by Ward Parker
A car trunk opened, then slammed shut with a hollow, metallic clunk. Footsteps slapped across the asphalt, getting closer.
The obeah man walked up to the soucouyant, carrying a red, plastic gasoline can. Missy put her phone away and retreated to where Matt was hiding.
Not until the soucouyant was doused with gasoline did her concentration break and her confession cut off. She looked up at him and her eyes widened in horror as she realized what was happening.
She screamed.
“Stupid, evil creature,” the obeah man said as he lit a candle and tossed it at her.
She was engulfed in a blazing pyre that sucked the air from around them. Matt couldn’t help but pity her, though it was over almost instantly. Instead of writhing in agony, she was consumed in seconds like a paper doll.
“She be hundreds of years old and alive only by the grace of Bazil’s evil power,” said Carriacou Jack. “Ain’t that much of her to burn, really.”
“She seemed pretty strong to me,” Matt said, wincing at the pain from her bites and claws.
“She was as strong as the Devil himself.”
“I can’t believe she stopped to count the rice,” Matt said. “That sounded like a stupid bit of folklore to entertain kids. Not something real.”
“I thought it was just a legend, too. I killed two soucouyants before her, but I never tried using the rice until tonight. Man, OCD is a really bad thing to have, no?”
“And it was nuts for you to shoot video of her,” Matt said to Missy. “What if she had attacked you?”
“I saw how engrossed she was with the rice-counting. And I knew my truth-telling spell was strong enough to control her. I didn’t expect her to go into so much detail, though. If you can help me get the video to the police in an untraceable manner, it could really help convince Affird to leave the vampires alone.”
“That truth-telling spell is awesome,” Matt said.
“Yeah. I’ve never used it against a monster before. Unless you count some of my dates.”
“You never told me you could do magic.”
“I didn’t?”
“No. I mean, I figured you were into occult stuff since you work part-time in a botánica. Are you a witch or something?”
“That’s a topic for discussion on another day,” she said with a smile.
36
Extrajudicial
When Missy returned to Squid Tower, she pulled up to the gatehouse to find Schwartz standing by the doorway.
“Bernie’s not back?” she asked.
“Do you think I’d be sitting here doing his job if he was?” Schwartz said. He looked beyond annoyed. “I called the security company and that crook Rudy can’t get anyone out here for another hour. Where did you go? I thought you were looking for Burdine?”
“I was, but something else came up. We were dealing with the soucouyant mentioned in the board meeting. It confessed to preying on people around the community.”
“Ha! And all those jerks thought it was me,” Schwartz said with a gloating expression.
She wanted to tell him she knew his hands weren’t exactly clean, but decided against it.
“It turns out it was Philomena, one of the day gate guards,” she said.
“Wait, are you telling me we’re short a gate guard tomorrow, too? Someone has to tell Rudy.”
A large SUV pulled up behind her. It honked its horn after only a few seconds of waiting.
“Hold on,” Schwartz shouted at the driver. “Our guard ran away. I gotta figure out how to open this thing.”
Schwartz went into the gatehouse. Guttural cursing came from inside. The SUV honked again. Missy turned around and resisted the urge to give the driver a one-finger salute. Finally the gate arm rose.
Miss pulled through and parked nearby in the visitor lot. As she was locking her car, she noticed the SUV had stopped just inside the gate. The driver stepped out of the vehicle. It was Affird.
“Mr. Schwartz,” Affird said. “I need a moment of your time.”
Affird reached into the SUV and pulled out a wooden pole with a sharpened end.
Missy froze. Oh God, he’s going to execute Schwartz.
She ran toward the gatehouse, her heart racing. She didn’t know how to stop him. She couldn’t assault a cop.
Unless she could stop him with a spell. Not Florida Cracker folk magick, not a simple truth-telling spell, but a strong, force-projecting spell drawing upon telekinetic power within her, like the binding spell. But it had to be faster and stronger.
And this time, she couldn’t fail.
Everything seemed to slow down until it was is if she were watching a video frame by frame. Affird stepped toward the gatehouse and raised the wooden pole. He moved closer to the open door.
Missy stopped, took a deep breath and focused with all her will, picturing Affird hit by an invisible force that would knock him over like a giant ocean wave.
Of course, nothing happened. Affird began moving into the doorway, his head turning to locate Schwartz.
She kept concentrating with all her mind and soul, adding the urgency of her panic to the strength of her conjuring.
Affird stopped in the doorway, his shoulders squaring off as he braced himself, holding the pole with two hands like a medieval pike.
Schwartz cowered beneath the gatehouse desk, looking up at his executioner, frozen in terror.
Time was up. This was Missy’s only chance. She imagined her mind shooting laser beams, invisible and aimed right at Affird’s back.
Nothing happened. Affird would thrust his stake any second now.
She kept drawing from whatever power she had inside herself. She drank from the emotions she had felt when she heard the story of her husband tormented by the neo-Nazi thugs, and then, when the police who should have saved him arrived, being executed by the evil cop.
She imagined with brutal clarity the cop unexpectedly thrusting the rebar into her husband’s chest, forcing it through his shirt and his skin, between his ribs, and into his heart.
The anger and sadness swirled through her chest and up into her brain. Her head felt like it was going to explode.
She remembered jumping at the BAM-BAM reverberating in Chainsaw’s bedroom as Affird killed the biker, illegally, unfeelingly, immorally.
Righteous rage hummed within her. It sang beneath her temples and along the edges of her ears.
And then it was gone, released from her in an instant, leaving her lightheaded and dizzy.
Affird’s back appeared to collapse inward as he went flying sideways in the gatehouse, smashing through a window and out into the approach lanes. His stake skipped across the asphalt and into a hedge.
She did this. Her mind did it all by itself.
She ran the rest of the way to the gatehouse. Inside, Schwartz was still beneath the desk, his face even paler than a vampire’s, which is saying a lot. He quivered with fear.
“What, what, what,” he mumbled.
“You were remarkable.” Agnes had somehow shown up. “You’ve finally discovered your power. I’ve always known you had it.”
“I have a lot of work still to do,” Missy said. “I was lucky tonight.”
“You weren’t lucky. You were strong.”
Missy and Agnes went around to the front of the gatehouse and bent over to examine Affird’s body sprawled face-down in the residents’ lane. Missy touched his neck and felt a pulse. She didn’t see any serious wounds.
“He’s alive,” Missy said. “But what are we going to do now? He needs medical attention. And once he wakes up, he’ll call a plague of cops upon our community.”
“Call nine-one-one for an ambulance,” Agnes said. “And I’ll mesmerize him. It’ll make him forget what happened here tonight. In fact, I’ll make him forget the entire day. Hopefully, he won’t even remember why he came out here in the first place.”
“Good,” Missy said. “But he didn’t come here to kill Schwartz on a whim. There must have been some physica
l evidence or a tip from someone. He’ll come across it again in his office and be reminded about why he was here.”
“This is the best we can do for now.”
“I’ll make a complaint,” Schwartz said, out now from under the desk. “Police brutality.”
“That’s not a good idea, Leo,” Agnes said. “None of us can acknowledge seeing the detective here tonight. Call them from the gatehouse phone, Missy, and don’t give your name. Then let’s all go home before they arrive.”
“I have to look for Bernie,” she said. “He could be in danger.”
“Of tripping over his own shoelaces, the moron,” Schwartz muttered.
Missy thought that after narrowly escaping death Schwartz would be a little more charitable. But she was wrong.
37
We're in This Together
Missy nibbled at her toast while Matt dumped hot sauce on his scrambled eggs. The ocean dazzled with the rising sun. They were the first customers at the beachside café which had become a regular meeting place for them with their opposing schedules. A sparrow hopped around on the patio searching for crumbs. It gave Missy an unpleasant memory of the rice grains and the soucouyant.
“Do you want me to look at any of your wounds?” she asked. “Something tells me soucouyant bites would be a serious risk of infection.”
“Thanks, but I stopped by the E.R. and they patched me up. Gave me a bunch of nasty shots, too.”
She took a sip of tea, sweet with honey. “So how does this end?”
He looked startled. “I hope you aren’t talking about you and me?”
“No, silly. How does the murder investigation end, and how do we get the police to leave us alone? We know the killer is dead. We sent the confession video to the police. But how can we be sure they believe the video was legit? Would they actually accept that she was a Caribbean vampire and killed all those people?”
“I’m hoping we don’t have to do anything. A friend of mine, a detective on the force, told me they received a video purportedly of the killer, but he wouldn’t say anything other than she was a nutcase who claimed she was a vampire. But they had already started looking into her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Philomena Toulard called to report finding a credit card on the floor of the gatehouse. It belonged to the mayor’s daughter. So the cops brought in the night guard—”
“Bernie.”
“Yes. But security footage showed he never left the property on the night of the murder. So the cops now suspect Philomena was trying to frame him. And there’s more. It turns out she had dirt in her past.”
Missy asked, her curiosity on fire, “Ties to other murders?”
“That’s what it sounds like. My friend said Philomena had moved around a lot in South Florida and had been a person of interest in more than one murder case. So the video might not be so far-fetched for them. I mean, the killing part. Not necessary the soucouyant part.”
“Are they looking for her?”
“Yeah. But as far as anyone knows, she skipped town, leaving her car and her possessions behind,” Matt said. “You, Carriacou Jack, and I are the only ones who know what really happened to her.”
“Are you certain none of her neighbors saw anything?”
“I’m pretty sure, unless someone was peeking out between their blinds. But the people in that building are not the types to talk to police.”
Matt took a big gulp from his glass of tomato juice and she shuddered. Ever since she began caring for vampires, she lost her love of Bloody Marys and ketchup. Even spaghetti sauce made her blanch a bit.
“Then what do we do now?” she asked.
“Make sure the vampires and werewolves are on their best behavior,” he said. “The cops will still have their eye on them, especially if there are any reports of more drugs at Seaweed Manor. Aside from that, let’s just wait and see. I assume there won’t be any more killings near their properties and then, hopefully, the police will lose interest.”
“Speaking of losing interest, I’m concerned about you.”
“About me?” Matt asked. “Why?”
“You’ll move on to other stories, but you know more about my patients than any outsider should know. Do you promise to keep all of this secret?”
“Yes, I promise. I’ll honor our agreement.”
“And if supernatural creatures pop up on your radar, do you promise to let me know?”
“You want to be involved?”
“I do. We have to be a team.”
He smiled. “Agreed.”
“And remember, I have a pretty good truth-telling spell, so don’t try to B.S. me.”
“I know. And I hope you’ll only use it on monsters, not on me.”
Missy arrived at Squid Tower for her first patient appointment of the night at 8:00 p.m. The gate opened for her the moment she approached on A1A and signaled to turn into the entrance. Bernie, back on the job, was much more responsive thanks to his new vampire senses. However, she heard he still had the habit of dropping the gate arm too soon and clipping the rear ends of cars.
He smiled at her when she passed the gatehouse. Being a vampire only made him creepier than he had already been. At least he appeared to be happier now.
The Blood Bus must have just arrived, because residents were pouring out of the building, heading for where it sat at the edge of the property. With their arthritic gaits, they looked more like a pack of zombies than vampires.
“Hey, Missy,” Bill said, waving to her. “Can’t wait to read you my new story at the next class. It’s about vampire commandos.”
“I look forward to it,” she said.
Then Agnes with her quad cane and Henrietta on her scooter exited the building. They smiled at Missy and said hello, each of them giving her a little hug. She didn’t worry one bit about having her exposed neck so close to their jaws.
She waited in the lobby for the elevator and admired the soft earth tones of the ultra-modern furniture, the walls, and decor. As much as the vampires complained about their HOA fees, they put a lot of effort into making sure the building looked great. The colors were always muted, due to the residents’ overly sensitive color senses.
The elevator opened and Doris emerged. She was a vampire from Baltimore. Squid Tower had a lot of vampires from Baltimore, where new vampires were apparently cranked out like an assembly line.
“I’m feeling so much better now, Missy,” said the seventy-year-old who’d been a vampire for only two years. “Your advice to take extra platelets with my meals really helped. Thank you so much, dear.”
She gave Missy a pat on the arm before Missy got on the elevator and pressed the button for the eighth floor. She hadn’t felt like she belonged anywhere since she left her job at the hospital. And now in this community with residents decades older than her in appearance, and, in many cases, centuries older in age, she felt a kinship of shared purpose. With a few of the vampires she even had a friendship. She wasn’t like them, but as her powers grew she was less like other humans.
She’d learned not all monsters were monstrous. Maybe she finally found a group where she belonged.
38
The Nighthawk
Bernie liked his job much more now. The night had become his solace, and the tunes he sang, delicate songs of darkness, came from some part of him he never knew existed. Among his heightened senses was the ability to sing without slipping off key so often. This could do wonders for his musical career. Be sure to look for him playing acoustic guitar at the touristy seafood joints on weekend nights.
At the same time, he felt a greater responsibility to protect his vampire brethren at Squid Tower.
Schwartz was extremely unhappy that Bernie had kept his job, but the condominium association not only insisted that he stay, but also gave him a subsidy to rent a condo of his own at Squid Tower.
Bernie learned some members were prejudiced against him because he was created by another kind of supernatural creature, but they
were persuaded in the end that a bloodsucker was a bloodsucker and that the soucouyant who created him was, in reality, just a vampire by another name—simply a female vampire from the Caribbean. And Bernie, unable to fly around as a ball of fire because of his gender, was more or less simply a male vampire from Long Island.
Schwartz didn’t buy it. But Bernie very politely reminded him that he knew about his habit of having hookers delivered. The board would not be happy to learn about this nor to have law enforcement digging around at the community again. Schwartz got the message.
Bernie was proud to say that Squid Tower now had the lowest crime rate of any condominium community in South Florida. In fact, there hadn’t been any theft or vandalism at all since he started patrolling the parking lot on his nights off and during slow periods in his shift. Car burglars made a great meal. It seemed the board was occasionally willing to overlook the rule against hunting on the property when the prey was someone who had just smashed a window of a board member’s Mercedes.
There was one downside. You could never get a plumber to come out to Squid Tower at night. Not for all the overtime in the world.
THE END
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