The Vampire's Seduction (11 page)

“Don’t he look natural?” Otis mused.

“Not with a hole in his throat you could drive a Mack truck through, he don’t,” Rufus pointed out.

“It’s just what folks say,” muttered Otis.

After a pause, Jerry spoke up. “Can we help find the guy who did this?” Wiry and strong-looking, Jerry would probably be pretty handy in a fight. Out of respect to Huey, he removed his Braves cap, and once again I noted that his ears were a little too pointy for a regular human. If the going got rough, I figured he might be able to shapeshift into something real useful. But this wasn’t his fight, and when William and I finally did find whoever murdered Huey and Alger, I didn’t know if even the two of us would be powerful enough to stop him.

“Thanks, but me and William have to handle this.”

Rufus bent his two index fingers and brought them to either side of his mouth. This was his way of saying
vampire,
a word which was never uttered in my presence. Better to waltz around the truth than to know for sure.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s our kind of business.”

They were silent for another moment, contemplating the seriousness of a new and vicious blood drinker in town. I had more to fill them in on later, but right then, we had to see about Huey. They continued viewing Huey’s body as if gathered around a proper casket in a funeral home, and I put the beer and chips on the card table. They each took a cold one, and I raised my can of Budweiser, the king of beers. “To Huey,” I said.

“To Huey,” the others chimed. We all popped our tops at the same time, sounding like a redneck funeral’s version of a twenty-one-gun salute.

Otis said, “Remember the time before he got cursed when Huey got drunk and fell into the oil pit?”

“Do I ever. I had to pay his hospital bill,” I said. “He ’bout broke every bone in his body. Even had his jaw wired shut.”

“That wasn’t the worst of it,” Rennie said. “He had to sit around for a couple of months in a body cast listening to his old lady bitch at him for being so dumb. And he couldn’t answer her back because his jaw was busted. Couldn’t get up and walk out either. He just had to sit and take it.”

Rufus put in, “Drove him crazier than a shithouse rat.”

We all laughed, and it felt good. A little guilty maybe, but good. It was fitting to share the bad times as well as the good with mortals. Their feelings were so real, so in-your-face. I forgot sometimes that I wasn’t one of them.

“It was right after that when his old lady had the curse put on him,” Rufus said. “ ’Course he tried to have it took off. He wore a
gris-gris
around his neck twenty-four/seven, but he was still afraid to drink.”

“Yeah,” Jerry said. “A man can’t do without his guts.”

This was a sobering thought. As sober as a thought could be after the thinker had downed a few Buds, anyway. “That’s a fact,” Rufus agreed solemnly.

“What are you gonna do with him?” Rennie asked.

“I thought we’d take the backhoe and bury him out back in his Corsica like he wanted.”

“He loved that car,” agreed Rennie.

“Seems a waste of a perfectly good Chevy,” Jerry said.

“It’s a
Corsica,
” I said, thinking perhaps he hadn’t understood.

“The transmission’s on its last legs,” said Rennie.

“Oh, well, then,” Jerry acquiesced, and cracked another beer.

The shop is several blocks away from the nearest residential area, so nobody was annoyed by the sound of a backhoe digging a car-size hole out back. After we’d finally gotten the car situated in the hole, I positioned Huey behind the wheel, his head at a jaunty angle, his left hand on the steering wheel, and, at Otis’s insistence, a cold Bud in his right. I guess it was the least we could do.

“Maybe we shoulda bought him some new clothes,” Rufus said. “You know, a suit or somethin’. That’s how they do it down at the funeral home.”

Jerry looked at Rufus like he was a black cloud just waitin’ to rain on our funeral parade. “Well, Rufus, you
dufus,
just where exactly do you think Huey is goin’ that he can’t go in his coveralls?”

Rufus scratched the back of his neck like something had bit him. “I told you not to call me that,” he mumbled, then fell silent.

As we stood looking down at Huey, Rennie said, “I guess somebody should say a few words.” Then everybody looked up at me.

On the one hand, it seemed kind of inappropriate for a creature damned for all eternity to preach a graveside funeral service for a human. But, on the other, I was Huey’s employer and friend, so I guessed I should rise to the occasion.

“Here lies Huey.” I glanced around at the four of them, all sad-eyed and getting soggy around the sinuses. Rennie’s eyes swam, magnified behind the thick lenses. “Please, er, Lord, receive him into heaven and take good care of him because he was a good ol’ boy and never hurt a fly that I know of.”

“Amen,” the others muttered.

Afterward, as I watched the boys sitting around the card table finishing off the rest of the second twelve-pack, I cursed myself for what I had to do. Humans, and even semi-humans, seem so frail to me. Their lives, which are short enough to begin with, can flicker out like a candle flame in a stiff wind when you add a little danger into their day-to-day routines. I couldn’t let what happened to Huey happen to them.

“Boys, I’m going to have to close the shop for a few days. Just until me and William can find the thing that killed Huey and deal with it.”

They began to protest, as I knew they would. Rennie especially had good reason. He was my partner in the business, which was his livelihood. “What about the customers? We’ve got four cars in there we’re working on.”

“Three. I’ve finished with the mayor’s car and I’ll take it to him tonight. You call the other three customers and tell ’em it’ll be a few days longer on the repairs. Tell ’em you’ll tow the cars elsewhere if it’s a problem.”

Rennie, having worked with me for years, knew me well enough not to push the matter. The others didn’t. Jerry stood up. “Jack, we can take care of ourselves. We’ll keep an eye on Rennie, make sure nobody bothers him. It’s not fair to close the shop.”

Jerry thought he was tough, and maybe he was by mortal standards, but in the nonhuman world he was way out of his league. Through the years I’d called many humans my friends, and a few, including these boys, had figured out my special situation, more or less. Hell, I had to hang with humans or be a hermit since William wouldn’t let me within spitting distance of other vamps. But every now and then, when someone you hang with gets too big for his britches, you have to show ’em who’s the big dog. It’s not an ego thing, honest. It’s for their own good.

“You wouldn’t know what we’re dealing with if it came up and bit you on the ass. Hell, I don’t even know if I can protect you. I don’t even know if I can protect myself. If this thing goes after me, it might not be picky about what it does with whoever gets in its way—like Huey. Until further notice, I don’t want anybody hanging around here. I’m serious.”

“Dammit, Jack, we—”

Jerry’s train of thought came to a screeching halt as I set my mouth to show off my fangs. I let my eyes dilate and leveled a deadly stare on him. “Drop it.”

Jerry sat down immediately. I’d never shown them my game face before. I sighed, seized by an overwhelming sadness. The regulars would never look at me the same way again, I knew it. The little scare was for their own good, but it made me feel like an outsider in my own home. I liked humans. I liked the rosy look of their skin, their musical voices, their genuine human smells, their normalness. The way they went about their business oblivious to the things I could see, smell, and hear that they couldn’t. Like the movement in a corner of the eye, the scent of old, dead things, the sound of lost souls stirring. They would never be troubled by any of that. Sometimes I longed to be one of them again.

Rennie broke the tension by saying, “All right. We get it. You’re bad.”

After the regulars went their separate ways, Rennie patted me awkwardly on the arm and told me to take care of myself. I could tell he was worried. Hell, so was I.

Alone at last, I went to the small safe I’d had poured into the concrete floor in the corner of the garage. I kept one of the tool cases parked above it, so that it was pretty much invisible. I’d installed the safe because some of our more eccentric customers liked to deal in cash. It’s tough to get credit cards and checking accounts when you’re not human. Me, I applied for a Social Security card when that system was established, so I have everything I need. Been drawing benefits for a good number of years now, and I pay my fair share of income tax just like your average human Joe. You know what they say. Nothing is certain but death and taxes. I have them both covered.

I fished out the tacky little necklace William had asked me to keep for him years ago. He called it a charm, but it wasn’t very charming. It was pretty ugly, in fact. Just a bunch of shells and beads strung on old, stained leather that looked like a kid’s “what I did last summer at camp” project. I wondered what was so special about it besides the fact that it smelled like blood. Just more of William’s mysterious shit. I tucked the stupid charm in my pocket, relocked the safe, and closed up the garage.

I took the mayor’s vehicle and headed over to Eleanor’s. Through William’s connections, I happened to know that his honor was at some kind of mayors’ conference out of town and wouldn’t be back until the night of William’s party. I figured William might as well continue to ride around in style while his Jag was missing. Something domestic wasn’t really him, but the Escalade was big and roomy and would do in a pinch. At least I wouldn’t have to drive ’em around and watch Olivia and William getting cozier and cozier in a bucket seat made for one.

My bucket seat.

I parked the car on the street in front of Eleanor’s, got out, and started up the steps, expecting to feel William’s usual impatience with my timing. I stopped on the landing halfway up and had to get a grip on the rail to keep from falling on my butt. Bloodlust and just plain old
lust
lust hit me like the lead car at the Daytona 500. Pleasure and pain so intense I could barely draw a breath. Was this what William had been hiding from me? He must have been so involved he’d forgotten to shut me down. That was a first. Unable to move, I looked down at the basement floor foundation. William was down there. No telling what kind of kinky party he was having with Olivia and Eleanor. And guess who wasn’t invited? Not that I had much stomach for that kind of thing. Tonight anyway. I stumbled down the steps, opened the door to the Escalade, hung William’s charm around the rearview mirror, and walked away.

Having nowhere to go and nobody to go to, I sat down on a stone bench in the square and waited for my temperature to drop to normal. I couldn’t remember when I’d felt more alone. Cut off from my human friends and kept at arm’s length by William and the few other vampires I got to meet, I felt like a man without a country. Hell, I might as well be one of those aliens people were always yammerin’ about. Add to that the fact that a fierce, kick-ass creature was out there somewhere looking to kill all of us and it just wasn’t one of my better days.

I heard human voices and looked up. One of those ghost tours was coming across the square. The tour guide, dressed in a Civil War–era getup complete with petticoats, was regaling the tourists with some supposedly scary story about one beastie or another who was rumored to haunt the antebellum house on the corner. As they approached me, I felt drawn to reach out to them but stopped myself. Humans for the most part don’t cotton to being stroked by strangers in public places, at least not when they’re sober.

Instead I bared my fangs at them, just the barest glint, not the full-out vamp face. The guide froze in mid-spiel and her customers gaped. She pulled herself together quickly, though, and straightened the bill of her bonnet. “We get all kinds here in Savannah,” she declared. “Halloween is just around the corner. I’m sure this gentleman is just rehearsing for a party.”

Halloween?
She thought I was a Halloween vampire? Now
that
pissed me off. But it just goes to show you, humans have an uncanny knack for explaining away what they can see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears. It’s a terrific skill for holding on to their sanity. As an ultimate survival skill, however, it sucks. William once told me that when humans first see a vampire, they choose to squander that crucial instant to search their minds for a concept that would explain away their instinctive sense of danger. It’s in that instant, even more so than in the bloodbath that follows, in which they lose their lives. Humans are nothing if not predictable. When they had passed by me, I muttered, “I got your party right here, lady.” When they couldn’t see, I extended my fangs full-length, pulling my lips back as far as they would go. I hate to say it but the effect must be pretty gross. Think of a snake unhinging its jaw to swallow a rabbit whole.

They might have been able to explain away my little flash of fang, but if I had showed them the full game face, it would have made ’em scatter in all directions, screaming like a bunch of banshees with toothaches. In my mind’s eye, I could just see the guide with her hoopskirt hiked up, running like a wide receiver. The fantasy was amusing but not as satisfying as it would have been to actually do it. It would almost have been worth the risk to see them scatter like bowling pins.

I was alone again. Or maybe not. That same feeling was creeping up my spine, spreading along my neck, and making my arm hairs stand on end. The feeling that I was being watched.

William

The man was on his knees as all good swans should be, blindfolded, naked, with hands tied securely behind his back. Helpless. Eleanor had outdone herself. Asked for a snack, with true southern hospitality she’d served up a banquet certain to keep Olivia busy for a while. Not only had Eleanor found a willing male donor in record time, he came damned close to being handsome—or at least he had a handsome body. No pale goth club rat this one. This swan was broad-shouldered, long-limbed, and the proud owner of impressive
equipment,
so to speak. Most likely an out-of-towner, perhaps a college footballer here for a bit of naughtiness. A big bite of naughtiness was more like it. If he’d had the opportunity to look Olivia in the eyes just once, he might have been a bit more careful about volunteering.