Dark Rain: 15 Short Tales (8 page)

I wasn’t quite that good… yet.
But that’s the thing with immortals: we have all the time in the world.

One prerequisite was that I needed to know where I was teleporting.
I might be undead, but popping up inside a wall has got to hurt.

Now, as I sent myself into the alleyway, I prayed like hell that there wasn’t a parked truck here, and that I didn’t manifest under its hood.

I was lucky this time. I appeared whole and intact and not as part of a combustible engine. The alley was mostly empty, except for a guy who had been rifling through a dumpster. Now, of course, he was running like a man who had just seen a woman materialize out of thin air.

I grinned and headed for the house around the corner.

There were many houses around the corner, unfortunately. All small and ringed by low metal fences.

I paused on the sidewalk, under the blazing sun, weaker than I was comfortable feeling. I cast my thoughts in an ever-widening gyre, far enough out to see into the surrounding homes.
Yeah, I can do that, too.

The neighborhood was quiet. The homes sat close together. A man attacking a woman would have been heard by any number of nearby witnesses.

On a positive note, I was pleased when I realized that I genuinely cared about Nancy’s wellbeing. Granted, she wasn’t exactly priority number one. But I did care enough to come out here. Which meant I wasn’t a monster, and that I could, in fact, keep the monster in check.

Love.
I shook my head at the insanity of it all. But it did make sense. Fight hate with love. Good versus evil and all that.

I liked to think I was on the side of good.

Suddenly, it struck me. There, the house to the left. The closest house, in fact, to the strip club. The interior was in disarray, and I had seen blood.

I dashed off.

The door was locked.

That was, until I lifted my foot and kicked it in. Not that I wanted to alarm this sleepy neighborhood, a neighborhood that was used to crime; a neighborhood, I suspected, that had learned to shut and lock its doors and windows and wrought-iron driveway gates.

I pushed the broken door all the way open, as the splintered wood from the doorframe caved inside.

The smell of blood and brains was strong. Almost too strong. The demon within me perked up, but I stamped her back in her place.

As the stench intensified, I stepped over a broken picture frame and drops of blood, then passed by a bloody hammer neatly propped up in the far corner of the room.

I found something else propped up in the next space, which was the kitchen. There, wedged between the refrigerator and the blood-splattered cupboard, was the woman my ex-husband had cheated on me with.

It had been a clean hammer strike that had caved in her skull.
One bash
.

She had died, I assumed, instantly.

Her spirit was nowhere to be seen, which wasn’t necessarily rare. It just meant that she had moved on, much faster than most.

I stood over her, and stared down at her bulging eyes, and bloody thighs, and into the hole at the top of her head.

The thing within me was interested in the corpse and all the blood, but the thing within me could go to hell.

And so, I stood there, with the corpse of a woman who had, I thought, loved my deceased ex-husband. A woman who had done her best to befriend me and make things right. A woman who was still turning tricks, despite my pleas for her to give it up.

‘Easy money,’ she had said.

Maybe I’m more psychic than I thought.

There were only a few who knew of this house, and who would use it:

The strip club’s elite customers. The politicians, the lawyers, the judges, and—
dare I think it
—the cops. Those requiring privacy for their dalliances. The top-tier clients of a strip club that would have, believe it or not, reverted to our kids, had the world known that Danny was dead. I idly wondered if he had had a share of what the women earned in the working house. I shook my head. No, he wouldn’t have gone that low. I hoped not, anyway.

The world, of course, only assumed he was missing, or maybe on the lam from a debt, which was how I wanted to keep it. The world didn’t need to know that he was buried in a cavern under the Los Angeles River, along with two vampires.

A long story that was best kept secret.

I straightened, fury building inside. Yeah, I cared about Nancy. I cared a whole helluva lot. And now, she was dead.

I turned and dashed through the broken door…

And headed to the strip club.

It was midday and as a creature of the night, I wasn’t yet at full strength.

However, I had feasted on Nancy just the day before—practically hours before she had been killed.
Bad week for Nancy.
I came up to the strip club’s back exit, the very exit that I suspected Nancy and her killer had used, what, twenty to thirty minutes ago.

The door was locked, but not for long. I’d yet to come across a lock that could keep me out. Or any vampire, for that matter. And no, I didn’t need to be invited in. When would I ever get any shopping done? Or go anywhere, for that matter? Who would invite me into a mall? Or the gas station? Thank God that little factoid had been debunked. It was bad enough that I couldn’t see myself in a mirror. I didn’t want to have Anthony running into the Walmart or Target to get the managers to invite me in, too.

I paused and scanned my surroundings, making sure no one was directly behind the door. The space was empty. Good thing, because when I was done kicking it in, the whole thing slammed back in a clanging cloud of dust.

To hell with invitations,
I thought, and stepped into the strip club.

The crash got the attention of two strippers, both of whom came rushing out, and both of whom were bouncing in places—never mind.

I pointed to their changing rooms and they stared at me, then at each other, then bounced off and slammed their respective doors shut.

At least they’re street-smart,
I thought, and pushed through the back hallway.

Music thumped. Lights flashed. And on the stage gyrated a completely nude, skinny, tattooed girl whose mother and father probably wept into their pillows at night. Hundreds of white lights were focused on the stage, around which one-dollar bills had been tossed, with the occasional fiver thrown in for good luck. Or a hope for more of a show.

It was midday—hell, not even one p.m.—and the place was nearly half full.

I’d been here before, back when I had applied for a job—long story—and I knew the layout fairly well. It wasn’t much: in the center, a raised stage. Single brass pole. Chairs encircling the stage, filled with bored, mildly turned-on, middle-aged men with nothing to lose. The girl on stage was completely nude, gleaming with sweat and looked, unbelievably, like she was enjoying herself. Dancing and cavorting and slinking and spreading, she seemed, well, into it.

Like they say, love what you do.

I shook my head and continued surveying the room. No one took an interest in me.
Maybe because I had clothes on.
The Hispanic bartender leaned a hip against the back counter and watched the dancing girl. If I had to guess, his mind was elsewhere. Working here, day after day, night after night, year after year, how many naked women had he seen? How many had it taken him to begin losing interest? Or, was it even possible for a guy to see too many naked women? I didn’t know, but his blank stare suggested it as a distinct possibility. Rick, the manager of the joint, was at the bar, his back to the dancer. Rick had, I think, the thickest neck I had ever seen. Even thicker than Kingsley’s.

There were, maybe, twenty customers. Most were seated around the stage. A handful were in the back booths. Single guys, sitting alone. Not talking. Hating themselves but interested in naked flesh even more.

From the back room to my right, emerged a man with short, slicked-back dark hair. From all appearances, freshly cleaned up. Refreshed, even. He nodded to a bouncer type standing guard outside what I knew to be the private rooms. Or the sex rooms. The big guy returned his nod. The two looked, well, like they had a secret. I doubted the big black guard knew it extended all the way back to a murdered stripper. If I had to guess, the big bouncer had arranged for Nancy and this guy to be alone just outside of the club… and by arranged, I meant paid nicely.

But as I watched the exchange, growing admittedly more interested by the second, I noticed two things: the guy with the short black hair had his dark shirt on inside-out.

Oh, and he didn’t sport an aura of any kind.

He was, I was certain, a vampire.

As he slid into the back seat, I could smell it now. Fresh blood, wafting from him. His shirt, I suspected, was covered with the stuff.

Nancy’s blood.

Before overreacting, I reminded myself that I had spilled that same blood.

No,
not spilled. Drank. Deeply. Violently. Angrily.

In fact, I had taken a decisive step backward from all the progress I had made these past few months. I had reined in the demon bitch nicely, and for that I was grateful. The less fresh blood she had, the weaker she became. That’s the way I liked it. That’s the way it had been for many years after the initial attack that had turned me. Since then, I had drunk only the putrid cow and pig blood. I had inadvertently kept her at bay with the least-desirable sustenance I could find.