Vampire Fire

by J. R. Rain

  “It’s been nagging at me for a while, Sam. Often you seem to refer to yourself as something less, somehow. When in fact, you are much more than most of us could ever imagine or hope for.”

  “Even you?” I asked.

  She opened her mouth, closed it again. Speaking of closed, her mind was still blocked from my own, as it had been, ever since one her witchy friends—a ghost of all things—decided that I was closer to being the enemy than a friend. Allison, bound to her triad in ways that I might not ever know or understand, had honored the request... but only so far. She didn’t cut ties with me, but she also didn’t allow me to access her mind, which was a shame, because telepathy was often a whole hell of a lot easier than talking. Especially in a crowded restaurant.

  “Does he call himself Satan?” asked Allison.

  “I don’t know. But probably. He exists, after all, because of humanity’s collective consciousness, apparently. And most of us call him Satan. Or Lucifer. Personally, I think he’s a fucking creep.”

  I might have said that last part a little too loudly. Heads snapped around, especially the pretty redhead. Did I need to talk to the redhead? No, I didn’t need to. Personally, I think it’s okay to let people be. To let them have their secrets. To leave well enough alone. But I suspected—oh yes, I suspected—that she and I would one day have a heart to heart.

  Perhaps even soon.

  “Good for you guys,” said a jealous Allison, picking up on my thoughts, and not bothering to hide the hurt in her voice. “I hope you guys really hit it off.”

  I decided not to point out that six months earlier, she had walked out of my life—only to return shortly thereafter, not necessarily with her tail between her legs, but certainly with an apology on her lips.

  I nodded. “It is, of course, perfectly logical to think that, after one meeting, she will become my new best friend.”

  Allison caught a subtle meaning I hadn’t necessarily intended. Or rather, she’d heard what she wanted to hear. “I’m your best friend, Sam?”

  I ignored her, not wanting Allison to get off the needy hook so easily. “In some countries, best friends adopt puppies together. I wonder if she likes labradoodles, too...”

  “You’re incorrigible, Sam Moon.”

  “I suspect we would be inseparable. Maybe she should just move in? I could always set her up in my office...”

  “I hate you, Sam.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “No, I don’t,” she said. She paused, debated what to do with her hands, then settled with folding them in front of her. “I’ve never had a friend like you.”

  “Even in your triad?”

  “They...” She paused. “They are different. They are necessary. They are important, and we do good work together.”

  “I’m trying not to feel hurt over here,” I said.

  “But I choose to be your friend, Sam. I’m honored to be your friend. I’m excited to be your friend—hey, stop doing that!”

  I was making gagging motions, really sticking my finger down my throat and leaning to the side. A lady sitting next to me scooted her chair back and said, “Oh dear!”

  “I’m okay now,” I said, and winked at Allison, and I winked at the redhead looking at me, too. The redhead blushed a little and turned back to her food and the hanging plants. Luckily, I was more interesting than a fern.

  “Are you quite done?” asked Allison, turning red herself. Allison was a witch and a psychic (although the two might go hand-in-hand), but not at immortal; meaning, her bodily functions worked normally, like blood flow. My bodily functions only ‘kinda’ worked, and mostly they did so begrudgingly. Mostly, I operated on a supernatural level, which is a weird thing to say unless, you know, you don’t have a heartbeat. Or can’t see yourself in a mirror.

  “We get it, Sam. You’re... different. And please never talk about my bodily functions again. Like, eww.”

  “Hey, you almost said weird.”

  “No, I didn’t. And you can never prove it. Besides, different is a better word. We’re both different. We’re not less. In fact, we might even be a little more. Or a lot more.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, especially when I’m flying over Orange County as a giant dragon or bat, or whatever the hell Talos is.

  Perhaps a little of both, I heard a distant voice say.

  I could be wrong here—but I was seventy-five percent sure those were Talos’s words. Like in my head. From across space and time and, for all I knew, dimensions.

  Crazy, I thought. Just too damn crazy.

  “I heard it, too, Sam. Not so crazy. So, that was Talos?”

  Okay, now, I was ninety percent sure. “I guess so, yeah.”

  “He sounds... wise. You are lucky to have him.”

  “Oh, God. Please tell me you’re not going to be jealous over a dragon, too.”

  “Maybe a little jealous,” she said. “Who wouldn’t want a dragon?”

  “We’re not having this conversation,” I said.

  “Oh, but we are, Sam. We’re having it real good.”

  And with that, I started laughing, and I didn’t stop laughing until we had cleared out most of the restaurant. Then again, it was kind of a small place, and lunch hour was mostly over anyway.

  “You never answered my question, Sam,” said Allison, wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes.

  “What question?”

  “Are you going to find Danny for the devil?”

  “Ah, that question.” I took in some air, held it for far too long, then let it go. I nodded, and kept nodding as I said, “If I can save another life, then, yes.”

  “But how will you find him?”

  I had been thinking about that all night, too, and I might have come up with an answer. As was the case with Sandy, I suspected I didn’t have a lot of time. After all, the devil dog had shown up that very night, along Lemon Street. And had I not met with Sandy the very next day, I suspected she might have met an unfortunate end... all to get at the entity within her.

  “I have a plan,” I said. “But I’m going to need your help.”

  Allison brightened considerably. Her need to be needed had just been granted.

  “Oh, shut up, Sam. I don’t need you.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Fine, whatever.” She rolled her eyes and did her best to look hurt, but that only lasted a fraction of a second. She leaned across the table, eyes flashing. “So, what do you need me to do?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute, but first I need to call Tammy to pick up her brother up again.”

  “The same brother who’s, like, six inches taller than she is? And who can, like, stop a speeding train?”

  “Yes, and hardly. I’ve been having a... feeling lately.” Which wasn’t like me. I rarely had psychic feelings, unless they were dream-induced. These weren’t. I just didn’t want Anthony left alone, not now, and not with his guardian angel now off the case. My guardian angel. My ex-guardian angel. I knew Allison had caught most of that.

  “I did, Sam. And I kind of wish I hadn’t. I’m pretty sure you just gave me a headache.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “How long have you been having these psychic hits?”

  “Maybe a week, maybe longer.”

  “And what do they entail?”

  “Something to do with Anthony,” I said. “Something about not leaving him alone.”

  “But isn’t that every parent’s fear?”

  I shrugged, suddenly miserable. “Probably. But not every parent has a child who’s a beacon to every supernatural creep out there.”

  Allison knew about the silver serpent that ran through my son’s aura, a serpent that marked him as a potential Light Warrior. Marked him for the good guys... and for the bad guys, too. “You can’t protect your kids all of the time, Sam. Ishmael did say your son would be okay.”

  “I’d rather not take the word of a very bad guardian angel,” I snapped.

  I pulled out my cell
phone and called Tammy. She picked up on the last possible ring, to remind me of my place in her life. I reminded her of her place, too, which was being a big sister. She didn’t like where this was going and put up a fight, and before we hung up, I counted three “I hate you”s and seven “whatever”s. Most important, she had agreed to pick up her brother. I said, “I love you,” and she said, “Whatever.” Okay, eight.

  I turned to Allison. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Anthony knew he wasn’t like other kids.

  He also knew that he wasn’t like other people. Heck, no one in his family was. Even his dad had started acting strangely at the end. Anthony was certain that Mommy hadn’t seen it; in fact, she had been so busy being mad at Daddy, that she didn’t see him changing before her eyes.

  Anthony didn’t know all the details of what Daddy was up to, but Tammy had filled him in later. Daddy, apparently, owned and operated a strip club, where women were paid to get naked—a thought that intrigued Anthony to no end. Why Daddy would do that, Anthony didn’t know. He also didn’t care too much, one way or another. To his young thirteen-year-old mind, his daddy could do little wrong, and running a strip club didn’t seem like the worst thing ever, at least to a teenage boy.

  It was after school, and Anthony found himself alone in the pick-up area, a spot in front of the school. He was in eighth grade, and was the second tallest boy in school. Anthony was only one inch shorter than Phillip McGarry, and that was all right by him. Anthony already had the reputation for being a big weirdo. He didn’t need to be a weirdo and the tallest boy in school, too! That would be just too much. Or so he thought.

  Most boys walked to school, or took the bus, but Mommy still liked picking him up, and so he let her. Walking would be a drag. It was, like, twenty miles away (although he had heard his mom say it was only four miles away). Still, four miles seemed like forever! Better to have Mommy pick him up. He knew he had to quit calling her Mommy, and quit calling his dad Daddy. He didn’t understand why he still thought of them as Mommy and Daddy. When his dad died, something inside Anthony sort of died, too. He could feel it. Or maybe it hadn’t so much died as stunted him on the inside. Certainly not on the outside! But inside, he still felt like a little boy who missed his daddy, and he couldn’t get past that feeling, no matter how hard he tried. And if calling his parents Mommy and Daddy felt right, then so be it—although he would never, ever use the names around his friends; that is, what few friends he had.

  One or two of the boys in school seemed to not mind so much if they ate lunch together, but mostly, kids stayed away from him. They had heard that he was freakishly strong. A number of them had challenged him, wanting to fight him, but he had ignored them for the most part. One boy wouldn’t let up, and kept getting in Anthony’s face, day after day, saying terrible things about him and his sister and mother. He was a boy Anthony didn’t know, a one-time big shot from elementary school who was still trying to be a big shot in middle school.

  As so, he had tripped Anthony one day. The foot had shot out from behind a door, but Anthony, instead of falling, had gracefully found his footing again. But in the process of regaining his balance, he had swung an arm out at the tripper. The shaggy, blond-haired kid had slammed into the lockers so hard that he had blacked out. Anthony had even caught him before the wannabe bully had hit the ground. In fact, Anthony had carried him to the nurse’s office over a shoulder.

  Now, no one messed with him, although he saw groups of boys conspiring against him as he passed. He heard his name whispered, with both awe and hate. Anthony suspected they were going to jump him someday and try to beat the strangeness out of him—and maybe he would let them, if just to appear normal. But Anthony knew himself. He knew that, once attacked, something triggered inside him, and he would fight back, often too hard, and often hurting the other boys. If only they would just leave him be.

  Mostly, they did.

  Anthony had long since discovered that playing sports with the other boys wasn’t much fun at all. He was better than them. A lot better. So much so that it was kinda freaky. Sure, the coaches here at Jenkins Middle School had pestered him nearly nonstop to join basketball and track and field, but Anthony had always politely declined.

  Truthfully, he only felt comfortable in Jacky’s gym, working out with the old trainer, or sparring with adults, some of whom even were able to challenge Anthony, although mostly he could beat them pretty easily, too. Anthony enjoyed the footwork, the give and take of punching, the dance of it all. It appealed to him on many levels, even if Anthony had to mostly hold back.

  And he liked Jacky a lot. A whole lot. Jacky felt just like a grandpa to him, and Anthony really liked that feeling. He only had one living grandpa. His grandparents lived in Vegas, and mostly stayed there. They weren’t very good grandparents, as far as Anthony was concerned, although Mommy seemed to be talking to them more and more these days on the phone.

  They think we’re weird, too, he thought. Everyone, everywhere thinks we’re weird.

  Mommy had talked about a special school for him, a school for kids who were different, as she said. These days, Anthony had been thinking about that school—a lot. He had almost forgotten what it was like to just be one of the boys, just another kid playing. All focus and all attention seemed to be on him all the time, but almost never in a good way. Yes, one or two girls seemed interested, and he had even spent time with them last year, but each one had eventually quit coming around. And he knew why, too. One girl had mentioned that she was being teased for hanging out with him. She even let slip what his nickname was. Man-child.

  Because he was bigger than most. Maybe not the tallest, but the fullest, biggest, and clearly the strongest. His shoulders were wider, and his whiskers were filling out. Yes, whiskers. A true man-child.

  He knew he was a freak. He also knew he probably would have died years ago if his mother—the queen freak herself—hadn’t saved him in her own weird way. Yes, she had told him everything, and he was glad that she had. After all, he would never, ever have been able to understand what was happening to him, if she hadn’t told him.

  Some of his other so-called friends called him “X-man.” Not just an X-men mutant, like Wolverine or Magneto, but X-man. “Hey, X-man...” they would begin. Anthony had to admit, he kind of liked it. He’d never thought of himself as a superhero before—and for all he knew, he wouldn’t get any stronger than he already was. The thing is, even at thirteen, he was still stronger and faster and quicker than most adult men. He knew this, because he was able to beat just about everyone at Jacky’s Gym. Unbeaten pros, too.

  Unbeaten, that is, until they sparred with him.

  Anthony kicked a small rock across the sidewalk. It hit a soda can in the weeds. He had been aiming at the soda can. He checked his cell phone. Mom was a little late. Again.

  Luckily, here, at the middle school, the principal didn’t seem to care so much if parents were late. Still, they just didn’t like kids milling around the school, after classes. Luckily, the principal seemed to like Anthony. Most adults seemed to like Anthony. He figured that most adults saw him as just that: an adult.

  Nope, he thought. Only thirteen. And proud of it!

  He sighed and looked into the sky. Despite being the middle of the afternoon, he saw something that he’d been seeing more and more of lately, something that could only be described as squirmy, super-bright... worms. They moved really fast, though—often zigzagging across the sky—they moved in a sort of flowing pattern. The other night, while he’d been lying in bed, he had seen the same electrified worms (as he came to think of them). Only, these electrified worms had somehow lit up his entire room. When he quit focusing on them, the room went dark again.

  I can see in the dark, he had thought. But the squiggly light seemed to come only randomly, and not really enough to see too much of the room. Still, they did seem to be appearing to him more and more, which he thought was interesting.

  He kicked a
nother rock and sent it rocketing up and over the nearby bushes, to tumble and roll across the parking lot. He thought of the words ‘rock’ and ‘rocket,’ and wondered if they were similar for a reason, but he couldn’t find anything similar about a stupid pebble and a spaceship.

  Now, for the first time in his life, he heard something unusual: a slight pinging sound just inside his right inner ear. Anthony shook his head and swatted near his head. Had it been a bee? A fly? Something buzzing around his head?

  He didn’t know. Then again, bees didn’t ping, like sonar. They buzzed. Flies sort of hummed. A mosquito maybe? In Southern California, mosquitoes weren’t very common, and Anthony didn’t know much about them, but he figured, yes, it was probably a mosquito, or something like it.

  Except...

  The pinging came again, and again. And, no, it wasn’t going on outside his head, either. It was, he was certain, happening inside his head. Maybe just inside his ear, as if something was trapped just on the other side of his eardrum.

  It came again, and again, steadily louder, and steadily more persistent.

  Anthony decided he didn’t like the sound. Didn’t like it one bit. It made him feel... uneasy. So, he tried to distract himself.

  He thought again of his growing list of talents. Heck, he’d spent his last four or five years getting stronger, faster, and, well, better at just about everything. Still, kicking the small, irregular rock with perfect aim was a new one to him, so he proceeded to kick a few more, with increasing exactness. The can. A sign. A car’s tire.

  Which is why he didn’t notice the black van pull into the school parking lot...

  His phone vibrated and he looked down at it: Mom flaked again so I’m picking you up, butthead. Almost there. And no staring at my friends. Or their boobs. They already think you are like the biggest creep.

  Yes, walking home was a bummer. But walking home with Tammy’s pretty friends was a completely different story!

  He was so excited that he aimed the next rock up and over the big, black van that had stopped in front of him.