by L.J. Hayward
Chapter 5
I came to in the back seat of my car. Somehow I’d been accordioned in with little regard to my comfort. Mercy then. Roberts would have at least made sure I had a clear airway. All the abuse my body had taken in the fight was making itself known and I really wanted to just go back to sleep, but I slowly realised being awake wasn’t so bad, either. Waking up to the sounds of tyres hissing over a rain-slicked road, the gentle patter of said rain on the car and soft, hypnotic singing has a lot going for it. They should bottle it.
I laid still, trying to work out the song Mercy was singing. It was smooth and gentle, lyrical and touching. One of Mercy’s favourites. One of mine too. I hummed along.
Prying open my eyes and letting them take their sweet time in focusing showed me the passing sign for Ikea. I hadn’t been out for long. Cool.
Mercy stopped singing and turned in her seat to look at me. She smiled. “Hi.”
I grumbled something.
“Got your money,” Roberts said. “I’m thinking, for a cut of the take, that I should be a proper partner. I could handle the money side of things, and the client care, of course, and Merce could do all the fighting and you could do all the fainting like a girl bits.”
I grumbled something else. Mercy checked my pulse.
“Sorry, but you’re alive.”
“Want to hit a drive-thru on the way home?” Roberts asked.
No grumbling this time. Too busy keeping my stomach on the inside.
“Fine. I’ll eat at your place then. Just hope you’ve got something other than blood.”
Nausea settling down, I drifted off again. Not completely, though. Passing street lights streaked overhead and I numbly counted the number of cars that passed us on the freeway. There weren’t too many. Roberts believed speed limits were a personal challenge. Mercy reached back and put a steadying hand on my chest when Roberts spun us off the freeway and onto the Gateway Motorway. There was more traffic here and he actually slowed a fraction, but still, we beeped through the bridge toll in short order.
After that, it wasn’t long before we were cruising across the Hornibrook Bridge to the ’Cliffe. Redcliffe peninsula, that is. A nice, quiet little extreme outer northern suburb of Brisbane. There are folk who live in Redcliffe that think a trip into the city requires a passport. For me, charging between the ’Cliffe and the Gold Coast, some hundred clicks down the highway, is nothing. All part of the job.
By sheer luck or divine intervention, I’d managed to swing myself a pad in the swanky ’burb of Newport. ’Course, the sales brochures don’t tell you canal living not only gives you unlimited and easy access to the water, but that it comes part and parcel with seasonal swarms of mosquitoes and sandflies. And while my neighbours all had speed boats and the like in their back yards, I just had a dock with folding chairs and stained spot where the esky of beer always sat. Still, my house matched theirs for size and compensation tendencies, even if I only used the ground floor. I hadn’t been upstairs in a while. It’s quite possible there were dust bunnies the size of velociraptors up there.
Why had I bought it? Well, let’s just say that at the time, I’d had a lot of cash to spare and a few inadequacy issues. Same deal with the car, but that I don’t regret at all.
Roberts eased into the drive and opened the garage remotely. He pulled in beside my Moto Guzzi 1200 Sport (yeah, okay, big issues) and stopped the car. Mercy got me out of the back seat without too many whimpers (mine, not hers) and we headed inside.
I was, somewhat negligently I felt, plopped on my bed, fed several little pills and left alone. After lying there for a while, I struggled up and wrestled with my boots.
What happened?
I nearly jumped off the bed. Roberts’ sounded like he was sitting beside me, but I was alone in the room.
I killed the bad vampires, Mercy replied.
Ah. That freaking link. Open and channelling.
No, to Matt. I know he went berserk, but he’s never crashed like that before.
Mercy took her time to respond. There was a faint pop of a beer being opened, followed by thirsty guzzling. Mmm, beer. Could I get Merce to bring me one?
I… I tried to whammy him.
This time it was Roberts who took his time. From the sounds of it, he pulled down the last of the beer in one go.
Shit, he muttered.
I didn’t mean to.
You never do.
There was a rustle and the fridge opened and closed.
What are you doing? Roberts asked, a tremor in his voice.
Matt wants a beer.
Roberts muttered something under his breath. Well, he doesn’t need one. Come on, time to get you to bed.
Things dwindled into white noise after that. I let it put me to sleep. When I woke up, I had an absolute mother of a headache, a back that felt about a hundred years old and a distinct odour of stale sweat about me. The time between falling out of bed and leaning against the cold tiles of the shower of the en suite with scalding water beating about my shoulders is best left in the depths of denial. Very little of it was worthy of a vampire killer.
When I was more alive than dead, I wandered from my bedroom and found Roberts on the couch. The TV was on and some morning news announcer mentioned a gas leak had caused the evacuation of Surf Wars on the Gold Coast the night before. All of the kids playing laser tag—where the leak had been centred—had recovered but a couple remained in hospital due to a few minor injuries. Thankfully, there was no mention of fang-wielding, melting bullies, or the crazy-eyed man chasing them down. Either the kids had been convinced it was a hallucination, or the media didn’t believe them. I’d be more inclined to go with the latter.
“Fucking luck,” Roberts muttered as I dropped into a recliner. “By all rights your little rampage should have made headlines, but no. Somehow no one ever remembers seeing the vampires or trolls or whatever freak you manage to bag in full view.”
“It’s simple. No one ever wants to acknowledge the weird. If you do, chances are no one will believe you anyway.”
“Nah, that’s not it. Must be dumb luck. Yeah, just dumb fucking luck.”
“Nice towel,” was my entire response.
Roberts had obviously made use of the upstairs bathroom. I kept towels there in case I ever had guests. In the ongoing battle to see me ‘settle down’, my mum had given them to me with the hopes they would be used by a female guest with more class than to use any towel I might have actually bought for myself. They were yellow with pink flowers embroidered on them. And they weren’t made to go around a man’s waist with room to spare.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t touching those rags you have in your en suite. You do have a laundry in this white elephant, don’t you?”
I shrugged.
The tickertape thing at the bottom of the screen announced it was nearly nine a.m. If I’d had any energy I would have panicked. As it was, all I could manage was a half-hearted grunt.
Roberts, it’s sad to say, knew me pretty well. “What’s up?” he asked.
“I’m going to miss a meeting with my therapist.”
“Aren’t you done with the head shrinking yet?”
“The first lot, yeah. This is the second. Court ordered. For some reason, I just keep losing my temper in public places. It usually ends in all sorts of trouble, like destruction of public property, threatening behaviour, indecent exposure. Cops and judges like to attribute that sort of thing to a lack of control and think it can be fixed with learned talk.”
Roberts laughed so hard he nearly lost his towel. “Indecent exposure. I didn’t hear that story. I hope it’s a good one.”
“Female ghoul. Thought I was coming on to her.”
Wiping a tear from the corner of his eye, Roberts settled himself down. “Where was Merce while you were romancing the ghoul?”
I glared at him. “In about the same position you are now. Picking herself up from an amusement induced fit.”
Roberts got up, modestly cl
utching the towel to his groin. He patted me on the shoulder as he went past. “And you say she’s not human. I’m going to find something in your closet I would be seen dead in, then you’re driving me home.” His chortling echoed around the room after he left.
There was nothing much else of interest on the TV. I turned it off before the inhumanly wide and bright smiles of the breakfast crew could blind me. Stomach rumbling, I went to the kitchen and began the great quest for nutrition. Even Indiana Jones would have found it tough going. In my dozy state, I opened the cupboard that hid the blood fridge instead of the one that upon occasion had cereal.
Crap. Roberts put Mercy to bed, but I bet he didn’t think to feed her first. I grabbed out a couple of bags, one O positive and one A positive. Both were just over their expiry date, but that didn’t bother Mercy and it was the easiest way to keep her supplied with food. The Red Cross didn’t take back stock from the laboratories that performed blood banking and I had a couple of contacts still in the game who smuggled me out the stock about to expire.
Bags of blood in hand, I went to see Mercy.
Her room was in the middle of the house. On the original plans, the room was supposed to be a home cinema. I’d opted out of that and turned it into a haven from sunlight for the vampire.
I’d reinforced the walls with steel bars as thick as my wrist and partitioned off the front of the room with more bars. Yeah, I kept her in a cage, but it was the best-outfitted cage you’ve ever seen. A double bed, a La-Z-Boy, a little plasma screen and DVD player, bookshelf with all sorts of books (mostly unread), a shower and a closet for the scraps of material she and various names-on-labels generously called clothes. She lived better than me. I didn’t have a plasma.
Mercy wasn’t snuggled up in bed like all good and not-so-good vampires should have been. She was pacing back and forth, dragging in heaps of air like a pearl diver getting ready for a long descent. Her shoulders rolled and her hands opened and clenched spasmodically. In the dim light cast from the open door behind me, her eyes flashed silver. Her pink tongue flicked over her fangs.
Behold the hungry vampire. A tiger caged and repressed. My nasty kitten.
It was after dawn and she was awake and very alert. Not a good sign. She should have been flaked out, unable to be roused with anything smaller than an A-bomb. But she was awake and prowling. My guts clenched and I felt like puking.
She spun toward me, hurling herself at the bars between us. Practice kept me from flinching. I just waited out her attack, hating the way she snarled at me, the way she thrust her arms through the bars, fingers curled into claws driving for my throat. Her psychic power hit me full on. Unlike last night, I didn’t have an open connection to her to force it back on herself. But while I felt it, and winced as it battered at my already sore head, it didn’t do much more than make my ears ring.
The attack was a long one, and I suffered through watching every moment of it. She threw herself at the bars, tore at them till her hands bled, till she ripped nails right out of her fingers. Bones broke on the unyielding barrier, her throat tore to ribbons with her vicious growls and snarls. She pulled hunks of hair from her head, knocked over the bookcase and tossed the bed against the wall. And I just sank down the wall to the floor, watching it all, hating myself and wondering for the millionth time if I should just put her down.
It was worse than watching her fight. Fighting was what she was built for. It was the point of the altering mechanism that made one a vampire. A weak human rebuilt into this—a manic monster consumed by its hunger, insane with the need to destroy. They were a very real threat to the stability of the world. A creature no one believed in, that preyed solely on humans, that had the evolutionary benefits equivalent to that of a great white shark, damn near perfect and completely alien in terms of wants and needs.
Vampires were animals. Worse than that. They were the unquantified mystery science knew nothing about. The silent, unseen predator lurking in the shadows. There were no institutions begging for funding so they could find a cure for vampirism. There were no vaccination programs. There were no anti-vampire forces ready to go into the night to do battle. No one knew about them, no one understood them. No one could defeat them.
I did my darnedest, with Mercy and Roberts, but it wasn’t enough. Because I’m such a believer in statistics, I did think there were others out there fighting as well, but I hadn’t seen or met any of them. And I doubted any of those hypothetical folk did it with something like Mercy at their side.
She rammed the bars one last time and crumpled to the floor, seemingly beaten, exhausted. Little mewling noises came from her, between pants for air. She was faking. Even broken bones wouldn’t stop her from fighting when she got this hungry.
I grabbed the broom handle I kept for just these times and used it to push the bag of A positive blood into the cage beside her, nudged her hand with it. She moved lightning fast, snatched up the bag and, recognising it for what it was, shoved it to her mouth. Her razor-sharp fangs punctured the plastic and she fed. Her natural blood group was O pos. The A group would react adversely with her natural blood type, they would tear each other apart and she would weaken. It was sort of an induced coma. She’d survive the reaction, and would heal, eventually, but she’d sleep through it.
I took the other bag—the one that would have restored her to full strength—and left.
Chapter 6
Erin stopped outside Kirby’s. From her research, Kirby’s had started life as a pub and graduated to nightclub status when the owner installed a high tech music system and began hiring halfway decent DJs. And now it was a boarded-up store front with Lord knew how many years worth of grime coating the windows. She leaned against the old glass-fronted sign advertising some band with four girls in outfits approximating private school uniforms.
If it hadn’t been for Ivan’s over-socialised life, she would never have learned the club from the video footage was Kirby’s. It was still listed in the phone book so she’d tried calling, with no answer. And here she was. Her first lead and a dead end. Not a particularly startling occurrence, but it hit her hard.
She and Ivan had stayed back late at the office the night before, nutting out a plan of attack on this case. It had netted them the identification of Kirby’s, a message left with one of Erin’s contacts in the local police and no hits on Google. The incident in the club hadn’t warranted news coverage, apparently. Finally getting home hadn’t been a blessing. William was having a bad night and the neighbours were having a loud party. Between nursing William through the pain and trying to call the neighbours to ask them politely to turn the music down, she hadn’t slept much.
And now here she was, stalled before she’d even started.
Maybe Ivan had discovered the owner by now. She was about to call him when the phone rang.
“Sol Investigations, Erin McRea speaking.”
“Hey, Sergeant, long time no talk. How’s tricks?”
“Gavin, it’s been a while hasn’t it.” She couldn’t stop the happy smile his voice induced. “Did you pass your sergeant’s exam yet?”
Gavin laughed. “Still trying. Don’t have wonder woman around to coach me anymore. How’s the private dick stuff going anyway?”
“Some days I wonder what my reason was for taking this job. Most days, I just look at the pay cheque and I’m happy.”
“Really? It’s that good? Need an assistant?”
“Sorry, got one. If he leaves to pursue his acting career I’ll give you a call.”
“You better. I got your message. You need something?”
Erin walked back to her car. It was only ten o’clock and there were very few people on the streets. In a couple of hours, the footpaths would be packed with people going on lunch. “I’m working a missing persons case. All I’ve got is some footage from a security tape from a club called Kirby’s.”
“That place shut years ago.”
“So I’ve discovered. Listen, the footage is from about six yea
rs ago, and shows an incident between a man and a young woman. He’s got a pretty bad limp and walks with a cane. Know anything about it?”
There was a rustle as Gavin moved around. “Not off the top of my head. Let me do a search and get back to you. This number good?”
“Yeah, this number’s great. Let me give you my fax as well.” She rattled off the number. “Thanks, Gav. You’re really saving me a lot of frustration with this.”
“If I find anything, sure. So, Kate’s been at me to call you. How’s Bill doing?”
Taking a couple of deep breaths to steel her resolve, Erin said, “He’s doing really well. I’ll tell him you and Kate asked after him.”
“Hey, you guys should come over for dinner one night. Kate’s been practicing this Vietnamese cooking and I don’t think I should be the only person to suffer.”
Reaching her car, Erin leaned against it. “Ah, I don’t think that would be a good idea. William’s still a bit touchy with what he eats. Chemo and all.”
“No problem. We don’t have to do the Asian. I do a mean charcoal grill. Nothing blander than my cooking.”
She began to make negative noises again.
“Come on, Erin. It’s been so long since Kate’s seen you. Since we’ve had a real chance to talk. You can’t tell me you’re getting out much, what with this job and Bill being the way he is.”
“No, Gavin.” Her fingers tightened around the phone so hard the case creaked. “It’s not a good time, okay. William’s fine, I’m fine, just leave it at that.”
There was a pause long enough that Erin considered hanging up, but eventually she heard Gavin sigh.
“Hey, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to push. We’re just worried about you, that’s all.”
Some of the tension left Erin’s shoulders. “I’m sorry too. Truthfully, William had a bad night and I didn’t get much sleep.”
“I understand. Is there anything me or Kate can do?”
“No. Not really. Thanks for the offer, though. If I need anything in future, I’ll ask. So, you’ll see what you can find about that night at Kirby’s?”
“Of course. I’ll try to get back to you this arvie, okay?”
“That’s great. Thank you.”
They exchanged slightly awkward goodbyes and hung up. Erin got into her car and was about pull out when she got a text message. It was from Ivan, giving her the address of the owner of Kirby’s. It was in New Farm, not far from Fortitude Valley, were she currently was. Erin plugged the address into her nav system and set out.
Not long later, Erin pulled up outside an old Queenslander behind a tall, wooden fence. She got out, straightened her skirt and went to the gate. Loud barking greeted her, soon followed by an even louder, “Shut the hell up, Godzilla.”
A screen door banged and the dog growled some more.
“If you’re selling something, go away. If you’re pushing God, piss off!”
Erin cocked an eyebrow. “Um, I’m not selling or pushing anything. I’m looking for Carl Leuwenoski.”
“What for?”
Peering through the slats of the fence revealed an untamed garden, a pair of hairy legs halfway down a set of stairs and a slobbering German Shepherd poised just opposite her. The dog’s lips peeled back from yellow teeth and it rumbled threateningly.
“I’m with a private investigation company. I need to talk to you about an incident in your club. Can we talk?”
Grumbling all the way, Carl trundled down the stairs. “Back off, ya mongrel.” He opened the gate enough to put his gut through and glare at her. “What incident?”
“It was about six years ago. A man, with a limp and cane, attacked a young woman, seemingly without provocation. Do you remember it?”
Carl scratched his three day growth and frowned in thought. He was somewhere between fifty and eighty, with a face red from a lack of blood-pressure medication. Steel-wool hair covered his head and sprouted from his nose and ears. There was a faint scent of wood smoke about him. By his knee, Godzilla stuck his nose out of the gate and sniffed in Erin’s direction. After a moment, the dog’s mouth opened and his tongue lolled out in a happy grin.
“Yeah, I remember. Not an easy thing to forget.”
“Can you describe what happened?”
“Not much more to it than what you said. Fella gets up and starts pummelling the girl. Really messed her up before the bouncers stopped him. I hear the girl pressed charges and he was put away for a while. Not long though. There were circumstances, ’parently.”
“Circumstances? What could warrant that sort of assault?”
Massive shoulders rolling in a shrug, Carl nudged Godzilla back behind the fence. “Dunno. I didn’t really follow it. The incident didn’t do much good for the popularity of the pub. Business went real bad and I had to do some fix up work pretty fast.” He scratched his gut. “Didn’t work. Went under about eighteen months later. Had to shut up shop. Can’t even get anyone to buy the place off me.” Eyeing her up and down, he asked, “Wanna buy a pub?”
“Thank you, but no. You don’t remember the man’s name? Or the girl’s?”
“Nah. The fella was a regular for a bit before though. Had issues, I guess. Used to come in every afternoon round five and stayed until it got too crowded.”
Erin frowned. “He was a regular and you didn’t know his name?”
“Paid in cash, kept to himself. Drank scotch straight up, didn’t chat.”
“I thought bartenders were the poor man’s therapists. If he had issues, wouldn’t he have talked about them?”
“I didn’t run Cheers, darl. If someone wanted to talk, fine. If they didn’t, even better. I only say he had issues cause few people could do that sort of drinking day after day if they weren’t trying to fill some sort of hole.”
He made sense. “Remember anything that might help me ID him?”
“Not really. Good lookin’ fella, I suppose. Nothing special about him, ’cept that limp. And his temper.”
Erin thanked him and said goodbye to Carl and Godzilla, who insisted on shoving his nose in her skirt before she got out of range.
Ivan was on the phone when she walked into the office and he waved her toward the fax. There were several pages on the machine which she snatched up and took into her office, leaving the door open so Ivan knew to come in when he was done with the call.
The top page was a hand-written note from Gavin. He apologised again for upsetting her, apologised for the lack of information he’d found and asked her and William around for dinner again. She set it aside and settled down to read.
Gavin had found the arresting officer’s report. It listed the loner as Matthew Hawkins, aged twenty-six at the time of the incident. He was arrested for assault and the victim, Jessica Harrington, indicated she would press charges. The next page was a court summary. Hawkins was found guilty of provoked assault and sentenced to a stint in a low security facility for two years with parole in ten months.
“Good news?” Ivan asked, coming in. He sat opposite her. Today his dark hair was gelled up into frost-tipped spikes, his jeans were respectable and his T-shirt showed a piñata and the slogan ‘I’d hit that’. Pretty tame by his usual standards.
“Of a sort.” She handed him the report. “Run down numbers for both of them, if you can. Leuwanoski said that there was provocation and the court summary mentions it as well. I want to know what could inspire that sort of rage. I don’t feel like going face to face with this guy without knowing what sparks his temper. I’d like to talk to Harrington first, if we can’t track down the court records.”
“Right.”
“Have you had lunch?”
Ivan shook his head. “Brad wouldn’t make me a sandwich this morning.”
“Are you that useless you can’t make your own lunch?”
“Brad would think so.” Ivan sighed. “Take out from the Chinese place?”
“Yeah. And get extra prawn chips this time. I do like them as well.”
Ivan went o
ff to get lunch and Erin tried to call her friend in the court system. She found out he was on holiday and resigned herself to an afternoon digging through the public records herself. By the time Ivan returned she’d exhausted her in-office options, so she took the bag of prawn chips and headed over the court house.
An hour later, with a growing headache from arguing, she was back in the elevator heading up to the office. When she stepped through the door, she was greeted with a stiff-faced Ivan and Mrs Veilchen. Ivan visibly relaxed at the sight of Erin.
“Here she is, Mrs Veilchen.” Wild eyed, Ivan stood and left quickly. “Toilet break,” he muttered on his way past.
“Mrs Veilchen, I didn’t know you were dropping by.” Erin nodded to her office and followed the woman in.
“I came to see if you had found my man.”
Erin glared at her back. “I’ve only been on the job one day. These things generally take a bit longer than that.”
“Mr Sol assured me you were one of the best.”
“Whatever Mr Sol thinks, it’s just not possible to move as quick as you seem to believe. Especially when I had so little to start with.”
Mrs Veilchen went to the window and looked out at the city. She was in another rich outfit, with another pair of dark glasses on. Her hair was pulled back today, accentuating the hollow cheeks and thin neck. “Have you found anything out at all?”
Erin sat down at her desk. She studied Heather Veilchen. There was something… wrong about her. It wasn’t the cool attitude, the stiff formality or the reluctance to take off her glasses. Or maybe it was. Who didn’t at least take off their sunglasses to greet someone, even if they put them straight back on? But it was more than that.
She just didn’t know what.
Unsettled, Erin wondered what this woman would do when she learned Matthew Hawkins’ name. There was a strong possibility she would drop the professional investigation and go it alone again. There was just that sense of cold-bloodedness about her.
If there was provocation for the assault Erin wanted to find out what it was before letting this woman loose.
“I don’t have much yet. I just spoke with the owner of the club. He didn’t know any names. I did learn, though, that the assault wasn’t unprovoked.” She watched Mrs Veilchen closely for a reaction.
Mrs Veilchen turned from the window and presumably looked at her. “And that makes a difference?”
A chill ran down Erin’s spine. “It might.”
“Will it help you find him any quicker?”
“It’s really too early in the investigation to say whether or not anything is important. I can only trace down any lead I get and see where it takes me. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to get back to your case. I will call you when I have something to report.”
Mrs Veilchen regarded her for a moment longer, then nodded once. She left without further word. Ivan scurried back in a couple of minutes later.
“That was the longest toilet break ever.”
“That woman freaks me out. She’s the whole reason I’m gay and I only met her yesterday.”
Erin smiled.
“Did you find anything out at the court house?”
Smile vanishing as if it had never been, Erin shook her head. “Apparently Jessica Harrington was underage at the time of the incident. The records have been sealed.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, so we need to start looking for those phone numbers.”
Ivan got up to leave.
“Oh, and Ivan.”
“Yeah?”
“If you see Mrs Veilchen on the security camera coming up here, turn the sign over to closed and hide.”
He grinned. “We don’t have a sign.”
“Get one.”