by Roger Keller
Heather looked over the keys. “He had some kind of Japanese truck. Good, we can haul him out of here with it. I don’t want his body parts leaking in my American Chevy.”
We wrapped the pieces of Aaron’s body in hotel blankets and loaded him into his Nissan Titan. I pocketed his fangs without thinking…and I don’t remember what happened to them. Misty brought down Heather’s Pelican case and the rest of our stuff. I kept the backpack and Marcello’s book close.
Heather made a face at Aaron’s truck. “Ugh, I even hate the color. So, Mike.” I held up a mini bottle of schnapps and downed it. “OK, Mike is too fucked up to drive. Misty you’re up.” Heather tossed the keys to her.
Misty caught the keys, her eyes never leaving Heather’s. “Um, OK,” she said. “I never drove a truck before.”
“You’ll learn,” Heather said.
Misty opened the door and leapt up into the driver’s seat. After she figured out how to shift an automatic transmission, we were our way.
We found a battered green dumpster a few blocks away from the Hamilton. The street was deserted, nothing but dark warehouses and small boarded up shops. Half the streetlights were burned out. There was one family owned hardware store, still in business, holding out against the big chains.
We disposed of Aaron in the dumpster, which seemed appropriate. Heather overdid it with the accelerant. The fire lit up the street just in time to catch the attention of a passing car.
“Oh shit,” Heather said.
The official-looking, beige Chevy screeched to a stop. A uniformed, town cop stepped out. He walked up to us slowly, hand on his sidearm. His mouth was wide open.
“Just what the hell is going on here?” he said. “So, you just thought you’d-”
Heather sighed and held her hand over the cop’s head. He ducked and took a step back.
“There’s really no need for that miss,” he said, avoiding Heather’s eyes.
“What?” Heather said.
“We don’t concern ourselves with your kind of business.” He played with his collar. A gold cross was pinned in place of his rank. “I thought you were some kids up to no good.” He looked at Misty. Her eyes flashed orange. “No, you ain’t kids.”
“You know about us?” Misty said.
“We sort of have a arrangement.” The city cop looked at the burning dumpster and swallowed hard. “As long as what you just threw in there ain’t human, it ain’t my problem.”
“Well, he wasn’t human,” Heather said. “So you can like, fuck off now.”
“Who was he?” the cop said, “if you don’t mind me askin’.”
“He was, that dick that works the front desk at the Hamilton,” Heather said. “Well, he used to work there.”
The cop nodded. “Guess he finally bit off more than he could chew.”
“You knew about him,” Misty said, “what he was like?”
“He didn’t bother anyone local, so…” The cop trailed off, looking ashamed.
“That’s pretty messed up,” Misty said.
“Maybe we should throw this coward in the dumpster too,” Heather said.
“I’m up for it.” I took out one of Heather’s Berettas.
The cop shrank back. He didn’t even bother drawing his gun on me. Heather appeared behind him, cutting off his escape.
“It ain’t me you need to be worrying about,” he said. “Aaron had a lot of friends.”
“I can’t wait to meet them.” Heather tapped her claws on his shoulders and whispered into his ear. “I don’t feel like killing you tonight. So, now you owe me.”
“OK, fine.” The cop squirmed loose as soon as Heather let up on her grip.
“Now disappear from my sight, pig.” Heather pushed him along with her boot.
*****
I sensed Riverton’s vampire community before Heather and Misty did. The only thing I could actually see was the city cop running like hell. I half expected him to shed his uniform like a retreating soldier who just heard his capital had been overrun.
“So, what’s it like being royalty?” Heather noticed them a second later.
Misty spun in a circle. I adjusted the backpack. Marcello’s book seemed to weigh it down like a stone.
“She’s right there.” I pointed at the burning dumpster. A woman in a long raincoat stood way too close to the flames. She had dark skin and long brown hair, which gave her an exotic look, for a Midwestern vampire. It seemed like she’d stepped out of a 1970’s fashion shoot in Monaco.
“She isn’t the only one.” I pointed at her coven, who were hanging back in the shadows, everywhere.
Heather kept her back to the woman, arms crossed, unimpressed. Her claws grew reflexively.
“What’s your first name?” Heather said. “Like, I ain’t calling you duchess, you know. That’s too lame.”
“No one calls me that, my dear,” she said. “My brother was the Duke, after all. I am Dominique.”
“I’m Heather.” She turned to face Dominique. “That’s Misty and Mike.”
Dominique looked me over. Her almond eyes narrowed. “You two like to live dangerously, I see.”
“That’s the only way to live,” Heather said.
“I take it that my innkeeper is no more,” Dominique said.
“So he was yours, huh?” Heather said. “Guess that makes you responsible for him.”
“Hardly,” Dominique said. “My apologies if Aaron did you wrong. I have so many who act on my behalf. Even I can’t keep track of them all.”
“I guess it’s nobody’s fault then,” Heather said.
They glared at each while I tried to count the others that were too scared or too smart to show themselves. Dominique broke the stand-off by looking down the street at the red horizon line.
“We appear to be out of time,” Dominique said.
“Yeah, it happens. The night gets away from you sometimes.” Heather held up her hands and retracted her claws. “I’m not worried. We’ll find a place to sleep and Mike can watch over us, or maybe not. Maybe he gets bored and well, who knows what might happen?”
“You shouldn’t say such things,” Dominique said, her voice quavering. “It is one thing to employ such a person, but there is-”
“Ugh, this shit is getting old,” Heather said. “Do you like, have some kind of point you’re trying to get to?” Heather looked down at her dive watch.
“Of course,” Dominique said. “I’d like to get to know you better, Heather. I invite you to spend the day at my residence.”
“Well,” Heather said, “we were going to sleep in the hotel today. You know, since it’s empty now and no decent, local human would ever go there.”
“I don’t wanna sleep there,” Misty said.
Heather ignored her. “I guess we could spend the day with you guys.”
I almost swore out loud. Sure, let’s waste some more time with another crazy-weird detour. Instead, I fished another mini bottle out of my army jacket. Dominique regarded me warily.
“I stay by the river, when I’m in town.” Dominique fast-walked up to Heather and held out a business card. “My address is on the back. We’ll be expecting you.”
*****
“Head for the hotel,” I said to Misty.
“Why?” Misty drove over a concrete divider and narrowly missed a stoplight.
I braced myself, glad the streets of Riverton were deserted.
“We’re going to get my truck,” Heather said “I don’t want to leave it at that crappy, creepy hotel while I’m asleep.”
“Should we tell Dominique about the book?” Misty said.
“Fuck no,” Heather said. “I just want to rest. Dominique invited us over. So, she can’t really do anything to us. It’s like, some kind of rule the elders have.”
Misty parked in the Hamilton’s unloading zone. Heather found a box of tissues and handed it to her.
“Wipe down everything we touched, then meet us in the garage,” Heather said.
I
left Misty to it and followed Heather.
“You need to taper off,” Heather said.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “We should get in your truck and drive the fuck outta this town. We could just sleep in a rest area.”
“Don’t you want to see Dominique’s house?” Heather put her arm around me as we walked through the eerily clean parking garage.
“Not really,” I said.
“You just need to sleep it off,” Heather said. “You’re strung out.”
“I bet it’ll be really easy to sleep in a vampire’s house,” I said.
“Well, you might be sleeping in the truck,” she said, “’cause Dominique and her coven will probably be too scared to let you through her front door.”
“Great,” I said.
Heather put her arms around me. I looked into her jade eyes. It was impossible not to feel something.
“You need to lighten up,” she said.
I kissed her. Her cool lips jolted me.
“What were you going to tell me?” she said.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“In Marcello’s house, before my exorcism, you wanted to tell me something.” Heather smiled wickedly.
“Maybe I’ll tell you what it was, sometime,” I said.
“Fucker.” She pushed me playfully and laughed. “We’re going to talk about it when we get home.”
“Speaking of Marcello,” I said, “he expects us by the end of the week.”
“Yeah, yeah, we got plenty of time,” she said.
“When this is over we need a break,” I said.
*****
Dominique’s vacation home was located in Riverton’s historic warehouse and grain elevator district. Unlike my hometown, most of these businesses were still active. They didn’t actually manufacture anything there, but they did make sure the supply of cheap corn related products kept flowing. This was the first time I’d seen regular humans in Riverton, besides the nosy city cop. Heather’s Suburban fit right in with all the first shift workers rolling toward another pointless workday in their jacked-up custom pick-ups.
Heather pulled up to a guard shack next to fenced off parking lot. A bored security guard put down a car magazine, heaved himself out of his chair, and waddled over.
Heather rolled the window down and leaned out. She was already sun-fatigued and surly. “I’m Heather. Were like, on the list.”
The guard hung back and tapped a pen on his clipboard. He’d worked for Dominique long enough to be worried.
“Yes ma’am,” he said, desperate go get rid of us. He kept looking at the sun that clearly wasn’t rising fast enough. “Watch the gate, ma’am.”
Heather parked over two spaces next to a red Mercedes AMG. The lot had dozens of high end, European sports cars and a few restored classic American muscle cars. I looked in the back seat. Misty was out like a light and Heather wasn’t far behind.
“Come on,” I pointed at Dominique’s cinderblock and steel warehouse. Anyone driving past Dominique’s place would have just seen a drab building, where expensive cars seemed to be waiting to have work done.
I carried Misty and our gear up to the entrance. Heather slumped against the steel door and clicked her claws on the fresh paint.
“Come in.” Dominique’s voice crackled through an intercom.
The door swung open and we staggered into the darkness, armed to the teeth.
*****
A silver haired man, wearing what I guessed was some kind of butler’s uniform, waited in the hall.
“Madam DeVoss has retired for the day,” he said in a faded Southern accent. “I regret to inform you however, that we only have one available room.”
“Sure that’s fine,” I said, trying to hold up Misty and my backpack at the same time.
“This way,” he said.
We followed the butler to a room on the first floor. Dominique’s place couldn’t have been more different than Lee’s. Everything was perfectly ordered, with no dust to be found anywhere. The paintings on her walls were expensive and depicted mostly normal things like landscapes and European cafe’s. The butler shuffled down a red-carpeted, door lined hallway.
“Your room.” The butler opened a door to our left.
We staggered awkwardly into the lavishly decorated room. I glanced back at the door. The butler closed it silently behind him as he left.
“The door doesn’t lock,” I said, as I dumped Misty and my backpack on the bed. Misty mumbled something, rolled onto the floor with a thud, and disappeared under the bed.
“It doesn’t matter,” Heather said. “We should be safe. But, um, help me with this.”
We pushed a shockingly heavy dresser in front of the door.
“There, if they like, wanna get in they’ll have to make a lot of noise,” Heather said.
Heather stumbled over to the bed and fell face down on the puffy floral print bedspread. I sat down next to her and took stock of my supplies. I had a couple of mini-bottles left, three handguns and the Buck knife. My phone lit up, beeped a low battery warning and died.
“Dominique’s house is kinda lame so far,” Heather said into a pile of pillows. “She has like, one lazy human guarding her cars. I didn’t see any weapons.”
“Maybe she doesn’t need any,” I said.
“Everybody needs some kind of weapon,” she said.
“We’ll know soon enough,” I said.
I pulled my backpack over and peeked inside. Marcello’s book was still there. I lay down next to Heather, closed my eyes for a second and I was gone.
*****
I found myself walking down a deserted suburban street. I wore tactical gear and lugged a dozen weapons that should have weighed me down. The streetlights were out and everything was tinted green, as if I was wearing night vision goggles. Late model, government issue, four door sedans sat abandoned, their sheet metal uni-frames riddled with bullets. I never liked the new cop cars. I guess I’ll always miss the old Crown Vics. Equipment and guns littered the street. There were bodies too, some in gray pullovers, others in paramilitary gear. The tail section of a helicopter stuck out of a burning pre-fab house. I swept the cars with an M-249 machine gun, wondering where the hell Heather got something that modern. The barrel was hot enough to cook with.
“Sir, we need back up.” A panicked voice came from one of the cars.
“You guys blew it,” I said, and walked toward a crippled Dodge Charger.
A bald man in a black suit looked up from his radio. I let the machine gun hang from it’s sling and pulled a hand grenade loose from my tactical vest. “Wait.” The suit screamed when I tossed the grenade through his open window into the back seat. I walked away slow for a second, then realized how stupid that was and ran, way faster than I should have been able to. The car blew up a second later. I felt the heat, but didn’t look back.
The street ahead ended with a roundabout. “I hate these fucking things,” I said under my breath. A black Chevy Tahoe waited on the small grassy hill in the center of the roundabout. It looked like they’d tried to drive right over the middle and gotten stuck on the landscaping rocks.
“You guys didn’t get far,” I said.
I used the machine gun to knock on the Suburban’s window. A brunette woman in BDU pants and an official government pullover looked up from the steering wheel. Blood trickled down her forehead.
“The airbag didn’t deploy,” she said as she rolled the window down
“Where?” I said.
“We need help,” she said. “She might be coming back. I think Darryl wounded her.”
“Where is she?” I showed her the machine gun again.
“I just said, I-” she said.
“I don’t mean Heather.” I reached in and grabbed her curly hair. “The other one, the short one. Where?”
“In the back,” she said. “Just let me go. I can get you a deal. Amnesty.”
“Bullshit.” I smashed her head into the wheel a few times before
I pulled her through the open window. “I’ve seen your deals. Show me where Misty is.”
“Back here.” The woman limped ahead of me, sobbing.
“What the hell were you fuckers thinking?” I said.
“The director didn’t give us much intel.” She sniffed and wiped her nose. “We thought you were some kind of extremist religious group. I had no idea. What the fuck are you people?”
“Yeah, that director really fucked you.” Growing fangs sliced into my lips. “I might let you go. Maybe you’ll go kill him. He used you guys like some crazy French general on the Western Front.” Blood that wasn’t mine trickled out of my mouth and down my chin.
The government woman pushed the button on her key-fob a dozen times before the hatch unlocked. She drew her Glock, but never got the chance to use it.
“Bitch.” Misty sprung out like a cheetah and tackled the woman.
“Guess you’re not going to see the director after all,” I said.
Misty lost it. Her red claws sliced the government woman to the bone. Broken handcuffs clinked on Misty’s wrists while she worked. I looked down at my own claws and laughed.
*****
I woke up back in Dominique’s house. Heather slept next to me, lurking under a pile of pillows and blankets. I reached over and patted a lump that was probably her head.
“I think I’m getting used to the dreams,” I said. “I didn’t mind this one.”
Heather grumbled under the blankets.
The old alarm clock on the nightstand glowed 1:30 PM. I downed two of the mini-bottles and fell back to sleep. There were more dreams, which fortunately I couldn’t remember.
I woke up feeling mellow and lay there for a while, listening to Heather and Misty.
“Well, maybe you should,” Misty said. “That dream was so real. You made him like us. I just think it’ll be safer if he’s a vampire too.”
“Ugh, Misty, we all have crazy-real dreams,” Heather said. “Most of them don’t even come true. Mike even has them. It’s weird, I’ve like, had those dreams since the first day I slept as a vampire, but I’ve never met a human who had them.”
“Do any if them come true?” Misty said.
“Sometimes,” Heather said. “Marcello told Mike something about them but I forgot exactly what. Lee used to have these theories about other dimensions and time lines, weird sci-fi shit like that.”