by J. R. Rain
Or not.
Maybe these were just the idle thoughts of a vampire who’d been close to death. Another inch or two—or perhaps even less—and I would have checked out once and for all.
All of which begged the question: how had the driver known to bring along a silver dagger?
I suspected I knew the answer.
Below, Whitehead Street was mostly quiet, although a few pedestrians meandered by. One or two might have even been inebriated. I never mind a little alcohol in my blood. After all, I’d spent many lifetimes picking off the drunken and wasted, and had acquired a taste for the stuff. I pushed aside the thought, even though I knew that fresh blood would help the wound in my chest heal faster, a wound that would, in fact, take many hours to heal.
Unless I feasted on the living.
I probably should have gone back to Parker. I probably should have told her what had happened. And then drank from her. That would have done the trick, of course.
Except, of course, I didn’t want to face her. Yes, she was only a mortal, and she was only barely eighteen, but she was already someone I respected greatly, perhaps more so than anyone in quite a while. There was a lot of wisdom behind those eyes, and her experience of being possessed by a demon helped her understand me in a way most women couldn’t.
And as I thought this thought, I considered what life might be like having her beside me for an eternity. The thought was, to say the least, appealing. Then I considered the alternative. I considered what it would be like to watch her grow old and wither away and die off like so many others in my life.
I shelved that thought, even as I kept my own thoughts blocked from Parker. Our connection was growing stronger, seemingly daily, and I didn’t want to broadcast a stray thought or two about losing her cousin.
Which brought me back to the present.
Earlier today, I’d felt a presence around me. Some vampires, I knew, could see into the spirit world. Could see, for instance, ghosts and spirits. I wasn’t one of those.
No, but I could feel them.
And I had felt the entity with us today. Or, what I had assumed was an entity. It could have been a curious spirit or two. Key West was littered with stray entities. I felt them everywhere, especially here at the Hemingway house.
But this had been different. I felt that we had attracted the entity. Who or what that entity was, I didn’t know, but it was obviously someone very interested in Dylan.
Or, more accurately, the dead maiden, Maria. The dead maiden who had been the object of affection to one very twisted man.
The Count.
Had it been the Count who had possessed the driver? I didn’t know, but the driver had known to use a silver dagger. I might be freaky as shit, but I looked fairly normal...unless you looked close enough. A close-enough look would reveal a number of abnormalities.
The driver had seemed to know I was trailing Dylan, called me a demon, and had the foresight to attack me with silver.
No, something had known I was a vampire, and I suspected it had been that something that had possessed the driver.
And perhaps it was the very same something that I had felt earlier in the day, the thing we had attracted in the museum.
As these thoughts sifted through my tired brain, as I waited for my burning chest to heal, and as I considered what my next step would be, a voice behind me said, “I’ve seen a boatload of weird shit in my time, old boy, but this takes the cake.”
I turned to the window behind me...and saw my first honest-to-God ghost.
And not just any ghost either. It was the Man himself.
It was, of course, the ghost of Ernest Hemingway.
Chapter Eight
Hemingway was something of a legend, maybe even rising to the level of a myth.
But to see him standing there before me—well, actually floating a little, his boots a few inches off the ground—almost made my heart stop. I was a little before his time, but having stuck around for decades, I’d had to read his fiction in night school. At one time I thought about being a writer, which might have helped me pass a million lonely nights and wrestle out some of my demons on paper instead of innocent people’s necks.
I’d have made a terrible writer, since I picked up on other people’s thoughts so much that I probably couldn’t form a coherent sentence if I tried. But Ernest Hemingway was built for the job—a drunk, a journalist, a fighter and, most of all, an asshole. The fact that he’d blown his own head off with a shotgun made him the perfect stereotype.
But I didn’t say that. All I said was, “Hello, Mr. Hemingway. Please forgive me for trespassing.”
He seemed pleased that I recognized him. His head was in pretty good shape, considering, and he wore a straw boater sporting a colorful headband, white shirt and trousers that were as rumpled as his skin, and a wrist watch. The watch seemed a little odd, since I assumed time never passed for a ghost.
“At least you’re an honest trespasser,” he said, waving me inside. “All these damned tourists that waltz through all day—why, I wish a hurricane would knock the whole place down.”
“It’s a sign of respect, sir,” I said, entering his study. I don’t know why I called him ”sir,” since I was way older than he was, but I had become stuck in my undead state around the age of twenty, while he had died—and gotten stuck in eternity—as an old man.
“Celebrity worship is the new opiate of the masses,” he said. “Most of them know more about what Kim Kardashian had for breakfast than why Cuba doesn’t like America. I doubt if they could even find Cuba on a map.” He gazed out toward the ocean, although you couldn’t see it from here. I imagine he’d watched the buildings grow up around him over the years and was really pissed off that they blocked his view.
One of his cats came in, strutting and swaying on its broad feet. Hemingway picked it up and it purred. “Most of my cats have six toes,” he said. “I like oddities. Maybe that’s why I like you.”
“I’m not that odd,” I said, which is the sort of stupid thought that showed why I could never be a writer. Because I often say the thing you’re supposed to say instead of the one true thing.
“You’ve got a hole in your chest,” he said, pointing at my wound. “That’s pretty odd.”
“Point taken,” I said.
“I can help you with that.”
I’d heard of Hemingway the war reporter, Hemingway the boxer, and Hemingway the big-game hunter, but I had never heard of Hemingway the healer. I was a little skeptical. But the guy had somehow healed his own head, so what did I have to lose?
“What do you have in mind?” I asked.
He put down the cat and walked over to a cabinet. His house was pretty much a museum and cat hotel at this point, but somehow he managed to produce a couple of bottles. Gin and vermouth. “I like my martinis dry,” he said. “Dusty spirits.”
He brought out two glasses and tilted the bottles one after the other. I swear I heard a glugging, even though no liquid came out. He gave me one of the glasses, hoisted a toast, and said “To have and have not.”
That was a pretty good metaphor for being a vampire, as well as being in love, and of course was the title of one of his novels. I drank, and the air in the glass went down my throat with a bitter burning sensation. Like I said, I’d had some alcohol in my system once in a while, but this was different. Way different.
I felt a hot bubbling in my chest, but that was nothing compared to what happened to Hemingway. His head exploded.
Literally.
Like from a shotgun blast.
Bits of grayish matter and blotches of white, milky substance spattered against the wall. His hat flew up and floated to the floor, and his beard just sort of evaporated.
I reached down to feel my chest, and the wound had completely closed. Energy coursed through my veins as if I’d just sucked a hundred virgins dry, and the aftertaste was almost that sweet, too. The old man mixed a hell of a drink.
Hemingway’s headless ghost bob
bed around a little like a kite in the wind, the cats scattering for the corners of the room. By the time I was feeling more or less back to normal—or at least my usual state caught between abnormal and paranormal—Hemingway had coalesced back into his original ethereal shape.
“Hell, yeah!” he shouted, punching his fists in the air like a boxer. “The bell tolls. To die well. A man in the rain. The one true thing.”
It seemed like the invisible typewriter in his skull had broken and was spewing out random bits of Hemingway-ese. But I was grateful for the recuperating powers of the spirits. They said Hemingway always wrote in a bar while standing up, and now I knew why.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, but he was already moving to his old carriage typewriter on the desk. He had forgotten I was there.
He stood, clacking at the keys, then hitting the carriage return and causing a little bell to ding. I walked behind him, looking over his shoulder at the paper filling with words.
I was curious. “Why do you still bother when nobody will ever read it?”
He stopped and turned, his eyes bright with some sort of hellish gleam. “It’s called ‘ghostwriting,’ son. Where do you think all these books come from by dead authors? You think literature can be left in the hands of that puke-faced punk Franzen and the bondage crowd?”
I didn’t have an answer for that one, plus I was eager to get back to Parker and resume the hunt for her cousin. “Can I ask you one thing before I go?”
He glanced at the typewriter as if it was the juiciest of all heavenly rewards, sighed, and said, “I’m just glad my publisher never made me write a godforsaken vampire novel. Okay, shoot.”
“Now that you’re dead, what do you really think about good and evil?”
“What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after. That is the thing, and that is all.”
I was always caught in between, because I had to kill to stay alive, and I had to kill evil people to justify my continued existence. That wasn’t much help. But it would have to do.
I bid him goodnight, went out to the balcony, and soared off into the dark, salty air.
Chapter Nine
We were at The Truman Hotel.
It was late—or early, depending, of course, on which side of the night you swung. Or which side of the neck you craved. Lately I’d been cavorting with a mortal, and mortals tended to keep regular hours. We were also in bed, although it wasn’t quite as exciting as it sounded. At least, not yet.
I was still weak and healing from the knife wound, and there were worse things in the world than having a beautiful young lady tend to you, which she was doing now.
“How could you let Dylan out of your sight?” she was asking me now.
Lucky for me, I had her wrist in my mouth and didn’t feel the need to answer.
“I mean, weren’t you right behind him?”
Okay, maybe there were worse things in the world. Like a nagging girlfriend.
“I’m not your girlfriend, and I’m not nagging. Okay, maybe I am nagging a little...but he’s my cousin and now he’s gone.”
I continued to sip from her wrist, feeling my strength returning and the pain in my chest diminishing. As I drank, I sent Parker a mental image of the scene...a sort of replay of my own memory. In it, she saw her cousin disappear down an alleyway. She also saw me kick into high gear, but not fast enough. She saw me facing down the van...and then saw me riding high on top. She gasped a little at that. She also saw me drop down into the passenger seat...and she saw—and perhaps felt—the knife plunge into my chest.
She jerked her arm at that last part, gasping. Blood spilled from around my lips, which I quickly lapped up. Waste not, want not.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” said Parker, and now she was rubbing my chest, careful of the still-red scar that blazed just beneath my heart. “You did your best. I know you did. Did it hurt much?”
I glanced up from her extended forearm, from which I was still suckling like a newborn. That is, of course, if a newborn was a bloodsucking fiend. Still, I glanced up because I noticed a tender change in her voice. No, not so much tender...but hungry herself. But not for blood.
I nodded around her arm, careful of my teeth.
“You poor thing,” she said, and now her rubbing hand spread out a little from the area of my wound, encompassing my upper chest and shoulders...and down to my flat stomach. Her palm was warm and exciting and she knew exactly what she was doing to me.
“What about your cousin?” I asked, and my voice might have sounded a little huskier than I’d intended. I might be immortal, and I might have had my share of beautiful women over the course of my very long life, but it was rare when I came across something that was more than casual, something more than physical. Something that felt right. That felt, in fact, magical.
“Magical, huh?” said Parker. “Boy, you think of all the right things to say.”
She gently removed her arm from my lips. As she did so, I watched the puncture wounds heal rapidly before my eyes. Next, she lowered her face to my lips and, yeah, the sensation was magical, although that was a word, I was certain, I had never used to describe any experience with any woman ever.
“Yeah,” said Parker, pulling away a little. “You know just the right words to think. Oh, and from what I’m gathering, my cousin can wait until tomorrow. For now, we need to get you healthy and strong. You’re not much good to anyone in your present condition.”
The truth was, I was already feeling stronger than I had even before the attack—
“Shh,” said Parker, putting her finger to my lips.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Then quit thinking, dammit. You’ve been hurt. Very, very hurt. And we need you to rest and heal and...”
Except, of course, Parker didn’t quite finish that thought, although I picked up on a very different thought. One that made even me blush.
And that’s damn hard for a vampire to do.
“Oh shut up,” said Parker, and lowered her lips to mine again.
And this time I did shut up, and quit thinking, too, for that matter.
Chapter Ten
I spent the rest of the night in recovery, plus some other acts that are best left between a lady and a gentlevamp, and all too soon the Atlantic sky beyond the window was turning red with dawn.
I nudged Parker until she opened her eyes. “You’ve got the day shift,” I said.
“Whu...what do you mean?” she murmured drowsily.
“Aurelio’s Pizza.” I gave an affectionate nudge to a strand of hair that had fallen over her cheek.
“Pizza?” she said. “I know we burned a lot of calories, but I’ve never seen you hungry before. Well, hungry for, you know, real food.”
I glanced at her wrist, where I had fed, and also at other places where I’d nourished other parts of me. I had sometimes wondered if the lingering effects of demonic possession gave her an extra zest for a vampire’s needs, but I couldn’t think too much about it or she might pick up on it. Best to keep her mind occupied elsewhere before she thought about “us” too much.
“The business name on the van that kidnapped Dylan,” I said. “License plate ‘P-Z-A-4-U.’”
“What, you think they’re going to force him to make deliveries or something?”
“Or maybe turn him into sauce.” I yawned. The sun was getting brighter and soon I’d need to close the shades and rest.
“So what do I do if I find this restaurant?” she asked.
“You’re on a reconnaissance mission only,” I said. “Look but don’t touch.”
“That’s what you said last night, and as I remember it, we touched a lot.”
“I’m serious here,” I said, already starting to mumble a little from the strange drowsiness that falls over me at sunrise. I compromised by shifting into telepathic communication.
Don’t take any chances if I’m not there to protect you.
She got out of b
ed and pulled the curtains tighter, and then began dressing. I could sense her simmering with resentment. You’re not my boss, she thought back at me.
We don’t know what we’re dealing with here. Dylan is in love with a decaying corpse, thanks to a spell cast by a witch doctor, and a freaky Count with dark powers is apparently jealous over it. I know you can handle yourself under normal circumstances, but these aren’t normal.
Well, there’s not much you can do about it. She mentally smirked at my languid form lying on the bed. You’re just going to have to trust me.
Trust? A woman? Luckily, I buried that thought deeply enough that she didn’t pick up on it. All right. Just make sure you stay in contact.
“So, you’re the one with all the experience stalking people,” she said aloud. “I doubt if ‘Aurelio’s Pizza’ is in the phone book. Where do I start?”
Cell phone. Google. Get with the times, kid.
After she found the address, she bent over the bed and gave me a kiss. If I’d had more strength, I would have pulled her down and kissed her until my fangs grew long. As it was, I just had to lie there and take whatever she dished out. Then she was outside, and as I drowsed, I shifted until I was riding shotgun in her senses.
The day was gorgeous. High sun, a crisp sea breeze that was just enough to ease the summer heat, a slightly salty taste in the air. The day crowd was mostly in a good mood, and Parker had no trouble hailing a cab. One of the fringe benefits of good looks.
Aurelio’s Pizza was on the north side of the city, in an industrial section stitched with railroad tracks and dotted with big metal warehouses. Aurelio’s was set back in a strip mall, flanked by a tattoo parlor and an appliance repair shop. The windows were smeared and filthy, and I wondered what kind of low-class clientele would want to eat there. The cab driver, who broke stereotype by being a quiet Caucasian who didn’t have any political opinions or sports loyalties, warned her against being alone in the “rough section.” She tipped him twenty bucks and he shut up fast, driving away with a big grin.