Moon Angel (Vampire for Hire Book 14), Page 2

  Until she heard the devil beckoning.

  Tammy knew she could keep him out of her head, if she wanted to. The cool thing about all this mind reading was that she had taught herself how to protect her own mind in ways that she knew, without a doubt, that no one, but no one could have access to it. For instance, she knew how to seal up her mind, wall it off, block it. But the devil had figured a way to connect with her anyway. To call to her. It wasn’t much, but she heard it. And it had all happened yesterday. She suspected that once she had slipped inside the devil’s mind, a sort of trap had been sprung. Kind of like opening an email virus. But she knew how minds worked, and how to access them, and she knew, roughly, where the connection lay in her mind. She also knew that she could remove it when she wanted to. Or so she hoped.

  And so, she had put Kingsley to sleep and taken a bus. A few dozen stops later and here she was, walking the streets of Santa Ana, knowing the devil was just around the corner.

  She felt excited, nervous and curious. And now that she could offer people suggestions—especially those people who might want to do her harm—she could do more than just avoid them. She could possibly control them too.

  Tammy turned a corner and recognized the woman who stepped out of a car with steamed-up windows as the same jogger from the day before. Tammy had known it would be her, of course. Heck, Tammy had been connected to her since yesterday.

  How much of the devil was inside her, Tammy didn’t know. Maybe it was only a part of him. Maybe the devil possessed many dozens or hundreds of people around the world. Tammy didn’t know. If so, she had never come across him in any other mind. Indeed, this was a new experience for her.

  The woman adjusted her short skirt and the man behind the wheel drove off. A quick scan of his mind and Tammy knew all about his cheating ways, his self-hate, his guilt, his depression, his suicidal thoughts. She also saw that he was an important man, a rich man. He was a politician of some sort. A congressman. She saw the devil’s hold on the man. Tammy knew the man had, in essence, sold his soul to the devil. The man knew it, but didn’t know it, too. Tammy had seen something similar, when her mother had inadvertently turned that handsome boxer into a sex slave. So gross, but so damn interesting too. The devil, she knew, had created a similar attachment within the congressman. But unlike her mother, who had released the boxer, the devil sought to use the man. Use and abuse him. The congressman knew it on some level, too, but he didn’t care. The man only wanted to please the devil, in whatever form the devil took. At this point, the man did not care if the devil possessed a man or a woman. He needed the connection. He needed to please, no matter what... forever.

  Tammy stood before the woman. She had a nice figure and was pretty enough. But her lipstick was smeared, and her hair was tangled and dirty.

  Unlike her mother, whose entity existed deep beneath her consciousness, Tammy could see the devil right there, front and center in the woman’s mind. It was, in fact, the woman who was buried deep below. Tammy could see that the devil had big plans for this woman. He planned to use her to bring many powerful men to their knees, to blackmail them and use them and hopefully destroy them and those around them. Or he might just kill her. He hadn’t decided which.

  “You heard my call,” said the woman—said the devil—wiping the back of her hand across her face, smudging the lipstick even farther across her cheek. She looked psychotic.

  Tammy wrapped her arms around herself. She tried telling herself that it was cold—and it was, kinda—but she suddenly realized just how far away from home she was, and how far away her mother was too.

  Now Tammy heard other voices, whisperings that seemed to come from everywhere and anywhere, from the shadows in the alley, from the shadows under cars and in corners, on the cold wind, too, and all of which seemed to be coming to a head here, in this place, around this woman with lipstick smeared across her face.

  In fact, yes, the whispering seemed to be swirling around them, swirling and swirling, and the woman before her—especially the entity within—seemed to be highly attuned to all the whisperings. More than that, it seemed to be responding to the whisperings, on another, higher level that even Tammy couldn’t quite penetrate. At least, not yet. It seemed—yes, it seemed as if the entity before her had delegated a part of itself to constantly, continuously, effortlessly, responding to the whisperings—no, to the information—that was coming to it. So, in a way, the thing before her could both focus on Tammy, but also give a part of itself to running what Tammy assumed was a very dark and terrible empire of fear.

  Tammy could almost, almost, make out the whisperings. She thought she caught a snatch of “...is ready now” and “...has killed again.” Tammy couldn’t see where the voices were coming from, not exactly, but out of the corner of her mind, she sensed movement... shadowy figures just beyond her perception.

  “There’s a lot going on in that mind of yoursss, child,” said the woman, her voice veritably hissing, but not quite in the way the dark masters hissed when they spoke to her mother. The thing was, Tammy wasn’t one hundred percent certain the woman had spoken the words. They might have just as easily been projected to her.

  “I’m not a child,” said Tammy.

  “Then what are you?” asked the devil.

  Tammy thought about that. She didn’t feel like an adult, not yet anyway, but she certainly didn’t feel like a child. She said, “I’m just not a child, okay?”

  “Fair enough,” said the devil, and now, Tammy could hear what sounded like a low growl in the voice. In fact, the voice was sounding less like a woman, and more like an angry man.

  “Not angry,” said the devil. “Let’s just say, I’m passionate.”

  “About what?” asked Tammy. She noticed that the street was nearly empty. She also noticed, from the corners of her eyes, shadowy movement.

  “A good question, lass,” said the devil. Tammy knew the word ‘lass.’ Jacky the boxer called her mother a lass, and Tammy always kind of liked it, too, even though she knew it was, like, Irish for ‘girl.’

  Better than ‘child,’ she thought. And as she thought that, she suspected the devil had plumbed that information from deep within her memory bank. Yes, he was inside her head, but he wasn’t so deep inside that he could see the secret she was carrying. A secret she had boxed up nicely. A secret that she knew the devil would have reacted to, had he seen it.

  Yes, thought Tammy in this secret place inside her mind. He can’t reach everywhere.

  Which was a relief to her.

  The devil watched her curiously, and Tammy knew he sensed he was missing something, that something was being, in fact, hidden from him, and this made him angrier and more curious.

  The devil said, “I am passionate about my work, you could say. I am passionate about my continued existence.”

  The woman stepped forward. Her movements seemed odd, her steps too long, her arms too stiff. She looked like a praying mantis or something. Tammy sensed the devil’s confusion. She also sensed the devil’s rage. It was welling up and it was terrible. Tammy was pretty sure she had never seen pure evil before, until now. Right there inside the woman’s mind, burning white and hot—and also black and slimy.

  The devil was still next to her ear. In fact, she could feel the woman’s longish hair brushing against her neck, a sensation that made Tammy’s skin crawl. The devil cocked her head this way and that, as if trying to get a look inside Tammy’s ear.

  More shadows shifted and moved around Tammy, and she had a sudden insight. “It was the shadows who summoned me, not you. The shadows formed a sort of chain, all the way to my house, because shadows are everywhere, aren’t they? And the things you control live in the shadows.”

  “Is that right, now?” asked the devil.

  “Yes, I think it is right. You need help. Lots of help. You are not as powerful as you want us all to believe.”

  The woman stepped around and stood before her again. Tammy was pleased that her words had gotten to the devil
, who seethed now just inside the woman’s mind. If anything, the hate glowed brighter and darker, something Tammy had never seen before: bright and dark occupying the same space.

  “There is a space in your mind, a hidden space,” said the devil, who now sounded nothing like the woman. “You are hiding a secret from me.”

  “A girl needs her secrets,” said Tammy, feeling a lot more confident than she probably should.

  Tammy sensed within the devil real confusion and a lot of anger. The devil was not used to mortals keeping secrets from him. Immortals, yes. The devil, like most immortals, could not penetrate the minds of other immortals. He hadn’t been able to penetrate her mother’s mind, nor had her mother been able to penetrate his. Tammy could penetrate it—and could go quite deep if she chose. She chose not to. Digging inside that mind, she suspected, would lead to madness.

  “I will find your secrets, lass. For now, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a little, pesky vampire who had proven to be particularly troublesome to the dark masters. The dark masters thought they could control her. They thought wrong. They began realizing this vampire bitch—sorry, your mother—was more trouble than she was worth. They began to realize that they might need to find another. Do you know what ‘jump ship’ means?”

  Chapter Three

  I was driving my minivan. I hung a right, then a left, and gunned it down a mostly empty street. I ran a red light, then blew through a stop sign, and nearly hit a young man wearing earbuds in a crosswalk who didn’t seem too happy about it.

  “Where next?” I asked, picking up speed on a busy street, weaving past slow-moving cars that were going the speed limit. I cursed them and panicked and, quite frankly, barely remembered any of it.

  Allie pointed northwest, and I continued zig-zagging through the city, since there wasn’t a street that angled northwest. That was, until we came across Anaheim Street, which cut diagonally and gloriously through the city.

  I gunned the minivan as fast as it would go, which wasn’t nearly fast enough for my taste.

  “She’s with a woman,” said Allison between whimpers. “A really messed-up looking woman.”

  “Messed-up, how?”

  “Lipstick smeared on her face, hair in disarray. She’s sort of walking around Tammy, talking to her, touching Tammy’s hair sometimes.”

  I gripped the steering wheel hard enough to tear the faux-leather covering. Touching my daughter? That thought alone caused me to blow through a red light. Hey, my inner alarm hadn’t sounded, and I knew we would be safe. Then again, they didn’t know that.

  “Who is she, Sam?” asked Allison, next to me. “The jogger from yesterday?”

  “Would be my guess.”

  She didn’t have to say it. None of us had to say it. We all knew the jogger from yesterday was the devil himself.

  I blew through another red light.

  ***

  “The dark masters are very, very serious about re-emerging into this world, lass. But your mother isn’t cooperating and they are losing patience.”

  Tammy nearly asked how the devil knew this, but knew that was a stupid question. The devil had shadowy agents everywhere. Literally, everywhere.

  “Well, tough shit,” said Tammy, feeling her spine stiffen. “My mom’s immortal. And Elizabeth is stuck. Forever. And from what I understand, they need Elizabeth to carry out their plan.”

  “All true, child, except you and I both know that a vampire can die.”

  The words hung in the air, words that Tammy knew but didn’t want to acknowledge.

  “In short, they are planning your mother’s execution. They are planning it carefully and, once done, Elizabeth will be free to pursue her next target. And in case you don’t know where I’m going with this, that next target is you. Granted, you are not ideal, but they think they can make it work.”

  “I’ll never help them! And Mommy will never die, either. She’s smarter than them, tougher than them. They’ll never hurt her.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. Your mother, as you know, lost her guardian angel. Your mother, quite frankly, has been left without protection.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Tammy.

  The woman spread her hands wide. “I will offer her my protection. After all, it behooves me to keep the dark masters at bay. There is, after all, only room for one sheriff in town.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  “Your mind, of course,” said the devil. “Now, do we have a deal?”

  ***

  “Down this street, Sam. There, do you see her?”

  I did. She was standing under a streetlamp with a woman who appeared to be wearing clown makeup in front of a closed pizza joint. I noticed other things too: my inner alarm sounding, the street being oddly devoid of foot and car traffic, and the moving shadows... yes, the many shadows that seemed to be crawling up street poles or swirling under cars. Shadows that flitted through the air like black flags. I nearly rubbed my eyes, but I didn’t have to. I knew these were living shadows, dark souls, an aspect which had been left behind on Earth, while the majority of them burned in hell. I’d always suspected these forgotten, lost fragments stuck around to help the devil, seeking forgiveness. After all, why help the very entity responsible for one’s seemingly eternal punishment? I didn’t know, but it was a sick circle, and here was my daughter in the middle of it.

  “Sam, that woman—”

  “—is the devil,” I said. “Hang on.”

  ***

  Tammy gasped, turned her head.

  She’d been hearing her mother for quite some time, but she’d been keeping that knowledge in that secret corner of her brain. But the minivan roaring down the center of the street was hard to deny.

  The woman looked, too, and grinned. “Mommy’s here. I would say ‘just in time’ but you and I know both know different, don’t we, Lady Tam Tam? You and I both know that your mother arrived just a fraction too late.”

  “You will protect her, right?” asked Tammy. “You will keep her safe? You will keep an eye on her, like you promised?”

  “Oh, I will keep my eye on her, don’t you worry. Meanwhile, you will be hearing from me again soon. I have some work for you.”

  With that, the woman calmly reached inside her purse and removed a handgun. And with the minivan nearly on top of them, she placed the barrel of the gun next to her temple. The woman’s eyes flashed with real fear and Tammy knew she was looking at the real woman, not the devil. Except the real woman couldn’t control herself, not even a little bit. She had just mouthed, “Help me.” Then the side of her head blew off.

  Tammy screamed and kept on screaming as she watched an oily, slithery, wet shadow rise up out of the dead woman and into the air. It rose higher and higher and disappeared.

  Chapter Four

  “Tammy’s in her room,” said Allie, looking up from the TV. I was pleased to see she was watching Judge Judy.

  “It was the only thing on.”

  “I’m rubbing off on you,” I said, and plopped down on the couch next to her. It was midday, the usual time I woke up, except my kids had stayed home today at my insistence. No surprise there. With Allie here, I could have slept in. Except the devil had his eye on my kids, and that made sleeping in damn near impossible.

  He had to be stopped. Just how, I didn’t know. Not yet.

  For now, I still needed to wake up.

  We’d spent most of the last night answering questions from the police, who I had telepathically convinced to leave us out of their reports. Of course, there was no denying that my daughter would show up on CCTV footage talking to the woman. There was also no good reason for my daughter to have been in Santa Ana in the middle of the night. So, I had told them that my daughter had run away. Again.

  The dead woman had been looking for someone to talk to. The dead woman, it turned out, had been a realtor in Huntington Beach. A very successful realtor. Well, the police were about to discover that some people could sink to new lows. (
Just wait until they saw her emerging from car after car, turning trick after trick.)

  I left the devil out of it, of course. So did my daughter. Then again, she’d spent the night crying in my minivan. Allie and I had taken turns holding her hand. With each sob, I found myself growing angrier and angrier with the devil. Tammy had finally admitted that the devil had coerced her into making a deal with him, that he’d convinced her that my life was in danger from the dark masters, that they would, in fact, seek another. To do so meant that Elizabeth would have to be free. In order for her to be freed, that meant I would have to be dead. Whether his information was correct or not, the devil had frightened Tammy into making a deal with him.

  “Thank you again for watching them,” I said, drinking my coffee and sitting across from her on my L-shaped couch. She’d stayed with my kids all day. At this rate, I was going to have to homeschool my kids.

  “Of course, Sam. She slept for most of the day. Anthony has been in and out of his room, playing video games and watching TV. I tried to get him to do his homework and he said he would. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t.”

  I nodded absently. Anthony and homework didn’t mix, but I knew he did his best. I also knew that Allison had to cancel all her personal training appointments today, and call in sick for her psychic hotline job—although she could do that from anywhere, just as long as she had a laptop and Internet connection. Of course, she had previously made it known that she felt self-conscious doing it here. Mostly because she had heard me make fun of her from the kitchen.

  “You’ve gone over and above the call of duty. I’ll make it up to you somehow.”

  “Just knowing you guys are safe is enough.”

  Indeed, having Allie watching over my kids had been comforting. My best friend’s powers seemed to only be growing. Or, more likely, she was learning how to control them better.

  “A little bit of both,” she said, picking up on my thoughts.