The Polanski Brothers: Home of Eternal Rest
Dakota Cassidy
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2005 Dakota Cassidy
No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and email, without prior written permission from Changeling Press LLC.
ISBN 1-59596-173-9
Formats Available:
HTML, Adobe PDF,
MobiPocket, Microsoft Reader
Publisher:
Changeling Press LLC
PO Box 1561
Shepherdstown, WV 25443-1561
www.ChangelingPress.com
Editor: Sheri Ross Carucci
Cover Artist: Karen Fox
This e-book file contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language which some may find offensive and which is not appropriate for a young audience. Changeling Press E-Books are for sale to adults, only, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.
For Joy -- a wonderful fan and friend who never stops caring about the person I am and to Lacey -- because she’s an angel and the queen of a good plot and Michelle because she’s always there for this poor writer!
Chapter One
“Holy Mary, mother of all things undead! You are in some piss poor shape, buddy. I bet you stink!” Joy Polanski said to the partially deteriorated body on her embalming table as she wrinkled her nose. Of course she wouldn’t know that because she couldn’t smell.
Not a fucking thing. Not even a hint of a whiff.
So how were you supposed to find your lifemate if you were a vampire who couldn’t smell? It was rather ludicrous if she gave it much thought, but Joy didn’t think about it. It would make her crazier than she already was. She chose to remain deaf, dumb and scentless to her quandary, thank you. Who needed to smell your Prince Charming anyway? He’d just have to sniff her out.
Someday.
Soon -- please… Otherwise it was going to be a very long, sexless eternity.
No one had to remind Joy Polanski that she wasn’t like all of the rest of her little vampire friends. She got plenty of ribbing from her so-called family members at the parlor.
Funeral parlor that is.
Family owned and run since -- well, since the beginning of funeral parlors, she figured. It was an easy source of blood due to the fact that each body had to be drained of all fluids and, no, there was absolutely no sucking on cadavers. That would be disrespectful in Joy’s father’s opinion. Their clients were already dead and no small animals were hurt during the making of embalming fluid. Plus, it was kind of convenient to have a coffin at the ready if you needed a nap. However, vampires didn’t really sleep in coffins. Well, not Joy’s clan anyway.
Owning a funeral parlor was a good job for a vampire. Most of their duties were at night like wakes and such and it was when death occurred most prevalently in the small town of Easton. Population ten thousand and four, home of one of only three funeral homes in the entire area. Almost all of the cases they handled were people who’d died of natural causes.
Business was good. They’d built a solid reputation by fair practices and genuine concern for their clients. Everyone came to Polanski Brothers because of the special attention to detail and the family atmosphere her father took such pride in. And Joy -- who cared about the families of the people she embalmed.
“Hey, vampire. Who the hell is that?” Joy’s cousin Andrew poked his head around the corner of the embalming room and gagged. “Christ, he smells. Good thing you can’t, eh?” Embalming involved horrific smells and the need for plenty of ventilation, hence Joy was the logical, non-working nasal, choice.
Joy narrowed her eyes at his handsome frame and gave him the look of death -- or a facsimile thereof because of course, vampires were already dead. “Don’t you have a grave to dig?”
“Nope, got nuthin’ but time on my hands.” He smiled smugly. “So who is this guy?”
Joy grabbed the clipboard left with her by the medical examiners and scanned it. “Alan Perkins. Thirty-four. Found three weeks ago in a wooded area just off I-36. He’s been on ice. Coroners figure he was dead about three days before they found him. Cause of death… aw, shit!”
Andrew’s smile turned to a frown. “What’s wrong?”
“He killed himself. You don’t see that too often around here, at least not in the five years or so we’ve been in Easton. Crap, that really sucks. He was a young guy.” Joy lifted Alan’s arm and saw the wounds on his wrist.
“Not compared to you he wasn’t.”
“Shut up, Andrew! You’re older than me by a hundred years.”
“Maybe so, but at least I can smell. You need to stop hanging around dead people, Joy.”
Smelling was highly overrated in Joy’s opinion. At the very least she might have been given an extra “vampire sense” or two as compensation for her lack of scent. “Then that would rule out almost everyone I know, including you, butthead.” Joy flipped Andrew the bird and set about making a small incision to inject disinfectant into Alan’s body, his blood and gases having safely been removed. She always used great care when handling any body, thinking often what it might be like if it were her own family member. Of course, her family members didn’t die, not unless there was a rare case of garlic OD.
Joy clucked her tongue. Poor Alan. She wondered if he had children. He was pretty badly decomposed. It would take some work to make him presentable. Andrew left quietly, knowing Joy took this task very seriously and to heart.
“Well, Alan,” Joy said quietly, “I’ll make sure you’re fixed up just right, I promise.”
If she had a heart it would constrict, thinking about this man’s potential family, but she had a job to do and that was to embalm Alan. When his family came in to speak with her father, the funeral director at Polanskis, she’d discreetly ask for a picture of Alan in life and then she’d return him to a reproduction of himself in death. Or at the very least, try to.
Joy leaned over Alan and patted his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Alan. Did you have a family? Children?” She spent far too much time wondering about the lives of visitors to her embalming table and far too little time actually living one.
A life, that was.
Of course you couldn’t really “live” if you were undead, now could you, she mused to herself. “Okay, Alan, let’s do this.” Alan stared blankly back at her. “I know,” Joy chuckled, “I’m talking to dead people again.”
* * *
As the Perkins family gathered for the seven o’clock viewing, Joy smoothed her conservative black suit over her hips and went to greet Alan’s friends and family. Joy often took on the role of counselor, sympathetic shoulder and bathroom locator. As it turned out, Alan Perkins didn’t have any children or even a wife, but he had droves of friends and distant family members lining up to view him. And of course, there was his mother Adelaide, weeping softly as she had from the moment she was allowed to view his body. Joy swallowed hard and tears stung her eyes at the very thought of any one of her family members dying. Well, except maybe Darren… he was a sleaze bag bottom feeder who’d lived for centuries just to make Joy miserable and she still wouldn’t wish death on him. But to lose her father or mother -- one of her siblings? She couldn’t comprehend it even if they did tease her unmercifully about her smelling issue. Being a vampire had its troubles, but it beat the shit out of living for eighty years and croaking.
She caught a glimpse of a flower arrangement dangerously close to spilling over by the foyer and moved to prev
ent disaster. Joy inched her way through the throng of people in the waiting room, and came out the other side of the crowd to the marble foyer. As she made her way to the flowers her shoe slipped out from under her and she stumbled, only to be caught by a firm grip and a hard chest covered in a navy blue suit.
If blood ran through her veins she might have blushed at her clumsiness. Jesus, she was like a bull in a china shop!
“No, you’re not. The floor’s slippery,” a deep, gravelly voice said.
Joy looked up from the chest her face was so ungracefully mashed against and cocked her head. “I’m sorry?”
Oh… wow.
A very tall, rather redwood-tree-like man gazed down at her, his gray-blue eyes intent. “I said no, you’re not like a bull in a china shop.”
Had she said that out loud? No, she hadn’t said anything.
“Yes, you did,” he insisted. His gaze darkened and his grip on her arm tightened.
“No, I didn’t.” Now back the fuck off, Neanderthal man… or I’ll use my mighty vampire resources and kick your redwood ass.
His hard jaw clenched and Joy watched in fascination as the muscles tensed, rippling under his skin. “I am not a Neanderthal,” he muttered indignantly. “And I’d like to see you try.” He shook his dark brown head, obviously as confused as she was.
Joy squirmed out of his grip and brushed at her suit to straighten it. This was officially a “what the fuck” moment and she wanted out. “If you’ll excuse me, I have things to take care of.”
He didn’t move. The solid wall of his body remained firmly rooted in front of her. “Did you say vampire?” His deep voice raised an octave and his eyes darkened.
No again. She hadn’t said a word. Okay, he was freakin’ her out. Was he a vamp? Hah! As if she’d be able to tell with her bum nose anyway. “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, Mr. --”
“McBride. Detective Larkin McBride, and yes you do. You just wondered if I was a vampire too.”
Holy Amazing Kreskin! He was… he was reading her mind.
“Kreskin?”
“He’s a mind reader,” Joy offered stupidly, because really, why not help out the man who was reading her thoughts to read them properly? “You know,” she explained, “the guy who says he can read people’s minds?”
“Um, no. I don’t know who he is. What the hell is going on here anyway, Ms. --”
“Polanski. Joy, and I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I have people to see to, so if you’ll excuse me…”
“You did say vampire or think it or whatever the hell I heard -- it was clear as day.”
“Well, that’s just silly, Detective. Vampires aren’t real. What kind of a detective believes in vampires?” she mocked him.
He narrowed his thickly fringed eyes. “The kind that knows when someone is yanking his crank.”
As if you’d ever be so lucky as to have me yank said crank… Fuck! No thinking, Joy.
“You know what I mean, lady.”
Joy gave him her best bewildered look and smiled innocently. “No, Mr. McBride, I have no idea what you mean, but I do have a job to do. Now, move.” Joy kept a tight rein on her musings. “Please,” she said as an afterthought.
Detective Larkin McBride stepped out of her way, scowling at her. Joy swept past him, feeling the hot gaze of his stare on her back as she pushed through the crowd.
“Are you all right?”
Joy skidded to a halt as the second hand in the course of a day grabbed her arm. Her gaze wandered up the arm attached to the hand and she found a very pleasant face smiling down at her. Kind of pretty -- certainly not like the gruff detective. He was lean and blond -- most definitely not like the detective. He smiled at Joy, encouraging her to answer.
“I’m fine, thanks, really,” she replied, oddly mesmerized by his nose.
His very pretty nostrils flared. “Was he bothering you?” he asked as his nose twitched.
Joy removed her arm from his light grip. “Who?”
“That man that’s staring at us. The big one.” He nodded his head in Larkin McBride’s direction.
“No.” She shook her head. Not anymore, anyway. “No, everything is fine. Can I help you with something?”
His lean face split into a cool smile. “No, not yet.”
Um, okay. She’d had enough of bizarre encounters for tonight. “Well, then if you’ll excuse me,” she said tentatively.
He leaned forward just a bit and took a deep breath, then motioned for her to pass. “Of course,” he said regally and Joy took the opportunity to skedaddle.
She headed for the bathroom on shaky legs, forgetting the blond guy and shivering over the detective.
Detective? Larkin McBride. An Irish detective. How cliché.
“I heard that!” the gravelly voice said right behind her, following her down the hall and into her private offices.
Shit.
“Yeah, shit,” he responded sarcastically to her thought. “Now why don’t we go sit down and figure this out.” He wasn’t asking -- his tone of voice suggested he was demanding.
Joy stopped at the door to her office and turned to face him. His nostrils were flared and his square jaw set with determination. “There isn’t anything to figure out, Detective. You’re obviously losing your marbles.” So go clean up the scattered remains and leave me alone!
“If I were a weaker man, I might be offended by that statement. You aren’t the first to tell me I’m a little left of center. How about you shoot for original?”
Joy took a deep breath and tried to clear her mind of all the excess stuff that was obviously hanging around just waiting to be “heard” by the detective. Backing up against her office door, Joy gripped the doorknob. “Okay… original. How does go the fuck away strike you?” She was never rude to a patron at Polanski Brothers, but her temper was notoriously short and if the detective found out they really were vampires… it could be very bad for business. Might even get ugly. People would start showing up with crosses and garlic necklaces just like they had in the last town.
So Dark Ages.
His laughter was deep and rich as it erupted from his throat. “It strikes me as exceptionally rude for a funeral parlor hostess -- or whatever you are. I’m grieving, shouldn’t that concern you?”
Tilting her head up to eyeball him, Joy sucked in another breath. “I’m not a funeral parlor hostess. I’m an embalmer. I suck blood out of bodies and stitch them back up. Do you still wanna play now?” she dared him. “Oh, and sorry for your loss,” she said dryly.
“Well, if there’s any truth to your thoughts, that’s exactly what you do. Suck blood out of bodies, that is.”
How utterly last century. Shit and shit again!
Larkin crossed his arms over his chest and smirked. “So let’s go into your office and sit down. Maybe then you can explain why I can read your thoughts.”
“Look, Detective. I have nothing to explain. Vampires are for people who watch too much television. I’d highly recommend you spend less time channel surfing and more time putting your detective skills to good use elsewhere.” Asshole. Joy groaned. Damnit!
He was no longer smiling smugly. His eyes grew dark and his nostrils did that flaring thing again. Joy would bet he had a fantastic sense of smell.
“As a matter of fact I do, and I’m not an asshole, but I can be…” He let his words trail off as he reached behind her and opened her office door. Taking her by the elbow he led her into her office and pointed to a chair.
Joy flopped down in the one behind her desk and sucked in her cheeks, fighting to keep her mind blank. She’d “think” later.
Sitting in the chair facing her desk, Larkin leaned forward, placing his elbows on the smooth mahogany, his blue-gray eyes intense and probing. “So?”
“So what?”
“So what is this vampire business about?”
“Look, what are you, Baretta?”
“Who?”
Okay, so he didn’t
watch TV. “The cop on TV, remember? He had a bird?” Joy watched as his face remained blank. “Forget it. You’re looking for shadows that don’t exist. There are no vampires here.”
“I know what I heard, Ms. Polanski,” he said firmly. “You won’t admit it, but I heard you think the word vampire.”
“Maybe that’s because you’re just like one, Detective. Right now you’re sucking the life out of me.”
“No, that’s not it. You distinctly asked yourself if I was another vampire. What would make you draw that conclusion?”
Joy tried to remain calm. She shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly. “Just idle ramblings, I suppose.”
The corner of his mouth turned upward. “So you admit that I did read your thoughts?”
Joy shook her head stubbornly because what choice did she really have? “No. I’m just going to play nice with you because you’re a whack-job and my life could be in danger. How do I even know you’re a cop? Maybe you’re some deranged lunatic?”
His wide hand dug in the pocket on the inside of his jacket. “Want me to show you my shiny badge?”
Want me to show you my shiny fangs? Oh! Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Joy remained silent, biting the inside of her lip as they stared at one another.
A knock on her door startled them both. Her cousin Cathy popped her head in. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Joy, but Mrs. Perkins is inconsolable right now. Your dad can’t seem to get her to leave the casket and from the looks of it, she really needs some rest. This is your specialty.”
“Okay, Cathy. Tell Daddy I’ll be right there. Would you grab a cool cloth and some water on your way back?”
Cathy smiled as she cast a quick, questioning glance at Larkin McBride. “You got it.” Cathy closed the door quietly.
A moment of thick silence passed before Joy said, “As you can see, I’m needed, Detective.” Joy rose quickly and zipped around her desk with Larkin McBride hot on her heels.
The click of her shoes on the marble tile seemed excruciatingly loud as she rushed to find Mrs. Perkins in the viewing room, sobbing in front of Alan’s casket. Joy’s father Edgar stood off to the side with mournful eyes. He wasn’t very good at this and he was sharing his discomfort and gratitude as he helplessly glanced at Joy.
The Polanski Brothers: Home of Eternal Rest Page 1