by C. J. Pinard
“That was… weird,” Thomas said.
Jonathan smiled. “Hell, if he’s talking, I’m listening. Call Jason from the BSI. He’ll need to be there, too.”
∞∞∞
“Oh, God you feel good,” Brandon said, running his tongue up the side of Angel’s neck as she lay below him.
“So do you,” she breathed. She almost called him “baby” but decided she was never, ever calling another man that.
Ever.
She clawed at his back and then sank her fangs into his neck as he moved on top of her. She sucked for almost a full minute, pulling them out and arching her head back in pleasure as his blood sang through her veins, energizing her.
Brandon then bit gently into her neck as he rubbed his hand down the side of her body, her stomach sucking in as chills covered her body at his touch.
Damn, the boy could give some good loving. Maybe she’d have to keep him a while longer.
She moaned as he licked the blood from her lips and kissed her tenderly. He put his hands in her hair, then reached down and locked his hands with hers. He continued to move in her, and she continued to enjoy it.
Then in a lightning fast move, she flipped him over on his back as she got on top, arching her back and running her hands along his firm chest. He relished in this, touching every exposed part she offered him.
“You’re gorgeous, Angel,” he whispered, his hands still exploring.
She smiled down at him. “Thank you.”
He threw his head back against the pillow and groaned as his final wave of pleasure swept over his body at the same time hers hit.
“Oh, my God you’re incredible,” she said, collapsing on top of him. She then slid off, back onto her own pillow.
He propped himself up on his elbow and looked at her. “You’re more incredible. You’re gorgeous and perfect.”
“Thank you,” she said again.
She rolled off the bed and slipped on a sheer black robe with fluffy red piping around its edges.
“Where you going?” he asked, producing a fake pout.
She grinned. “Bathroom. I’ve gotta get cleaned up. We’ve got a club to run – or have you forgotten already?”
He waved her off. “Eh, that club is so successful, it’ll run itself. Come back to bed with me. I’ll be ready to go again in a few minutes.”
She laughed. “I don’t think so.” She blew him a kiss and closed the bathroom door.
Once inside the bathroom, she started the shower and then looked at herself in the mirror. Her platinum hair was a mess. “Sex hair,” she grumbled to her reflection. Her full lips had a spot of blood on them, and her blue eyes were a bit bloodshot, but she knew that wouldn’t last. She would always go back to the way she looked at 19. Never once did a wrinkle or blemish ever appear on her body. Bruises, cuts, and wounds never lasted long. No matter what happened to her, she always healed and she always looked the same.
She took the robe off and hung it on a hook behind the door. She turned around and looked at her back in the mirror. She remembered getting shot with the UV gun almost a year before as she’d escaped from the Immortals while trying to find Darius. There wasn’t even a hint of a scar on her back from the gunshot wound.
One would think these things would be a dream come true to any beautiful woman, but Angel was tired of looking nineteen. She wished for her life back. She wanted to find true love, get married, have children, get scars and wrinkles and grow old with someone. She didn’t want to always be this.
As the mirror became too fogged up to see in any longer, she hopped into the shower, determined to find a way to reverse this curse of vampirism.
Brandon was still lying in bed, his arms behind his head. There was a knock at the door. He pulled the sheet up to cover his lower half before calling out, “Come in.”
Bryan stood in the doorway, designer jeans, a Gucci shirt, and a new haircut. “Are you ready to go or what, man? We gotta be at the club in thirty minutes.”
“Shower’s occupied, can’t you hear it?” Brandon said lazily.
“Why don’t you go conserve water and share it?” Bryan said with a smirk.
Brandon also grinned. “That, my man, is a great idea. I’ll see you downstairs in fifteen.”
Bryan closed the door and Brandon got out of bed, opened the bathroom door, and slipped into the shower next to Angel.
She gasped in surprise, then smiled.
He grabbed the loofa sponge and said, “Here, let me help you with that.”
Chapter 4
∞∞∞
Los Angeles – 1918
Kathryn’s stay at the Alexandria Hotel turned out to be a blessing in disguise; within a week of staying there, she secured a job working in the hotel’s housekeeping department. Not her first choice in jobs, but there was no way she was going back to her old profession.
It had been a month since she arrived in Los Angeles, and while her days were long, she was grateful for an honest paycheck. David, however, practically had a stroke over her choice of job. He wasn’t all that happy with her new living conditions, either.
The apartment she chose was on a side of town that wasn’t anywhere near as glamorous as the area the hotel was in. David offered to help her get back on her feet and pay for a nicer apartment, but she’d refused.
“I’m so glad you finally have a night off,” David said, kissing Kathryn’s hand as he opened the passenger side door to his Model-T. Then he went around to the driver’s side and they set off towards downtown.
“Yes, well they’ve had me on the nightshift for a couple of weeks, but I’m glad for the break,” she said, looking at him as he drove.
He smiled at her briefly and went back to watching the road. “I’m just happy to get you alone. I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” she replied sincerely. She looked back to the road and then up at the sky. The sun was just beginning to go down and the distant sunset cast an orange and pink smear across the horizon. The wind felt nice against her face. She was happy she had her hat on to preserve her hairdo. “So where are we off to today?”
“You’ll see,” he said, smiling coyly.
After almost an hour of driving, David turned right on Wilshire Boulevard and Kathryn’s eyes lit up. “Wow, beautiful!” she breathed.
As she stared down the long road, it was twinkling with lights from all the large buildings.
David looked over at her and smiled. “Like what you see?”
“Oh yes, I’ve never seen anything so pretty,” she replied, wide-eyed.
He drove all the way down Wilshire and then took a long highway that eventually led them to a cliffy area, overlooking a beach. He pulled a blanket out of the back of the car, along with a picnic basket, and opened her door for her.
“Oh, David, I’m not dressed for the beach, or for a picnic!” she said.
He laughed and pulled her from the Model-T. “Oh come on, miss prissy, have a night beach picnic with me. I will carry your shoes. Or heck, I will carry you if you need me to.”
Well she had nothing to say to that. His charms had won out, yet again. With her shoes in one hand and David’s hand in the other, they made their way down a slightly rocky incline until the surface evened out into soft, tan sand. Stepping over lengths of slimy black seaweed, they settled near a small alcove on the beach. The sound of the waves crashing onto the shore was loud, and the smell and taste of salt in the air was profound, yet pleasing.
David set the picnic basket down and pulled the blanket from around his shoulders, laying it on the sand. He indicated for Kathryn to sit, and as she did, he sat down himself. Pulling a box from the basket, he set it on the blanket and removed the lid. The smell of the warm chicken wings wafted up into her nose and made her stomach grumble.
She eyed the food and said, “I hope you brought napkins, those look messy.”
He chuckled. “Of course. I also have some coleslaw and tea, if you’d like it.”
“I’d love it.”
They sat in silence, eating their food as they looked at each other. When they were done, David repacked the basket and grabbed Kathryn’s hand. “You are so beautiful.”
She smiled. “Thank you. Why are you so good to me?”
“It’s easy,” he replied. “You make me want to treat you like a queen. You make me want to be a better man.”
“Why? Were you bad before you met me?” she asked, teasing.
“No, but –”
He was cut off by the sounds of laughter and glass breaking. They looked up to see three men on the beach, lighting a small bonfire and drinking bottles of something, while laughing.
“I hadn’t noticed them before,” Kathryn whispered, slightly alarmed.
David looked at them curiously, then back at her. “Me either. Just ignore them, they’re probably just some young hoodlums doing some illegal drinking.”
But they were hard to ignore, laughing and hooting and hollering at each other’s jokes. After about fifteen minutes, David said, “I think we should head back. Shall we?”
“Sure, I’d like to get back into the car. It’s getting chilly out here.”
They packed up the blanket and basket and started walking.
“Ow!” Kathryn hollered. She looked down to see she had sliced her foot open; her stockings were torn and a bloody rock lay a few inches away.
David followed her line of sight and saw a small blood trail leaking from her foot into the sand. “Oh my, we need to get that bandaged up.” He glanced back at the boys on the beach and they were all gawping at them, frozen. Their expressions were serious and they stood eerily still.
David looked back at her and said quickly, “I’m going to carry you to the car.”
Kathryn began to protest being carried, then looked down at her foot again. When she looked up, she saw one of the men standing right in front of them. She was alarmed, since he had been standing clear across the beach just a moment earlier. It was dark, but she could see something was odd about his eyes. David pushed Kathryn back behind him, and then put his hands to the man’s chest and began easing him back.
“Take it easy, not here,” he said to the man through gritted teeth.
Kathryn was standing in the sand, frozen, fear a mask across her pretty face. The man’s eyes didn’t seem to have any whites at all, but were solid black. The man then hissed and Kathryn gasped.
“Get out of my way,” the man growled at David.
The strange man advanced on Kathryn quickly and she screamed. David grabbed him by the back of his jacket and threw the man far. Kathryn couldn’t believe David could lift a person like that; he seemed to be as insubstantial as a ragdoll. The strange man – creature? – got up and began to advance on them again. David pushed him to the ground and pulled a small .22 caliber pistol from his waistband, shooting him point-blank in the stomach. Kathryn let out another blood-curdling scream, tears streaming down her face.
The man lay very still, blood dripping out of his mouth, his eyes closed. Kathryn crawled over to them and could see fangs in the man’s open mouth. David reached down and twisted the man’s neck and Kathryn heard a loud, sickening crack. She screamed again.
David looked up to see the bonfire still burning, but the other two were long gone. When he turned back to Kathryn, the look on his face frightened her. Gone were his sweet features, replaced by a murderous, angry countenance.
She continued to sob silently, so he picked her up and ran as fast as he could to his car, leaving her shoes, the blanket, and the picnic basket on the beach. He drove as fast as the car would take him.
∞∞∞
Portland, Oregon – Present Day
She had to fight the urge to cover her mouth and nose with the sleeve of her pink hoodie. Shady Grove Retirement Center reeked as badly as anything she had ever smelled, and she’s smelled plenty of disgusting things in her long life. Her enhanced sense of smell didn’t help matters, and she couldn’t help but think the stench resembled something close to death.
Rain thrummed the roof, making a loud clatter as she looked around the dimly-lit nursing home.
“May I help you?” asked a plump older woman in faded pink scrubs who sat behind a large desk. She looked annoyed and clearly not amused.
Angel removed the head scarf and oversized sunglasses and smiled at the woman. “Yes, I need to visit someone. I called earlier and they said visiting hours were until six.”
“Yes, they are. Who do you need to see?”
“Uh, Darius…”
The woman raised an eyebrow at her as Angel’s sentence hung in mid-air. Seeing that Angel was not going to give a last name, the woman looked at her computer screen and said, “I’m going to assume you don’t know his last name, or can’t pronounce it, but you’re darn lucky we only have one patient here with that first name. You got a picture ID?”
“Sorry about that. But yes, here you go.” Angel handed her an Oregon driver’s license.
The woman studied it, then looked at Angel. “Here you go, Ms. Lewis. Right this way.”
She followed the woman down a long hallway. As she peered into various rooms, she could see humans in the last stages of their life. She even thought she caught the scent of death in one of the rooms, but of course said nothing. Angel was just glad today was extremely rainy, as she had to go out before sunset so she wouldn’t miss visiting hours. It still made her nervous to leave the house before the sun went down, but the cloudy, rainy climate of Portland was the whole reason Pascal had chosen this area to live in in the first place.
Pascal, she sighed, then shuddered, moving her thoughts to other things.
She suddenly found herself nervous, wondering how Darius was going to react to her visit. She hadn’t seen him in over a year since Pascal practically forced him to drink the Enchantment he had stolen from the sylph, which had ended Darius’s vampirism. The memory of Darius suddenly going from a strong, young black man to an old, wrinkled one was burned in her memory and she let out another shudder. That day still gave her nightmares, and she fought to keep from choking up.
The woman led her to a large room with various televisions set on mute, closed-captioning scrawling across the screens. Several old men and women sat in comfortable-looking recliner chairs with headphones, either watching the televisions or sleeping. Other patients were sitting at the tables, playing checkers and other board games. The nurse approached a man who was sitting in a chair, reading a book. She tapped him on the shoulder and he looked up at her, annoyed.
“What do you want, Anne?” He glared at her over the rim of his reading glasses.
She huffed at him. “Mr. Jackson, do you mind? You have a visitor.”
But Darius’s eyes were already on Angel. He yanked off his glasses and stared.
“Hi, Darius,” she said, her arms crossed at the wrists in front of her.
He said nothing, just pointed to an empty chair next to him.
Anne toddled off, speaking to a few other patients as she left the leisure area.
Angel gulped down a sob that threatened to erupt. He looked so… old. Wrinkles mapped his forehead and eyes, and those once-hazel eyes looked clouded with cataracts and tired. His beautiful mocha skin was now ashen. He slouched over slightly as he sat, and his once stylish hair had been cut very short, as it was much thinner and marbled with gray. He was wearing a plain black T-shirt and jeans that looked baggy.
“Go ahead and stare,” he said. “I do. I look in the mirror every damn day and can’t believe I look like this.”
“I’m sorry to stare, really. I guess I was hoping I imagined what happened last year,” she said quietly.
He turned his head and looked at her curiously. He set his book down on his lap and folded one long leg over the other, as she had seen him do so many times before. Gone was the cocky manner in which he would do it, though. He now just looked distinguished and grandfatherly.
She had an entire speech prepared and couldn’t rememb
er one word of it. She just looked at him and continued to stare.
“So what the hell do you want, Angel? I would tell you to piss off but it’s been so long since I had a visitor, that I am reluctant to,” he said with a smirk.
“Who visited you last?”
“That would be nobody. I’ve not laid eyes on one person I know for almost a year.”
She sighed and looked down. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey, no hard feelings, lady. I understand –”
“No,” she interrupted. “I’m sorry for everything. I just came here to let you know that Pascal is dead.”
His mouth dropped open. “Oh, my God. What happened?”
“Well, Pascal got his wish. He dragged us all back to that godforsaken Oregon Vortex and turned a bunch of vamps on the property. No potions, no ‘Enchantment’ – just turning them inside the Vortex property worked. Sun-walkers, all of them.”
Darius uncrossed his legs and sat up straighter and leaned forward. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious. And it ended up being his demise. Those sun-proof vamps turned on him, killed him.” Leaving out the one small detail that she actually had plunged the knife in his heart herself.
Details, details.
Darius chuckled. “Serves him right, the undead bastard.”
“I wanted to let you know that Pascal had a stash of hidden money and I wanted to give you some. I’ve always felt bad about what happened to you, and I don’t think you should have to live here. It smells like death here.”
“Yes, it does. Well, from what I can smell, anyway. Nothing works like it used to.”
She smiled at him. “Did you ever figure out how old you are now?”
He nodded. “It wasn’t hard, I always knew how old I was. Seventy-five now. I was born in 1938. The worst part is that my mind is still totally intact. I don’t feel like I’m on the slow train to crazy town like the rest of these people in here.” He looked around.
“I’ve got enough cash to pay for a nice apartment for you for a few years. I really don’t think you’d want to live at the house right now. It’s like a frat house, and Mike and I are the only sane ones left.”