Vamp-Hire (27 page)

He put his fingers on Brandon’s chin and
pushed. The mouth came open with a soft, plosive sound and Nick
peered inside.

“What are you doing?” Kim asked. They’d
attracted a small audience. Nick looked around, noticed Pearlanne
wasn’t amongst them. He wondered where she was.

He moved his upper lip to check his teeth. No
fangs. Maybe they flicked in and out or something. Nick touched an
index to the point the canines, wiggled at one of them. They didn’t
even break the skin.

He reached behind the teeth and felt
something hard. Nick hooked it with a fingernail and pulled out a
small piece of plastic. It was black, flat, and about an inch and a
half wide.

And had a pair of metallic fangs on either
end.

“What the hell?” Nick turned it over in his
hand, careful to avoid the sharp parts. Brandon and his group were
efficient killers. They didn’t need something like this. Was it
supposed to serve some other purpose?

Then the words of the killer from the vision
came back to him.

I killed no one. I set them free…

He hadn’t thought to take him literally. Nick
didn’t know what ‘setting free’ meant.

If he weren’t dying, what was happening to
him?

“The military is here,” Pearlanne said. She
was sweaty and looked like she had been fighting. Her lip was split
and one eye was partially closed.

“What happened to you?” Nick asked.

She smiled. “I was having a little chat with
a couple of vamps who had a problem with how they got here.”

“Well, you did kidnap us,” Allen said.

“You were out after sundown,” Pearlanne said.
“It was lawful apprehension.” She stared everyone down. “Were any
of you taken from your homes? Anybody complaining about excessive
force?”

Nobody spoke. Nick had been hit with a taser,
but they hadn’t beaten him with billy clubs or broken his legs.

“How can you be so blind?” a woman asked.
Nick looked and saw it was one of the vamps who he’d come in with.
“What happens to humans who get rounded up after sundown? Do they
get taken to detention centers? Did they get put in front of a
firing squad?”

“A firing squad?” someone said. “I heard they
send you to one of those islands. Puerto Rico or something.” During
the Conflict, many small islands had been completely overrun by
vampires. A rough estimate of somewhere around eighty percent of
Puerto Ricans had been devoured. The relative few who had escaped
had told any number of horror stories of what they had seen and how
they had narrowly escaped.

“A bullet is cheaper,” someone else said.
Nick was surprised to hear how cynical many of them were. He
supposed he was too, but they were even more glass-half-empty than
him.

“Look, regardless of how you got here,
there’s obviously someone or something out there that would have
just as soon seen you dead. They killed my uncle and my father. For
all anyone knows we still aren’t safe. The military won’t watch
over us all forever.”

“Let me go, Kim,” Nick said.

“The poison is still in you. You’ll barely be
able to move. You’re still sick.”

“Not for too long. I think this was meant for
me.” He held up the fangs.

“No,” Allen said. “That was some sort of
weapon. He only bit you because he knew he wasn’t going to make it
out.”

“No. If he was going to kill somebody it
would have been Kim.”

“Well, he did try to break my neck,” she
said.

“Yeah, and then he bit me. If this was a
lethal poison, why not bite the person who was hurting him? He was
trying to break your hold for long enough to get to me. And the
other obvious thing: I’m not dying.” Nick took her hand off his
arm. His stomach felt like the bottom dropped out of it but he held
his feet. The air agitated his skin and everything was tinged red.
Slumped into a chair, Nick was pretty sure he felt better than he
had when he first woke up.

Someone kicked a trash can over to him.

“You look like you could use that.” Nick’s
stomach agreed.

“Aw, hell.” He grabbed the trash can and
everything came up, which wasn’t much considering it had been
several hours since he’d last eaten. He was still holding onto the
can when the voice came over the megaphone.

“You. Inside. We need everyone inside to come
out single file, with their fingers laced behind their heads. The
area has been secured and you are in no danger.”

The tall blond, Ray, pulled his long hair
into a ponytail and tied it with a rubber band. He looked at
Pearlanne.

“You think he’s talking to you too?” He
smirked and headed for the door.

“Hey, where are you going?” someone said.
“Out,” Ray said. “Look, if they shoot us in here or out there
doesn’t make that big of a difference. I’m a get-it-over-with kinda
guy. Remember, we got some people in here who can’t comply. I’ll
give them the heads up.”

“I know what you’re thinking.” An equally
tall vamp who looked about half his weight hooked him by the arm.
“You think if you surrender first they won’t shoot you because they
want to round us all up.”

“Stop it with the conspiracies, already. The
military isn’t some big bad wolf. They’re on our side, even if it
doesn’t seem like it. If all you yahoos had bothered thinking about
it, if they wanted us all dead they would have launched a rocket
and blew us all up.” He wrenched his arm away from the skinny vamp
and continued toward the door.

“Wait a minute,” Allen said. “We still need
to think about this.” Ray kept walking. “Look, Ray, as far as we
know they’re still going to arrest all of us.”

Ray turned around and looked at him. “What?
You gotta be kidding me. Why would they?”

“Hello? Why are we all here to begin with? We
broke curfew.”

“But all this. I mean, they were trying to
kill us! They can’t be out there to arrest us now.”

“Why not?”

Pearlanne was standing by the door. She
looked uncertain.

“Nick?” she said. “What do you think? Those
vamps were here for you.”

“I don’t know,” he said, his stomach still
tap dancing inside of him. When Kim tried to put a hand on his
shoulder he shied away. He needed to feel his way through this and
despite outward appearances, he was starting to feel some better.
“They could have been coming for any of us. What was that thing
your father had? He scanned us all with it and it told him
something about me.”

“It’s something the military gave him.”

The room collectively groaned.

“So that’s it, then,” a woman said. “Those
uber-vamps were sent by the military.”

“What do we do?” Ray asked.

Nick bit his lip for a moment. “I’m gonna
turn myself in.” He stood. The room felt like it was leaning to the
left for a moment then everything slowly righted itself. Nick
blinked several times before his head cleared. “If I’m the reason
they came here, then they should leave when they have me,
right?”

No one said anything and Nick headed for the
door. He stumbled and Ray caught him. Nick thanked him and pulled
himself upright. Allen stood in front of the door.

“This isn’t right. This so isn’t right.”

Pearlanne seized him by the shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” she said. There were tears in
her eyes. “All of you. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t feel bad, Pearlanne. They’ve been
trying to get me for a while. It was just a matter of time.” When
Nick thought about it, there really was no way he was going to get
away forever. The city was only so big and he couldn’t have
honestly expected to go floating from place to place. They’d found
that girl and it didn’t seem like she’d been advertising her home
address.

He pushed open the door and put his hands
behind his head. There was a big military truck about seventy yards
away. There were about a half dozen floodlights pointed at him,
nearly blinding him.

“Proceed toward the light slowly,” a voice
boomed. Nick shuffled his feet. The light was giving him a
splitting headache. He wanted to shout, which would have been
pointless over the roar of a helicopter sweeping overhead. It added
another spotlight that felt like dynamite exploding in his brain.
Nick’s nose began to run and a moment later he realized it was
blood trickling across his lips.

He looked toward the light and thought he
could see the faintest outline of someone approaching him.

“Continue walking,” the voice ordered.

Nick thought he was moving. He looked at his
feet and saw they were barely rising off the ground. The light was
like a balloon, each step closer into it, the tauter it got, only
it wouldn’t explode once it had been squeezed hard enough, Nick
would.

He fell to his knees in a coughing fit.

“Get up and continue toward the light.”

Nick crawled for about a foot, maybe not even
that far. He held a hand up in front of him and pitched forward
onto his face. It was like his body had fainted, but he was still
wide awake. He felt his limbs moving, like he was treading water,
though he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. His mouth filled with
blood and his eyes felt too wet. He blinked and there was a film of
red in one of them.

Nick’s muscles seized and a moment later he
began shuddering like he’d been submerged in a pool of ice. He felt
himself be picked up; he couldn’t open his eyes to see by whom.

A moment later a door closed and he heard the
shuffling of feet.

“What’s wrong with him?” someone said.

“I think it was the light. This one is
supposed to be like those others and they don’t like bright light.
I think it gave him a seizure or something.”

“Well, let’s get this freak back to home base
and let Leonard deal with it.”

“What about the rest of them in there?”

Before the other man answered, something
heavy shut around Nick, sealing off sound.

Nick shook more violently than before, trying
to regain control of himself, and couldn’t. It was like all his
wires were crossed. Nothing worked the way it was supposed to. All
he could do was lie there, hot blood tears streaking out of his
eyes and into his ears.

Chapter 5

Friday

“How long… how long have I been out?”

Nick sat up, looking around. He was in a
dimly lit gray room. A man stood in the corner wearing a lab coat.
He was bald, mid-fifties, wore glasses. Nick didn’t like the scent
of him and a moment later smelled some sort of illness riddling his
body.

“You’ve been asleep thirty-four hours. We’ve
been monitoring you and you are just about ready.”

“Ready for what?” He swung his legs out of
the cot and rubbed his head. “Where are my pills?”

“I’m afraid you won’t be needing those
anymore. The bosa is the only medication you’ll need now.”

“The what?”

“The bosa. It’s Arabic for kiss. You had your
first dose of it the other night, albeit under non-ideal
circumstances.”

“What does this ‘bosa’ do?”

“Gives you more you to play around with.”
Nick stared at him. “You’ll understand shortly.” The man hadn’t
stopped scribbling on his clipboard, only looking up at Nick once.
“I need to take some vitals.”

He came within arm’s reach and took Nick’s
wrist in his reedy fingers. The man’s skin was unnaturally dry,
like he was made of paper. Nick took the opportunity to get a good
look at him. Fifties was being generous. The man had to have been
in his late seventies at least. His eyes were dark and sunken, his
cheeks sallow, the little bit of hair on his head wispy and white,
as well as his bushy eyebrows.

Nick wanted to ask how old he was, not really
wanting to know the answer. The doctor—at least Nick presumed he
was an MD or DO by his lab coat and overall detached demeanor—let
go of his wrist, took the stethoscope from around his neck, and
pressed the business end to Nick’s back.

“Deep breath for me,” he said.

Nick complied. “I should kill you,” Nick
said. The man paid his comment no mind as if he had a script and
had no ability or interest to deviate from it. He moved the
stethoscope to the other side of his back.

“Again.”

After he plucked the thermometer out of
Nick’s mouth he examined it, a look of deep concern on his face.
Nick gave up on asking him anything about his situation; the old
man wouldn’t answer.

“How am I doing?” he asked.

“You’ll live,” the doctor said. Nick didn’t
think he was a doctor anymore. Probably someone who’d been taught
the motions. Nick had experienced his share of detached physicians
during his time at the Center, and the old man was cousin to a
ghost. Nick could see him and feel him, but he had his own agenda
and could only follow it. It was his mind that seemed
insubstantial, nothing Nick did or said seemed to touch it. Twice
he’d moved as if to hit him and the old guy hadn’t even
flinched.

Finally, Nick gave in and let the old man
finish his check-up. He didn’t want to waste another threat and
have his bluff called. The old man scribbled some more notes on
that clipboard. After he put it down Nick was certain nobody else
was going to look at it.

“You’re dying, you know,” Nick said to him.
No response. Perhaps because the old man already knew that, perhaps
he’d been told that several times over who knew how many years
before and kept defying actual doctors’ prognostications. He turned
and headed for the door.

Nick hadn’t even seen that until now. He was
certain the door wouldn’t open and when it did and the old man
stepped through, he was sure there was a guard on the other side.
When the old man disappeared and nobody reached for the door to
pull it shut, Nick stood up. He walked forward, certain that any
minute it would slam and he’d be trapped in here.

Because he was a prisoner. Right?

No. Nobody shut the door and when he got to
it and peered out, nobody with a firearm was on the other side. If
it hadn’t been for the old man’s shuffling pace on his way out,
Nick might have thought he was here alone.