Jackson gave me a hard look, getting my meaning.
Like Mimi, Jackson was a faker. She had been an example of the undead blending in with the living. Most of us do the same, although not to the extent Mimi had. Jackson, on the other hand, was the lone example of the living blending in with the undead.
We had met only a couple months earlier. I’d been trying to drink from a Ramsgate College wrestler—Dave I think his name was—in an alley. Then my would-be victim’s other varsity team friends had shown up.
We become stronger with age, and having only been Nightfallen for three years, I was still a relatively new. Against the five of them, men that knew how to leverage their strength on a body, I hadn’t a chance. As I’d bared fangs and tried to slash at them with my clawed fingers, they’d been able to hold me down.
But then Jackson had showed up, pulled his gun on them, and scared them off. I’d thought it strange, a pistol-packing Nightfallen, much less one willing to let the boys that had just attacked me and realized I was a vampire live. Gratitude and attraction can make a woman overlook a lot, though.
Jackson’s family and friends thought he died from wounds received in Afghanistan. The reality was that he’d been reassigned from being a soldier to being a spy, a mix of Defense Department genetic modification and magic allowing him to do a passable job masking what he really was from us.
Since then, we’d basically become hired guns for Echo Valley’s Undead American community, the better for Jackson to interact and get intel. It’s how we’d come to find ourselves here tonight, called in as consulting detectives.
Mansfield still in earshot, Jackson let my comment go. “You don’t think a bunch of sorority chicks did this?” he asked.
“You never know. Girls are catty. Maybe they were open-minded about the whole Nightfallen thing, but killed her only because she stole someone’s boyfriend,” I teased.
Jackson walked around the room, looked in some drawers. “All modern stuff. No obvious mementoes from when she’d been alive, or the years in between.” From what Mansfield had told us, she’d become Nightfallen around Prohibition. It explained her party girl tendencies.
Jackson opened the curtains and looked to the street below. Neither of our reflections appeared in the window. “The other houses are pretty well screened by trees. Probably no use in asking them if they’ve seen anything.”
“That’s for the best anyway,” I said. The last thing we wanted was a murder getting reported to the authorities. Especially when any tests of the body would show it had been dead for nearly a century.
We left Mimi’s room to speak to Mansfield again. He was a little too thin, in the way that every guy model in a clothes catalog is these days. His combed back hair, slim-tailored suit, and Buddy Holly glasses captured what a Millennial executive would look like, if our generation actually had any job prospects. He was more like a decorative object than a tool capable of doing anything constructive. As the cliché went, lover rather than a fighter. If he’d been otherwise, he wouldn’t have needed us.
“Anybody else reside in the house? Other Nightfallen, or human slaves? I see you’ve got a lot of room here,” I said. It was an old Victorian, converted to be apartments.
“No, it was just us. She’d bought the building last semester. We were still fixing it up. The plan was to rent out rooms to students.”
“And reduce them to Renfields, right?” I asked. “I’d think you could set up an honest-to-goodness buffet here.”
Mansfield shook his head. “No, that wasn’t the plan at all. She just wanted friends.”
“Friends? Yeah, right,” Jackson said.
“It’s true. Town after town, she always tried to recreate that college feel: everything new and exciting, so much hope for the future, your friends always just down the hall. She could only take it so far, though. It was too risky for her living in the sorority house or a dorm. The idea of the apartments was to build something with a similar feel, but where she’d be safe,” Mansfield said.
“Cool plan, but wouldn’t the tenants start getting suspicious when some of them started becoming anemic?” I asked.
“Wasn’t going to happen. We’ve been drinking nothing but deer and pig blood since she made me, she was so scared about her human friends finding out.”
“When did you find the body?” Jackson asked.
“I woke up just after sundown,” he said, the air around him blue with cigarette smoke. “As I came up from the basement, I saw the back door’s lock had been broken. I called for her, and not hearing anything, I ran upstairs to her bedroom. I found her … like that.”
“The basement? You two didn’t sleep together?” Jackson asked.
“Mimi was something of a traditionalist,” Mansfield explained. “We kept separate beds. Her the master bedroom, me a box in the basement.”
“That sleeping arrangement probably saved you,” I said.
He stared at the floor as he spoke. “I know. It makes me feel weird thinking about that. It’s a strange sensation near my heart. I think it’s guilt. It’s hard to tell. I’m pretty sure I could kill a school bus full of children and not feel anything, but it hurts that I survived and she didn’t.”
It’s good that Mansfield wasn’t looking at us. He missed the look of disgust that for a second washed over Jackson’s face. “The blood when you found her. Was it dry?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And when was the last time you saw her animate?”
“Just before dawn this morning. We kissed good-day,” Mansfield said. We asked him a few more questions and were about to leave when Mansfield asked, “Can you take care of her body? I just … can’t do it.”
“Sure,” I said. “We’re full-service.”
2
Kiln Burial
“No way around it. Whoever killed her did it during the day,” Jackson said, carrying Mimi’s body into the abandoned factory.
“Honest-to-goodness Van Helsings,” I marveled. “Outside of fiction, there haven’t been many hunters.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re good at keeping a low-profile, and when we’re not, we’re good at killing witnesses,” I said.
Like industry in the rest of the county, it was also dead in our cold little corner of Pennsylvania. The mountains ringing Echo Valley once were laced with silenced coalmines and steel foundries. A few generations earlier, it hadn’t been unusual for fathers to work up in these mountains, to pay for their children to attend Ramsgate College in town.
All those industries were gone now. Still, idle furnaces, sleeping like dormant volcanoes, sure did come in handy when you had to incinerate a body. In one such factory’s dead heart, we found an old smelting furnace and stuffed Mimi into it.
We had stopped on the way at Jackson’s house to pick up supplies. “I’m sure our employer had imagined a more dignified burial,” I said as I watched Jackson douse the corpse’s clothes with his homemade napalm–shaved pieces of bar soap soaked in gasoline.
“Then he should have been man enough to do it himself,” Jackson said, setting the jerrycan aside, then from a plastic container began filling Mimi’s mouth with black and silver powder.
“You know, I could have whipped us up some sulfuric or hydrochloric acid. I’ve done it before,” I’d said.
“Don’t try to impress me. I already know about all the advanced placement science courses you took before you died,” he said, pulling out a piece of hobby fuse.
“There wouldn’t be any light my way. More cloak-and-dagger. That’s what you’re supposed to be about, right?”
“We’re deep enough in the factory that no one will see. If any one does, who cares? There won’t be anything to identify soon enough.” With that, he took the fuse and shoved it into the corpse’s mouth. Pulling out a silver Zippo, he lit it.
Aluminum dust from an Etch-a-Sketch and rust sanded off of junkyard cars, with some magnesium shavings from a survivalist fire starter: Jackson’s ther
mite recipe was simple, but effective.
The thermite ignited in the body’s mouth, so brightly white I could see the jawbone silhouetted through her skin. A second later, it burned through her face completely. Then it caught the homebrewed napalm Jackson had spilled on her, and the rest of the corpse caught fire in an orange flash. Even as he kicked closed the furnace’s door, I could feel the heat against my face and body, pleasant given the fact I generated no warmth myself.
“The ash that’s left won’t even be recognizable as bone without a microscope,” Jackson said, the fire’s orange rays playing across his face like a summer sunset through the furnace door’s grating.
“That military training talking? I thought crematory ovens were more a German army than a U.S. army thing,” I said, turning up my southern accent to add some sweetness to my snark.
“You know, that joke would be timely if World War II hadn’t ended seventy or so years ago,” Jackson said. “And actually, I’ve seen what fuel-oil explosives and white phosphorous can do to a human being. Gave me the idea.”
“Maybe we can use it to dispose of the hunters’ bodies, once we find them,” I said.
“I’d rather not kill them if we can help it.”
“Whoever is doing it knows Nightfallen are real. Mimi’s death wasn’t a random killing, but a mission. They’re not going to stop unless they’re forced to,” I said.
“Maybe their mission is over. One and done.”
“You heard what Mansfield said. She was making a point not to hurt anybody precisely so she could keep being a party girl forever. It’d probably be hard to find one of us that was more harmless. Mimi wasn’t dangerous enough to justify a lone killing. No, whoever it is, this was just the first.”
“We could find them and threaten them,” Jackson said. He pulled back his black coat, revealing his 1911 in its holster. “If fangs don’t convince them, waving a .45 in front of their face might.”
I guess war has a brutal honesty to it. You’re there to kill, and everyone knows it. Spying is synonymous with lying, or so movies led me to believe. Jackson was great at killing, but needed help with being a liar.
He had too much of a conscience to be a good spy in the daylight world, much less out here with us. However morally warping pretending to be a drug dealer or an arms smuggler was, it didn’t involve drinking blood, worshipping the devil, or hypnotizing girls so they’d be easier to sexually assault.
“Mansfield is going to want to see bodies when we’re done. He’s going to want to see proof,” I said.
“If somebody has to die, maybe it doesn’t have to be the living. We reverse the equation and get rid of Mansfield.”
“If the guy that hires us disappears, there are going to be questions from powerful Nightfallen. Never mind your cover getting blown. You’ll get our heads ripped off.”
He watched the corpse burn. I got the feeling that he’d like to do the same not just to all my kind, but also those that had dropped him out here, in the night. He was supposed to learn about us monsters to better wage war against them. And we all know that old saying about becoming the monster you fight.
3
Crashing The Party
It was before eleven when Jackson and I drove past the brightly lit, Southern plantation manor that was the Alpha Psi house. Its two stories of pillars and patio looked warm and inviting, but its doors were tightly closed. For all the light, there wasn’t much life inside.
By contrast, the house next door was a frat. Dark, it looked like the Section 8 version of the Alpha Psi house. People crowded outside by the front, smoking. Even in Jackson’s jeep, you could feel the music’s bass rumble.
“I’d hoped the sorority would be having a party,” Jackson said.
“They don’t want their nice place trashed. That’s what frats are for. I bet some of Mimi’s human acquaintances are at the party next door.”
He parked us a couple blocks down the street, and was getting out of the jeep.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked.
“I told you, our next move should be to find and talk to her sorority pals,” Jackson said.
“You can’t go in there.”
“Sure I can. Unlike you, I don’t have to be invited in.”
“Come on, look at you,” I said.
“What, my clothes? I’ll ditch the hat.”
“No, I mean, look at you,” I said. Jackson was about 6’2”, dressed in a black pea coat, Army baseball cap, jeans, and polished black boots. Not exactly what the kids were wearing these days. And at 29, his face was handsome but hadn’t any of the boyish smoothness you still saw on most college guys. “You’re too old. You’ll get everybody’s radar up.”
“You look like you’re 16 going on 12. You going to pretend you’re one of the girls’ kid sisters?”
“The fraternity brothers will love it.”
“And your black leather coat and lace collar too.”
“It’s a choker. And yes, I can get more info faster without you. Basic evolutionary psychology. They’ll be happy to see another girl they think they can bang. An outsider male is just another competitor for their booze and women.” He looked at me, dubious. “I promise not to kill anybody,” I added.
“Fine. Fifteen minutes.”
I didn’t even have to hit my headlights—make my eyes go hypnotic—to get in. As I approached the group of smokers, one guy asked, “Hey, want a beer?”
I smiled. “That sounds nice.” He was confident with a winning smile, and his skin seemed to glow with the touch of a dozen women. That was just the surface—beyond the visible spectrum, I could also see his life’s energy radiating in waves off him. I felt a hunger pang.
He escorted me in. His arm around me, I let him guide me through the crowd. It was dark, packed with bodies that shined gloriously to me. Fruit just dying to be picked. In everyone’s hand, bottles of cheap beer. The place had its own humidity, all these bodies moving against one another. From another room, a stereo was grinding loudly, and I could feel its beat vibrating in my dead heart.
The beer coolers had been situated upstairs where it was a little quieter and less crowded. He took a long swig from his while I politely held mine. Drinking it—or anything other than blood—would have made me throw up.
“What’s your name?”
“Tiffany,” I lied.
“I’m Ron.”
“Nice to meet you. Help a girl out, will you?” I asked, not wanting to waste more time learning about him. “I’m supposed to meet my older cousin, but I got in late. She’s not at the Alpha Psi house or answering her phone. Do you know Mimi Breck or if any of her sorority sisters are around?”
“Sure, I know Mimi. Haven’t seen her tonight, though. She’s your cousin you said?” Ron asked, so casually I was reasonably certain he had nothing to do with her death.
“Yeah. I’m trying to decide if I want to attend Ramsgate with her. When was the last time you saw her?”
“Basketball game earlier this week. She’s a fan.”
“Has she been doing okay? Any problems? People following her?” I asked. Ron looked at me warily, the conversation suddenly too real world. “It’s just that she’s seemed a little down in her emails, and I wanted to make sure she’s okay.” I ran my fingers over my choker playfully, a signal to make him think I was interested, softening my questions.
He wasn’t drunk but he’d definitely had a few. Enough so that whatever reluctance he might have had giving up details on Mimi wasn’t too hard to overcome.
“Nothing stalker-ish, if that’s what you mean,” Ron said. “I did hear that she’d been having a hard go of it inside the sorority house. Mimi’d done something to piss off the chapter vice president. A lot of female drama. She said something about it at the game, but I wasn’t paying too much attention.”
“Doesn’t sound that different from high school,” I said, hoping I wasn’t overselling the playfulness. “What’s the chapter veep’s name anyway? So I kn
ow not to get on her bad side.”
“Emily Lin,” Ron said. “Haven’t seen her around tonight, though.”
I was about to disengage from him and report back to Jackson. It didn’t seem too likely a popular girl would be the one driving a stake through her sorority sister’s heart, but right now she was the only person we knew about that might have a motive.
He grabbed my arm as I’d turned from him.
“Hey, stick around.” His tone was light, but his grip was firm. “Party just started. Mimi will probably show up soon. She doesn’t usually miss these.”
So charming, so assertive, such a smooth talker, giving me a reason to stay. The only reason it didn’t work was because I thought of him as food. That offended me, though: that if I was still a living girl, I’d have fallen for his bullshit. It made me want to hurt him.
Too many witnesses to claw his eyes out, and it’s not like I needed the grief of disposing of another body. But even through my leather jacket, I could feel the warmth of his blood against my arm. This close to him, I could see it pumping through his circulatory system. Then there was the smell of him—my mouth watered like it had during Thanksgiving at my grandparents’, in another life.
Jackson was able to keep us with a steady supply of government-provided blood packets. They were cold, though, the difference between a Delmonico served perfectly, and leftovers from the fridge.
I looked at my watch—my fifteen minutes was almost up.
Screw it. This wouldn’t take long.
“Oh, okay,” I said. “Hey, it’s kind of loud in here. Do you have your own room?”
No hesitation—he’d had his share of DTF girls. “It’s upstairs.”
“Leave the lights off,” I said as he kicked the door closed behind us, and pushed me onto the bed. I stabbed my tongue into his mouth as he groped my breasts.
In the dark, excited as he was, he was almost blinding to me. I broke off the kiss, and gently went for his neck, but he didn’t want that, grabbing me by the hair firmly, and he unzipped my pants. Adorable how he thought he was the predator here.
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