Vamp-Hire (24 page)

“I have family,” the bald vamp said. “I have
go.” He had visibly struggled mightily with forming those few words
in English. Nick got a good look at him and realized he didn’t look
like any vamp he’d ever seen before. His skin was yellow and his
ears were flat, like he was a different species of vamp. Most
inhuman of all were his eyes, black where they should have been
white, crimson red where they should have been brown or blue.

Nick felt a visceral revulsion at the sight
of him in toto. By some miracle he kept his feet rooted where they
were. If anyone ever were, this man was his brother. Somehow, he
managed to be alien to Nick. He’d said he had a family and needed
to get back to them. Nick had no one.

Tears spontaneously spilled from his eyes. He
thought he’d cried all the tears he’d had in store for his lonely
plight. Apparently, that was a well much deeper than he’d
thought.

“Please,” the vamp said, locking eyes with
Nick. “Please help. Please let go.”

“I-I can’t,” Nick said. “I’m trapped in here
too.” He grabbed hold of a section of wire mesh and shook it to
show he was in the same situation.

“I wouldn’t get too close to him if I was
you,” someone said. Nick turned and saw one of the men who had
kidnapped him. The one not Wendell. “That sucker is one tricky
devil.” Nick stepped over to see the man better.

“Why are you holding me?” Nick said.

“C’mon, man. Let’s not jerk each other’s
chains here. You know exactly why we picked you up. We get
sixty-five a head for you people violatin’ curfew.”

“I was just out for a walk. Getting medicine
for my sister’s sick kid.”

“Riiiiight.”

The baldheaded man leapt into the wire mesh
and began shouting rapidly in his native language at the man. It
was too fast for whatever in Nick’s head to keep up and he only
caught every fourth word or so.

“Calm down, you.” The man lifted some sort of
metal stick and jabbed the pronged end of it into the vamp’s chest.
His body convulsed violently and he went down like his bones had
evaporated. The human pulled the cattle prod back and pointed it in
Nick’s direction. Nick seethed, wishing he could peel away this
cage and get at him. “You gonna need some o’ this?”

Nick took a subconscious step backward when
the man stabbed the air in his direction, eyes locked on the weapon
in his hands.

“Good.” He smiled, revealing a set of
perfectly straight, white teeth. Nick was surprised, he would have
suspected there would have been at least a half dozen missing. He’d
have to remedy that. “Now I gotta make a phone call to see about
payment for you people. Pearlanne, come in here and watch for me,
wouldja?”

There was a door to his right, slightly ajar.
It creaked open and a tall figure stepped in. Pearlanne had cropped
hair with an apostrophe of a ponytail pulled to the back of her
head with a rubber band. She had on a necklace with a black
circular medallion. She was an Imprean. Nick recognized P
immediately, except she appeared less muscular, taking another step
back like she was a second cattle prod. The vamp in the pen next to
him moaned softly and her eyes settled on him. He didn’t think she
had noticed him but that would change in a moment.

The human left and she shut the door behind
him. P, or someone who had to have been her twin, stood there, lips
slightly parted and staring at the man on the floor. Nick looked at
him too, then at the pens farther out to either side of him. He
revised his estimate to at least a dozen other vamps in here,
captured by whoever these people were. And there she was on the
other side.

Nick was agitated that one of his kind would
take part in this. He didn’t know where the feeling came from,
considering he had never really associated with his own kind by
choice. One thing they all did have in common was that they were
all alone. Of all the things he had been taught back at the Center,
he had never been given a sense of community. It had never been
encouraged for vamps to participate with one another outside of the
doctors’ tests, to have a united strength greater than the sum of
its contributors. Of all the activities in which they had been
immersed, never had any of them involved cooperation. Except with
the commands of designated superiors.

Nick vowed that would change right now. He
didn’t waste time believing he could save everyone, but there had
to be something he could do to strike a blow against the machine
that had delivered him here. He had heard of wranglers before, had
been warned about them as a means of deterring vamps from going out
after dark. He was certain it was all legal, but that didn’t make
it right. As near as he could tell there wasn’t a single human in
this room and there wouldn’t be one on this side of a cage.

“You need to let us out,” Nick said.

Pearlanne looked at him and her harsh eyes
softened. “Sweetie,” she said. Her voice was similar, though a much
softer version of the grizzled one P had. “You know I’m not doing
that, right?” She smiled at him and slinked toward him in a manner
that would have been better complimented by a floor-length gown
instead of blue jeans and a sweatshirt.

“You have to let us go, Pearlanne.”

She looked momentarily surprised then smiled.
“And why do I have to do that?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do.”

She stifled a laugh and covered her mouth.
“Really?” She was about a foot away from the enclosures and began
walking past them in a line. “What about this one—should I let him
go?” A vamp lay curled into a ball on his bed of newspaper. He
lifted his head and regarded her out of one unwinked eye. “He still
smells like the cold pool of blood we found him in. Now, I think it
was human blood, but hey, we can take his word for it, right?” She
looked at him. “You didn’t kill anyone tonight, did you?”

“I’m innocent!” he shouted and laughed, near
maniacally.

“Sure you are, dear.” She walked back in
Nick’s direction, slowing in front of one of the vamps Nick had
come in with, the woman. She stared silently at Pearlanne and Nick
noticed she didn’t come any closer.

“She had a grenade. Probably was going to use
it as a paperweight? Maybe we should just give it back to her
before she goes.”

“Okay, I get it. Some of us are dangerous.
Not all of us. I was only out after curfew. The sun was barely
down!”

“So we should let you go?” She’d stopped in
front of his pen and jabbed a finger at him.

It sounded wrong to him so he didn’t say
‘yes’. He couldn’t abandon his position after so recently adopting
it. Sure, some vamps were bound to be criminals. In that respect
they couldn’t be more human.

“I’m sure you know about the Pens,” Pearlanne
said. She laid a hand on the wire mesh between them. “Did you know
eighty percent of all vamps go through there and that there’s a
ninety percent recidivism rate?”

Nick had heard that stat before and knew it
was as much crap as the one about one percent of the population of
the world being vamps. Too many bodies went through there to keep
track. He’d nearly starved to death there simply because they
couldn’t truck in food fast enough.

“You should know,” Nick said, “if you don’t
let me go, I’ll tell.”

“Tell what, Sweetie? I was never in the
Pens.” She had lowered her voice as if Nick was clueing her in on a
conspiracy. She hadn’t responded to his threat, almost as though
she hadn’t heard.

The door opened then and the man came in with
a cordless telephone tucked between face and shoulder, an
industrial strength-looking chainsaw and some device that looked
like a skinny tablet, much longer than it was wide with a nub of a
rubber antenna at the top.

He set the chainsaw down and walked over to
the Pens.

“No. I want all my money,” he said into the
phone. I got nineteen here, that’s fifteen hunnert dollars.” Nick’s
eyes went to the chainsaw. What the hell was that for? His
conversation with Pearlanne had been usurped by this new one
between man and phone. “I don’t care if you can’t take ‘em! I have
fulfilled my responsibilities, it is time to collect.”

The chainsaw wasn’t big at all, but it was
shiny and had big teeth every four inches in its chain. That could
probably saw through a body no problem.

“Well, then I’mma let ‘em go. Hell yeah, I
am.” He listened a moment. “And where does it say I gotta warehouse
vamps?” Another couple beats. “Well, when the military gets here
they can pay me my fifteen hunnert!”

He finally turned in the direction and seemed
to look right at Nick. He’d missed it before. Pearlanne was the
man’s daughter. It was in the set of their shoulders, the high
forehead, and the sea green eyes.

“All right, fine, I’ll do it. There better be
somebody on the way.” He took the skinny tablet thing and went from
one end of the room to the other, the device making a series of
beeps as he passed it over each pen. He got to Nick and the machine
made a high-pitched trilling sound. He slapped the side of it and
ran it again, getting the same result.

“What do you know?” he said. He got to the
end of the row and said into the phone, “Yeah, I got one. But I
want two thousand. And you take the whole lot and not only him, got
it? All right. Bye.”

He thumbed a button on the phone and tossed
it onto the table next to the chainsaw.

“So what are we doing, Will?” Pearlanne asked
him.

“They’re gonna come get ‘em,” he said,
thumbing in Nick’s direction. “Like I told ‘em to.”

“And what about the payment?”

“Already in the account.” He took out his
cell phone and waggled it in front of her. “Just got the
notification!” They fist bumped and Nick affirmed what he’d
suspected before. Father and daughter, although it wasn’t a
traditional relationship and that wasn’t even because she was a
vamp.

“You’re not going to live to see that money,”
Nick said. Will and Pearlanne looked at him. “They’re going to kill
you. Probably all of you.” He wasn’t sure how he knew this, he just
knew. “Calm down, you,” Will said. “We do this all the time. Pretty
standard stuff.”

“Have you ever had someone like me?” Nick had
no clue how he was the unique one amongst the vamps in here. He
didn’t even know there was such a thing. Even if he had thought it,
he would have guessed the man in the pen next to him would have
been it.

A smile hooked the side of Will’s mouth. “I’m
not that worried about it. You should be worried about Wendell,
though. He’s upstairs right now trying to find a twenty-four hour
dentist to fix his tooth. He’s pretty peeved at you.”

Nick said nothing. He was looking at
Pearlanne, who was making kissy faces at him.

“You should have asked for more for him,” she
said. “He’s a cutie.” Nick had the feeling that if he had asked for
more, whoever was paying would have gladly handed it over. There
was something just on the edge of being realized, something he
should be putting together

“Will, who were you talking to?” Nick asked.
“On the phone there, who was it?”

Will gave him a look. “I don’t think I’m
gonna answer that. I don’t believe we are on a first name
basis.”

“Come on,” Nick said. “Was it military?

“That’s an educated guess. I mean, who else
would it be?”

Nick figured it had to be military. Who else
could it have been?

The answers pinged inside his brain. The way
Nick saw it, there were two possibilities. Either it was Leonard
who was looking for a special vamp for whatever reason, his
‘special project’ as he had phrased it, or it was the vamp from the
vision he had had. If it were the second, then that had so many
other implications. Nick had guessed at least three, but if the
killers had connections and cash that implied so much more. So much
more going on than just killing other vamps and it still begged the
question why? To what end did it serve to kill their own kind?

“Was it a guy named Leonard?” Nick figured he
wasn’t the only military in the city, though he was probably the
only one actively seeking vamps. He hoped he was guessing right.
That was the only way they had a chance to see tomorrow.

“Him?” Will said. “I don’t deal with him no
more.” Something about his tone was too forced, too proud, like it
hadn’t been his decision to end their business. Clearly he wanted
Nick to think it had been.

“So you used to? What did he say—that he
didn’t want to do business with you because you kept bringing him
bums?”

“Hey!” someone a few pens down shouted.

Will’s eyes narrowed. “Never you mind what he
said to me. I’m gettin’ two large for the bunch a’ you.” He spun
around and stormed out.

“Wow,” Pearlanne said. “You push his buttons
almost as well as me.”

“Look, if you care about him at all, you have
to get out of here.”

“Why?” she said slowly. “What do you
know?”

“It’s my Skill,” he said. “You know about
Skills, right? Almost all vamps have them.” He realized she was the
one who had alerted Wendell and Will, locating him when he should
have been tactically invisible. “You have a Skill too. You told
them where to find me. Where to find all of us.”

From the look on her face, Nick could tell it
was true.

“Pearlanne, I need you to do something.” Nick
knew he was taking a big risk with the scant bit of credibility he
had. “Locate any vamps nearby. I bet there’ll be at least three of
them.” It was a big guess and he hoped if he came close she would
believe him.

“It doesn’t work like that,” she said. “I can
feel emotions and where they are. I’ll do it for you, Sweetie. For
a kiss.”

“Are you… are you serious?”

“As flapjacks on Sunday morning.”

Nick considered for a second. Pearlanne was
probably one of the prettiest women he’d ever encountered, vamp or
human. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have believed her,
and in this instance it seemed an even more difficult prospect to
believe. He didn’t want to but he didn’t want to die even more.