Bring On the Night (13 page)

The music took a darker turn with Marilyn Manson’s cover of “Sweet Dreams.” Ken finally turned to Regina.

For the first time that night, their eyes met, and for the first time that night, Ken’s steps faltered.

She didn’t budge as he swayed toward her, hips and shoulders off rhythm. He stopped a few inches away, his eyes glued to hers. She traced the tip of one long, black-lacquered fingernail up his arm, from wrist to shoulder, then finally arcing down to his heart. He shuddered.

The rest of us watched, released from his spell, as he turned his head to expose his neck.

“Stop that.” Regina gave his face a gentle slap. “Dance for me.”

He jolted as if from a trance, then did as she asked. His self-possession had vanished, replaced by a desperate, almost doglike desire to please. Regina’s gaze roamed over his sinewy frame, as he knelt before her, twisting his body in a pathetic pantomime of lust.

By the last chorus, he was writhing on his belly, like Roman slave dancers I’d seen in movies. As the song ended, he laid his head on her foot and stretched out his tongue to lick her boot.

“No!” Regina stepped back and looked away. He crawled after her, bobbing his whole body to stay within her vision, a puppy begging for attention.

She leaped over him and dashed for the bedroom. With a strangled noise, Ken lunged to follow her, but she’d slammed the door and locked it behind her before he could take a step.

Ken turned to me, eyes heavy lidded with longing. “What’s wrong with her?”

“For starters, she’s not the bachelorette.” I motioned to Lori. “See the veil? Dance for the veil.”

But Lori shook her head. “I think we’re done.” After a short, awkward silence, she started applauding. We all joined
in, though it sounded more polite than appreciative.

“I’m so sorry.” Ken collected his clothes and hurried off to the bathroom, dropping a sock on the way.

“So.” I unzipped the insulated pizza bag. “Who’s hungry?”

“Nakedness and pizza.” Lori grabbed a slice with olives and sweet peppers. “Perfect man.”

“Sorry he went all Igor there at the end,” I whispered.

“I’m sure it’ll seem really funny ten years from now.” She stepped out of the way for Maggie and Tina. “Do you think he stuffs his G-string?”

“Definitely,” Maggie said. “No way that’s real.” Tina and I just snickered. Silence fell over the kitchen as we devoured the pizza with hormone-enhanced hunger.

Ken hobbled out of the bathroom wearing one shoe. “Oh, there’s my other sock.”

“You want to stay for a drink?” I said.

His eyes turned to the bedroom door with a distant, cloudy awareness.

“Of alcohol,” I added. “Or soda.”

“Oh.” His face relaxed into a boyish smile. “No thanks. I have another, um, delivery.”

“Where’d you get the pizza?” Maggie asked. “It’s amazing.”

“My dad’s restaurant.”

Lori gasped. “You’re actually a delivery guy?”

“No, I’m a dancer.” He sat at the table to put on his remaining sock and shoe. “The pizza is one of my gimmicks.”

“So if I’d picked the fireman stripper,” I said, “he would’ve brought his giant hose?”

Tina choked on her laughter, but since her face turned red instead of blue, I decided she didn’t need the Heimlich.

When Ken was fully dressed and had collected his props, I led him to the front door. “Thanks for an unforgettable experience.”

He reached into his pocket. “Can you give that black-haired girl my card?”

“Isn’t dating a client’s friend kind of unprofessional?”

His hand remained steady as it held out the card, poking its corner into the webbing between my thumb and forefinger.

Figuring it was none of my business (and really wanting to return to the pizza before it got cold), I took his card and shooed him out.

“Should we bring Regina some pizza?” Maggie asked me.

“She’s lactose intolerant, but I’ll check.” I picked up our half-full zombies, went to the bedroom door, and tapped it softly with my foot.

“It’s open!” she called.

I found Regina on our bed, smoking a cigarette and reading my latest issue of
Under the Radar
. I was so high on alcohol, saturated fat, and naked-man endorphins I didn’t care how I would get the smoke out of my duvet.

“I heard him leave, so I unlocked the door.” She flipped the page and frowned at it. “Thought I’d stay here until your little friends defreaked.”

“I think you’re the most freaked of all.”

She slapped shut the indie music magazine. “That guy was so hot.”

“He was pretty cute.”

“I don’t mean cute. I mean, hot. Sweaty.” She eyed my neck a little too intently. “When a human’s temperature rises, the blood moves to the surface of the skin. He smelled incredible.” She hugged the throw pillow to her chest and kneaded its soft fabric. “I wanted to put my hands all over him. I wanted to keep him.”

I set her drink on the nightstand. “He would’ve let you.” I dropped Ken’s card in her lap.

She stared at it as if it were a winning lottery ticket coated in holy water. “Give it to Shane. He always needs guys, thanks to your little arrangement.”

“But Ken liked you. Why not call him? You can end it if he seems unstable.”

“And then he stalks me, and things get messy. Breaking in a new donor isn’t worth the novelty of fresh blood. So unless I’m desperate, I try to keep things status quo.” She rested her chin on the corner of the pillow and scowled. “It pisses me off, looking at 99.9 percent of the male population and knowing I can’t fuck them—at least not without risking the thing that makes fucking them worthwhile.”

I didn’t envy Regina or other female vampires. Their, uh, interior muscles could ruin the life of a human male. But male vampires could sleep with female humans. Monumentally unfair.

“Still.” I took the card and stuffed it into her hand. “I think it would make Ken’s day—and yours—if you called him.”

Someone knocked softly on the door, then Lori opened it. “Sorry to interrupt. Tina just had the spookiest idea.”

Girl Power

The Sherwood cemetery was less than a half-mile walk from my apartment. It was almost midnight, and the streets of the small town were empty. So we figured as long as I didn’t cough on any permeable surfaces, I wouldn’t be a public health hazard.

The three ladies of the Sherwood Paranormal Investigative Team walked down the cemetery lane ahead of Regina and me, examining their
Star Trek
y EMF readers, which they all kept in their car trunks for ghost-hunting emergencies.

“If we get caught trespassing, I’m running away,” Regina told me as she lit a cigarette. “Remember, jails have windows.”

“Speaking of windows…” I raised my voice. “Lori?”

She turned, then looked where I was pointing. A small stone building sat at the top of the hill, in the center of the cemetery. A light was on in the upper window.

“It’s commemorative.” Her drunken lips tripped over the word. “That chapel was a stop on the Underground Railroad. They’d leave a light in the top window to show it was a safe haven for runaway slaves. So there’s always a lamp lit at night. Cool, huh?”

I kept my eyes on the glow, expecting a shadowy figure to pass before it. This was only my second time in a cemetery; most of my experience with them came from horror movies.

The fact that Susan Haldeman’s body had been found nearby should have made this outing seem stupid. But I was accompanied by a vampire and a soon-to-be Control Enforcement agent. As bridal parties went, this one had high ass-kicking potential.

To lower the creep factor, I kept Lori talking. “So the Underground Railroad went through Sherwood?”

“It went through everywhere. It was so secret that most of the places still aren’t known. This one’s been confirmed.” She drew an imaginary line from the chapel toward town. “It had an actual tunnel that led to one of the churches in Sherwood.”

“Is the tunnel still there?” Regina asked.

“It’s sealed off. Probably collapsed by now.”

“Shh!” Tina glared at us, apparently having sobered up during the walk to the cemetery. “Ghosts prefer quiet.”

“Nuh-uh.” Regina clapped her hands together, cupped for maximum volume. “I saw
Poltergeist
a million times. Those ghosts were loud.”

Tina flapped her arms. “Poltergeists haunt houses. The ones in cemeteries prefer to be left in peace.”

My skin prickled. “If I believed in ghosts, I would say that maybe peace is where we should leave them.”

Lori caught up to her fellow SPITters. They whispered among themselves, sweeping their EMF readers, each covering a different sector or whatever.

At least it had stopped raining. The blacktop of the cemetery lane still glistened, and I had to weave to avoid soaking my pink high-tops in the puddles.

A breeze stirred the bare-branched trees scattered throughout the cemetery. I unbuttoned my jacket to let the cool, damp night air soak the skin of my neck. A week from now, I could be in my own grave after my brain swelled out of my skull and my body baked from the inside, like a potato in a microwave.

The thought made me giggle, partly at the image of a giant microwave and partly with the euphoria of being not yet dead.

“I’ve never seen you this pissed,” Regina said.

I turned to face her, walking backward. “I’m not mad.”

“‘Pissed’ means ‘drunk’ in England.”

“We’re in America.” I raised my arms to encompass the glorious nation. “And you’re Canadian. When are you going to start talking like one?”

“I’m a citizen of the world, and I can talk any way I bloody well want.”

“Legally, yes, but if you don’t want people to laugh at you, then—”

My voice cut off. Someone was coming. Fast.

I pointed past Regina. “Look out!”

But she had already spun to face the gray-skinned figure lumbering in our direction. Behind me, Lori screamed.

He—
it?
—moved with the speed of a vampire but none of the grace. He stumbled toward us in a blur, making no sound but the
thwap!
of his torn shoes and the swish of his ragged, muddy clothes. Oddest of all, he seemed to be wearing sunglasses.

My Control training kicked in, and I whirled to look for other attackers, in case he was a diversion.

Nothing. I turned toward him again and stifled my own scream.

He wasn’t wearing sunglasses. His eyes were holes.

“It’s a vampire!” Tina pulled a stake from her inside jacket pocket.

Regina lunged, punching the man on the left cheek. He stumbled back and almost fell. She flicked away her cigarette and planted her feet, hands up in a fighter’s pose.

When he straightened up from the blow, his neck was torn, almost broken. Flaps of skin hung over his collarbone.

I yanked Tina back. “That’s not a vampire.”

The creature stepped forward, and Regina planted another punch in the middle of its chin. This time the head flew off, as cleanly as a Wiffle ball from a tee. It bounced across the wet grass, eye sockets flashing twin black spots, and came to rest against the back of a tombstone.

The body toppled forward. Regina stepped out of the way.

We stood there for a long moment, four of us wondering if the head would get sucked back into the creature’s body as it curled into itself. But unlike a vampire, this thing didn’t disappear, and it seemed to contain no blood. It reeked, though, like the ancient food at the back of my refrigerator.

“What. The. Fuck. Just. Happened.” Maggie stared at Regina, then at the body, then back at Regina.

I sighed. Debriefing hyperventilating civilians wasn’t one of my fortes.

Lori took Maggie’s hand. “Um, Regina’s a vampire. But it’s okay—she’s a nice one.”

“Hey!” Regina rubbed her knuckles against her Hüsker Dü T-shirt. “I am not nice.”

“Sorry.” Lori turned back to Maggie. “She’s actually a
bitch, but she doesn’t kill people.”

“Doesn’t kill people!?” Maggie’s voice verged on hysteria. “She just knocked that guy’s head off!”

“That wasn’t a guy.” Regina knelt beside the body. “Well, it used to be. But he was definitely dead before I hit him.”

Tina pocketed her stake and brought out her cell phone. “I’ll send a picture to my dad. I bet he’ll know what it is.”

I scowled at her, wondering who brings a wooden stake to a bachelorette party, then squatted next to Regina, hands in my pockets. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?” I whispered.

“Hell, no. People joke about us being walking corpses, but it’s bollocks. We’re reanimated at the moment of death. We don’t die long enough for a coffee break, much less a burial.” She poked at the mud caked on the man’s clothes, then pointed to his hands. “His fingers and knuckles are all torn up. He must have clawed and punched his way out of his coffin.” She looked around the cemetery. “Assuming that’s where he came from.”

I pulled out my cell phone and plugged my ear to block Tina’s excited chatter: “Daddy, you’ll never believe what I just saw! I just sent you the photo—is it another kind of yoosie?”

I dialed Colonel Lanham’s office, not expecting him to answer this time of night.

He picked up on the first ring. “Lanham.”

“Sir, it’s Ciara Griffin. Something weird just happened here in Sherwood.” I looked at Regina, who was holding the corpse’s head in a Hamlet-like pose. “Weirder than usual.”

Who Will the Next Fool Be

Colonel Lanham was the only person I knew who could look parade rigid while hunched over a corpse. Face hidden by a light blue surgical mask and the bill of his black cap, he scoured the putrid ex-human with the quick, methodical strokes of a flashlight beam.

Around him, black-clad Control agents were securing the area—far away, at the cemetery’s front and back gates, and close by, taping off the path from the creature’s grave to its final-final resting place. All the agents were either vampires or had chicken pox immunity (I made Lanham check).

A female agent with graying brown hair and a kind smile was sitting
on a bench with Maggie, who was still trembling an hour after the attack. I first met civilian liaison Major Ricketts more than two years ago, after a band of fanatics had kidnapped me and Jeremy, who had needed lots of counseling after his hard impact with the truth about vampires.