Samantha Moon: First Eight Novels, Plus One Novella (75 page)

“
There are some immortals who are so old, so powerful, that they cannot be killed by any means, Sam.”

“
And the medallion could kill them?”

“
Perhaps. That’s the theory at least.”

I shook my head, amazed all over again. “I just want my son returned to me.”

Pain flashed briefly over her face, and although her thoughts were impenetrable to me and her aura was non-existent, I was still a mother and an investigator and I could read her like a book. She was thinking of the loss of her own son who had died years ago.

Tears filled her eyes and, perhaps embarrassed, she changed the subject. “You must be famished,” she said, standing.

I was. I hadn’t eaten tonight and it was hitting me hard. Not to mention I had given copious amounts of my own blood to my son.

Hanner disappeared into her impressive home, and while I waited the electrified particles of light in the sky seemed agitated and frenzied, but that could have been my imagination. Or a reflection of my own inner struggles. I was having a hard time holding onto a thought for long, before it slipped away into the ether, to be quickly replaced by an equally chaotic thought.

She mercifully appeared a few minutes later, holding two full wine goblets that were filled with anything but wine. She handed one to me, which I eagerly accepted.

The glass was warm. “Fresh blood,” I said.

“Of course.”

“
But where?”

“
I have an arrangement with a mortal, Sam. A few mortals, in fact. Most of us do. It makes our lives easier.”

I nodded but was soon drinking hungrily. Hell, I nearly bit through the glass. As I drank I was aware of Hanner watching me from over her own glass, her eyes as wild as I had ever seen them. I could only imagine what my own looked like.

Like an animal. A hungry animal.

I didn’t savor the blood. In fact, I barely tasted it, so quickly did it pass over my lips and down my throat and into my stomach, where it interacted on some supernatural level with my own supernatural body.

When you don’t need to come up for air, one can quickly down a glass of blood, and shortly it was finished but I was hesitant to return it. After all, there was still some blood pooling in the bottom and coating the inside of the glass.

“
Thank you,” I said, then motioned to the empty glass. “And thank...whoever provided this.”

“
Oh, I will.” And she said that with such enthusiasm I briefly wondered what
other
kind of arrangement she had with her donors.

The hemoglobin had an immediate effect, no doubt due to its freshness. Rarely had I drank blood so fresh and pure. Even the stuff provided by Kingsley had no doubt been days or weeks old, and stored in his refrigerator.

This was different. This was straight from the source, and it was so damn good. Unable to control myself, I tilted the bloody goblet up and waited for the last few drops to crawl down, where I eagerly lapped them up. Once done, I used the edge of my index finger to scrape the inside of the glass clean.

“
I’m a ghoul,” I said, embarrassed.

“
No different than licking brownie batter from a whisk. At least, that’s what I tell myself.”

“
I’ll tell myself that, too, but I think I’ll pretend its chocolate chip cookie dough.”

She smiled and sipped her own drink much more lady-like than I had. I set my glass down and secretly wished for another.

Such a ghoul.

Hanner said, “You should consider getting your own donor, Samantha. They are terribly important. I cannot imagine what you have been feeding on these past few years.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“
No, I suppose I don’t.”

We were silent some more and I finally set aside the glass, which had now been completely scraped clean. I found myself idly sucking under my nail.

“You are in an interesting situation, Sam.”

“
I don’t know if I would use the word
interesting
,” I said. “
Frightening
, perhaps.”

“
You misunderstand,” said Hanner, and not for the first time I detected an odd lilt to her voice. “I mean, you have been given an interesting choice regarding your son.”

“
You mean I
had
been given,” I said. “I already made my choice, remember, and now I must turn him back before it’s too late, before he realizes what his mother has done to him.”

“
You misunderstand again, so let me explain clearly: Sam, you have a chance to be with your son...forever.”

Her words didn’t immediately sink in, but when they did, when the full realization of them hit, I was left speechless and my mouth hanging open.

“Eternity is a long, long time, Sam. Too long to be alone. Now, you will never have to be alone. Ever...” Her voice trailed off and she looked away and somewhere in the far distance a coyote howled. At least, I think it was a coyote.

Chapter Ten

I parked my minivan in front of a high, wrought-iron fence, where I sat and studied the grounds beyond. Even to my eyes, which could penetrate the darkest of nights, I couldn’t see much. A long winding road that led away from the fence plunged into some deep, dark woods.

Well, as deep and dark as they got in the hills above Fullerton.

I understood Detective Hanner’s heartache. I understood how much she missed her own son, but I wasn’t about to sentence my own son to a lifetime of blood-drinking adolescence. Not if I could help it.

According to Detective Hanner and her neighbors, the old man’s property was not only protected by a high fence but also by dark magicks. I asked her what, exactly, she meant by
dark magicks
, and she shrugged and said she was only reporting what she’d heard from her neighbors. Hanner added that she wouldn’t put anything past the creepy old man who may or may not be immortal.

What the hell kind of neighborhood was this?

Except this really didn’t feel like a neighborhood. Not anymore. Not out here in the dark and surrounded by trees and high fences and apparently black magicks. In fact, I felt like I was in a fairy tale. A Brothers Grimm fairytale, as twisted and dark as they come. And there was no prince waiting for me at the end of this cobblestone drive. No, only an ancient master of the black arts, who may or may not be a vampire. Who may or may not be undead.

I debated turning back, but instead I got out of the minivan and approached the gate. I could have scaled the fence easy enough, but the “protected by dark magicks” part had me a little nervous. And curious.

So what would happen if I broke in? Would a wart appear on my nose? Would a she-devil manifest in a swirl of black smoke to drag me down to hell? Would Lady Gaga apparate and give me a make-over? I shuddered. I didn’t know, but now was not the time to find out.

So I did it by the book, and pushed the red intercom button above a cobwebbed touchpad. I had no sooner released my finger when I got a prompt reply.

“State your name,” crackled a strongly-accented voice through a speaker.

“
Samantha Moon.”

The speaker crackled again. “Please turn around.”

“Excuse me?”

“
Turn please.”

I did, turning slowly, knowing there was a camera somewhere and wondering how well my make-up was holding up.

“The left side of your neck, just below your jawline, is missing.”

“
Excuse me?”

“
It shows up as...empty on my monitors. Are you a vampire, Samantha Moon?”

I touched the area in question, and sure enough, I had missed a spot there. Damn. “Now, what kind of question is that to ask—”

“Are you a vampire or not?”

“
Perhaps we can discuss this inside, where we can have a little more pri—”

“
You are alone in the woods, dear girl. Let me assure you. Again, I ask: are you a vampire or not?”

I rarely, if ever, go around blurting my super-secret identity. The man in the house, whoever he was, was obviously privy to the ways of the undead. How much so, I didn’t know. But I needed help for my son and I needed it asap.

“Yes,” I said. “I guess you could say I’m a vampire, although I really don’t think of myself as—”

“
State your reason for being here, vampire. And hurry please, you are cutting into my morning rituals.”

Morning rituals? I didn’t like the sound of that. I suddenly had an image of a bloody forest animal staked within a pentagram, but this wasn’t a psychic hit. Just my overactive imagination. In fact, as I thought about it, I wasn’t getting any psychic hits from the old man. Whoever he was, he was good at concealing his thoughts.

I said, “I’m here because I need help with my son.”

“
What kind of help?”

“
Can we please talk inside?”

There was a long pause, and then the speaker went dead and the iron gate swung open on silent hinges. I got back into the minivan and drove through. As I did so, the iron gate shut immediately behind me.

I was a vampire, dammit. I shouldn’t be afraid.

But I was.

Chapter Eleven

There’s a reason why they don’t make roads out of cobblestones anymore.

Teeth rattling and brain turning nearly to mush, I soon pulled around a massive fountain that featured three rather robust mermaids, each more endowed than the next. Men and their damned mermaids, I thought. As I turned off the minivan, I actually paused to wonder if mermaids were, in fact, true.

Hell, why not?

The house was huge, complete with massive columns and a wide portico, all befitting a man who may or may not be a human. My sixth sense was telling me to be wary. It wasn’t exactly ringing off the hook, but it was letting me know that there was danger here, perhaps not necessarily of the physical kind, but...something.

I stepped out of the minivan and into the cool night air. Crickets chirped nearby and the waxing moon shown through some of the taller, ornamental evergreens that marched around the property.

The house was a massive Colonial mansion, befitting America’s forefathers. Our very rich forefathers. I followed a cement path through what appeared to be crushed seashells, and then stepped up on a cement veranda, and found myself before two massive double doors. My internal warning system continued beeping steady, neither increasing or decreasing. Nothing would harm me here, I was sure, but I was being warned to stay alert and cautious.

No problem with that.

I pressed a doorbell button inlaid within an ornate brass fixture that seemed about right for a house this gaudy. A gong resonated from seemingly everywhere, followed shortly by footsteps on a wooden floor. Soon, the right door swung open and I was greeted by a wide-shouldered man with a red nose, holding a tissue. He studied me briefly, eying me along his red nose, which could have used another wipe or two, but that was probably just the mother in me. He was balding and what few stray hairs he had were wildly askew. Was he the butler? I didn’t know, but I suspected so. My only experience with butlers was with Franklin, Kingsley’s wildly disproportionate butler.

Finally, he nodded and wiped his nose—thank God—and said, “This way, madam.”

And like Franklin, he didn’t sound very happy about being roused to service in the middle of the night. But like a trooper he led me down hallways and around corners, past marble sculptures and fine works of art. The deeper we got, the more I realized that something was off. Something was different. Very different.

It was the energy in the house. It was moving slowly, spiraling oddly. Normally, energy zigzagged randomly, illuminating my night world nicely. But this energy spiraled in seemingly slow motion, as if the very house itself had slipped out of the normal flow of time. And the particles themselves blazed in multiple colors of oranges and blues and violets.

What the hell?

I stopped and stared, feeling like a teenager at her first laser light show, minus the funny mushrooms.

“
This way,” said the butler, and I followed him deeper into the house.

Chapter Twelve

The man looked like a gnome or something out of Xanth.

But it was hard to tell, since he was sitting cross-legged on a cushioned mat in the center of an empty room. I saw that a similar cushion had been placed before him. Was that for me?

He was wearing a white robe and a peaceful expression. He wasn’t a vampire, I knew, because I could see his aura around him, and I was getting minor psychic hits, too, which is not the case when I’m in the presence of Detective Hanner. And it hadn’t been the case when I had faced off with Captain Jack, whose mind had been completely closed to me.