Supernatural Vigilante series Box Set

by D. R. Perry

  “So that’s why Whitby’s asking for Newport.” I nod. “You can set up for good.”

  “Bingo.”

  I kind of want to offer Maya my place, but that’s way too forward for polite vampire society. Okay, it's forward in any type of society. I’m thinking she’s got a special ability, the kind that affects people's moods. It’s hard for me to think in a line that doesn’t lead to some charming feature of hers. Maybe it’s something she can’t help but she might be doing it on purpose. Nah, it’s got to be unintentional. I’ve got negative rungs on the vampiric ladder, so she isn't trying to bilk favors out of me.

  “Can’t you guys just stay here?” I clear my throat and clarify. “In Providence?”

  “Well, that’s a problem. On account of what happened the last time King DeCampo let an out-of-towner try to make his own way in this city.”

  “I never heard that story.”

  “Really?” Her smile’s like a necklace of diamonds, sparkling in the sun. Her eyes are clouded, though.

  “Truly.” I manage to smile back at Maya. She’s a bit intimidating. No, that’s a lie. She’s downright incredible, and I’m having a hard time untying my tongue around her. I decide to tell her the immediate truth. “I’m happy to just stand here and listen to anything you feel like telling me.”

  She throws back her head and laughs out loud. I’m more dazzled than the time the guys in the High School lighting booth turned the follow spot on me by accident. If I’d known a goddess would grace the Blood Moot that evening, I’d have been hanging around outside before the sun was all the way down.

  “We should find a place to sit down if you really want to hear it. Because it’s a long story.”

  I let her lead me to a loveseat off in the corner opposite from where we were standing. After that, I listen to her talk. And watch, of course. Focusing on what she’s saying is a challenge because Maya’s something like The Most Interesting Man except female and a vampire. I manage.

  The gist is that I’m not Stephanie’s first turn. I’m a replacement, as I suspected. It’s a good thing Maya’s telling me this because just watching her talk is a distraction that keeps me from freaking out about the whole thing. When she gets around to naming the guy it must show on my face because she stops.

  "What was that, Maya?"

  “I said his name was Tierney. Tino, are you okay?”

  “Irish?”

  “That’s right, he was.” She sets her elbow on one knee and leans her chin on her hand. “That means something to you.”

  “It does.” Maury’s murdered partner has the same last name. But he worked a rotating shift, so there’s no way they were the same guy. Probably related in a mortal way. “Hey, Maya?”

  “Yeah?” She’s gazing at me. I don’t know why. Maybe she can see the hamsters turning the wheels in my brain.

  “I think I owe you for this conversation.” I glance toward the king’s corner of the room, spot Raven, and prepare to flag them down to formally record a debt.

  “Wait until I finish the story.”

  “Okay.” I don’t tell her that I could listen to her recite bad infomercials for seventy-two hours straight and not get bored. Instead, I just let her talk. Her story’s more enlightening than an entire room full of Christmas lights. The LED kind. She mentions who took the rap for killing Tierney.

  “Is that why the king owes Stephanie?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you should ask the king’s Attaché.” Maya has a point. The king in any given territory delegates that kind of thing. But I’m not happy with her suggestion because I don’t like the owner of the job here.

  “Ask Raven?”

  “Ask me what?” Apparently, they saw me looking and ambled over already.

  “Did Stephanie’s other kid get killed?” I raise an eyebrow, challenging Raven to harp on my slang for someone who got turned. They don’t bother. I manage not to blink as they answer my question, all straightforward and everything.

  “Yes, he did.”

  “How?”

  “You wouldn’t be asking if you didn’t know. But since you asked, he died by vampire claw.”

  “Any chance you could tell me who the claw belonged to?”

  “If I have to look it up in here, it’ll cost you.” Raven taps their little black notebook.

  “Never mind. I’m a Private Investigator, I’ll figure that out on my own.” I grin.

  “Your brain is growing, Crispo.” Raven smirks.

  “Yeah. Learn something new every day. And I owe Maya a small favor for her time, so make a note of that, please.” I figure using the magic word mitigates the risk of waving Raven off. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m trying to enjoy the lady’s company.”

  “Be careful, you crazy kids.” Raven notes my debt down in the book. With a feather pen.

  “The king told Whitby and his folks to mingle.” Maya drops Raven a wink. “I’m mingling.”

  “True.” They look back at me. “Keep on feeding your head, Crispo. Some night you’ll even figure out how to tie your own shoes.” They saunter off.

  I turn back to look at Maya, and she’s blushing. I blink, then listen for a heartbeat. There is none.

  “How do you do that?”

  “Nice parlor trick, huh?” She winks. “It’s great for blending in and not freaking out the norms. Most of the others don’t care about that, but you’re different. This is a skill I think everyone should learn, so I’ll show you how for free.”

  Maya spares me twenty minutes of her time and teaches me how to pop a fake blush on demand. It’s harder than I expect, but she must be a better teacher than Stephanie because I manage to do it once. She thinks I’m a natural and tells me to keep on practicing. We’re laughing about something or other when I get the feeling someone’s looking over my shoulder.

  “Ahem.”

  I don’t look at whoever said that. I’d rather watch Maya sigh because it’s clear that our time together is coming to an end for now. I figure she’s got to be relatively new for a vampire but not anywhere near as young as me. She’s a good person to know. So I hand her a business card.

  “You really are a PI.” Maya drops me a smaller smile this time, but it seems just as genuine as her bigger ones from earlier.

  “Don’t be a stranger.”

  She giggles. “I won’t.”

  The interrupting vamp strides past me and escorts her away, linking his arm through hers. It’s Whitby himself. How could he possibly be her sire? I wonder why she implied that he turned her but shake the question off. Sometimes, it’s an extremely personal question. I can ask another time.

  “You can leave if you want to now, Tino.” Stephanie steps into the space Maya left. “You showed, mingled, and I saw Raven noting your attendance. I know you’ve got things to do.”

  “Yeah. One of those things is getting some information. And we should talk about one of the things I learned tonight. About Tierney.”

  “You’re right.” Stephanie wrinkles her nose. “But unfortunately, I still have demands on my time and a few small but important tasks to finish here. Why don’t you go about your outside business, and I will meet you at your apartment in the wee hours?”

  “You have tasks here?” I turn my head and look at her out of the corner of one eye. That always used to intimidate people before I undied, but it’s not so effective now. Probably my being the equivalent of a fifth-grader has something to do with it.

  “Yes." Steph's looking away when she finishes explaining, which makes me think she's understating things. "The king’s territory is growing with these new arrivals, which always comes with more busywork for the rest of us.”

  “Well, the last thing I want is for you to get on his bad side.”

  “I know, Tino. But don’t worry about me.” Stephanie turns her back on me, mostly because as my elder and better in this place, she can.

  “See you later,” I say to her retreating form.

  And I do worry about her. Because sh
e said nothing about staying on King Decapitate’s good side now that she doesn't have a debt to leverage against him. Whitby might not be as old or powerful as DeCampo, but he's got numbers. And if that crew is here for a benign reason, I'll eat Whitby's stupid hat. After the upheaval at Cranston PD that led to my resignation, I know a political shift when I smell one.

  Chapter Eight

  After I get home, I pick up all the costume selections I made earlier with Scott. Some of them need to get familiar with the business end of my Febreze bottle. So, I get that from under the sink. My parents’ basement is musty, okay?

  After that, I put some blood into the coffee maker’s carafe and turn the burner on. I twist the dial on a plastic kitchen timer, too. That’s a lesson learned the hard way. Leave blood in there too long, ruin a perfectly good carafe right along with my dinner.

  As I put the clothes on hangers from my closet, I sigh. If the world knew about vampires, maybe there’d be a Mr. Blood machine, something like a Mr. Coffee but with a shorter timer. My imagination runs off, dreaming up a world where all the human conveniences have vampiric counterparts. Why can't we all just get along?

  Now I’m dreaming of a special sunblocking suit that’d let me vacation in Fiji. With the cat I don’t have yet. Probably they won’t invent technology like that until after they make sentient holograms and perfect space travel though. The timer ringing startles me out of my reverie.

  The mug I drink my blood from isn't up in the cabinet. It's sitting in the sink, right where Stephanie left it the night before. I shut off the coffee maker before rinsing it. The blood pours like maple syrup. After I set the carafe in the sink, I turn the tap on to run water over it. Once I’m sitting down with my mug, I tap the app on my phone to see the evening news.

  “An alleged Organized Crime associate was apprehended last night in Roger Williams Park, based on an anonymous tip to WPRI. The official joint statement by Cranston and Providence Police says that they have no alleged associate in custody and ask that any citizen with information about the death of Cranston Detective Larry Tierney call either department.” The phone numbers for both duty officers flash at the bottom of the screen.

  I don’t have time to wait for those details, so I set the WPRI app to send alerts to my phone about that story. The weather, too, because that’s good to know. I figure I might end up outdoors for part of the evening so that kind of information could come in handy.

  The costume now passes my sniff test, so I put it on. I go into the bathroom and have a look in the mirror. That’s when I realize the whole idea sucks. There’s no way I can go out there and talk to people with my reflection the way it is. Even with the itchy mask, it looks too weird. People are going to notice. I shake my head but only see that mask and the shoulders of my opera cape shimmying a little in the stupid vampire-unseeing glass.

  I look like The Invisible Man dressed up for a costume party. Everyone can see my clothes in the mirror, but not any part of me that’s exposed. Putting on gloves solves the problem with my hands. But I realize that I have to do something about my face besides the mask.

  My medicine cabinet is empty. When I got turned, I emptied it out in an impulse-driven balancing act of denial and affirmation. I open the linen closet and find the box with my old stage makeup kit in it. Could greasepaint solve my mirror problems? Maybe.

  I open it, ready to go to town. But there’s no tube in my flesh-tone because I used it all up. I try blending red and white, but there’s not enough of that either, so I add some yellow and blue. What I end up with is a ghoulish mix that’s between green and gray. It doesn’t do much for my eye area, so I use a pencil to color in my brows. I get fancy and change their shape into something more dramatic, too. I don’t worry about sweating the stuff off because that doesn’t happen to me anymore.

  Color contact lenses lend an eerie effect of floating pupils, but upon inspection, that’s only a problem extremely close up. Most people will only get a glimpse of me in a mirror and think my eyes are perfectly normal when looking directly at me. I definitely have to order more of this stuff. I’d just use Maybelline, but that won’t give the coverage this does. Greasepaint doesn’t come off in the rain, and it’s bad enough that the sun keeps me indoors. I need to be able to work in a downpour if one happens.

  My new reflection makes me chuckle, but then I blink. Because it works. The irony is that I look like everyone’s idea of how a vampire should appear, based on stage and screen representations. They believe so strongly that we don't exist, there’s no way I’ll blow my cover even if I flash fangs or get blood-lusty red eyes. They’ll just think it’s part of some vigilante gimmick. Like I’m a pro wrestler or something.

  I’m almost ready to go, but as I approach the door leading out of my apartment, I understand that I’m forgetting something fundamental.

  “Shit. I don't have a freaking alias.”

  But I’ve got no idea where to start, which means my time’s shorter than I’d like. I have to damn the torpedoes and head out anyway.

  “You can make it up on the way, Tino,” I tell myself. "Think of it as a nickname."

  Talking to yourself is a sign that your sanity’s in need of a few small repairs. And going out unprepared should be number one on the top ten list of things not to do when you’re a vigilante. But I know nothing, so I think everything’s going to be peachier than a Georgia springtime.

  I’ll probably end up embarrassing myself for all eternity because that’s just how I roll.

  Providence and the surrounding areas have one thing in abundance that most people don’t think about. Old factories. Most of those are renovated into space. I’m talking about the kind you can rent, not the place past Earth’s atmosphere that’s about as high as the totals of construction and real estate racketeering.

  And I just happen to know that the Caprice family owns a handful of those. I also know that the only one that’s not on the king’s turf is over by Broad Street, right on the Cranston Line near Roger Williams Park. It’s okay if you can’t make sense of my directions. I’m a Rhode Islander, and we all get it. You kinda have to live here or visit frequently. And if you haven’t, you should, because the food here rocks. Not that I can enjoy it anymore.

  Anyway, I could run across rooftops like Hollywood’s favorite nocturnal cape-wearer, but I don’t. Instead, I stick to the sidewalks and the shadows. This has the bonus of keeping me away from reflections and the city’s recording devices, some of which still use silvered mirrors. I’ll be in trouble with the monarch and his buddies if I get caught on tape, and that’s the last thing I need.

  When I get to the actual shadow of the old converted mill, most of the lights are on. It’s also loud out here, probably because nearly all the tenants are bands with screamy vocalists and heavy distortion on their guitars. All the windows on the first floor have a reinforced steel screen over them to keep people from making like I was going to and breaking in. I walk most of the way around the place before I see a window I can jump to that’s dark.

  Before I try it, I lean against the brick wall and glance around. I’m not in the line of sight for any cameras, so it’s a go. I leap and catch the line of bricks just above the window. Once my feet are on the sill, I squat and pull the pane up. Also, I grudgingly thank Stephanie for the reflexes and extra dexterity that come with being a vampire. At least this part doesn’t suck so much.

  I shimmy inside and close the window behind me. Leaving it open would only make the tenants lock it in the future. This current setup is way too convenient for me to scuttle it because I forgot something so silly. I’m chuckling and wiping old mortar crumbs off my hands when I trip over something on the floor like a stupid oaf. Whatever it is feels cool and rigid but eerily squishy. It reminds me of the last thing I want to find. A corpse.

  In seconds, I’m at the light switch on the opposite wall next to the door. After flipping it, I lean beside it. The light reveals a rubber dummy dressed in old clothes and decorated with obviousl
y (to me) fake blood. The floor said dummy is sprawled on would usually have a carpet, but it’s been rolled back. That’s not strange, but what is are the weird shapes inside circles chalked in green across the polished concrete. There are jars of what looks like green glitter on half the available surfaces in the place. My feet feel all tingly, too. It’s like when the Novocain wears off after a trip to the dentist.

  “Crap on a crap cracker.” I wonder whether this is some kind of magic, but I’m not sure whether that actually exists. My mind comes up with a list of more questions to ask Stephanie.

  I stare at one of the lines. Well, it’s not really a line anymore, exactly. I stare at the Tino-sized footprint on it. I lift up my right leg to examine the sole of my gumshoe. Yup. I smudged it and fudged it, but fudge has a way of still coming out good as long as you smooth it over before it goes solid. Can spells solidify? Is fudge magic? It sure tastes like that. Tasted. I miss chocolate.

  On a rolling cart off to the side of the circle, I see the box of chalk. It’s easy to find a matching green piece, so I grab it and step carefully back to the line I mussed worse than Kayleigh Killarney’s lipstick at the Homecoming dance. I fix it.

  Once the line’s filled in, I tread carefully again and drop the chalk back in the box. There’s a rag next to it so I use that to dust off my hands and my shoes. Leaving chalky footprints in the hall would suck more than the industrial vacuum in the corner by the window.

  “See ya, weirdo lab,” I say to the empty, silent room.

  Because that’s what this place looks like, a laboratory for people learning stage or movie special effects. Or magic if it’s an actual thing. I’m not sure what I literally stepped in exactly, but I know it’s not as important as the reason I came here. The Caprices. I shut off the light.