by J. R. Rain
He filled his massive chest to capacity, which put a lot of pressure on his nice dress shirt, especially the buttons. I was prepared to duck should buttons start flying like so many bullets from a Gatling gun.
He studied me like that for a moment, his chest filled, button threads hanging on for dear life, and then finally expelled. He leaned back and crossed his legs, adjusting the drape of his hem.
“Don’t judge me, Sam,” he said. I noticed he looked away when he spoke.
“Who’s judging?” I said. “I’m just admiring the fine handiwork of your shirt.”
“Every man deserves a fair trial, Sam.”
“And every defense attorney deserves a hefty payday.”
“This has nothing to do with money, Sam.”
“Say that to your mansion in Yorba Linda.”
“My home is the result of a lot of hard work.”
“And a lot of freed killers.”
Perhaps in frustration, he closed both hands into boulder-like fists, and as he did so, his knuckles cracked mightily. Jesus, he was an intimidating son-of-a-bitch, but I was not easily intimidated.
“What do you want, Sam?” he asked.
I found myself wanting to lash out, too. I found myself wanting to storm out and flip him the bird. How...how could a man represent such scum? And how could I ever respect such a man?
The answer was easy: I couldn’t.
I continued saying nothing. I just sat there, battling my emotions, knowing that Kingsley might be the only person I knew who could help me find Archibald Maximus, but hating that I needed his help.
And in my silence, Kingsley must have spotted something. His thick eyebrows knitted and he sat forward a little. “Unbelievable,” he said.
“What?”
“You did it, didn’t you?”
“Did what?” But I knew what he was talking about. Kingsley was closed to me, as were all immortals, apparently, but we both were experts in reading body language.
“You turned him, Sam, didn’t you?”
“I saved him.”
He looked away, shaking his great head. “And you have the nerve to come in here and accuse me of being selfish. You, who condemned your own son to an eternity of childhood.”
“What was I supposed to do, goddammit? Watch him die?”
“There’s a natural order to things, Sam.”
“And we’re not natural?”
“No, we’re not.”
“And part of that natural order is to let my son die?”
He said nothing, but I saw his brain working. The great attorney was looking for a counter-argument, but I would be damned if I was going to listen to an argument for my son’s death.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t know much about much, but I know one thing: I’m a mother first. I am a mother and that is my baby in the hospital. He was sick and I had an answer. It might not have been the best answer, and I sure as hell don’t expect to win any ‘Mother of the Year’ awards. I also don’t understand what the hell happened to me, or what the hell even happened to you. I have no clue the power and magicks behind what keeps us alive. But if this fucking curse, this disease, that I live with every day can somehow save my son, somehow keep my life from spinning completely and totally out of fucking control, you damn well better believe I’m going to utilize it, because it sure as hell has taken a lot from me, Kingsley.”
He was nodding. “Okay, now that you’ve justified turning your son into a blood-sucking fiend, what are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to find someone who can help me.”
“Help you how? With the medallion?”
“Yes. I have a name.”
“Where did you get the name?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, and debated storming out of the office. Instead, I kept my ego in check for my son. “Have you ever heard of someone named Archibald Maximus?”
There was no recognition on his face. “No,” he said. “You don’t forget a name like that.”
“Do you know anyone who could help me?”
“I pointed you to the only person I knew who could help you,” he said.
That had been Detective Hanner. I sensed Kingsley’s hesitation. Did he know someone else? I sensed that he might, but he didn’t say anything else. Instead, he was now looking at me like I was the biggest piece of shit he’d ever seen. Probably with the same expression I had been wearing just a few minutes earlier.
“I don’t know who else to turn to,” I said, biting the bullet. “I know you don’t agree with what I’ve done. Quite frankly, I don’t agree with a lot of what you’ve done, either. But let’s put aside our differences for now, okay? I made the best choice I could. I did what I thought was right. There’s a chance, a very small chance, that I can return my son to mortality without any lasting repercussion or effects. But if I hadn’t done what I did, there was a hundred percent chance that I was going to lose my son. I gave him a chance at life, Kingsley. Was it selfish for me to keep my little boy alive and expose him to something he never asked for? Yes, it was. I agree. I’m horrible. But my son is alive, and there is a chance to return things to normal. Normal is all I’m asking for, Kingsley. Please help me.”
He looked at me for a long moment, and the fact that he had to decide whether or not to help me, crushed my heart almost completely. I didn’t want a man who had to decide whether or not to help me, even if he didn’t agree with my choices.
Finally, he sighed and nodded, and said, “I’ll see what I can do, Sam. But I make no promises.”
I smiled even as my heart broke. “Thank you, Kingsley.”
As I left his office, Kingsley wouldn’t look at me. I said goodbye and he merely nodded. If I was a betting woman, I would bet that our relationship was over.
Forever.
Chapter Twenty-one
I was driving north on the 57 Freeway.
I checked with my sister and my son was still sleeping contentedly. The doctors seemed pleased that he was stable, but there was still mild concern, most notably that his body temperature had now dropped to 97 degrees, one degree lower than normal.
This didn’t worry me. My son was going to make it, and the doctors were going to have a conundrum on their hands, much as they had with me, in a different hospital, over six years ago.
My sister asked what I was up to, and I told her that it was a very important case, a matter of life and death. She understood, but just barely. Her husband, who was watching Tammy and her kids, would be picking her up soon. I made it a point to be there when the sun set.
After all, tonight would be my son’s first night as...something far different than he was before.
I exited on Orangethorpe and worked my way over to Hero’s in Fullerton. I checked the time. Fang should just be showing up to work. I was right.
As I dashed in from the blistering heat, gasping and clutching my chest, I saw the tall bartender doing something very unbartender-like. He was texting. Just as I stepped into the bar, my cell phone chimed.
I paused just inside the doorway and fished out the cell. It was a text, of course, from Fang. It read: Good afternoon, Moon Dance, how are you?
I wrote: I could say I’m fine, but that would be a lie. By the way, the guy at the end of the bar needs another beer, so quit texting and start working.
I hit send and waited.
Fang had just spotted the guy at the end of the bar, who had just motioned him over, when his cell phone vibrated. Fang paused and read the screen, and I watched with some satisfaction from the doorway as his mouth dropped open. Then he started looking around until he spotted me. I waved, and he shook his head.
“I was beginning to think you were everywhere, Moon Dance,” he said.
“Is that a bad thing?”
He winked. “Not for me. Hold on.” He drew the guy a draft of beer and came back. “I think our connection is growing stronger.”
“How so?” I asked.
“I was texting you as yo
u came in.”
“Could have been a coincidence, and is texting even a word?”
“If not, it should be,” he said. “Anyway, there are no coincidences, Moon Dance.”
I grabbed a stool at the far end of the bar. Privacy, for me, is always good. I said, “That would sound deep if it wasn’t bullshit.”
“Bullshit, huh? Then how do you explain that for the past half hour I’ve been feeling increasingly...troubled.”
“Maybe you had some bad Chinese.”
“Not bad Chinese, Sam. And how would you explain that I’ve felt incredible grief coming from you. Wave after wave of it. I sensed that something profound had ended.”
I thought of my relationship with Kingsley. “Ended?”
He shook his head. “Crazy, I know. But, to me, I felt a finality to something, as if something emotional and tragic had ended. Of course, I assumed it was something to do with your son.”
Jesus, my connection with Fang is growing. “My son is fine,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes. “How fine?”
I nodded, confirming his suspicions.
His jaw dropped. “You really did it?”
I nodded again.
“And how is he?”
“He’s fine. He’s great, in fact.”
Fang leaned on his elbows. The grisly teeth around his neck—definitely not shark teeth—clacked together with the sound of knuckles striking knuckles.
“But you’re not fine,” he said.
“My job’s not over.”
He nodded. “The medallion.”
I caught him up to date, noting the striking difference between the way he handled the news and the way Kingsley had. There was no judgment in Fang’s voice. There was only concern for me and my son.
He said, “And so the ending I felt was the end of your relationship with Kingsley.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not. I’m sure you’re glad he’s out of the picture.”
Aaron Parker, aka Fang, shook his head. “I would not be much of a friend if I wished for you to experience pain on any level.”
Now I was shaking my head. “Not as much pain as you might think. Kingsley is an amazing man, as you well know, and he was there for me when I needed him the most, but...it was bad timing. I was just dealing with the end of my marriage. I wasn’t ready to start a new relationship.”
“And he wanted to start one?”
“He wanted something, more than what I could give him. But it’s not that.”
“It’s ideological,” said Fang, picking up on my thoughts. In fact, I could even feel him in my thoughts.
“We’re just too different,” I said. “Apples and oranges.”
“Vampires and werewolves.”
I smiled at that. Fang smiled, too, and I sensed his strong need to reach out and touch me, but he held back. One relationship had ended. Now was not the time to push for another. Perhaps not for a long, long time.
“It takes all my willpower, Sam,” he said, tracing his finger along the scarred bar top in front of my hand, “to not touch you.”
“I just need a friend,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “And you have one. Always.”
Chapter Twenty-two
I was on my second glass of wine, even if the first one did little more than upset my stomach. I haven’t had a good buzz in half a decade, and I suspected my days of being buzzed were long gone.
Being buzzed was overrated, I thought. Now, flying high over Orange County was a different story.
There are some benefits to being a creature of the night.
Fang and I got back to the subject of my son. He said, “I’m still fairly involved in the vampire online community. I’ll ask around about our friend Archibald Maximus.”
“You’re still hanging out in chat rooms?”
“Often.”
“They seem so...five years ago.”
“Don’t knock them, young lady. It’s where I met you, after all.”
Years ago, confused and lost, I had joined a vampire IM chat group hoping to learn anything I could about the undead. I hadn’t expected to learn much of anything, let alone create such a deep and lasting friendship.
I said, “Well, I don’t have a lot of hope.”
“We’ll see what turns up. Remember, you never know who might be popping into some of those chat rooms.”
“Like me,” I said.
“Right, like you. Sometimes I come across the real deal.”
“How do you know they’re the real deal?” I asked, suddenly feeling a pang of jealousy for reasons I couldn’t quite understand but wasn’t in the mood to probe very deeply.
“Oh, you know. I’ve made it my life’s ambition to find vampires.”
“And to be one.”
Fang glanced at me sharply. Last week, the handsome freak asked me to turn him into a vampire, so that we could live together, or some cheesy crap like that. Not that I didn’t believe him, but I was suspecting he would do anything—anything—to be a vampire. Fang’s story was...interesting, to say the least. Interesting and disturbing. Born with a rare defect, his canine teeth had grown in exceptionally long, so long that he had lived with the “vampire” stigma during his entire adolescence and most of his teen years. Childish insults, mostly, but with such ferocity and frequency that he came to believe he was vampire.
In an act of passion and violence, his teenage girlfriend had ended up dead and Fang had gone on to have one of the most memorable trials to date. O.J. Simpson with teeth, as some called it.
Later, Fang would escape a high-security insane asylum...and kill two guards in the process. His whereabouts were presently unknown to law enforcement, a secret he had entrusted to me, much as I had entrusted one to him.
We all have our secrets.
Fang, or Aaron Parker, had never lost his passion for vampires, even when his two massive canine teeth had been gruesomely removed in the insane asylum—teeth that now hung around his neck to this day. Six years of online chatting and one bang-up job of stalking on his part later, and here we were. Friends with issues. Friends with secrets. But most important...friends.
His request had caught me off guard, and I would consider it later, but for now I could only think about my son. He understood this, of course, which wasn’t hard to do since he was powerfully and psychically connected to me.
He grinned at that last line of thought. “I can think of no other person I would rather be powerfully and psychically attached to, Moon Dance,” he said, using my old chat room username.
“You’ve been reading my thoughts,” I said.
“It’s not like I can help it,” said Fang. “So, from what I gather, you don’t find me such a bad guy.”
“No,” I said. “But you have your issues. Scary issues.”
“I could say the same thing about you.”
“Touché,” I said, although I thought his comparison wasn’t quite fair. I had never asked for any of this.
“And neither had I,” said Fang, picking up on my thoughts.
“Victims of circumstance, you had said.”
“Something like that,” said Fang. “We are what we are.”
“Fine,” I said. “But be discreet with your inquiries.”
“Of course,” he said.
I thought of my son. I didn’t have to check my watch to know that the sun would be setting in a few hours. I seemed chrono-kinetically attuned to the sun. Soon, Anthony would be waking up after sleeping through his first day. I wanted to be there for him.
“Chrono-kinetically?” said Fang, picking up my thoughts.
“It works,” I said.
He grinned. “Hey, it just occurred to me that you might want to take a look at Cal State Fullerton’s library.”
“Why?”
“Apparently they’ve got quite an occult department there. You know, books. Real books. With paper and dust and ink. A guy was just in here
going on and on about their extensive collection.”
“What guy?”
“Young guy.”
“Maybe,” I said, standing, leaving my wine half-finished. Always the pessimist these days.
“Where to now?” he asked.
I thought about it. I had a few hours before Anthony awakened. I said, “I need to beat the shit out of something.”
Chapter Twenty-three
I was at my gym with my trainer.
By “gym” I meant my boxing studio. By “trainer” I meant the little old Irish guy named Jacky who talked like a leprechaun.
“Hands up, lass. Up, up!”
“Go to hell,” I grunted, as I lifted my heavy hands. Vampire or not, I was nearly mortal during the day, and my hands felt like lead, especially after going through a few rounds on the heavy bag.
But even though sunset was still under two hours away, I had more than enough strength to hit the bag hard enough to rock the little trainer. He grunted through the shockwaves, screaming at me to keep my hands up even as he struggled to hold onto the bag.
“End round!” he shouted, just as I leveled another hard roundhouse. Unfortunately, the Irishman had let his guard down just enough. The punch, although mostly absorbed by the heavy bag, sent him staggering backwards.
“You okay, Jacky?” I cried out, moving over to him and catching him just as he stumbled over my gym bag.
As I held him up, the Irishman looked at me with eyes slightly crossed, sweat pouring down his face. A second later his eyes uncrossed and he stared at me. “Jesus, you’re a freak.”
“I’ve heard that before. From you, in fact.”
But he was still staring at me. “And how did you get over here so fast?”
“What can I say? Cat-like reflexes.”
“Freak-like reflexes,” he said in his Irish trill. “I need a break, Sam.”
He took his break, and in his office, through his partially open door, I saw him down a few cups of water and what looked like pain medication. He came back, cracked his neck, grabbed the heavy bag from behind, and said, “Round four. Let’s do this.”