J.R. Rains Vampire for Hire World_Dead Ahead

by Eve Paludan

  “Why are they more on edge than usual?” she asked aloud, more to herself than to either of the kids.

  “Mom, the cops think there are a couple of underage girls in the house. They might be held there against their will.”

  “Oh, no. I hope the girls can get out safely. Thanks for letting me know.”

  From their vantage point, with Sam’s minivan parked on a hill one street higher than the house where Narcotics Detective Amber Tarkington was about to make a big drug bust, Sam kept her eyes on her and her partner, Kevin Holden. A couple of uniforms wearing body armor marked Fullerton PD in glow-in-the-dark letters pulled the detectives back for a convo. Sam had a perfect view of the detectives and cops gathering under a burned-out streetlight, so this was where her vampire night vision came in handy.

  Suddenly, she felt a prickle in her mind, like Tammy was poking around in it. She turned sharply to her daughter. “What are you doing to me?”

  Tammy bit her lip for a moment.

  “At a time like this, you’re poking around in my head?”

  “Yes,” Tammy said, looking ashamed.

  “What are you doing? Stop that. I need to focus on what’s going on.”

  “I know.”

  “What could be more important than what I’m doing right now?”

  Tammy’s voice wavered. “I was trying to find out if I was in trouble. I know my counselor called you.”

  “Oh, we’re going to talk about this now? Fine!” Sam said. “You skipped school, Tammy! The last time, you promised you would never do it again. And here we are again, you going truant from school. We need to talk about it. A lot. First, where did you go that day?”

  “Mom, sheesh, I didn’t mean to pull you away from your investigation. I can see you’re working right now!”

  “So, you thought I wouldn’t notice you’re peeking into my head?”

  “I thought I could sneak around in there and just see if you were mad at me.”

  “Oh, I am. I was going to do this later, but go ahead and answer the question, Tammy, about what happened when you skipped school. Where. Did. You. Go.”

  Sam kept her eyes on Amber Tarkington as she and Detective Undeath took their positions on the street below, outside the drug bust house. Not long after, a cruiser pulled up at a discreet distance down the block, without lights or sirens. Two more uniformed officers quietly made their way to the drug house.

  “You’re not going to believe me, Mom. You’ll say I’m lying.”

  “Then don’t lie.”

  “Fine, this is the truth. A kid from my gym class is missing, and I wanted to help find her.”

  “You couldn’t wait until after school?”

  “Mom, you know when a kid is missing that every minute counts. And by the way, do we have to have this conversation during the stakeout?”

  “Granted, it’s not the ideal situation for a parent-child discussion. But you’re a captive audience so deal with it. And I will have your undivided attention without having you spy on my thoughts.” Sam turned her eyes away from the cops setting up the bust and gave her daughter a steely look.

  Tammy made a frustrated squealing sound and madly texted a friend.

  “And turn off your phone while you’re with me,” Sam ordered, “or lose it out the window.”

  Tammy sighed and complied, turning it off and putting it in her purse. “I’m gathering information on the missing girl from her BFF, Renee. Anyway, stake-outs are so scary. Death is all around us, waiting.”

  With his mouth full of hamburger and fries, Anthony piped up from the back seat, “I like going on stake-outs. I wanna see what you do all night on investigations.”

  Tammy turned around to stick out her tongue at him. “You just want to eat fast food and fart a lot, you bottomless pit of hunger and gas.”

  “That’s not totally true. I’m back here researching for a paper I need to write. I’m reading an article on my phone about how Sir Isaac Newton was also studying alchemy and his family hid his alchemy papers for years and years. He even wrote about the philosopher’s stone.”

  “The junior alchemist is finally studying up on his major? Who knew he could even read?”

  “Be quiet, Tammy,” Sam said. “What did Anthony ever do to you?”

  “He’s a freak and he exists,” she replied. “Like in that Stephen King horror novel, Firestarter.”

  “You’re just jealous because I can make myself into a giant human torch and save people in dramatic rescues,” Anthony said. “And all you can do is read my dirty mind, you busybody. Now, who’s the perv, voyeur?”

  “Did you just learn a new word and wanted to use it, Pyro Boy?” Tammy spewed.

  “Enough, you two!” Sam snapped. Softer, she said, “Did you really skip school to find a missing kid?”

  “Yes, Mother. You should trust me to do the right thing by now. I’m almost eighteen.”

  “We’ll talk about the concept of trust later. Now, when and how did she disappear?”

  “She ran away to a friend’s house after an argument with her foster mom over her dating some stupid football player because he got a DUI. Typical mom-daughter crap, I know. She ran away to her best friend’s house. But then, she went missing from the friend’s house when she and her friend went to Echo Park to… to score some weed. Ugh, that was stupid on their parts.”

  “It sure was. So, a runaway. Is the friend gone, too?”

  “No, Renee walked away from a situation where she felt uncomfortable and couldn’t convince Emily, that’s the missing girl’s name, to come back to her house with her and call her foster mom and make up with her. Or that’s what Renee was telling her mom and the police when she got back home, without Emily.”

  “The last person Emily was seen with was Renee?”

  “No, Renee claims—and I believe her—a man, a pale man, approached them and asked them both to go to an underground club with him. Offered them both a lot of money for sex and a little bit of kinky stuff that he promised wouldn’t hurt. Much.”

  Sam’s eyes flicked to the back seat where Anthony had actually stopped eating and was all ears. In fact, he was on the edge of his seat.

  “Keep talking, Tammy. Don’t censor yourself because I’m in the vehicle,” Anthony said.

  “I wasn’t going to. You’re a big boy now, dork, with an astonishing Internet history, might I add, but please stop talking so I can.”

  “It’s always about you, Tammy,” Anthony said.

  Tammy waved him off. “Anyway, something bad happened to her, Mom. It’s been three days now and I actually suspect a vampire kidnapped her and is probably using her to feed from, or maybe worse. She could be dead for all we know.”

  Now, Sam did look hard at her daughter. “Why in the world would you think something like that?”

  “Because the last place that Emily Radford was seen was just around the corner from Fang’s Place, the blood bar owned by your friend, Fang.”

  Sam was startled. “How do you even know about that place?”

  “I’ve been reading your mind for a long time.”

  “When you skipped school, you went to Fang’s to look for Emily, didn’t you?” Sam said, her voice filled with dread.

  “Don’t get excited, Mother. The vampire doorman at Fang’s Place wouldn’t even let me in. He said I wasn’t old enough to enter as a donor. Or undead enough to enter as a vampire.”

  Sam breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good. You should not be anywhere near that place. It’s dangerous for you to even go to Echo Park by yourself, let alone to Fang’s Place.”

  “It was dangerous for Emily, too. I did pump the doorman for information. Apparently, she was there the day before and I missed her. He didn’t let her in the door either, but she was right there.”

  “So, she was alive yesterday?”

  “Either alive or undead by the end of the day. I wasn’t clear on which.”

  At that moment, the drug bust went down. A number of shots rang out
and cops were running all over, including Detective Amber Tarkington, shouting orders and storming the drug house after Detective Holden broke down the heavy wooden door with his shoulder, like it was made of tissue paper.

  Chapter 6

  Tammy gave a little scream when gunfire erupted down the hill in the drug house. “Mom, a detective just got shot!”

  “Get down, kids! And stay down!”

  Tammy and Anthony dove to the floor of the minivan.

  “Mom, call the paramedics! Now!” Tammy shrieked.

  “Who got shot?”

  “The lady detective. I can see her in my mind. She fell on the floor, and she’s bleeding from the back of her shoulder where she got shot. There’s a hole in the front where the bullet came out—she’s hurt bad.”

  Sam grabbed the handle of the locked glove compartment and the handle snapped off, so she couldn’t get in there for her gun without tearing apart the dash.

  “Damn it!” Sam swore.

  Another shot rang out.

  Tammy gave another scream. “Now, the man detective just got shot, too. His head is bleeding, but he’s elbow-crawling to his partner’s side. He’s kneeling next to her and covering her with his body and looking around. Mom, the bad guys are sneaking up on them, and they’re gonna shoo—”

  A hail of gunfire erupted, and Sam couldn’t hear the rest of what Tammy said. The uniforms who were watching the front and back doors rushed the house and opened fire as well. Then gunfire was returned from inside the house and shattered the windows of the house as well as thudded and zinged off the police cruiser.

  Sam got a burner phone from the console and dialed 9-1-1.

  “9-1-1. Where is your emergency?”

  She said the address quickly, then blurted, “Officer down! She’s been shot inside a drug house. We need paramedics and backup! Hurry. Multiple shots fired.”

  After a couple of seconds, the 9-1-1 operator said. “They’re on the way. Who am I speaking with?”

  “A private… citizen. I’m near the site of an FPD drug bust in progress. Oh, hell, I’m going in to help. Don’t shoot me when you get here. I’m a short, pale brunette in mom jeans and a CSU gray bomber jacket.”

  “Stay on the line with me. Do not approach the crime scene.”

  Sam barked, “STAY!” to her kids. She tossed the cell phone on the front seat.

  Tammy picked it up. “My mom is going in,” she said. “If she doesn’t, innocent people are going to die.”

  “Tell her I said not to go in,” ordered the 9-1-1 operator.

  “Too late,” Tammy said and hung up because it took all of her concentration for her to use her mind-reading gifts to see what was going on inside the house.

  Like a blur, Sam burst from the minivan and ran downhill. With a leap like she was diving into a lake, she sailed through a glass window horizontally, shattering it, and then did a tuck and roll into the squalid living room. She came up on her feet and looked for Amber.

  ***

  While they were hunkered down on the floor of the van, Anthony asked, “Why didn’t Mom tell the 9-1-1 dispatcher that the male detective got shot, too?”

  “Because he’s a vampire.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I read Mom’s mind, that’s how.”

  “She’s following him for her P.I. case?” he asked.

  “At first, it was the woman detective only, but now, it’s turned into Mom watching both of them.” Tammy raised her eyebrows, and Anthony caught her drift.

  “Please tell me they’re not doing… you know.”

  “Yep. While he’s sucking her blood.”

  Anthony grimaced. “Okay, shut up now. I don’t want to know the rest.”

  “I wish I didn’t know the rest,” Tammy said. “I wish I didn’t poke around in Mom’s mind after she saw what she saw last night.”

  “Tammy, we gotta stage an intervention for you or something. You’re abusing your mind-reading gifts.”

  “I know. It’s turning into a sickness.”

  “Stay out of my head,” he warned.

  “No problem. It’s gross in there after you’ve been all over the Internet looking at girls in plaid schoolgirl skirts.”

  “Shut up. Mom’s yelling.”

  The kids heard her shouts and the tinkle of glass breaking and the thuds of furniture getting overturned.

  “Things are seriously dangerous down in the house,” Tammy said.

  “Read their minds and tell me what’s happening!”

  “Oh, so now, you want me to use my gifts?”

  “Tammy, do it!”

  “I see bad things. Bad men with guns and some girls are in danger. Mom’s fast, but she can’t be everywhere at once.”

  “I should go help Mom,” Anthony said.

  Tammy shook her head. “No, you could get shot! And there’s a male vampire in there who drinks human blood.”

  “I’m not scared of him. I have to help Mom.” Anthony made a move to unlock the van, and Tammy screamed and grabbed his sleeve. “If you go in the house at this exact second, you’ll be shot for sure. I can see the future for a little while ahead of now.”

  “But Mom took off without her gun.”

  “She’s a vampire. You’re not.” Tammy started crying.

  “What’s going on in there?” Anthony asked. “Tell me. Stop crying and use your freaking mind powers for something good for a change!”

  Tammy’s eyes looked far away and after a few moments, she said, “Okay, you can go in now. The guy guarding the front door is now heading for a room with weird stuff in it. Chemicals.”

  “Chemicals?”

  “Anthony, go now! You have about a ten-second window to get through the front door before something else happens.” She talked faster and faster. “Mom’s fighting the drug dealers, and they’re out of bullets and trying to hit her with their guns. They have knives, too. They’re ganging up on her. She’s protecting herself with boxing and kicking and—”

  There was gunfire.

  “Mom got shot by the male detective! In the leg! She’s bleeding.” Tammy shut her eyes. “Oh, wait, she’s still kicking their asses. She kicked the weapons under the couch. Now, she’s telling the uniforms not to shoot her—oh, no, one of the drug guys has a lighter and he’s—”

  Boom! There was a loud explosion and Tammy screamed, “I can’t see Mom through the smoke and flames! I don’t know if she’s okay!”

  “What was that explosion?”

  “I think a meth lab just blew up!”

  “Stay here!” Anthony ordered and left the vehicle.

  “Hold your breath, Anthony!” Tammy shouted after him.

  Almost as fast as his mother had run down the hill, he did the same in a blur and grabbed a garden hose from the front yard, turned it on full blast and ran into the house with it.

  Tammy could see a confusing scuffle in her mind and cried out, “Mom, Anthony, get out of the house. Now!” She also sent the desperate plea telepathically to Sam.

  Within seconds, Sam carried a wet, bleeding and unconscious Amber Tarkington out of the house and laid her gently on the grass. Then, screaming a bit, she dug a bullet out of her own leg with her fingernails and put it in her pocket. Anthony helped the male detective stumble out from the house. He seemed to be in a daze and pressed at a big bloody hole in his forehead. When he almost fell, Anthony just picked him up and carried him, which likely saved him from being shot himself when a SWAT van rolled up and guys in black erupted from the vehicle.

  The men in black streamed into the house, rousting out the drug dealers and dragging them onto the driveway and cuffing them. They carried a couple of young girls out—they were drugged-up looking and likely unconscious. A fire truck and a paramedic truck arrived soon, too.

  Anthony shouted to the firefighters, “The house is empty as far as I can tell, but there’s a gas stove and the fire is almost—”


  A larger explosion rocked the house. It imploded and folded in on itself with a great boom that blew everyone back and left their ears ringing.

  Sam screamed out her vampire compulsion, “You can’t see me. You can’t see Anthony.”

  The head-shot detective on the ground sat up, stuck his finger in the hole in his forehead, screamed in pain and pulled out a flattened bullet. He put it in his pocket and stood. Sam noticed the hole closing in his forehead as he leaned over Amber Tarkington and said softly, “Oh, baby. I am so, so sorry. I should have gone in first. I love you.”

  And then, he leaned over her bloody shirt. As soon as his jacket shielded what he was doing, he put his mouth closer to the bullet hole in the front of Amber’s shoulder until a paramedic ran to Amber with his kit and said, “Get out of my way. What the hell are you aiming to do to her? That’s not a snakebite, asshole. You don’t need to suck out the poison and you sure as hell can’t suck out a bullet.”

  Back in the minivan, Tammy, who had caught all of this terrifying action in her mind and eyes like a horror movie playing out—slow-mo frame by slo-mo frame—threw up everything she had in her stomach, completely missing the van’s plastic-lined wastebasket.

  Chapter 7

  It took a while for things to be all over and for Sam and Anthony to get back to the minivan. Sam was limping but insisted she was okay, that the bleeding was stopped.

  Before they did anything else, they needed to hit a 24-hour self-serve carwash. Anthony ran a foaming brush over the upholstery and squirted air freshener over everything while Sam and Tammy wadded up blobs of vomit in paper towels and threw them away in a garbage can.

  “I’m so sorry, Mom. I puked my milkshake and onion rings all over the place.”

  “It’s okay. I’m sorry I exposed you and Anthony to this situation. I don’t know if I can forgive myself for the danger I put both of you in.”

  “We did what we had to do, Mom. If all of us hadn’t been there, people would have died. And they still might. I saw those invisible black snakes transferring from Detective Hound Dog to the lady detective. That’s a sign that she might die.”