Dark Moonlighting (26 page)

“The light’s gone!” he shouted at Jasmine
desperately. “It’s not safe now. It’s not good to be out. I should
have hid!”

“Easy,” I said. I kept a good distance away
from the bench so as not to agitate the man any more than he
already was. “I take it you know who I am?”

The elderly man nodded his head so quickly
that I feared he might give himself whiplash. “Vampire,” he hissed.
“You’re one of the five.”

“That’s right,” I said calmly. I looked
around, paranoid that SWAT teams or police helicopters were closing
in on me as I stood there. “You, uh, gave me a veiled prophetic
warning last time I met you. Do you… remember that?”

The homeless man rolled his head towards
Jasmine. “Now in the street there is violence,” he giggled.

“Something tells me this isn’t going to be
very productive,” my former partner said to me. She turned to the
homeless man and put her hands out to steady him. She thought
better of the action when she inspected his vomit-stained clothing.
“How did you know he was a vampire?” she asked.

“Saw him eating,” the bum said in a rare
moment of lucidity. “Saw them all eating. More like me were killed.
Lots. And they still can’t feed everyone, oh no.”

“You saw them killing other homeless people?”
Jasmine questioned. She nodded at me. “There’s your prophecy, Nick.
He was probably, I don’t know, hiding in a pile of trash in an
alley when some of the murders happened. You and the other vampires
didn’t notice him, but he saw you all and figured out what you
were.”

“Who we were,” I corrected before addressing
the elderly man. “I’ve hunted all over this town. Where did you see
them? Where do you… live?”

“Deep in my heart I abhor you,” he said with
a smile.

“Where do you sleep at night?” I demanded. I
cringed at the sticky feeling on the palms of my hands as I grabbed
him by the shoulders. “Where did you see all of us?”

The bum, having fallen back into his typical
stupor, seemed not to notice my intensity. “In the dark side of
town.”

“Give me the name of a street!” I yelled at
him.

The man looked towards the sky, deep in
thought. “It’s right on the tip of my tongue,” he said with a
sorrowful shake of his head.

I wanted desperately to smack the worthless
man around, but I was interrupted by the sound of my cell phone. I
let go of the bum and took a second to wipe my hands off on my
pants. The ringtone, Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’”, was halfway over
by the time I answered the phone.

“Who’s the man?” Anthony questioned on the
other end of the line.

“Presumably you,” I answered hopefully. “What
do you got for me?”

“Foolish ancient creatures who use modern
technology,” Anthony began. “I hacked into the sales records for
the local Coffins ‘N’ Stuff store. Four identical coffins were
purchased and shipped to the same address about fourteen months
ago. The dumbasses paid with a credit card. It was child’s play
tracking them down.”

“Great,” I said excitedly. “Do you have an
address?”

“Already ran it down. It was the same
apartment Kourtney was using when you met her at the courthouse,”
Anthony answered.

“We’ve already checked that place out,” I
said in defeat. “They were long gone.”

“Yup,” Anthony said gleefully. “But it looks
like they’re clumsy movers. An identical coffin was purchased with
the same credit card last week and shipped to a different address.
I’m guessing they needed a replacement. You’re going to have to
rock down to 1457 Electric Avenue. It’s about a block away from the
intersection with Ventura Boulevard.”

I thanked Anthony, who warned me to be
careful, before returning to the car with Jasmine. The homeless man
collapsed back onto the bench, unfazed by the encounter. It was a
ten minute drive to the address. I spent the time trying to
dissuade Jasmine from coming with me. She not so politely informed
me that there was nothing I could say that would keep her from
backing me up. We found a disheveled warehouse when we arrived at
the address. We exited the vehicle as quickly as possible before
heading towards the front door. Secretly I was pleased that my
former partner was coming with me. I felt much more at ease knowing
she was watching my back.

The interior of the warehouse was large and
almost completely empty. The lights were dim, but they illuminated
the four coffins in the center of the room. It was lucky that there
was light at all. While I did not need it, the light allowed
Jasmine to see the three people grouped up in front of the coffins.
Two women, one with blond hair and one with red, had their backs to
the entrance of the warehouse. The third figure was a man wearing a
blue polyester suit. He had a large gold chain around his neck, and
he was wearing sunglasses which served no practical purpose. With
his mouth agape, he lowered the sunglasses down past his nose as he
saw us enter the room. The women turned around when they noticed
his odd expression.

“Hello, Lance,” I said menacingly as Jasmine
and I raised our crossbows. “I see your fashion sense hasn’t
improved any.”

“Long time no see,” Lance said in amazement.
“I guess you’re a better investigator than I gave you credit
for.”

“Nice place you’ve got here,” I said,
motioning around the nearly empty room.

“Yeah,” Lance agreed. “The economic downturn
has really been a blessing for vampires looking to squat in
abandoned warehouses.”

“Where’s the third one?” I demanded. “Where’s
Kim?”

“Out running an errand for me,” my nemesis
responded. “And I’d watch my tone if I were you. We both know those
little toys you’re holding aren’t going to do any good against us.
You’re outnumbered three to two, and one of you is just a
human.”

While Jasmine liked to pretend to be a
militant, I knew from plenty of conversations with her that she had
never truly experienced racism. She had grown up in an affluent
suburb in the Midwest where no one had ever dared to mutter the “N”
word in her presence. Her parents had raised her to fear a society
that did not really exist anymore. Her grandparents had even told
her horror stories about the Civil Rights movement. Lance’s
insinuation that she was somehow inferior because she was not a
vampire triggered an inherent sense of persecution in Jasmine that
she had never felt before. Jasmine pulled the trigger of her
crossbow a split second after Lance had spoken the words.

I discovered that Jasmine did, in fact, know
how to use a crossbow. The projectile she fired shot across the
room so quickly that its target did not have enough time to so much
as flinch. The bolt shot through Kourtney’s chest, knocking her
back several feet. She fell to the ground with her arms and legs
spread wide. Her left leg twitched once, but then she was still.
Lance and Khloe looked down at their comrade’s corpse in shock.

“Two on two now, bitch,” Jasmine triumphantly
announced. She pulled back the string on her weapon and loaded a
new bolt.

“Seems that you’ve been misinformed,” I
mocked. “Wood in the heart is actually one of the few things that
can kill us. The cellulose in the wood retards the ability of the
virus to repair damage to the body. It only slows the response
down, but the heart is too vital of an organ to be offline for any
amount of time. The blood stops pumping, the body dies and the
virus can’t survive without its host.”

“I see,” Lance said. “Well, I think it’s safe
to say that… run!”

Lance and Khloe suddenly fled towards the
back of the warehouse. Jasmine fired her crossbow again but,
unaccustomed to just how fast vampires can run, missed her target
by about ten feet. I compensated for the speed as best I could, but
it was still a difficult task to hit a target moving so quickly. My
bolt grazed past Lance’s backside. He let out a yelp as he threw a
hand against his posterior. He only limped for a few steps before
returning to his top speed.

I did not bother reloading my crossbow before
I took off after them. I pushed myself as hard as I could, but I
was still a long distance behind them when they barreled through
the back exit. I emerged into the alleyway behind the warehouse
five seconds after they had passed through the door.

“Shit!” I yelled at the empty alley.

Jasmine joined me a moment later. She put her
hands on her hips as she sucked down oxygen. “Maybe if we—” she
started to suggest.

“No,” I angrily interrupted. “They’re
gone.”

I dropped Jasmine off at a bar twenty minutes
later. Her car was back at my place, but I was sure that my
apartment was under police surveillance. I could not risk returning
there, and Jasmine had confessed that she wanted to have a few
drinks before she called it a night anyway. She promised me that,
even if The Chief did not believe her, she would recruit other
members of the Starside Police Department to help her take care of
the three remaining vampires. Our tearful goodbye was painfully
short. I loved her like a sister, but I had to get out of the city.
It was hard to leave her, especially knowing that she was now a
target of Lance’s vengeance. Tears were still streaming down my
eyes when I reached the southern edge of the city of Starside. I
was startled out of my stupor when the musak version of “Free
Fallin’” started playing in the pocket of my pants. I was angry
with myself as I retrieved the cell phone. It would be easy for the
police to lock onto the signal and trace it back to my location. I
should have gotten rid of the electronic device hours earlier. I
frowned as I looked down at the unfamiliar number that the phone
was displaying.

“What?” I asked in annoyance.

“I have your woman,” Lance answered
triumphantly from the other end of the phone.

My free hand tightened on the wheel as I
slammed on my brakes and pulled over to the side of the highway.
“What?” I asked again, trying desperately to control my
emotions.

“I thought that might get your attention,”
Lance responded. “If you’re not here in an hour the love of your
life dies. If you don’t come alone she dies. If you bring that
crossbow with you—”

“She dies,” I finished the thought for him.
“I get it. Where are you?”

“Right where you found me,” he answered.

“You went back to that warehouse on Electric
Avenue?” I questioned. “The one that you know me and my
police
officer
friend know about? Are you that insanely stupid?”

There was a long pause on the other end of
the phone. “Just get over here,” Lance said in annoyance.

I swore as the line went dead. I tossed my
cell phone out of the car and, with screeching tires, headed back
into Starside. He was obviously planning on ambushing me, but there
was nothing I could do about that. The only thing I could think
about was rushing over to the warehouse to save Lara.

I arrived back at the vampire gang’s hideout
and brazenly pushed through the front door. She was standing with
Lance in the center of the room. When he saw me enter, my nemesis
slid behind her and grabbed her by the throat. He poked his head
out from over the shoulder of his human shield, and he smiled
wickedly when he realized that I was unarmed. A single bead of
sweat rolled down her cheek and landed in her unnecessarily exposed
cleavage.

“Christina?” I asked in bewilderment.

I was startled a moment later when Kim and
Khloe came in from my left and right. I tried to struggle as both
my arms were suddenly pinned by the slutty vampires.

“Now now, be a good boy,” Lance said
condescendingly. He wrapped a hand around Christina’s throat to
emphasize his point. “Christina and I were just talking. I think
I’ve gotten her mostly caught up on what’s going on.”

Christina was showing a legitimate emotion
for the first time since I had met her: fear. She was trembling
slightly, and her face was almost as pale as mine was.

“What’s happening, Nick?” she asked me. “Why
does he hate you so much?”

“Yes,
Nick
,” Lance said. “Why
do
I hate you so much? Why don’t you tell this pretty young
woman what you did to me?”

I looked into the angry faces on either side
of me. There was no escape. I stopped my futile struggle against
them and, with fiery eyes, stared at Lance Flowers. Reluctantly, I
told Christina the horrible truth.

Chapter Fourteen: The Horrible Truth

It was a dark and stormy night. The year was
1973. The location was New York City. The temperature was
sixty-eight degrees. Fahrenheit, not Celsius. The wind was blowing
in from the West at twelve miles per hour. But… the wind gusts were
reaching up to thirty miles per hour.

I was walking through Times Square, minding
my own business. I had taken a day trip or, to be more accurate,
night trip into the city for a snack. I had just drained a
prostitute who had been bragging about spreading herpes to her
johns. I was planning on doing a little bit of sightseeing before I
left. That is when I first saw him. Even in that era, the blue
polyester suit he was wearing made him stand out like a sore
thumb.

He was walking down the street, and he looked
angry that it was raining even though he was holding an umbrella. I
watched him try to hail a few cabs, but he was having no luck. He
walked for a half block before he found his victim. She was a
sweet, grey-haired woman whose clothes were soaked from the rain.
She would have reminded me of my grandmother had both my
grandmothers not died of the plague in their early thirties. She
had managed the impossible and actually gotten a cab despite the
high demand that resulted from the nasty weather. She turned away
for a second to grab the bag she had left on the ground. That was
when he struck. Without a pang of conscience, Lance shoved the old
woman aside and dove into the back of the car. I scowled at his
foul deed as I, and the poor old woman, watched the cab pull away
from the curb and head down the street.