Crooked Fang

by Carrie Clevenger

  I was about to pounce on him when he stopped, having somehow spotted me in the sliver of deep shadow I was hiding in. He turned tail and fled the other direction. I hauled ass after him. Our footsteps thudded over the balcony’s concrete. I reached out to grab him when, to my surprise, he jumped over the railing, and I went right after him. We landed on the blacktop below with a roll and I pulled the fucker’s hood back to reveal long, wavy hair. I realized I was face to face with a gorgeous woman a split second before she pulled a fist back and knocked the holy fucking shit out of me.

  My jaw sang with pain as I started healing, but I was too slow to react to even try and catch her before she got off me and tore off around the building. I lay there rubbing my jaw in surprise and blinked at the parking lot lights. Her face was a flash–black eyes, dark hair. Perfect nose. She also had a mother of a right hook.

  After I got to my feet, I went back up the stairs and into my room. The contents of my backpack had been dumped out on the floor and scattered in a wide circle. My heart sank as I realized the bitch had stolen my two guns. I’d been a fool to think I was safe, even here.

  I locked the door and secured the chain before gathering my shit to stuff into the backpack and set it up on the dresser. Who was she? What did she want? Was she connected to the ones who set Pale Rider on fire and killed Serv? I was so used to my problems being simple, with clear-cut solutions. But, with the situation I was in, I didn’t even know who I was fighting against. I couldn’t form a strategy. Hell, I couldn’t even be pacified with a suitable face to hate. It just had to be a woman. A woman that hit like a man.

  After a long shower, I changed into another pair of jeans I’d brought, lay across the bed to watch some late-night black-and-white movie, and passed out. I popped awake while it was still daylight, twitchy from my unnamed visitor. There was nothing on TV, I’d forgotten to get my booze from Silvia and I wasn’t supposed to smoke in my room. Frustrated, I threw myself back on the bed, laced my fingers over my chest and glared at the ceiling for hours.

  I’d eventually dozed off again when my phone jangled in my pocket. I dug it out and growled a greeting.

  “Did you get some sleep?” It was Silvia.

  I relaxed a little. “Not really.”

  “I was wondering if you still wanted to go out to the park to look around.”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear to look at my watch. Quarter past nine. “Sure. You okay?”

  “Yes. I’ll be there in a while. See you then.” She hung up.

  I shaved at the sink and threw a shirt on before dropping in the seat by the window, peeking out through the curtains every so often to see if she’d pulled up. Silvia showed up about a half-hour later and seemed really happy to see me. Maybe she’d been lonely before I came along. She hugged me tight, I pulled the door closed, making sure it was locked, and we got into her truck.

  “So,” she muttered around a cigarette before lighting it one-handed. She eased the SUV up to seventy once we left the city limits. “What do you do back in Colorado? Just your band?”

  I scowled at the dashboard, preoccupied with thoughts about the woman from the night before. “I work at a bar too.”

  “Sounds like a fun job.”

  “It is.”

  “Good for your habit.”

  I snorted. “You don’t have to lecture me. I’m an adult.”

  She patted her bag. “I brought your whiskey. You forgot to get it from me last night.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out.”

  “So young. You should take care of your body.”

  I didn’t answer her, and the conversation dropped for about ten minutes. She turned the radio on and waved a hand at it.

  “Find whatever you like,” she said, so I did.

  The Wind Cries Mary came on over the little speakers and I turned it up. She smiled and I nodded to the beat.

  “Jimi Hendrix is good. Your father enjoyed his music.”

  I hummed a response. Saying I liked Jimi Hendrix was the fucking understatement of the year. I worshiped that man. Best damn guitarist, mellow tunes–it was how music was done back then.

  “I bought him a record once.”

  I blinked and glanced at her. “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged a shoulder, her eyes not leaving the road. “I bought Gabriel a Hendrix record, but I never gave it to him.”

  “Why not?”

  She gave a little laugh. “He was dating my sister. Don’t you feel that it would be inappropriate?”

  I thought back to Heather and me, and there was always Silvia. Being the older sister, she was automatically cool. But there seemed more to it. She talked about her time with me more than she should.

  When we reached the park entrance, she stopped at the visitors’ station. She was crying. It was a quiet sort of sob, more of a sniffle here and there, but I gave her a moment.

  Women cried for the craziest shit. I waited at first, figuring she was probably embarrassing the hell out of herself. It was a little disheartening, seeing her in pain like that and it was becoming clear that not only had she just lost her sister, she’d lost somebody that was too fucking dense to read all of the signs. Well the ones she let show. Turned out my girlfriend’s older sister had been over the moon for me as well.

  I wanted to give that time to sink in, but we were there for a reason and she was already recuperating. I patted her shoulder, she wiped her eyes, and we got out of the truck.

  The ranger on duty was a slim Dineh named Albert, with big hands and a friendly face. His hair was close-cropped against his skull, and in his green park ranger uniform, he resembled a drill sergeant. His gaze traveled skyward to take me in and Silvia smirked.

  “How have you been then?” He sat down, inviting us to do so as well.

  “I’m coming back in two weeks.” Silvia remained standing but I sat. I wasn’t looking to be rude.

  “Are you sure? You know we can cover your shift.”

  “I have bills to pay,” Silvia said, stony-faced. “Funeral bills.”

  Albert swallowed and nodded once, turning his attention to me. “Are you family?”

  I shook my head. “I’m trying to help Silvia out. I’m a friend of the family.”

  “We came to look around the site,” Silvia said.

  “You know we’re not supposed to poke around there.”

  “What are the police doing? I’ll tell you what they are doing. They are recording the unfortunate but accidental death of just another Dineh.”

  “I know you well enough to tell when you’re not going to change your mind on something,” Albert said, “and this would be one of the times.”

  He gave her the keys to one of the six-wheelers and we were off, cutting through light woods, campsites and, finally, the primitive overnight camping grounds. The plug of dirt where it’d all gone down bordered on one side by the lake, free of trees to not obstruct the view but was somewhat secluded by the topography. Silvia pulled the Caterpillar up to the yellow tape and cut the engine.

  “Here you are.” Her voice was nearly a whisper.

  “You’re not coming?”

  She shook her head. “This is an evil place. I can’t be close to her final breath this soon.”

  I lit a cigarette, stepped out of the ATV and slipped under the tape. When I closed my eyes and opened to my senses, I detected the distinctive musk of a Nesferata. None of this, from here on out, was going to be by the book.

  The Nesferata were an untrustworthy species of vampire–warm-blooded and food-eaters, with retracting curved fangs and catlike grace. They were rare, insanely hard to capture alive and claimed no allegiance to any side but their own. The water licked the bank as I stood at the lake’s edge. A turtle’s head peeped out at me, blinked and submerged again. The place was goddamn quiet, one of those campsites where a person could pretend they really were roughing it.

  I’d gotten what I came for, that the Nesferata were somehow involved, but clicked on a flashlight an
d went through the motions of checking the scene out. I couldn’t figure out where Heather had died, but the campers’ blood was in two easy-to-sniff-out spots. It seemed like they’d just happened to be in the way.

  What the hell was I doing there? As much as I liked to pretend, I wasn’t people. Nesferata were the vampires closest to people, walking the line between natural and supernatural and were considered inferior hired thugs and hit men by my kind. I’d dealt with them before, back when I still was with my bitch of a sire.

  Every Nesferata in America traced their bloodline back to Jack Pearson, or Jackal as he was known, who served as their leader. Legend had it that the Amazon jungles in South America were inhabited by these Nesferata vampires, and the tribes down there would hunt them down, and drink their blood. Not just anybody could catch one of these things. Jack was about three hundred or so and was one of those original Nesferata, straight from the tribe.

  He had been unwanted by his kidnapped French mother from the start, but accepted by the tribe because of his father, who had been some kind of important tribe council member. When it came time for the hunt, he was immediately selected to go into the jungle to try catching the Nesferata. The drawback was, if he succeeded, he would gain the powers of a god but eventually be hunted and killed in the same manner.

  Jack wasn’t interested in hanging out, and yeah, he bagged a female Nesferata and did the deed. Stolen blood was an honor to their kind.

  Jack escaped after he changed, came to the US, and started his own army of black market drugs and arms thugs, and named the whole organization The Core.

  I did not need to tangle with that big bastard and, the way things were looking, I’d stepped in a big pile of Nesferata shit. Whether the rogue had shacked up in the park and taken out Heather for a meal or what, I was way over my head because they were vengeful as hell. If I killed one and they found out about it, I’d have twenty more breathing down my neck.

  Silvia called my name, and I rejoined her back at the Caterpillar. She looked at me in question.

  I shrugged. “It was secluded enough for sure,” I agreed. “The other two were never found, huh?”

  She shook her head and I grimaced. Chances were the police would find nothing more than a few bleached bones many years from now.

  I don’t think I said more than five words on the way back to drop off the Caterpillar and neither did Silvia. It was an odd way to go out–a strange horror-movie type killing. I couldn’t imagine what Silvia was thinking, but I couldn’t really fill her in on much. From what I figured out already, I needed to make myself scarce around her until I nabbed the loose Nesferata. If he was even in the area anymore, it could have been a quick bite-and-run. Something didn’t add up. Nesfers were generally slippery–there and gone. They didn’t do stupid shit like this. Not that I’d ever seen. Still, if it was a newly made, and he was a dim bulb, it could happen.

  We left the ATV at the empty ranger station. Albert had gone out on patrol.

  I watched Silvia out of the corner of my eye on the drive back to Raton and remembered how Heather would sit on my lap in her tiny-ass Toyota, and I’d buckle us both in. I swallowed hard and my vision swam.

  “You okay?” Silvia asked without looking at me.

  I clamped down on my bottom lip and nodded.

  “You’re welcome to stay with me if you need to.”

  I didn’t think that was a good idea, considering the aggravating amount of emotion already bleeding through. I shook my head quickly and lit a cigarette. I’d almost fucking cried sitting right there.

  The message light was lit on my phone at the motel when I got in. I dialed the office to check on it.

  A young girl answered the phone. “Oh, yes. Just wanted to inform you that your sister was here looking for you. You might want to catch up with her. She was concerned about you.”

  My sister. The one that knew I was dead. Right. “Did she leave a message?”

  “No, she said she was going to drop by and leave you something.”

  Or...take a few things, same difference right? “So you gave her my room number.”

  “Is there a problem, Mr. Nez?”

  “No problem at all. Thanks for letting me know. You be sure to let me know if anybody else comes asking around after me too.” Pissed, I slammed the phone down in her ear.

  I dialed Scott’s number on my pre-paid, eyeing the clock. His muffled “’lo?” reinforced the fact that it was later than I thought.

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  “Xan?”

  “Yeah. Listen, has anyone called or came by looking for me?”

  “Hmm.” I imagined him rubbing his face, judging the schlupp sound in my ear. “Just some girl, but she was after your car. Said her dad used to have one, and wanted to know all about it.”

  “Some girl.”

  “Yeah, Xan, why...it’s like two fucking o’clock man. What the fuck?”

  Someone was doing her homework and stalking all my haunts.

  “When was this?”

  “A couple of days ago.”

  “Days? Or was it nights, Scott?”

  “Well, it was dark out. Yeah, it was night, why?”

  I almost crushed the phone in my grip. “So, wait. You talked to a strange girl about my RS. This didn’t seem, I dunno, weird at all?”

  There was murmuring on the other end and I heard Scott tell his wife it was me on the phone. Scott groaned loudly into the receiver.

  I growled. “What in the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I’m getting up. Now I gotta take a piss. Hold on.”

  The phone was slammed down on some hard surface. I heard the squeak of a door, and then the faint sound of a flushing toilet a minute later. Scott picked up the phone again.

  “Going downstairs.”

  I waited to the sound of him disarming the house alarm and going outside. He flicked a lighter to the backdrop of crickets. “I needed to smoke anyway.”

  “I thought you’d quit.”

  Scott exhaled softly. “Yeah, I did. Until recently. Seems some asshole vampire friend of mine started me back up.”

  “What a bastard.”

  “Tell me about it.” Scott laughed. “Now, since you’re so worried, what the hell is going on?”

  “I caught somebody coming out of my room last night.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Because I didn’t know that there was premeditation involved. Today I had a message from the office telling me my sister was looking for me.”

  “Holy shit. Your sister? She knows you’re dead, right?”

  “Yeah, she does. Whoever it was went through my stuff and took my guns. I tried to catch her...it was a woman.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, and she punched me in the face. Tell me what this chick looked like last night.”

  “Well, she was pretty tall, dark hair, dark eyes–”

  “Was she a looker?”

  “Dude, she was a hottie. Probably why I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  I could hear him smiling. “She give a name?”

  “Hell, I don’t remember.”

  I planted my face in my hand. “Goddammit, Scott. I told you that there are people–vampire hunters–out there that would like very much to make me extinct. Just because it was a chick–”

  “Hey, what can I say? I’m a dirty old man.”

  “I’m older than you.”

  Scott snorted. “Not anymore. Have you looked into a mirror? Old farts like me don’t get that kind of female attention every day. You’d done the same damn thing if you’d been me.”

  “This girl I saw, she had the most gorgeous face...”

  “She has a face?”

  I sighed. “Fuck you very much. Back to bed, old man.”

  “She has great tits.”

  “I’m so telling your wife.”

  “Shit. Like she doesn’t cougar-out on those teen heartthrobs.”

  “Aww man, she’s been reading
those books, huh?”

  Scott laughed outright. “Is it that obvious? Never mind the fact that she already knows a real vampire and doesn’t realize it.”

  “My secret dies with you, man.”

  “Cross my high-risk heart. Listen, Xan, if she comes back around...”

  “I doubt she will. She’s already found me. I’ll catch you later.” I hung up the phone and sat on the edge of the bed. The girl had balls for sure. And she was using her innocent looks to get my information. I rubbed my jaw where her fist had connected with my face and laughed at my bizarre situation before falling asleep.

  The next night, I went out on the bike to explore the town, since all I’d seen since I got there was a diner, a bar, hospital and some chick’s fist. It was a small community, more of a tourist trap than anything functional, so there were a lot of antique shops and places for souvenirs. Most of the buildings looked old, maybe a hundred years or more, but were freshly painted in bright reds and yellows. The park toward the center of town was immaculately trimmed, green and featured a gondola, which I imagine was used frequently for weddings and parties. The sidewalks on Main Street were wide and perfectly maintained. A lot of places had bright neon signs adding color to my usually black, dismal nights, and splashed the pavement with reflected green, blue and pink.

  It was Smalltown, USA at its finest–a big show-off to people traveling in from Colorado. An Amtrak station rested behind the park and seemed busy with sleek silver passenger trains loading up travelers. There was an industrial side of town too–across the tracks, a power and water treatment plant. Large warehouses, clustered around a massive cul-de-sac, hosted auto repair shops, welding facilities and some other shit I didn’t really pay attention to.

  After I took the three-cent tour, I circled back around to roost at a honky-tonk just down from the sparkling matinee of the old-fashioned movie theater. It was a tavern in the most literal sense possible. Bud Light neon behind the bar. Sawdust on the floors. Hank Williams, Jr. on the juke. They had a couple of oscillating fans going to dispel the thick, pungent smoke cloud. The place had a dance floor, though I was surprised any human could find another in there because, aside from the pool table lights and the neon, the place was as dark as a sack of black cats. But, of course, I could see just fine. After stopping by the bar for a tall glass of whiskey–for which they charged me an arm and a leg–I made my way through the clumps of people standing around with peeling beer bottles and cowboy hats to pick out the corner table. It faced the entirety of the open room, and that’s how I spotted the bitch that punched me in the parking lot of Snooze Inn.