Vampire Fire

by J. R. Rain

  “Where was it spotted?” I asked. I was holding my travel container of coffee, which I sipped from now. I was pretty sure the coffee did nothing for me. But I believed it did, and that belief was good enough.

  “Heading south on Lemon Street, between Rosecrans and Chapman, before it disappeared.”

  I nodded. Then nodded again, digesting this. “And when you say disappeared, you mean it literally... disappeared,” I said.

  Detective Sherbet looked pained. And maybe a little sick. His usually ruddy jowls were white, accentuated by splotches of red. The haunted look in his bloodshot eyes suggested that he might have chosen the wrong career path. At least on this day.

  “That’s what the reports say, Sam. A three-headed dog, running down the middle of the road, in the suicide lane, to be exact. It paused once and let out a terrifying roar. One woman had a heart attack, right there at the bus station. There were no less than six serious car accidents. After pausing, the creature continued south, picking up speed, its center head looking forward while its two...” Sherbet loosened his collar. “While its two other heads looked off to either side. Their eyes were, according to most reports...”

  “Were what?”

  “I don’t want to say it, Sam. Don’t make me say it.”

  “Say it,” I said.

  He looked down at thick hands that were now clasped over his rotund belly. He nodded, and then seemed to accept all over again that his life would never, ever be the same again. At least, not since meeting me.

  “Their eyes were on fire. Burning eyes on a three-headed dog that disappeared into thin air. But there’s more.”

  I waited. We were in his downtown office at the Fullerton Police Department, just a hop, skip and jump from Lemon Street, the scene of the three-headed sighting. The old police station still retained some of its Spanish architectural charm, with swooping archways and lots of plaster. Inside was another story. Hi-tech, fast-paced, glass offices filled the expansive space. Fullerton sported 150,000 residents, and not all of them were law-abiding citizens. At last count, Fullerton averaged about a homicide a month. Enough to keep Sherbet and his team busy.

  “Busier since I got to know you, Sam.”

  I chuckled. He didn’t. Yes, Sherbet was one of the few mortals who had immediate access to my thoughts. I was about to say “complete access,” but that wasn’t correct. No, he only had access to my current thoughts; that is, what I was thinking now. What I was feeling now. Or, in this case, what I was noticing now, even if in random passing. My deeper, richer, scarier, secretive thoughts were not available. Indeed, such thoughts would only be available to maybe the alchemist, my ex-guardian angel, my daughter, and the bitch within me, from whom I held no secrets.

  “You said there was more, Detective,” I prompted. Yes, I could have dipped into his thoughts and found the information, but I didn’t dip when I didn’t have to. And I rarely dipped with personal friends. It seemed rude, intrusive, and overly impatient. Plus, I wanted my friends to have their own secrets.

  “Some described it as having a pointed tail, a few called it a dragon’s tail, in fact. Almost all claim it was as big as the biggest horse.”

  “Maybe it was a horse,” I said. “Maybe someone was pulling a stunt. How hard would it be to find two fake horse heads and have them hanging off either side? And, for that matter, hook up red lights—”

  Sherbet was shaking his head. “Sam, you have no idea how much I want to believe your theory. I was thinking something similar. The problem is, each and every witness, to a person, claim it was a really big dog—a cross between a Rottweiler and some sort of... hellhound.”

  His last word caught me by surprise, so much so that I made sure to quickly shield my thoughts.

  “You okay, Sam?” asked Sherbet, suddenly looking concerned... and maybe a little suspicious. “Your usual inane flow of thoughts was just cut off...”

  “It’s nothing, Detective. At least, not anything I am willing to discuss now. And, ouch about the inane part. How many witnesses?”

  “Twenty-eight, so far. With more coming in.”

  “Video?”

  “None, although a few people tried. Nothing shows up on film. Sam, please tell me it’s one of your own.”

  “One of my own?”

  “You know, one of your friends or something.”

  “I don’t have any three-headed dog friends, Detective.”

  “Can any of them, you know, turn into one? Yes, I just heard myself. And I hate that we are having this conversation.”

  “The answer, Detective, is that, no, I don’t know what your witnesses saw. And, no, none of my friends can turn into a three-headed dog.”

  With my thoughts still shielded from Sherbet, I recalled the devil’s words from yesterday: Perhaps pets is a better word...

  Wasn’t the three-headed dog, Cerberus, the official mascot of hell? It was, and if my scant knowledge of Greek mythology was correct, the city of Fullerton might have been introduced to the devil’s pet... or pets.

  “Will it come back, Sam?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know why it’s here?”

  I waited before saying, “I might.”

  “Jesus, Sam.”

  We were quiet some more. The air conditioner kicked in. Cool air on my cold skin was redundant. The detective looked like he might pass out.

  “Are you okay, Detective?” I asked.

  “No, Sam.”

  “Are you just being dramatic?”

  “This three-headed fucking horse thing is going to be the death of me.”

  “Okay, now you’re being dramatic.”

  He ignored me. “The people in the station... they’re saying it’s some sort mythical creature. Cerebral or something.”

  “Cerberus,” I corrected.

  “Sam, this isn’t happening.”

  “Do you want me to hold you?” I asked.

  “Do not hold me, Sam.”

  I shrugged. “Your loss.”

  “I need your help, Sam.”

  “I think you do.”

  Chapter Eight

  An hour later, I met Sandy Damayanti in a Rite Aid parking lot on Lemon Street.

  She was a witness who had curiously asked to see me by name. Her name and contact info had been provided by Sherbet, who seemed befuddled by her request.

  Anyway, for someone who had seen a three-headed devil dog, she didn’t come across as particularly shaken up. If anything, she seemed excited by the prospect of hell on earth. She wore black yoga pants and black New Balance shoes. Her tank top was pink. She wore a tight sports bra under her tank top. She was cute and friendly and maybe a little ditzy, which I wasn’t in the mood for. At least not in the middle of the day, when I am at my crankiest.

  We stood in the shade of a jacaranda tree with its purple flowers and the buzzing bees. One thing people forget about vampires: we can still hurt, even if it’s only temporary. I was careful around the bees. I had asked Sandy to tell me what she saw, which she did now.

  “I was in the Rite Aid, picking up my prescription—do you need to know my prescription?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it was b.c., just in case you do. You never know, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Anyway, I was coming out to my car when I heard all the screaming and the cars braking and then the cars smashing into each other. Do you need to know the shoes I was wearing?”

  “I do not.”

  “I was wearing my Skechers with the pink heart design—oh, my God, so cute.”

  I looked at her. “How is this relevant?”

  “Because I was wearing them last night, silly. I mean, officer.”

  “I’m not an officer. I’m a consultant to the Fullerton Police Department.”

  “Oh, right. Gotcha.”

  I doubted she got it. Or anything, for that matter. Okay, that might have been rude.

  My consulting gig with the Fullerton Police Department was an unusual
one for a private investigator to have. Years ago, I’d been brought in to help find a particularly sadistic serial killer. Turned out the bastard was running a blood bank, whose donors were not willing participants. I still had flashbacks of the victims hanging from meat hooks, flashbacks that I think the bitch within me rather enjoyed... and perhaps even triggered. Anyway, in the world of vampires, blood donors didn’t need to be killed. In fact, it was better that our victims didn’t die, better that they forget and move on, as proven by Fang and his own successful bloodletting operation he called a bar. Blood banks such as his did good work. It kept many of our local bloodsuckers from feeding on people and their kids. It also put a little cash in Fang’s pocket. Or a lot of it. It also plugged him into the local vampire scene, which sometimes proved invaluable to me and my investigations.

  So, my job title as police consultant stuck, and I was even on the Fullerton Police Department’s payroll, from which I collected a few dollars each month. Which meant I was at their beck and call. Which also meant that Sherbet could yell at me even more than usual.

  “Who’s Sherbet?” asked Sandy Damayanti.

  Oops.

  “No one,” I said. “Just thinking out loud. Now, walk me through what you saw.”

  “Sure!” she said a little too excitedly. “I was just coming out of Rite Aid, after picking up my b.c.—”

  “What’s b.c.?” Then it hit me. Birth control. Geez.

  I nearly told her to continue on, but decided there was a better way. So, at the risk of awakening the bitch within me, I gave Sandy Damayanti a silent command to be quiet and open her mind to me. Why have her retell the story, when I could relive it? In her memories, that is.

  Her mouth shut and her eyes flickered a little, and I should have felt like shit taking over her mind, but I didn’t. Neither did the bitch within, who had perked up a little.

  Slipping past her surface forethoughts proved to be challenging. In fact, I encountered quite a bit of opposition... so much so that I nearly gave up. There was something... pushing against me, resisting me, denying me. Or trying to. But there, between the folds of her thoughts, I finally found an opening.

  At the second layer of thought, where memories are usually stored, I found something else entirely. It was, I was certain, another presence. It was hovering there, just beyond her conscious mind, watching, alert, a floating black blob on the sea of her simple thoughts. It sensed me and scurried deeper into her mind, and I let it go. I wasn’t here to exorcise any demons, or whatever the hell that had been.

  Here, in this place of memories, I asked her to recall back to last night, and she did. The dull, formless, random memories dispersed, making room for the shiny new memories from just the night before.

  Next, I told her to start from the beginning, minus the damn shoes and birth control prescription. She did, although I sensed a reluctance within her to not talk about her cute Skechers. But my own will now usurped her own, to the unending delight of the demoness within me. The crazy, crazy bitch.

  Sandy and I might have looked like two gals standing in the shade together, on a lunch break perhaps, enjoying yet another perfect Southern California afternoon. But to the keen observer, they would have noted Sandy’s eyelids fluttering, her eyeballs rolling randomly in their sockets. They would have noted my own eyes being partially shut. They might have noticed my lips moving subtly as I gave Sandy sub-vocal commands. Mostly, my lips didn’t move. Mostly, my commands were given on a telepathic level, but Allison had pointed out to me once that my lips tended to move, too. Go figure.

  What they wouldn’t have known was that I was re-living Sandy’s memory from the night before, reliving them in exquisite detail, in fact.

  ***

  She’s walking up to her sporty Hyundai that looks, yes, cute.

  She is having a good day, feeling good, but now, she doesn’t feel so good. Now, she feels... uneasy. She looks down at her arms, and there are goosebumps there. She rubs her arms and shivers, but it’s not cold. Today has been sunny and warm...

  She looks into the sky...

  Gray clouds. And not just gray... but swirling and gray. And, sweet Jesus... lightning! She hasn’t seen lightning in, like, forever. Now, the hair on her head is standing on end, and she can feel a crazy energy crackling from seemingly everywhere. She pauses right there in the middle of the parking lot. She pauses and turns in a small circle.

  Something is happening. Something crazy and wild, and she doesn’t know if she should be afraid or awe-inspired. She decides both are in order.

  Now, she feels it in her teeth. A ringing, zinging, high-pitched, tuning-fork sensation that she definitely knows she doesn’t like. Not at all. Nope.

  And that’s when it happens.

  Another lightning strike.

  But this time, the bolt hits nearby, maybe a hundred yards away. Brakes squeal, a handful of people scream. She’s one of them. Had someone not been looking into the sky, they might have missed the thunderbolt... and thought maybe a transformer had blown. But she had seen the bolt, and it struck there, just down the road.

  Although afraid, she had always liked the strange, the weird, the different. After all, hadn’t she often played with a Ouija board while growing up? Didn’t she actually see something rise up once out of the Ouija board? Didn’t she sometimes suspect those dark thoughts of hers weren’t, well, hers? That they were his, whoever he was? In fact, it was safe to say she had never truly been the same since. Her personal relationships all failed. Her relationship with her parents deteriorated. And wasn’t the root of all the problems... him? They were. She was sure of it. She had become angry and belligerent, and sometimes uncontrollable rage filled her. She tried to stamp it out. Tried to put on a brave face. But mostly, she was angry. Mostly, she was afraid. And she didn’t have a damned clue what to do about it. Or about the thing within her, whatever it was.

  These were her deeper thoughts, triggered by the strange events in the sky above her, now bubbling up to the surface and scaring her all over again. Because, after all, she didn’t want to believe something had possessed her. But she suspected it had. And she suspected it was still there.

  And now, the memory slipped away, because there was more screaming going on in the street. A lot more, and soon, she saw why.

  ***

  As with all memories that I access, this one comes to me in real-time, as if it’s happening now...

  Movement appears from her left, where the lightning has struck. The movement is a big movement. A large shadow or something. A glowing shadow, which makes no sense to her mind. But there it is. Moving, rushing toward her, galloping like a horse. No, not quite a horse. The stride is off. It runs more flat-out, like a dog. A very big dog.

  The shadow continues to materialize, crystallize, clarify, calcify...

  The head is quite big. Too big for a normal dog’s head, at least. Sandy feels like she’s watching a Michael Bay movie. She has a sudden, shifting, out-of-body experience that makes her think she might actually be in a movie theater, and that maybe, just maybe she had fallen asleep in her seat and is only now awakening...

  No, she thinks, actually shaking her head. This is no movie, and this is no movie theater. Dizziness grips her. But also excitement. More excitement than I, myself, was prepared for...

  The charging shadow is heading toward her on Raymond Avenue, running along the center of the street, down what she thinks of as the suicide lane. It’s a busy street, surrounded on both sides by shopping centers, freestanding stores, and hole-in-the-wall restaurants. Cars are stopping, swerving, crashing, honking, racing, skidding.

  The creature continues to materialize. Sandy doesn’t know if it, in fact, has always been out of focus and is only now coming into focus, or if her shocked mind is having a difficult time perceiving it.

  She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t really care. At least, not now. After all, things are happening fast.

  Mostly, she feels utterly and completely excited.

&
nbsp; The ground shudders with each thunderous footfall. She can actually feel each vibration rising up through the asphalt of the parking lot. I wonder if she is aware of her teeth rattling, too. Probably not, but I am, for I am both watching it through her perspective... and watching her watch it as well.

  Strange stuff, but I have the added benefit of standing back a little and watching the events proceed... and also watching her reaction, and the reaction of the others around her, those she isn’t quite aware of, but whom her senses had picked up.

  For instance, I can see a man standing nearby, his back to her, a man in a white T-shirt and blue jeans and boots. A man with tattoos and, admittedly, a cute butt. The winding tattoo along his left arm is familiar. I am certain it is a dragon tattoo. And I am certain, even from here, that I can see it slowly moving. Now, the man turns and looks at Sandy, and I see the huge grin on his face.

  “You will meet her soon,” the devil had said.

  But Sandy’s focus is entirely on the creature running down the middle of Raymond Avenue, not the man standing near the curb, and certainly not on his moving tattoo.

  And so, I allow myself to see what she sees, and what she sees has now come into startling clarity. It is clearly a dog. The blurry, massive heads have coalesced into three massive heads. I was expecting it, yes, but seeing it live (and through her eyes), was disturbing nonetheless. The three pairs of eyes are, in fact, lapping flames, snapping and burning and leaving behind wispy tendrils of black smoke.

  Jesus.

  More cars crash. I watch a truck plow into the rear end of a Prius. Airbags explode inside the smaller car. Sandy caught the accident, too, and I also catch her thoughts. “One less Prius...”

  Okay, ouch.

  A guy on an old ten-speed tries to stop, but the front wheel wobbles uncontrollably, and he tumbles sideways. He crab-crawls backward as the galloping dog passes him by. The dog’s right head watches him, its eyes crackling and spitting fire.