Crooked Fang

by Carrie Clevenger

  Dressed in a low-cut black halter top with a dangly charm on a black cord around her neck and her hair down around her shoulders, she was definitely a sight. Surrounded by male admirers, she casually toyed with the rim of her glass as she held conversation. I licked my lips instinctively. But there was something about her that wasn’t right. Her tawny skin basked in the tiny bulb above her table. Maybe that was it. Her table was one of three lit. I kept my eyes on her while I drank and smoked, watching her dance with different partners, whispering in their ears. Probably told them all the same line. She was a predator. I had just the name for her type: man-eater.

  Man-eater, like that old eighties’ song. The girl was gorgeous, deceptively observant of her prey and–

  I blinked. Something clicked inside me. Vampire. Had to be. I dropped my lighter, bent to pick it up off the floor and glanced in her direction again. She was looking right at me, but jerked her gaze away as soon as our eyes met. She murmured something to one of her current flock of fellows. He nodded, and she slid out of her chair and started right for me.

  “Xan Marcelles.” Her accent was flat, much like mine, and she bore the high cheekbones and plush lips of a Native American woman. She didn’t look Navajo, at least from what I knew. Her hair curled at the ends in loose spirals, and was streaked with blond. Her eyes were bright brown, if I could say anything was that. I swallowed a mouthful of whiskey slowly to give myself more time to think.

  “I think you have the wrong man.” I reached for my cigarettes.

  “Cold blood. Assassin for Zeta’s line. Bass player for The Crooked Fang.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Am I mistaken?” She taunted me with a coy smile.

  “It’s Crooked Fang. Just Crooked Fang. And we seem to be short a singer.”

  “Why are you here?” She didn’t assume a defensive posture. Everything about her body language exuded calm. She scanned me from head to toe. There. The tips of her fangs. Receding fangs. The only vampires with those were Nesferata, and they were all male in the US. Well, up to now.

  I lit my cigarette. “Isn’t that something.”

  She frowned at my amusement.

  “A fucking female Nesferata. You owe me two pistols.”

  “Join me outside.” Without another word, she walked away. I watched her stroll past her table of fans and shove the front door open to disappear. With a heavy sigh, I gathered my hard pack and lighter, finished my glass and followed after her.

  She wore a snug pair of jeans. The man in me was drawn to that sexy ass while the vampire I really was, wanted her away. Far away. She walked ahead of me and we retreated to the side of the building where there was only an employee parking lot, a Dumpster and a scraggly black-and-white cat picking through dropped garbage. The cat hissed and fled the minute it saw us.

  “I must ask why you are here.” She watched the cat, almost as if I didn’t seem to be a threat to her.

  I snorted. Some fucking nerve. “A friend of mine was found with a chunk taken out of her neck. You know, vampirey shit. I came to find out what killed her.”

  “Your investigation is not needed here.” She turned to face me and crossed her arms under her breasts. “You must leave.”

  “Who are you?” I tore my gaze away from her rack to meet her eyes.

  “My name is Nin. I am direct blood of the Jackal himself.”

  Well lah-de-dah. The fucking Nesfer king made himself an immortal bitch to have at his beck and call. “I’m here because someone killed a friend of mine. By biting her.” I spat on the ground. “Could even be you.”

  She squared her jaw. “I have taken no lives in this town.”

  “What do you really want? Besides me out of here? Because I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I am here to capture an errant member of The Core and transport him back to California.”

  “I thought all Nesferata were male.”

  She scowled for a moment. “I was worthy.”

  “Worthy of what? Jack’s time?” I laughed.

  She glared at me. “Do not speak of my sire that way. You need to leave by tomorrow night.”

  I closed the distance between us, causing her to back up a step. The reek from the Dumpster clogged the air. “Or what. You planning on making me go?” I made a good show of my big fangs. Her gaze flicked up to them, but she remained calm. “Do what you have to do. Because I’m not leaving, Nin.” Her hands shot out but I caught her wrists and held tight. She strained and struggled in my grasp. “Yeah, see? You need to learn right now that you can’t push me around. Don’t think that you can just drop my name, toss around a few threats and I’ll tuck my tail under and scurry along. I’ll leave when I’m fucking done.”

  She had a light smell, not as musky as the Nesferata male. That’s why I hadn’t detected her right off. She was quiet, agile and could fight, but I was stronger. Much more so. I pushed her back against the Dumpster, rattling it. She let out a little sound from the impact.

  “I’m going to let you go now. Try anything and you’ll end up in this Dumpster instead of just against it. Understood?” She nodded without a word and I relaxed my grip on her wrists.

  She jerked out of my hands and rubbed the bruises I had left. “You are strong,” she whispered. “Even for a cold one.”

  I smirked and stepped back. “Cold one, huh?”

  “Your heart does not always beat.” She wrinkled her nose. “At least you do not stink as I thought you might.”

  “I don’t stink. Your kind are the ones that smell.”

  “You will fail.”

  “How long have you been tracking the stray, Nin? I’d say you were the failure. You can’t even keep up with your own men.” I smiled. “By the way, tell Jack this for me.” I gave her a middle finger and walked back inside.

  Stray Nesfer? The only good Nesferata was a dead Nesferata. And this one still on the loose was in trouble with his own blood. Open season as far as I was concerned.

  * * * *

  With Nin knowing where I stayed and the fact that I’d probably just really pissed her off, I thought it prudent to split the scene at Snooze Inn the next night. Silvia’d invited me several times to go and stay with her and while I didn’t turn in the key to room 211, I did pack up everything I came in with, sans my fucking guns. I wasn’t expecting Silvia to still be awake but she answered the phone on the second ring.

  “Hey, was wondering if I could come by tonight.” I realized I was twisting the phone cord around my finger like a nervous teenager, and unwound it.

  “Of course, Gabriel. You know I don’t mind.” She gave me the directions to her house.

  “You weren’t asleep, were you?”

  “No. I don’t sleep much. I will see you when you get here.” She hung up.

  I put on the backpack and rode my bike over to the Snooze Inn office. The same sleepy-looking clerk that had checked me in blinked at my intrusion. He put down the magazine he’d been reading and cleared his throat. “Yes, Mr. Nez?” His gaze slid to my Suzuki outside then back to me before he pasted on a weak smile.

  “I’m leaving tonight and maybe tomorrow. I know that some of the other employees here have given out my info to people asking about me. Make it clear that they are not to do that anymore, okay?”

  The clerk raised a brushy eyebrow. “Will do. Is there a problem we should know about?”

  Possible answers flooded my mind, none of them really logical. “Press. I came here for privacy.”

  “Press.”

  “Yes.”

  The clerk lifted his chin and I heard his pulse pick up slightly. Sure, it was excitement in an otherwise uneventful, prefabricated tourist town. I can only imagine the questions that perched on the tip of his tongue. Who was I? Why was the press looking for me?

  No, I wasn’t famous. Not to the living anyway, but my more recent past was looking to snake up my leg and bite me in the ass. Xan Marcelles had left his roost, stirring up the pit of vipers I had taken the rest of my ki
nd to be. Nin had disarmed me, but I could do more than just shoot, as I’d demonstrated earlier that night.

  “Thanks for the help.” I turned and left him standing there without any answers about the strange, long-haired, tall guy that was currently residing in one of their rooms.

  Once back on the bike, I cut straight through town, keeping an eye out for Nin, or any of the countless other Nesferata goons. Earlier, things had still been open, but now the town was put to bed for lack of a better term. I guess the sidewalks really did roll up after ten there. The cooler air that struck my face non-stop was like a slap as I left the city limits, the tiny headlight on the bike switched to high beam as I navigated the twistier roads.

  Silvia lived about halfway between the city and Maloya Lake according to her directions. I couldn’t see much of the surrounding landscape outside the bright beacon on my happily purring Suzuki. I took it up to eighty once the roads started to straighten out and almost missed the thin green sign indicating the road where Silvia lived. I made the turn and slowed down as I passed rural houses. Silvia’s place was somewhere among these, but she said it was well away from the road and I’d have to look for her mailbox instead, emblazoned with her last name, Redhouse, on its sides.

  After about a mile and a half of scanning the sides of the road, I spotted it. A single mailbox, lip hanging open because someone’d forgotten to close it. Two painted mustangs were frozen mid-gallop on its side. Large-lettered reflective decals spelled out S. Redhouse. Beyond the reach of my headlight, positioned a good acre away, lay her house. I eased the bike’s two wheels over the cattle guards and kept a leisurely pace down her shell driveway. One light shined in the one-story bungalow-style house, which had probably been built in the fifties or sixties. It wasn’t fancy or really even attractive, but it was the place she called home. She had a long front porch with wind chimes hanging, silent in the dead air. Nothing stirred out here except crickets, which never shut up anywhere anyway. She had the door open before I got off the bike. I walked up her sidewalk and met her. Her gaze zeroed in on my backpack then to my face.

  She held a double-barrel shotgun aimed at the dark wood planks of the floor. “Is everything okay with you, Gabriel?”

  I shoved my hands in my pockets and shrugged. “Just figured I’d take you up on your offer to visit at least once.”

  Her eyes searched the darkness behind me then landed on me again. “Come in.” She backed away from the door, leaving it open and propped the gun barrels-up against the wall. Her heart was thundering.

  I eyeballed the weapon. “Um. Everything okay?”

  She nodded.

  I rubbed my face and walked in. She’d been organizing, it looked like. Stacks of magazines, pages yellowed and curled, nestled against the baseboards in the hallway. Empty boxes and a roll of tape with scissors. The blades of the scissors were stuck under the top layer of tape so someone wouldn’t have to fight to peel off a piece. I’d used that trick myself. A threadbare recliner with a doily atop it peeked out from the corner with a reading lamp over it. Paperbacks leaned in a precarious tower between it and the wall. Another chair was overflowing with the greens of her park ranger uniforms. I could read the patches on the sleeve from where I stood. Vampires have great eyesight, at least the ones I’ve run into do. I hadn’t worn glasses since my first year at college anyway. Glasses were for dweebs.

  Her living room was cozy–small but not stifling, walls decorated with a variety of Native American relics, including a Navajo rug. I’d bet money that one was real.

  “Your grandmother Juanita wove it on her loom,” she explained when I asked about it. “Our mother took it when Juanita passed on, and I took it when our mother went.”

  My grandmother? Oh, right. Juanita. My mother. Knowing the origin of the thing made me look at it with a larger degree of interest. I stood there gawking at the rug like I’d never seen one in my life. I had actually...this one probably, the one my mother worked on whenever she had time. I vaguely remembered it not being done yet when she died, which meant someone else finished it. I had only one thing of my mother’s: a bronze medallion which I wore on a leather cord around my neck. It was a good thing I’d picked up wearing it in the past year–it’d have perished in the fire at Pale Rider otherwise. She’d given it to me about a month or so before she died and I had never really paid attention to what it was until I was changed into someone that suddenly had all the time in the world. The inscription and image were nearly worn smooth from age, but with a little Googling I managed to figure it to be Saint Christopher, patron saint of travelers. I rubbed it then, deep in thought, standing before the rug my mother mostly made. It was strange how most of us passed on into nothingness, yet our things stuck around for some time afterward. It was almost like we borrowed everything for a little while, as long as we wanted it or needed it. And when we died, those things were transferred to another person, who would also eventually die. Someday I would have a place for all of those things. I would collect my family’s things and keep them safe until they turned to dust. By the time that happened, I hoped to be extinct myself.

  Silvia had moved on to the kitchen. Shotgun shells lay on the atomic-age dinette, old, much like the rest of the house. Pale green chairs with steel-tubing legs. I pulled one out from the table and planted my ass in it.

  “Did you want anything to drink?” She busied herself with the sponge and a plastic burnt-orange cup in the sink. A shortwave radio crouched on the counter, off.

  “Nah, I’m good.” I was used to people offering shit when I visited and the response was automatic.

  A kettle whistled on the stove and she turned off the gas. The stove was mint green, as was the fridge. A hand towel draped over the oven handle. Woven rugs on the floor. What a lot of people might think of as grandmother’s kitchen.

  “Tea helps me relax enough to sleep.”

  “What’s with answering the door with a shotgun?”

  “An old lady living alone can’t be too careful. Plus there have been noises outside tonight.”

  “What kind of noises?”

  “Dogs, I think,” she said softly, her gaze finding the kitchen window. “I heard one rattling around in the garage.” She plucked a teacup from the wooden tree on the counter and after dropping a strainer filled with loose leaves in the bottom of the cup, filled it with boiled water from the kettle. The aroma of the resultant brew was hauntingly familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d ever smelled it before. She joined me at the table with her tea and we sat in silence for a few moments while she savored a few sips of her drink. Tonight, she wore a red sweater, and no silver jewelry save for the big turquoise rings I’d already seen. Her face was smooth and free of makeup and her long silvery hair was done in two braids starting from the base of her skull.

  “I received a call today from the detective.” Her dark eyes rose to meet mine.

  I leaned in closer. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. They are releasing the body to me tomorrow morning. I’ve already made arrangements to have her picked up for preparation and burial.”

  “Have you told your family about this?”

  Silvia nodded. “But they are not interested in the traditional ways. I have to do this on my own.” Her gaze dropped to the tabletop. “I’m going to step outside to smoke.” She looked at me again. “Would you like to join me?”

  It occurred to me then her house didn’t smell like smoke. I suppose I should’ve noticed it right when I walked in the door, but that damn rug had held my attention. There was really only one reason a smoker smoked outside their own house, especially an older one like this.

  “Does anyone else live here with you?” I slipped out the back door and sat beside her on the steps. She took the time to light her cigarette and passed me the lighter. Even though I had one of my own, I used hers to light my cigarette.

  She exhaled a plume of smoke into the chilly night air. “Heather was staying with me.”

  I raised my eyebrows.
“Here? ’Til...”

  She nodded. “Aside from the pointless poking around the police did, her room is intact.”

  Well no fucking wonder she was depressed and wanting to hang out so much. She had a time capsule in her goddamn house. “You haven’t gone in there?”

  She shook her head, the tendrils of smoke drifting lazily in ragged rings around us in the windless night wafting slightly. “You can go see if you want. There are pictures of her in there.”

  “I’m sorry, Silvia. I didn’t know she lived here.”

  “She came to stay after Ralph died two years ago.” She could have stared a hole through the tattered and peeling dark red barn that sat not too far away from us. Her lip trembled. “I can’t let this shake me. I have to be strong until she is put to rest.”

  I put an arm around her shoulder and felt the constricted sobs hitch her body quietly. We sat and took in the night for a few minutes. “Hey...it’s okay to feel loss. She was your sister. Was Ralph your husband?”

  She nodded and small sound escaped her. I tightened my fingers around her shoulder while she occupied herself with crushing her cigarette out on the concrete step. I followed her example and we rose to our feet together.

  “It really isn’t okay. Feeling loss maybe. But showing it is something else entirely.”

  “Nobody can expect you to be that strong all of the time–”

  “I have to be.” Her gaze drilled into mine again, sharp and shining. “If she feels for any reason that she has unfinished business here...” She dropped off and covered her face with her hands. Her silver rings caught the light from the barn.

  I raised a brow, unsure of how to voice my concerns.