Moon River (8 page)

“
From the safety of a TV monitor.”

He didn’t smile. Death was serious business. “Something like that. The smells can be a bit overwhelming at times.”

That I was enjoying the smells, I kept to myself...and to Sanchez, who glanced at me again. I stepped closer to the medical examiner.

Can you hear me, doctor?
I thought.

He cocked his head slightly, then nodded.

I’d learned last year that vampires can control others. To what extent, I didn’t know. Truthfully, I didn’t want to know. But something within me—the devil within me, I suspected—enjoyed controlling others. Needed to control others.

But I needed to now.

And I was enjoying every moment of it.

Good,
I thought.
You are to destroy any evidence that links her death to a human. Your official report will state she died of an animal attack. We’ll call it a rabid coyote. Understood?

The good doctor stared at me from over his bifocals, then nodded.

Delete all computerized files and destroy all written reports. Additionally, erase the cameras.

The doctor nodded again, and soon, Detective Sanchez and I stepped out of the laboratory and into the air-conditioned hallway.

To say that Sanchez was looking at me warily would be an understatement. “What happened in there?”

“
We have to keep this on the down-low. You can appreciate that.”

“
No, I mean...all that creepy shit. You really enjoy death that much?”

“
No,” I said, answering truthfully. “She does.”

“
And who’s she?”

“
Another place, another time.”

Chapter Fifteen

We were sitting in Sanchez’s squad car in one of Griffith Park’s many entrances. I noted we were parked in a handicap spot.

Sanchez picked up on my observation, and said, “I’ll move if it’s needed.”

“Good to know,” I said.

We were one of a dozen or so other cars. A family of four was currently gathering blankets and an old-fashioned picnic basket. Their two young kids were kicking rocks at each other while the dad was texting, oblivious. The mother, of course, was doing everything, stowing the gear away and telling the kids to knock it off.

Typical. Moms are the true heroes of the world.

I want to wring the dad’s neck and tell him to pitch in. To get off his goddamn phone and do something.

Then again, I was in a foul mood. Who wouldn’t be? After all, for the first time since becoming a vampire—or whatever it was that I was—I’d really felt the influence of the thing living within me. Her desires were merging into my desires...and I didn’t like it. I hated it, in fact.

And it scared the shit out of me.

Worse, I knew that she liked that it scared me...that she craved my fear, in fact. She fed off it. I suspected my fear made her stronger, braver, more audacious.

“
Are you catching any of this?” I asked Sanchez.

“
All of it, and I’m sorry. I mean, I don’t know what the hell happened to you—or is happening to you—but it sounds pretty shitty.”

“
You have no idea.”

“
And this
thing
inside of you. Does it possess you?”

I looked at the handsome detective who filled the driver’s seat completely. His hands were hooked over the lower half of the steering wheel. Big hands, squarish nails. The nails looked thick and healthy. All of him looked thick and healthy. Finally, I shook my head. “It’s complicated.”

“Try me, Sam. I’m a big boy.”

I thought of burdening the detective with who I was, and what was happening to me. Why burden him and not Russell? What was the difference? I thought about that as the detective and I sat together in the dark car, at the base of a park where two innocent women had been slaughtered by a vampire, or a wannabe vampire.

The difference, I knew, was simple: Russell had never asked for any of this. The detective had a job to do, and part of his job included finding answers to two homicides. The answers just happened to be supernatural in nature.

Russell deserved answers, too. Since his girlfriend happened to be supernatural in nature, too.

“I know of Russell Baker,” said the detective, picking up my thoughts.

“
You follow boxing?”

“
I do. He’s a champion in the making.” Sanchez studied me some more. “And I see he’s bound to you in some way.”

I chuckled. “You’re getting pretty good at this mindreading thing.”

“What can I say, I’m a natural. So what does it mean, bound to you?”

“
I don’t know yet, Detective. I’m still figuring that part out.”

“
Sorry, I ask a lot of questions.”

“
You’re a homicide cop. It comes with the territory. And if I were you, I would be asking a lot of questions, too.”

“
If you were me, would you be afraid?”

“
Are you afraid of me, Detective?”

“
Back there, in the autopsy lab...yeah, I was a little.”

“
It’s not me, Detective. It’s her.”

“
Which comes back to my question: are you possessed, Sam?”

I almost laughed. “Now that’s a question I bet you don’t ask every day.”

He smiled and waited. I felt suddenly sad and empty and lost. His eyes held compassion, but also wariness. That a grown man...that such a huge hunk of a grown man with a gun and his training and his muscles, would be wary of me, just made me realize all over again just how much of a monster I’d become.

“
Not a monster, Sam. I just don’t understand what’s going on with you. Tell me about the thing within you.”

“
She’s a highly evolved dark master.”

“
What does that mean?”

“
Think of a highly evolved master—like Christ or Buddha. But she would be the opposite.”

“
She is evil.”

“
Perhaps,” I said. “Although I’m not sure what evil means, exactly. I do know that she enjoys death. She enjoys taking life. She feeds on the fear of others. She enjoys creating fear. She enjoys, for instance, that you are wary of me. She wants me to exploit that. I can feel it within me. She hungers to control, to feed, to consume.”

“
Sounds evil to me.”

“
She does not see it that way. She sees it as a balancing of the light. A necessity.”

“
A necessary evil?”

“
I think so, yes.”

“
Do you communicate with her?”

“
No. Not yet. But she is getting bolder. I can feel her inside me more and more. I sense her impressions now. They filter up from wherever she resides.”

“
Sweet Jesus.”

“
The name alone makes her recoil.”

“
Interesting,” said Sanchez.

“
Very,” I said.

“
So, she doesn’t possess you?”

“
No. I am still me. But she influences me heavily.”

“
She is the source of your current powers?”

I nodded. “Or as some would have me believe, the source of my immortal condition.”

“Why is she here? Why does she do what she does?”

“
It is her entry into this world.”

“
Through you?”

“
And others like me.”

Sanchez blinked. “I just received an image of a hulking creature. Is that a...”

“A werewolf, Detective.”

“
You have got to be kidding me.”

“
I’m afraid not. Would you like for me to erase your memory now?”

“
No. Not yet. Perhaps never. I need to know this stuff.”

“
Why?”

“
I have a job to do, for one.”

“
You need to know what you’re up against, and all that?”

“
Yes. But also...”

His voice trailed off, and I caught where he was going with this. “No, Detective. I can’t let you.”

“I want to help you, Sam.”

I shook my head. “No. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Maybe I don’t, but I know one thing, Sam: you need help. A lot of help. I may not be this big, hairy Kingsley fellow, but I have resources at my disposal, and I’m pretty good with a gun.”

I chuckled...and as I did so, he sat back a little.

“Wait...Kingsley Fulcrum, the defense attorney...is a werewolf?”

“
Does it surprise you?”

“
He is a big-son-of-bitch.”

“
And hairy,” I added.

“
There is a lot of weird going on,” said Sanchez, whistling lightly.

“
I would say welcome to my world...”

“
But it’s my world, too,” he said. “Now.”

I didn’t say anything about that, and as we sat here together, I focused on something that had been troubling me since I’d first met the LAPD detective in Sherbet’s office.

“Tell me again why you first approached Sherbet?”

Sanchez looked at me, blinked, and as he did so, I noted something very curious in his memory. It was blank. He said, “You guys dealt with a similar incident. It seemed obvious to approach Detective Sherbet.”

Except, of course, I knew that the official records had been stricken of any connection that had anything to do with vampires. Officially, the murders taking place under the Fullerton Theater were the result of a serial killer. Unofficially, the murders were the result of a blood ring—mortals who supplied human blood to vampires. Any of that evidence had been destroyed and memories erased by another vampire named Hanner.

Sanchez, who had been following my train of thought, shook his head. “No, I remember reading something in the newspaper.”

“Details of the crimes were not reported in the paper. Try again.”

“
I...I thought I had read it in the paper.”

“
The details of the crimes were covered up, Detective. Anyone and everyone associated with the Fullerton Blood Ring have been dealt with.”

“
What do you mean dealt with?”

“
Memories altered.”

“
So, then, how did I know to call Sherbet?”

“
That’s the million-dollar question, Detective.”

Chapter Sixteen

Sanchez left me there at the park.

He didn’t like it, but I told him it was part of my process. He had asked what process that was and I told him I hadn’t a clue. He liked that even less, but he also sensed I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. And then, finally, I gave him a small glimpse of the creature that I would soon become.

“
Holy shit,” he said.

“
That about sums it up,” I said as I stood outside the driver’s side door of his squad car. “Go home to your family, Detective, and forget about vampires and ghosts and giant flying bats.”

“
I couldn’t if I tried.”

“
I could help you.”

“
No, please.”

He gave me a lingering look, then looked out over the dark park, shook his head, then drove off, his tires crunching over the gravel parking lot.

I set off along the same trail, the same trail where a young lady had been killed recently, where she had bled to death. Where a quarter of her blood had gone missing.

Enough to feed a hungry vampire.

Perhaps even two.

* * *

The park was mostly empty.

Sometimes, I heard the rustling of smaller animals and the rarer mid-sized animal. Raccoons and skunks, mostly. Griffith Park was famous for its observatory and zoo and Greek Theatre, all of which have been featured in movies and TV shows ranging from
Rebel Without a Cause
to
Three’s Company
.

Yes, we were directly above Hollywood, and Hollywood loved to film in its own back yard. Griffith Park was, quite literally, Hollywood’s back yard.

I passed the crime scene again, and was pleased to see that the young lady’s spirit was gone, although I saw residual energy, energy that would never go away. A murder scarred the land, perhaps forever. And what I saw, as I moved past that same boulder where I’d seen the ghost of the young woman sitting, was a chaotic collection of light that formed and reformed, swirling and dispersing, over and over again. Perhaps throughout all eternity. Playing out the scene of her murder, at least at an energetic level, forever.