Vamp-Hire (12 page)

Silence. Then, “I don’t know what you mean.”
The change in her tone told Nick she knew exactly what he meant. It
had grown cold, much like the other night. She was being guarded
again. This time he could understand why. “I have to get back to
work. I can’t stay on the phone.”

The line went dead.

For a moment, Nick considered calling her
back then decided to check his voicemail instead. Despite her
coldness, they’d never actually fought and he wasn’t eager to start
now.

Lucky had left a message. Apparently, Nancy
was nowhere to be found. Lucky had gone to the house and found the
door open. Had it been locked Nick doubted Lucky would have
described it as such. The rest of the money had been left on the
coffee table.

Weird, but okay.

“Maybe they left in a hurry after her husband
took those shots at you,” Lucky said in the message. “In the panic,
they probably just left the house. It looks like it’s abandoned
anyway. I doubt anyone lives here.”

It bugged Nick that Lucky hadn’t known from
the start if the house had been abandoned. They were supposed to be
doing this together and if Lucky weren’t looking out for him then
he wasn’t doing enough to earn his cut. It should have been a
hundred fifty dollars, half of the agreed upon three hundred.
Lucky’s cut was fifteen percent or twenty dollars, whichever was
greater, which would leave Nick a hundred thirty.

Lucky left his number for Nick to call him
back and Nick deleted the message.

“You gonna buy something?” the kid at the
front counter asked. Nick speed-dialed Lucky, put the phone to his
ear, and nodded at him, reaching randomly and grabbing a bag of
Bugles. Something in the back of his mind recalled a ghost of a
memory of what they tasted like and he quickly put them down. He
had no intentions of ever eating those again. It was somewhere
around lunchtime, though, and he knew he should be eating soon.

While the line rang he searched around
through the hodgepodge of potato chips, Donettes, Skittles,
Starburst, and—

—candy bars.

All of a sudden, Nick’s mouth watered. He
remembered the label-less chocolate Dolph had set in front of him
and the heaven it had turned into the second the creamy-smoothness
had touched his tongue. He wanted that again.

Lucky didn’t answer his phone and worse
still, his voicemail hadn’t been set up to accept messages. Nick
would have to try him again later. He went to the counter.

“What’s the best chocolate you have?” he
asked the gumpy, crater-faced kid with a stupid-looking paper hat
canted on his head.

“Um, M&M’s?”

“No, I want the good stuff. Premium
chocolate.”

The kid wrinkled his nose and a white-tipped
zit that looked on the verge of critical mass tautened. Nick did
his best to look him in the eyes. “Well, I guess we got about all
of ‘em.” He scratched his head, his oily-looking dark blond hair
waggling in front of one eye. “Oh, we have Godiva. Yeah, it’s kinda
expensive, so I guess it’s good. I never touch any of it.”

Nick locked eyes with him. “Where?”

The kid pointed and he walked over to the
small endcap farthest from the door. There were all kinds of
high-end junk food on the racks. Nick grabbed a dark chocolate
candy bar. Something about bittersweet spoke to him. He passed over
all the ones with nuts of any kind, and also picked up a box of
something called Pocky Stix. They looked like straight pretzels
covered in chocolate and he was curious how something like that
tasted.

He grabbed a few more candy bars for good
measure and realized he had two handfuls of candy. He needed actual
food to go along with this stuff. Nick turned around and spotted
the hot food section to the side of the cashier’s counter. He
dumped all his stuff on the counter and continued over, pondering
what might be good to eat.

The doctors had told him the importance of
eating healthy, but Nick was feeling a little defiant at the
moment. He wanted something that was going to taste good, something
that would be worth remembering. Nick wanted savory—chewy, salty,
sweet.

Just thinking about it was making him hungry
and he supposed that was a good thing. He had two subs and
something called a panini, and was heading back to the counter when
two guys came in, ski masks rolled down on their faces.

Crap. This was something Nick didn’t want to
be involved in. He didn’t have much money, maybe he could walk
right out. And he really wouldn’t call the cops. He wanted as
little involvement with them as possible. “Where you going,
Sweetie?” the beefier one said. He was about Nick’s height, with a
tattoo of a dragon or something lizard-like with a tail on his bare
shoulder. Nick’s eyes kept flicking toward it and to the weapon in
his hand, a billy club it looked like. “Drop the stuff.”

Nick did as he was told and the skinny one
leapt the counter. He was all menace in his body language,
sauntering over to the kid and grabbing him by the vest.

“Please, just take the cash and don’t hurt
anyone. I already hit the silent alarm.”

“That’s interesting, because I heard a nasty
rumor that stuff around here don’t work right.” The beefy one
giggled and it sounded like someone had turned on a garbage
disposal. “Like those cameras you got posted outside.”

The kid’s eyes bulged and his mouth dropped
open. Skinny guy gave him a shake for no reason.

“He offered you the money, just take it and
go,” Nick said under his breath.

“What? What did you say?” The big one was
jabbing the billy club in Nick’s direction. He looked at it, then
at the arm, then at the body. This person was muscular and
something… else. It was his shape. And then Nick knew: this wasn’t
a guy at all. Despite the bluster, muscles, and torn up voice this
person had been born female. He didn’t know if that would matter or
change whatever was going to happen next and he began to back
away.

“Sweetie, I didn’t tell you to move.” Nick
took another step. “Stop it right there,” she said through gritted
teeth. “Don’t make me crush that pretty little face.” She jabbed at
him with each of her last three words. Nick took one final step
backward and the last of his body was out of the sunlight.

He felt immediately different. Predatory.
Nick tried to keep his face straight, clenching his teeth and
tensing his body as he widened his stance.

She was looking over at Skinny Guy, who was
saying something else to the kid. Something must have given Skinny
Guy away because the kid said, “Dwight, is that you?”

Skinny Guy cum Dwight punched the kid in the
stomach and he went down like a car over a cliff. Dwight gave him a
kick for good measure and the boy groaned.

Dwight and Muscle Girl laughed and she came
over to the counter and snatched up one of Nick’s candy bars,
chomping into it without even removing the wrapper, all the while
still pointing the baton in Nick’s general direction.

Now he was angry in addition to whatever this
emotion was pumping through him. Those were his candy bars, even if
he hadn’t paid for them yet. Sure, there were more, but those were
his. He could smell the blood under the skin, feel the beating
hearts through the air between them and he wanted them in that
moment. To tear them apart, to lie in their blood, to drink from
fountaining wounds in front of their still seeing eyes.

He smelled something else in the air.
Something like him. It was her, she was a vamp too. And just as
suddenly, his predatory desires fled, abandoning him to that secret
place inside he hadn’t even been aware of until a few days ago.

Muscle Girl charged him and swung the baton
underhanded into his stomach. Nick’s legs turned to water and tears
sprang to his eyes. His body folded and he slumped to his
knees.

The world before him turned into a watery
blur and tears spilled from his eyes. He felt like he’d been
impaled on an iceberg and hoped she hadn’t torn something vital
inside him. The pain built steadily inside him until he thought he
was on the verge of fainting or throwing up. He opened his eyes and
saw he was kneeling on one of the sandwiches he’d picked out, a
meatball marinara with something on it called sriracha sauce. He’d
never heard of such a thing and had been looking forward to it as a
surprise for his wakened taste buds after eating the chocolate.

He felt her brushing the baton against the
back of his skull almost tenderly. Any moment now she was going to
bash in his skull and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
Nick couldn’t even open his mouth to plead for his life. He could
taste the bile building at the back of his throat and throwing up
was one of the absolute worst things in the world as far as he was
concerned. Fine, let her do it. What the hell had been so good
about this life so far anyway?

“Do it, P. Do it.” Dwight giggled from the
other side of the counter, a high-pitched tweaky sound. Nick could
still smell him, the oil of his unwashed skin, the body odor, the
miscellaneous drugs oozing out of him through his sweat. Whatever
in Nick that had found his smell appealing had had to do a high
jump to get over all that first.

He felt ‘P’ move above him. “Grab the cash,
D. We gotta leave.”

She stepped away and Nick’s pain began to
subside. He wiped his eyes clear with a hand not rooted to the
floor. His legs were probably as strong as noodles and he might
still hurl if he moved around too much. He definitely wasn’t a
threat to her under normal conditions.

“I was gonna drink you up, Sweetie. I had you
all eyed up when you got out of that big truck in the parking lot.
I was gonna split your wig open and chug you like a can of pop. I’m
not gonna do that now, am I?” Nick had no idea why she was asking
him. Wait, yes he did. She’d smelled the same thing on him that he
had smelled on her. They were—what was it that Dolph had called
people like him? Vamps. She was one too. As far as he knew, she was
the first one he’d met since leaving the Center and even though he
hadn’t been told to avoid other vamps he hoped to never see her
again.

The cash register popped open and Nick risked
looking up to see Dwight grabbing fistfuls of cash before hopping
over the counter again. P backpedaled, looking over her shoulder
out the window. Dwight giggled, lifting his mask to munch on one of
Nick’s candy bars.

“Give me the money,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dwight said and handed it over.
She turned for the door and he followed.

“Where you goin’?” she asked. “You stay
here.”

“Oh, right. Right.” Dwight stood there as she
left. She pointed the baton at Nick before pushing through the
doors. “Be seeing you.”

She ran.

A few minutes later the police arrived, guns
drawn, and put handcuffs on Dwight and Nick. The kid behind the
counter hadn’t gotten up and Nick wondered just how hard he’d been
kicked. Dwight offered no resistance whatsoever, he didn’t seem
like the same talkative, violent person from shortly before.

They were placed in separate cruisers while
the police ‘processed’ the crime scene or whatever it was they did.
Many people in uniforms went in and out before a woman eventually
came to the cruiser and took his picture. He wondered when anyone
was going to ask him what had happened. An ambulance had arrived
quickly, presumably to take the kid away. Dwight was in a cruiser
next to Nick’s and he peered over at him.

The man looked totally gone. He sat facing
forward, not moving, and as far as Nick could tell, not even
blinking. Nick had heard of tweekers before, but had never seen
one. He wondered if there were something more at play here.

Someone opened the door on the other side and
he turned to look. A female officer peered at him, then down at the
cuffs on his wrists, then back up to his eyes. The tiny gold
nameplate on her chest read ‘Finn’.

“You gonna behave?” Officer Finn said. Nick
nodded, not wanting to speak. Officer Finn stepped back and he saw
another person behind her. Dressed in the same color blue, the
man’s uniform was somewhat different, less bulky and rounded in the
shoulders. She whispered something he couldn’t quite make out and
then the man came forward, turning and bending as he stepped into
the car and sat on the empty seat beside Nick.

“It’s all right now. I’m here.” Her voice was
much softer to this person than it had been to Nick a moment ago.
It was almost motherly. “Tell me what you think, I’ll be right
here.”

Nick wondered exactly what this person was
supposed to think or not think. The man turned and looked at Nick.
His eyes were empty, his lips slightly parted. Nobody was home
behind those eyes. His face was a twin of Dwight’s.

He stared back at the man, unafraid that he
would take it as some sort of challenge. The pain of P’s blow to
his stomach had reduced to a warm ache just above his belly button.
Nick wondered for a second why he had thought of her again when it
came to him. This new person with no gold name tag on his chest was
another vamp. And he wasn’t just looking at Nick, he was looking
into him. He felt it, not knowing how such a thing was done.

At first, it was a gentle pulling behind
Nick’s eyes, gradually tracing back, tickling at his brain. Nick
knew he could break eye contact at any moment, at least he believed
he could. He wanted to cooperate, though. He wanted them to know he
had nothing to do with what happened inside the Big Pig and to the
kid. His left hand twitched involuntarily, then his right. It only
felt weird when he took three deep breaths without meaning to
before whatever was happening to him moved down to the muscles of
his thighs and then his toes.

The man broke eye contact and turned to the
officer who was standing outside the car. She knelt, tucking a few
errant strands of her brown hair behind her ear and inclining it
toward the man’s face.