Moon Child (Vampire for Hire #4) (9 page)

“Where to now?” he asked.

I thought about it. I had a few hours before
Anthony awakened. I said, “I need to beat the shit out of
something.”

Chapter Twenty-three

I was at my gym with my trainer.

By “gym” I meant my boxing studio. By
“trainer” I meant the little old Irish guy named Jacky who talked
like a leprechaun.

“Hands up, lass. Up, up!”

“Go to hell,” I grunted, as I lifted my heavy
hands. Vampire or not, I was nearly mortal during the day, and my
hands felt like lead, especially after going through a few rounds
on the heavy bag.

But even though sunset was still under two
hours away, I had more than enough strength to hit the bag hard
enough to rock the little trainer. He grunted through the
shockwaves, screaming at me to keep my hands up even as he
struggled to hold onto the bag.

“End round!” he shouted, just as I leveled
another hard roundhouse. Unfortunately, the Irishman had let his
guard down just enough. The punch, although mostly absorbed by the
heavy bag, sent him staggering backwards.

“You okay, Jacky?” I cried out, moving over
to him and catching him just as he stumbled over my gym bag.

As I held him up, the Irishman looked at me
with eyes slightly crossed, sweat pouring down his face. A second
later his eyes uncrossed and he stared at me. “Jesus, you’re a
freak.”

“I’ve heard that before. From you, in
fact.”

But he was still staring at me. “And how did
you get over here so fast?”

“What can I say? Cat-like reflexes.”

“Freak-like reflexes,” he said in his Irish
trill. “I need a break, Sam.”

He took his break, and in his office, through
his partially open door, I saw him down a few cups of water and
what looked like pain medication. He came back, cracked his neck,
grabbed the heavy bag from behind, and said, “Round four. Let’s do
this.”

And we did this, with Jacky grunting and
taking the brunt of the impacts and screaming at me to keep my
hands up. I cursed and punched and did my best to keep my hands up,
and all the while I felt the sun slipping slowly toward the
horizon.

Chapter Twenty-four

A quick shower and a few miles later and I
was at the Cal State Fullerton library, which was bigger than I
remembered.

I had graduated here in my early twenties
with a degree in criminal justice. That degree led to a job
interview with the Department of Housing and Urban Development,
where I was eventually hired as a federal agent. A great job, and
one I regretted leaving, but it’s hard to work the day shift when
you’re a creature of the night.

The Cal State Fullerton library was epic.
Granted, I’ve never been to other university libraries but I would
be hard-pressed to believe any of them could be as big as this one.
There were five floors of books, with rows upon rows of aisles that
seemed endless. Cubicles everywhere, filled with students connected
to iPods, iPhones and iEverything else. The juxtaposition of dusty
library with modern technology was striking. Two worlds
colliding.

At the information desk, I found a terminal
and punched in the name “Archibald Maximus.” Or tried to. Typing
with these sharp nails was a bitch. A few tries later and I hit
“enter” with little hope.

I wasn’t surprised. As expected, nothing came
up.

I thought about what Fang had said about the
university having a considerable occult section and decided to ask
someone about it.

That someone turned out to be a flirty young
man with a killer smile. He was standing behind a long, curved
desk, stacking books.

“Where might I find your occult section?” I
asked.

He blinked. “The Occult Reading Room?” Some
of the flirt left him. Just some.

I nodded encouraging, and his grin returned
and I could see his mind trying to find some angle to use for a
come-on line. He found none, and seemed disappointed with himself.
That is, if his long sigh was any indication.

“Third floor,” he said. “And you’re in luck.
The room’s only open two hours a day and you have about twenty
minutes.”

“Lucky me,” I said, turning. “Thank you.”

“I can show it to you, if you like—”

“No, thanks, cutie. I’ll manage.”

He smiled and nearly said something else but
I had already turned away, heading quickly to the bank of
elevators, where one opened immediately. As the doors were closing,
I caught sight of something so disturbing that I immediately tried
to punch the door open. Too late, they closed and I was heading
up.

A tall man had been moving purposely toward
me. A tall man wearing a bow tie.

Chapter Twenty-five

The elevator doors opened on the third
floor.

I half expected to see the same man in the
bow tie appear, but, as far as I could tell, I was alone on the
third floor. And if anything, the floor appeared even bigger and
more spacious than the ground floor. Row after row of endless
shelving that stretched as far as the eye could see, all lit
gloomily by halogen lighting that dully reflected off the scuffed
acrylic flooring.

Cryptic signs with seemingly random words and
numbers pointed in various directions, apparently of use to only
those who spoke Librarian.

Since I hadn’t yet seen a sign that said
“Occult Reading Room” and my time was rapidly running out, I
decided to try something new in my bag of tricks: remote
viewing.

Or, in my case, nearby viewing.

I closed my eyes and quieted my mind and
thought about what I wanted. The Occult Reading Room.
Interestingly, the young kid downstairs came into view...followed
immediately by the man in the bow tie. I blinked, refocused, and
another image came to mind, swimming up from the black depths like
a creature from the deep. Except this was an image of a doorway,
and it was to my right and up another hallway.

My consciousness returned quickly; my eyes
snapped open.

Whoa.

I hung a right and followed a row of books to
the south wall. Once there, I headed north and soon came across the
very same doorway I had just seen in my mind’s eye.

Unbelievable.

The sign above said “Occult Reading Room,”
and as I stepped through the open door, I was distinctly aware of
the faint sound of an elevator door opening.

Chapter Twenty-six

The Occult Reading Room was surprisingly
bright.

A young man with bright blue eyes and a short
beard that came to a point was manning the front desk. He looked up
from the pages of an old book that looked like it belonged on the
set of a Harry Potter film. I glanced down at the open page and saw
various diagrams and words that I was certain were not in English.
Then again, I was never very adept at reading upside down.

“I’m looking for information about a
man.”

He pointed to a card catalog on a nearby
wall. “We’re still in the process of computerizing the card
catalog, but everything we have is in there.”

“Sure, um...”

He smiled warmly. “You have no clue how to
use a card catalog.”

“I haven’t used one since high school, and
even then I didn’t know what I was doing. Mostly I just needed a
place to hide my gum.”

He shook his head. “You’re not chewing any
gum now, are you?”

“No.”

He grinned. “Then come on.”

At the card catalog, he patiently showed me
how to search under “subject.” I thanked him and he had just
returned to his epic tome, when I heard footsteps approaching in
the outer hallway.

From my position at the card catalog I had a
view of the entrance into the Occult Reading Room. No one was
there. Indeed, the footsteps seemed to be receding now, perhaps
heading down a side aisle.

I debated following, but remembered the
reading room would be closing in just a few minutes.

The creep in the bow tie had me on edge. Had
he been the same tall man I had seen in Kingsley’s building? I
didn’t know, but I could count on one hand the number of men I had
seen wearing bow ties this last year. Hell, in the last five
years.

And now I had seen two in one day.

Coincidence? I think not.

And, yes, I thought back to Fang’s words:
“There are no coincidences, Moon Dance.”

Although my sixth sense was always a little
sketchy during the day, I wasn’t picking up on any danger. Still, I
stepped briefly outside and scanned the hallway. No one there.

Back at the card catalog, I found the drawer
labeled “Ma-Mi,” and started flipping through the ancient cards, my
sharp nails and heightened dexterity making it easy to whip through
them rapidly.

My blurred fingers stopped on a name that I
wasn’t entirely prepared to see. In fact, I had already given up
the search as a lost cause. But there, on the yellowed piece of
paper, were the words: Archibald Maximus: My Life as a Mystic,
Alchemist and Philosopher.

“Unbelievable,” I whispered.

Dazed, I jotted down the Dewey Decimal
Numbers and proceeded to hunt through the reading room. The energy
in the Occult Reading Room, I noticed, was off. I wasn’t sure why,
truth be known, but I wondered if it had something to do with the
room’s darker contents. Indeed, as I read some of the spines of the
books, I could see why:

A Compleat History of Magick, Amulets and
Superstitions.

Vampires: Alive and Well and Living Among
Us.

Magick in Theory and Practice.

Curse Tablets and Binding Spells.

Lycans: Our Wolf Brothers.

Additionally, there were countless books on
alchemy, magic, demonology, divination, Satanism, freemasonry,
Middle Eastern magical grimoires. Books on East Asian magical
practices, Tibetan secret practices, books on the Tarot and raising
the dead. Some of the books looked ancient, so old that I was
afraid to touch them. Many of them were surrounded by a darkness
visible to my eyes, similar to the darkness that had surrounded my
son. Sometimes I heard whispering as I went down the aisles, as if
I were not alone.

One book in particular radiated a blackness
so dark that I gave it a wide berth. Even still, as I stepped past
it, I heard whispering in my ear, “Sister, come to us...”

Sweet Jesus.

Shaking, I finally reached the aisle I
wanted. Ignoring the slithering, psychic chattering that now seemed
to come from everywhere, I quickly ran my pointed nail along the
books’ spines, praying like hell that the book I needed would be
there.

Not this row. I scanned the next one and the
next.

And there it was. I literally breathed a sigh
of relief.

I carefully removed the narrow volume. The
book was clearly ancient, bound in leather and written in what
appeared to be vellum, sheep skin. The title was clear enough and
written in modern English, which surprised me since the book was
obviously bound centuries earlier.

But I didn’t have time to think about it.

The young man behind the desk was now
carefully stacking his books. As he turned away from me, I quickly
slipped the narrow volume down the front of my jeans.

I made haste, exiting via a different route,
ignoring the beseeching cries from some of the darker books. At the
desk, the young man smiled and asked if I had found what I was
looking for.

I said maybe, smiled, and exited the Occult
Reading Room, noting for the first time that the aura around him
was violet and utterly beautiful.

On the way out of the library, walking a
little funny, I didn’t see the man with the bow tie.

Chapter Twenty-seven

I was sitting by my son’s side.

The sun was setting and I was feeling excited
and nervous and guilty as hell. I thought back to my first few
nights as a vampire, and I was certain that I wasn’t aware that a
drastic change had occurred. Not yet. It would take a few days.

Indeed, I just remember sleeping and healing,
and it wasn’t until a few days later, at home, that the cravings
began. Cravings for the red stuff.

I looked down at my son. In a matter of days
or hours or minutes—or perhaps it had already happened, he would go
from being a sweet little boy, to an immortal with a hunger for
blood and a penchant for turning into a little vampire bat. No
doubt, a cute little vampire bat.

And be with you forever.

I heard the words again. And again. And
again.

I suddenly had an image of me fighting
traffic for an eternity, listening to infomercials for an eternity.
An eternity of bad hair days, of showering and putting on
deodorant. An eternity of drinking blood.

Mostly, though, an eternity alone.

I never feared death. Death was the natural
order of things and I was always certain that there was something
waiting for us beyond. If so, then why fear death?

But I would never discover what lay beyond,
would I? I would never see the face of God. I would never sit
across from Jesus or Buddha or Krishna. Instead, I would only sit
across from a TV, or whatever passed for a TV in the far future,
while yet another infomercial for yet another magic dishrag.

The medallion had been my answer, of course.
It had been my way out of the immortality game. The immortality
prison. My chance to escape an eternity of doldrums.

But not anymore.

The sun was setting. I knew this because I
could feel some of the weight on my shoulders diminishing. Also,
there was a small tingling that was beginning to creep up along my
spine. A sort of awakening perhaps. An awakening to all that I
could be. I ached for the sun to set. Longed for it to do so.