vampire for hire 02.5 - vampire nights (6 page)

I jogged at first, my legs feeling strong and mechanical, two pistons attached to a five-foot, three-inch frame. I stepped off the sidewalk and jogged along the street next to a row of parked cars. I picked up speed gradually, keeping the van in sight.

The couple whipped past me, a blur really. I saw the man’s head snap around, following. Or trying to follow me. No doubt his jaw had dropped open, too.

I chuckled and lowered my shoulders, picking up speed. Street signs, small trees, and fire hydrants all whipped past me. A small dog barked at me from an open car window, but its yipping receded behind me almost instantly.

I came to the first intersection, and I was in luck. A green light. I debated slowing. The debate didn’t last long when I spied the van hang a left far ahead.

I hit another gear entirely. A gear I didn’t know I had.

Lights blurred past me so fast that I shouldn’t have been able to control my body. I should have been completely out of control, slamming into whatever crossed paths in front of me. But it was the opposite. I had
complete control
of my body—and I saw everything with clarity. Perhaps even supernatural clarity, nearly predicting where cars and people would be.

Wind thundered over me, plastering my clothing to my skin, whipping my hair into a crazed frenzy.

My legs felt so damn strong. My energy endless.

I could do this all night. All the way to the rising sun.

I’m not sure what people saw, or what they think they saw, or even if they actually did see me. I was through the intersection so fast that if someone looked down, or looked away, or even blinked, they would have missed me.

I felt movement to my right and veered away just as a car pulled rapidly away from the curb and hung a U-turn. The driver never saw me, I’m sure of it.

The light at the next intersection was red. I slowed down gradually, reluctantly, coming up behind a row of cars. I side-stepped smoothly onto the sidewalk and wove quickly through a group of women who were much too loud and drunk. I suspected I was in the midst of one of those “girls’ nights out” that I’m always hearing about. Does drinking with my sister count?

By the time I reached the sidewalk, the light had turned green. I crossed with the others, except, unlike the others, I was already on the far side of the street before they had taken a few steps. I heard gasps behind me, and saw many heads turn, but they were now so far behind me that I didn’t care and I’m sure they were doubting their own sanity.

And now I was running so fast that I wasn’t entirely certain that my feet were touching the ground. Wind blasted me. Lights streaked. Bugs were obliterated.

The next light was green and I was just a blur. I felt like a blur, too. I felt inhuman. I felt elemental. Like the wind. Something from the sky, the earth.

Cars came and went. People came and went. I swerved, I dodged, I hauled ass, and finally I hung a left and was nearly upon the van, which was just turning into a warehouse.

I swerved to the other side of the street and spent a few seconds coming to a full stop. I might be immortal, but I still had to contend with physics. Well, sort of. Cars are manufactured with brakes. Bi-peds? Not so much.

From behind an old-school station wagon, I watched the van come to a complete stop along the side of the building. The baker emerged from the van, and as he did so, a car door opened from another vehicle parked near the warehouse.

His pretty young assistant stepped out and met him with a warm hug.
Bingo!

Together they slipped inside the dark building through a side door. My mind raced. What was this place? What the hell was going on? I didn’t know the answers to either question, but one thing I did know: Men were fucking pigs.

Chapter Seven

I stepped up to the building and scanned it.

So what kind of building was this? Why were they here after hours? Was this some kind of underground sex club? Were unspeakable sexual acts being performed just behind these doors? I pictured a sea of naked bodies, all undulating rhythmically to hypnotic music, drugs everywhere, naked limbs everywhere, penises and breasts and sex toys galore.

But I knew this wasn’t right. This was just my imagination running wild. Far different than a psychic hit.

Still, I listened for music, for the thumping of bass, for
anything
, but heard nothing other than a faint, echoing hammering sound which could have come from anywhere.

No. Wait. Laughter. Yes, I just heard laughter coming from within the building.

The bastard. He had no business laughing with another woman, not with a dying wife waiting for him at home.

The bastard.

I stepped back and scanned the facade. Nothing to indicate what the building was. I had a thought and removed my iPhone. I Google-mapped the area and a moment later the same city street popped up on my screen. This time in bright daylight.

Ah, there we go. According to Google Maps, the area was known as Al’s Auto. I pocketed the phone and did some frowning.

Al’s Auto? What the hell?

I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew one thing: a married man had met his cute assistant in an apparent abandoned building late at night, leaving his sick wife to die alone.

Yeah, men are fucking pigs.

Of course, I was a little biased these days.

Keeping to the shadows of a pathetic tree rising up from a trash-strewn sidewalk planter, I closed my eyes and utilized some of my newfound skills, clearing my mind and doing my best to remove some of the burning hate that I was feeling for the cheating bastard. With eyes closed, I expanded my awareness. I imagined this as a glowing arc, widening around me like ripples in a pond. The glowing arc was my feelers, my tentacles, my supernatural eyes and ears and hands and feet. It kept widening. I sensed a nearby mailbox. There was a rat watching me from a drain grate. Correction,
three
rats, all with glowing eyes, attracted to me for reasons I couldn’t quite understand. There was also an orange tabby that had made its way from the alley to sit under the baker’s van. The tabby was watching the rats, its tail swooshing spasmodically. I could almost—almost—hear the growling of its stomach. Maybe I sensed its hunger. Anyway, the arc continued out, widening, now reaching its curious supernatural feelers deep into the Al’s Auto. I saw a simple front office. Two simple front offices, actually. Computers. Desks. Filing cabinets. Pictures of sports cars on the walls. The building wasn’t abandoned. It was perfectly functioning. I sensed a hallway that led into the back of the shop. I pushed through a doorway into a brightly lit room. Lots of images here. Murky images. Clear images. Cars lined up. Cars on lifts. Another bigger image under what appeared to be a tarp. But I was reaching the end of my range. The images were getting murkier, fuzzier, more scattered. I was certain there was a man lying on the ground. Correction:
two
men lying on the ground. Or perhaps kneeling; it was hard to tell. Were they dead? Again, impossible to tell. And now I saw something else. Or
someone
else. A woman was squatting over one of them. The images were distorted at best. What they were doing exactly was impossible to tell. What I inferred they were doing was another story.

My consciousness snapped back to the street, stunned.

I opened my eyes and, briefly confused, got my bearings. A scratching sound came from my right. I turned and saw the bright eyes of one of the rats. Watching me. He had inched a little closer.

I ignored the rat and did the only thing I could think of. My client wanted evidence. I would give her evidence. I didn’t have time to mess around with this case. I had other, more important cases. Bigger cases.

One and done,
I thought. It was time to end this case.

I pulled out my iPhone once again, but this time I called Mrs. Shine.

Chapter Eight

We were in the alleyway.

Gertrude Shine was a heavy-set woman with swollen ankles, so swollen that the hem of her stretch pants were stretched to the limit. Her hair was indeed red and permed, and she was the spitting image of the woman I had seen in my thoughts.

Anyway, I felt horrible for bringing her out here, especially in her current condition, but people don’t pay me to tell them good news. They already know, in their hearts, that bad news is coming. I’m simply a facilitator of bad news, which is a shitty way of looking at my job. Or an aspect of my job, but there you have it. Had I more time, I would have waited around and tried to photograph the adoring couple as they left the building, ideally hand-in-hand, and no doubt with a long kiss goodbye. People generally don’t hump in public, and, by law, I can’t photograph through windows. Major invasion of privacy. So, catching a couple on a date, kissing in public, and generally acting lovie-dovie is the best any private eye can hope for. And it’s generally enough for most people.

Well, screw all that.

The woman was dying. Her husband was a snake, and I had bigger fish to fry.

“He’s in there?” asked Gertrude. She seemed to be having problems standing and she was definitely having problems breathing. I was worried for her, but she didn’t complain.

I nodded, and she set her jaw determinedly.

“With her?”

“And one other,” I said.

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m confused,” she said.

“So am I,” I said.

Minutes earlier she had parked across the street, and I had led her back here to the alley behind the auto shop. Before us were two massive fold-up doors, so big they could have housed a dirigible. Lights flickered beyond the dirty windows. I heard voices, laughter. As far as I was aware, only three people were inside.

The back alley was similar in layout to Hero’s; meaning, the space behind the shop was also a small parking lot that bled into a much darker alley. If I hadn’t been so tough, I might have looked nervously down the alleys.

I was, and I didn’t.

The air was heavy and still. Mrs. Shine was sweating profusely and waving her hand in front of her face. It was time to get on with it.

“So, you have no idea who owns this building?” I asked.

“None.”

I went over to the first of the garage doors and studied it. Two big padlocks. I reached down and gripped the handle.

“But isn’t it locked?” asked Gertrude, stepping behind me.

I was feeling sassy and impatient and even small lies seemed a waste of time.

“Not anymore,” I said, and yanked hard on the handle. Both locks held tight, but I couldn’t say the same for the latches. They ripped apart and tumbled to the cracked concrete, even while I continued pulling up the rolling door.

Light spilled out.

Blinding light.

Behind me, Mrs. Shine gasped. I didn’t gasp, but my jaw did drop open.

Chapter Nine

Three people jumped in unison.

One of the guys who jumped was unfortunately working under what appeared to be a massive propeller. As he leaped, he slammed his head hard, instantly opening a gash along his hairline. Blood poured freely from his skull and he cursed. Before I could stop myself, I licked my lips.

“Jesus H. Christ!” he shouted, holding his head.

We seemed to have caught the young woman, who had been kneeling next to him, in the act of handing him a tool. Holding a wrench, she gasped and spun around. She was, of course, the baker’s assistant. Apparently, she was also a mechanic’s assistant, too.

The baker himself had been lying on a tarp and painting the hull of what I could see now was a good-sized boat. In his alarm, he had kicked over the can of paint which spilled across the tarp and over onto the oil-stained cement floor.

The young guy holding his bleeding head marched over to us, holding his wrench rather threateningly. I was still stunned, still soaking in the scene, still realizing I had made an egregious error.

So had Gertrude Shine.

The young man with the wrench said, “What the hell’s going on here?”

Blood had found its way between his fingers. I was too alarmed to pay much attention to it. Well, not too much. I did notice how the overhead lights reflected dully off it. Perfectly off it. He was looking around wildly, trying, no doubt, to figure out how we had gotten in. He walked briefly outside and saw his destroyed garage.

“What the fuck?”

I said nothing. There was nothing to say. Something like this could cost me my private investigator’s license. I hadn’t been thinking. I hadn’t been thinking for a few days now. Hell, even longer. After all, Orange County was being stalked by a sick son-of-a-bitch, and I had found myself in the thick of it.

But I couldn’t think about that now.

I blinked. Coming back to my senses. What had I done? Sure, I  might have talked my way out of something like this, but it was impossible with Gertrude next to me. Her husband, CS Shine, came over to her, equally stunned. There was a big blotch of cream-colored paint on his hip where the pail had been knocked over and washed over him.

“Trudy?” he said, looking from her, to me, to the broken door, to his bleeding mechanic friend. “Trudy, what’s going on?”

I looked at her and saw that she was crying, holding her hands over her face. She was looking up at the stern, the back of the boat where the massive propeller was mounted. Although most of the boat was covered in a blue tarp, the stern was exposed, perhaps so the mechanic could have a go at the engine. Painted in fancy black script above the propeller were the words “Gertrude Forever.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, but she was crying so of course she understood. Perfectly.

He smiled at her patiently, and I saw the love radiating from him. Literally. I could see the warm, violet waves emanating from the light field that surrounded him, reaching out to her. “You always wanted to travel the world, honey, and now we can. We’ve been overhauling it. Al, Becky’s boyfriend, has been letting me use his shop and helping me rebuild the engine.”