The Fixer: A Lawson Vampire Novel 1 (The Lawson Vampire Series)

by Jon F. Merz

  Maybe in some weird way, I was partially jealous. After all, she knew Cosgrove was a vampire and as much as she wanted revenge for his killing Simbik, she also wanted to understand the creature that he was. And here I was sitting next to her in some vacuous club with people swirling all around us, her perfume teasing my nostrils, intimately aware of her body heat and desirous of her. And she was more into Cosgrove.

  Damn, so much for being some kind of enlightened guru. Hell, I was still a prisoner to the kind of jealousy you could find in any junior high school.

  I watched her watch the crowd. Everything she did had a degree of artfulness to it. Not that your ordinary run of the mill Joe Blow could tell, but I could. One of the benefits of working in the same field.

  Talya scanned the crowd with an amazing degree of detachment, never focusing on one thing, but simultaneously absorbing, processing and sifting everything and everyone in the room. Each time she passed her eyes over the room, she did so in a different manner. You’d never guess she was so actively surveying the club searching for her-our target.

  Her skill mesmerized me. Her beauty haunted me. Her very presence made me feel like a fourteen year old boy.

  And in that realization, I knew I was in a lot of trouble.

  I explained before about the rules governing interaction between my kind and humans. Sex was okay. Love was not.

  Was I falling in love with her? I didn’t know. I wasn’t exactly an expert on the emotion. I could count the times I’d fallen in love on a hand with one finger.

  Sure, I’d had sex a lot of times.

  But love? Me? You had to be joking. I was, after all, a vampire.

  Oh sure, it was possible. I mean, vampires hook up all the time with each other. It’s how we keep producing our species. But I’d never met a vampire who did it for me.

  After all, the prospects of sex were kind of bleak. You did the deed and shared each other’s blood as a symbolic gesture of what had transpired. It was a really disturbing vision the first time I’d learned about the ritual of vampiric procreation.

  Swore me off kids forever.

  Never thought I’d have a problem either. I was a Fixer. Not the kind of job that allows of intimate relationships. Hell, the first few years I was active in the field I didn’t even have so much as a home I was on the road all the time.

  I wondered if Talya had ever been in love.

  And immediately realized things were worse than I thought.

  "Lawson?"

  I snapped back to reality. Talya grinned.

  "Everything okay?"

  I nodded. "Yeah, sure. Fine. Just doing some thinking is all."

  She nodded. "Seemed to be deep in thought there. You sure you’re all right?"

  "Yeah." I scanned the club. "See anything?"

  She nodded. "Yes. Judging by what I’ve seen, approximately 65% of the club will be getting some sex tonight."

  "That it?"

  She flashed me a healthy smile. "Well, Lawson, the night’s not over yet." She leaned closer to me. "The percentage could increase…even by two."

  I snapped my eyes away, aware of the pounding in my chest and the rising heat in my face. So much for professional demeanor. I cleared my throat and looked back at her.

  "You’re something else, Talya."

  But she’d ceased looking at me. Her eyes focused beyond me, staring, narrowing, becoming acutely attuned to her environment. Even her body had shifted slightly, almost imperceptibly. She’d become more animalistic in the space of less than three seconds. I’d seen the look before.

  On myself.

  Talya had shifted to her combat mode, and as I turned in my seat, I saw why.

  Cosgrove was in the club.

  Chapter Twenty

  I’d seen shadows disturb more things in their path than Cosgrove did as he entered. He didn’t so much walk as ooze his way through the crowds. It felt eerie just watching him move inside and begin his stalk. I thought about sharks I’d seen and the resemblance to their movements seemed uncanny.

  Talya didn’t take her eyes off of him. "How do you want to play this?"

  I brought my piece out, feeling the cold metal on one side and the warmth of the side that had lain next to my body. It felt good knowing I had a magazine full of death-dealing Cosgrove rounds.

  Talya seemed as primed as I was to take this thing head on and get it over with.

  "Straight up," I said. "Give me two minutes to get into position. Then we’ll hit him. Fast and hard. Got it?"

  She nodded, scarcely moving her lips. "Go."

  I slid out of the booth and back into the shadows. I had to make sure I stayed in his blind spot as much as possible. It would be okay if he spotted Talya. He might chalk it up to coincidence and maybe even try to take her out.

  But he couldn’t see me. If he did, the game would be over and I’d be left holding a heaving bag of shit. Cosgrove would run if he sensed anything remotely like an ambush.

  I stayed in the dark recesses of the club, watching the lights dance off of Cosgrove as he cut across the floor. His head seemed fixed in place, and he never swiveled it from one side to the other. His peripheral vision seemed to just absorb everything.

  He drew abreast of me and for just a second I thought he might actually turn and stare at me through the darkness, but he only just kept moving.

  And a minute later I was safely in his blind spot.

  Not it was my turn to go on the offensive.

  I could see Talya sitting in the booth. She was smiling but I thought it was just to draw Cosgrove in like a beacon in the night. If he wanted what he thought was an easy target, he’d move on her straight away. After all, in his mind he’d already laid the groundwork the other night at the bar. And here was Talya, all alone, and already smiling at him.

  A tempting target to be sure.

  I resisted the urge to just draw my gun and start pumping rounds into him from across the club. It was so tempting, the thought of going off half-cocked with no fire discipline like some heroin laced gangbanger. Tempting because I suddenly realized how damned scared I was of another encounter with him. I wanted this finished as quickly as possible.

  But to kill him I had to get close. The wooden rounds weren’t much good beyond a dozen meters. That meant I had to close on him, get the muzzle up near his heart and then plug him.

  Not exactly an easy thing to do to someone like Cosgrove.

  My stomach got that kind of bowel pain nervousness that probably made my sphincter turn into a diamond manufacturing plant. But I shrugged it off and continued trying to thread my way closer to Cosgrove.

  He noticed Talya, and although his back was mostly to me, I thought I saw a slight change in his body language. It almost took on a jaunty air to it. His confidence must have jumped when he’d seen her.

  Sure enough, he moved over to the booth. She stood and shook his hand like an old friend and gestured for him to sit. Wisely, her position demanded he have his back to the outside when he sat down. I saw him hesitate as if recognizing the area of vulnerability he had moved into, but after a second he simply sat down and leaned forward speaking with her.

  I physically had to move a couple out of my way which didn’t go over too well with the boy who had far too much gel in his hair and far too much cologne on. It must have given him an extra dose of attitude as well, but I simply fixed a look on him and he thought better of it. Probably the smartest kid in Boston at that moment.

  Talya smiled and laughed right along with Cosgrove. She kept her eyes on him all the time, never once betraying my position with a quick glance that Cosgrove surely would have picked up

  I kept moving.

  At a dozen feet, I slid the pistol out of my jacket pocket and thumbed the safety to the off position. I had a round in the chamber already, set to fire.

  Two more seconds.

  "What the fuck-?"

  A voice to my right.

  I felt the hands – club security showed up.

&
nbsp; They saw my gun.

  I pivoted, sliding out of the security man’s grasp, but the commotion and screams had already started.

  Someone yelled "Gun!"

  Cosgrove whirled around, saw me heading for him – I was trying to level the pistol on him, aware that Talya was trying to hold him down.

  He jerked out of her grasp

  I fired twice-

  -bad shots that ricocheted off the ceiling and hit some lights sending a shower of glass toward the floor.

  Cosgrove leapt across two booths and made for the door.

  By now the security staff was in full crisis mode and converging on me at full speed. Talya was scrambling, trying to get after Cosgrove. She pulled her gun out as she went.

  "Don’t go after him!"

  Another security guard tried to tackle me, but I moved and he slid into another couple entangled on the floor. I ran for Talya, chasing not so much Cosgrove anymore as her. If she went after him alone, he’d kill her.

  I burst through the side emergency door and had two options. Right would bring me down behind the club into the dark shadows. Left would bring me on to Commonwealth Avenue.

  Two shots exploded to my right made my decision for me and I eased down the alley.

  My skin prickled

  I dove ahead-

  tucked

  rolled

  came up in a defensive stance with the gun in front of me.

  I caught a silhouette against the night sky. Cosgrove was on the roof.

  "Lawson!" He hissed.

  I shot two more rounds at him but he ducked back and away.

  At the end of the alley a pile of overflowing garbage cans sat neatly stacked by the roof. I used them, scrambling to get to the top, and finally managing to do so.

  I didn’t like what I saw.

  Talya’s body lay in a crumpled heap near the middle. She wasn’t moving. Her gun lay ten feet away, useless.

  And Cosgrove stood perched on the lip of the roof some thirty feet away like a predatory hawk waiting for his prey.

  Simply smiling.

  I leveled the gun on him. She wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t Talya moving?

  Then I saw the blood.

  It made a small droplet trail across the roof. I could smell the copper. But it smelled slightly different from human blood.

  Cosgrove’s blood.

  I’d winged him with one of my rounds. Too bad it wasn’t his heart or he’d be dead now. Still, he’d be smarting from the wound and it would need some medical attention, especially if one of the splinters had lodged under the skin or internally.

  I kept the pistol on him and moved closer, but he didn’t seem particularly concerned.

  In fact, he began chuckling. "Two choices, Lawson. Save her or kill me. What will it be?"

  Save her? What had he done-but it came to me before I’d even finished the thought. Cosgrove had taken a lot of her blood. Almost too much. And right now she’d be hovering right near the brink of death. She needed an infusion. More to the point, she needed another vampire’s blood to survive. The antibodies in my blood would help her system fight off what Cosgrove had done to her.

  But it had to be done quickly.

  Unless I chose to just kill Cosgrove and be done with it.

  But I knew, just as that son of a bitch knew, that I wouldn’t do that. There was no way I was going to allow him to kill Simbik’s fiancee as well. I’d injured him and he needed an escape. Threatening Talya’s life would grant him that reprieve.

  I lowered the pistol. "Another time, Cosgrove."

  "Sooner than you think, Lawson." Then he leapt from the roof, vanishing from sight.

  I knelt in front of Talya and felt for her pulse. Thin and wiry. Definitely bad. I felt a vague heartbeat but her entire circulatory system was in limbo.

  I didn’t hesitate. I stripped my jacket off and rolled up my sleeves. One fingernail on a vampire is always longer than the others for just the reason I was about to use it for. I slit the veins on my left wrist and held the bleeding over Talya’s mouth. I watched as it dripped steadily into her mouth, staining her lips, her tongue.

  It hurt like hell.

  Her tongue came to life, as if realizing the blood flowing into her would prove her salvation, and fluttered against the open wounds of my wrist, seeking and suckling more of my essence.

  I had to be careful. If I gave too much it would hurt me. If I gave too little she’d still die.

  Her eyes opened slightly. She looked up me there on the dark roof. And there seemed to be a realization in her eyes. But I couldn’t imagine what it might have been.

  She may well have decided that she really had been outclassed. Unlike every other person she might have killed, Cosgrove simply didn’t register on the normal scale. Look what he’d done in the space of just a few short minutes. Not only had he evaded our ambush, he’d escaped from the club, brought her down with no discernible effort and drained her of a ton of blood.

  Not the kind of evening most people would recall fondly. And Talya least of all. But professionals are like that. They spend so much time training for what they have to do, that when they come up against someone or something better than they are, it hurts their pride.

  Hell, Cosgrove outclassed me and I was a goddamned vampire. Pride, hell, mine was shot.

  Time to stop the infusion. I could tell from my own pulse that if she took in too much more, I’d either pass out and die or else need to find a blood bank with a don’t ask don’t tell withdrawal policy.

  I withdrew my arm. Talya whimpered slightly, licking her lips to get the last bits of my blood.

  "Lawson."

  Her voice croaked out in a hoarse whisper. I’d expected it to sound like that, after all, she’d just drunk blood. It coats the vocal chords like velvet.

  I leaned close. "I’m here."

  "Did you-did we-?"

  I shook my head. "No. He got away."

  She frowned. "My fault."

  "No."

  "Shouldn’t have gone after him."

  I tried to quiet her down. "You need to rest now."

  "-tried to shoot him."

  I noticed the shell casings. She’d missed. And Cosgrove had disarmed her easily.

  "Yeah, I think you wounded him."

  She smiled. "No. You…did that."

  "It doesn’t matter."

  "Should have listened to you."

  "It can’t be helped Talya. Now, be quiet. Let your strength come back." I held my arm up to my lips and coated the wound with a hefty dose of my saliva, which has enormous coagulating qualities. The wound would slow first and then stop.

  Talya tried to lift herself off the roof but I pushed her back down. "Not yet. You’re still too weak. Wait a few more minutes."

  "Where-?"

  "Roof of the club."

  "What happened?"

  "Cosgrove took you down and then he took a lot of your blood."

  I thought she was going to puke then but she fought it back, choking down the sour bile that must have risen in her throat. "God."

  "You’ll be okay, now."

  "You…saved me?"

  "Well, it was either that or lose another friend."

  She smiled. "My hero."

  Despite the evening’s events, I smiled too. "You bet."

  "What about Cosgrove?"

  I shrugged. "He’ll be around. We’ll get him another time."

  And looking out into the night, I wished I felt more confident about it than it sounded. I had two strikes against me, and if Zero’s theory about the depth of the conspiracy panned out, there were already two outs in this ninth inning.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I smuggled Talya back to the hotel and got her into bed. She’d be out for a good twelve hours. Having your body ravaged by a nut job like Cosgrove meant a lot of rest. He’d damn near killed her.

  And in the process, I wondered what he’d done to me.

  I watched her sleep under the simple pale blue covers of
the bed from the cushiony armchair in the corner of the room. A single floor lamp sat beside me, casting vague yellow hues across the room, illuminating one side of her face.

  Only just managing to jaundice the deathly white pallor.

  But that came with the territory.

  In the movies, if you get bitten by a vampire you become one. Sometimes it takes three bites, but usually it’s one. As usual, Hollywood hasn’t got a clue.

  The process of vampirical metamorphosis, as we call it, takes a great deal of time and effort. It’s messy. It’s invasive. It’s a pain in the ass. The paperwork alone would drive anyone nuts.

  Granted, what Cosgrove had done to Talya constituted the first step, that of bleeding the intended vampire of most of their human blood. The next step involved a co-mingling of human and vampire blood to see if they accepted each other. Kind of like a marriage blood test, except we didn’t test for Rubella.

  If the blood types could coexist, the next step involved an apprenticeship of sorts where the petitioner attended history courses, severed all contact with former human friends and family, adopted the vampire lifestyle and got fed a steady diet of blood. At first the blood would be 25% vampire and 75% human, then gradually the percentages would change. Until finally, the apprentice would consume 100% vampire blood for a period of seven days. Thereafter the percentages reversed until it was 100% human blood.

  I’m not a scientific type so don’t ask me to get into the exact chemical compositions, white and red cell counts, and all that jazz. I’m just telling you what I read.

  It happens, needless to say, about as often as an Independent gets elected President of the United States.

  Talya made no noise as she rested. And even in her depleted state, she maintained a quiet discipline while she slept. Almost as if she could spring up at any time and go immediately on a job. I wondered how many times she’d done just that.

  Her history books would need rewriting after tonight. She’d had an encounter with one of the most highly-developed killing machines on the planet. And she’d survived.