Dark Rain: 15 Short Tales (17 page)

“I’m not like other vampires, Mr. Spinoza.”

“You throw that word around pretty liberally.”

He shrugged. “There’s no denying it.”

“There’s denying it a little.”

He held my gaze. “Not here, Mr. Spinoza. Not now. It is, as you will see, important for me to offer you full disclosure.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Never have I been more sure.”

I told him to fire away, and he did.

With both barrels.

“I was never very concerned about pursuing my vampirism. You see, although I was turned over a decade ago—turned very unwillingly and unexpectedly, I might add—I have mostly continued to live my life the same as I always have.”

The train picked up some speed. We were traveling south from Union Station in Los Angeles to Orange County. The train, called the Pacific Surfliner, did just that: ran up and down the Pacific Coast, in particular, all of Southern California. At present, we passed between warehouses and industrial parks as we made our way toward the coast. We were mostly alone in the cafe car, save for the cashier and a young kid who sipped idly on his straw and scrolled through his phone. I wondered if he could overhear our conversation.

“No one’s listening to us, Spinoza.”

“You can read my thoughts,” I said, then realized just how crazy my words sounded, even to my own ears.

“I do, yes. I somehow developed this gift—or curse. The stronger, the more focused the thought, the more likely I am to pick it up. That boy next to us is lost in his own world. His thoughts are scattered and nearly incoherent.”

I said nothing; hell, I tried to think nothing, too. The cafe, located on the bottom floor of a bi-level train, was the second-to-last coach on the train. For commuters, this was the end of it, but the company men could pass behind the counter and continue on to the crew car.

I sat facing the cafe, my back to the bulk of the car. Above me hung a wide mirror that afforded me a view of the reserved business class behind me. In it, I could see many coach passengers already asleep, but some were browsing their Kindles and Nooks and oversized cell phones. Most had white cords hanging from their ears. Maybe they were cyborgs, plugged into the train’s brain.

“I do not know much about my fellow vampires, Mr. Spinoza. I keep to myself and to my studies. I am, if you have not already figured it out, a professor of economics at USC.”

I had figured it out. After we’d hung up this morning, I had run his name through my various proprietary databases, as I did with each potential client. I knew his marital history (divorced). I knew his arrest record (none). I knew his job history (twenty-two years at USC). I knew where he lived (Trabuco Canyon). I knew his driving record and credit history (both spotless). There wasn’t anything on paper to suggest that Professor Harry Artemis was a bloodsucking fiend.

He winced. “Ouch. If I am a fiend of anything, it’s educating our young people. I am passionate about my job, my position, my students. There is, as you will discover, very little that is fiendish about me.”

Professor Artemis might just be a mind reader, if such a thing was possible, and I was beginning to think it was. Oh, and I knew the professor was fifty-two, but he didn’t look a day over thirty.

“A diet rich in blood and avoiding the sun does wonders, Mr. Spinoza. If you still doubt what I am, perhaps a demonstration is in order.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, and nearly reached for my gun—a gun indeed loaded with silver bullets. Long story.

“No, Mr. Spinoza. Any fool can drink blood. I have another proposal. I assume your phone is equipped with a camera.”

I nodded.

“Very well. Why don’t you take my picture?”

I studied him long and hard, then reached inside my light jacket and removed my phone. As I swiped it on and punched in my password, I was not very surprised to see that my hands were shaking. Damn strange, all of it. I took in some air, willed myself to relax, and brought up the camera feature. Feeling foolish, I pointed the Android phone at the man sitting across from me. In the rectangular viewer, Professor Artemis curled his lips up in an ugly rictus of a grin, and I snapped the photo.

He disappeared—at least, from my screen.

One moment, his face was there, grinning that horrible grin, and the next, it was gone, replaced by a blurry, opaque smudge…a smudge that I could almost see through. All that remained on my screen was a headless cardigan sweater and a tweed jacket.

I swallowed. “Would you mind if I took another?”

“By all means.”

Harry the vampire didn’t smile this time. Instead, I caught him looking forlornly out the darkening window, his chin resting on his hand. This time, I didn’t take my eyes off the screen. One nanosecond, he was there, and the next, he was gone, replaced by the same blurry, see-through splotch. I took another, and another, and all were the same, picture after picture.

Sweet Jesus.

“Uncanny, isn’t it?”

I’d seen some strange shit in my time. Hell, I’d even taken down a vampire or two. In fact, I personally knew another bloodsucker by the name of Veronica Melbourne, a vampire who now spent her time hunting the worst of the worst—vampires and everything in-between. But I found these pictures strangely unnerving. I wasn’t facing down an attacking vampire. I wasn’t hunting a creature of the night. I wasn’t seeing something out of a nightmare that must be dealt with in the moment, often with only a few seconds of thinking. Instead, I was calmly sitting across from a person who could not, would not, show up in my photographs. It was perplexing and exhilarating and frightening.

I said nothing. Then again, I’m used to saying nothing. Saying nothing is my catchphrase, so to speak. A friend of mine, Knighthorse, says enough for two people. Hell, maybe even for three or four. Most of what he says is about himself.

“I would like to meet this Knighthorse.”

“He would like that.”

“Why’s that?”

“Knighthorse thinks most people should meet him.”

The vampire laughed, tossing back his head enough for me to see the dark blue veins along his neck, just under the surface of his translucent skin.

“I sometimes wear makeup, especially when I know I am going to be photographed. The makeup shows up on camera.”

How the hell do you respond to that? I didn’t know, so I didn’t. And as I kept not responding—and kept going through the photos on my phone—I caught a phantom scent of burning flesh. The image of my son appeared in my thoughts, smoke still rising from his blackened, peeling skin. I took in some air and let the image go as fast as it came. These were my images, my cross to bear, my personal hell. As torturous as they were, they were all mine, and I didn’t want to share them with a fucking vampire.

“I’m not privy to all your secrets, Mr. Spinoza,” he said quietly, his voice seemingly reaching me from a distance. Then again, maybe he was speaking directly into my head. “Your intent to keep something secret is enough to shut someone like me out of your mind.”

“Or you can just stay the fuck out of my head.”

His stare did not waver. “I wish I knew how to turn it off. My connection is stronger with some people than with others. My connection with you is one of my strongest.”

“Lucky me,” I said. “Now, tell me why I’m here.”

“You’re here to save my life, Mr. Spinoza. Or not.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you have a choice, of course.”

“Save your life from whom?”

“The man in my dreams.”

“The dream is always the same, Mr. Spinoza. I find myself here, in this very car. In this very cafe coach. You are sitting across from me, your back to the business class. In fact, seeing you here now is so surreal that I am afraid I am questioning reality.”

I felt the comforting—and very real—weight of my weapon in the holster inside my jacket. I could draw it quickly, if need be. Quick enough to stop a charging vampire? I didn’t know.

“Nor will you need to find out, Mr. Spinoza. I have never attacked another living soul.”

The train continued on into the night. The vampire before me rocked with it, although his eyes never left me, nor did they blink. Even one time.

I said, “Tell me more about this dream.”

He nodded once, and looked out the window to my right. I looked, too, and saw something alarming. He cast no reflection.

No reflection at all.

“They are, in fact, many dreams of the same event. Many dreams that end in different ways.”

“What do you mean?”

“I either live or die.”

“I see,” I said.

“No, you don’t, Mr. Spinoza. Let me explain further. In my dreams, I am here, in this very coach, sitting across from you as I am now. In my dreams, we are chatting, although I never know about what.”

“Maybe you are trying to convince me that you are a vampire.”

He smiled, or tried to. He should probably give up smiling altogether. There was no humor in his eyes, and his curling lips only made him look more ghoulish. “No, I get a sense that I am trying to sell you something, Mr. Spinoza. It is only when I awaken that I realize that I was trying to convince you to save me. That I was worth saving. That I was of value to this world, to the human race. That I was not like the others.”