Vamp-Hire (28 page)

Wherever ‘here’ was.

Nick had the option of going left or right.
He had read somewhere that most people were right-handed and would
favor their dominant hand when choosing a direction. He went
left.

To say this place was a maze would have been
an understatement. There was nothing to distinguish anything from
anything else. The only thing he saw were long hallways and doors.
All the doors he tried were unlocked, all of them empty except a
cot. For all he knew they could have all been the exact same room
he’d woken up in.

“I know what this is,” he said. “I know what
this is! You let me out to give me the illusion of control, but I’m
just in a bigger prison. A maze. You’re trying to break me.”

Nick hoped he had kept the niggle of panic
that was in the back of his brain out of his voice. He was actually
afraid of mazes to the point where he was unable to trace through
them when they were on paper. He couldn’t even do crossword puzzles
because they reminded him of mazes. Literary pathways obscured by
random letters.

Mazeophobia. That was the closest he had come
to finding what it was called. Mazeophobia was defined as fear of
getting lost while driving. Nick supposed that related to his
situation. If one could be considered as piloting or driving one’s
own life, Nick had spent the last few months being afraid of
getting lost while in the driver’s seat of his own life.

If Nick could be brave enough to see his way
out of here, then he promised himself there would be no more hiding
for him.

He realized that physically he felt great.
None of the pains that had racked his body a few hours ago or
however long it had been remained. More than that, he felt strong.
Stronger than he could remember ever feeling. Nick ran his hands
down his chest and stomach and thought he felt a layer of muscle
that had not been there prior. He crossed his arms and put his
hands on his shoulders, feeling his way down the muscles of his
arms. Those felt bigger too. Though he hoped this wasn’t the
product of a hopeful imagination, he was worried about why this had
happened. He certainly hadn’t been working out, nor had he been
eating the commensurate amount of protein to precipitate his added
bulk.

Nick had the urge to ask that old man more
questions. He wasn’t going to ask anyone anything while chasing his
tail like a dog. He needed to use a sense other than his eyes.

He smelled the air. At first it seemed as
gray as the walls in this place, then he began picking up
individual trails of scents. Hours old coffee, cigarettes,
artificial pine, peppermint oil, illness.

He turned his head, following the last scent.
It was rotten, cold, and held a note of blood. He followed it,
annoyed at having to navigate around walls and corners. Twice he
had to move in the complete opposite direction of where he wanted
to go.

Eventually, the halls widened and he came to
some sort of common area. It might have been a cafeteria once with
its counters and a back area where equipment for cooking and
storing food may have gone. It had a vague, old food smell, but
there were no tables or chairs, no sneeze bars, no people in hair
nets, and most of all, no food.

For the first time since he could remember,
Nick was hungry.

Maybe his fat stores had been depleted by his
sudden increase in muscle tone, maybe it was because he hadn’t
eaten in a while. Regardless, passing through here made him want to
eat and Nick realized he had fallen out of the habit.

He compiled a mental priority list. Step one:
escape. Step two: find food. The two were interchangeable.

On the other side of the room were two doors.
He couldn’t tell which the old man had gone through. He thought
left again.

Nick had no reason to think either door would
be unlocked and the knob turned when he tried it.

“I wish I coulda eaten Albert Einstein,” a
wide-backed vamp in a tight black shirt said from about twenty feet
in front of him. “He was a real smart guy. Maybe some of that
woulda rubbed off on me.”

Nick’s first thought was to attack him,
subdue him, and perhaps hurt him until he gave directions to the
exit. He’d only walked five feet when someone he didn’t see
spoke.

“I would have eaten Ghandi,” a female vamp
said.

“You got somethin’ against peace?”

“No, silly. Diet. With all those hunger
strikes and junk he’s the closest to vegetarian I’ll ever eat.”

“You do know vegetarians still exist? And was
the Mahatma a vegetarian? ‘Cause I’m not so sure about that
one.”

“I think he was. And it’s not just the
vegetarian thing, he was good. Goodness counts too.”

“Why not just eat Martin Luther King
then?”

“I thought about that. He looked like he ate
too many rich foods. He might give me gout.”

Someone tackled Nick.

The wind sailed out of his lungs and he
realized she must have been clinging to the ceiling or something.
He’d never thought to look up and somehow her voice had sounded
like it had been coming from somewhere else in the room. Nick
looked up at someone sitting on top of him. She was raven-haired,
pretty, maybe unnaturally so, and familiar. She pushed her hair out
of her face and even the wound on her neck struck a chord with
him.

“You better remember me,” she said. “You did
see me naked, after all.

“You’re the girl,” Nick said. “At the… at the
place Dolph took me to. You’re the dead girl.”

“In the flesh,” she said and back flipped off
him, catlike in her grace as she quietly came to her feet.

“But… but you’re—”

“Dead?” Another man entered the room from a
side door. It was Lieutenant Leonard. The last time Nick had seen
him his head was smoking. He’d healed up nicely.

The vamp with his back to Nick and the girl
went over to Leonard. She had easily taken him down and the male
looked equally powerful as they sauntered over to the lieutenant.
Nick could feel the violence in them. It resonated with something
deep within him and he realized he wanted to kill the lieutenant
just as he felt they wanted to kill him. Leonard seemed to barely
notice them, his eyes locked on Nick. They were three feet away
from him when they dropped to their knees, holding their hands up
to him in supplication.

Leonard’s eyes rolled up in his head, his
lids batting furiously, his breathing fast and heavy. He sounded as
if he were choking on something and his head pitched back. Nick
felt a wave of something off him that was not vamp. It tugged at
him and he might have taken a couple of unintentional steps forward
had he not been lying on the floor. With one final convulsion, what
looked like a spike shot out of the roof of his mouth. It pushed
out farther, his jaw unhinging to make room.

Nick sat up, staring in awe. He guessed it
was some sort of tooth, it looked like it could have been made of
bone. Then a drop of something translucent yellow hung from the
curved tip. It hung impossibly long before dropping onto the palm
of the woman. Another came a moment later and shortly after that a
steady stream of the liquid was pouring into both their hands.

They splashed it into their faces, put it
over their heads. The look on their faces was positively joyous,
rapturous. They smiled and laughed like children in a pool.

Nick was on his feet by the time the stream
had slowed to a trickle. The tooth/horn retracted and Leonard
closed his mouth. The man and woman rose in unison and turned to
face Nick, their expressions stony.

“It is in these most precious moments when
our connection is strongest,” Leonard said. “They can see my
thoughts, feel my desires, and my mere whim is their commandment.
You are mine now as well.”

“Yours?” Nick asked, backing toward the door.
“How do you mean?”

“It is my ichor that flows in your veins. My
will that mandates the continued beating of your heart.”

Images flooded Nick’s mind. It felt like some
sort of feedback between the two vamps and Leonard. He put a hand
up as if to ward this off, backing up and bumping into a wall. A
single image came to him, crystal for just long enough. It was like
a GIF in that it was about five or six images strung together on a
loop so the same thing kept repeating over and over. It looked like
a hospital room, except the walls and floor were covered in blood.
Too much blood to have come from one person. The only figure other
than the two vamps was Dolph. He was wearing a hospital gown as
they held him by either arm. His legs were gone below the knees and
his bloodied head lolled before the woman vamp tore one of his
bulky arms off as easily as tearing a sheet of paper in half.
Dolph’s head shot up, agony chiseled into his face just before
everything started over.

Nick was able to push the image out of his
mind before she tore his arm off a second time.

“Go, my children,” Leonard said. They turned
and pushed out the door he’d come through, running like first
graders who’d heard the last school bell of the day.

“Why?” Nick said, tears streaming down his
face.

“Because he was going to get in the way.”
Leonard made a face as if this was obvious.

“He’s been in the hospital for days now. He’s
old—he’s not a threat to you.”

“Of course he’s no threat.” Leonard tilted
his head like a dog trying to understand human language. “He is a
complication. A burr in my side. Which one of you killed my
Brandon?”

The change in gears made Nick pause. “I
did.”

“No. You did not. You merely wounded him. He
would have eventually died had I not intervened, but it would have
taken much longer for that to happen. Someone… tore him away from
me. Which of you dhampir did it?”

Nick found himself trying to press through
the wall. He kept telling his legs to run; they kept not listening.
Leonard cocked his head to the other side and narrowed his
eyes.

“You are resisting me?” He smiled and the
pressure that had been bombarding Nick eased. “Very well. I will
respect your desire to protect this person. I’ll shoot them
all.”

“What? No!”

“Then give me the name!”

“It was me. I killed him.”

“Your blood is my blood now. Do you think you
can lie to me and I not know it before the words cross your lips?
You could no more lie to me than I could lie to myself!” Leonard’s
fingers had elongated into talons. “You will tell me who and how it
was done. I would have this person die a special death.”

“I… I can’t.”

Leonard smiled again, only this time it was
the baring of a mouthful of hooked fangs. “You cannot resist me. I
am your master.”

Nick could feel Leonard large in his mind and
knew he was right. It was like fingertips had been grasping at him
before. Now, a boa constrictor had seized him by the throat.

“I’ll tell you. You have to take me to them
first.”

“You have a brain full of ulterior motives,
young man,” Leonard said, pointing with a human hand. “But hey,
that’s okay.” He slapped Nick on the shoulder, a shark-like smile
on his face filled with human teeth. “C’mon, let’s go.”

“What are you?” Nick asked.

The lieutenant coughed a laugh as he headed
out the door. “I’m not a vampire.”

“Look, I’m guessing I’m supposed to serve
you, right?” Nick followed at what seemed like a safe enough
distance. “You’re gonna spit on me with that horn-tooth thing and
I’ll turn into a mindless zombie?”

“It doesn’t work that way. Did Alex and
Cameron look like mindless zombies to you? The first time showed
them the power they could potentially have. After that they came to
me of their own free will and submitted. Just like you will. You
can be one of us too.”

Leonard seemed perfectly normal now. Like the
kind of guy you grab a beer with at a bar. His smile was friendly
and genuinely warm.

“But you kill people. I don’t think I can be
part of that.”

Leonard stopped. “Kill what people? You’re
not talking about Alex, I know. As you saw, she’s alive and
well.”

“Those two wranglers. That one vamp.”

“Unfortunate and unforeseeable. It was
self-defense, they fired on my people first. We were forced to. Had
they simply made you available for pick up, everyone would still be
alive.”

“Brandon said you gave them permission to eat
everyone else.”

“They killed an innocent. Wendell and Willis
might have had it coming, but what did she do?” Nick knew Leonard
had to have known he knew better, but was content with going down
this road anyway.

“Fruit from the poisoned tree. Anyway,
they’re kids.” He shrugged. “All this is so new to them. They just
went a little crazy is all. I already spoke to them about it and it
will never happen again.”

He said it like that was enough. His tone was
playfully stern, like he understood Nick thought it was a big deal,
but it wasn’t really a big deal. Nick stood shoulder to shoulder
with him and looked the man in the face.

“You have to be kidding me. There has to be
someone over you. Someone who signs off on what it is you’re doing.
If they knew the truth you’d—”

“I’d probably get a medal. Are you kidding
me? You know how people in this country feel about vamps. Even if
they did reprimand me it wouldn’t be more than a slap on the wrist.
You see, that’s what I’m trying to change with this program. People
will take vamps seriously once they see my peeps. They’ll take
pride in our contribution to the effort. In mein kampf!”

Although Nick didn’t know why he’d said ‘my
struggle’ in German, he knew he was looking at a madman—a monster.
He wanted to know what the endgame was, and maybe he could learn by
keeping him talking.

“So what are we supposed to do to make the
world a better place?”

Leonard shrugged. “Take out a terrorist or
two. Maybe a town full of them.”