Vamp-Hire

by Rice, Gerald Dean

  “I’m afraid you won’t be needing those anymore. The bosa is the only medication you’ll need now.”

  “The what?”

  “The bosa. It’s Arabic for kiss. You had your first dose of it the other night, albeit under non-ideal circumstances.”

  “What does this ‘bosa’ do?”

  “Gives you more you to play around with.” Nick stared at him. “You’ll understand shortly.” The man hadn’t stopped scribbling on his clipboard, only looking up at Nick once. “I need to take some vitals.”

  He came within arm’s reach and took Nick’s wrist in his reedy fingers. The man’s skin was unnaturally dry, like he was made of paper. Nick took the opportunity to get a good look at him. Fifties was being generous. The man had to have been in his late seventies at least. His eyes were dark and sunken, his cheeks sallow, the little bit of hair on his head wispy and white, as well as his bushy eyebrows.

  Nick wanted to ask how old he was, not really wanting to know the answer. The doctor—at least Nick presumed he was an MD or DO by his lab coat and overall detached demeanor—let go of his wrist, took the stethoscope from around his neck, and pressed the business end to Nick’s back.

  “Deep breath for me,” he said.

  Nick complied. “I should kill you,” Nick said. The man paid his comment no mind as if he had a script and had no ability or interest to deviate from it. He moved the stethoscope to the other side of his back.

  “Again.”

  After he plucked the thermometer out of Nick’s mouth he examined it, a look of deep concern on his face. Nick gave up on asking him anything about his situation; the old man wouldn’t answer.

  “How am I doing?” he asked.

  “You’ll live,” the doctor said. Nick didn’t think he was a doctor anymore. Probably someone who’d been taught the motions. Nick had experienced his share of detached physicians during his time at the Center, and the old man was cousin to a ghost. Nick could see him and feel him, but he had his own agenda and could only follow it. It was his mind that seemed insubstantial, nothing Nick did or said seemed to touch it. Twice he’d moved as if to hit him and the old guy hadn’t even flinched.

  Finally, Nick gave in and let the old man finish his check-up. He didn’t want to waste another threat and have his bluff called. The old man scribbled some more notes on that clipboard. After he put it down Nick was certain nobody else was going to look at it.

  “You’re dying, you know,” Nick said to him. No response. Perhaps because the old man already knew that, perhaps he’d been told that several times over who knew how many years before and kept defying actual doctors’ prognostications. He turned and headed for the door.

  Nick hadn’t even seen that until now. He was certain the door wouldn’t open and when it did and the old man stepped through, he was sure there was a guard on the other side. When the old man disappeared and nobody reached for the door to pull it shut, Nick stood up. He walked forward, certain that any minute it would slam and he’d be trapped in here.

  Because he was a prisoner. Right?

  No. Nobody shut the door and when he got to it and peered out, nobody with a firearm was on the other side. If it hadn’t been for the old man’s shuffling pace on his way out, Nick might have thought he was here alone.

  Wherever ‘here’ was.

  Nick had the option of going left or right. He had read somewhere that most people were right-handed and would favor their dominant hand when choosing a direction. He went left.

  To say this place was a maze would have been an understatement. There was nothing to distinguish anything from anything else. The only thing he saw were long hallways and doors. All the doors he tried were unlocked, all of them empty except a cot. For all he knew they could have all been the exact same room he’d woken up in.

  “I know what this is,” he said. “I know what this is! You let me out to give me the illusion of control, but I’m just in a bigger prison. A maze. You’re trying to break me.”

  Nick hoped he had kept the niggle of panic that was in the back of his brain out of his voice. He was actually afraid of mazes to the point where he was unable to trace through them when they were on paper. He couldn’t even do crossword puzzles because they reminded him of mazes. Literary pathways obscured by random letters.

  Mazeophobia. That was the closest he had come to finding what it was called. Mazeophobia was defined as fear of getting lost while driving. Nick supposed that related to his situation. If one could be considered as piloting or driving one’s own life, Nick had spent the last few months being afraid of getting lost while in the driver’s seat of his own life.

  If Nick could be brave enough to see his way out of here, then he promised himself there would be no more hiding for him.

  He realized that physically he felt great. None of the pains that had racked his body a few hours ago or however long it had been remained. More than that, he felt strong. Stronger than he could remember ever feeling. Nick ran his hands down his chest and stomach and thought he felt a layer of muscle that had not been there prior. He crossed his arms and put his hands on his shoulders, feeling his way down the muscles of his arms. Those felt bigger too. Though he hoped this wasn’t the product of a hopeful imagination, he was worried about why this had happened. He certainly hadn’t been working out, nor had he been eating the commensurate amount of protein to precipitate his added bulk.

  Nick had the urge to ask that old man more questions. He wasn’t going to ask anyone anything while chasing his tail like a dog. He needed to use a sense other than his eyes.

  He smelled the air. At first it seemed as gray as the walls in this place, then he began picking up individual trails of scents. Hours old coffee, cigarettes, artificial pine, peppermint oil, illness.

  He turned his head, following the last scent. It was rotten, cold, and held a note of blood. He followed it, annoyed at having to navigate around walls and corners. Twice he had to move in the complete opposite direction of where he wanted to go.

  Eventually, the halls widened and he came to some sort of common area. It might have been a cafeteria once with its counters and a back area where equipment for cooking and storing food may have gone. It had a vague, old food smell, but there were no tables or chairs, no sneeze bars, no people in hair nets, and most of all, no food.

  For the first time since he could remember, Nick was hungry.

  Maybe his fat stores had been depleted by his sudden increase in muscle tone, maybe it was because he hadn’t eaten in a while. Regardless, passing through here made him want to eat and Nick realized he had fallen out of the habit.

  He compiled a mental priority list. Step one: escape. Step two: find food. The two were interchangeable.

  On the other side of the room were two doors. He couldn’t tell which the old man had gone through. He thought left again.

  Nick had no reason to think either door would be unlocked and the knob turned when he tried it.

  “I wish I coulda eaten Albert Einstein,” a wide-backed vamp in a tight black shirt said from about twenty feet in front of him. “He was a real smart guy. Maybe some of that woulda rubbed off on me.”

  Nick’s first thought was to attack him, subdue him, and perhaps hurt him until he gave directions to the exit. He’d only walked five feet when someone he didn’t see spoke.

  “I would have eaten Ghandi,” a female vamp said.

  “You got somethin’ against peace?”

  “No, silly. Diet. With all those hunger strikes and junk he’s the closest to vegetarian I’ll ever eat.”

  “You do know vegetarians still exist? And was the Mahatma a vegetarian? ‘Cause I’m not so sure about that one.”

  “I think he was. And it’s not just the vegetarian thing, he was good. Goodness counts too.”

  “Why not just eat Martin Luther King then?”

  “I thought about that. He looked like he ate too many rich foods. He might give me gout.”

  Someone tackled Nick.

/>   The wind sailed out of his lungs and he realized she must have been clinging to the ceiling or something. He’d never thought to look up and somehow her voice had sounded like it had been coming from somewhere else in the room. Nick looked up at someone sitting on top of him. She was raven-haired, pretty, maybe unnaturally so, and familiar. She pushed her hair out of her face and even the wound on her neck struck a chord with him.

  “You better remember me,” she said. “You did see me naked, after all.

  “You’re the girl,” Nick said. “At the… at the place Dolph took me to. You’re the dead girl.”

  “In the flesh,” she said and back flipped off him, catlike in her grace as she quietly came to her feet.

  “But… but you’re—”

  “Dead?” Another man entered the room from a side door. It was Lieutenant Leonard. The last time Nick had seen him his head was smoking. He’d healed up nicely.

  The vamp with his back to Nick and the girl went over to Leonard. She had easily taken him down and the male looked equally powerful as they sauntered over to the lieutenant. Nick could feel the violence in them. It resonated with something deep within him and he realized he wanted to kill the lieutenant just as he felt they wanted to kill him. Leonard seemed to barely notice them, his eyes locked on Nick. They were three feet away from him when they dropped to their knees, holding their hands up to him in supplication.

  Leonard’s eyes rolled up in his head, his lids batting furiously, his breathing fast and heavy. He sounded as if he were choking on something and his head pitched back. Nick felt a wave of something off him that was not vamp. It tugged at him and he might have taken a couple of unintentional steps forward had he not been lying on the floor. With one final convulsion, what looked like a spike shot out of the roof of his mouth. It pushed out farther, his jaw unhinging to make room.

  Nick sat up, staring in awe. He guessed it was some sort of tooth, it looked like it could have been made of bone. Then a drop of something translucent yellow hung from the curved tip. It hung impossibly long before dropping onto the palm of the woman. Another came a moment later and shortly after that a steady stream of the liquid was pouring into both their hands.

  They splashed it into their faces, put it over their heads. The look on their faces was positively joyous, rapturous. They smiled and laughed like children in a pool.

  Nick was on his feet by the time the stream had slowed to a trickle. The tooth/horn retracted and Leonard closed his mouth. The man and woman rose in unison and turned to face Nick, their expressions stony.

  “It is in these most precious moments when our connection is strongest,” Leonard said. “They can see my thoughts, feel my desires, and my mere whim is their commandment. You are mine now as well.”

  “Yours?” Nick asked, backing toward the door. “How do you mean?”

  “It is my ichor that flows in your veins. My will that mandates the continued beating of your heart.”

  Images flooded Nick’s mind. It felt like some sort of feedback between the two vamps and Leonard. He put a hand up as if to ward this off, backing up and bumping into a wall. A single image came to him, crystal for just long enough. It was like a GIF in that it was about five or six images strung together on a loop so the same thing kept repeating over and over. It looked like a hospital room, except the walls and floor were covered in blood. Too much blood to have come from one person. The only figure other than the two vamps was Dolph. He was wearing a hospital gown as they held him by either arm. His legs were gone below the knees and his bloodied head lolled before the woman vamp tore one of his bulky arms off as easily as tearing a sheet of paper in half. Dolph’s head shot up, agony chiseled into his face just before everything started over.

  Nick was able to push the image out of his mind before she tore his arm off a second time.

  “Go, my children,” Leonard said. They turned and pushed out the door he’d come through, running like first graders who’d heard the last school bell of the day.

  “Why?” Nick said, tears streaming down his face.

  “Because he was going to get in the way.” Leonard made a face as if this was obvious.

  “He’s been in the hospital for days now. He’s old—he’s not a threat to you.”

  “Of course he’s no threat.” Leonard tilted his head like a dog trying to understand human language. “He is a complication. A burr in my side. Which one of you killed my Brandon?”

  The change in gears made Nick pause. “I did.”

  “No. You did not. You merely wounded him. He would have eventually died had I not intervened, but it would have taken much longer for that to happen. Someone… tore him away from me. Which of you dhampir did it?”

  Nick found himself trying to press through the wall. He kept telling his legs to run; they kept not listening. Leonard cocked his head to the other side and narrowed his eyes.

  “You are resisting me?” He smiled and the pressure that had been bombarding Nick eased. “Very well. I will respect your desire to protect this person. I’ll shoot them all.”

  “What? No!”

  “Then give me the name!”

  “It was me. I killed him.”

  “Your blood is my blood now. Do you think you can lie to me and I not know it before the words cross your lips? You could no more lie to me than I could lie to myself!” Leonard’s fingers had elongated into talons. “You will tell me who and how it was done. I would have this person die a special death.”

  “I… I can’t.”

  Leonard smiled again, only this time it was the baring of a mouthful of hooked fangs. “You cannot resist me. I am your master.”

  Nick could feel Leonard large in his mind and knew he was right. It was like fingertips had been grasping at him before. Now, a boa constrictor had seized him by the throat.

  “I’ll tell you. You have to take me to them first.”

  “You have a brain full of ulterior motives, young man,” Leonard said, pointing with a human hand. “But hey, that’s okay.” He slapped Nick on the shoulder, a shark-like smile on his face filled with human teeth. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  “What are you?” Nick asked.

  The lieutenant coughed a laugh as he headed out the door. “I’m not a vampire.”

  “Look, I’m guessing I’m supposed to serve you, right?” Nick followed at what seemed like a safe enough distance. “You’re gonna spit on me with that horn-tooth thing and I’ll turn into a mindless zombie?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. Did Alex and Cameron look like mindless zombies to you? The first time showed them the power they could potentially have. After that they came to me of their own free will and submitted. Just like you will. You can be one of us too.”

  Leonard seemed perfectly normal now. Like the kind of guy you grab a beer with at a bar. His smile was friendly and genuinely warm.

  “But you kill people. I don’t think I can be part of that.”

  Leonard stopped. “Kill what people? You’re not talking about Alex, I know. As you saw, she’s alive and well.”

  “Those two wranglers. That one vamp.”

  “Unfortunate and unforeseeable. It was self-defense, they fired on my people first. We were forced to. Had they simply made you available for pick up, everyone would still be alive.”

  “Brandon said you gave them permission to eat everyone else.”

  “They killed an innocent. Wendell and Willis might have had it coming, but what did she do?” Nick knew Leonard had to have known he knew better, but was content with going down this road anyway.

  “Fruit from the poisoned tree. Anyway, they’re kids.” He shrugged. “All this is so new to them. They just went a little crazy is all. I already spoke to them about it and it will never happen again.”

  He said it like that was enough. His tone was playfully stern, like he understood Nick thought it was a big deal, but it wasn’t really a big deal. Nick stood shoulder to shoulder with him and looked the man in the face.

&n
bsp; “You have to be kidding me. There has to be someone over you. Someone who signs off on what it is you’re doing. If they knew the truth you’d—”

  “I’d probably get a medal. Are you kidding me? You know how people in this country feel about vamps. Even if they did reprimand me it wouldn’t be more than a slap on the wrist. You see, that’s what I’m trying to change with this program. People will take vamps seriously once they see my peeps. They’ll take pride in our contribution to the effort. In mein kampf!”

  Although Nick didn’t know why he’d said ‘my struggle’ in German, he knew he was looking at a madman—a monster. He wanted to know what the endgame was, and maybe he could learn by keeping him talking.

  “So what are we supposed to do to make the world a better place?”

  Leonard shrugged. “Take out a terrorist or two. Maybe a town full of them.”

  Clarkdale, Nick remembered. Operation Sun Sweep.

  “That thing in Arizona? With the Renfieldians?”

  “Not Renfieldians. Close enough. All I have to do to prove my team is ready is rout out a small rebel force in town and we get a golden ticket.”

  “Small rebel force?” Nick asked. He had the sensation he already knew: Ti and the gang. Maybe even Lucky too. He shuttered the thought, fearing Leonard might pick up on it. Church seemed like a good front for a rebel base operation. That building was a whole lot bigger than he’d seen.

  “Yeah. I suspect one of them was the one who attacked us when we came to see you the other day.” Leonard stopped again. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to know who that was, would you?”

  “No,” Nick said. He couldn’t make it sound not like a lie. Fortunately, Leonard didn’t call him on it. They continued down the hall, turning around a corner. The lieutenant waved his badge in front of a security box and it beeped, a green light coming on as the door unlocked. He pushed through and they walked into a large room that was half holding cell.

  The vamps from the other night stared at them with tired eyes. They were all to one side of the cell, a corpse on the other side. Nick couldn’t have mistaken him for asleep; half of the upper side of his head looked like it had been bitten off.