Samantha Moon Phantasm, page 93
part #9 of Vampire for Hire Series
“You’re impossible, Sam,” she said, and began handing out the caramelized desserts, along with little spoons.
Kingsley held his delicately with his paw-like hand and had me giggling in no time. Same with Tammy and Allison. Anthony, not so much. He kept his head in the game and ignored her dessert. Kingsley hammed it up, a true showboat, sticking out his sausage-like pinky. We laughed some more, and when I looked back at Anthony, his dessert was gone. Just like that.
“Any more?” he asked over his shoulder, still smacking his lips, still playing his video game.
“Anthony...” I began, since Allison had just sat down next to me.
“No, it’s okay, Sam,” she said, getting up again. “I have like a dozen more.”
“Bring me four! No, five. Six!”
“And I’ll have the rest,” said Kingsley, his voice deep enough to make my eardrum tickle. “That is, if everyone is okay with that?”
I had taken, precisely, two bites of my own dessert. Tammy had just dug into hers. And Anthony and Kingsley were already divvying up the rest. Yup, just another night with the gang.
As I ate, and while Allison was busy handing out the rest of the desserts, my daughter shot me the occasional look. She had, of course, long since read my mind—and had long since known—that, more than likely, she had been duped into making a deal with the devil. I had tried to talk to her about it, but she wasn’t in the mood. And she might never be in the mood.
But to get to her, the devil had to get through us, and that just wasn’t going to happen. Not on my watch, Allison’s watch or Kingsley’s watch. Or all his hulking, patchwork monsters’ watch.
Indeed, there was strength in numbers, but when dealing with the devil, anything was possible. I suspected there was also a very good chance that the devil let us think we were safe. Surely, he had not brought his full arsenal of demons to Santa Ana that night.
So far, the devil had stayed away, and I was beginning to think that this was all one bad dream. How could the devil be connected with me? And was he really using my kids to get to me, to incite a reaction? A few days ago, it had all seemed plausible, so much so that Kingsley had taken us all in. Now, three days later, I felt a bit silly. After all, why would the devil have an interest in me? Who was I to him? I was just a mom with a hankering for blood.
“You’re more than that, Mom,” said Tammy suddenly, standing. She took up her crème brûlée, with all its fancy accent marks and macrons, and headed out of the family room. She sidestepped a Lichtenstein monster who had been waiting patiently to collect our empty dishes. He nodded as she passed. She ignored him.
“Excuse me,” I said to the room, and Kingsley nodded at me. Allie, who had been following my thoughts, made to stand, but I gestured for her to stay. I needed to speak to Tammy alone. It was time.
She was just starting up the curved stairway that led to the bedrooms upstairs when I stepped into Kingsley’s massive open foyer which featured an antique table with a Ming Dynasty vase in the center of it, a vase that he’d paid far too much for. High above was a crystal chandelier. I was pretty sure most of my house would fit in his foyer, too.
“I want to be alone,” Tammy shouted behind her as she continued up the stairs.
“I heard you say ‘alone,’” I said, starting up the stairs behind her. “But what I really hear is: ‘Mom, I want to talk.’”
“Oooh, you’re impossible!” she shouted to me from the top of the stairs, then marched away, her little hands balled into fists.
She was just about to slam one of Kingsley’s oversized guest bedroom doors with its crystal doorknobs when I stopped it. “I didn’t raise a daughter who would slam a door in her mother’s face, and so I will assume that you forgot just how fleet of foot I am.”
She spun around. “Fleet of foot? What are you talking about?”
“It means fast. Like a fox.” I slipped inside and shut the door behind me.
“There’s nothing to talk about. You can just leave. And there’s crème brûlée on your chin.”
“I’m leaving it there until you talk to me, young lady.”
She had long since stuck out her lower lip, as she’d been doing since she was a little girl. But now, that lower lip quivered, then broke into a laugh. “You look ridiculous, Mom.”
I made a show of trying to find the pudding, but kept barely missing it.
“It’s right here, Mom,” she said, pointing.
I swiped again. “Did I get it?”
“No. And you are doing that on purpose.”
My next swipe came away with a dab of crème brûlée. “C’mon, baby. Let’s sit down and talk.”
“Do we have to?”
“Yes.”
Kingsley’s guest room she chose was simple: a bed, a reading chair, a lamp, a dresser. Nothing too fancy; same with his other eight guest rooms. Yes, eight. We sat on the edge of her bed. A shadow shifted to slip just behind the dresser. It was, I was certain, a long-dead ghost swinging by, but it was so formless and lost that it might as well have been a living shadow. Then again, it could have been one of the devil’s minions.
“Thanks, Mom. As if I wasn’t already having a hard enough time sleeping.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. Have I told you lately how brave you were to try to help me?”
“Like a million times.”
“Well, you are. And you did your best to try to help me. You couldn’t have known that it was a—”
“Trap? Of course, I thought it was a trap. I just thought there was a chance... that maybe he was telling the truth... and that...”
She broke down, weeping into her hands, sobbing harder than maybe I’d ever seen her sob before. I pulled her into me and held her, and let my own tears flow, and, as she cried, she tried to speak, and, dammit, I understood every word. Every blubbering word:
“I can’t... I wouldn’t know... I can’t lose you. I just can’t. You’re my mommy... my friend... we lost Daddy... but yeah, yeah inside Anthony... not the same... Anthony has really bad BO, like really bad... not normal... I wouldn’t know how to... I just don’t want... can’t lose you. Ever. No. Never...”
She cried some more, and I found her hot tears and breath oddly comforting, maybe even reassuring. I held her tight, and she might have even held me tighter, and when she was finally all cried out, I was certain I heard footsteps just outside the bedroom door. Allison was creeping around again.
“Not creeping,” she said from the other side of the door. “Just concerned.”
“We’ve got this covered,” I said.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
I heard her pad away, then creak down the stairs. Tammy unraveled herself from around my neck, and wiped her nose.
“She’s a good friend, Mom.”
“I know, baby.”
“She’d do anything for you.”
“I know.”
“Like go to other worlds, fight dragons, and fight demons, too.”
“I ask a lot from my friend, eh?”
Tammy smiled and wiped her cheeks, except the tears kept coming.
“What’s got you so upset?” I asked.
“The devil wants to kill you, Mommy. I made a big mistake.”
I took her hands and dropped to my knees on the floor before her. I looked up at her and said, “I know things look bad, sweetie. And I know there are some very bad people out there who want certain things from us. But I don’t plan on going anywhere. Not now, nor ever. And I mean that literally. And no one, but no one, will ever hurt you or Anthony.”
“The devil is listening to you, Mommy.”
“How?”
“Through me.”
“Is he close?”
She nodded again. “He’s not very far.”
“Close enough that the two of you are connected?”
She closed her eyes, and more tears appeared. “He’s inside me, Mommy. And I can’t get him out.”
She pulled her hands free from mine and buried her face in her palms. “He’s laughing, Mommy. Says he owns me. He says he will destroy you and everyone you love. He says no vampire is going to take him down. Not now, nor ever. He’s going to enjoy watching you die. He says he’s going to use me to kill you.”
She wept harder and harder.
My daughter didn’t sound possessed. Indeed, she wasn’t. There was no fire in her eye, and no deepening of her voice. She and the devil had a mindlink; of course, that, in and of itself, was a terrible, terrible thing for any mother to come to terms with.
“Can you block him, baby?” I asked.
“I-I’ve tried. He breaks through every time. Except...”
“Except what, baby?”
“There’s still a tiny place in my mind that he hasn’t found yet. It’s like a small box.”
“Can you go in there now?” I asked.
“I-I can, but that means...” She searched for words.
“Means what, sweetie?”
“It means I have to sort of shut down. I can’t do a lot in there. It’s a dark place.”
“But safe?”
She nodded, her lower lip trembling.
“Can you go in there now, baby? And maybe sleep?” I asked her. “Sleep all night long?”
She nodded. “I-I think so. The devil says he’s gonna find me, though.”
I took in some worthless fucking air. “Can you go in there now, baby?”
She nodded, and I watched her eyelids flutter, and then her shoulders sank, and my daughter was nearly a lifeless thing. She breathed and sat straight. The tears stopped and her lower lip quit trembling.
“Are you in there now, sweetie?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
“Does the devil know about the Angel of Death?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes, Mommy. He said nothing will help you. Nothing. Not God, not your friends, not Anthony, not your angel, and certainly not Azrael.”
I knew the name, thanks to the Librarian. I was just surprised to hear it come from my daughter’s lips. The Angel of Death.
“Sleep, baby. You are safe here.”
“Okay, Mommy.”
As she lay on her side, I pulled the comforter over her.
“Mommy?”
“Yes, darling?”
“Where are you going?”
My daughter, of course, had picked up on my plans. I said, “I’m going to talk to an old friend. A very good friend.”
Chapter Ten
Fang was behind the counter, looking much as I remembered him back in the day, back when he was a bartender at Hero’s, my favorite bar where I used to hang out with Mary Lou, back before I had learned that he had stalked the shit out of me.
That was, of course, a long, long time ago. Now, he was one of us: that is, a vampire. And instead of serving just beer and wine, he also served human and animal blood, all done inconspicuously, in clear defiance of any health codes.
He spotted me come through the door and waved me over, smiling broadly. Fang, I noted, still wore his two extracted teeth—his two remarkably long teeth—as pendants around his neck, looking for all the world like two normal-sized shark teeth, rather than two extraordinarily long human canines.
“Moon Dance!” he said, coming around the bar and holding out his hands. Fang was tall and thin, but he was now wiry with muscle. Vampirism had been good to him. He had always been good-looking, but he seemed to have filled out a little over the years since his turning. Indeed, there was a glow to him now, which suggested a recent feeding. Not a big surprise, since he ran a no-kill blood bank. Yes, the many human donors here thought they were donating to a real blood bank. Other than that one ethical hiccup, everything else was on the up and up. In fact, his bar was saving lives by satiating those vampires who might have otherwise killed for their nightly hemoglobin fix. With the faux-donation clinic just next door, I knew Fang had, by now, amassed vats full of human blood, many of which were separated by blood type, racial type, gender type, and even age type. Who knew vampires could be so particular?
The bar itself looked like your typical dive bar. Those two gents in the back, sipping on what looked like red wine, were sipping, of course, blood. Except your average Joe off the street wouldn’t know the difference. Fang kept the place dark, kept the music loud. The booths along the walls and window were high-backed, deep and dark, perfect for a vampire who didn’t want to draw attention to himself or herself. And for those vampires who chose not to satiate the entity within, or for those preferred to keep the parasite within them weak, or for those who were generally against consuming human blood, Fang also kept on hand some pig and cow blood, ordered from the same damn butchery that I used. Lucky me.
He gave me a big, smothering hug. He even lifted me up off the ground a little. It had been a while since I’d seen him, and the look in his eye was undeniable: the lanky goofball still had it bad for me. Why these men had it for me, I didn’t know. But I suspected most women had their fair share of inexplicable crushes. I remember all the crushes on Mary Lou. Boys would literally follow her home daily from middle school and even into high school. Hell, her husband had been one of them.
Of course, my crushes just so happened to be an escaped convict-turned-vampire, a guardian angel, and a big, bad werewolf.
Fang set me down after a half-twirl. “And to what do I owe the pleasure, matey?” he asked.
“I need some help,” I said. “And I also need a drink. Not necessarily in that order.”
He grinned. “Still animal blood?”
“Still animal. Yourself?”
“Oh, I am into human blood, Sam.”
“How’s that working out for you?” I asked.
“Edward and I have an agreement.”
“Edward?”
“My dark entity. He only comes out to play when I give him permission. And he goes back in when I say so.”
“And how’s that working out for you?”
“Mostly, okay. Lately, I’ve noticed he tends to stay out longer and longer, even after I call him back.”
“That could be a problem,” I said.
“I know.”
I said, “Cow and pig blood work every time.”
“Weakens him?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. Except, I knew Fang might already be too far gone. Meaning... the opening had already been created. His entity, Edward, no doubt had a foothold, which meant he could probably slip out at will. Slip out and take over Fang. I kept that to myself. Fang would discover it for himself. It was a slippery slope consuming human blood; it strengthened a vampire, but also strengthened the entity within.
Fang went over to a row of wine casks, drew from a shiny spigot, and out flowed a thick stream of crimson. When the glass had filled, he turned the spigot, caught a few remaining drops, and set the shimmering goblet of blood before me. Unlike the other vampires who preferred the anonymity of the high-backed booths, I sat at the counter, front and center, not very far from a few mortals drinking their blues away with mugs full of dark beer.
Fang caught me looking at the closest customer, a house painter by the looks of him. Fang said, “Don’t worry about Matt. He’s a regular, and has long since been given the suggestion to ignore anything and everything vampire- or ghoul-related.”
“Ghoul?” I asked.
Fang shrugged. “A good catch-all. I don’t know who’s going to walk in through those doors.”
I raised the glass, tried to ignore the big fat chunk of meat floating in it, and chugged half of it down. Animal or not, the blood hit the spot. Especially my belly, which warmed first, then radiated out in waves. A good feeling. One that also felt lacking. Like drinking a diet soda. Good enough, but missing that sugar kick. The kick, in this case, was the human element.
“So what’s got you down, Moon Dance?” he asked, leaning his sharp elbows on the bar. It was just like old times.
I considered how much to tell him, then decided to tell him all of it.
***
Fang and I had long since lost our telepathic communication, and even I was tired of hearing my voice when I finally concluded with the events of tonight—that is, when I realized the devil had an even deeper connection with my daughter than I had realized.
“His connection is growing, Sam.”
“Is it a possession?” I asked.
“Not quite, but close. Enough that he can begin to influence her.”
“Well, she’s safe for now.”
He nodded. “Her locked-up space in her mind will only last so long. The devil—he’s going to find a way in.”
“He’s never going to let her go, is he?”
“At least not until he figures a way to get to you.”
“And why doesn’t he just kill me now?” I asked. “Send a handful of demons to do the dirty work for him?”
Fang, whose knowledge of the occult was second only to the Alchemist—at least in my experience—shook his head. “It is common knowledge that the devil cannot engage, Sam. Nor can his demons. They can terrorize, yes. They can do everything but kill or destroy.”
“Unless invited in.”
“Indeed.”
“And so he’s what? Scheming, manipulating, orchestrating?”
“All of the above. And, from what you’ve said, you and the devil are inextricably tied together. But the devil knows the future is not writ in stone.”
“Did you just say, ‘writ’?”
“I did, Sam. I’m a dork.”
Fang was many things, but I had never thought of him as a dork. I laughed and caught his eye. Ah, the fire just behind it was growing. His entity, Edward, was taking an interest in this conversation.
I said, “So the devil hopes to change his fate?”
“It appears so. And it appears his fate is tied to you.”
“Since when did this happen? Why am I the last to know?”
“The future is a strange animal. Those who see it only see probabilities. Same with prophetic dreams, as you well know. More than likely, the devil knew of his future fate, but had waited until it had seemed more and more likely.”
“Like if I had been killed off or something.”
