Samantha Moon: First Eight Novels, Plus One Novella (56 page)

It was into this environment of loss and despair and suffering that I stepped out of my minivan.

A low iron fence surrounded the property. The gate was topped with rusted iron spikes. The spikes were mostly rounded and probably wouldn’t do much damage unless someone fell from a great height. The front gate was not locked and swung open on rusted hinges. As I moved across the front yard, I felt eyes on me from across the street. I had attracted the attention of the neighbors in the apartment building. No doubt watching from one of the windows.

I stepped up onto the cement porch, which was cracked and flaked with peeling paint. I paused a moment, getting a feel for the house. Someone was inside, I knew that much. I could hear a TV on somewhere. The house itself was drenched in so much tragedy that it was a beehive of bad vibes, depression and anything else negative.

More than anything, the house was the last known residence of Lauren Monk and her daughter Maddie. I shook my head. What a place to raise a little girl.

Granted, I doubted there was much “raising” going on here.
Existing
was
more like it.

I knocked on the door loudly. The door was made of metal and seemed better suited in a parking garage stairwell. There were dents in the door, about waist high. Someone had tried to kick it in at some point. Maybe many points. I looked around the metal frame. As far as I could tell, they weren’t successful. The door and frame had held firm.

The TV continued to blare. A distant siren wailed behind me. Down the street someone laughed and others followed suit. I knocked again, and again.

No response.

I stepped back, lifted my foot, and kicked the door in.

Chapter Nineteen

The door swung violently back, slamming hard into the wall behind it, so hard that the doorknob punctured the drywall. It stayed open like that as I stepped in. Unless someone was brandishing a stake or silver-tipped arrows, I wasn’t too concerned about what was waiting for me on the other side. Sure, a bullet to the chest probably would hurt like hell, and no doubt ruin my blouse, but gone are the days where I worried much about my own physical safety.

I found myself standing in a living room. Or a toxic bio-hazard. Take your pick. The long clump of trash to my right was probably a couch. The rectangular clump in front of it was probably a coffee table. Everything from shopping bags to clothing to pizza boxes were everywhere. Including used heroin needles. Everywhere. Hundreds of them.

I stepped over broken glass and empty beer cans and a McDonald’s Happy Meal. I moved through the living room and into a kitchen that hadn’t been used as a kitchen in some time.

Instead, it was being used as a meth lab.

There were bottles and jars with rubber tubing. There were stripped-down lithium batteries piled on tables. Paint thinner and starter fluid containers lined the floors. Empty packets of cold tablets, no doubt containing pseudoephedrine, were piled on the tables and counters. Also on the tables were jars containing clear liquid with red and white bottom layers. Ether and ammonia wafted from them. Propane tanks were everywhere. Okay, the propane tanks made me a little nervous.

There was a strong smell of something else. And it was coming from the next room. I knew that smell. Any cop or agent would know that smell.

I moved through the kitchen and down a short hallway. I had sensed someone else in the house, but what I had not sensed was whether or not that someone was alive or dead.

At the far end of the hallway, in a room to the right, a TV was on and a man wearing boxer shorts was lying face down in a pool of blood. In death, he had made an unholy mess of himself, but that did not stop me from checking him out.

I rolled him over. Blood stained the mattress. Probably all the way through and to the bed springs below. I counted five shots to the chest. I wrinkled my nose, although wrinkling did little against what was wafting up from him.

I did a quick examination. White male in his early fifties. Dead for less than 24-hours, give or take a half a day. Heavy set. No indication of a fight. The body already in full rigor mortis. Face bright crimson where the blood had settled like oil at the bottom of an oil pan.

I eased him back down.

Years ago such a scene might have turned my stomach. I might have picked a quiet spot behind the house to vomit, careful not to disrupt a crime scene. Now, not so much. I had seen many dead bodies in my time, certainly, but there was something else going on. Something that worried me. I should care more about death, about the loss of life. But I didn’t.

Death no longer bothered me. Didn’t phase me. I felt no emotion or concern or anything.

It was just death.

The natural order of things.

I wasn’t always this way, but something had changed inside of me, and I think I knew what that something was.

I was becoming less human...and that scared the shit out of me.

I spent the next twenty minutes carefully picking through the house, looking for any clues that might help me find little Maddie, but nothing stood out. No Rolodexes filled with the names of drug kingpins. No computers or laptops. No cell phones. Nothing that seemed to indicate that a little girl had ever lived here.

Nothing, that is, except for the Happy Meal box.

I pulled out my cell phone and called Detective Sherbet.

Chapter Twenty

I spent the next two hours with Detective Sherbet and Detective Hanner. I gave them my statement, stood back and watched the preliminary crime scene investigation, and when all the fuss was over, I headed over to Heroes in Fullerton, where Fang worked.

As I walked up to Heroes’ single door, a door which always somehow seemed to be slightly cracked open, I ran a hand through my thick hair and fought a sudden wave of nerves. I adjusted and readjusted my light leather jacket.

It was just after 1:00 a.m. when I stepped inside the bar. Heroes is filled with a lot of wooden beams and colums. The floor creaks when you walk across it, and more often than not, you will find a pool of spilled beer somewhere nearby, reflecting the muted track lighting above.

Aaron Parker, aka Eli something or other, aka the American Vampire, aka Fang, was tending bar alone tonight. He was chatting with two guys in flannel shirts when he looked up and caught my eye. He smiled broadly. It was the same look he had always given me since being hired here months ago.

Since stalking me and taking this job.

I must have mentioned in one of my IMs to him that my sister frequented Heroes. Initially, I had thought I would be more careful than that, but I had let my guard down with Fang. And he had not only found out who I was, but had gotten a job at the very bar I frequented with my sister.

Creepy. And well, sweet, too.

Aaron Parker was clearly a nut. That much was certain. He was also a killer. But, more than anything, he was Fang. My Fang.

Maybe we’re all nuts.

I saw now the hint of longing in his eyes. Saw the deep concern for me. Perhaps it was love. I never noticed it before. Or, if I did, I hadn’t given it much attention. I had been a married woman until recently. Besides, maybe I thought he had been hamming it up for an extra big tip.

But I saw him differently now. In a new light, so to speak. The attention, the intent behind his gaze...all of it was for me.

I took in a small, sharp breath.

He smiled and unconsciously pulled back his upper lip. In that moment, in this lighting, I had a brief flashback to the disturbed teenage boy who seemed to relish pulling back his upper lip in the courtroom, the boy whose fanged smile had made front page headlines across the country.

That boy was a man now. And although he had some plastic surgery, appeared to have grown a foot or more and was sporting a beard, there was enough similarity to give me pause.

He’s a killer,
I thought.
A murderer.

The tormented young man had grown into something beautiful, but that made him no less tormented or sick. I had not known Fang to be sick. Obsessive, certainly. But his advice had always been spot on, and his caring for me had been genuine. Or, at least,
seemed
genuine.

And his smile—that sexy, slightly awkward smile—seemed genuine, too. I walked up to the bar just as he reached for a bottle of white wine.

“Hello Sam,” he said easily. The massive teeth that dangled from the leather strap around his neck clanked together with the sound of two thick beer mugs toasting. Clearly the rest of the world thought these were shark teeth. Or perhaps some other creature. Barracuda? Sasquatch?

“
Hello Eli,” I said, using his official name, although I sat at the far end of the mostly empty bar.

“
We are so formal tonight,” he said.

“
We
are still in shock from last night.”

“
We are?”

“
Oh yes,” I said.

“
You never expected me to be so dashingly handsome, perhaps?”

“
I didn’t expect you to be a renowned fugitive.”

He calmly cleaned a shot glass, as if he was just another bartender. “And does that bother you?”

“That you’re a wanted man? That I’m cavorting with a known criminal?”

“
Cavorting?”

“
It’s a word,” I said.

He grinned easily and leaned across the counter, putting most of his weight on his palms. His two teeth hung freely from his neck like pale corpses twisting in the wind. “It’s kind of a sexy word.”

I looked away. I would have blushed if I could have. “I think you’re taking it out of context.”

“
I prefer
my
context.”

“
Are you quite done?” I said. “I thought we were just friends.”

“
Just friends? After that kiss last night?”

“
That kiss was your idea.”

“
I seem to recall you enthusiastically participating.”

“
Can we change the subject?” I said.

He grinned broadly. “Sure. Whatever would you like to talk about, my lady?”

I shrugged and sipped the white wine. Wine has no effect on me, but it’s one of the few things, outside of hemoglobin, that I can drink like a regular person. Red wine not so much. Red wines contain tannins that upset my stomach. For someone who is supposedly immortal, my digestive system is hypersensitive.

I said, “I just want to talk to a friend.”

“You know I’m your friend, Moon Dance.”

“
I like when you call me Moon Dance.”

“
I know. I read your epic IMs this morning when I woke up. Truth be known, I like it when you call me Fang, too.”

“
Fang and Moon Dance,” I said, shaking my head. “We’re weird.”

“
More than anyone could possibly know.” He glanced around his mostly empty bar as any good bartender would, saw that his few patrons were content, and looked back at me. “Sorry I missed your IMs last night. I crashed as soon as I got home.”

“
No worries. It was late.”

“
It’s difficult to keep up with your schedule, you know.”

I laughed and set down the worthless wine. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t normal. Why was I so concerned about looking normal?

Fang reached out and touched the back of my hand. His warm touch sent a shockwave of shivers up my arms and down my back. “You know,” he said, “there is a way that you and I could have the same schedule.”

“
Oh?” I said, curious. “Would I need to get a second job here as a barback?”

“
That’s not what I meant, Moon Dance.”

He continued touching me. His thumb lightly stroked the back of my hand. His fingers slipped under and caressed my palm. I shivered. Fang wasn’t looking at me. I sensed his hesitation, and I sensed his insane desire.

Now Fang turned to me and our eyes met and I found myself looking deep into another person’s soul for the first time in my life. Everything opened up to me. All his secrets. All his desires. All his wants and needs and hopes and dreams. And cravings. I gasped.

Fang gave me a lopsided smile.

“Yes, Moon Dance,” he said. “Make me a vampire.”

Chapter Twenty-one

It had been a long night.

When I got home, I discovered that everyone was sleeping in my bed, including little Anthony. I stood in the doorway of my bedroom, taking the scene in: Tammy on her back and snoring lightly. My sister in the middle and lying on her side with her palm resting lightly on Anthony’s back.