Moon Shadow (Vampire for Hire Book 11) (18 page)

Chapter Forty-one

After calling Allison and checking up on Tammy for the tenth time that day, I went through my mental checklist of resources:

There was Kingsley, who had been at this immortal game for quite a while, although from the werewolf point of view. His general knowledge was vast, and his information about Lichtenstein had been invaluable.

There was Fang, who had a broad general knowledge of all things vampire. Not much of it was firsthand experience. Most of what he knew had been gleaned through rare texts and a personal obsession. These days, of course, he was gathering his own personal data. Of course, I had him edged out by nearly a decade in that department.

There was Allison, my confidant. Or, rather, my one-time confidant. Now, I was mostly shut out of her mind, so that the entity within me would not be privy to Allison’s witchy plans, whatever they were. I knew that Allison and her witch sisters battled some very dark entities on their own, some of which were aligned with the dark masters. I now know that while I sleep, Elizabeth, my own dark entity, finds temporary release. Where she goes or who she meets with, I don’t know. But I understand that she herself would forever be privy to my own plans, my own thoughts.

No secrets,
I thought.

Of course, she and I were in this together, perhaps for all eternity. If I got rid of her, without the help of, say, the Librarian and his powerful alchemical potions, then I would mostly likely die, too. I didn’t want to die. I enjoyed this life, strange as it was. I enjoyed watching my kids grow older. I enjoyed my friends, and I even enjoyed my job. I liked helping people find answers, especially answers to tough questions. So, I wasn’t exactly conspiring to remove the entity within me.

Moving on. There was Sherbet, who had one of the sharpest investigative minds I’d come across. And now that he’d been introduced to all things supernatural, he was a great guy to bounce ideas off of, whether he liked it or not.

There was my angel, Ishmael, who rarely made an appearance these days. I suspected Ishmael, whether he wanted to let on or not, was still bound by some ethereal code of conduct. He wasn’t too forthcoming with information, either, which was just as well. He might know things I didn’t really want the answers to. Or not. Hard to say. Still, he would come if I called him. I rarely did.

There was Talos, my dragon alter ego, who seemed wise in all things. His knowledge was often universal and metaphysical in nature. Except, I needed answers directly related to the strange happenings at Lake Elsinore.

There was now Dracula whom, I suspected, might be a profound source of information. After all, he had tallied up over five hundred years as the walking dead. He had the perspective of history. Hell, he
was
history. Living history. But I hadn’t yet formed that kind of connection with him.

Then there was, of course, the Librarian, Archibald Maximus, who was my sort of catch-all go-to person for all things vampiric, supernatural and historical. A man I trusted with my life—hell, with my son’s life, too. A man who had given much to me, and had never once asked for anything in return.

To understand the strange happenings in Lake Elsinore, I thought my choice was obvious.

***

Which was why I found myself at Jacky’s gym.

No matter how crazy things got, and no matter how busy one seemed, there was always time to unload on a punching bag, all while your trainer urged you to keep your hands up. Up, up, up.

Oh, I kept them up, and as Jacky held onto the bag for dear life, absorbing my onslaught of punches, I did my best to keep the lake monster out of my mind, as well as Lichtenstein and his own monsters and, especially, Tammy’s impending accident.

It was just me and the bag and sweat and Jacky barking orders and the sound of boxers working out with their own trainers.

I did this until Jacky finally raised the white flag, so to speak, begging for a break. I didn’t let him off immediately and instead, unloaded a flurry of punches that surely knocked the Irish out of him.

And after he stumbled away, punch drunk and rubbing his neck and muttering in something that sounded like ancient Gaelic, I tried to feel bad as he disappeared into the men’s shower. He would be fine. He was old, yes, but he was tough as nails. And I thought he secretly liked taking my punishment.

I grinned and grabbed my stuff and headed to my next appointment. Cal State Fullerton.

In particular, the Occult Reading Room.

Chapter Forty-two

Months ago, I had discovered a small loading dock behind the Cal State Fullerton library.

This was useful since, being neither student or faculty, I didn’t have a parking permit. Nor was I going to shell out $90 for one. Parking in the loading dock was a surefire way to get one’s vehicle towed unless one had a cache of magnetized door signs stowed in their minivan. Signs such as “AAA Catering,” or “Acme Auto Detailing,” or “J&J’s Plumbing,” or “Mobile Blood Drive.” Yes, that last one always made me giggle.

Now, as I parked confidently in the loading section, I admired my latest sign: “Express Espresso Coffee Delivery.”

I spotted two students making out in the shadows, and thought that was a pretty good idea. The shadow part, that is. As in, getting out of the sun and into the shadows. Of course, making out is fun, too, with the right guy. Sometimes even the wrong guy.

Anyway, I hopped up onto the loading dock and into the blessed shadows. Yes, I could have lasted a lot longer in the sun, but why do so when I didn’t have to? Shade equaled a happy vampire mama. I nodded at the students who were now openly staring at me. I frowned until I caught their thoughts: they had both seen me jump up onto the dock, about six feet straight up. Maybe even higher. I smiled and wiped the memory from their thoughts and commanded them to resume their snogging session. I didn’t have to tell them twice.

It was mid-afternoon and the sun was out, and so were approximately ten thousand students, nearly all of whom were on their cell phones. And those who weren’t on their cell phones were about to get on their cell phones. I remember when cell phones first became available. Most were used primarily for business. Important business. I remember taking a call on my department-issued cell phone. I remember thinking how important I must have looked. Hell, I remembered feeling important. It was a big day for me. I was an important person, taking an important call, on a staticy flip cell phone the size of a man-purse.

Now, as I hung a right and headed for the main library doors, passing students exiting and staring blankly down at their phones, or talking blankly on their phones, I realized what a dope I must have looked like.

A world of dopes
, I thought, and pushed my way into the library.

Chapter Forty-three

At the third floor, I exited the elevator, hung a right, and moved along a long corridor with a windowless wall on one side and rows upon rows of research books on the other. The rows extended nearly as far as the eye could see. Even Talos’s eyes. I was fairly certain this is where books went to die.

I passed quite a few ghosts. At least a half dozen. Some were fully formed; others were nothing more than globs of multidimensional silly putty. The few that I could make out were moving down aisles with heads bowed, staring at the floor, their feet a good two or three inches off the floor. One sported a bullet wound in his temple. I got the psychic impression this was self-inflicted. Another nearby ghost continuously vomited frothing ectoplasmic sputum. A drug overdose, surely. Or bad tacos. I suspected these two had died here in the library, or very close to it. A large university with over a half century of history was bound to have a few fatalities... and suicides. And no doubt, murders, too.

I walked past the vomiting ghost and cringed. A puddle of sticky ectoplasm clung to my shoes, then snapped off in a puff. Okay, that was gross.

About halfway down a blank section of wall, a doorway began to form, expanding exponentially the closer I got, like a magic portal into another realm, which it just very well might be.

By the time I reached it, a doorway was waiting for me, complete with a scuffed door that could have used some paint. There was a rectangular window in it that afforded a limited view of the help desk and a hallway beyond. Over the doorway was an etched plastic sign that read: Occult Reading Room. In smaller letters that I hadn’t noticed before was another line: Maximum Occupancy: At the Discretion of the Librarian.

I giggled at that and looked over my shoulder. I was alone in the corridor. The ghosts had dispersed, too, as ghosts are wont to do. Once inside, I closed the door behind me, and wondered once again what the scene would have looked like from the outside: a woman stepping into a wall, perhaps? Or would they have caught a brief glimpse of the door; indeed, would they have caught a brief, if not forbidden, view of the Occult Reading Room itself?

And just why was it so forbidden? Well, I kind of knew the answer to that. The books here were hardcore. As in, world altering. Hell, not so long ago, I’d seen something escape from the pages of one such book, something I wouldn’t soon forget, if ever. A demon in the form of a dragon, inadvertently let loose by my son.

Although the Librarian had returned it from whence it came, I suspected an aspect of it—a tendril of it, a whiff of it perhaps—had found its way into my son. I hadn’t been able to confirm this, mostly because I’d never been able to read my own children’s auras. But more than once, I’d seen my son sitting up in bed in the middle of the night, staring at nothing, enough to creep me out and worry me to no end. Other than his late-night staring sessions, I hadn’t seen much else to be alarmed about. So, for now, I let it go.

Other than loosing demonic dragons into the world, the Occult Reading Room was
the
place for all things dark and evil. As such, Archibald Maximus, the young man who oversaw this room, did just that: he oversaw who had access to these books. He was, in a sense, their custodian. The room itself was enchanted; as in, only those who had a need to find the room could find the room. Whether or not there was a vetting process, I didn’t know. Whether or not Max turned some seekers away, I didn’t know that either. And those he did turn away... did they go willingly, or put up a fight?

So many questions, I thought, as I rang the bell at the help counter. The small ding echoed in the medium-sized room, half of which was filled with tomes and diaries and grimoires and parchments and scrolls and tablets, books bound with leather and sheepskin and human skin. They filled the overburdened shelves from floor to ceiling, in row after row. Granted, not quite as long as rows in the library at large, but, trust me, there were more than enough books here to summon Lord Voldemort many times over. Amazingly, the other half of the room was outfitted with reading chairs and lamps and tables.

“Your mind is busy, Samantha Moon,” said a voice from down the hallway. To where the hallway led, I did not know.

“Wouldn’t yours be, too,” I asked the Librarian, “if you were me?”

“Perhaps,” he said, appearing from the shadows, eyes gleaming bright, and coming around the simple help desk. He clasped me warmly on the shoulder. Not quite a hug, but warmer than a handshake. He nodded, or actually, bowed. A small gesture, but it looked good on him. “But I would shield my thoughts more often than not. You never know what’s lurking in the shadows.”

“Like an alchemist who can read minds?”

“Or a vampire mama who can read minds, too.”

Hearing him say ‘vampire mama’ made me snort. “Well, shielding my thoughts is a drag,” I said.

“It’s work, I know,” he said. “But it’s worth it in the end.”

“Is there a way to permanently shield my thoughts?” I asked.

The Librarian said, “There is a way to summon a semi-permanent wall, but it involves some darker magic.”

“And you know this, how?”

“I believe my mother might have invented the spell.”

“Then I need only to ask her.”

“In short, yes.”

“But asking her requires me to summon her.”

“It would, Sam. And it would also mean something else.”

“She would bargain with me.”

Maximus nodded gravely. “I imagine so. People like my mother do not give willingly, if ever. And when they do, they always benefit. Always. Remember that.”

“Oh, I will. Which is why she is stuffed as far down as I can keep her. Life is easier that way.”

“I imagine so,” he said, and I detected a very odd tone to his voice. Sadness? Regret?

“Perhaps a little bit of both, Sam,” said Max, picking up on my thoughts a little too easily. “She was, after all, once my mother.”

We were both silent, and I honestly didn’t know what to say to the guy. That he’d had the world’s most dysfunctional childhood, I didn’t doubt. At what point she had quit being his mother and had taken on the role of Queen Bitch of Darkness, I didn’t know. Max had hinted at seeing terrible things—strange rituals, human and animal sacrifices, and, I suspected, all manner of things that go bump in the night, including real demons and God knows what else these self-proclaimed highly evolved dark masters had summoned from, I imagined, Hell itself.

An air conditioning unit clicked on inside the room, and I wondered who the hell had installed an AC unit in the Occult Reading Room. Max grinned, still following my thoughts. “It hasn’t always been the Occult Reading Room, Sam. It was once a special collections room for the university.”

“So, you hijacked it?”

“You could say that.”

“And put some sort of spell on it.”

“You could say that, too.”

He held my gaze, and I knew our connection was strong, and even though I couldn’t see a lick into his mind, I knew he was in mine now, probing deeply, I suspected. I supposed I could have told him to stop or thrown up one of my better walls or, well, kicked his ass. But I liked the Alchemist. A lot. Had things been different and Mad Max had been, say, a little less serious, I could have seen myself having a drink with him. But I let that thought slip by, knowing that he had undoubtedly seen it.

But the Alchemist had to know that he was kind of my hero, too. Not only had he saved Anthony from a life of vampirism, his advice in all things had saved my ass time and again. That his mother had been a dark master was something else. Max’s early career had taken a decidedly different course, one in which he had devoted his life to fighting the very darkness his mother represented. Fighting and, I suspected, winning. Indeed, Max had been instrumental in sealing his mother—and others like her—away. Removing them from the earth plane. I don’t usually use words like “earth plane,” but Max did. And he knew more about this stuff than anyone did. Even if he did only look twenty-two. Someday, I would ask him how, exactly, he and others like him defeated the dark masters.

“Yes, a very active mind. And thank you. It’s always nice to be called a hero.”

I shrugged and would have blushed, except blushing required movement of blood, the pumping of blood. My blood, I suspected, moved like molasses through my veins.

“Very, very active,” murmured Max.

I tried to quiet my mind, to give him better access. I trusted him. He was in there for a reason. Soon, I found myself looking deep into his bright blue eyes and I thought there was a small chance we had a moment; that was, until he blinked and cut our connection, and I realized that I was the only dope who’d had a moment. Or two.

“The boy in your thoughts, the boy who is missing...”

“Luke?”

He nodded. “Yes, Luke. I see him there, but he’s faint, almost blurry. Is he...”

I nodded, following his drift. “He’s a memory of a memory.”

“Ah, that explains why I can’t connect his name and why he seems so phantasmagorical.”

I nodded, impressed. “Phantasmagorical is my new word of the week. Hell, the year.”

He smiled politely. Max wasn’t as silly as I sometimes thought he was. Or hoped he was. All it took was for me to remember he wasn’t a 22-year-old guy, but a 500-year-old man. I mentally walked Max through how I came across the memory of Luke, culled from the mind of Raul, the old Mexican
brujo
. A witch.

“Raul is a good man. He’s one of us.”

“Not to be rude, but he’s old,” I said. “And you look so young.”

“Not all are alchemists, and not all choose to be immortal, Sam. It takes... great effort to do what I do.”

“You mean, to stay young?”

He nodded. “Indeed.”

“You don’t sacrifice kittens and/or puppies, do you?”

“No. But I do spend a considerable amount of each day, sometimes hours, in deep meditation, silently reciting powerful and dangerous incantations.”

“How dangerous?”

“One mistake would be the end of me.”

“Yikes.”

“And not just the end of me, Sam. It would banish me to the same plane as the dark masters.”

“I want to know more about that plane.”

“Another day, Sam. When you are ready.”

“Fine,” I said, a little miffed. I was a grown-ass woman. Who said I wasn’t ready?

“Perhaps I misspoke, Sam. When I am ready, might be more accurate.”

Okay, feathers officially unruffled. I said, “Well, a few memorized incantations seem a small price to pay to live forever.”

“I thought so, too.”

I didn’t have to be a mind reader to know where he was going with it. “It limits you,” I said. “It binds you to your rituals or whatever you call it. Hard to be-bop around when you are forced to spend a few hours a day in what I assume is isolation.”

“You assume correctly.”

“And you probably have your potions and crap everywhere. All bubbling and frothing.”

“Not quite, but close. I do carry a travel bag of, as you say, potions and crap.” He nodded and winked.

“And if I had to guess, I would say it all takes place back there,” I said, pointing down the dark hallway.

“A good guess,” said the Librarian, this time offering me a smile. Then he smiled sadly and looked away. “It’s not easy being us.”

“Being sexy? I agree.”

He grinned again. “We defy natural laws. In doing so, there’s a price to pay, so to speak. With you, it’s the routine consumption of blood. With me, it’s spending hours in solitude each day, without fail.”

“And if you did fail?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

I did, yes. Death and banishment. “I can see why you hang around this dusty old place. You need peace and quiet.”

“Oh, I’m only here for a few hours a day, Sam. Often, I can be found elsewhere.”

“I sense you are seguing into something.”

“Your intuition is as strong as ever, Sam. Indeed, I run a school of sorts.”

“And what, pray tell, is a ‘school of sorts’?”

“Myself and a few others like me teach the ways of alchemy.”

“My God, so Hogwarts is real?”

He smiled. “Close, but not quite. It is a school, yes, and we do teach the children a wide variety of subjects. But that’s where the similarities end. The kids we teach go on to become what we call Light Warriors.”

“Are we really having this conversation?”

“We are, Sam. In a secret room here at Cal State Fullerton, surrounded by enough books to bring Voldemort back many times over.”

“Geez, you’re good.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“Fine,” I said. “So what, exactly, is a Light Warrior?”

“We give balance to the world of darkness, Sam.”

“I take it I’m no Light Warrior.”

“I’m sorry, Sam. But no.”

“I’m trying not to take offense.”

“Put it this way: I still consider you an ally.”

I shrugged, but I was still kind of butt-hurt. “That’s good enough, I suppose.”