And Mitzi?
Mitzi was chipper as ever. Can’t keep a good vampire dog down, I guess.
Problem was, there hadn’t been time to arrange for a new apartment. We couldn’t stay at her place with a staked landlord in the basement and we couldn’t go back to my house with a staked editor in mine.
I loaded the last box on the truck and climbed the stairs to Clancy’s now-empty apartment to find her standing on the bare, planked wood floor of the living room rubbing lotion on her arms. It was from one of those same blue glass jars I’d seen at Alicia’s party.
“What is that stuff, anyway?”
Clancy dipped two fingers in the jar and ran the white cream over her forearm. It looked like Noxema.
“More like the opposite,” she replied, reading my mind. “That stuff you put on to relieve a sunburn—this stuff you apply to prevent one.”
I walked over and took the jar from her, turned the label toward me. “Alicia’s New Dawn.”
Clancy nodded. “Put her own name right up front there, didn’t she? Miss Vanity. But you have to admit, the idea’s brilliant. Create what is essentially a sunblock for vampires. Even ole Drac himself could have gone surfing with this stuff.”
“Interesting image,” I said, sniffing the jar. “Hmm. Not bad. Subtle odor.”
Clancy smiled sardonically. “Not to another vampire it isn’t. They can detect each other a mile away wearing this stuff.”
“Is that why you wear it,” Mitzi asked ominously from the doorway, “to keep tabs on the old gang?”
Clancy gave her a cursory glance, took the jar back from me and screwed on the lid. “I wear it because I work for Alicia. And in case I run into her outside the shop. She thinks I’m one of them. Wearing this stuff encourages that belief.”
Mitzi made a scoffing sound. “But, of course, you’re not one of them.”
Clancy ignored her, put the jar in her purse and turned brightly to me. “Well, then! Shall we start making some plans to take down her operation? Put an end to this epidemic?”
“Don’t you think we need a place to sleep first?” from a clearly disgruntled Mitzi.
Clancy slung her purse and headed for the door. “We can always stay at a motel a few nights.”
Mitzi gave me a wry look as I passed her. “That will be cozy…”
* * *
We found a Motel 6 near Lake Shawnee at the edge of town, parked the truck in the lot and took my old Chevy to the park. On the way we stopped off at a 7-Eleven to buy me a pair of sunglasses.
“The cream works fine on the skin,” Clancy explained as we walked the lake, “but vampire eyes can’t tolerate sunlight without shades.”
“What about me?” Mitzi inquired, trailing, snuffing the shoreline.
“You’re a dog,” Clancy replied.
Mitzi’s head came up, muzzle wrinkled threateningly. “That lotion stinks on you, Miss Cummings.”
I frowned disapproval, leaned close to Mitzi. “Be nice, huh? I think she smells good with it.”
“You think she smells good without it!”
“I wouldn’t judge the odor of others!” Clancy retorted, reading us both.
“Listen, sister,” Mitzi growled, “I can smell an alley cat six blocks over! I can detect which plants are nutritiously edible right under my feet! Do you know what that’s called?”
Clancy shrugged. “Shitting where you eat?”
Mitzi started toward her…
“Girls, girls!” I pleaded. “Weren’t we planning the eradication of a vampire epidemic!”
Clancy stooped to the shore, plucked a stone from the mud, flung it at the water. We watched it plop. “See those growing spirals? That’s how a vampire plague spreads once it gets started.”
Mitzi snorted contemptuously at a rock. “Wonderfully analogy!” Then to me: “I’d hang on to this one, Ed. She’s so…deep!”
“This shop you work at,” I asked Clancy, “tell me about it.”
Clancy fished for another stone. “Alicia’s New Dawn shop is basically a vampire training center masquerading as a health spa. We sell all the usual herbal shampoos, soaps, conditioners, what have you, to any customer who walks through the door.”
“Every innocent woman, you mean.” Mitzi corrected.
“Not really. There’s a complete line of men’s products as well. You’d be surprised how big our male clientele is, and growing all the time.” As I watched, she scratched absently at her upper arm.
“So they come in,” I said, “get bitten, put on the cream and go home vampires. And then what--bite the wife and kids before dinner?”
Clancy smiled, regarding the lake. “Not quite that simple. First of all the cream isn’t effective immediately, it has to work into the skin for a few days. If a vampire tried walking outside after only one application, he’d burn up in a matter of minutes. Secondly—as you know—recruiting victims can be a messy, bloody affair. Alicia’s shop is supposed to be regarded by the citizens as an upscale boutique, not a slaughterhouse. And third, and most importantly, it’s an ineffective way to spread a franchise from town to town, state to state. You can’t risk exposure by being clumsy. One little bloodbath blunder could bring the whole chain down before it’s big enough to recover. No, you have to go slowly and cautiously. That’s the one thing we have in our favor—it all takes some time.” She scratched at her other arm, looked down at it with annoyance.
“If this sunblock, or cream or whatever doesn’t work right away,” Mitzi asked, “how does she get vampires to walk around in the daylight? And, by the way, why are you smiling? Like you enjoy her little scheme?”
“I admire it,” Clancy said, “it’s really pretty ingenious. We sell New Dawn—the sun cream—as an exclusive product only. We even overprice it. But mostly we tell the customers it isn’t truly effective without the baths.”
I turned to her. “Bathes?”
“Mud baths. Alicia didn’t choose Kansas entirely by accident. The soil is veined with limestone in this part of the country. And as blazing hot as it can get outside in the summer, deep below ground it can be quite cool. Hollywood studios store the negatives to their best movies in a limestone vault in Hutchinson, Kansas. The temperature is cool, but most of all, constant. Alicia’s shop was built over a series of limestone caves. One of the galleries was converted into stone mud bath tubs, filled with another of her secret ingredients and chemicals that acts in tandem with the cream to block out the UV rays. The process takes several days, several visits.”
“Which gives the aspiring vampires an excuse to be away from home,” Mitzi put in.
“Exactly. And a good place to be bitten down below without making a mess of the counter displays and aroma therapy shelves up above.”
“Clever,” I admitted. “Clever woman, our Alicia.”
“Yes indeed,” from a wry-sounding Mitzi, “except for one thing.”
Clancy and I turned to her.
The dog was nodding at Clancy. “You’re sun block wonder cream. It isn’t working.”
I looked down. Clancy and I gasped in tandem. Her forearm was a map of bright red and bleeding marks from her scratching nails.
Clancy stepped back in horror. “Oh, my God…” she whispered.
Then she began moving in a tight little circle, scratching furiously at both arms at once. “Oh, God, what’s wrong with me?”
Mitzi parked her butt pointedly on the grass. “Gee, let me think. You’re a vampire, maybe?”
“Mitzi, shut up!” I tried to grab hold of Clancy but she squirmed free easily; in fact, she knocked me nearly senseless into a tree. Funny how quickly I forgot about her strength.
An almost animal moan of misery rose in Clancy’s throat, her eyes gone wide, and a little wild. “Stop it!” she began screaming at no one, “stop it! It burns!”
A group of boys fishing a nearby dock looked our way curiously.
I lunged for Clancy again. “Honey, let me look at it!”
But she wouldn’t�
��or couldn’t—hold still. Flailing about like that, she might have knocked me flat again if I hadn’t ducked around her. I finally stood back impotently, watching her dancing contortions, unable to think how to help.
“Nothing I enjoy more,” Mitzi sighed, head down on crossed forepaws, “than a nice sunny day!”
Clancy screamed and began ripping at her blouse.
A couple on the walkway above us turned. One of the boys on the dock pointed.
I imagined the police descending next.
I grabbed both her wrists in my hands, tried to access her ravaged forearms. She threw me off like a rag doll, Mitzi having to jump out of the way or be squashed. The poodle turned to me patiently as I lay there flat on my back. “Yeah…this is really being inconspicuous.”
I pushed up on my elbows. “Damnit, Mitzi, will you do something?”
She yawned her pink palette at me. “Like what?”
“Can’t you see? She’s burning up!”
Mitzi licked her chops once leisurely, glanced over at the writhing woman on the shore. “Yes, well, vampires will do that in sunlight when they don’t have fur…”
She stuck her rump in the air, stretched luxuriously on her forelegs and finally stood up. “Maybe she needs a little cooling off…”
“Mitzi, wait!”
But she’d already launched herself at the flailing Clancy. Three quick gallops and she was a furry projectile even Clancy’s strength was no match for. She hit the woman square in the solar plexus, head down like a ram, and butted her into the lake.
I scrambled up, slipping in the mud, and leapt after them.
Mitzi was already trudging ashore, smelling as only a wet dog can smell, then spraying me thoroughly as she shook dry.
I pushed past her through ankle-deep lake water. But Clancy was already coming out again, no longer struggling or flailing, clothes dripping, head down and arms held out, studying them intently. To my amazement the angry-looking rash had disappeared…
* * *
I was sitting on the motel bed, Mitzi in a wicker chair, as Clancy came out of the shower, head in a turban again, towel around her.
“What is that,” Mitzi inquired yawning, “three baths in one day now? Is this how vampires seduce people? Why don’t you just dispense with the towels and drag him to bed? I’ll take a long walk.”
“I just don’t understand it,” from Clancy, rubbing at her wet head thoughtfully, “okay, I’m a hybrid, but I’ve been in the sun all my life and…I just don’t understand it…”
“I do.”
Dog and lady looked up at me.
Then dog jumped lightly off the chair and headed for the door nervously. “Yeah, think I’ll take that walk now…”
“Stay where you are, Mitzi!”
She jerked to a stop, seem to shrink in place a fraction, a little whine escaping her.
“Whine away, it isn’t going to do you any good!”
Clancy looked at both of us. “What’s going on?”
My eyes narrowed at the dog. “Yes, Mitzi, why don’t you tell Miss Cummings what’s going on?”
Mitzi shrank lower.
I turned away, pulled Clancy down beside me on the bed, took her arm in my hand, examined it carefully. “Good. You look fine now. Thank God.” I checked the other arm. Same thing.
Mitzi inched toward the door.
“Mitzi!”
She halted.
“Will one of you tell me what this is about, please?” from Clancy.
“Mitzi?”
Mitzi flopped on the carpet with sudden arrogance. “Oh, for chrissake, I pissed in your silly ice tub.”
Clancy stared at her. “You what?”
“Before you joined me in it,” I explained. “She came swaggering into your bathroom, jumped up on the lip of the tub—“
“It was only a little squirt!”
“Tried to make me feel like I was dreaming,” I said.
“That’s filthy!” Clancy hunched.
“No! It’s not! Flushing your own poop down a pipe into the sewer system, that’s filthy! At least I fertilize!”
Clancy sat dazed. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“She’s jealous,” I said.
“Screw you,” Mitzi muttered, “I was only protecting you. She burned, didn’t she?”
“Not from the sun,” I told them. I turned to Casey, patted her hand. “I’m sorry. You had a reaction, that’s all. Mitzi? Apologize to her.”
“I will not! The woman sucks! In the worst way!”
Clancy dragged the towel from her hair, shook it in confusion. “It doesn’t compute, Ed. Dog urine? I mean, disgusting as it is, surely it wouldn’t cause that kind of reaction…”
“She said,” Mitzi snorted, “having often been peed on!”
Clancy ignored her, stood and began pacing the carpet suddenly, juggling the towel in her hand. I could almost see her mind working it out. “We drove to my place after we were shot…it was daylight when we got there, full sun on my skin…”
I watched her, waiting.
“…I made the palette bed for the dog—“
“The dog has a name!”
“…and filled the tub with ice. Got you into it, Ed…”
Thoughts racing, wheels turning.
“…I tucked in the dog…then came in and got into the tub with you…”
“Showed your pretty blonde wool—“
“Mitzi, shut up! Go on, honey.”
Clancy paced, juggled. “…I dozed off for a minute or so…woke up, got you out of the ice and into bed…” She frowned, concentrating. “…eliminated the landlord…helped you pack up the apartment…rented the U-Haul…” She looked up at me, shrugged defeat. “Drove us here to the motel. That’s all!”
She slumped.
“Not quite,” I encouraged, “you left something out!”
She turned to me. “What?”
Mitzi sighed atop the wicker chair. “Your vampire sauce, dear.”
Clancy frowned. “I don’t—“
“She’s right, Clancy! You put on the lotion before we left the apartment!”
“Yeah, so?”
“So! You were looking for something that would elicit a reaction—a strong one!”
“Alicia’s lotion? But I use New Dawn every day--”
“Not mixed with dog pee you don’t!” I was jubilant.
Clancy’s jaw dropped suddenly. She brightened.
Then she turned abruptly and threw herself on Mitzi.
The dog yelped wildly strained to get away. “Help me, Ed, she’s going for the jugular!”
Clancy hugged her tight, even pressing her cheek to the furry head. Then, holding her up at arm’s length, she smiled proudly at the poodle. “Mitzi, I could kiss you!”
Mitzi strained, gave me a desperate look. “Oh God, Ed, she’s bi! A bi-vampire! Shoot her! Stake her! Call Pat Robertson!”
Clancy dropped the dog, swept over and cupped my cheeks in her hands, kissed me hard on the mouth. Really hard.
I blinked dizzily. “Thanks. Um…to what do I owe that pleasure?”
But Clancy was dancing now, barefoot and hip swinging across the carpet. “Put de lime in de coconut and see whot hoppen…put de lime in de coconut and see whot hoppen!”
Mitzi looked over at me with jaded eyes. “Centuries of bloodthirsty vampires, and we get Bette Midler.”
But I was up on the carpet now, swinging Clancy in my arms. “Put de pee in de lotion and see whot hoppen…put de pee in de lotion--”
Mitzi sat up quickly, looked from one of us to the other. “You mean--?”
We nodded in tandem. “You, my darling, Mitzi,” Clancy said, pointing a slim finger, “just devised a method to eliminate the enemy!”
Mitzi stood slowly, finally panted a doggy smile. “For real?”
“For real,” I grinned, dipping Clancy to the carpet, “man’s new weapon in the war on vampires! Dog urine!”
ELEVEN
After the dancing
and hugging and victory posturing, Clancy began digging quickly through one of the packing boxes she’d brought in from the U-Haul.
Mitzi and I looked at each other. “You’re unpacking, Clancy? In a motel? Shouldn’t we be discussing how we’re going to get the dog urine into the beauty cream?”
“Tell you one thing,” from Mitzi, “I’m not squatting over a hundred and fifty jars of sunblock for the next two weeks.”
Clancy smiled, pulling things from pasteboard. “You don’t have to, Mitzi. Alicia produces the lotion right there in her shop. In the basement, in fact. A big, fat vat of it. She’s cautious to a fault—doesn’t trust farming out work to any out-of-town manufacturers of her personal beauty aids. Not at this stage, anyway. Ah!” She found what she was digging for, the Mr. Coffee machine, and pulled it free of the packing. “We attack at nightfall. Meanwhile we down as much coffee as we can stand to stay hyper-focused. You too, Mitzi.”
“I hate coffee,” Mitzi snorted from her chair, “nasty stuff.”
“Drink it anyway,” Clancy told her, “you can go back to rooting through the garbage later.”
She plugged in the coffee maker, gave me a critical eye. “Hey. How you feeling?”
I shrugged from the bed. “Fine. Why, do I look bad?”
“A little peaked. You’ve been through a lot and the treatment’s still wearing off. Why don’t you lie back on that expensive Motel 6 pillow and take a little nap?”
“I thought we were having coffee—getting wired for the big assault.”
“There’s time before it brews. Go on, close your eyes for a moment.”
I started to answer when both motel windows burst inward simultaneously.
A symphony of glass cascaded musically into the room, along with two darkly dressed figures in black half-masks. They looked almost like Ninjas.
“Shit!” I heard Clancy gasp—
--then everything became a blur of chaos. A very fast blur.
The one closest to Clancy went for her, his speed amazing.
He wielded a black, sharp-pointed pike like a lance. Clancy received him gracefully, ducked under his thrust, swung and smashed the Mr. Coffee pot across his face. As he staggered back I launched myself from the bed to her aid--got all of three feet before the biggest figure smashed me to the floor with a roundhouse kick. It drove all the air from my lungs. Gasping pain, head ringing, I heard a distant growl, saw a brownish blur that was Mitzi leap high from her wicker chair, pink lips skinned back, white canines flashing. My attacker met her on the point of his pike. Mitzi yelped once bravely as the lance drove through her heart and out her back, then slumped dead. Her killer chuckled and swung her off the spear and into the wall in a smear of pulp.
B005N1TFVG EBOK Page 9