J.R. Rains Vampire for Hire World_Dead Ahead

by Eve Paludan

“I might say the very same thing to you.”

  “Touché. Ugh, is it too much to want to be the first in my family to actually retire from the police force and not die on duty?”

  His eyebrows rose. “Now, there’s a scary bucket-list item.”

  “I know it is. Think I can do it?”

  “You better do it! I’m counting on you to live, funny girl. So, I’ll retire when you do. I’ve been thinking of selling the donut shop sometime in the future, but I don’t want to sit at home all day alone because I will just bake and eat, same as I do anyway at the shop. If I was retired, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself while you’re out there fighting crime.”

  “I hear retired men have hobbies. Like taking up golf or growing avocados.”

  “I have a better idea. What do you think about me changing the donut shop hours to the same as yours at work?”

  “An all-night donut shop that’s closed in the daytime?” Amber smiled. “That would not fly with your regulars, and then, you have to worry a lot more about crimes at night that you don’t usually have in the daytime.”

  “True.”

  “You don’t have to do that for me, work nights in the donut shop.”

  “I would, though. For you, Amber.”

  “I know you would, but you’re such a morning person. Anyway, I was also thinking about how rough my graveyards have been on you and I have a surprise for you.”

  “Another one?” he said, shaking his head. “Should I be lying down instead of sitting down?”

  “Ha-ha. This one’s a good surprise, I promise.” She paused. “I’m taking a slight cut in pay because I won’t get the shift differential anymore, but I’m going back to day shift for a while, probably six months to start, hopefully, a year or more. So, I’ll be here sleeping when you sleep.”

  “Day shift? Amber, that’s great!” Tyrone’s face lit up for the first time in months.

  “I have other good news, too.” She smiled. “I’m getting a new partner.”

  “Why are you smiling? You already know who it is?”

  “It’s Saul Schultz. He was my dad’s partner, back in the day when they were beat cops.”

  “You’re kidding. The old detective who was so helpful to you after your dad died?”

  “Yep, old Saul. It’s going to be like old home week when I return to the job. He knows so much about crime investigation. And even though I’m a good investigator, he’s one of the few legendary greats still active on the force. I’m so stoked to pick his brain clean.”

  “Amber, I am so happy for you.”

  “And for you, too? That some old man who I think of as family is my new partner?”

  Tyrone laughed bitterly. “I trust you. Come on, we’ve talked it all out by now.”

  “I know, but I’m still grateful for your forgiveness. It means everything to me that you took me back after all this stuff went down.”

  He nodded. “It’s not so much forgiving you as it is that I have accepted the circumstances under which you were completely hypnotized by that… thing.”

  “Don’t say that about Kevin. He was still a person. My partner.”

  “Until he was more than that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I know you are. At first, I thought your story about being compelled by a vampire and then getting saved by drinking his blood was utter concocted bullshit, the worst fairy tale I ever heard. But I wanted you back and I realized I even didn’t care if it was a lie, only that you were staying in this marriage. With me.”

  Amber’s eyes got misty. “You said ‘at first’ you thought my story was utter concocted bullshit. But then?”

  He paused. “But then, I saw you in the garden this morning with the bloom of health in your cheeks, lifting hundred-pound sacks of mulch and laying that block retaining wall like it was plastic Legos. And after that, lifting and carrying rolls of sod like they were paper towels while I huffed and puffed to hand you garden tools and rake up dirt clods and sweep the patio.”

  “You helped a lot, hun.”

  “Not much, but thanks. You did all the heavy work. But now, you can stop with the Wonder Woman display of strength. You don’t have to remodel the whole backyard into some country club paradise to prove anymore to me that you were telling the truth about vampire blood and its healing qualities.”

  “Thanks, Tyrone. Anyway, the yard is done, and it looks great.”

  “It sure does and so do you, beautiful. I’m a believer. Something supernatural has happened to you all right.” He reached over and squeezed her hand. “I don’t know what I would have done if I lost you forever. I just thank God he didn’t turn you into an undead creature.”

  “Me, too. I like humanity. I like you, too, handsome.” She looked at him with those beautiful soft eyes he loved so much.

  Just as Tyrone leaned over the patio table to kiss his wife in the gathering night, a skinny dead-pale, drooling vampire with filthy, tangled long hair leaped over the garden wall. In a blur, she knocked over the table, Tyrone and even Amber.

  Tyrone shouted and threw a patio chair at the vampire just as Amber drew her weapon and shot the vampire in the chest. And when the vampire didn’t fall away, she shot again. This time, the vampire rolled off her, leaving blood all over Amber’s chest and clothes.

  “Amber, Amber! Are you okay?” Tyrone asked.

  Amber stood up. “I’m fine.”

  “Did that thing bite you?”

  Amber felt all over herself. “No, no. She didn’t. It looked like she wanted to bite you more. You okay?”

  “Yeah, fine,” Tyrone said. “But you’re right. She was going for my neck.”

  Amber said, “I saw that. Look, she’s just a girl. A teenager.”

  “She looks sick. I mean, she’s dead, but she looks horrible.”

  “She’s obviously a real vampire,” Amber said.

  “How do you know?” Tyrone asked.

  Amber pointed. “See the natural black pointy fingernails? The pale complexion? The strings of drool from extreme hunger? The bloody lips from her biting them and getting all worked up into a blood hunger?”

  Tyrone shuddered. “Ick, but if she’s a real vampire, how did you kill her with a regular bullet?”

  “I didn’t. My first round was a regular bullet. The second one was silver. I made it myself from pure silver I bought on eBay. I’ve got more silver ones behind that one.”

  “Wow. I guess that second silver bullet better be your ammo-loading m.o. from now on.”

  “I guess so.” Amber groaned. “This sucks. Man, I am not going to be able to go back to work under these circumstances. There’s going to be a lot of inquiry. And fuss. And paperwork and grueling investigation by the homicide department.”

  “I have a friend in the homicide department,” Tyrone said.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, he’s a donut customer. He’s been my friend for ten years.”

  “You’re kidding. Are you talking about Detective Sherbet aka Detective Donuts?”

  “Is that what you call him?”

  “Not to his face, obviously. So, you’re calling Sherbet?”

  “Yeah, instead of 9-1-1, I’m going to call him.”

  “Oh, boy. I need to wash up. I’m a mess.”

  Tyrone shook his head. “No, Detective Tarkington. You just sit tight right there and don’t mess with any evidence that clears you of murder and establishes this as a self-defense case.”

  “Since when do you know so much about police procedure?”

  “On all of those nights when you were working, I watched a zillion true-crime mysteries on TV. And I read a lot of books on the subject, too. I learned a few things.”

  And then, Tyrone Tarkington stepped inside his house and made a private phone call. When he came back to the garden, he said, “Detective Sherbet can’t come right now because he’s down with the flu, so he’s sending someone else to help us.”

  “From the homicide department?”


  “No, a private investigator.”

  “A P.I.? Why’s he doing that?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Chapter 19

  Not long after the phone call to Sherbet, Sam entered the garden in the same way the vampire had, by vaulting the wall.

  “Hello, Sam,” Tyrone said.

  “Hi, there. Nice to see you again.”

  Sam turned to his again-bloodied wife. “Hi, Amber, remember me?”

  “Yeah, I do. You were there the night I got shot. I vaguely remember you jumping into the fray, and I thought you might have even taken a bullet for me.”

  “I did take a bullet for you. In the leg.”

  “What? Are you okay?”

  “Perfectly fine. I got it out with only a little bit of screaming. I’m a quick healer and I hear, you are, too.”

  Amber looked puzzled and said, “You waited with me until the ambulance got there. You and my partner. My former partner. He left town to take another job. It’s hard to recall all of the details of that night.”

  Sam nodded. “You were in shock from being shot.”

  Amber nodded. “Why were you there that night?”

  Sam looked at Tyrone.

  Tyrone said, “I hired Sam to do surveillance on you because I thought you were cheating on me.”

  “Geez, how did I not catch onto that?” Amber asked, scrutinizing Sam.

  “Because I compelled you not to catch on. And I removed the compulsion as soon as it seemed prudent to do so. Like, right now I did.”

  “Oh, you’re a vampire!” Amber screamed a little and reached for her gun.

  Sam stayed Amber’s hand in her ironclad grip, despite the detective being very strong. “Whoa, there, Annie Oakley. I’m one of the good ones. I’ve already taken one bullet for you. Don’t make it two, or I’ll be very put out.”

  Amber carefully put away her gun in its holster.

  Sam walked a few steps and stood over the body in the Tarkington’s backyard. “Do either of you know who this is?”

  “Is that a rhetorical question?” Amber asked.

  “Probably not. Do you know her?” Sam asked again.

  Amber said, “No, but I think I saw her on a missing person flyer on the bulletin board at work. She’s a habitual runaway from foster homes. Her name escapes me at the moment.”

  Sam said, “Her name is Emily. Emily Radford. She was kidnapped by teenage vampires and turned into one. And then, she got rescued from their creepy cult and taken to a safe house. But I guess she left the safe house and came here. Damn it, why don’t kids ever do what they’re told?”

  “Because they’re kids,” Amber said. “Expecting kids not to take risks with their personal safety is pure folly.”

  Sam looked at Amber. “My question is, why would she come here? What’s her connection to you and your home?”

  “I don’t know, Sam. Really, I don’t.” Amber said, “Ever seen this girl before, Tyrone?”

  “I know her,” Tyrone said quietly.

  Sam and Amber both whipped their heads around and stared at him.

  “How do you know her?” Sam asked. “And do you know why she would come here?”

  “Because she felt safe here.”

  “Here? She’s been here before?” Amber asked.

  “Yeah, she lives—lived in a foster home in the neighborhood. She was always hanging around the street, panhandling or doing a little petty theft here and there. One time, she saw me get out of my car with my boxes of leftover donuts and she asked if she could have them. So, I gave her the donuts and after that, ended up giving her donuts quite often. Sometimes, she sat in the backyard with me and ate them and drank water out of the hose and told me about her sad life in her foster home.”

  Amber was shocked. “You knew her that well?”

  “Yeah. I felt sorry for her. Pre-vampire, of course, I even went out of my way to give her a job in the donut shop as my baking apprentice, but she robbed me at the end of the week when I sent her to the bank with the deposit bag.”

  “Oh, Tyrone!” Amber said. “How could you have trusted her?”

  “I know, believe me, hindsight is everything. I felt stupid, so I never told you what happened. And I only trusted her because I thought we had such a good rapport—after all, we had worked together for a whole week during her winter break from high school. I guess the money was too much of a temptation for her.”

  “You ever see her after that, before tonight, I mean?” Amber asked.

  “No, not until she leaped over the wall and attacked us. I assume she was too scared or too ashamed to come and see me at the shop or at home anymore. Anyway, I didn’t much want to see her again after I gave her a chance at a decent life and career and she blew it. I was going to teach her the business in every aspect.”

  “She was just a kid,” Sam said.

  “I know, but I guess I was comparing her with the good experience we had with our own three kids, so it was easy to trust her because no one before this had ever done anything bad to me like this robbery.”

  Sam shook her head. “Anything else I should know about you and the deceased?”

  “Yes. For the record, nothing untoward ever happened between us.”

  “Good to know,” Sam said.

  “I didn’t even see her that often, but I think before our whole fallout with the bank deposit that she felt safe with me because I was a normal dad. She said she wished she would have had normal parents. And her foster parents were so cruel. I don’t think they physically abused her, but the mental abuse she told me about was awful, if true. I feel so bad that she got turned into a vampire.”

  “I feel bad that she’s dead now,” Amber said. “I killed a kid.”

  “A deadly vampire teen who attacked you,” Sam said.

  “That fact would not be provable to a court. What the hell do I put in my police report?”

  “Nothing, no report,” Sam said. “I’m going to take her away. Sherbet okayed it.”

  “Huh, that doesn’t seem like him,” Amber said. “He’s kind of a by-the-book detective.”

  Sam’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “More than you know.”

  “Sam, are you really a vampire?” Tyrone asked.

  “Yeah, I really am.”

  “How did I not know this when I hired you?”

  “Because I compelled you not to realize it.”

  “And, before you leave, you will make me forget I ever hired you to follow my wife?”

  “I see you understand.”

  Amber said, “You can’t just carry a body out of here.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Sam said, giving the body a cautious side-eye.

  “It’s not fine. Where are you going with Emily Radford’s body?”

  “To a cave off the Los Angeles River. She won’t be alone in there, though. She’ll have some company.”

  “Oh, that’s creepy.” Tyrone rubbed down the hair that was standing up on his forearms.

  “You’re going to make us forget we ever met you, aren’t you?” Amber asked.

  “Yep.”

  “And we’ll forget about Emily?”

  “Yes. I will make it so.”

  “That’s sad,” Amber said. “No one who cares will remember the girl.”

  “My kids will. They’re the ones who rescued her, a little too late, though.” Sam curled up her lip at the bloody mess on the patio. “Tyrone, do you have a pressure washer and some concrete cleaner?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Can you tidy up all this blood and get things back to the way they were?”

  “Of course.” He went to get the requested items.

  After he stepped away, Amber warned, “Don’t make me forget about vampires, that they exist. I need to know that they do, so I can stay safe and keep my husband and family safe.”

  “Yes, you do,” Sam said.

  “And I don’t want to forget Kevin Holden. My partner saved my life.”

  “But first, he nearly rob
bed you of it,” Sam said.

  Amber said in a sad voice, “I didn’t tell him how weak he was making me by using me as a feeder.”

  “I could take away your pain by taking away your memories of him and you can even select parts you want to remember.”

  “No, to do that, to take away the pain, you would have to take away the love, Sam.”

  “Yeah, that’s the catch. Pain and love are always linked. Why is that?”

  “What a world, what a world, right?”

  “Definitely. I won’t do that to you, I guess. You do know you have super-strength now, right?”

  Amber said, “I know. It’s fantastic. I can lift heavy stuff, no sweat!”

  Sam smirked. “Don’t run the LA Marathon or anything public like that, but if you ever want a fast and furious sparring partner, you might bump into a really pale woman who looks exactly like me over at Jacky’s Gym, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings.”

  Amber laughed. “You know everything about me, don’t you?”

  “I know enough to know that I’m impressed with the choice you made, to come back home to be with your husband and your family when you could have run away with Kevin Holden and become immortal. You took the hard road, but the right road.”

  “Thanks, Sam. That means a lot to me, coming from you.”

  “Amber, go clean yourself up. Take a shower and throw away your bloody clothes. Clean your gun and your holster. I’ll take Emily away with me.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll turn into a big bat-like creature, and I’ll fly off with her in my talons.”

  “Yikes. Can all vampires do that?”

  “Hardly any. Luckily for you mortals.”

  “But I’ll forget you, and I’ll also forget that vampires can fly?”

  “Yes and yes. Now, go hug that husband of yours and live happily ever after or something close to it.”

  “Is that a suggestion, an order or a compulsion?”

  ***

  Both Tyrone and Amber sort of lost track of a small block of time. They couldn’t remember quite what had transpired in the backyard this evening, except for a lot of yard work and a mysterious bloody shirt in the garbage can. But that didn’t matter now because they were cuddled up in bed in each other’s arms, watching a romantic comedy on Netflix and chilling when their phone rang—it was their daughter, who had gone into labor with their first grandchild.