One Night Burns (The Vampires of Livix, #1)

by J Gordon Smith

  “Told you what, exactly?”

  “That he does scientific work at some lab with possible military uses. I never pried into any details and they never talked about it. So I understand why you’re here.” I watched more vehicles arriving and others leaving including news station vans, “I guess it could be anything then. Bethany told me her Dad had gotten some promotion or something and they went out to celebrate a week or two ago but nothing else. Do you have a card or something?”

  “Already reaching for one,” he flipped a card out for me. ‘Virtual Bureau Agency’ lay in a clean line over an intricate federal seal with his name, ‘Investigator’, and phone number.

  I gave him mine. How sad. Exchanging business cards this way for this reason.

  “Lawyer?” he said glancing across my card.

  “No, law student. Patents. None of the criminal side of the business.”

  “Let’s hope we find it’s something simple. Sometimes these kinds of things reach out like a spider web. Not to frighten you but I want to warn you to keep your eyes open and keep your doors locked. Also, you can help me solve this. Sometimes the smallest details or things you remember turn up being important. When you get away from this,” he swept his arm across the scene, “and think about anything out of the ordinary.”

  Too curious already, “I’d like to start my, your notes. What is with an investigator wearing a pair of Wakizashi blades?”

  His eyebrow raised, “What does a college girl know about Japanese swords?”

  “I know Anime.”

  “Cartoons?” he smiled, “Sorry, unprofessional of me, but I haven’t heard that before. I carry these because they hold more mystique than a pair of Bowie knives and keep their edge better in the inevitable gun and knife fights I get into. I thought they intimidated people with the whole ninja media out there. I’ll certainly have to rethink it if cartoons are involved.”

  “But it looks like you disguised them as normal batons.” I studied his face more intently. Rough angular features a shade on the gaunt side of athletic, like he had once been supremely in shape but then became worn by hardship. His eyes a neutral shade of gray but wider pupils than I’d expect. That look of mesmerizing pools one can fall into … like Garin’s. “Holy water – I meant, Holy Cow!” I looked at the clock on my phone, “I’ve got to get going.”

  Mr. Branoc ruffled his shoulders like a large black bird caught in shifting winds on a high tree branch, “Be sure and call me if anything comes up or you remember any details that could pertain to this case.” He walked a few steps but turned, “I’ll probably check in with you in a few days. Thanks Anna. And sorry about your loss.”

  -:- Eight -:-

  “You’re coming with me to the showing,” I demanded through the phone.

  “– What?”

  “You’re going to come with me and tell me if your kind is involved.” I avoided hitting the car in front of me in the fast food drive through line.

  “My kind?”

  Angry thoughts fumed and sputtered in my head while I drove back to my apartment. I tried scrambling through what I remembered from those psych classes. I wasn’t in a state of mind to remember details if I wanted. I remembered Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy, which didn’t seem right, but nothing came to mind for the phases of loss and grief. I decided I didn’t care. Seven in the morning and people already lined up to get kiddie food boxes with ensured weight gain, diabetes, and death. I wanted that semi-unregulated drug caffeine.

  Too many cars in the drive through.

  I tried turning the wheel to pull out of line but saw, “Too late!” – the curb funnel already trapped me. If these restaurants profess speed, why do they have sixty items on a menu that takes repeating and checking and confirming from every kid in the car? The choices should be few: you want fries with that and a diet drink. Next. Then the other maddening question is the breakfast or the lunch menu? No wonder these corporations are struggling. Largest factory farms on the globe and they made it too complex to move quick enough in my drive-through line. I’d make the coffee faster at home if I hadn’t stopped but now trapped here it became a toss-up.

  “Hey, are you still there?” asked Garin.

  “Ah ... yes.” I rolled forward a few inches. Finally, “Give me a large coffee and a fist-full of sugar and cream. And ice – put a few chunks of ice in it.”

  “shquirpted … shquirpted … rugtgtl rupplweet quellteiniss … shuirpted.” the radio replied.

  “Gah!” but at least the digital readout showed what I wanted and the price. I found the change in my coin tray and gave it to the much-too-cheery girl at the money window and got my coffee at the second.

  “Helloooo out thererrrrr?” came from the other end of my phone now laying on the passenger seat where I dropped it.

  “Sorry. Hold on a minute while I dope my coffee.” An old British guy with a twinkle in his eye at the college cafeteria tried chatting me up by asking if I needed any contaminants in my coffee. Which confused me until he pointed to the sideboard of cream, sugar, and flavored syrups. I laughed but remembered the discussion still.

  Once I left the strip mall outer lot I saw little traffic plodding along the regular roads. A good thing. I wandered across the margins on my side of the street. Balancing a phone with an impatient coffee slurp at the lights – tolerable now because of the coffee – retelling the morning events to Garin. My eyes tearing and welling up before dangerous curves in the road.

  “Bethany is dead. Murdered this morning.”

  “– Bethany that you introduced me to last night?”

  “Yes.” tears welled in my eyes. I needed to pull over. I drove into a random small parking lot, empty now. An automotive glass shop or something with metal art of a globe held aloft by pointed robotic fingers thrusting up through the front lawn like a monstrous mechanical undead creature pushing out of the grave.

  “What went on?” he asked.

  I told him what I knew.

  “Are you ok enough to finish driving back to your apartment?”

  “Yes.” I wiped my eyes again to clear them.

  “I’ll be there soon. And we’ll talk more.”

  “Fine. See you.” I rolled the car back onto the empty street.

  I sat in my apartment. The coffee improved when cut with more milk. And heated in the microwave after the cold milk, ignoring the warning not to put the paper cup in a microwave. I stared out the window as the sun lighted the street in bright rays. The day outside beamed much happier than my mood.

  Garin came to the door and I opened it. He walked in and hugged me tight. My arms squeezed his neck while my face pressed into his shoulder. The tears poured out uncontrolled. Garin closed the door with his foot, picked me up, and sat us down on the couch.

  “We’d talk or text every day since we became friends in high school. We’d confide everything. Every boy we had a crush on. Every boy that liked either of us.”

  “– whether you should see me?”

  “No, we’ve done less of the shared decision making. But we’ve been there for each other in everything.” The tears slipped over my lids as I blinked but it helped to focus on talking with Garin. He touched the side of my face. It felt good.

  “Branoc is a vampire investigator.” Garin looked in my eyes.

  “That’s what I suspected after seeing his swords.”

  “And probably human police plus another contingent of vampire police in addition to Branoc.”

  “I saw a bunch of different cars arriving and leaving. How do you know this?”

  “Standard protocol. If anything suspicious like this happens that could involve a vampire. Or to ensure it wasn’t a vampire. Branoc’s attendance means it’s extra suspicious or they know more about the attackers or some other large agitation.”

  “The viewing will be tomorrow night.”

  “That’s quick.”

  “As long as her father gets re-routed home from his business trip. Her mom is a wreck. I can’t blame he
r for trying to mourn faster. Bethany told me her parents had expected a little girl, that would have been Bethany’s older sister, but lost her in some late term pregnancy mishap. Bethany believed her birth lifted them from that darkness, piecing the story together from random talk in the family over the years including pointedly questioning her father.” I wiped my eyes so I could see.

  “That’s awful. Losing two children.”

  I sat back flipping through the thoughts and words like a paperback, “Hey. Did you say attackerS? As in multiples with an ‘S’?”

  “I didn’t mean anything specific with it. Something must be going on in the vampire community to pull him in. He’s separate from the vampire police. Not really independent but pretty much on his own.”

  -:- -:- -:-

  We came to the worn cement steps at the entrance of Wayward and Sons Funeral Home. Thick fluted columns reached two stories to the porch ceiling. The building stood stark in black and white paint reapplied in maintenance coats like foundation makeup applied too thickly and revealed cracks and creases in its corners accentuating its age.

  How many sad people trudged up these steps since the building’s construction?

  I wore a black and maroon sheath dress with a shiny black narrow belt and low heels. They clicked up the concrete steps and across the threshold. Garin cut a precise shape in his black wool suit behind me as we entered.

  I tipped up my sunglasses and stuck them in my hair that I had wrapped up and held with some ebony combs. I looked around. The heavy drapes creating a sudden quietness and darkness. A little sign in the foyer revealed Bethany’s full name and an arrow to the right. I clutched my purse tightly. It wheezed air from the zipper like an old bagpipe as the crumpled tissues stuffing it compressed. Squeezing it kept me from needing them, yet.

  Somber people scattered in tight clumps. Chairs hovered silently in the thick sound deadening carpet. The low ceiling and wide columns sprinkled throughout the interior made it seem claustrophobic or too much like a crypt holding the weight of purgatory above us. Mrs. Gale stooped at the side of the casket clinging to Mr. Gale’s shoulder keeping herself still. Their faces drooped grim and ashen. Patrick played with a hand held computer game while ear buds plugged into the game chattered incessantly but unintelligibly at a low volume. Smudges streaked his face. Shouldn’t have a seven year old here. But probably to keep him close and safe. Others stood, appropriately nervous and sympathetic, but not too close. Some of Bethany’s other college roommates and friends and a few people I recognized from high school glided around the room. I waved a fleeting gesture to those I knew.

  I shuffled to the casket. Black stained wood like furniture in a fashionable home store enclosed her. The lid split open at the top and white tulips laid arrayed like a gown along the whole bottom half of the casket. The interior upholstering glowed in cream fabric. Bethany rested in there like a princess lost in magical sleep in a forgotten world. Although no prince would ever be able to wake her.

  Garin whispered against my ear as he hugged me. Looking over my shoulder. “No vampire feeding.” He squeezed me with his arms.

  How did I get reassured from that? I don’t know. I asked him to check for me. It helped a little and I grasped at the fleetingness of it. It gave me strength to clutch Mrs. Gale’s hand. I hardly noticed Garin shake hands with Mr. Gale and say something unimportant. I touched Patrick’s shoulder. His eyes flashed to me for a second before going back to his game. Furry cartoon characters in little battles. And then I fled.

  We ended up at the park on a bench near the fountain. For a while young maple trees and the ceders behind the bench shielded us from the hot sun.

  I could see from the great oak at one end of the park to the band stage marks in the grass and gouges left in the dirt from dragging heavy amplifiers back and forth. I pictured Bethany over the spot of the grass I last saw her alive. So pretty. Such a great friend. And now gone! We stayed until I ran out of tissues. Garin held me and I fit seamlessly in the hollow of his chest with his arm around me.

  “Who could do this?” I demanded.

  “The police and investigators will find out.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” Garin squeezed my hand.

  “You know, while vampires seem romantic and sexy, this is what they do. Even if not the case for Bethany. This type of thing – what you do.”

  “Not what I do, at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “An African tribe called the Massai. The soil and weather where they live are too poor to support them with farming and foraging. At some point they began a practice of nicking the arteries of their grazing cattle and collecting blood. Not enough to weaken their cattle. But enough to sustain themselves. They mix it with milk. And that keeps them alive through the harshest times of the year.”

  Garin looked far off continuing in low tones I could hear but his words wouldn’t carry far to others, “The vampire community set up a company in the late eighteenth century after the beef and pork slaughter houses consolidated and mechanized new factories. This company negotiated with the slaughter houses for a supply of the kill floor blood and paid more than other possible buyers but they had to carefully handle the product and ensure cleanliness. The company acted like a medical blood products firm ensuring maintenance of high quality levels. That change revolutionized the vampire-human relationship. Mix it into several flavors, bottle it, and ship it to vampire distributors.”

  He brought his eyes back to mine, “Like human intensive farming where one farmer can feed a hundred and twenty five when as little as a century ago a farmer barely produced more food than required to feed his own family. Now two percent of our population that remains in farming produces so much grain we ship the excess around the world and give it away. This system and process allowed the vampire community to expand over the last century. Some old ones remain, or young ones on joy rides, that consistently kill. But mostly we have become civilized. Also removed are the pitchforks and torches that decimated the vampires through the centuries. As a group that’s what vampires fear most deeply. Pitchforks and torches keep most of the vampire community in check. We fear the population that we live among rising against us in the fragile balance between predator and prey.”

  “Like cheetahs could be easily killed if the gazelle didn’t run but fought as a group with their long wicked horns.”

  “Exactly – pitchfork horns.”

  I ran out of tissues. I’m not hungry but Garin suggested I stay put and he’d go to the grocery store across the street. I can see he’s keeping a close eye on me as he moves through the store.

  He came back with a hot burrito, a diet drink, and a box of tissues in a small shopping bag. I took the food from the sack and pushed into the empty bag all the soggy bits of spent tissues I’d been cramming wetly in my purse and collecting on my lap. Then I could worry the paper bag will disintegrate. I used hand cleaning gel before unwrapped the burrito, not hungry before but now I am.

  “Thanks,” I nodded to the food, “and thanks for being patient with me.”

  “Of course.”

  We watched cars go around the square until the sun set. The times Bethany and I spent together filled my thoughts. Sitting in cars talking about boys. Trying to figure out their wily ways. Never succeeding because their confusion ranked as high as ours and neither group brave enough to actually say who they liked to them directly. We shared dreams of what we wanted in life. Picket fences, big wedding dresses, kids? “Maybe when we’re really old – like 30!” she said, but that wasn’t seeming so far away now. Careers, husbands … love. Singing a song together with the radio in front of a mirror. Hushed secrets about who we yearned for. It’s so hard to say goodbye, Bethany!

  Sparrows twittered and flew out of the cedars across the lawn to land in a maple tree. From there they skipped across the street and stopped in the scroll-work of a building’s gingerbread molding.

  “I’m glad you’re here with me.” I
stroked his arm with my fingers, so solid, patient, and quiet.

  The darkness hurried in. “Take me home.” My bottom sore from the bench and my legs too stiff.

  He drove me home and at the door to my apartment asked, “Do you want me to stay?”

  “No. I’ll probably watch an old movie and fall asleep with tissues.”

  “Give me a call and I can be over here any time. If not I’ll see you tomorrow and I’ll pick you up at eleven.”

  “Good.” I turned and grabbed the sides of his face and pulled him into mine. I kissed him hard, “Thanks for being with me today.”

  “Goodnight, Anna.”

  “Goodnight.” I closed the door. I flipped on the television in passing through to the bedroom to find a flannel nightgown and change. I settled on some random late night movie. I fell asleep on the couch before the fourth or fifth scene.

  The next morning I stood waiting at eleven when Garin’s car pulled up. I got in. I wore another black dress going out of style but satisfactory for now. I slipped my feet into my shiny patent leather shoes with slightly higher heels than I’m comfortable wearing,

  Garin said, “I like the shoes but they will probably sink in the sod around the grave site.”

  I shrugged, “All I have that go with this dress.”

  He wore a charcoal suit. His necktie a swirling rose pattern pinned up with a silver cross bar under the points of his shirt collar. Bits of metal poked from his outfit like his stainless steel watch and pewter cuff links. He shod his feet in laced black dress shoes. He pushed the car away from the curb like a small boat from a dock. I’m lost in thinking about Bethany again, we float along the smooth glass-like river of the road. Watching the trees at the shoreline beyond the gravel drift toward and away from us. The images of Bethany and our times together more and more vivid as we came closer to the cemetery. Garin down-shifted like the boatman dropping an oar in the water. We rounded a corner and accelerated forward.