Moon Child (Vampire for Hire #4) (2 page)

To think that this hulking, winged creature
owned a five-year-old minivan with license plates that were about
to expire was laughable. No, it was incomprehensible.

I wasn’t worried about security cameras. They
would capture nothing...except maybe a car door opening and
closing...followed later by a spunky, thirty-seven year old mother
who may or may not fully appear in the image, depending on whether
I wore make-up. Without make-up, the camera would capture only the
curvy outline of empty clothing.

Of course, knowing that I did not appear on
camera prompted me to remember to wear make-up, including a light
coating on my arms and backs of my hands. Still, no doubt there
were hundreds of surveillance videos out there of an unseen woman.
Want to know how to find vampires? Check surveillance video.

For now, though, I alighted near the van’s
cargo door, which itself faced a listless magnolia tree. The tree
was surrounded by some low bushes and curved pipes that I assumed
had something to with the hospital’s plumbing. But what the hell
did I know?

The area wasn’t quite big enough to
accommodate a hulking, mythical monster, and I ended up trampling
some of the bushes, breaking a branch and denting one of the
pipes.

Life goes on.

In my mind’s eye, I saw the woman in the
flame, watching me calmly, waiting. I focused on her, and she
seemed to move toward me, or I to her. I was never sure which. The
feeling that came next was difficult to describe, since there
really was no feeling. As if awakening from a short nap, I gasped
lightly, and raised my head. I was on one knee, which was digging
into a small spider plant that had seen better days. I fluffed up
the little plant and stood. Next, I reached under my fender and
found the small hide-a-key that I kept there.

Shh. Don’t tell anyone.

I unlocked the minivan and slipped inside. My
clothing was still there, and a few minutes later, after a quick
dusting of foundation, I emerged from the minivan, purse in hand.
The transformation from giant monster bat into a concerned mommy
was now complete.

My life is weird.

I checked the time on my cell. It was just
after 2:00 a.m. I would say the vampire’s hour, but the truth is,
any time between sundown to sunup are the vampire’s hours.

My daughter Tammy was staying with my sister,
and no doubt they had all gone home by now. After all, Anthony
appeared, to all those concerned, to be fairly stable. It was only
me and my heightened extrasensory perception that suspected that
not all was as it seemed.

Indeed, I knew my son had only hours to live.
If that.

I had taken some of that time to come to a
decision.

And I had made my decision.

With the waxing moon overhead shining its
silent strength, a strength I seemed to somehow draw from, I turned
and headed for the hospital, knowing the staff there would allow me
in to be with my sick son.

A sick son, I thought determinedly, who would
be sick no more.

Chapter Three

“Hello, Samantha,” said Rob, the front desk
security guard. Rob was a big guy who probably took steroids. You
know there’s trouble when the night shift at a children’s hospital
knows you by name.

I said “hi” and he smiled at me kindly and
let me through.

At the far end of the center hallway was a
bank of elevators. As I headed toward it, I heard a vacuum running
down a side hallway. I glanced casually at the cleaning crew
working away...and saw something else.

Crackling, staticy balls of light hovered
around the cleaning crew. Many such balls of light. I knew what
these were now. They were spirits in their purest forms. Some
called them orbs, and sometimes they showed up on photographs. Many
non-believers assumed such orbs were dust on the lens. But the
camera could never fully capture what I could see. To my eyes, the
balls of light were alive with energy, endlessly forming and
reforming, gathering smaller particles of energy around them like
mini-black holes in outer space. But there was nothing black about
these. Indeed, they were often whitish or golden, and sometimes
they appeared red. And sometimes they were more than balls. Much
more. Sometimes they were fully formed humans.

As I swept past the hallway, a cleaning lady
looked up at me. I smiled and turned my head just as one of the
whitish electrified balls seemed to orient on me. Soon it was
behind me, keeping pace with me.

I just hate being followed by ghosts.

And as the elevator doors closed in front of
me and I selected the third-floor button, the ball of white light
slipped through the elevator’s seam and joined me for a ride
up.

It hovered just in front of me, spitting fire
like a mini sun. It moved to the right and then to the left, and
then it hovered about a foot in front of my face.

The elevator slowly rose one floor.

“It’s not polite to stare,” I said.

The ball of light flared briefly, clearly
agitated. It then shot over to the far corner of the elevator and
stayed there for the rest of the ride up.

The doors dinged open and I stepped out onto
my son’s floor.

Alone.

* * *

Danny was there, sleeping.

He was sitting in one of the wooden chairs at
the foot of the bed. His head had flopped back and he was snoring
loudly up at the heavens. Probably irritating the hell out of God.
One thing I didn’t miss from living with the man was all his damn
snoring.

Well, that and the cheating.

My son wasn’t snoring. He was sleeping
lightly. A black cloud hung over him, a black cloud that only I,
and perhaps others like me, could see.

And it wasn’t so much as hovering as
surrounding him completely, wrapping around his small frame
entirely. A blanket, perhaps. A thick, evil blanket that seemed
intent on obliterating the bright light that was my son.

The lights were off, although I could see
clearly enough. The energy that fills the spaces between the spaces
gives off an effervescent light. These were individual filaments,
no bigger than a spark. By themselves, the light didn’t amount to
much. But taken as a whole, and the night was illuminated
nicely.

For me, at least, and others like me.

The frenetic streaks of energy often
concentrated around the living, and they now buzzed around my
ex-husband, flitting about him like living things, adding to his
own brilliant aura, which was presently a soft red with streaks of
blue. I have come to know that streaks of blue indicated a state of
deep sleep. The red was worry or strong concern. So, even in sleep,
he was worried.

Worried for our boy.

Danny was a bastard, of that there was no
doubt. He had proven to be particularly nasty and sleazy and
underhanded. He was also confused and weak, and neither of those
qualities were what I needed in a man. I needed a rock. I needed
strength. I needed confidence and sympathy.

Not all relationships are meant to last
forever, I had read once. And forever is a very long time for a
vampire.

I stepped through the room and over to
Danny’s side. His snoring paused briefly and he shivered
inexorably, as if a cold wind had drifted over him.

Or a cold soon-to-be ex-wife.

I touched his shoulder and he shivered again,
and I saw the fine hair along his neck stand on end. Was he
reacting to my coldness or to supernaturalism? I didn’t know, but
probably both. Probably some psychic part of him was aware that a
predator had just sidled up next to him. Maybe this psychic alarm
system was even now doing its best to awaken him, to warn him that
here be monsters.

But Danny kept on snoring, although goose
bumps now cropped up along his forearm.

I shook him gently and his snore turned into
a sharp snort and I briefly worried that he would swallow his
tongue. Then next he did what any woman would want to see.

His eyes opened, focused on me, and he
screamed bloody murder.

And he kept on screaming even as he leaped
backward falling over his chair, which clattered loudly to the
floor. He landed on his back with an umph, as air burst from his
lungs. He kept on trying to scream, but only a wheezing rasp came
from his empty lungs. He scuttled backwards like a clawed thing at
the bottom of the ocean.

I stood there staring down at him, shaking my
head sadly, knowing that he had attracted nurses from here to
Nantucket.

“Are you quite done?” I said, standing over
him and shaking my head at the pathetic excuse for a man.

He clutched his chest and stared at me
briefly, and then he seemed to remember where he was. But he was
still having trouble breathing, and that was scaring him, too.

“Just calm down,” I said, kneeling next to
him and taking his hand. “Calm down, you big oaf, and relax. I’m
not going to eat you. Yet.”

I patted his hand as he continued clutching
his chest. And then his lungs kicked into gear and he took a deep
breath, sucking in half the oxygen in the room.

“Sorry,” he said weakly, as running footsteps
sounded in the hallway. “You scared me.”

“Ya think?”

I stood and pulled him up with me. Perhaps a
little too roughly. He flew up to his feet and seemed surprised as
hell to find himself standing.

He looked around, mouth open. “Jesus, Sam.
You never cease to amaze me.”

Just then a nurse rounded the doorway,
hitting the lights. She looked first at Anthony in his bed, and
then at us. She saw the toppled chair and our proximity.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I just startled
Danny.”

“I was sleeping,” he said, lamely. He shot me
a glance. “You know, nightmares.”

The nurse studied us some more, then came
over to Anthony’s side and checked him out. Satisfied, she left,
although she looked back one more time as she exited.

Danny studied me for a moment or two and
seemed like he wanted to say something. His hair was mussed and
there might have been a welt developing on the side of his head.
Whatever he wanted to say, I really didn’t want to hear it.
Instead, I looked over at Anthony, who had stirred a little during
the commotion. He almost appeared to be watching us, except his
eyes were still closed.

“How is he?” I asked.

“The same, I think. He woke up about an hour
ago and asked where he was. I told him he was still in the hospital
and that he would be going home soon.” Danny looked away. “And...he
shook his head and said he was sorry and that he loved me.” Danny
fought to control himself. “I asked him what he was sorry
about...and he said for...being a bad boy and for...leaving us. He
said he has to go but that everything will be okay.”

“He said that?”

Danny covered his face and nodded, words
briefly escaping him. After a few deep breaths, he tried again.
“Jesus, Sam, what the hell is he talking about?”

“He was probably just dreaming.”

“But he was awake. He was looking right at
me. And he didn’t look sick, either. He looked...peaceful. Good
God, he was even smiling.”

“Calm down, Danny—”

“But what’s happening, Sam? Is he dying? Does
he know that he’s going to die or something?”

“Don’t talk like that.”

Now Danny was shaking. Violently. He was
going into shock, or something close to shock. No doubt a thousand
different emotions and chemicals had been released into his
blood-stream. I reached for his shaking hands and this time he only
slightly recoiled.

“I can’t lose him, Sam. I can’t. I don’t know
what I’ll do without him. He’s my baby boy. My little partner. He’s
everything to me, Sam. Everything. I’ll quit my job to spend more
time with him. I’ll do anything to have him back. Anything. Jesus,
we can’t lose him.”

His words continued on, but they had turned
hysterical and incomprehensible. Before I realized what I was
doing, I pulled the big oaf into me and hugged him tight.

But I did not share his tears. Not this
time.

Unlike him, I knew there was hope.

When Danny had cried himself out, holding
onto me a bit longer than I was comfortable, I showed him to the
door and told him to go home and get some rest and that everything
was going to be okay.

He paused only briefly at the doorway,
checked his pockets automatically for his cell, wallet and keys,
then nodded once and slipped out of the doorway, wiping his
eyes.

I briefly watched him go, then I turned back
to my sick son.

Who would be sick no more.

Chapter Four

I stood by his side.

Opposite his bed, rain began pattering
against the hospital window, lightly at first and then
stronger.

Something wants my attention, I thought.

I ignored the rain, even as a strong gust of
wind now shook the window, which was hidden behind the closed
blinds. I ignored the rain and the wind and reached down and
stroked my son’s hair. My narrow fingers slipped through his hot
tangled locks. He was too hot. He was too sick. He wasn’t going to
make it. I knew it all the way to the very depths of my being. His
vitals hadn’t registered anything yet, but they would.

Soon.

I continued stroking his hair. He seemed to
be getting hotter by the second. He also shifted toward my touch,
moving toward me imperceptibly, making a small, mewing sound.

The rain picked up, drumming now on the
window.

My heart was racing, and for me that’s saying
something. I continued standing by his side, knowing that this was
my one chance to turn away. To not do this thing. I had been
advised that he had fulfilled his life’s mission, and that it was
time for him to move on. I had been advised by a very powerful
entity that my son was meant to die. That it had been ordained so,
or some such bullshit.