American Vampire

  AMERICAN VAMPIRE

  by

  J.R. RAIN

  Vampire for Hire #3

  Previous

  I was in the same parking lot where a young lady had been killed not too long ago in connection with a case of mine. A case that had involved Kingsley.

  The parking lot was mostly empty. It was late Sunday night, so no surprise there. I was in a spot that afforded me a perfect view of the parking lot’s entrance.

  I’m really doing this, I thought.

  I was a few minutes early. To my right was an alley that ran behind the restaurant. The alley was clean and dimly lit and led to the back entrances of the stores that ran along Harbor Boulevard. Potted plants were arranged outside the bar’s back door, and a nearby fire escape appeared freshly painted. The alley itself was composed of cobblestones, like something you would see in an English village. I remembered the way the girl’s blood had soaked between the stones, zigzagging rapidly away from her dying body.

  The moon was bright, but not full. Clouds were scattered thinly across the glowing sky. Glowing, at least, to my eyes. A small wind made its way through my partially opened driver’s side window. I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking, and so I kept them there on the steering wheel, gripping tightly, my knuckles glowing white.

  A car turned slowly into the parking lot, making a left from Chapman Avenue. Its headlights bounced as the vehicle angled up the slight driveway and into the parking lot.

  I’m really doing this.

  I hadn’t expected to be this nervous. Fang knew everything about me. He knew my dirtiest secrets. So what did I know about him? I knew he was a lady’s man. I knew he had a massive fascination for vampires. I knew he was mortal.

  And that was it.

  In a way, I loved Fang. He was always, always there for me. In my darkest hours, he consoled me. He lifted me up and reminded me that I was not a monster. I shared with him my heart, and in return he accepted it with tenderness and compassion. He was the perfect man. The perfect confidant.

  I didn’t want to lose what I had with Fang.

  The car continued moving through the parking lot. I could hear its tires crunching. The car, I soon saw, was an old muscle car. A beautiful thing. Not quite cherried, but obviously well taken care of. It gave off a throaty growl, not unlike the growl of the werewolf the other night.

  I didn’t want to lose Fang. I love what we have. Our connection was so rare, so helpful, so loving, so sweet, so important to me.

  I can’t lose that.

  I wrapped my hands around my keys, which were still hanging in the ignition.

  This was a bad idea. I should never have agreed to this.

  “What am I doing?” I whispered, feeling real panic, perhaps the first panic I had felt in a long time. Far worse panic than when a nine-foot-tall werewolf approached me in my hotel room.

  And what if Fang isn’t who he says he is? What if he’s someone completely different? Someone untrustworthy?

  What if I have to silence him?

  I started rocking in the driver’s seat. The throaty growl of the muscle car reverberated through the empty lot, bouncing off the surrounding dark buildings. The car pulled slowly into a parking space two rows in front of me.

  We were now facing each other. The windshield was tinted enough for me to have a hard time seeing inside. Still, I could see a single figure. A man.

  The driver turned the car off and the parking lot fell silent again. A moment later, the muscle car’s headlights flashed twice.

  My heart slammed inside me. My right hand was still holding the keys. I could start the car now and get the hell out of here and forget this night ever happened, and Fang and I could go back to what we had.

  I could. But I didn’t.

  I reached down and flashed my headlights twice in return. A moment later, the muscle car’s driver’s side door opened. A booted foot stepped out.

  Close to hyperventilating, I went to open my door but stopped short. Shit, I had forgotten about my seat belt. I hastily unfastened it and opened the door.

  I’m really doing this.

  As I stepped out of my van completely, the person opposite me did the same. The night air was cool. Sounds from the nearby bar reached us. Laughter. Music. The low murmur of a handful of conversations going on at once.

  I stepped around to the front of my minivan, and the figure in front of me did the same, stepping to the front of his car. He leaned a hip casually against the front fender. When I saw him, I stopped and gasped and covered my mouth with both hands.

  Fang grinned at me. “Hello, Moon Dance.”

  Chapter One

  The night was cool.

  The waning moon hovered just above the old downtown buildings, its silver light suffusing with the yellow of the parking lot lights. Both sets of lights served to illuminate the tall man standing in front of me. Not that I needed much light to see him in the dark, thanks to the phosphorescent streaks of incandescence that seemed only visible to me. And perhaps others like me.

  A small wind rattled a tree next to me. The tree had thick, waxy leaves that reflected the surrounding light. The tree didn’t seem native to Southern California. Trees in Southern California tended to be stunted and pathetic-looking. A plastic grocery bag scuttled halfheartedly across the parking lot, passing between Fang and me. We both ignored it.

  “Aren’t you going to say something?” he asked, grinning easily. There was humor in his deep voice, but there was also something else. Doubt. Just a shred of it. But it was there, underlying his humor. And I knew the reason for his doubt, for I shared it, too. Fang wasn’t at all certain this meeting was a good idea, either. And I suspected why.

  He has a secret, too. A big secret.

  How I knew this, I wasn’t sure. A psychic hit, perhaps. But I was suddenly certain that Fang stood to lose much by this meeting; after all, his past—whatever it was—would not remain hidden, not with me in the picture.

  We all have our secrets.

  I finally moved my hands away from my mouth and took in a lot of air. I don’t generally need a lot of air; in fact, I’m fairly certain I don’t need any air at all. But breathing deep helped calm my nerves, and since my lungs still worked, I figured I might as well use them every now and again.

  I also found myself scanning the parking lot, wondering if I had somehow walked into an elaborate prank…or something far worse. A trap perhaps. But I sensed no danger here and I sensed no malice from Fang. Granted, my sixth sense wasn’t foolproof, but in situations like this, well, it certainly would have been triggered. Especially since my extrasensory perception seemed to be getting stronger and stronger of late.

  “Don’t look so concerned, Moon Dance,” Fang said. He eased himself off the fender of his car and faced me. “We’re alone.”

  I still hadn’t spoken. Music pumped from the bar nearby and I might have heard the sharp crack of a pool ball striking another pool ball. Either that, or someone had just broken a kneecap. There was a slight hint of beer on the wind…and vomit. The two often went hand in hand, especially at this late hour and especially in a back alley parking lot.

  I stopped scanning the surrounding area and focused on the man before me. Now with my shock abating, the investigator in me was surfacing. The man, I was certain, had stalked me. In fact, I was sure of it. That raised all sorts of alarm bells within me, although I should have known it would happen sooner or later. Fang was, admittedly, a vampire aficionado. I should have known he would have used all the clues I had laid out before him over the years to eventually find me.

  Perhaps you wanted to be found, Sam.

  Perhaps.

  Granted, a part of me had hoped Fang would be Kingsley, but Kingsley was a very different kind of creatu
re of the night. In the end, I knew that Fang could not have been Kingsley.

  But I never expected the man standing before me now.

  Finally, I spoke. “They let you off work early.” Now I, too, stepped away from my van.

  “Yeah, well, I told them it was an emergency,” said Fang easily.

  He moved away from his car and stepped over the crumbling concrete parking curb with its exposed, rusted re-bars.

  “And this is an emergency?” I asked.

  His face lit up. “Of the highest order, Moon Dance.”

  Now he was coming toward me, moving across the empty parking lot. On his chest, the two great shark teeth swung and bounced from the leather strap. Only I was beginning to think they weren’t shark teeth.

  Fang. His name is Fang for a reason.

  More deep breaths. I was tempted to step away from my van, but I couldn’t make my legs work. In fact, they suddenly felt gelatinous and heavy and not really my own.

  I put my hand on the van’s warm hood, stabilizing myself.

  Fang was a tall man, and his long strides quickly ate up the asphalt between us. When he was just a few arms lengths away, he stopped, chest heaving.

  “I don’t know your name,” I said, suddenly self-conscious. His eyes rapidly roamed over me, taking me in. But I was used to him looking at me, wasn’t I? After all, I had often caught him looking at me.

  “You never asked for my name,” he said.

  “Married women don’t ask bartenders for their names,” I said.

  “You’re not married now.”

  “Technically I’m separated. The divorce paperwork is being drawn up now by my attorney.”

  “You’re doing an awful lot of talking,” said the Heroes’ bartender, smiling at me again. His white teeth shone brightly, and so did the monstrously long teeth dangling from his neck. “And not enough asking.”

  “Fine,” I said, feeling my heart calming down. This was Fang, after all, my best friend, my confidant, the man I had opened my life up to…all my secrets, all my fears. Everything. “What’s your name?”

  “You can call me Eli Roberts,” he said. “But my given name is,” he paused. “Aaron Parker.”

  I blinked, and might have gasped, too.

  Aaron Parker. I knew the name, of course. Anyone in law enforcement would know the name. I looked at the man in front of me again…looked at the fangs hanging from the leather strap. Indeed, those weren’t shark teeth.

  “You’re the American Vampire,” I said.

  He smiled and laughed lightly. “Could you say that a little louder, Moon Dance?”

  Chapter Two

  The Downtown Bar & Grill was a new restaurant in a very old building. The walls were brick and the black lacquer bar counter was epic. It stretched from nearly end to end and I could only imagine how many drinks had been served from its polished, scarred surface.

  Aaron Parker, aka Fang, found us a table in the darkest corner of the deepest part of the lounge. Music thumped from nearby speakers. There wouldn’t be a soul on earth who could overhear us. A waitress materialized out of the darkness like a ghost and took our orders. Aaron ordered for us. White wine for me. Jack and Coke for him.

  “You remembered what I drink,” I said. I found myself feeling wary and highly exposed and vulnerable. I also found myself fighting a very strong desire to run. But to run was to leave a lot of questions unanswered.

  To run was to screw everything up, and I didn’t want to screw everything up.

  Aaron sat forward and studied me intently. I don’t like to be studied intently. He knew that, didn’t he? Interestingly, his look was the same look he’d given me many times at Heroes, a bar I frequented with my sister. Silly me, I had thought his probing glance had been an interest of a different sort. Now I knew differently. He had been stalking me. He had known who I was all along.

  I instinctively looked away, feeling a bit like a freak at a carnival: “Come one, come all—see the real-life bloodsucker!”

  Now that he was sitting across from me and not endlessly serving customers, I had a chance to really study him. I had always found him attractive. I’m sure he knew that. And my sister had an unhealthy crush on him that her husband really should probably be concerned about. Aaron Parker was tall. Perhaps one of the tallest men I had ever seen. I suspected he was an athlete and I resisted the urge to ask him if he played basketball. Aaron had full lips. The kind most women drool over. He had sad puppy dog eyes, as brown and bright as polished cherry wood. But it was his mouth that I found the most curious. He didn’t seem to know what to do with those beautiful lips of his. Sometimes he pulled them as if snarling. And sometimes they seemed to drape over his lower lip. Often they moved and shifted and I kept having the impression he was about to say something, but words rarely followed the movement. It was the oddest twitch I had ever seen.

  Finally, his moving lips formed words. When he spoke, he did so softly. If not for my better-than-average hearing, I might have missed what he said: “I remember everything you tell me, Samantha.”

  “Except I never told you my name.”

  Now he looked away, suddenly embarrassed. He should be embarrassed. Her had stalked the shit out of me. “Yes, I’ve known your name for some time.”

  “It’s not nice to stalk people,” I said. “Especially someone who can kill you and deposit your body somewhere over shark-infested waters where it will never be seen again.”

  Aaron’s eyes flashed briefly with amusement. “It was a chance I had to take.”

  Our drinks came. It was late Sunday night and the bar crowd was thinning. No doubt only the hardcore drinkers were left…and a creature or two of the night. As we sat in the bar, toasting to good health and long life (which put a smile on my face), I was suddenly certain Aaron and I were being watched. I glanced over his shoulder, searching for the source, but there was only an empty stairway leading up to God knew what. Still, the electrified field that only I seemed to see, a field that consisted of glowing streaks of light that helped me see into the darkest of nights, seemed to be buzzing with more than usual activity. Light streaks zipped about as if energized by something unseen.

  Something’s coming, I suddenly thought. What that I was, I didn’t know.

  I turned back to Fang. “So how did you find me?” I asked, although I had already intuited the answer. Obviously, I had given the man enough clues about my life—in particular, the cases I had worked on—for him to find me. Quite simply, he had put two and two together. Even if two and two had come over the course of years.

  He confirmed my hunch, and explained. To his credit, he looked a bit sheepish. Anyway, it had been one of my bigger cases four months ago that had gotten some national attention, a case that involved a runaway girl and a murderous dad. Despite my best efforts to remain anonymous, my name had appeared once or twice in the newspaper. I had, of course, mentioned to Fang that I was working on an important missing person case. By this point, I had already inadvertently dropped enough clues over the years to direct him to the general region where I lived. And once he knew the general region, well, it had just been a matter of scanning the local headlines for any news about a runaway.

  I said, “So everything I ever told you….”

  “I made notes,” he said. “I saved our messages. I poured over them later, searching for hidden clues about you. About how to find you. In the beginning, you gave me very little to work with. But you loosened up over the years.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. There was a creep factor here that was hard to ignore. But I also understood human nature. Or, at least, tried my damned best to. Yes, of course he had been curious about me. Who wouldn’t have been? I was a woman who was professing to be much more than a woman. And, admittedly, I had certainly been curious to find him, too, but I had never acted on it. I was a married woman at the time, working hard to keep things happy and seemingly normal.

  Too hard.

  A marriage shouldn’t have to be s
o much work. Love shouldn’t crush your soul. A relationship should add to your life, not take away from it. Something I’m only now beginning to understand.

  But it was hard to remain mad at Fang…or Aaron. There was a gentleness to him that I never saw coming. His instant messages to me had exuded confidence. But I wasn’t seeing the confidence here. No, I was seeing a man, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, who had anything but confidence. I was missing something here, and I wasn’t sure what it was.

  I looked again at the teeth dangling from his neck. They were long and thick—but not quite as thick as shark teeth. They looked like dog canines. Big dog canines. I looked again at his twitching mouth, and saw him curl his upper lip down as if to….