H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (66 page)

“Taxi?” one of the cab drivers asked.

“Sí,” Wyatt said, winking at me like he was
a native countryman.

“Hell, I could have figured that one out,” I
laughed.

“Trust me, when we’re in the heart of this
city, you’ll be glad I can interpret what’s being said
immediately.”

The cab driver opened the back door and
Wyatt and I got into the back seat.

“Why are we taking a cab?” I asked.

“I’m a little uncomfortable flying around
the city. God knows what goes on down here. All I need is a bullet
to the wing.”

I guess he was right; if I transitioned to
the eagle, it might cause pandemonium. “Where should we go first?”
I asked.

“We need to go to the place where we can
find out anything for the right price.”

“Where’s that?”

“The red light district.”

“Where the drug dealers and hookers dwell?”
I asked.

“If you want to know anything, the hustlers
down there will find out for twenty bucks.”

“Adelitas!” Wyatt said, to the cab
driver.

“Bien.” The driver took off and there we
were, two vampires in a cab in Tijuana about to hit the red light
district.

After about ten minutes of some of the worst
driving I had ever experienced, the cab driver delivered us to a
bar called Adelitas.

“¿Cuánto cuesta?” Wyatt asked, inquiring
about the cab cost.

“Cinco,” he said.

“Five bucks?” I asked.

Wyatt looked at me and said, “Remember, we
are in Mexico; everything is cheaper.”

There were a lot of businesses and bars
along the street. We stepped out on the street and the night was
alive. There was energy unlike anything you would ever see in the
Inland Empire. The streets were thumping and packed with tourists
and hustlers everywhere.

“So, what now?” I asked. “Do we go into a
bar and try to find out information?”

“We can go to a bar if you’re ready to be
ambushed by about twenty girls begging for some time alone with
you,” Wyatt laughed.

“Seriously?” I asked. In a way, it didn’t
seem like that bad of a concept.

“You’ve been here before, you know how it
is.”

“It was a couple of years back and I was
drunk on my ass. I have very little memory of anything other than a
porcelain toilet at the end of the night.”

“The city does that to you, too. Damn, it’s
a great town,” Wyatt laughed.

“So, what now?” I asked.

“The guys that have the answers will come up
to us. They’ll speak perfect English to let us know how American
they are. Let’s just start walking and they will make their way to
us.”

Sure enough, all we had to do was walk about
twenty feet down the street and a man about six feet tall and real
skinny approached us.

“Hey man,” he said, without an accent.

“What’s up?” I said.

“What do you guys want? Girls, blow,
condoms, Viagra, what?”

Wow, he didn’t mess around. He apparently
had a pharmacy on his person.

“We need information,” Wyatt said.

“Okay, what kind of information are you
looking for?”

Wyatt and the man spoke to each other in
Spanish, but the man responded in English. I think he did it for my
sake.

“I can get in a lot of trouble taking you
there,” he said.

“Would $500 make it easier for you?” Wyatt
asked.

“For $500, I’ll have sex with both of you
before we go,” the man joked.

I wasn’t one for that kind of humor. At
least, I hoped he was kidding. He must have been because he didn’t
pursue it.

“Meet me here at nine in the morning.
Believe it or not, it’s more discreet doing stuff during the day
around here, there’s a lot less police.”

“We can’t exactly do that,” Wyatt said,
looking at the man.

The man looked us both over and grinned. “I
guess you can’t.” He was street smart enough to know we were
vampires. “Meet me here in twenty-four hours and I’ll have an
answer for you.”

“Are you certain that you can arrange a
meeting or are you just wasting our time?” I asked. He obviously
knew we were Mani and now it was time to throw some weight around
to get what we wanted.

The man paused and then looked me in the eye
and said, “I guarantee it.”

“All right, we’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t
fuck with us. You got that?” I said, as stern as I could, without
coming across as paranoid.

“When people need things in this city, I’m
who they come to,” he said, in a slick, con-man type of way.

“You better be.” There was something about
this guy I didn’t trust.

“Hey, can you guys front me some of the
money?” the man asked.

There it was.

Wyatt looked at him and said, “You’ll get
the $500 when we’re sitting down with her and nothing more and
nothing sooner. Taxi,” Wyatt yelled.

No faster than he said it; a taxi whipped
around and was in front of us. “That’s it?” I said to Wyatt,
getting into the taxi.

“That’s it. If the guy is legit, we should
have a meet and greet tomorrow.”

“What did you say to him in Spanish?”

“I asked him where the witches were.”

“Witches?”

“Yes, witches. They believe down here that
everything supernatural is either ghosts or witches.”

“He mentioned there is a great witch that
sees the future and she is well protected.”

“You think the great witch is the Deity?” I
asked.

“I have a hunch.”

“Why?”

“He mentioned she’s spoken of two men in
black that will seek her out. He obviously is close enough to her
that he recalled her saying this.”

We were wearing black, but then again so
were half the people walking around the street we were on. “So, we
sit back and wait?”

“Unless you want to party with the locals?”
Wyatt grinned.

“Not quite.”

“Then let’s head back. We need to
sunlight-proof the room anyway.” Wyatt was right. We probably
should have done that before we left. There was only one window, so
it should be real easy to block any sun from getting in.

It was three in the morning when we got
back. I stepped out of the cab and was stopped dead in my tracks. I
saw the most beautiful Latina woman I had ever seen being escorted,
gripped by the arm, by a short Mexican gentleman.

She made eye contact with me and I gave her
an honest, warm smile. Then she gave me an odd, concerned look in
return. It was a desperate look, I knew that look. She was in some
kind of trouble. I decided to do something I wasn’t accustomed to
doing because it was invasive, but I needed to know more about this
woman. I focused my thoughts and I tried to read her mind.

I hadn’t done this a lot, so it took some
concentration. I locked into her mind and I kept hearing her repeat
the same phrase, ‘Ayuda mi, por favor.’ She said it over and over
again. It was as if she knew I was reading her mind. The problem
was I had no idea what ‘Ayuda mi, por favor,’ meant.

I knew ‘por favor’ meant ‘please’ but I
didn’t know what “Ayuda” meant. Her eyes were piercing through me.
I decided to follow the couple into the elevator with Wyatt right
behind me. He wasn’t aware of what I was doing and it was probably
a good thing. The man who had a hold of the woman’s arm never once
looked up at us in the elevator. He held her arm tightly as if she
was a child. This woman was anything but a child. She was at least
5’9” in height and had a body built like a thoroughbred. Her hair
was dyed red and her face was one of the prettiest I had ever
seen.

I had seen far too much in a short amount of
time to not know this situation wasn’t right. Every once in a
while, I’m drawn into something that feels bigger than myself--this
was one of those times. I didn’t know if it had anything to do with
my overwhelming attraction for this young woman, but, I needed to
know more. Our room was on the fifth floor and they were going to
the sixth floor.

The second we got out of the elevator and it
closed, I turned to Wyatt, and asked, “What does ayuda mean?”

“It means help,” Wyatt answered.

“She was saying, ‘help me, please!’ I
said.

“Who was?”

“The girl in the elevator.”

“You read her mind?” Wyatt asked,
perplexed.

“Yes.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Didn’t you see how she looked at us?”

“Yeah, she’s a hooker, they all look at you
like that,” Wyatt said, laughing.

“She might be a hooker, but she’s in
trouble.”

“Most prostitutes have trouble on a
twenty-four hour basis.”

“I’m telling you, it was more than that. She
needs our help.”

“I’m pretty sure every woman in this city
needs our help. But we can’t go around saving everyone. We need to
leave this place as soon as we can and going on Boy Scout missions
isn’t going to help.”

“Maybe so, but I can’t turn my back on her
now,” I said.

“Are you thinking with the right brain,
Josiah?” Wyatt asked, insinuating I just wanted to get laid.

“She was crying out for help in the
elevator, that’s all I know. Was she hot? Yeah. But that’s not why
I want to help her.”

Wyatt stared at me with disbelief. He was so
jaded by life that something like this meant nothing to him. I
couldn’t be that way. I wasn’t wired like that. I knew I needed to
help her. “Wyatt, I’m going to do something about it. You don’t
have to help, but I’m going figure out what’s going on.”

“What are you going to do? Bust down doors
in Tijuana? You want to put us on blast while we’re down here? We
need to find the Deity and get the hell out of here.”

“Look, like I said, you don’t have to help
me. I’m not even asking you to. I just know I have to do something.
We’re dealing with Tandra, so I don’t anticipate much of a problem.
Go get some sleep.”

Wyatt looked at me with a look that was a
cross between reluctance and exhaustion.

“I know you’re tired, Wyatt. Go get some
sleep. If I need your help, I’ll let you know.”

“Josiah, the Boy Scout.” Wyatt smiled and
went inside the room. “Look, Jo. I’ll help you if you want me
to.”

“Don’t need it. I’ll take care of this on my
own. I got that feeling. And when I get that feeling I need to
honor it. For all I know, it’s the Triat speaking to me.”

“I think it’s the blood in your penis
speaking to you.”

“I thought we no longer have blood,” I
said.

“Something gets us hard,” Wyatt smirked.

Chapter Eight

I went down the elevator of the hotel and
made my way outside. I decided to transition into my eagle form and
fly up to the sixth floor. I made my way around the hotel, peeking
through windows. I know it’s a Peeping Tom kind of thing to do, but
at this point it was my only option.

There were only a couple of lights on in the
rooms. At the east end of the building, there was a light on and I
could see two images. I could hear a man yelling at a woman and I
tried to listen at the outside of the window.

They were both speaking Spanglish. Spanglish
is when someone mixes Spanish and English together. It is very
common in southern California. It actually helps someone like me
have an understanding of what is being talked about. And for some
reason both these people knew enough English to speak Spanglish
pretty darn well and thank God they were.

I slowly flew up to the window, trying not
to be heard. About every fourth word they slipped in an English
word and I could gather what was going on. Then I heard the man
walk over to the window and open the curtain. I shot up the side of
the building so he couldn’t see me. I found a spot where I could
see him, but he couldn’t see me. It was the man that was with the
red-headed woman in the elevator. This was definitely their room
and she was the one he was yelling at. As I listened, I could tell
he was taking her somewhere she didn’t want to go. She seemed very
upset at the idea of going.

Then the lights turned out and they left the
room.

I went to the front of the hotel and was
careful not to be seen. In a few moments, I looked down and saw the
red-headed-woman slip into a taxi with the short Hispanic man.

I decided to follow the taxi from the sky.
The taxi went about six blocks and made a left turn in front of a
tiny, lit-up establishment. From the sky, I couldn’t make out what
kind of business it was. It appeared to be some kind of bar. It had
neon pink lights that read Roosters and Hens.

As I glided down, it became apparent what
the business was. It was a massage parlor. I’d heard about these
places in the Inland Empire. I could just imagine what kind of
happy endings that these sorts of massages had in Mexico. I
gathered this wasn’t a massage establishment but more of a
whorehouse, with their blatant advertisement of half-naked girls in
the window.

The man and woman got of the taxi and he led
her into the parlor. I noticed there were about six men outside
hanging around the door, talking. Some looked big, but I knew if it
had to come to it, I would have no problem taking them out.

Why was he taking her there? The only thing
that made any sense is that he was forcing her to work there
against her will, or he was trying to get in some kind of weird
threesome with one of the girls.

I decided the only thing to do was to
transition and go in myself. I flew a little ways down the street
where nobody could see me. I transitioned as I landed and then
hurried over to the Rooster and Hens Massage Parlor.

“Hey buddy, we got some sexy girls for you!”
One of the guys out front yelled to me as I came up to the door.
“Just thirty dollars for a massage and the girls are
beautiful!”

I nodded my head and he opened the sliding
glass door for me and I went into the establishment. An older,
pretty woman greeted me at the door. I assumed she was the
madam.