Moon Dragon (10 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

We were in my minivan.

I’d forgotten that this evening was “ghouls’ night out” as Allison liked to call it. I’d compromised with her and now here we were on a stakeout together...and she wouldn’t stop talking.

“Stakeouts,” I said, “are generally done in silence.”

“That was a rude thing to say, Sam. Besides, tonight was ghouls’ night out—”

“Will you quit saying that?”

She continued, without missing a beat, “—and you know damn well I look forward to this night all week. Besides, it’s also been a week since, you know.”

Yes, I knew well. It had been a week since I’d last fed from her wrist and I could feel the effects. A little lethargic. A little less than what I knew I could be. True, I’d drunk my fill of cow and pig blood from my supply in the garage, but it wasn’t the same. That was equivalent to living on McDonald’s. Eventually it wore you down and sapped your energy. Sadly, normal food didn’t help. At all. I could eat ten scones from Starbucks and still feel depleted. I needed blood, and I needed it about every other day.

Yeah, a true ghoul
, I thought.

I heard that,
came Allison’s thought.

“You caught me,” I said. “And we’ll take care of that later.”

That
being, of course, me drinking from her wrist, usually from the same old scar. Luckily for her, she healed almost instantly as soon as I pulled away from her. Vampire saliva had that effect.

We were sitting in the front seat of my minivan, parked in the same spot down the road, in front of a house that mostly appeared empty, which was why I had chosen it.

“Is he always this busy?” asked Allison.

“Not so far,” I said.

Indeed, we saw the silhouette of a man—Gunther, no doubt—flashing back and forth behind the glass of his front door. We saw lights turn on and off. At one point, we heard him in the garage.

“So, what do you think he’s up to?”

“Hard to know,” I said.

“The full moon is in, what, three nights?”

“Two,” I said. “Sunday night.”

“Why don’t we, you know, confront him? Before he hurts someone else?”

“And make him tell me what I need to know?”

“Well...” she thought about that. “Yeah, I guess.”

“If he’s a werewolf—and it’s looking more and more like he is—then he’ll be as strong or stronger than me. Besides, if I confront him, he could go into hiding, or disappear altogether.”

“So, you’re waiting to flush him out, or catch him in the act.”

“Something like that.”

“To think there are actually these
things
running around at full moons, hungry for people.”

“Most aren’t running around at full moons. Most are responsible. Most don’t want to get caught. Most lead fairly normal lives and want to continue leading them.”

“Like Kingsley,” she said.

“Right.”

“And maybe this guy, too.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“So, you’re saying that they practice safe transforming?”

Sometimes Allison, despite her neediness and clinginess, made me laugh, which I did now. “Responsible transforming, yes.”

“
I can see the public service announcement now,” said Allison and adopted a mock announcer voice: “Transform safely and comfortably in a padlocked cell deep beneath your home...”

“The More You Know...” I said.

Now, we were both snickering, although I really didn’t feel like snickering. Not after seeing what I had seen last night: Vlad Tepes, the escaped demon, and my son staring at me, although that last one could have been my imagination. Still, the laughter felt good, and it might have been my first laughter in the last 24 hours.

When we were done, we both smiled at an old lady walking her labradoodle past our parked minivan. She gave us a good, hard look, and I waved to her and smiled. So did Allison. The old lady didn’t smile back.

“She’s going to be trouble,” said Allison.

“Probably,” I said.

“Then why don’t you do your vampire-mind-trick on her? Or whatever you call it.”

“I don’t call it anything. Besides, I already called the Orange Police Department days ago. They know I’m in the area doing surveillance.”

“Gee, you private dicks think of everything.”

I was about to comment when I saw it again: a car sporting a mustache attached to its grill, driving slowly by.

“You see that?” I asked, pointing.

“What? The car with the mustache?”

“Yeah, that. What’s the deal with that?”

“I don’t know, but I feel like I’ve seen those before.”

“I have, too. In fact, three of them on this very street.”

“Three different cars?”

I nodded and thought about that and nearly Googled it again when Allison suddenly turned and faced me. My friend was quite lovely. Dark hair, almond-shaped eyes, caramel skin. She reached out and took my cold hand. I flinched involuntarily, as I always do when people touch me.

“There’s something about this case that you’re keeping from me, Sam. Something buried so deep that I can’t quite see it.”

“You don’t get to know all my secrets,” I snapped, pulling my hand free.

Allison, to her credit, didn’t take offense. She also knew that I could get pretty damn moody sometimes. She got it. She also knew when my snapping wasn’t about her. Of course, having a mostly open telepathic connection helped, too.

So, instead of being hurt or snapping back, she blinked and calmly said, “Nor do I want to, Sam, but I can feel the conflict within you. It’s bubbling up to your surface, then sinks down again. I’ve felt it ever since you took on this case.”

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. I almost wished Gunther would make an appearance, just so I wouldn’t have to answer Allison’s question.

“That bad, huh?” asked Allison.

“I’m afraid so,” I said, and let the full extent of my misgivings percolate to the surface of my thoughts.

“Just know that I’m here for you,” she said. “And I don’t mean that in a needy way.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Bitch,” said Allison.

Had we been guys, I might have socked her in the arm. But we were girls so, I winked at her and blew her a kiss and she shook her head, then grew somber again. “So, what gives about this case?”

I drummed my nails on the steering wheel...and decided to come clean. “I’m just having a hard time caring,” I said.

“Caring about what?”

“About catching Gunther Kessler.”

“But...but you have to care, Sam.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why do I have to care?”

“Didn’t you take, like, an oath to care?”

“To protect and serve?”

“Yes, that.”

“No. That’s the police.”

“But if you don’t care, then you are falling into their trap, playing right into their hands.”

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, fighting a feeling inside me...or, rather, trying to understand my
lack
of feeling. My lack of caring for the missing hikers.

It’s her,
I thought.

No, it’s me.

I gripped the steering wheel more tightly. The conversation was making me feel uncomfortable. I suddenly needed some air, although air is not what I needed, ever. I rolled down the window and got a breeze going. The day was warm, and the street was mostly quiet. The old lady with her labradoodle was gone. For now.

I had a sudden, exciting image of breaking the old lady’s neck, twisting her head so hard that she died right there in my hands, while I feasted from her spasming corpse.

“Holy shit, Sam. Please tell me you didn’t just think that.”

“She’s asking for it.”

“No, she’s not, Sam. She’s a concerned citizen, wondering why two women are parked on the street for hours on end.”

I felt the anger rise in me. I felt a strong need to lash out at Allison for being such a stupid bitch. It took all I had to not say something horrible...and to not do something horrible either. I held my hands in my lap, interlocking my fingers, putting myself under house arrest. I rocked back and forth, releasing some of the energy.

A moment later, when I had calmed down, I heard Allison audibly exhale, too. She sensed correctly that the worst had passed. For both of us. Allison was, after all, a powerful, albeit new, witch. There was no telling what she would have done to me in return.

“That was scary, Sam.”

I shook my head, looking down and rocking, rocking.

“But I think what’s scariest of all is that I...” she paused, tried again. “Is that I know that was all you.”

She was right, of course. The entity within me—Elizabeth—was still firmly caged in my mind. This last little outburst had been me.
All me.

After a moment, Allison looked at me. There was sweat on her forehead. “What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“And you really don’t care about the missing hikers?”

“I’m trying to,” I said, then paused and looked away. “But some people deserve to die.”

“I think I need to go, Sam.”

I nodded. “I think you should, too.”

Chapter Twenty-four

Good evening, Moon Dance.

When you say it that way, Fang,
I wrote in my little IM window,
I always hear Bela Lugosi’s Dracula.

Maybe that’s how I’d intended it to sound, Sam. What’s on your mind?

My fingers briefly hovered over the keyboard before I typed:
How can I keep doing my job...if I no longer care?

Care about what?

If people die?

His answer came a half minute later:
I’m not sure what to say to that, Moon Dance.

But surely you agree,
I wrote.
We are the same, you and I. We are hunters, are we not?

We are, Sam. But we can decide who to hunt and what to hunt and when to hunt. Or to not hunt at all. You have a viable source of blood from a willing donor.

I shook my head there on my couch, although he couldn’t see me shake it. The lights were out and, although it wasn’t quite twilight yet, the room was dark enough. The sun had set about an hour ago and I was feeling...hungry. Allison had left before my feeding, and my body was letting me know it. My stomach never growled, nor did I feel hungry, as I remembered it back when I was mortal. No, this was different. This was a physical need. I suspected this is what a heroin addict felt—an overwhelming desire to satisfy the deepest yearning. To the point where rational thought went out the window.

I missed my feeding today,
I wrote.
I think I was scaring her.

You’re scaring me, Sam. You have the cow and pig blood packets.

Fuck the packets.

I’m coming over. I have my own packets. Human blood. Are you home?

Yes.

Sit tight.

He logged off.

Except I didn’t sit tight, whatever the hell that means. I closed my laptop and stood and paced my small room and wished like hell my living room was bigger so I could pace in longer steps. I didn’t have to live this way. I could have more money. I could take the money I needed from those who had it. I could then take their lives, too. I could take and take and take, and nothing could stop me, not ever.

I paced the small room and shook my hands, then ran my fingers through my hair. I was hungry.
Starving.
I shouldn’t have let her leave without first feeding from her. I had cow and pig blood in the garage, mixed with all sorts of filthy pollutants.

I deserved better than that.

I paused at my big living room window. It looked out from my end of the cul-de-sac, all the way down the street, itself lined with houses on either side. Most had big trees out front. Lots of cars were parked out front, too. It was evening. My kids were with my sister. I had begged her to take them. I wasn’t feeling like myself...I’d told her. She had looked oddly at me when I had dropped them off.

Now, along the street, I saw some kids playing. A sort of chasing game as they weaved in and out of parked cars. Reckless. Careless. Shitty parenting. I watched the kids some more. Laughing and now playing a game of tag. Refreshing, actually. Still, why would you let your kids play outside when there were predators out there? Predators watching them, even now. Predators who would snatch their kids away.

Stupid fucking parents.

I paced in front of the window. I wondered what those same parents would think if they knew an honest-to-god vampire lived on their very street. Something that drank blood and stayed up at night and watched their children play.

I shook my head, rubbed my eyes and paced some more...and then, I saw it. The thing I had been hoping to see. It was exactly what I needed, but hadn’t known, until now.

It was a tomcat, walking along the wall that separated my front yard from my neighbor’s front yard.

Before I could think, before I could plan, I was out my front door, pouncing faster than I ever thought I could, and certainly faster than the cat had expected.

It was a short time later when I heard the familiar voice behind me. “Ah, shit, Sam.”

I pushed the remains of the cat away, tossing aside a leg that I had been sucking the marrow out of.

“Aaron,” I said, using Fang’s assumed name. He was, after all, officially on the run and wanted for murder. “Fancy meeting you here.”