vampire for hire 10.5 - vampire requiem (3 page)

I looked at the traffic, looked at the text, and pulled over to the side of the road. I slipped between the two front seats and settled along the messy back bench...and closed my eyes.

And summoned the single flame.

***

I appeared in the alley behind the strip club.

I could do that: appear and disappear—or teleport, as Allison called it. Apparently, it was a rare gift among vampires. I had seen it used by the oldest vampire of all, Dracula, no less. I had watched him appear and disappear on command, masterfully, perfectly, and wipe out a clan of werewolves in the process.

I wasn’t quite that good...yet.
But that’s the thing with immortals: we have all the time in the world.

One prerequisite was that I needed to know where I was teleporting.
I might be undead, but appearing inside of a wall has got to hurt.

Now, as I appeared in the alleyway, I prayed like hell that there wasn’t a parked truck here, and that I didn’t manifest under its hood.

I was lucky this time. I appeared whole and intact and not as part of a combustible engine. The alley was mostly empty, except for a guy who had been looking through the Dumpster. Now, of course, he was running like a man who had just seen a woman appear in front of him out of thin air.

I grinned and headed for the house around the corner.

***

There were many houses around the corner, unfortunately. All small and surrounded by low metal fences.

I paused on the sidewalk, under the blazing sun, feeling weaker than I wanted to feel. I cast my thoughts in an ever-widening gyre, far enough out to see into the homes around me.
Yeah, I can do that, too.

The neighborhood was quiet. The homes were close together. A man attacking a woman would have been heard by any number of nearby witnesses.

On a positive note, I was pleased when I realized that I genuinely cared about Nancy’s well-being. Granted, she wasn’t exactly priority number one. Hell, I was happy that I cared enough to come out here. The realization told me that I wasn’t a monster, and that I could, in fact, keep the monster in check.

Love,
I thought again, shaking my head at the insanity of it all, as I stepped up onto her front porch. But it did make sense. Fight hate with love. Good versus evil and all of that.

I liked to think I was on the side of good.

There, the house to the left, was the closest house, in fact, to the strip club. The interior was in disarray, and I had seen blood.

I dashed off.

***

The door was locked.

That was, until I lifted my foot and kicked it in. Okay, not that I wanted to alarm this sleepy neighborhood, a neighborhood that was used to crime; a neighborhood, I suspected, that had learned to shut and lock its doors and windows and wrought-iron driveway gates.

I pushed the broken door all the way open, as the splintered wood from the doorframe caved inside.

The smell of blood and brains was strong. Almost too strong for even me to handle. The demon within me perked up, but I stamped her back in her place.

As the stench grew stronger, I stepped over a broken picture frame and drops of blood. And there was a bloody hammer neatly propped up in the far corner of the wall.

I found something else propped up in the next room, which was the kitchen. There, wedged between the refrigerator and the blood-covered cupboard, was the woman my ex-husband had cheated on me with.

It had been a clean shot with the hammer that had caved in her skull.
One bash
, I thought.

She had died, I assumed, instantly.

Her spirit was nowhere to be seen, which wasn’t necessarily rare. It just meant that she had moved on, much faster than most.

I stood over her, and stared down at her bulging eyes and blood-covered thighs and down into the hole at the top of her head.

The thing within me was interested in the corpse and all the blood, but the thing within me could go to hell.

I’m not psychic, nor do I want to be.

I had enough weird shit to contend with. I also didn’t want to have to deal with knowing the future, or even the past.

And so, I stood there, looking down at the corpse of a woman who had, I thought, loved my deceased ex-husband. She was a woman who had done her best to befriend me and to make things right. And she was a woman who was still turning tricks, despite my pleas for her to give it up.

‘Easy money,’ she had said.

Maybe I’m more psychic than I thought.

There were only a few who knew of this house, and who would use it:

The strip club’s elite customers. The politicians, the lawyers, the judges, and—
dare I think it
—the cops.

A club that my ex-husband had once owned provided top-tier clients with privacy for their dalliances. It was a strip club that would have, believe it or not, reverted to our kids, had the world known that Danny was really dead. I idly wondered if he had had a share of what the women earned in the working house. I shook my head. No, even Danny wouldn’t have gone that low. I hoped not, anyway.

The world, of course, only assumed he was missing, or was maybe on the lam from a debt, which was how I wanted to keep it. The world didn’t need to know that he was buried in a cavern under the Los Angeles River, along with two vampires.

A long story that was best kept secret.

I nodded, feeling fury build within me. Yeah, I cared about Nancy. I cared a whole helluva lot. And now, she was dead.

I turned and dashed through the broken door...

And headed to the strip club.

***

It was midday and, as a creature of the night, I wasn’t yet at full strength.

However, I had feasted on Nancy just the day before—just the day before she had been killed.

Bad week for Nancy,
I thought, as I came up to the strip club’s back exit, the very exit that I suspected Nancy and her killer had used, what, twenty to thirty minutes ago.

The door was locked but not for long. So far, I’d yet to come across a lock that could keep me out. Or any vampire, for that matter. And, no, I didn’t need to be invited in. When would I ever get any shopping done? Or go anywhere, for that matter? Who would invite me into a mall? Or the gas station? Thank God that little factoid had been debunked. It was bad enough that I couldn’t see myself in a mirror. I didn’t want to have Anthony running into the Walmart or Target to get the managers to invite me in, too.

I paused and scanned my surroundings and made sure no one was standing directly behind the door. The space was empty. Good thing, because when I was done kicking the door in, the whole thing slammed back in a clanging cloud of dust.

To hell with invitations,
I thought, and stepped into the strip club.

***

The crashing door got the attention of two strippers, both of whom came rushing out of a side room, and both of whom were bouncing in places—never mind.

I pointed to their changing rooms and they stared at me, then at each other, then bounced off into the changing rooms and slammed their doors shut.

At least they’re street-smart,
I thought, and pushed through the back hallway.

Music thumped. Lights flashed. And on the stage was a completely nude, skinny, tattooed girl whose mother and father probably wept into their pillows at night. The lights were focused on the stage, around which one-dollar bills had been tossed, with the occasional fiver thrown in for good luck. Or a hope for more of a show.

It was midday—hell, not even one p.m.—and the strip club was nearly half full.

Ever the optimist
, I thought, and surveyed the room. The stage itself was encircled with hundreds of white lights, which alternately flashed. Classy.

I’d been here before, back when I had applied for a job—long story—and I knew the layout fairly well. The layout wasn’t much: in the center, a raised stage. Single brass pole. Chairs circling the stage, filled with bored, albeit mildly turned-on, middle-aged men with nothing to lose. The girl on stage was completely nude, gleaming with sweat and looked, unbelievably, like she was enjoying herself. Dancing and cavorting and slinking and spreading, she seemed, well, into it.

Like they say, love what you do.

I shook my head and continued surveying the room. No one took an interest in me.
Maybe because I had clothes on.
The Hispanic bartender leaned a hip against the back counter and watched the dancing girl. If I had to guess, his mind was elsewhere. Working here, day after day, night after night, year after year, how many naked women had he seen? How many had it taken him to begin losing interest? Or, was it even possible for a guy to see too many naked women? I didn’t know, but the blank stare on his face suggested that it might be a possibility.

I continued scanning. Rick, who was the manager of the joint, was at the bar, his back turned to the dancer. Rick had, I think, the thickest neck I had ever seen. Even thicker than Kingsley’s.

There were, maybe, twenty customers. Most were seated around the stage. A handful were in the back booths. Single guys, sitting alone. Not talking. Hating themselves but interested in naked flesh even more.

From the back room to my right and from a dark corner, emerged a man with short, slicked-back dark hair, a man who, from all appearances, looked freshly cleaned up. Refreshed, even. He nodded to a bouncer type who was standing guard outside what I knew to be the private rooms. Or the sex rooms. The big guy returned his nod. The two looked, well, like they had a secret. I doubted the big black guy knew the secret extended all the way back to a murdered stripper in the house next door. I suspected the big bouncer had arranged for Nancy and this guy to be alone just outside of the club...and by arranged, I meant paid nicely.

But as I watched the exchange, growing admittedly more interested by the second, I noticed two things: the guy with the short black hair had his dark shirt on inside-out.

Oh, and he didn’t sport an aura of any kind.

He was, I was certain, a vampire.

***

As he slid into the back seat, I could smell it now. Fresh blood, wafting from his direction. His shirt, I suspected, was covered with the stuff.

Nancy’s blood.

Before overreacting, I reminded myself that I had spilled that same blood.

No,
I thought.
Not spilled. Drank. Deeply. Violently. Angrily.

In fact, I had taken a decisive step backward from all the progress I had made these past few months. I had reined in the demon bitch nicely, and for that I was grateful. The less fresh blood she had, the weaker she became. That’s the way I liked it. That’s the way it had been for many years after the initial attack that had turned me. Since then, I had drunk only the putrid cow and pig blood. I had inadvertently kept her at bay with the least-desirable sustenance I could find.

That was, until the first killing. The gangbanger who had wanted to gang rape me was my first blood. That hadn’t ended too well for the young man.

Still, I reminded myself, I hadn’t killed Nancy. I had only...partaken of her. And awakened a slumbering giant within myself. In fact, I felt her rising up through my consciousness now. She sensed, as well as I did, that the shit was about to hit the fan.

And she wanted a front-row seat.

Well,
I thought.
Enjoy the ride.

I moved away from the back doorway, and headed behind the stage and to the sated vampire who, even now, was watching me come to him.

With a smile on his face.

***

I took the seat opposite him, my back to the stage. I was missing the performance of the girl who danced like no one was watching—except, of course, most of the pervs in Colton were doing exactly that.

The chair seemed unstable, and I wondered how many lap dances it had endured. And with that thought alone, I vomited a little in the back of my mouth.

The man with the slicked-back hair wasn’t a man. He wasn’t a werewolf either. He seemed too slight. The werewolves I had seen were big boys...growing bigger, in fact, with each full moon. The older the werewolf, the bigger he was. Which made Kingsley one of the oldest, I realized.

And hairiest
, I thought.

“You killed Nancy.” My voice came out flat, emotionless, even.

“Oh, was that her name?” He hadn’t blinked yet. Oldest trick in the book. I could out-unblink the crap out of him. He kept his wide-eyed stare on me. His skin, I saw, was flushed. He had had a healthy feeding, of course. After all, why waste all that good blood? I, of course, hadn’t had anything all day...and the Jamba juice didn’t count. At least, not for my kind.

Whatever kind I was, that is.

A vampire
, I told myself.
A vampire, for once and for all.

Except, of course, I didn’t really believe that. I never did. I wasn’t so much a vampire as a person who was possessed by a very, very dark and powerful entity, an entity whose own supernatural powers leaked through.

No, not leaked...poured through.

And the guy in front of me seemed too fresh, too excited, too happy. He seemed, in fact, to revel in exactly what he was.

He’s a new vampire.

Which bode well for me. The older the vamps, I noticed, the stronger they were...and the more aware of the powers they possessed. New vamps relied on strength only. At least, I had.

Except, early on, I had had my early warning system, a slight ringing in my head which was, even now, sounding strongly...warning the crap out of me.

“Yes,” I said, “and she was a friend of mine.” And she
had
been a friend, dammit. Even if only for the past few months.

He said, “You should turn around and pretend you never saw me.”

“Or not.”

Oh, yeah. This guy was new, and a little full of himself. And, judging by the damage he had inflicted on Nancy, a certifiable psychopath. Not to mention, he couldn’t see auras—at least, not yet. Had he been able to, he would have seen what I was. No matter.