Moon Child (Vampire for Hire #4) (8 page)

“What was I supposed to do, goddammit? Watch
him die?”

“There’s a natural order to things, Sam.”

“And we’re not natural?”

“No, we’re not.”

“And part of that natural order is to let my
son die?”

He said nothing, but I saw his brain working.
The great attorney was looking for a counter-argument, but I would
be damned if I was going to listen to an argument for my son’s
death.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t know much about
much, but I know one thing: I’m a mother first. I am a mother and
that is my baby in the hospital. He was sick and I had an answer.
It might not have been the best answer, and I sure as hell don’t
expect to win any ‘Mother of the Year’ awards. I also don’t
understand what the hell happened to me, or what the hell even
happened to you. I have no clue the power and magicks behind what
keeps us alive. But if this fucking curse, this disease, that I
live with every day can somehow save my son, somehow keep my life
from spinning completely and totally out of fucking control, you
damn well better believe I’m going to utilize it, because it sure
as hell has taken a lot from me, Kingsley.”

He was nodding. “Okay, now that you’ve
justified turning your son into a blood-sucking fiend, what are you
going to do now?”

“I’m going to find someone who can help
me.”

“Help you how? With the medallion?”

“Yes. I have a name.”

“Where did you get the name?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, and debated
storming out of the office. Instead, I kept my ego in check for my
son. “Have you ever heard of someone named Archibald Maximus?”

There was no recognition on his face. “No,”
he said. “You don’t forget a name like that.”

“Do you know anyone who could help me?”

“I pointed you to the only person I knew who
could help you,” he said.

That had been Detective Hanner. I sensed
Kingsley’s hesitation. Did he know someone else? I sensed that he
might, but he didn’t say anything else. Instead, he was now looking
at me like I was the biggest piece of shit he’d ever seen. Probably
with the same expression I had been wearing just a few minutes
earlier.

“I don’t know who else to turn to,” I said,
biting the bullet. “I know you don’t agree with what I’ve done.
Quite frankly, I don’t agree with a lot of what you’ve done,
either. But let’s put aside our differences for now, okay? I made
the best choice I could. I did what I thought was right. There’s a
chance, a very small chance, that I can return my son to mortality
without any lasting repercussion or effects. But if I hadn’t done
what I did, there was a hundred percent chance that I was going to
lose my son. I gave him a chance at life, Kingsley. Was it selfish
for me to keep my little boy alive and expose him to something he
never asked for? Yes, it was. I agree. I’m horrible. But my son is
alive, and there is a chance to return things to normal. Normal is
all I’m asking for, Kingsley. Please help me.”

He looked at me for a long moment, and the
fact that he had to decide whether or not to help me, crushed my
heart almost completely. I didn’t want a man who had to decide
whether or not to help me, even if he didn’t agree with my
choices.

Finally, he sighed and nodded, and said,
“I’ll see what I can do, Sam. But I make no promises.”

I smiled even as my heart broke. “Thank you,
Kingsley.”

As I left his office, Kingsley wouldn’t look
at me. I said goodbye and he merely nodded. If I was a betting
woman, I would bet that our relationship was over.

Forever.

Chapter Twenty-one

I was driving north on the 57 Freeway.

I checked with my sister and my son was still
sleeping contentedly. The doctors seemed pleased that he was
stable, but there was still mild concern, most notably that his
body temperature had now dropped to 97 degrees, one degree lower
than normal.

This didn’t worry me. My son was going to
make it, and the doctors were going to have a conundrum on their
hands, much as they had with me, in a different hospital, over six
years ago.

My sister asked what I was up to, and I told
her that it was a very important case, a matter of life and death.
She understood, but just barely. Her husband, who was watching
Tammy and her kids, would be picking her up soon. I made it a point
to be there when the sun set.

After all, tonight would be my son’s first
night as...something far different than he was before.

I exited on Orangethorpe and worked my way
over to Hero’s in Fullerton. I checked the time. Fang should just
be showing up to work. I was right.

As I dashed in from the blistering heat,
gasping and clutching my chest, I saw the tall bartender doing
something very unbartender-like. He was texting. Just as I stepped
into the bar, my cell phone chimed.

I paused just inside the doorway and fished
out the cell. It was a text, of course, from Fang. It read: Good
afternoon, Moon Dance, how are you?

I wrote: I could say I’m fine, but that would
be a lie. By the way, the guy at the end of the bar needs another
beer, so quit texting and start working.

I hit send and waited.

Fang had just spotted the guy at the end of
the bar, who had just motioned him over, when his cell phone
vibrated. Fang paused and read the screen, and I watched with some
satisfaction from the doorway as his mouth dropped open. Then he
started looking around until he spotted me. I waved, and he shook
his head.

“I was beginning to think you were
everywhere, Moon Dance,” he said.

“Is that a bad thing?”

He winked. “Not for me. Hold on.” He drew the
guy a draft of beer and came back. “I think our connection is
growing stronger.”

“How so?” I asked.

“I was texting you as you came in.”

“Could have been a coincidence, and is
texting even a word?”

“If not, it should be,” he said. “Anyway,
there are no coincidences, Moon Dance.”

I grabbed a stool at the far end of the bar.
Privacy, for me, is always good. I said, “That would sound deep if
it wasn’t bullshit.”

“Bullshit, huh? Then how do you explain that
for the past half hour I’ve been feeling
increasingly...troubled.”

“Maybe you had some bad Chinese.”

“Not bad Chinese, Sam. And how would you
explain that I’ve felt incredible grief coming from you. Wave after
wave of it. I sensed that something profound had ended.”

I thought of my relationship with Kingsley.
“Ended?”

He shook his head. “Crazy, I know. But, to
me, I felt a finality to something, as if something emotional and
tragic had ended. Of course, I assumed it was something to do with
your son.”

Jesus, my connection with Fang is growing.
“My son is fine,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes. “How fine?”

I nodded, confirming his suspicions.

His jaw dropped. “You really did it?”

I nodded again.

“And how is he?”

“He’s fine. He’s great, in fact.”

Fang leaned on his elbows. The grisly teeth
around his neck—definitely not shark teeth—clacked together with
the sound of knuckles striking knuckles.

“But you’re not fine,” he said.

“My job’s not over.”

He nodded. “The medallion.”

I caught him up to date, noting the striking
difference between the way he handled the news and the way Kingsley
had. There was no judgment in Fang’s voice. There was only concern
for me and my son.

He said, “And so the ending I felt was the
end of your relationship with Kingsley.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. I’m sure you’re glad he’s
out of the picture.”

Aaron Parker, aka Fang, shook his head. “I
would not be much of a friend if I wished for you to experience
pain on any level.”

Now I was shaking my head. “Not as much pain
as you might think. Kingsley is an amazing man, as you well know,
and he was there for me when I needed him the most, but...it was
bad timing. I was just dealing with the end of my marriage. I
wasn’t ready to start a new relationship.”

“And he wanted to start one?”

“He wanted something, more than what I could
give him. But it’s not that.”

“It’s ideological,” said Fang, picking up on
my thoughts. In fact, I could even feel him in my thoughts.

“We’re just too different,” I said. “Apples
and oranges.”

“Vampires and werewolves.”

I smiled at that. Fang smiled, too, and I
sensed his strong need to reach out and touch me, but he held back.
One relationship had ended. Now was not the time to push for
another. Perhaps not for a long, long time.

“It takes all my willpower, Sam,” he said,
tracing his finger along the scarred bar top in front of my hand,
“to not touch you.”

“I just need a friend,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “And you have one.
Always.”

Chapter Twenty-two

I was on my second glass of wine, even if the
first one did little more than upset my stomach. I haven’t had a
good buzz in half a decade, and I suspected my days of being buzzed
were long gone.

Being buzzed was overrated, I thought. Now,
flying high over Orange County was a different story.

There are some benefits to being a creature
of the night.

Fang and I got back to the subject of my son.
He said, “I’m still fairly involved in the vampire online
community. I’ll ask around about our friend Archibald Maximus.”

“You’re still hanging out in chat rooms?”

“Often.”

“They seem so...five years ago.”

“Don’t knock them, young lady. It’s where I
met you, after all.”

Years ago, confused and lost, I had joined a
vampire IM chat group hoping to learn anything I could about the
undead. I hadn’t expected to learn much of anything, let alone
create such a deep and lasting friendship.

I said, “Well, I don’t have a lot of
hope.”

“We’ll see what turns up. Remember, you never
know who might be popping into some of those chat rooms.”

“Like me,” I said.

“Right, like you. Sometimes I come across the
real deal.”

“How do you know they’re the real deal?” I
asked, suddenly feeling a pang of jealousy for reasons I couldn’t
quite understand but wasn’t in the mood to probe very deeply.

“Oh, you know. I’ve made it my life’s
ambition to find vampires.”

“And to be one.”

Fang glanced at me sharply. Last week, the
handsome freak asked me to turn him into a vampire, so that we
could live together, or some cheesy crap like that. Not that I
didn’t believe him, but I was suspecting he would do
anything—anything—to be a vampire. Fang’s story was...interesting,
to say the least. Interesting and disturbing. Born with a rare
defect, his canine teeth had grown in exceptionally long, so long
that he had lived with the “vampire” stigma during his entire
adolescence and most of his teen years. Childish insults, mostly,
but with such ferocity and frequency that he came to believe he was
vampire.

In an act of passion and violence, his
teenage girlfriend had ended up dead and Fang had gone on to have
one of the most memorable trials to date. O.J. Simpson with teeth,
as some called it.

Later, Fang would escape a high-security
insane asylum...and kill two guards in the process. His whereabouts
were presently unknown to law enforcement, a secret he had
entrusted to me, much as I had entrusted one to him.

We all have our secrets.

Fang, or Aaron Parker, had never lost his
passion for vampires, even when his two massive canine teeth had
been gruesomely removed in the insane asylum—teeth that now hung
around his neck to this day. Six years of online chatting and one
bang-up job of stalking on his part later, and here we were.
Friends with issues. Friends with secrets. But most
important...friends.

His request had caught me off guard, and I
would consider it later, but for now I could only think about my
son. He understood this, of course, which wasn’t hard to do since
he was powerfully and psychically connected to me.

He grinned at that last line of thought. “I
can think of no other person I would rather be powerfully and
psychically attached to, Moon Dance,” he said, using my old chat
room username.

“You’ve been reading my thoughts,” I
said.

“It’s not like I can help it,” said Fang.
“So, from what I gather, you don’t find me such a bad guy.”

“No,” I said. “But you have your issues.
Scary issues.”

“I could say the same thing about you.”

“Touché,” I said, although I thought his
comparison wasn’t quite fair. I had never asked for any of
this.

“And neither had I,” said Fang, picking up on
my thoughts.

“Victims of circumstance, you had said.”

“Something like that,” said Fang. “We are
what we are.”

“Fine,” I said. “But be discreet with your
inquiries.”

“Of course,” he said.

I thought of my son. I didn’t have to check
my watch to know that the sun would be setting in a few hours. I
seemed chrono-kinetically attuned to the sun. Soon, Anthony would
be waking up after sleeping through his first day. I wanted to be
there for him.

“Chrono-kinetically?” said Fang, picking up
my thoughts.

“It works,” I said.

He grinned. “Hey, it just occurred to me that
you might want to take a look at Cal State Fullerton’s
library.”

“Why?”

“Apparently they’ve got quite an occult
department there. You know, books. Real books. With paper and dust
and ink. A guy was just in here going on and on about their
extensive collection.”

“What guy?”

“Young guy.”

“Maybe,” I said, standing, leaving my wine
half-finished. Always the pessimist these days.