by Kat Turner
That’s it.
First, Jonnie’s legs gave out. He fell to his knees. Next, his head dropped like a bowling ball as he slumped forward. To the sound of screams and shouts, his cheek hit hard ground, and he blacked out.
“Ugh.” Jonnie came to in a cold, dimly lit room. He ached all over. Too weak to move, he processed his surroundings. Quiet beeps, occurring in two second intervals, hit his ears.
Blurry eyes focusing on some impressionist-style art print of a pastel field, Jonnie realized he lay in a hospital bed.
He forced his boulder of a skull to the side. At his bedside, a redhead nurse in magenta scrubs fiddled with a chirpy machine. Attached to it were tubes connected to a plastic bag that fed cooling liquid into his system.
“How long was I out?” His voice croaked, throat raging like Satan had ripped out his esophagus.
She gasped, jumped, smacked a hand to her chest. “You scared me.” The nurse looked at her watch. “You were unconscious when you arrived, so two hours.”
Queasiness sloshed his stomach. This had to be the beginnings of deterioration. Meaning only one thing would solve the problem, and it wouldn’t be the temporary fix dripping saline into his body. “Give me my phone. I need to call my personal physician.”
She shook her head, jiggling the bag of solution they fed him. “What you need to do is sit tight until we finish running some tests. Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of you here.”
No time. He’d have to hypnotize her. Marshalling every bit of his remaining strength, Jonnie circled a hand around the woman’s wrist and urged the glamour up his spine and into his eyeballs. It sizzled his optic nerves like oil on a hot pan.
He locked her brown eyes with his inky, magic-filled ones, and barreled in. “Bring me my things.”
She got that glassy, faraway look in her stare that let him know it worked. The muscles in her arm slackened, and he dropped her wrist. Guilt for messing with someone’s mind prompted him to turn his head as she scurried off, white soles squeaking against linoleum flooring. Beyond his window sat a parking lot, empty except for a couple of run-down cars. A security light swarmed by enchanted moths bathed the space in an ominous, orange glow. What were his bandmates doing? Sitting in the waiting room talking about him, staging an intervention?
Before he could go down the rabbit hole of obsession, the nurse’s noisy rubber shoes signaled her return. The sounds ceased as she approached, zoned out and holding his possessions.
Jonnie collected his wallet and mobile phone from the poor, dazed woman. Someone must have had a roadie bring the items over in case the medical personnel needed his ID or contact numbers off his phone. He pulled tubes from his arms, setting off a wicked series of beeps. Fuck. Alerted, more staff would arrive soon, meaning he needed to move. All he could do was hope that the stuff they’d shot into his veins would buy him adequate time before he started boiling again.
He walked the nurse to a vinyl chair and sat her down. “Close your eyes. Stay here and don’t budge.”
She nodded, compliant.
The brainwashing would wear off in an hour or so, and her colleagues would assume that she fell asleep at her station. Shite. The assumption in question could get her fired. He plucked a business card from his billfold and wrote, in his distinctive handwriting, “not her fault” on the back. Jonnie laid the paper rectangle on her lap.
He changed into his sweaty, stinky clothes from the concert, pocketed his mobile, and slipped into the hallway. Fortunately, there was no activity at this hour, and he carried his shoes as he strode down the corridor and breezed out an exit.
A hot and humid night, unusually windy, raised his temperature a few worrisome degrees. Palm trees fluttered in the gusts, and Jonnie slunk into a corner behind a ripe dumpster, hurried into his shoes, and texted Connors.
The black car rolled into the lot. Jonnie hailed the driver to where he stood and climbed in for the familiar, loathsome ritual. “Since you follow the tour, I suppose that means I’m your only client.”
Jonnie watched the cluster of crazed bugs bang at the light, frantic wings flapping, while Connors prepped. Jonnie was no better than those dumb moths, stupid for their fix. A moth to flame, seduced by the lure of youth.
Clicks and clacks ensued. “I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you about that.” Nerves tightened the doctor’s voice as he swabbed the injection site with alcohol.
“How so?”
“The higher ups have relocated me. So I won’t be on call, or available much at all actually, after this evening.” Connors whistled nervously, sticking the needle in and firing up the machine.
Jonnie’s abdominal muscles tensed. Horror crashed through him in a series of thunderous peals. His lifeline was retreating. “The progression is speeding up.”
“Yup. It’ll do that. What landed you in the hospital?”
Jonnie gave Connors the gist.
“Sunlight aversion kicked in early. Congratulations, my friend. You are officially a creature of the night.”
“So if I avoid the sun, how much time do I have before the coma?”
Connors yawned. He finished the procedure and tucked away his supplies. “A week, maybe more.”
A week was nothing. “Can you give me a referral?”
“Nope. Sorry. And you don’t know me, and we’ve never met. You’re loaded, though. I’m sure you’ll figure out some way to get those treatments.”
Jonnie paid Connors in cash, the final transaction bringing a combination of dread and relief more sweet than bitter. Though having the rug pulled out from under him didn’t feel good in the slightest, it also meant this abominable aspect of his life was over and done. The uncertainty remaining in its wake frightened him a bit, but he managed to hang on to grounding perspective. He knew what he needed to do going forward. “Right.”
“Good luck, man. Pleasure doing business with you.”
He denied Connors the validation of a nicety, exited the car, and called Eve. The plan to track down a cure had hastened.
Seven
Seated on a cushy throw rug covering Jonnie’s wooden floor and surrounded by a white fan of papers and clippings, Eve picked up a printout from the Internet. Abiding Jonnie’s color-coding system, she highlighted a paragraph in green and reread it. “I can’t tell if this is legitimate or not, but it’s the best lead we have so far.”
During the disastrous concert and trip to the hospital he’d told her about, she’d hung back and read everything she could get her hands on, from his research and a general Internet search, on Vampivax and vampires and this company that created them through its youth treatment. Though his story of the collapse filled her with worry, her practical brain managed to stay focused on finding a solution.
Anything could lead to information about an antidote or cure, natural and medical methods to halt, slow, or reverse the condition. And maybe along the way she’d stumble across some paranormal tidbit she could use to help her with the Lacey situation and its apparent, attendant squirrel haunting.
She’d run down several blind alleys and encountered numerous redacted PDF files and other black boxes of non-information, but her work had turned up a single, strong lead.
Apparently, a community of shifters and other supernatural people thrived in the Peruvian jungle, and vampires lived among them. The vegetarian ones used, and sold, some homemade herbal blood substitute.
Jonnie paced. Behind him, rain drummed against his floor-to-ceiling window, streaking the glass. “I’m inclined to believe it because of the connection to Scarab. I’d bet that the people broken out of their prison ended up down there. It’s like a sanctuary.”
Eve paused from arranging the documents into color-coded stacks. Jonnie didn’t look well. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and spotty pink blotches crawled over his neck. Though he complained of feeling overheated, he also shivered.
“What’s going on with your bandmates?” She folded the corners of some fringe newspaper clipping, the article
a lurid and conspiratorial exposé on a top-secret program involving training supernaturals in underground bunkers for use by private military contractors.
Her heart beat in time with the rain. Was all this real? It was tough to draw the line between truth and falsehood when it came to far-out stuff, but if even a fraction of it was authentic, the implications were profound.
Right now the priority was getting Jonnie well. If she could heal Lacey’s soul and exorcise the rodent-demon attached to it, win-win. At that point, she’d need to figure out if Lacey’s parents were behind the haunting, but she couldn’t risk getting ahead of herself or scattering her focus.
He rubbed his arms. “I’m sure they’re in the waiting room, waiting for an update from the doctors. The nurse will wake up in thirty minutes or so, and at that point it’s just a matter of time before they know I escaped.”
“The nurse will wake up? Why is she asleep?”
A rueful half-smile from Jonnie. “Long story. Vampire skills.”
Despite the insane situation, despite herself, Eve smiled back at him. He stopped his pacing for a moment while they stared at each other, two screwed up and haunted people. In a shadowy loft near the banks of the Mississippi river delta, they pushed against flood waters of madness threatening to breach their psychic levees.
“Wanna light some candles? I feel like we need some mood lighting. Maximize the whole broody atmosphere.” Her utterance of the words “mood lighting” made her cheeks flame and her thighs squeeze together. Now wasn’t the time for desire, of course, but her attraction hadn’t gotten the memo. Hadn’t tempered. It had strengthened, in fact, as her concern for Jonnie’s health added a layer of depth to her feelings for him.
He took a seat on the floor next to her, folding his legs to the side. The gray athletic shorts and white tee shirt he’d changed into after showering emphasized his lean muscles and long limbs. His body reminded her of a male ballet teacher whose classes she’d once taken.
“I’ll play some classical music, too. The most depressing violin concerto I can find.” As he reached for a paper, he brushed his thumb against one of her fingers.
His gentle touch made its way to her cuticle bed, a tiny gesture of intimacy that delivered an emotional payload larger than it should have.
“Are they worried about you? The Fyre guys?” Her words came out low and husky, suited to the darkness and their shared vulnerability, befitting their common fear and confusion.
“Yeah. As soon as someone tells them I ran out of the hospital they’ll start calling or come over here.” Eyes downcast, Jonnie stroked Eve’s knuckles. He traced a vein on the top of her hand, following the raised line. As she watched him touch her, she thought of the Amazon river. Of the two of them riding down it in a boat, searching for hope and answers in the depths of the jungle. Together.
“Why can’t you tell them? You told me.” She allowed her hand to relax, fingers uncurling. Eve tapped one of Jonnie’s rings, a smooth disc of silver where a stone would normally be. She walked her fingers over his knuckles and picked at chipped black polish on his pinky nail. He could use a touch up.
He scooted a little closer to her without taking his wandering fingers away. The aroma of soap on his clean skin made her breath quicken.
“Because you live these things, these far out supernatural experiences. You know. You endure it. They, I mean, they wouldn’t get it. Brian’s wife is a witch, so perhaps in theory he wouldn’t balk and call me barking mad, but it’s still a big leap. Practicing magic is one thing, but this is a whole other level. To think they’d accept me without judgment is, well, optimistic at best. And if I noticed things changing, like them growing more distant day after day…” His shoulders slumped, and his grip on her hand tightened.
Her heart kicked into her mouth. Darkness hung heavy, a measly glow from a shaded lamp doing nothing to brighten it. She suddenly and irrationally wanted to jump up and turn on every light in the suite. And, at the same time, her intuition urged her to pull Jonnie close to her and hold him tight.
“You know a witch?” In her minds eye, an image of the squirrel’s mangled death mask of a face superimposed over Jonnie’s profile. Burn the witch and make it dead. The sick, sneering little voice bounced off the walls of her mind.
“Yeah, I mean, she’s not too active from what I understand. Mostly she does these deep meditations and trance workshops at her yoga studio. Why?” His eyes cut to Eve’s, the low light emphasizing their narrowed, quizzical cast.
Eve fidgeted with the papers, rearranging them for something to do besides look at Jonnie. She hated to talk about it. Hated her uselessness to help, her complete and total ineffectuality. Hated how the creature reminded her of the deadly error. “I have recurring visions and dreams of this little squirrel zombie thing. It calls me a witch. There’s a story there, a long story.”
Lively noise of New Orleans nightlife filled the silence that followed, eighties rock music blasting from a strip joint or club on Bourbon Street. The effect was an incongruous one, like she and Jonnie existed in a glass bubble, their own weird world, separate and distinct from the city.
“I’ve seen it too.” His voice, burdened with emotions that she couldn’t quite pinpoint and spoken in a low volume, shook.
Eve drew inward as her body tightened. A ball of iron settled in her stomach. Suddenly, the papers around them looked sinister, ominous. She fought the urge to jerk her head over her shoulder, swept up in some irrational fear that if they continued speaking of the little devil, it would appear. “Where?”
Above their heads, a ceiling fan hummed. Its monotone sound was a small measure of comfort in the eerie silence, but not enough. Energy hung in the space between their bodies, vibrating in a high-voltage electric current. A secret, frightening and alien, bound them together.
“In the shared dream, or visit to the third place, or wherever it was. I saw it. Sitting on your chest.”
Dread both dragged her down and amped her up. Her pulse banged in her ears, and a shiver slithered over her skin. She glanced at his sharp profile, his strong bone structure rendered foreboding in the minimal lighting and disturbing context. “What do you think it means?”
He shook his head, glancing at a grandfather clock, his gesture seeming to make its ticks strike louder. “We should go.”
“Go where?”
“To Peru.” Jonnie grabbed both of her hands and stood, urging her to rise along with him.
She did, a wild and volatile cocktail of emotions brewing in her chest and stomach. Her breathing quickened, making her breasts heave with each inhale. He towered above her as a god of the night. She could flee or could fall into his arms. A force deep in her bones longed to scream a crazed and primordial howl, to release the id.
Before she could formulate a thought, let alone answer, he dropped his hold and sprinted off. Jonnie returned with a duffel bag, which he filled with the papers. While she watched, excited and scared and fucking crackling with sparks from head to toe, he zipped up the bag. Jonnie dropped the sack and texted.
“A guy will be here in fifteen.” A fast, breathy timbre in his tone made heat bloom between her legs. He’d sounded the same way when they’d kissed, smashed their bodies together in a fervor of forbidden pre-dawn lust.
She knew the sound of his excitement. Knew an intimate detail of him and craved more.
“I never said yes.” Her reply came out with a taunting edge and smoky inflection that should not have matched the unfurling scenario, yet it did. In that instant, Eve lost a sense of time. Moments stretched to eternity in a taffy string made from urgency, danger, and anticipation.
In her mind, she fell backward without a net. Into a place or irrationality and desire, into a chaotic chamber of debauchery. A place of forbiddens and taboos and delicious mysteries. Into the part of herself that chased curiosities and questioned assumptions of good or evil. Into dark delights.
Into the part of herself that would run away with a vampire and dare
herself to discover what happened.
He stepped closer, intimidating in his presence though slight of build. His posture was perfect, his dark eyes keen. “Are you saying no?”
Eve wasn’t sure if she heard the nascent spark of a threat in his voice, or if in her worked-up state she imagined it. In any event, the whole drama ignited her like a firework.
“Would it matter if I did?” Her chest swelled, every nerve ending of her body flush with awareness. She gazed up into his intense stare, lust between her legs, hunger in her throat.
An uncanny sensation adjacent to déjà vu swept through her. Something unfathomable had passed between them, and a watery psychic memory of it still clung to the edges of what she was able to perceive, tantalizing and menacing. Ephemeral, subliminal, whispered at a volume one note too low to hear. Made her crave the real thing, whatever that was.
“Of course it matters. I want you to want this, Eve.” He brushed her cheek with cool, graceful fingers. They travelled a languid journey down her neck, ghosting her jugular vein. Her blood pounded like it pushed against her skin, magnetized to the man who they both knew longed to feed off it. Her clit swelled, stiffened. And she wasn’t even positive what he was talking about. But it was enrapturing and wicked, as decadent as the first bite of a fine chocolate mousse. The essence of sin, distilled into syrup.
He licked his front teeth in a quick swipe. She swore she saw the fangs, those miniature tusks of ivory winking in the lamp’s golden halo.
“I want to, yes. I want this.”
His body heat tormented her skin with the promise of a touch.
“You have a passport?” With movements as crisp and efficient as his businesslike tone, Jonnie darted to the bedroom section of his spacious home. Drawers flew open. He dragged a suitcase out from under his bed and tossed clothes and other items into it.
Meg’s frowning face flashed in Eve’s mind, joining Jonnie’s breaking of the mood to remind her of the irrationality inherent in all of this. The statement “what in the actual fuck are you doing” shouted a bewildered accusation in her brain.