The Spinoza Trilogy (16 page)

I heard footsteps well before anyone got to the door. That’s what happens when you have a massive home covered in polished marble flooring. The footsteps grew louder, appearing just behind the door, where they paused. No doubt I was being peeped at through the peep hole. I must have passed the peep test because a moment later the door clicked open.

“
Mt. Spinoza,” said Mrs. Perkins. She tried to sound surprised but I knew a fake surprise when I heard one. A sort of unnatural rise in octave. Prior to life as a private eye, I had spent years investigating insurance claims—and frauds, too. I knew bullshit when I heard it. “What brings you back here?” she asked.

“
I’d like to speak with you inside,” I said, “if you wouldn’t mind.”

Her eyes briefly darted up...up to where I knew a woman was hiding—and with this being daylight—no doubt
sleeping
. Her gaze settled back on me and she nodded reluctantly. “Okay, but please be quick about it. I have...some errands to run.”

I said I would, and she let me inside. I followed behind her, my blanketed arm behind my back. For now, she hadn’t noticed it.

She led me deeper into the mansion.

Chapter Nineteen

We were soon in the same wide-open living room.

She motioned for me take a seat on the couch, with my back to the hallway. She asked if I wanted a drink and I said no. She said she wanted some hot tea and I said fine. I recalled it had been 98 degrees outside and suspected I might have been hoodwinked.

When she left the room, I immediately switched positions to an overstuffed chair-and-a-half that gave me a good view of anything approaching from the hallway. I also felt more comfortable with my back against a wall.

Vampires, I suspected, were sneaky.

My heart rate increased considerably while I waited. I adjusted my grip on the crossbow, which now rested in my lap, partially hidden by the chair’s overstuffed pillow. From my position in the living room, I couldn’t see the upstairs landing.

Mrs. Perkins returned five minutes later, carrying a steaming cup of tea.

“
Now,” she said, as she sat on the couch across from me. “How can I help you, Mr. Spinoza?” She didn’t seem to notice that I had switched spots. If anything, she seemed very distracted.

I heard movement upstairs. Something heavy fell. I looked up at the sound, but Mrs. Perkins ignored it completely. Her demeanor was different this time around. Gone was the sour old lady, replaced now by something overly friendly.

And that’s when I noticed the white cloth wrapped around her neck; in particular, what appeared to be a splotch of blood.

“
What happened to your neck, Mrs. Perkins?” I asked.

The question seemed to shock her. She jerked a little and sat up straighter. She reached for her neck but never quite touched it. “Oh, that?” Her strange, pleasant demeanor never wavered. “Oh, that was just a minor...
thing
I had removed at the doctor’s the other day.”

I motioned to her arms, both of which were wrapped up in a similar white cloth. “And you had other...
things
removed from your arms as well?”

She smiled serenely. “It’s horrible getting old, Mr. Spinoza.”

“I’ll remember that.”

I found myself scanning the room...in particular, the two exits. One seemed to head off into what appeared to be a library, and the other went down the hallway. I suspected there were a few offshoots from the hallway, an opening to the kitchen, no doubt, and the stairway leading up to the second floor.

“Who’s upstairs, Mrs. Perkins?” I asked.

Her slender form tensed a little; her fingers clawed the arm of the couch. “What do you mean, dear?”

“I mean, who’s that I hear walking around upstairs?”

“
Oh, I have a guest.”

“
Who?”

“
Isn’t that a personal question, Mr. Spinoza?”

“
Perhaps you could tell the police then.”

“
Oh, I’m sure the police would have no interest in—”

“
And you can also show them the wounds on your neck and arms—”

“
Please, Mr. Spinoza, there’s no need for that.”

And that’s when a woman’s voice resonated from somewhere down the hallway. “I would suggest,” and the voice, growing louder as the speaker drew closer, “that you leave my mother alone.”

And as the last words were spoken, a very lovely, pale-faced woman stepped into the living room.

It was, of course, Evelyn Drake.

Chapter Twenty

She looked sick and weak.

My first impression was that I was looking at someone who should probably be in the hospital, or lying in bed.

Or in a grave.

She didn’t stand entirely straight, as if the weight of something was dragging her down. I also noticed she was supporting herself by resting a long-fingered hand on an elegant couch table sporting a vase with flowers. Dead flowers.

She looked like the perfect candidate to be gasping for air but, as far as I could tell, she wasn’t having any problems breathing. Did vampires even breathe?

I didn’t know. In fact, I didn’t know much about the undead at all, and I was seriously beginning to regret my decision to come here at all.

After all, the woman in front of me was the same woman I had seen in the autopsy report. The same woman whose body had been covered in knife wounds.

Seventy-two of them, in fact.

Her feet were bare. She was wearing a dark robe. Silk, I think. Her hair was slightly mussed. She had been sleeping, roused, no doubt, by her mother. A little pit stop on her way to making tea.

Evelyn Drake was pretty in an undead, goth sort of way. Her cheek bones were prominent. Her lips full, her eyes round and seemingly all-seeing. Her blondish hair was matted in places and I figured even vampires get bedhead.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” I said.

“
Now, that’s not a very nice thing to say to a woman,” she said.

She stepped into the room, feeling her way over the furniture, which supported her weight. She stumbled slightly over the spot where the carpet met the marble flooring.

The skin showing around her robe was so white that I found myself staring. Her thighs and arms and neck...like pure alabaster. Her lips were red, but not exorbitantly so. I had an image of those lips covered in blood as she fed.

She smiled as if she had read my thoughts.

“How long have you been living here?” I asked, unnerved. I had read somewhere that vampires could read minds. And so I did all I could to
not
think of the crossbow hidden under the blanket. In fact, I imagined I was holding a puppy.
It’s just a puppy. A puppy, dammit.

She said, “Since my rather...premature burial.”

Although obviously weakened, her movements were oddly fluid. As if I were being approached by a ballerina. A very pale and hungry-looking ballerina.

“
So, you’ve been living here secretly for, what, over a year and a half?”

“
It’s no bother, really,” said Mrs. Perkins nervously. “It’s such a joy to have her back. We missed her so much. She stays in her room all day, sleeping. She’s such a hard working dear. And when we go to bed at night she leaves for work. Works all night, and sometimes she’s just coming home when we awaken. Always so tired and dirty.” The mother looked at her daughter with so much love in her eyes that my heart nearly broke. Evelyn was now about halfway across the room.

“
Your daughter was killed, Mrs. Perkins,” I said. “An autopsy was performed on her. She was buried.”

“
Ooh, we don’t talk about that,” said Mrs. Perkins, clearly living in denial. “Mistakes are made.”

“
Mother and I have an agreement to keep my presence a secret,” said Evelyn, still approaching me. She looked weak, almost helpless, but there was something in her eye that scared the shit out of me. It was the look of a killer. A predator. A hungry predator. “In return, she gets to see her daughter.”

I looked at her mother’s wounded neck and arms. “And you get to feed.”

“Mother loves her baby girl,” said Evelyn.

My stomach turned. I tried to picture a daughter drinking blood from her own mother and it was too disturbing an image to hold for long.

“And what of your own children?” I asked Evelyn.

“
My children have moved on, Mr. Spinoza,” she said, glancing at my card that was still on the coffee table. “They think mummy is dead and we’ll just leave it like that. My kids were always...in the way. And just a little too
tempting
.”

“
What the hell does that mean?”

“
Young blood...is particularly fresh.”

She looked at her mother who was watching this whole exchange with a frozen smile. Her cheek muscles twitched as she held the smile.

“You kill people,” I said.

She grinned. “I kill lots of people, Mr. Spinoza. It’s kind of what I do.”

“What are you?” I asked.

“
What do you think I am?”

“
A bitch. A user. And a parasite.”

The mother looked at me sharply. “I will not have such language—”

And that’s when Evelyn Drake lunged forward, leaping—

Chapter Twenty-one

I didn’t want to kill her.

Especially not in front of her own mother. It was all so fucked up.

But she didn’t give me much choice.

Her strength was alarming, especially when she had appeared so visibly weakened. Or perhaps that had all been an act to catch me off guard.

With her mother screaming behind her, Evelyn’s hand went straight for my throat and squeezed with such force that my neck would have snapped or been crushed within seconds.

The angle of her body was such that I didn’t have to even adjust the crossbow. As darkness rapidly approached the corners of my vision, I fired the weapon.

The first thing that I notice was a loosening of her grip. The next thing I noticed was the strangled sounds I heard...of course, those strangled sounds were my own feeble attempts to breathe.

The next thing I noticed was the woman on the ground, kicking and clawing her chest. It was a site I’ll never forget. Steam hissed from between her fingers. Her screaming mother dove on her, pulling at the silver shaft that protruded from her chest.

“
My baby! My baby!” She worked the bolt with both hands as the vampire writhed and twisted and screamed.

Gasping, I found my feet, and just as the mother pulled free the bloody crossbow bolt, which dripped blood and meat, the woman on the floor lay still.

Mrs. Perkins threw herself on her daughter, wailing and begging her to come back to her.

And that’s when I turned my head and heaved until my stomach was empty.

Chapter Twenty-two

I was in my office drinking a latte from Starbucks. Starbucks has a new scone, called a petite vanilla bean. Being petite, I got three of them. They were damned good.

Too good.

I had just finished the last of the scones when Detective Hammer and his thick cop mustache came in through my door and set a big bag of greasy donuts on my desk. He looked at my empty Starbucks package.

“
Don’t tell me you had one of those scone things.”

“
A petite vanilla bean. Three of them.”

“
Oh, God. Any room left for a real breakfast?”

“
You mean a real breakfast of donuts?”

“
Is there anything else?”

“
You are propagating the cop stereotype,” I said. “And there’s always room for donuts.”

He placed a cup holder on my desk filled with two steaming cups of coffee. Coffee had splashed out of the little holes in the plastic lids and had stained the rims. I knocked back the last of my Starbucks, tossed the empty cup in the trash, and started on the fresh coffee Hammer gave me. We both picked our donuts, sat back in our chairs, and took a few bites before Hammer got things started.

“You work some strange cases,” he said.

“
Lately.”

“
This might be the strangest.”

“
Would be hard to top this one,” I said.