Moon Child (Vampire for Hire #4) (4 page)

“But look what I’ve done to him.”

“Only temporarily, Sam. Remember the
medallion.”

“But what if it doesn’t work?”

“But what if it does?” he countered.

“You’re ever the optimist.”

“My friend is a gloomy vampire. Someone has
to be the optimist in this relationship.”

“But what about the psychological harm? I
mean, even if I can turn him back, will he ever have a normal life
again?”

The man smoking nearby snubbed out his
cigarette. He glanced at me once and I saw the darkness around his
heart. I didn’t know what that meant, but I suspected its
implication: someone close to him was going to die. I tried to
smile and he tried to smile, but in the end, we only stared at each
other with empty eyes as he slipped back into the hospital.

Fang was thinking hard on his end. He was
always thinking hard for me. Always helping. Always working through
my problems with me.

“It’s because I’m a helluva guy,” he said,
picking up on my thoughts.

“And because you’re obsessed with
vampires.”

“Well, someone has to be. Now, speaking of
vampires...six years ago, after your attack, when did you first
realize that you were something, ah, something different?”

“When did I first realize that I was a
vampire?”

“Yes.”

“Weeks later. But I knew something was vastly
wrong only a few days later.”

“But did you suspect you were a vampire?”

“No. Not at first. I just knew something was
wrong.”

“When did you crave blood?”

“A few days later.”

“How many days later?”

I thought back to my time in the hospital,
and then to my first few days at home. “Four days. But I thought I
was low on iron or something.”

I had an image of my son drinking blood and
it was almost too much to bear. I started pacing again and hating
myself all over again.

“Calm down, Moon Dance,” said Fang, despite
the fact that I hadn’t said anything, so pure was our mental
connection. “The way I see it, you have four days to find him a
cure.”

I stopped pacing; he was right.

He went on. “You have four days before your
son realizes that something is wrong, that he’s something
different.”

“Four days,” I said. Relief flooded me. My
God, he was right. I had four days to find a cure.

“Four days, Sam, to unlock the secret to the
medallion.”

“I gotta go,” I said. “Love ya.”

The words caught him by surprise, as they did
me.

“Love ya, too,” he said after a short pause,
and clicked off.

Chapter Eight

I checked on my son.

According to the doctor on staff—a young guy
who could not have looked more bewildered—Anthony’s fever was
dropping at an astonishing rate, even though the fever hadn’t
appeared to break; as in, my son hadn’t yet broken out in a
sweat.

More astonishing, at least to the doctors,
were his eyes. Red, swollen eyes were a hallmark of Kawasaki
disease. Anthony’s eyes, however, had shown marked improvement. In
fact, there was no indication of redness and the swelling was
nearly gone. Same with his tongue. “Strawberry tongue” was common
with children with Kawasaki disease. His tongue was a normal,
healthy pink. Same with his hands and feet, which had earlier
developed severe erythema of the palms and soles, now appeared
normal and healthy.

The doctor just stood there by my son’s side,
blinking and stammering and smiling. He was certain he was
witnessing a miracle. He had—just a very different kind of
miracle.

When the doctor left to order some blood
work, I sat by my son’s side, holding his warm hands. He continued
staring at me quietly, and I was having a hard time looking him in
the eye. Did he know what I had done? I didn’t think so, but I
suspected he knew on a very deep level. The soul level, perhaps.
His outer level, the physical level, was still confused and
wondering.

Finally, he spoke, and my son’s little voice
sounded strong. He told me he felt weird and sick to his stomach. I
remember feeling sick to my stomach, too. Years ago, I had been
attacked in the woods while jogging, an attack that had changed my
life forever.

Why? I asked myself again. Why attack me? For
what purpose? What good was a vampire mama?

For now, though, I comforted my son as best
as I could. I asked him if he was hungry and he shook his head
emphatically, his black locks whipping back and forth about his
forehead. I really needed to get him a haircut.

I told him to rest. He nodded and I hugged
him tightly and did my best to ignore the guilt that gripped my
heart. Six years ago, after my attack, I had slept often throughout
those first four days. Perhaps the length of time necessary for the
body to fully assimilate the vampire blood, for the transformation
to be complete. I didn’t know.

Anthony would be sleeping often for the next
four days, and for that I was thankful. After all, I was going to
be busy looking for answers. And since his health was now assured,
I felt free to leave his side.

I gave him a kiss on his cooling forehead
just as he was drifting off to sleep. I got up from his side and
closed the curtains tight, and slipped out of the room and out of
the hospital and headed for my minivan.

I checked my watch as I stepped in. Two hours
before sunlight.

As I started my vehicle, I made a call to the
only other vampire in the world that I knew.

Chapter Nine

I was at Detective Hanner’s home in
Fullerton.

The home was located in the hills above the
city, and as we sat together on her second-story deck, she pointed
out the rooftop of another home, barely distinguishable among a
copse of thick trees. According to Hanner, the old man there was a
Kabbalistic grandmaster, and was considered by many to be immortal
himself.

“Then again,” said Detective Hanner, crossing
her bare legs and flashing me a grin, “neighbors do tend to
talk.”

“What, exactly, is a Kabbalistic
grandmaster?”

“One who has mastered the nuances of the
Kabbalah, the esoteric Jewish doctrine that facilitates a deeper
connection with the great unknown, helps one gain a profound
understanding of other realities and illuminates the meaning of
life.” Hanner turned her face toward me and I was struck again by
the wildness of her eyes. They belonged to something untamed and
free and hungry, a puma hunting at night, a tiger hunting in the
jungles, a lion tracking its prey across the Serengeti. She grinned
fiercely and added, “Or something like that.”

Hanner, who had known about my plans to help
my son, did not know about the medallion. Wrong or not, I trusted
my new friend, and so I told her about it, and about what I needed:
answers to unlocking its secret.

“Where did you get the medallion, Sam?”

“From the vampire who attacked me.”

“Amazing. Others have been looking for it for
a very long time. Others like us.”

“There are that many who seek to end their
lives?” I asked, confused.

She shrugged. “Or there are others who seek
to end the lives of other immortals.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“There are some immortals who are so old, so
powerful, that they cannot be killed by any means, Sam.”

“And the medallion could kill them?”

“Perhaps. That’s the theory at least.”

I shook my head, amazed all over again. “I
just want my son returned to me.”

Pain flashed briefly over her face, and
although her thoughts were impenetrable to me and her aura was
non-existent, I was still a mother and an investigator and I could
read her like a book. She was thinking of the loss of her own son
who had died years ago.

Tears filled her eyes and, perhaps
embarrassed, she changed the subject. “You must be famished,” she
said, standing.

I was. I hadn’t eaten tonight and it was
hitting me hard. Not to mention I had given copious amounts of my
own blood to my son.

Hanner disappeared into her impressive home,
and while I waited the electrified particles of light in the sky
seemed agitated and frenzied, but that could have been my
imagination. Or a reflection of my own inner struggles. I was
having a hard time holding onto a thought for long, before it
slipped away into the ether, to be quickly replaced by an equally
chaotic thought.

She mercifully appeared a few minutes later,
holding two full wine goblets that were filled with anything but
wine. She handed one to me, which I eagerly accepted.

The glass was warm. “Fresh blood,” I
said.

“Of course.”

“But where?”

“I have an arrangement with a mortal, Sam. A
few mortals, in fact. Most of us do. It makes our lives
easier.”

I nodded but was soon drinking hungrily.
Hell, I nearly bit through the glass. As I drank I was aware of
Hanner watching me from over her own glass, her eyes as wild as I
had ever seen them. I could only imagine what my own looked
like.

Like an animal. A hungry animal.

I didn’t savor the blood. In fact, I barely
tasted it, so quickly did it pass over my lips and down my throat
and into my stomach, where it interacted on some supernatural level
with my own supernatural body.

When you don’t need to come up for air, one
can quickly down a glass of blood, and shortly it was finished but
I was hesitant to return it. After all, there was still some blood
pooling in the bottom and coating the inside of the glass.

“Thank you,” I said, then motioned to the
empty glass. “And thank...whoever provided this.”

“Oh, I will.” And she said that with such
enthusiasm I briefly wondered what other kind of arrangement she
had with her donors.

The hemoglobin had an immediate effect, no
doubt due to its freshness. Rarely had I drank blood so fresh and
pure. Even the stuff provided by Kingsley had no doubt been days or
weeks old, and stored in his refrigerator.

This was different. This was straight from
the source, and it was so damn good. Unable to control myself, I
tilted the bloody goblet up and waited for the last few drops to
crawl down, where I eagerly lapped them up. Once done, I used the
edge of my index finger to scrape the inside of the glass
clean.

“I’m a ghoul,” I said, embarrassed.

“No different than licking brownie batter
from a whisk. At least, that’s what I tell myself.”

“I’ll tell myself that, too, but I think I’ll
pretend its chocolate chip cookie dough.”

She smiled and sipped her own drink much more
lady-like than I had. I set my glass down and secretly wished for
another.

Such a ghoul.

Hanner said, “You should consider getting
your own donor, Samantha. They are terribly important. I cannot
imagine what you have been feeding on these past few years.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“No, I suppose I don’t.”

We were silent some more and I finally set
aside the glass, which had now been completely scraped clean. I
found myself idly sucking under my nail.

“You are in an interesting situation,
Sam.”

“I don’t know if I would use the word
interesting,” I said. “Frightening, perhaps.”

“You misunderstand,” said Hanner, and not for
the first time I detected an odd lilt to her voice. “I mean, you
have been given an interesting choice regarding your son.”

“You mean I had been given,” I said. “I
already made my choice, remember, and now I must turn him back
before it’s too late, before he realizes what his mother has done
to him.”

“You misunderstand again, so let me explain
clearly: Sam, you have a chance to be with your son...forever.”

Her words didn’t immediately sink in, but
when they did, when the full realization of them hit, I was left
speechless and my mouth hanging open.

“Eternity is a long, long time, Sam. Too long
to be alone. Now, you will never have to be alone. Ever...” Her
voice trailed off and she looked away and somewhere in the far
distance a coyote howled. At least, I think it was a coyote.

Chapter Ten

I parked my minivan in front of a high,
wrought-iron fence, where I sat and studied the grounds beyond.
Even to my eyes, which could penetrate the darkest of nights, I
couldn’t see much. A long winding road that led away from the fence
plunged into some deep, dark woods.

Well, as deep and dark as they got in the
hills above Fullerton.

I understood Detective Hanner’s heartache. I
understood how much she missed her own son, but I wasn’t about to
sentence my own son to a lifetime of blood-drinking adolescence.
Not if I could help it.

According to Detective Hanner and her
neighbors, the old man’s property was not only protected by a high
fence but also by dark magicks. I asked her what, exactly, she
meant by dark magicks, and she shrugged and said she was only
reporting what she’d heard from her neighbors. Hanner added that
she wouldn’t put anything past the creepy old man who may or may
not be immortal.

What the hell kind of neighborhood was
this?

Except this really didn’t feel like a
neighborhood. Not anymore. Not out here in the dark and surrounded
by trees and high fences and apparently black magicks. In fact, I
felt like I was in a fairy tale. A Brothers Grimm fairytale, as
twisted and dark as they come. And there was no prince waiting for
me at the end of this cobblestone drive. No, only an ancient master
of the black arts, who may or may not be a vampire. Who may or may
not be undead.

I debated turning back, but instead I got out
of the minivan and approached the gate. I could have scaled the
fence easy enough, but the “protected by dark magicks” part had me
a little nervous. And curious.