Vampires & Werewolves: Four Novels

by J. R. Rain

  Easy, I thought. He’s afraid of you. And when people are afraid they do evil, hurtful things.

  One minute. I rolled up my window. I wanted to be able to hear my kids. I didn’t want some damn Harley coming by and drowning out little Anthony’s comically high-pitched voice, or Tammy’s too-serious recounting of that day’s school lessons.

  Thirty seconds. I had my finger over the cell phone’s send button, Danny’s home number—my old home number—already selected from my contact list and ready to go.

  Ten seconds. Outside, somewhere beyond the nearby freeway’s arching overpass, the sun was beginning to set and I was beginning to feel good. Damn good. In fact, within minutes I was about to feel stronger than I had any right to feel.

  And I was about to talk to my kids, too. A smile that I hadn’t felt all day touched my lips.

  At 7:00 p.m. on the nose, I pushed the send button. The phone rang once and Danny picked up immediately.

  “The kids aren’t here,” he said immediately in his customary monotone.

  “But—”

  “They’re with Nancy getting some ice cream.”

  Nancy was, of course, the home-wrecker. His secretary fling that had become more than a fling. The name of that witch alone nearly sent me into a psychotic rage.

  “They’re with her?”

  “Yes. They like her. We all do.”

  “When will they be back?”

  “I don’t know, and that’s none of your concern.”

  “So when can I call back?”

  “You can call back tomorrow at seven.”

  “That’s bullshit, Danny. This was my time with—”

  “Tomorrow,” he said, and hung up.

  Chapter Four

  An hour later, I was boxing at a little sparring club in downtown Fullerton, a place called Jacky’s. Jacky himself trained me, which was a rare honor these days, as the little Irishman was getting on in years. I think he either had a crush on me, or didn’t know what the hell to make of me, since I tended to destroy his boxing equipment.

  The sun had set an hour ago and I was at maximum strength. I was also still pissed off at Danny, hurt beyond words, and now the old Irishman was feeling the brunt of it.

  He was wearing brand-new punch mitts, which were those little protective pads trainers use to cover their hands. I was leveling punch after punch into his mittened hands, sometimes so rapidly that my hands were a blur even to my eyes.

  And I wasn’t just punching them, I was hitting them hard. Perhaps too hard.

  Jacky was a tough guy, even though he was pushing sixty. He was an ex-professional boxer back in Ireland who had suffered his share of broken noses, and no doubt had broken a few noses himself. I had never known him to show pain or any sign of weakness. And so when he began wincing with each punch, I knew it was time to ease up on the poor guy. He was far too tough and stubborn to lower the gloves himself and ask for a break.

  I paused in mid-strike and said, “Let’s take a break.”

  To say that Jacky was relieved would have been an understatement.

  Still, he shot back. “Is that all you got, wee girl?” he asked loudly, and, I think, for the benefit of anyone watching, since I sometimes attracted a crowd of curious onlookers, and Jacky had a tough-guy image to uphold.

  Of course, I never wanted to attract crowds of onlookers, as I generally avoid bringing attention to myself. But since that incident last month with a Marine boxer, an incident in which I put him in a hospital, well, I had become somewhat of a hero in this mostly women’s boxing club.

  “Well, I could probably go another round or two,” I said lightly to Jacky.

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” he said.

  Jacky shook off the protective gloves. His hands were ruddier than his Irish complexion; his fingers were fat and swollen.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “I had a bad night.”

  “I’d hate to get on your bad side.”

  “Doesn’t seem to worry my ex-husband.”

  “Then I say he’s not right in the head. You punch like a hammer.” He shook his head in wonder. I often caused this reaction from the old boxer, who hadn’t yet figured me out. “Harder than anyone I’ve ever trained, man or woman.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve all got our talents,” I said. “Yours, for example, is having red hair.”

  “That’s not a talent.”

  “Close enough.”

  He shook his head and held up his red hands which, if I looked hard enough at them, I could probably see throbbing.

  “I need to soak these in ice,” he said. “But if I soak these in ice, the women here will think I’m a pussycat.”

  I leaned over and kissed him on his sweating forehead. The blush that emanated from him was instant, spreading from his balding head, down into his neck.

  “But you are a pussycat,” I said.

  “Well, you’re a freak of nature, Sam.”

  Jacky, of course, didn’t realize how freaky I was. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of people who knew how freaky I was.

  “You could be a world champion,” he said. Now we were making our way over to the big punching bag.

  “I’m too old to be a world champion,” I said. Jacky was always trying to get me to fight professionally.

  He snorted. “You’re, what, thirty?”

  “Thirty-one, and thank you.”

  However, Jacky was closer than he thought. I was indeed thirty-seven calendar years old, but I was frozen in a thirty-one year old’s body.

  The age I was when I was attacked.

  Granted, if a girl had to pick an age to be immortalized in, well, thirty-one would probably be near the top of her list.

  And what happens ten years from now when you’re forty-seven but still look thirty-one? Or when your daughter is thirty-one and you still look thirty-one?

  I didn’t know, but I would cross that bridge when I got there.

  Jacky took up his position behind the punching bag. “So what’s eating at you anyway, Sam?”

  “Everything,” I said. I started punching the bag, moving around it as if it were an actual opponent, using the precise body movements Jacky had taught me. Ducking and weaving. Jabs. Hooks. Hard straight shots. Punches that would have broken jaws and teeth and noses. Jacky bared his teeth and absorbed the punches on the other side of the bag like the champion he was, or used to be. I took a small breather. So did Jacky. Sweat poured from my brow.

  “Let me guess,” said Jacky, gasping slightly, and looking as if he had taken actual physical shots to his own body. “Is it that no-good ex-husband of yours?”

  “Good guess.”

  “Does he realize you could kick his arse from here to Dublin?”

  “He realizes that,” I said. “And why Dublin?”

  “National pride,” he said. “So why don’t you go kick his fucking arse?”

  “Because kicking ass isn’t always the answer, Jacky.”

  “Works for me,” he said.

  “We’ll call that Plan B.”

  “Would be my Plan A. A good arse-kicking always clears the air.”

  I laughed. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “Break’s over. Hands up.”

  He leaned back into the bag and I unleashed another furious onslaught. Pretending the bag was my ex-husband was doing wonders for me.

  “You’re sweating like a pig, Sam,” screamed Jacky. “I like that!”

  “You like pig sweat?”

  He just shook his head and screamed at me to keep my fists up. I grinned and unleashed a flurry of punches that rocked the bag and nearly sent little Jacky flying, and attracted a small group of women who gathered nearby to watch the freak.

  And as I punched and sweated and kept my fists up, I knew that fighting Danny wasn’t the answer. Luckily, there were other ways to fight back.

  Chapter Five

  After a long shower and a few phone calls to some friends working in the federal gov
ernment, I was at El Torito Bar and Grill in Brea—just a hop, skip and a jump from my hotel.

  I was wearing jeans and a turtle neck sweater. Not because it was cold outside, but because I looked so damn cute in turtle neck sweaters. The stiff-looking man sitting across from me seemed to think so, too. Special Agent Greg Lomax, lead investigator with the FBI, was in full flirt mode, and it was all I could do to keep him on track. Maybe I shouldn’t have looked so cute, after all.

  Damn my cuteness.

  El Torito is loud and open. The loudness and openness was actually of benefit for anyone having a private conversation, which was probably why Greg had chosen it.

  Personally, I found the noise level here a bit overwhelming, but then again, I’m also just a sweet and sensitive woman.

  It was either that or my supernaturally acute hearing that quite literally picked up every clattering dish, scraping fork, and far ruder sounds best not described. And, of course, picked up the babble of ceaseless conversations. If I wanted to I could generally make out any individual conversation within any room. Handy for a P.I., trust me. Granted, I couldn’t hear through walls or anything, but sounds that most people could hear, well, I could just hear that much better.

  “Lots of people over at HUD talk very highly of you,” he said.

  “I gave them the best seven years of my life,” I said.

  “And then you came down with some sort of, what, rare skin disease or something?”

  “Or something,” I said.

  “Now you work private,” he said.

  “Yes. A P.I.”

  “How’s that working out?”

  “It’s good to be my own boss,” I said. “Now I give myself weekly pay raises and extra long coffee breaks.”

  He grinned. “That’s cute. Anyway, I was told to tell you what I could. So ask away. If I can’t talk about something, or I just don’t know the answer, I’ll tell you.”

  We were sitting opposite each other in a far booth in the far corner of the bar. I was sipping some house zinfandel, and he was drinking a Jack and Coke. White wine and water were about the only two liquids I could consume. Well, that and something else.

  Just thinking about that something else immediately turned my stomach.

  I said, “So do you think the crash was an accident?”

  “You get right to the point,” he said. “I like that.”

  “Must be the investigator in me.”

  He nodded, drank some more Jack and Coke. “No, this wasn’t an accident. We know that much.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He smiled. “We just know.”

  “Okay. So how did the plane crash?”

  “All signs point to sabotage.”

  “Sabotage how?”

  He was debating how much to tell me. I could almost see the wheels working behind his flirtatious eyes. No doubt he was computing the amount of information he could still give me and still not give up any real government secrets, and yet leave me satisfied enough to sleep with him tonight. A complex formula for sure.

  Men are better at math than they realize.

  He said, “Someone planted a small explosive in the rudder gears. The pilot heard the explosion, reported it immediately, and then reported that he had lost all control of the plane. Ten minutes later the plane crashed into the side of the San Bernardino Mountains.”

  “And everyone on board was killed?”

  “Yes. Instantly.”

  “Is there any reason to believe that these key witnesses were killed to keep them from testifying?”

  “There is every reason to believe that. It’s the only motive we have.” He drank the rest of his Jack and Coke. “Except there’s one problem: our number one suspect was in jail at the time of the crash.”

  The waiter came by and dropped off another drink for Greg. Perhaps the waiters here at El Torito Bar and Grill were psychic. Greg picked up his drink and sipped it.

  “It would take a lot of pull to sabotage a military plane,” I said.

  “Not as much as you might think,” said Greg. “This was a DC-12, and the contract the government has with them stipulates that the makers of the planes get to use their own mechanics.”

  “So the mechanic was a civilian.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you found the mechanic?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Dead in his apartment in L.A.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Gunshot in the mouth.”

  “Suicide?”

  “We’re working on it.”

  I followed up with this some more, but Greg seemed to have reached the limit of what he was willing to tell me.

  Greg motioned to my half-finished drink. “You going to finish that?”

  “Probably not.”

  “You want to head over to my place and, you know, talk some more about what it’s like giving yourself raises?”

  I said, “When you say ‘talk’ don’t you really mean boff my brains out?”

  He grinned and reddened. I reached over and patted his superheated face.

  “You’ll just have to give yourself a raise tonight,” I said, and left him my card. “Call me if you hear anything new.”

  “But I live right around the cor—”

  “Sorry,” I said. “But your calculations were off.”

  I smiled sweetly and left.

  Chapter Six

  We were at the beach, sitting on the wooden deck of a lifeguard tower. The sign on the lifeguard tower said no sitting on the wooden deck.

  “We’re breaking the law,” I said.

  Kingsley Fulcrum turned his massive head toward the sign above us. As he did so, some of the moonlight caught his cheek bones and strong nose and got lost somewhere in the shaggy curls that hung on his beefy shoulders.

  “We are risking much to be here,” he said. “If we get caught, our super secret identities may be discovered.”

  I said, “Especially if I show up invisible in the mug shot.”

  Kingsley shook his head.

  “You vampires are weird,” he said.

  “This coming from a guy who howls at every full moon.”

  He chuckled lightly as a small, cold wind scurried over my bare feet. Before us, the dark ocean stretched black and eternal. Small, frothing whitecaps slapped the shore. In the far distance, twinkling on the curve of the horizon, were the many lights of Catalina Island. Between us and Catalina were the much brighter lights of a dozen or so oil rigs. The beach itself was mostly quiet, although two or three couples were currently smooching on blankets here and there. They probably thought they were mostly hidden under the cover of darkness. They probably hadn’t accounted for a vampire with built-in night vision watching them. A gyrating couple, about two hundred feet away up the beach, might have been doing the nasty.

  Kingsley turned to me. I always liked the way the bridge of his nose angled straight up to his forehead. Very Roman. And very hot.

  He said, “You became a private investigator after you were changed?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that means you took your P.I. photo when you were a vampire.”

  “Yes.”

  “So how did you manage that?”

  “I wore a lot of make up that day,” I said smugly, proud of myself. I had wondered what to do about the photo, too.

  “So the make up showed up, even though you didn’t?”

  “Yes, exactly. I even made sure I blinked when the picture was taken.”

  “Just in case your eye sockets came up empty.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You could have worn colored contacts,” said Kingsley.

  “But then the whites of my eyes would have come up empty,” I said.

  He nodded. “So you sacrificed your vanity.”

  “I might look like a major dork in the picture, but at least I look human. Granted, if you look close enough, there is a blank spot somewhere near my throat, where I had missed a patch of skin, but not too many
people are looking at my throat.”

  “No,” said Kingsley. “They’re looking at the dork with her eyes closed.”

  I punched him in the arm. The force of my blow knocked him sideways.

  “Ouch!” He rubbed his arm and grinned at me, and the light from the half moon touched his square teeth. Kingsley was a successful defense attorney in Orange County. A few months ago, he had hired me to investigate a murder attempt on his life. His case had come at a difficult time in my life. Not only had I just caught my husband cheating, the bastard had the gall to kick me out of my own home.

  A very difficult time, to say the least. The wounds were still fresh and I was still hurting.

  And I would be for a very long time.

  Not the greatest time to start a new romance with a hunky defense attorney with massive shoulders and a tendency to shed.

  “There are two people boffing over there,” said Kingsley, looking off over his shoulder. “I think one of their names is Oh, Baby.”

  Kingsley’s hearing was better than mine, which was saying something.

  I grinned and elbowed him. “Will you quit eavesdropping.”

  He cocked his head to one side, and said, “I was wrong. His name is Oh, God.”

  I elbowed him again, and we sat silently some more. Our legs were touching. His thigh was about twice as wide as mine. We were both wearing jeans and sweaters.

  I sensed Kingsley’s desire to touch me, to reach out and lay his big hand over my knee. I sensed him forcibly controlling himself.

  Down boy.

  I was still looking out over the black ocean, which, to my eyes, wasn’t so black. The air shimmered with light particles which flashed and streaked across the night sky. I often wondered what these streaking lights were. I didn’t know for sure, but I had a working hypothesis. I suspected I was seeing the physical manifestation of energy itself. Perhaps I was being given a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the workings of our world.

  Then again, I’ve been wrong before.

  Kingsley was still looking at me, still fighting what he most wanted to do. And what he most wanted to do was ravage me right here and now on this lifeguard pier. But the brute held himself in check. Smart man. After all, I gave him no indication that I wanted to be ravaged.