Vampires Don't Cry: The Collection

by Ian Hall

  This certainly needed dealt with. At the highest level.

  “You will be responsible for sweeping in on voters as they reach the steps of each ballot center. You will deliver the following message; ‘Why not vote for Ronaldo Cusack? Nice man.’ That’s all. ‘Why not vote for Ronaldo Cusack? Nice man.’ We’ve prepared the message carefully. After you deliver the message with the vampire breath under their nose, you will whisk yourselves away.”

  He started to hand out individual sheets.

  “Memorize these schedules and addresses.”

  When mine arrived at my seat, the organization hit home harder.

  George Walters

  Group C1

  Individual Schedule

  Bread St. Community Center, 6 am – 10 am

  Glaiser Elementary School, 10 am – 2 pm

  Baldwin Middle School, 2 pm – 7 pm

  Below, maps of each ballot canter were printed, and routes between them, contact phone numbers, and emergency phone number. All very professional.

  I shrugged as I placed the sheet next to my recording phone.

  This would give us something to talk about that night.

  All the political hubbub of the day didn’t drive the memories of sex with Lyman out of my head, but it did bring me solidly back to earth. All things considered, our little romp had been put in its rightful place: something nice to think about, but only when there was nothing more interesting going on.

  When we met at the car, we exchanged nervous glances, but we didn’t speak of it, we didn’t kiss, we didn’t hold hands.

  When we got back to the hotel room, Lyman’s phone proved easy to link up to his laptop. We watched the whole ‘election’ thing twice, each of us relating his recording to the exact same event in our own classrooms that morning. It was like that show my dad use to watch: Mission Impossible; real espionage-y stuff.

  Then we sent it all to Howard Weeks.

  That set up an instant video conference. Man, I’ve never seen him look so pale.

  Once he’d seen it all, he just hung up, promising to call us back as soon as he’d consulted with his staff.

  “So what do we do?” I asked, all stirred up just thinking what those vamp bigwigs were trying to pull.

  “I want to try something first.” Finch stood up and grabbed Lyman by the arm. He stood, looking all mystified in the middle of the room. Finch took his hand firmly. “Watch,” she said to her audience.

  Incredibly, they both, like, vanished.

  “Wow!” I exclaimed, clapping my hands together like a little kid. Valérie looked as excited as me.

  “I take it we’re invisible?” Finch’s voice sounded clear, from right in front of me.

  “We?” Lyman said. I could hear the shock in his voice.

  Then I got a pretty good surprise of my own when a pair of invisible lips gently kissed mine. What a monkey!

  They came back to normal, laughing their heads off. It sure broke the ice from the serious political stuff.

  So, of course, Valérie and I tried it, and it worked. I was big-time tempted to unzip Lyman’s fly, but decided that I’d leave that ‘til later. Maybe.

  Then Valérie and Lyman tried it, then me and Finch. It worked every time. It sure felt strange, though, your whole body just simply didn’t exist anymore, hands everything, just not there.

  “So what’ve you got in mind, girl?” Valérie looked at Finch, who looked all puffed up with pride that her idea worked.

  “Well, we’ve got some digging to do, and I can hear Howard’s next assignment as clear as day... ‘Find out all you can on the higher-ups in the organization.’” She’d mimicked the old man’s voice so well, we were all laughing again. “So we’ve got two things to investigate; first, the high-ups in the University, find out who’s exactly in charge, and their positions in the structure. But we also need to find out the vampire tie in to this Ronaldo Cusack. We’ve got to find out if he’s a vampire, or if he’s not, and the extent of the leverage they have on him.”

  Valérie caught on quicker than I did. “And we can do it more efficiently if we have two teams who can go invisible.”

  “And much safer,” Finch added.

  “We don’t need to be invisible all the time, so there should be no problem as far as stamina is concerned.” Valérie paced the room. “Who’s going with whom?”

  Finch stepped in quick. “Lyman with me. He’s the most inexperienced, but I like his perspective on stuff.”

  I gave her a sideways glance, but she didn’t meet my eyes, and gave nothing away.

  “Okay,” Valérie said. “That gives us dibs on what mission we want. What do you fancy, Mandy?”

  I had no delay in answering. “I’m pretty pissed off with the school already. I’d love to get out of campus and take a look at Mr. Cusack.”

  “Excellent.” Valérie stood up, obviously in ‘Mission Control’ mode. “Finch, Lyman, get out of here, other room, plan your hike, meet back here when you’re done.”

  With a weird kind of longing, and maybe even a tint of jealousy, I watched them leave, all hustly and bustly and chattering with excitement. But I got brought back to earth when my school bag got dumped in my lap.

  Valérie got onto her laptop, and soon began hitting me with Cusack facts. “Okay, Mandy. Ronaldo Cusack is the Secretary of State right now, he used to be Assistant, but he succeeded when the last one died… only two months ago. Hmm. Two deaths in three months have gotten Cusack to this point. This guy’s having a meteoric rise in status. It seems that Arizona is only one state out of fifty that doesn’t have a post of Lieutenant Governor. So two months is not a lot of time to pack up a household. Maybe he’s not moved into the official residence, if there is one. It must be listed in the phone book or something. Let’s find out where he lives right now, where he works, and then Google the evening’s events to see if we can locate him tonight.”

  Valérie and I got down to business, and within an hour, had the whole plan worked out.

  Turns out Ronaldo Cusack was a quarter Latino, married with two kids, one boy and one girl, both around twenty; the perfect American couple. They lived in a small ranch house in a pretty nice neighborhood in the south-west corner, south of Cesar Chavez Park. I looked at it from Google Maps; two floors, a fair bit of green space, no garden walls, pool, tennis court.

  “Let’s go.” Valérie stood up, seemingly satisfied with the amount of intelligence we’d pulled together, and pretty quicky-slicky at that. “Change your clothes. We need dark top, dark jeans, dark shoes, preferably a hoodie.”

  When I got to the room, Finch and Lyman had already gone. I looked at the messy sheets, and gave a wry grin. Man. I had done a number on him last night, but to give him his due, Lyman played me pretty good, too.

  I gave my head a shake, and got stuck into my drawers, but of course, I had nothing I needed. I mean, we’d packed light for San Diego, and then came here. When I really thought about it, I traveled pretty light for a girl.

  I went back to Valérie’s room, and got quite a shock. Tight black jeans, very tight hoodie, and a belt that held most of her Căluşari roll.

  “Seems I’m not exactly equipped for night ninja work,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.” She slipped off her belt, and wrapped it up into the roll again. Man, I had to get me one of those. “We’ll stop at a Wal-Mart on the way. And a shoe store, of course.”

  “I never knew Wal-Mart sold ninja supplies?”

  Valérie gave the biggest grin I’d ever seen cross her face. “Oh you’d be very surprised.”

  The Invisible Man

  Finch had me wear all black. Seems I had all the right stuff, hoodie and all.

  “In the campus, we’ve got to be extra vigilant for security cameras.” She looked at a map of the campus as I dressed. The room still looked pretty messed up, as we’d left in a hurry that morning, but Finch didn’t say a word. “If they catch us actually going invisible, we’re done for, so we’ll remain
blank/invisible/whatever you want to call it, for long stretches, maybe even the whole thing.” She looked over just as I got into my pants. Typical. “If I get fatigued, I’ll tell you, we’ll rest up and carry on. If ever there’s a time to split up and leg it out quick, the code word is ‘luminous’.”

  “Luminous,” I repeated.

  She took my hand and ‘winked’ us both invisible.

  Wow.

  Taking someone’s hand while running is difficult at the best of times. But when you’re holding hands with someone that can run a million miles an hour, it proved downright hard to adjust to.

  We started with Finch chugging me along, but soon settled down to a reasonable jog.

  “How fast can you run, anyway?” I asked.

  “I clocked it once at just a shade over one-twenty-five.”

  Well, of course, I jogged the next part in silence.

  Over my face, I had one of Finch’s hoodie scarfy things, almost like a ski mask, but a thinner, stretchy material. I felt like one of the ninja turtles, and probably looked just as stupid. If anyone could have seen me, that is. I mean, if we did get caught on a camera, we needed to retain our actual identities.

  We reached the main administrative building with ease, and slipped through the unlocked front door. The security guard behind the desk never even looked up.

  Finch tugged my hand, and we slipped behind the desk, right behind the guy. I stood, looking dumb for a moment, then seeing a map of the floors on the wall, realized that she did have a reason for the diversion.

  One of the worst things about being invisible, actually, proved not being able to see each other. I did some stumbling on my own, not seeing where I put my feet, but I seemed to bump into her constantly. When Finch changed direction, the only notice I got was a pull on my hand.

  We took the stairs, carefully, then I got pulled to one side.

  “Camera,” she whispered.

  “I saw it.”

  We stood at the locked double doors for a moment, then a quiet click sounded, and one opened.

  “Never knew lock picking was in your portfolio,” I mused as we traversed the ensuing corridor.

  “Never knew vampire fucking was in yours.”

  I stopped in my tracks, but just for a second as Finch almost pulled my arm out of my shoulder. “Touché,” I mumbled as I got dragged down the passageway.

  “We’re looking for room 245,” Finch whispered.

  Turns out we didn’t need the room number, the door said it all.

  245. Dean’s Office.

  I saw the door handle turn, but it didn’t open.

  “Locked,” she said.

  “Figured.”

  This one took Finch a little longer, but it did open.

  “Look for cameras,” Finch said, once safely inside. She flipped the light switch.

  I gave the room a good looking over, but couldn’t see anything that even resembled a camera. “Nothing.”

  “Okay, we search the room.” Finch let go of my clammy hand and became visible again. “Well, look at you,” she said. “Or don’t, rather.”

  At first I didn’t get it, but Finch looked all around the area where I stood, obviously not actually seeing me. I stuck my hand up in front of my face, but nothing appeared.

  “Oh, fuck. Is this permanent?”

  Her face looked gravely serious. “I thought that when I let you go, you’d immediately become visible again. I have to physically tell my body to ‘materialize’, so maybe I have to tell yours, too.”

  “Then do it!” I snapped.

  “Wait!” she held her hands up, and I groped for them, panicking slightly. “No! Wait!”

  I gave a couple of deep breaths. “Why?”

  “Because it might be a timed thing, you know, it wears off after a few minutes. We have been under for quite some time.” She looked at her watch. “Over ten minutes.”

  “Okay, let’s get on with the room search. If we’ve tripped an alarm, or we’re being observed, we’ve only got minutes.” Finch looked around the room. “I’ll take the desk, you do the bookcase.”

  I wasn’t exactly happy with the situation, but I did see the prudence in experimenting with the longevity of the effect. I looked around. Apart from the Dean’s desk, the bookcase actually was the only other furniture in the room; kinda sparse for a megalomaniac.

  I went through the bookcase thoroughly, but nothing jumped out as worthwhile evidence.

  “Got it,” Finch chirped behind me.

  I turned, still invisible. “What?”

  Finch stood over the desk, flicking through a plain old notepad. “It’s a notebook. Like she’s taken notes at all the meetings. There’s dates, times, places, who attended.”

  “Like she’d been the secretary, and she’d taken minutes of meetings?”

  Finch looked up, looking around the room, searching for me. Her incredulous look said it all. “Gold dust.”

  “Motherload!”

  We fixed a light to shine on it, and I turned the pages while Finch took photos of every page with her phone’s camera.

  Faced with the possibility of discovery, and the fact we’d probably gotten much more than we’d even hoped for, we decided to get out of Dodge.

  “Wait,” I said, once she’d replaced the notebook, and relocked the drawer. “You’ve got to turn me off again. I can’t just go outside like this. I have to know if it’s reversible.”

  She nodded, and looked at her watch again. “You’ve been invisible for almost thirty minutes.”

  With my help, she found my hand, and ‘ping’, I went back to normal.

  “Wow.”

  “This is kinda important, but we can look into it later. I‘m putting you under again.”

  Ping. Invisible.

  “But at least this means we don’t have to hold frigging hands all the time.”

  “Yeah, but we’ll have to talk to each other, just to make sure we’re nearby.”

  “Sure.”

  We went back into the hallway, and I waited while Finch relocked the door. Then we whisper-chatted all the way down the staircase and outside. As I closed the door, I stopped to look back at the security guard. I smiled. We’d gotten away with it all.

  I turned. “Finch?”

  Nothing.

  “Finch.” Louder.

  “Finch!” I shouted.

  Shit.

  Dressed like two ninjas from a Jackie Chan movie, we arrived at Chandwick Park Road, South West, Phoenix. We parked the car half a mile from the start of the property and got out. Trees lined the road, and no street lights, leaving us in virtual darkness.

  “Do we do the invisibility now?” I asked, slightly nervous about the whole thing.

  “Probably best, we don’t know what we’ll come up against. There could be cameras anywhere along the road.”

  Valérie took my hand, yes, all very elementary school, I know, and we walked up the road, getting the feel of the area.

  “Looks more like a ranch than it did on the map,” I told her, looking at the white painted cattle fence.

  “Depends when the Google pictures were taken.”

  I nodded. It made sense; all the fencing looked new. “What’s the plan?”

  “Well, we take a look around, and we see if anyone’s inside.”

  “And do we go in?”

  “I’m pretty sure they’ll have a housekeeper or something. They wouldn’t have left this totally abandoned.”

  We soon came across wide metal white gates, and sure enough, cameras with red LED blinky lights on both sides.

  We jumped the fence at the side without undoing our hand grip, and worked our way through the extensive grass area to the front of the house. From what we saw through the ground floor windows, the inside had been furnished lavishly, but suitcases and large packing boxes were right there in plain view. Someone was either moving out or in.

  I jumped back from one window as a man crossed the room inside, pulling on Valérie’s arm.


  “We’re invisible, remember?” Valérie chided.

  Okay, so I wasn’t really used to it yet. “So how do we get inside?”

  “Watch.” I got pulled around to the front door.

  I felt her jump, and the camera above the door jerked upwards, jamming into the door. She rang the bell, made us visible, and let my hand go. Pushing me to one side, out of the doorway, she quickly lifted off her hood, and tucked her belt under the hoodie bottom. I quickly did likewise.

  Then she cut her arm real bad with her knife. Man, she meant business.

  The door opened, and the guy we’d seen stood in the doorway. “Can I help you?” Then he looked down at Valérie’s arm. “Oh, heavens, what happened?”

  “I was climbing over the fence.” Her face looked red, she’d forced tears, and held her arm looking like she was in serious danger of passing out. He hadn’t even looked at me once. “I just wanted a photograph of the house.” She panted. “Do you have a bandage? Anything to tie it with? She can drive me to the ER.”

  The guy switched into ‘help’ mode, waving us inside, muttering something about a first aid kit in the kitchen.

  But Valérie needed no other action. She ducked under his arm, and stood right in front of him.

  “What?”

  She breathed onto his face. “You don’t see us, you feel sleepy, you need a seat, no one came to the door, you saw nobody.”

  It took a second telling, but he just wandered off, and found a sofa to lie down on. Valérie took me by the hand, and we were invisible again.

  The house held nothing out of the ordinary. Desk drawers were empty of anything interesting, and the bedrooms were all tidy and easily distinguishable; parents, guest, son with his baseball junk on every wall, and daughter’s, with her pink out the wazoo.

  We’d just given the kids’ rooms a quicky glance, but I held Valérie’s hand back. “Wait.”

  Pulling her inside the pink palace, I took a better look, or should I say sniff. “Smell.”

  I heard Valérie sniffing the air. “Oh – well spotted. It’s vampire, all right.”

  “Let’s check the sheets.”

  We sniffed hard. “Just been laundered,” Valérie said.