Samantha Moon: First Eight Novels, Plus One Novella (172 page)

It was weeks later.

I was in my office, working, doing anything I could to get my mind off Danny’s death. We had left him in the cavern, along with the remains of the old vampire and Hanner. Kingsley had sealed the entrance with more rocks and destroyed another entrance we had found at the back of the caverns.

For all intents and purposes, the cavern had ceased to exist, and was now, in fact, a tomb, adding to its legions of dead three more lost souls.

There was no hiding Danny’s death from my kids, especially when I had a mind-reading daughter. So, I had told them what had happened. I told them that their dad had died trying to be with them, that their dad had made friends with the wrong people, and that their dad had died telling me how much he loved them, his last words, in fact.

It had been a hell of a shitty week.

Yes, I had asked my kids to keep one more whopping big secret. I asked them not to let the world know that their dad had died. Yes, I was a horrible mother, but the world at large needed to think that Danny had disappeared, perhaps with a stripper prospect, or perhaps because of some dirty business dealings. These explanations weren’t far from the truth. Hanner and Fang had disappeared months earlier, back when Fang had first turned. Hell, Fang didn’t technically exist, anyway, having been on the run since his escape from the insane asylum two decades earlier.

I had all of this on my mind in the weeks that followed, weeks during which I threw myself into my work, and threw myself into anything to avoid thinking about my lying, cheating ex-husband, my ex-husband who I suddenly missed with all my heart, my ex-husband who I forgave and would forever forgive.

Sanchez had also come by with questions of his own. I told him what I knew. I even told him about the caverns under the Los Angeles River. I told him that he had been compelled to act as a sort of puppet for Hanner.

I told him all of this, then took his hand and looked him deeply in the eyes, and then compelled him to forget it all. I told him to go home to his psycho wife and to forget anything about vampires. I told him to close his related cases and to write all three off as animal attacks. I told him I thought he was very handsome, but asked him to forget that I’d said that, too.

It was with these heavy thoughts, as I was leaning down and filing papers away in my office, when I heard a whisper of clothing and the swish of pant legs.

I looked up to find Fang standing in my doorway.

Chapter Forty-seven

“I’m sorry about your ex-husband,” he said.

The truth was, I had been pissed at Fang, too. His desire to be a vampire—his own personal compulsion—had led to circumstances and events that had led, in turn, to Danny’s murder.

But I knew that wasn’t fair, either. Fang had just wanted to be a vampire, to be immortal, to live the life of characters in books and movies, but he had not fully comprehended the horror of the reality of such an existence.

The reality was, of course, that something very dark and sinister now called Fang’s body home.

“Thank you,” I said. “Danny was a good man who made bad choices.”

Fang was seated in one of my three client chairs. Yes, I was ever the optimist. His long legs were crossed, and the drape of his jeans hung neatly. He was wearing leather boots that looked expensive.
I suspected that Hanner had dressed and splurged on him these past few months.
He was, after all, supposed to be her golden boy. As in, the perfect vampire and perfect killer. I didn’t want to know what Fang had done, or how many he had killed these past few months.

I could see the fire just behind his pupils, the fire that hadn’t been there when I’d first met him for drinks last year, back when he had finally revealed his super-secret identity, and I’d realized the extent to which I had been stalked. Back then, he had been a bit star-struck, awed to be in the presence of a real vampire. He had been excited and goofy and funny and charming.

Now, he was none of that.

Now, he was controlled, reserved, cautious and careful. He watched me closely, rarely taking his brooding eyes off of me. His mannerisms were nonexistent; instead, he kept his hands folded on one knee, hands that had once poured us drinks at Hero’s, where I had first met him, back when Mary Lou and I had thought he was just another cute bartender, back when my marriage had been shaky, at best. Now, those hands had been compelled to hold a silver blade to my sister’s neck.

“You miss him,” said Fang.

“
Danny was my first love. He was the father of my children. He died in my arms.” I looked away. “And he was never given a proper funeral. Yes, I miss the big idiot.”

Fang looked down for the first time. He adjusted the drape of his jeans then returned his hands to his knee. “I’m sorry that I played a part in his death, Sam.”

I nodded and wiped my eyes and looked back at him. It was, of course, hard to tell how sorry he was, with no inflection or emotion in his voice.

“
I miss you, Sam,” he said. “I know now may not be the time to say it, and, for all I know, you’re still dating that muscle-bound boxer or even Kingsley or someone else, but I want you to know that I miss you every day. I missed you even when I was compelled to do bad things. I missed you while I silently screamed inside my head. I miss you every day, every hour, every minute. I never stop thinking about you.”

“
Did you kill, Fang?”

“
Yes. Many.”

“
Were you compelled to kill?”

“
Sometimes.”

“
And, what about the other times?”

He looked away. “No.”

I bit my lip and fought the tears that threatened to come. “I think you should leave.”

He nodded once and stood smoothly on long legs. He crossed the room and paused at my office door.

“I’m sorry I failed you, Sam.”

He looked at me for a long moment and something hit me, something deep in my heart. I suddenly remembered the love I felt for him, the deep longing to have him back in my life.

As he turned to leave, I said, “Wait, Fang.”

He looked back. “Yes, Moon Dance?”

I hadn’t heard him say my old username in so long that I nearly lost it right there. Instead, I kept it together and said, “I miss you, too.”

He smiled and I saw the tears in his eyes.

“More than you know.”

The End

Samantha Moon returns in:

Vampire Sun

Vampire for Hire #9

Available now for pre-order!

Amazon Kindle

~~~~~

Also available:

Dark Side of the Moon

A Samantha Moon short story!

Kindle
*
Kobo
*
Nook

~~~~~

P.S.: A few of Sam’s friends also have books of their own:

The Jim Knighthorse Series begins with:

Dark Horse

Kindle
*
Kobo
*
Nook

Aaron King, aka Elvis, stars in:

Elvis Has Not Left the Building

Kindle
*
Kobo
*
Nook

The Allison Lopez trilogy begins with:

The Witch and the Gentleman

Amazon Kindle

See the reading sample below for Spinoza’s very own trilogy that begins with:

The Vampire With the Dragon Tattoo

Finally, to read more about Samantha’s journey to Europe, please check out:

Burning

(Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #1)

written by Eve Paludan

Kindle
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Kobo
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Nook

Please enjoy the first 5 chapters of:

The Vampire With the Dragon Tattoo

The Spinoza Trilogy #1

by J.R. Rain

Chapter One

Her name was Gladys Melbourne and she was crying.

We were sitting together in my office, with the door closed. Outside, the street sounds came through my partially open window. A particularly loud Harley rumbled by so loudly that the fillings in my teeth nearly rattled out.

Gladys ignored the Harley. She was looking away and wiping tears from her high cheekbones.

Women crying in my presence wasn’t something new to me, and so I calmly waited it out. Meanwhile, my natural shyness to people in general prevented me from saying the soothing words she no doubt needed to hear.

I waited. She buried her face in both hands. I looked at the ceiling and sat back in the chair, and silently wished I could find it within me to say something, anything.

She continued crying.

Outside, a street person yelled something. I thought I recognized the voice. I knew most of the street people. When I’m feeling generous, especially when work is steady, I usually gave abundantly to the local homeless.

A bird squawked outside my window. I was sure it was a crow, although it could have been a raven. I wasn’t sure which was which, although both struck upon some primal fear within me. Perhaps in a past life I had my eyes pecked out by such a bird. A black, soulless, pitiless bird.

Gladys’s shoulders quaked. A tissue appeared in her hands. She used it to dab her eyes. She looked up at me and I promptly looked away.

Her breathing was harsh and ragged. She was still not ready to speak.

On my desk was a closed laptop, a clear plastic cup of half-finished iced coffee, a pen, my car keys and my cell phone. Next to the laptop was a picture of my dead wife and son. As I looked at them, I smelled again their burning flesh. I would never, ever forget the smell, or the image of their blackened bodies. I kept the pictures up on my desk to remind myself that they were so much more than blackened lumps of charred flesh.

But it never worked. Always, I saw them burning, burning.

I closed my eyes. The smoke stung them all over again.

As I rubbed my eyes, I finally remembered the forgotten dream I had had just this morning, the haunting memory of which had been plaguing me all morning. And so now the memory of it came blazing back into my consciousness, awakened by the woman’s heartbreak and the psychosomatic scent of burning flesh....

I was in a forest with my son, holding his hand. Massive tree trunks punctuated the earth, rising up like magnified hair follicles. A sticky mist lay over the forest and the sound of falling water was nearby. We were heading to the falling water. I sensed our great need for water. For hydration. No, I sensed it for my son’s benefit. He needed the water. Desperately. And now I was recklessly crashing through the forest like a bear drunk on fermented elderberries, dangerously towing my son behind me. I looked down at him but his sweet, angelic face was blank, his lips parched and dry and white. The forest opened into a clearing and there before us was a beautiful waterfall, cascading down through the mist as if falling from heaven itself. And when I looked down again, I saw that I was holding my son’s dead and blackened hand. The water crashed idyllically just a few feet away. I held his scorched hand and sat in the high grass and wept.

The woman in front of me was breathing normally again. When I came back from the forest, when my wet vision cleared again, I saw that she was watching me curiously. I tried to smile, but smiling never came easy to me.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“
Yes,” she said. “I need help.”

“
I know.”

“
I’m sorry for crying.”

She needed encouragement. She needed to know it was okay to cry in my presence, that everything would be okay. I said nothing. I was never very good at small talk. I was never very good at much, and sometimes nothing was okay. Sometimes things crashed around you, and they kept on crashing for years to come.

“My granddaughter ran away,” she said. “Step granddaughter.”

I sat back. I thought the woman was going to cry again, but she held it together. Thank God. Instead, she gazed at me steadily, her wet eyes unwavering.

She went on, “I was told you specialize in finding the missing. Missing children, in particular.”

I did find them. And sometimes I found them dead. But I did not tell her that. With a runaway, there was still hope.

“When did your granddaughter run away?” I asked quietly, taking out a notepad and a pen from my top drawer.

“
A week ago. Six days ago, to be exact.”

“
Who told you I could help you?”

“
Detective Hammer. He said it wouldn’t hurt to see you. That you had a knack for this sort of thing.”

I did. When it came to finding missing children, one needed to be dogged and relentless. No stone left unturned. Having good instincts helped, too. But the funny thing about instincts was that one never knew when they would kick in. That’s where the dogged and relentless part came in.

“How old is your granddaughter?” I asked. Always use the present. Never, ever refer to a child in the past tense.

“
Sixteen or seventeen. I’m not really sure. Her birthday is next month.”

My son’s birthday would have been next month, too, but I didn’t say anything about that. There was enough heartache in this room without bringing that up. He would have been thirteen. Instead, he died when he was nine.

At the thought of my son’s birthday, my breath caught, and I was briefly back in the forest, sitting in the short grass, holding his charred hand as the nearby water bubbled with life.

Presently, a small breeze made its way through the open window behind me. Los Angeles smelled of exhaust and oil and burned rubber.

“Has she run away before?” I asked.

“
No.”

“
Do you have a photo of her?”

“
Yes.”

She reached into an oversized purse and pulled out a manila file. “At Detective Hammer’s suggestion, I put together a package for you. Everything about her is in here, pictures, friends, her likes and dislikes, favorite places to hang out, anything and everything I could think of. There’s even a list of her favorite books. All vampire books.”

I took the proffered file, flipped through it. I got to the list of vampire books. She seemed to prefer one author in particular.

“
Thanks,” I said. “This will help a lot.”

Gladys nodded. “I have some more information that might help you, Mr. Spinoza.”

I waited.

“
Her parents were killed three years ago. She’s lived with us off and on ever since.”

She waited, as if expecting a reply. None came. She went on awkwardly. “Yes, well, there’s something else you should know about her. Something that worries me a great deal.”

I waited some more, although I did nod encouragingly.

She went on, “Veronica is a little...different.”

“Different how?”

I was imagining a slower child. Perhaps one with autism. Some sort of disability. Gladys was looking increasingly uncomfortable. She took in some air and leveled her stare at me.

“She sort of lives in her own fantasy world, Mr. Spinoza.”

“
What does that mean?”

“
She calls herself a slayer.”

“
A slayer?” I said. “As in dragons?”

“
No, as in vampires.”

Gladys blinked slowly, but didn’t look away. I think my mouth might have opened, but no words came out. Finally, I nodded.

“You mean like in
Dungeons & Dragons
,” I said. “Or that
World of Witchcraft
, or whatever it’s called. A slayer is like her—what do they call it?—her avatar?”

Gladys smiled gently. “I’m not sure I understood half of what you just said, Mr. Spinoza, but what I do know is that she really thinks she’s a vampire slayer.”

“Do you have her on any medication?”

Gladys shook her head. “She won’t see a doctor, and won’t go to school.”

“So she just stays with you?”

“
Yes.”

I thought about that. “How did you meet her, Gladys?”

“Veronica just...appeared at our house one day. Bloodied and in a horrible mess. She always refused to talk about where she came from or what happened to her. But I later understood her parents had been in a horrible accident.”

I rubbed my temples. If I had known that by putting a simple ad in the Yellow Pages I would be meeting the world’s whackos, I might never have gotten into this business.

Not true,
I suddenly thought. Getting into this business was something I
had
to do.
Needed
to do. Looking for the missing was, in fact, the only thing I
could
do.

I asked, “Are you on medication, Gladys?”

“Many,” she said, smiling. “But not the kind you’re thinking of. I assure you, Mr. Spinoza, everything I have told you is true.”

“
And this girl is sixteen?”

“
Give or take a few years.”

“
What does that mean?”

“
She would never tell us her exact age.”

I thought about that. “When she appeared at your house, did you report her to the authorities?”

“She warned us that if we did, she would run away and we would never see her again.”

“
And you didn’t want her to run away.”

“
No. It was so...
nice
having someone in the house with us. Jack is in a wheelchair, you see, and she was always so helpful, even from the beginning.”

“
You enjoyed her company,” I said.

“
We loved having her around. She was a breath of fresh air, despite...despite her problems.”

“
Problems?”

“
You know, typical teenage stuff. Always sad, depressed. Of course, back then we didn’t know why she was so sad and depressed. But later we figured it was about her parents. We didn’t ask her too many questions. She didn’t like questions.”

“
And you didn’t want her to run off because you liked her company.”

“
We loved her company. We loved her. She was like a real granddaughter to us.”

“
Do you have any kids, Gladys?”

“
One. But we do not speak anymore. She disowned us decades ago. All over a fight. One single fight.”

And now she did weep again, although softer than before. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, which squeaked under my considerable weight.

“Veronica was our last chance to do it right, and she was our gift from God.”

We were silent. Outside my office window, the streets of Los Angeles weren’t silent. I studied Gladys. She seemed sane enough. But I have been fooled before.

She went on, “Since we didn’t know her exact age, my husband and I agreed that she was at least eighteen, and so we felt comfortable about not reporting her. Of course, we would have preferred to contact the proper authorities, or her parents, but she wasn’t giving us many options. In the end, we wanted her safe and well fed and properly cared for.”

I nodded, wondering if Veronica’s best interests were really being considered. I looked down at my notes. “And Veronica has lived with you for the past three years?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

“
Sometimes? What does that mean?”

“
It means that sometimes she disappears for a few days and nights.”

“
Days and nights?”

“
Yes.

“
Where does she go?” I asked, and already I was dreading the answer. My feelings of dread weren’t unfounded.

“
Hunting vampires,” said Gladys. She said the words so calmly, so conversationally, so pleasantly, that I nearly burst out laughing. Hearing the words “hunting vampires” come out of this sweet, elderly lady nearly made me question my own sanity.

Maybe I’m the one going insane.

“That’s what I get for asking,” I said, mostly to myself. Gladys looked at me curiously.

“
Excuse me?” she said.

I waved off my comment. “Never mind. So when she’s not out hunting vampires, where do you think she really goes? A boyfriend’s house? Parties? Weekend drinking binges in Vegas?”

Gladys shook her head to all of the above. “No,” she said. “I believe she really hunts vampires.”