by J. R. Rain
“How much did Danny tell you about me?” And were there others out there who knew my secret?
Other strippers and prostitutes, no doubt.
“I’m sure there are, Sam.” She exhaled and looked away. Nancy never hid from what she did then—or now. Although I didn’t ask, I got the very strong feeling, and these days I always trusted my feelings, that she made her living as a very high-priced call girl.
“Something like that, Sam. I could tell you about it if you really wanted to know.”
“I don’t. Not now, not ever.”
She looked away and smoked, and if my judgmental tone had affected her, she didn’t show it. These days, I tried to keep that down, anyway. I tried to welcome her as a friend.
“I do what I have to do, Sam. I’m glad you don’t judge me… too much. Anyway, he told me your whole story. How you were attacked. How you were turned. How you guys kept blood in the garage fridge. How you threatened him, scared him.”
Danny had blabbed my secret.
Months ago, when Nancy and I had first met, I could have denied it. I could have even changed her opinion of me. Controlling others was something that used to not sit well with me, but was now, admittedly, a feasible option. Of course, the demon bitch within me loved it. Loved it more than anything, if I had to guess. So, I rarely gave in. And, yeah, that pissed her off to no end. Now, that I enjoyed.
“Are you taking his side?” I asked.
“Well, you did threaten him, Sam. He told me all about you throwing him down on the bed and choking—”
“He tried to have me killed! By other vampires. And he nearly got my sister killed, too.”
She shrugged. She usually shrugged. It was her defense mechanism. Her shrugs seemed to indicate: I’ve seen worse.
I shielded my thoughts. I had to. They had turned dark. Far darker than I was willing to share.
“So, you are taking that rat bastard’s side. And if you shrug again, I’m going to remove your shoulder and feed it to my neighbor’s dog.”
She shrugged again, and this one was defiant, snotty. It also came out with a surprising lack of concern for her own safety. She should have been very, very concerned for her own safety.
Very.
Maybe we weren’t comrades, after all. Maybe it was impossible to put our past behind us and to forget the hurt, the jealousy. The complete disruption of our lives.
And this, a defiant shrug, from the woman who’d slept with my husband, back when he and I were still trying to work things out, back when I still loved him, back when I needed him most.
I snapped.
Literally. I knew the bitch within me helped me snap. Gave me just the right amount of hate to fuel what I did next… and what I did next would horrify me later.
But it didn’t horrify me now. Oh no, what I did felt just right.
So very, very right.
When I was done feeding from her neck, I was tempted to kill her. Tempted, of course, by the demon within me.
Instead, through superhuman effort—well, supernatural effort, to be exact—I pulled away from her torn throat, wiping my mouth like the ghoul I am. Then I licked the back of my hand.
Yeah, definitely a monster.
Kill her, chanted a voice in my head, a voice way, way, way down deep. A voice I never, ever trusted. Until now, I had done such a damn good job of ignoring it, too. So good that I almost, almost, thought I was normal. Especially with the two rings I now wore: one that helped me eat normal food, and one that helped me live in the light of day, both forged in an alchemical process that few on Earth would ever know.
I had made a valiant attempt to not feed from humans over these past few months—or even from anything living. My sole source of sustenance had been my bloody packets of filth delivered from a slaughterhouse.
Now, as I sat back, I watched Nancy slowly come back to her senses. I had seen this before. Victims slipped into a catatonic state of shock. Allison never had, though, when I’d fed from her each week. Perhaps a friendly bite to eat was much different than a full-fledged vampire attack.
And I did attack Nancy. Criminal charges could be pressed against me. Hell, I should be in jail for what I just did to her.
Except that no jail could hold me.
She blinked, the tears rolling down her cheeks. Jesus, had I put her under a sort of spell, the way a dolphin stuns its prey with a sonic blast? She rolled her head in my direction. More tears streamed out. The wound in her neck had already coagulated, although it still seeped some blood.
I tried to feel really bad about what I had done.
The old me would have been mortified. The old me would have hated herself for attacking this woman. The old me would have feared that such an attack would prompt more of the same, and would, in fact, signal the end of my humanity.
The old me was a wuss.
Besides, humanity was overrated.
Yes, I knew that was her talking, the demon within. But sometimes, she made sense. And sometimes, people just deserved what they got. And sometimes, I just needed to feed.
All good points.Which meant, I was slipping. The demon within me was gaining a stronger foothold, gaining more and more access to my thoughts. To my actions. There was a war raging inside, and I was losing ground. But see if I cared.
“Are you okay, Sam?”
I had erased her memory of the attack. It seemed a prudent thing to do, under the circumstances. With a few well-placed words and a suggestion that the past few minutes had never happened, I was in the clear. There was some blood on her shirt, but I’d suggested to her that it was from an old scratch that had since healed.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I said, my thoughts shielded deep behind an impregnable wall.
“Okay, good. You sort of got this funny look on your face…” Nancy said.
“And then?”
“And then, I asked how you were doing.” She laughed. “Look, I’m sorry if I pushed any buttons. I never thought we would be friends, either. It just sort of fell into our laps… and felt, well, it felt comfortable. All that other stuff… we were different people back then. I didn’t know you. You didn’t know me. Danny played us both. I’m glad we can see past that.”
I tried to smile and might have even succeeded. I took in a lot of useless air and with the guilt setting in, hissed mentally, Yeah, some friend I am.
“You attacked her?”
“A little bit,” I underreported to my psychic friend. Allison and I were having lunch at Lazy Dog in Brea, a place that allowed customers to bring their dogs on the patio. I didn’t own a dog, which was probably a good thing. We didn’t want Fido to go missing like my neighbor’s cat. “And could you say that a little louder?”
“I’m Latina,” she said. “We’re loud, deal with it.”
“I’d rather not.”
Allison made a face and shoved a forkful of her iceberg wedge salad in her mouth. I might not be much of a salad expert—especially after not eating the stuff for over seven years—but it looked like a lazy-man’s version of a regular salad.
“It’s all about presentation,” said Allison, picking up on my thoughts, which, nowadays, just about anyone seemed to do—at least, anyone with any kind of connection to me. Allison’s just happened to be stronger than just about anyone’s, since, well, up to a few months ago, I’d been ingesting her blood on a regular basis. Consensually, of course. Her willingness to provide me with small snacks of human blood had a happy side effect of enhancing her psychic abilities. So, our give-and-take was quite symbiotic.
“It’s all about marketing,” I said, not impressed with the presentation.
“Or that, too. But I’m confused, Sam—”
“Confused about why you paid ten bucks for a side salad?”
“Never mind that, and this is much more than a side salad… it’s an experience.”
I snorted. Damn loudly, too.
“Anyway,” said Allison, with tons of emphasis on the ‘any’ part. “I thought you had, you know, kicked
the fresh blood habit.” She looked at me hopefully. She was more than willing to go back to our old arrangement, but feeding the beast within me fresh blood had only created a bigger problem. A nearly uncontrollable problem.
“I don’t think I can kick the habit. I can only deny myself. Besides, this Nancy thing wasn’t so much about a need to feed, but to…”
“Hurt her?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That. I wanted to lash out. To finally…”
I let my voice trail off. No matter. Allison was there to pick up on my thoughts, as surely as if I had spoken them.
“To finally hurt the woman who had hurt you.”
I nodded, and felt like crap. I had never attacked Allison or torn her up. When I had fed from her, it was more like… sipping a fine wine. It was never violent.
“I think,” I said, as I worked through my feelings, “that it was going to happen, one way or another, eventually.”
“I’m not following.”
“I had imagined doing just that to her—so many times, hundreds and hundreds. Maybe even a thousand or two. There was a lot of momentum. I’m not sure if I could have stopped myself. It was almost as if I had to act out, just to get it out of my system.”
“Okay, I think I get it.” Allison nodded. “Like you attracted it or something? What do those hippy-dippies call it… manifested? You manifested it.”
“I guess,” I said. “But on the bright side, I didn’t tear her head off and punt it over my back fence into the Pep Boys parking lot, which I had been imagining, too.”
Allison cocked an eyebrow at me. “Well, hopefully, it’s out of your system now.”
“Hopefully.”
“Sam…”
“How the hell am I supposed to know how this works? One minute she’s giving me sass, and the next I’m tearing through her throat and gorging on her blood so fast, it almost came out my nose. I didn’t exactly plan on it, you know. It was impulsive.”
“I know, Sam. But remember last time…”
I nodded. The last time I had fed from something living, I had torn it to pieces. The aforementioned neighbor’s cat. My hunger had been fueled by the entity within me, an entity I had permitted to grow stronger by doing just that: giving her fresh blood.
I knew better now, which was why I fed from clear plastic packets of filthy cow and pig blood. And I didn’t feed as often, or as much. Just enough to sustain myself. Just enough to keep my energy up, but not so much that it empowered her.
It was a fine balance, but one I had been straddling successfully for the past few months, despite my urges, my hungers.
“You’re going to have to be careful, Sam. Keep her dormant. Keep her weak.”
“I hear you. Now, can we quit making me feel like shit and get back to why you hate money?” I pointed at Allison’s salad.
I was thirty minutes into some heavy traffic when my business appointment canceled on me. Via text.
I briefly considered going over there anyway and canceling my prospective client’s face, until I realized that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Still, it was a nice thought, whatever it was. Except, it wasn’t. That was her thinking.
I had let the genie out of the bottle, so to speak. Or, in this case, the demonic bitch. I had fed her human blood, and not from a willing and calm participant. With my violent attack on Nancy, I had given her a renewed strength and hope and life… and that was never, ever a good thing. I had fed… evil.
Now, as I sat in traffic, I wondered how I could have gone about things differently with Nancy. The anger had risen up so quickly. Had I even had time to talk myself down? A sudden rage. A vicious attack. A gluttonous feeding from a pulsing throat.
Get up, I told myself now, and walk away. Better than attacking. Better than losing it all. Better than giving the entity within any life at all.
There was a tiny break in traffic as people bailed off the nearest ramp, even crowding the dirt shoulder in their eagerness to get off this tedious stop-and-go parade of exhaust-belching cars. There was no way I could justify getting off into that neighborhood. I inched my car forward, maybe five feet.
Oh joy!
I idly considered abandoning my vehicle on the side of the road and taking flight… except that I had never taken flight with Talos during the day. Would he even come? Could I transform? Did I need the silent magic of night to make the transition?
I looked down at my phone and really wasn’t very surprised to see a restricted call. Who it would be from was anybody’s guess… but I had my suspicions.
“Moon Investigations,” I said into my hands-free headset to avoid a ticket.
“Samantha, it’s Ted with the California State Parks.”
“Ranger Ted,” I said, my suspicions confirmed. We had met at the ranger station just outside Arrowhead. They now kept me on speed dial, ever since I had helped to bring home a sheriff’s missing wife a few months ago, a wife who wasn’t so much missing as held captive by a pack of werewolves. Long story. Ranger Ted, of course, didn’t know about the werewolf part, which was how I intended to keep it. Anyway, I’d also helped find a missing camp counselor and an arsonist.
My phone vibrated with another text. I looked down and saw that it was Nancy Pearson. Okay, maybe I was getting a little too close to my deceased ex-husband’s mistress. Chatting once or twice every few months seemed perfectly reasonable. But now, we were text message buddies? I ignored her text.
“Are they still keeping you hopping over there?” I said into the headset.
“Hopping? Yeah, that, too.” Ted snorted. “Got a minute?”
“I’m stuck on the 91 Freeway, what do you think?”
“Even on a Saturday?”
“Even on a Saturday,” I said.
“You see, that’s why I work in the woods. No traffic, other than a few drunken yahoos and…”
“And what?”
“Poachers,” he said.
“Poachers?”
“Right.”
“On the king’s land?” I asked, shocked.
He didn’t laugh at my sarcasm. “No, in the forest. We’ve found two dead bucks, field-dressed, and with their heads removed. They’re trophy hunters—for the antlers—and apparently, they wanted the meat, too, and might be coming back for it.”
“Are you telling me this to make me vomit up my Mango-A-Go-Go Jamba Juice?” I said, to try to sound as normal as possible. Truth was, I found his description very intriguing. Too intriguing.
It’s the bitch in me. Such a sicko.
“Sorry about the mango-whatever-you-just-said, but we need a good man—or woman—working the case. I’m stretched too thin with the forest fires on the north side. You interested?”
“Usual pay?” I asked.
“Another year,” he said, referencing my free national park pass.
“And how many am I at, now?”
“Four, I think. Non-transferable, of course.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll swing by tomorrow morning.”
“On a Sunday?” He sounded impressed.
“The poachers. That’s when they’ll come back for the meat. If they field-dressed the carcass, they’ll be back before the flies lay eggs in it.” Which sort of meant I should have even come out today, but now that I had the day off, thanks to my canceling potential client, I wanted to be with the kids.
“You’ve got me there,” Ranger Ted said.
“See you then.”
Traffic inched forward.
It was about ten minutes after we clicked off that I remembered Nancy Pearson’s text. It was another two minutes before I decided to actually read it while traffic was at a complete standstill.
He’s going to kill me, Sam. At working house. Please help…. He’s here now. Shit, don’t call.
Don’t call. She was hiding. She was hiding right now. Or possibly hurt. Right now. Or even dead. Right now. All because I was too pissy to pick up my cell and look at her message.
The working house.
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Yeah, I knew the place. It was a small home around the corner from my dead hubby’s strip club, a house where some of the girls serviced certain customers. The high-rollers.
I looked at the traffic, down at the text, and pulled over to the side of the road. I slipped between the two front seats and settled along the messy back bench… and closed my eyes.
And summoned the single flame.
I appeared in the alley behind the strip club.
I could do that: appear and disappear—or teleport, as Allison called it. Apparently, it was a rare gift among vampires. I had seen it used by the oldest vampire of all. Dracula, no less. I had watched him appear and disappear on command, masterfully, perfectly, and wipe out a clan of werewolves in the process.
I wasn’t quite that good… yet. But that’s the thing with immortals: we have all the time in the world.
One prerequisite was that I needed to know where I was teleporting. I might be undead, but popping up inside a wall has got to hurt.
Now, as I sent myself into the alleyway, I prayed like hell that there wasn’t a parked truck here, and that I didn’t manifest under its hood.
I was lucky this time. I appeared whole and intact and not as part of a combustible engine. The alley was mostly empty, except for a guy who had been rifling through a dumpster. Now, of course, he was running like a man who had just seen a woman materialize out of thin air.
I grinned and headed for the house around the corner.
There were many houses around the corner, unfortunately. All small and ringed by low metal fences.
I paused on the sidewalk, under the blazing sun, weaker than I was comfortable feeling. I cast my thoughts in an ever-widening gyre, far enough out to see into the surrounding homes. Yeah, I can do that, too.
The neighborhood was quiet. The homes sat close together. A man attacking a woman would have been heard by any number of nearby witnesses.
On a positive note, I was pleased when I realized that I genuinely cared about Nancy’s wellbeing. Granted, she wasn’t exactly priority number one. But I did care enough to come out here. Which meant I wasn’t a monster, and that I could, in fact, keep the monster in check.