Sam Harlan (Book 3): Damned Cold (11 page)

I thought about that, and how absurd we’d look parading through town, just a beautiful woman, a rough looking man, and two priests. It sounded more like a bad joke than a serious attempt to find an evil witch, a vampire, and a missing woman. “We’ll be back when we find something,” I said.

* * *

I placed my order with the pretty Indian woman at the counter who quickly made my two roast beef foot-longs. I paid for my sandwiches, coffee, and Callie’s chicken salad, and we took seats near the front of the building. It was a newer franchise. The building looked a little rough on the outside, but the inside was clean and inviting and smelled of fresh-baked bread. I opened my sandwich and took a bite. I had the woman load the sandwich with extra roast beef, and it tasted delicious. I started to chew and had a moment where I longed for the beef to be rare, almost bloody, and quickly shook my head.

“What’s wrong?” Callie asked. Her plastic fork was hovering over her chicken salad, but she was eying me intently.

I started to speak, but a man in his early sixties opened the door behind her, causing the bell to tinkled. The man had an orange, bottled tan and dyed blond hair. I put him in his early sixties, and he was a shade taller than me, but wore a suit just expensive enough to set him apart from the locals.

The woman on his arm was a different matter. She was starkly beautiful, with coal-black hair, deeply tanned skin, and a skirt short enough to be considered indecent. I put her in her early thirties, but the man said something and she laughed, and I saw crow’s feet around her eyes and upped that to early forties. The woman glanced my way, smiled, then turned back to her companion.

I felt a sensation I hadn’t expected. Just a glance from the woman had ignited my libido.

“
Sam
,” Callie said, just loud enough to bring me back to my senses.

“Sorry.”

“Why are you acting so … weird?”

I gulped down some of the coffee. It was hot, and that’s about the only thing it had going for it. “Edmund said I’d be feeling things, and he’s right. I’m angry.”

“Everyone gets angry,” Callie said. “It’s only human.”

I took a bite of my sandwich, chewed, and swallowed. “I’m hungry.”

She smiled. “None of this is news to me, Sam.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s happening even more since we’ve gotten here. What if I change? What if it doesn’t take me hundreds and hundreds of vampire kills?” My voice dropped until I was whispering. “What if I just wake up and I’m a monster?”

She was starting to respond when the door opened again. This time, it was a man dressed in a police officer’s black uniform and black coat. The man was a few years older than me and bigger than me, and his beefy face and build hinted at time spent doing manual labor or dedicated sessions in the gym. On his arm was a woman with a long black ponytail. They took their place in line, glaring at the couple in front of them.

Callie shook her head, then said, “I don’t think you’ll become a monster.”

“But how do you know?”

She smiled. “You’ve been through … so much, and you haven’t given up yet. You chose to fight back. You have free will, but you chose to fight. That says something. I think we have plenty of time to figure out how to keep you from becoming a vampire.”

I wanted to tell her I was plenty worried that we weren’t going to figure out how to stop me from changing. I wanted to tell her that I was troubled by the witchcraft, and by the missing woman. I wanted to tell her that unless there was a vampire to fight, we had no business being in Bement, Illinois.

Instead, I took another bite and another, until I’d finished my first sandwich and moved on to my second. I washed it all down with more of the bad coffee, then asked, “What do you think of Jodie and Gene?”

She sipped her iced tea. “I think magic is a temptation most people aren’t able to resist. Think about your life before the vampire attack. Wouldn’t you have been tempted?”

“Tempted by what?”

“Power. People used to have faith in God, but as faith has waned, it’s left an empty hole in them. They feel that God doesn’t care. You still feel that way.”

“Maybe,” I said grudgingly. “I just don’t get,” I waved my hand around, “this.”

“God cares, Sam. God loves. Just because we don’t understand His will, doesn’t mean He’s not with us.”

“Why can’t He be with Dorothy Hamm?” After I’d said it, I realized how bitter it sounded. Before Callie could respond, I continued, “If God loves us, how can He let an innocent woman be taken.”

“
If
that’s what happened,” Callie said. “The problem is that we see things through our eyes and not His. It’s not that God doesn’t intervene, but if He did, we wouldn’t have free will.”

I glanced up as I finished unwrapping my second sandwich. “You’re saying that Dorothy deserves to be missing? That something she did brought this on?”

“Not at all. What I’m saying is that people make their own decisions. We are
all
responsible for our decisions, even if they impact others.”

“You mean Jodie did something she shouldn’t have, and that’s why Dorothy is missing?”

“We don’t know, Sam. That’s also part of being human.”

I started in on my sandwich. Callie continued to pick at her salad. Finally, I said, “Well, being human sucks.”

She smiled at me. “It’s hard when we don’t have the answers. I heard Father Jameson and Father Lewinheim discuss the nature of free will.”

“Yeah? How’d that go?”

“Several hours of extensive discussion led them to the same conclusion. Not quite in your words, exactly, but they agreed that sometimes it … sucks to be human. That’s why we must hold tightly to our faith.”

* * *

We finished eating and I threw our trash away while Callie used the restroom. When she returned, we exited the restaurant and headed for the truck. Behind us, the door opened and the man in the suit followed us out, along with the woman he seemed intent on displaying as his arm candy. I was opening the truck door when the man cleared his throat. I turned to him in time to have him stick out a business card in my direction.

“Del Doll,” he said, “I own Del Doll Dodge in Monticello. I can’t help but notice that you’ve got yourself quite a beauty here.”

I glanced at the truck. “It gets me where I need to go.”

“Well, lucky for you that we caught you here.” He smiled his megawatt smile. “This is my wife, Lisa.”

I didn’t say anything, but I saw Callie frowning. I didn’t take the card from his hand, nor did I speak.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Lisa said in a voice that was low and sultry.

I offered them a perfunctory smile. “We have to be going—”

“I’m a little flush on new Dodge trucks,” Del said. “A man that would hang on to a truck like this is the man who would appreciate the comfort and style of a new Ram or Silverado.”

I almost laughed. If it were possible to sound like a late-night commercial, Del Doll had it locked up. “No thanks.”

His smile never wavered. “I hear that all the time, but it never hurts to take one for a test drive. We’ve got the best finance officers of any dealership in the area. The sky’s the limit.”

The door to the Subway opened and the police officer came out. His badge was embossed with the name Gary, and he stopped within arm’s reach of Del. “He doesn’t seem interested, Del. Maybe you should turn off the salesman bullshit and let the man be on his way.”

Lisa’s smile faltered. She was giving the woman with Officer Gary an unpleasant look. “What do you have against the free market, Bobby?”

“If he’s not interested, then he’s not interested,” Officer Gary said. He pointed to the sign in the Subway window. “No soliciting.”

Del’s smile finally dropped a notch. “No reason to get testy. We were just drumming up business.”

“Your business is always plenty busy.”

Del raised a hand. “Fine, fine. We’ll be on our way.” He motioned for his wife to follow and they got into a black Dodge Durango. He waved as they backed out and headed north.

I turned to the officer. “Thanks.”

Officer Gary didn’t speak. His gaze wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t friendly, either. He spun on his heel and headed to the car with the Bement Police logo. The woman with him offered us a polite nod, and they were backing out and heading north.

I turned to Callie. “What the he—heck was that about?”

She looked baffled. “I have no idea. These small towns are … strange.”

“Sister, you got that right.” We climbed in the truck and I backed it out and headed north to Monticello. “I hope we find something in those trees. I hope there’s something that points to who is responsible.”

I was passing the grocery store on the right, taking the small bend in the road, when Callie said, “If you can’t find a vampire, what are you going to do?”

I grunted. “Someone tried to kill us. That’s got me more than a little … miffed. I’d like to find the responsible party.” I’d been thinking about it during the meal at Subway. “However, if we can’t find anything, and I can’t find Dorothy Hamm, and there’s no vampire, I might have reached the end of what I can do. If nothing pans out, maybe it’s time to call it a day and head home.”

Callie turned to me and nodded. “I agree. I want to help Dawn find her mother, but free will only takes us so far. Good intentions aren’t enough to help.”

I laughed.

“What?” she asked.

“We finally agreed on something,” I said. As I spoke, a red Ford pickup truck towing a plow turned onto US-105 heading south. We were only a mile north of the Bement Cemetery and the next nearest vehicle was a couple of miles in front of us. The plow was folded up, and the tips of the iron chisels gleamed silver in the December sun.

The Ford swerved into our lane and I had a moment of clarity where I saw the old man driving the truck, a shock of white hair on his head, his face tan and weathered and bearing a grim look of determination.

The old man’s lips were moving and Callie was screaming and I was swerving, desperate to avoid the plow’s chisels. The Ford swerved deeper into our lane before swerving back. The plow whipped around and the chisels caught the side of the Chevy. The metal shrieked and squealed and we went crashing off the road and into the ditch, slamming into the grassy earth.

My head slammed against the steering wheel and I didn’t even have time to think before everything went black.

If you’ve never
been knocked unconscious, you can’t imagine the feeling. At first, it feels like you’re floating on a warm cloud. Everything is peaceful. Quiet.

Then the pain comes. Sometimes it’s your whole body. Sometimes it’s an arm, or a leg, or your ribs.

But one thing’s for certain—your head
will
hurt. And not just hurt. There’re no words that accurately describes the agony in your brain.

I managed to open one eye, saw a gray patch of concrete, then rolled to my side and puked my guts out, spewing roast beef all over the floor. Every heave caused a new muscle group in my body to spasm, which prompted me to vomit again.

The roast beef was followed by bitter green bile, until nothing was left but spit. I was empty and hollowed out, my head pounding in time with my heartbeat. I lay there helplessly until the room stopped spinning.

I was at the bottom of a round concrete pit, twice as wide as I was tall, and nearly fifteen feet deep. There was a buzzing fluorescent light far above, and I could barely make out the strange Celtic-like runes etched into the walls.

Callie wasn’t with me.

I staggered to my feet, which was a huge mistake, and went right back down again. I managed a few dry heaves, and after what seemed like an eternity, the churning and roiling in my stomach came to halt.

I was freezing.

Then I realized it was because my trench coat and shoulder holster were gone. Even my silver Bowie knife was missing.

“Hello?” I shouted, then immediately regretted it. My throat was raw and felt like it had been sandpapered.

I could hear voices far above, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. “Hello?” I tried again.

The old man who had driven the Ford truck into us leaned over the edge of the pit. He shook his head, then turned to speak to someone else.

“What’s going on?” I yelled. “Where’s Callie?”

The old man glanced down into the pit. “Why didn’t you kill Meriwether?”

“Why do
you
want him dead?” I countered.

“You shoulda
killed
him,” the old man said. “He almost murdered you. You were
supposed
to kill him!”

“This isn’t just about Dorothy, is it?”

The old man scowled in frustration. “We would all be safer with him dead.”

“Nothing indicated—”

“He’s evil, boy. You shoulda done what you’re good at.”

“I’m not a killer,” I said. “You don’t point me like a loaded gun.”

The old man pulled back from the edge and I lost sight of him. “Hey!” I yelled. “Come back.”

The old man leaned back over the edge. “You got something to say?”

“I’m not a killer,” I repeated. “That’s
not
what I do.”

The old man shook his head. “I know what you are, boy. You’re a man of violence, and death follows you.”

“Damn it,” I shouted. “What do you want from me?”

He stared at me with a face as hard as stone. “We have your friend. You’ll kill Carlton or you’ll never see her again.”

* * *

I stewed in my anger while I waited for the old man to return. He had Callie, and I was trapped at the bottom of the pit.

Every part of my body ached. The Chevy wasn’t designed to crumple on impact like a modern car, and it didn’t have airbags. We’d been wearing seat belts, but it hadn’t afforded much protection. It felt like I’d taken a beating. Callie might feel even worse.

I longed to jump to the top of the pit and pull myself up and over, but the edge of the pit was impossibly high. I searched for cracks or bumps that I could use to pull myself up, but the bare walls were smooth and offered no purchase.

My anger flared again, so strong I almost fell to the floor.

I’ll pummel the old man, smashing and breaking the bones in his face. I’ll beat him until his brain swells. His agony will be exquisite. He will feel the way I did when Ignacio Santiago beat me in Marshalltown. He’ll know the desperation and terrible finality as he fades away into the long dark night.