Vampire for Hire (30 page)

 
      
 
The line dropped before I could say goodbye.

 
      
 
Chapter Forty-four

 
      
 
I was back at the hospital, sitting in a chair at the foot of my son’s bed. He was sleeping quietly. Too quietly. I would have thought he was dead if not for the hospital equipment that chirped out a
heart beat
.

 
      
 
The dark halo around him was bigger than ever. My son, to my eyes, seemed lost in a cloud of black smoke.

 
      
 
Sitting on my lap was a clipboard with a mostly blank sheet of paper I had found in the backseat of my car. The paper had my daughter’s name on it and the beginning of an assignment. I wondered idly if she ever finished the assignment.

 
      
 
I held in my hand a Pilot Gel Ink Rolling Ball pen, which I preferred to use when I did my automatic writing sessions.

 
      
 
Automatic writing is still new to me. In fact, I’d only done it a couple of times, and both times I was certain I was going crazy.

 
      
 
In essence, as it was initially explained to me by Fang (and verified by a little online research) the process of automatic writing is a way to communicate with the spirit world. In particular, with highly evolved enlightened beings who know what the hell they’re talking about.

 
      
 
At least, that was the idea.

 
      
 
Who or what came through in these sessions was certainly open to debate. And, yes, there was a part of me that seriously suspected I was moving my own hand, and giving myself the answers I wanted to hear.

 
      
 
Just a part of me.

 
      
 
The other part of me, perhaps the part that was still human, believed that I was getting messages from beyond. By spirit guides, or spiritual beings.

 
      
 
Or, for all I knew, Jim Morrison, unless he was alive, too, and working as a bounty hunter in Hawaii.

 
      
 
I went through the various steps of centering myself, imagining silver cords attaching themselves to my ankles and lower spine and reaching down through the many hospital floors, the building’s foundation, through the very ground itself, down through Hell and a lost world of dinosaurs, and all the way to the center of the earth, where I mentally tied them tightly around three massive boulders.

 
      
 
Now firmly anchored, I closed my eyes and attempted to empty my mind by focusing on the physical act of breathing, drawing air in through my nose and out my mouth, even if it was air I didn’t need. Except I kept thinking about my son, lying there just a few feet away, fighting for his life.

 
      
 
Focus, Sam.

 
      
 
I closed my eyes and, as I breathed, I pictured the stale, medicinal hospital air flowing over my lips and down deep into my lungs. I breathed in, holding the air, and then exhaled it.

 
      
 
I did this over and over, breathing and picturing, and any time I thought of my son, I gently released the thought.

 
      
 
In and out, in and out.

 
      
 
Breathe, breathe.

 
      
 
My hand twitched.

 
      
 
I kept reminding myself to breathe, and as I breathed I imagined the air currents tinged with gold, and the golden air flowing into my mouth and filling me with golden light.

 
      
 
My hand twitched again, followed by a full-blown spasm.

 
      
 
The pen gripped in my fingers moved back and forth.

 
      
 
It’s coming,
I thought. Whatever it is.

 
      
 
Keep breathing. Breathing. In and out. Golden light.

 
      
 
Jesus, my hand is moving.

 
      
 
Don’t think about it. Good, good.

 
      
 
But now I couldn’t deny that something seemed to have settled in me. I actually felt another presence. A warm and loving presence.

 
      
 
And then my hand moved again, and again, and I realized it was writing. I looked down at my clipboard as two words appeared:

 
      
 
Hello, Samantha.

 
      
 
Chapter Forty-five

 
      
 
“Hello,” I said quietly, feeling slightly silly, but also feeling like something very important, and very exciting, was happening. “Um, how are you?” I added lamely.

 
      
 
My hand twitched again and again, and it kept on twitching until it wrote out a reply. I could only watch in stunned silence. My hand, in these moments, did not feel like my own.

 
      
 
I’m doing very well,
it wrote.
It’s a great day to be alive, is it not?

 
      
 
“Am I alive?” I whispered, my voice barely audible to myself. “There’s some who think that beings such as myself are dead.”

 
      
 
More twitching and tingling. More writing.
Do you feel dead?

 
      
 
“No, but I feel very...different.”

 
      
 
Twitch, write.
You should feel different. We are all different.

 
      
 
“Am I dead?” I asked. “And don’t ask:
Do I feel dead?
”

 
      
 
Your body went through a massive transformation, or metamorphoses, Samantha, but it did not die.

 
      
 
“Then why don’t I breathe? Why can’t I eat?”

 
      
 
That’s the metamorphoses of which I speak. Or write. Your body, quite literally, is not the same, and thus does not have the same requirements.

 
      
 
“Like food or air.”

 
      
 
Exactly. Yes.

 
      
 
“But I still need blood.”

 
      
 
Of course. This is your new body’s requirements.

 
      
 
“And so my new body is a killer, if it must feast on blood.”

 
      
 
Does all blood need to come from that which is dead?

 
      
 
“No,” I said, and my voice trailed off. I thought about something Kingsley had said earlier, about blood donors. Those who donated willingly...and those who most certainly did not. Blood debt perhaps.

 
      
 
Yes, Samantha, you are a far more powerful being than you were before, but what you make of your new physical form is up to you.

 
      
 
“I could choose to kill. Or not to kill.”

 
      
 
Exactly. Yes. Just like everyone else.

 
      
 
“So I have a new body...but I still have the same moral code.”

 
      
 
You are still you, sweet child, no matter what shape you take.

 
      
 
“Don’t call me sweet child. It makes me want to cry.”

 
      
 
Why?

 
      
 
“Because it sounds like you care about me. That you love me. But I don’t know who you are or what you are.”

 
      
 
Understood. But remember, all you have to do is ask.

 
      
 
“I have asked, but you’ve avoided the question.”

 
      
 
I did not avoid. I simply gave you the answer you were ready for. Are you ready for the answer now?

 
      
 
I thought about that. I looked at my son sleeping on his back. My God, had the black halo actually grown in just a few minutes?

 
      
 
“No. Not now. Wait. Perhaps just a name.”

 
      
 
You want my name?

 
      
 
“Yes.”

 
      
 
My hand and pen paused, and then together they wrote:
I am called by many names, through many lives, but I’m most commonly called Saint
Germain
.