The Vampire Shrink (28 page)

Alan walked around behind my chair and rubbed my shoulders. “Do you want to talk more about Emerald, or are you ready to tell me what happened to you last night?”

“Both, I think.”

He swiveled my chair around until I faced him, took my hands, and guided me up from the chair and back over to the couch.

I studied him, searching for answers in his eyes. “You said Emerald was killed by vampires. Do you really believe that? Are you telling me the truth? There really are vampires?”
Devereux is really a vampire?
I made one more feeble attempt at denial. I didn't want to believe, but that ship had sailed. I knew what I'd seen in the basement of the Crypt.

“Yes,” he said, “I'm telling you the truth. Nothing in my background, education, or training prepared me to believe vampires really exist, but that's what I discovered. Beyond any rational doubt. For some reason I don't understand yet, more of the mindless, demented vampires are showing up in Denver.”

None of that made any sense to me. “Why is this happening all of a sudden? Has Denver had other murders in the past where the victims were drained of blood?”

“According to my research, there have been sporadic deaths attributed to massive blood loss, but they were few and far between. It makes sense, because there've always been vampires, and some of them would have been the type who needed to kill. The death toll became significant only over the last few months.” He picked up our coffee mugs, refilled them in the kitchen, and brought them back. The pink sweatpants were almost glued to his skin, leaving nothing to the imagination. The view, coming and going, was distracting, but then I remembered what we were talking about.

“Why Emerald?”

“That I don't know. But I promise you, I'll find out. Now, tell me—what happened to you last night?”

He stretched out his long, pink-encased legs and crossed his ankles on the coffee table. I curled up, my legs tucked underneath me, at the end of the couch.

“Well, after I saw you in the club and we split up to find Tom … Hey!” I sat up straight. “That reminds me—you lied to me. You said you were going to help me search for him, and then I saw you charge through the doorway to the basement. How am I supposed to trust you if you lie to me? And how do I know you're not lying about other stuff?”

He studied the carpet and shook his head. “Spank me, I've been bad.” He shifted his eyes to gaze up at me from under his unfairly long eyelashes and grinned. “I'm sorry I lied to you. But you need to know this about me: I'm dedicated to my work, and it wasn't even in the realm of possibility that I'd go off searching for Tom instead of finding out what was happening with the vampires downstairs. It's part of the job description of being the kind of obsessive-compulsive I am.”

I frowned at him and relaxed back into the cushions, but had to admit to myself that I did understand what he meant. Having a curious mind had landed me in more sticky situations than I could count.

“What was going on with the vampires downstairs? Why were they fighting? From what I saw, it was about to turn into a bloodbath. Talk about
Night of the Living Dead.”

He scooted excitedly to the edge of the cushion, eager to share.

“By the time I got there, the chaos had started to wind down, and the interlopers were gone. From what I could gather, some vampires are challenging Devereux's rule of the coven. Bryce, the one we talked about before, is determined to take Devereux down. It seems very personal to him—the two of them definitely have unfinished business. He and his followers threatened the club manager, knowing it would piss Devereux off, and the fun began. The room was one unholy mess after the combat ended.”

“Yeah.” I grimaced. “I saw some of the body fluids oozing out from the doorway.”

He motioned with his cup. “Vampire bodies heal very quickly, so even the worst injuries repaired themselves within minutes. If it hadn't been for the blood everywhere, you wouldn't have known a vampire war was being waged.”

“What did you do? Just run in and start swinging? Do you have a death wish?”

“No.” He laughed. “I'm adventurous. I'm courageous. I'm relentless. But I'm not stupid. Besides, I'd found out from my vampire source Ian—Deep Fang, I call him, you know, like the Watergate informer—that when a vamp loses blood, the first thing he does is seek a donor. I didn't want to be anyone's dinner, so I kept my distance until Devereux was alone in the room.”

A little energy rush charged through my body. “You talked to Devereux?”

As Alan started to answer, the doorbell rang. I walked over and peered through the peephole to make sure the visitor was welcome company. It was more than welcome. It was food—police-escorted food. I cracked the door and was slammed by a wall of noise as hordes of reporters shouted questions from the road. I quickly handed over enough money to cover the bill plus a generous tip, and reached out to grab the bag. I offered my thanks, then closed and relocked the door. I carried the large sack of Chinese food to the kitchen table.

“Do you want to wait on the rest of the story until you've eaten, or can you continue?” Alan asked.

The smell of the food was driving me mad, and I moved around the kitchen in a blur, gathering plates, glasses, and utensils. “I'll bet I can eat and talk at the same time. Wow. You ordered lots.”

“Oh, did you want something, too?” He laughed.

“Very funny.”

I opened a bottle of wine and poured some into two glasses; then we sat at the table and dived into the feast. Neither of us gained any points for table manners during the meal. The food was glorious, and we ate with silent enthusiasm for a few minutes. There's nothing like stress and hunger to cause us to revisit our primitive roots.

For some reason I suddenly thought about the fact that vampires didn't eat food. I wouldn't ever be sitting at the table sharing a meal with Devereux. At least not any meal I could force myself to contemplate. Unless, of course, we'd all gone mad or there were hallucinogens in the water supply, and none of this had really happened.

I paused in the food-shoveling process and sipped my wine. “You spoke to Devereux? What did you talk about?”

Alan had already cleaned up his first helping and was reaching for reinforcements.

“It was strange, actually. He was in the middle of telling me about his long-standing rivalry with Bryce and all of a sudden he stopped talking and closed his eyes. Then he said, ‘She is gone—he has taken her.' I started to ask who was gone, and who ‘he' was, but before I could get the words out, Devereux vanished.”

“You mean he left the room?” I claimed seconds on the egg rolls.

“No. He literally vanished. Vampires aren't bound by the same limitations of time and space as we humans are. They can move through both with just a thought.”

“I don't understand what you mean. Physical matter has certain unarguable limitations—flesh-and-blood bodies can't just disappear from one place and rearrange their molecules in another. We haven't caught up with
Star Trek
yet.” Although I had seen Devereux and Bryce levitating. That was definitely strange.

Alan polished off his second helping and went for the championship round, adding an impressive third layer to the sustenance already on its way down to his deceptively flat stomach.

“Devereux would say there are limitations if you believe there are. But I've seen him vanish and reappear so many times that I don't have any problem accepting that vampires can travel by thought, not only in this dimension but in all the others.”

I pushed my plate away, finally satiated.

“Other dimensions? You know, every time we talk your stories get weirder and weirder. Are you going to tell me next that the vampires are really aliens, preparing to take over the Earth? Or maybe they're controlling us with their minds, and we'll be herded into holding pens—walking blood receptacles—to wait for an impending undead feeding frenzy?”

“No.” He chuckled. “I'm not going to tell you any of that, but you have to admit they'd be interesting hypotheses to pursue. I'll make a note of them. Shall I continue telling you about Devereux, or would you rather make fun of my proclivities?”

“Oh, by all means, please continue.” I raised my wineglass in his direction.

“Anyway, after he vanished I went back upstairs and then outside, looking for you. Of course, you weren't there, but I found Devereux leaning against the building about a half-block down from the entrance to the club. He was just standing there with his eyes closed, and when I approached he said, ‘The one who has her is not only evil, but he is also insane. His mind is splintered, and he is more animal than vampire.'” Alan had altered his voice, imitating Devereux's accent and unique speech patterns. “At that point I still didn't even know who he was talking about. He said, ‘I am linked with her mind so I should be able to sense her, but he has done something to mask her energy signature. He has overwhelmed her mind with his and is keeping us from communicating with each other. I have met few others powerful enough to do that. She is in great danger. She must be found.'”

I appreciated his clever Devereux impersonation and shook my head. “You actually remember what he said, word for word? That's quite the memory you have there, Special Agent Stevens.”

“Yes, it does come in handy. I have the auditory equivalent of a photographic memory. Remember that in case you tell me something and then say you didn't.”

“Okay.” I reached out and patted his arm. “I'll remember that. Then what happened?”

We returned to the living room and reestablished ourselves on the couch.

He cleared his throat. “A whole lot of nothing. Devereux vanished again, and I went back into the club to search for you. I still thought you were in there somewhere. Just so you know, I kept an eye out for Tom, too, but I never saw him. I ran into Devereux's personal assistant, a snarly vamp named Luna, and I asked if she'd seen you. She said she couldn't believe so many people were interested in one ordinary human and that Devereux was so beside himself that you'd been taken. That was the first time I realized they were talking about you.”

“I'm surprised Luna even deigned to acknowledge my existence.”

“She is a charmer.” He reached over and stroked my leg. “I didn't want to believe you were missing—I'm stubborn that way—so I kept looking in the club and giving people your description and asking if they'd seen you. Finally, I drove back to the cop shop to see if there'd been any reports. I knew they wouldn't put out a missing-person report that soon, but I was rattling cages as much as I could. Turns out I didn't need to. A couple of hours later, the chief showed up in person and ordered that you be made top priority. All available units went out on the street, searching for you; then they alerted the media. I've never seen anything like it before. I still don't know what happened to get the chief riled up.”

“I was told Devereux called the chief.”

“Devereux? What would Devereux have to do with the police chief …?” He paused. “Of course—I should've remembered. So much for my famous tape-recorder memory, eh? During one of our discussions, Devereux told me he'd used his ability to control minds to create relationships with several powerful people in town, people who could ‘smooth away any difficulties,' as he put it.”

“What do you mean?”

“It makes perfect sense now. He simply called the chief, suggested he rally the troops, and that's all it took. No one would question it, and the chief would always think it was his own idea. Ingenious, really.”

“Are you saying Devereux used mind control on the police chief?”

“Yep. The chief and a few other highly placed cops.”

“Doesn't it bother you that Devereux manipulated the police? What if he uses mind control on you?”

He grinned. “I have a healthy respect for his abilities—he's the most powerful vampire I've ever run across. It might be worth it to let him take over my mind for a little while, just to see how that feels. You have to admit, it got the job done. The cops found you.”

“Actually, I found the cops. But I'll have to thank Devereux the next time I see him.”

And why does thinking about seeing him feel good and bad at the same time?

“Okay, stop stalling. Tell me what happened to you last night.”

I rearranged myself on the cushions. “I'm not stalling.”
Yes, I am.
“There really isn't much to tell. I went outside to wait for Tom—or you—and walked down the block and rested against the building. I suddenly had an overwhelming bad feeling, instant terror, and heard a grotesque voice calling me. I couldn't tell if the voice was coming from outside of me or inside my mind. It was like fingernails on the blackboard from hell times a thousand.

The voice kept telling me to come to it. I remember thinking I just needed to stay where I was and everything would be fine. That I could just ignore it. That's the last thing I recall until I woke up this morning in the cemetery.”

I told him everything about the mausoleum, the coffin I'd awakened in, the dead bodies, and my encounter with the police. He sat silently while I spoke, shaking his head.

“I've had some horrible experiences since I joined the FBI, but none of them comes close to being worse than what you just told me. Now I'm really sorry I was such an asshole when you came home.”

“Apology accepted. We were both stressed out. I'm glad it's over. Well, except for the media fallout. I guess I can't avoid it any longer. Go ahead and tell me—how bad is it? What did they say about me on TV?”

“Pretty much what you'd expect.” He grinned. “They played up all the occult aspects and continually referred to you as the Vampire Shrink, with accompanying snickers. I think you'll have to make a statement when you feel up to it—they're not going away until you talk to them. I imagine this isn't the direction you envisioned your career moving?”