Blood Work (50 page)

Hey, I don’t
know about anyone else, but a girl not much over five feet, about
as wide as my thigh, with a sweet heart-shaped face and bouncing
curls of black hair isn’t that scary. Especially when she’s wearing
PJs with My Little Pony on them.

“Whatever.
It’s time to get up.” I spun around and walked out of her room.

In the
kitchen, I made myself some lunner—think brunch but at the other
end of the day. I was finishing off my bowl of cornflakes and
grapes when Mercy slouched in. She’d showered and washed her hair.
It was plastered down to her scalp and shoulders and dripped water
onto her t-shirt (slogan—I’m Dressed and Out of Bed, What More Do
You Want?) and track pants.

“Evening.”

She snarled at
me and went to the cupboard hiding the blood fridge.

“Grumpy. Maybe
you didn’t get enough sleep.”

Mercy had made
leaps and bounds forward in learning to act human, but sarcasm was
still a lost cause with her. She glared at me and then glared at
the locked fridge.

“I’m hungry,”
she snapped.

“You ate two
nights ago.”

“And now I’m
hungry again.”

“Why? You’ve
done nothing. I checked your haemoglobin this morning. It was fine
then, it’ll be fine now. You don’t need any blood.”

She moaned and
threw herself into a chair. “But I’m hungry.”

“You only
think you’re hungry.”

Her head hit
the heavy, wooden table with such force it jumped. I caught my bowl
before it could shatter on the floor.

“Be careful
with the furniture, Merce. Please. We can’t afford to replace
anything if you break it.”

Her muttering
was stifled by the table. I patted her head on the way to the
sink.

“Do that a
couple more times while shouting ‘I’ll never get it, never’ and I
might take some pity on you. Otherwise, earn your keep.”

Dragging
herself up with exaggerated weariness, she followed me into the
living room. “But there’s nothing to do.”

I showed her
the imps. She got down on her hands and knees and peered into the
cages. They woke from their music induced stupor and hissed at her.
Mercy growled and the cages rocked backwards as the imps all piled
up at the end furthest from her.

“They’re
really tiny,” she observed.

“Babies. I
figure the big one is mum or dad. Maybe both. I think I read
somewhere demons are hermaphrodites. Or they reproduce asexually.
Either way, they shouldn’t be here. Take them out and drown
them.”

In a lot of
ways, Mercy was much like a teenager. She was turned when she was
twenty-three, but her mental age was younger. In vampire years, she
was barely a toddler. At two and bit years turned, she should have
still been nothing more than a mouth on legs. Feeding was all that
consumed a young vampire’s mind in the early years. Only when they
reached the ripe old age of twenty or thirty did they start to slow
down and learn a few words. At fifty, they could pass for a sulky
adolescent. A lot of wild vampires didn’t make it that far. They
were, relatively speaking, pretty fragile until they hit the half
century. After that, it was a rapid incline until they could pass
for human at a night club, then quickly on to making muster at a
cocktail party. Around the 300
^th
year, they could be in
government and no one would know the difference.

It seemed that
with a well planned diet and regimental training program, a vampire
could roar through that process in no time at all. I’d stumbled on
the process by accident while trying to help Mercy through the
early stages of the transformation. The discovery, and Mercy’s
subsequent awesomeness compared to other vampires her age, had
drawn all sorts of nasty interest. The fight with the Primal
Veilchen had been a result of that interest. And it was why I
couldn’t quite understand why we hadn’t been inundated with
avenging vampires since.

Mercy sighed
as if I’d just asked her to lop off a limb and offer it to a hungry
dog. She picked up the carriers and trudged outside with them. I
followed her as far as the back door and watched as she went to the
end of the dock in the backyard. Our house backed onto a salt water
canal. The neighbours all had sleek boats at the end of their
docks. We had nothing, if you discounted the grouchy vampire on her
belly, dunking cat carriers in the water.

Demons don’t
like salt. At least, imps don’t. It’s like Holy water for vampires.
You dunk an imp in the ocean and you can almost hear the plaintive
cries of ‘I’m melting’.

The water
boiled around the carriers and thankfully the imps were suffocated
before they could start yodelling again. When the water calmed
down, Mercy lifted up the carriers, drained them of sludge and
brought them back inside.

“Happy?” she
demanded as she went past.

“Immensely.”

“Can I eat
now?”

I went and got
her a bag of O pos and she took it into her room. Moments later, I
could hear the opening of Pirates of the Caribbean. Since Mercy had
discovered Orlando Bloom, Will Smith hardly got a look in.

Retreating to
the office, I called Roberts.

“Hey,” he
answered. “I was about to call you.”

“Yeah? Got a
job for me?”

“Nah. I saw
Jacob today. He was wondering if you wanted to come in for a Black
Books marathon.”

I scowled.
“Why couldn’t he call me himself?”

“What am I?
His secretary?”

“No, you’re
mine. And you’re not doing your job properly. How come I’ve got no
work?”

“What are you
talking about? I gave you that job in The Gap.” There was a short
pause. “Didn’t I?”

“You did, and
I finished it today. More imps. Lots more imps. How did you get my
card to a senior citizen anyway? Have you moved out of the pubs and
clubs and onto the bowling greens? RSLs?”

Roberts was a
rep for booze companies. He trawled the drunken rabble of the local
watering holes with promotional gear and competitions to win, you
guessed it, more alcohol. I’m not so great with crowds, so Roberts
hands out my business cards whenever he overhears a conversation
that might be of interest to me. It’s an agreement that works
fairly well. Until now.

“No,” he
answered slowly. “I do have a life, unlike some people whom shall
remain named as you. I met the old duck at the theatre.”

I strangled
back a laugh. “The theatre?”

“Yes, Carla
and I went to see The Phantom of the Opera.”

“Hang on.
Carla? What happened to Gale?”

Roberts
sighed. “Do you remember that trip you dragged me on, up to the
Sunny Coast?”

“The sprite
invasion, sure.”

“I missed
Gale’s birthday.”

The last
serious relationship I had was at university with Halle, a girl
with a sad Brad Pitt dependency. I’m now thirty-two. My memory
might give out on me every now and then, but I still knew missing a
birthday was a Big Deal.

“Ah man, I’m
sorry. If I’d known, I would never have asked you along.”

“The sad thing
was, she’d never told me it was her birthday. Apparently, I was
just supposed to know.”

I sucked in a
sharp, wounded breath. “That’s tough.”

“Yeah. But
anyway, Carla’s better. Longer legs.”

“When do I get
to meet her?”

Roberts
snorted. “Never. Gale was ready to forget me an hour after meeting
you.”

“Hey, that’s
not fair and good job changing the topic of conversation. Why don’t
I have any work?”

“Shit. Okay,
here’s the reason. Mate, there is no work. I keep listening but no
one’s talking.”

“Are you
shitting me?”

“It’s the
truth. Get your arse out of the house and come check it out
yourself. No one’s got vampire problems, or troll issues, or ghoul
troubles. I’m telling you, you must have cleaned up the town. There
are no nasties out there for you to get all righteous on.”

I sagged back
in the chair. “Well, that hardly seems fair. I was just hitting my
stride. And Mercy’s at a stage where I don’t have to constantly be
watching her.”

Me and my fat
mouth.

“Hawkins!”
Someone began pounding on the front door.

I lurched out
of the chair. “I’ll call you back,” I snapped at the phone and hung
up. Racing to the front door, I flung it open before Charles could
knock it down.

“What’s the
deal, Charles?” I demanded.

Charles was my
neighbour. We didn’t get on so well. He thinks I’m weird. I don’t
know where he’d get that idea.

“That… that…
girl is in your backyard.”

Charles thinks
I’m weird and he thinks Mercy’s retarded. He’s never quite come out
and thought it openly, but he subconsciously believes that I’m
taking advantage of the poor, mentally deficient girl.

How do I know
this? Because Charles has a very open mind and I have psychic
superpowers. I’ve lost count of the number of nights I’ve been
woken up by his dreams. I do, however, know how many times I’ve
been woken up by Charles and his wife Sue having sex. They’re both
screamers, but their emotional screaming is what gets me. If I
didn’t regard Charles with so much contempt, I would probably blush
whenever I saw him.

And right now,
his stuttering words were matched by his stuttering mind. Flashes
of Mercy in the backyard slapped me in the brain, along with
Charles’ embarrassed lust.

“Dear God,” I
muttered and, leaving Charles at the door, I ran through to the
back of the house and out onto the patio.

There’s a
narrow strip of grass between patio and canal. Mercy had put down a
towel on the grass and was lying on it. The only thing she wore was
a pair of sunglasses. The moonlight was like silk on her pale skin,
caressing the curves and accentuating the peaks. She was flawless.
You would never have guessed she’d almost died of severe wounds six
months ago.

“What are you
doing?” I demanded.

“Sunbathing.”

I blinked
several times. “Okay. As long as you’re doing it sensibly.”

Charles was
still at the door when I returned.

“Is she still
out there?”

“Yes.”

“Covered
up?”

“No.”

“What’s she
doing?”

“Sunbathing
sensibly.”

He gaped at me
like a fish out of water.

“Might I
suggest,” I said as I turned him around and gave him a helpful
shove toward home, “that you and Sue watch a movie tonight. Or play
Scrabble. Or, if you want, look out the window at the naked girl
and have some fun. Whatever. Goodbye, Charles.”

I shut the
door before he could splutter a reply. Think about it. It could
have been worse. He could have seen her dunking two occupied cat
carriers in the water.

Of course, I
wasn’t about to just let Mercy get away with it. In the kitchen, I
got a bucket and filled it with water and all the ice in the
freezer. I let it cool down and then went upstairs. I never go
upstairs. I have no need to. Mercy and I have bedrooms on the
ground floor. I have an en suite and she has a shower stall. The
only need I have of a second storey is so I can dump several litres
of freezing water on the naked vampire from the balcony.

She squealed
and I’m certain I heard a muffled, female laugh from next door.

Mercy was in
the living room when I came downstairs. Dripping, but otherwise
none the worse for wear. Vampires run at a much higher operating
temperature than humans. It would take drowning in Antarctic waters
to affect them.

Thankfully,
the phone rang. Mercy knows that’s often a sign of business (at
least, it used to be), so she didn’t kill me before I could answer
it.

“Night Call,”
I said.

“Matt
Hawkins?”

The voice
sounded vaguely familiar. “Yeah. Who’s this?”

“Ivan Vorel.
From Sol Investigations.”

Aah. “I didn’t
expect to hear from you.” Ever again. His boss didn’t exactly like
me. Pity. For a while there, his boss had been very much on my
‘like a lot’ list. Time—and no contact—had lessened that
feeling.

“I know,” Ivan
said. “Listen, are you able to come into the office tomorrow? I
would like to talk to you.”

“Does Erin
know you’re calling me?”

There was a
long pause. “No. She won’t be in tomorrow.”

“Okay. I’ll be
in around ten. Is that all right?”

“Yeah. Thanks.
I really appreciate it.”

He hung up and
I stared at the phone for a while. What could it mean that Ivan was
willing to risk Erin’s ire by contacting me?

“Work?” Mercy
asked.

“Could be. And
it’s possible that it’s something big.”

Again, me and
my fat mouth.