Vampire Games (4 page)

I wondered if Fang knew what had happened. After all, I knew that Hanner had a...gift for removing memories. Indeed, I sensed a lot of vagueness from Fang, and it was clear that our personal connection had been broken, somehow. I thought Hanner had something to do with that.

I’m...I’m not really sure,
he wrote, confirming my suspicions.

I had a vision of blood, a lot of blood. Fang might have been more closed off to me than normal and, although I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, we still seemed to have some sort of connection.

Enough for me to see the blood.

But most disturbing of all—

I wrote:
You drank blood.

He paused only slightly before writing:
Yes, Moon Dance.

I sensed his shame, but I also sensed his excitement. Fang had grown up with elongated canine teeth, a rare defect that had grown into an even rarer psychosis: as a youth, he began to actually believe he was a vampire. Crazy, but that was exactly what it was.

Crazy.

His psychosis had led to the death of his girlfriend, a teenage girl who had been partially bled to death...and partially consumed.

By Fang.

His escape from a high-security mental institution had been in all the papers, and his subsequent manhunt had been well documented. But he had slipped away.

And assumed a new identity.

Aaron Parker, aka Fang, now went by the official name of Eli Roberts—and how he landed in my life was one of coincidence and obsession. Although I doubted he still saw himself as a real vampire, I knew he retained a hunger for blood. I knew this because every now and then I would see it in his thoughts. His hunger. But over the years, he had controlled himself. Controlled
it
.

We were both silent. Or, rather, the IM message box remained silent. I wasn’t sure what to say. I sensed that Hanner was working her way into his world, but for what reason, I didn’t know. But one thing I did know: none of it was good.

So, what will you do now, Fang?
I finally wrote, deciding on the direct path. What else could I say?

I don’t know, Moon Dance.

Did she threaten you?

She didn’t have to. I understand the implications. I’m a fugitive. She’s a cop. Things could go very badly for me.

Did she say what she wanted?

From me? Not yet.

She wants something from you, Fang.

I sensed him nodding, and after a moment, he wrote:
I know.

But I sensed he was holding something back, and finally wrote:
There’s something else, isn’t there, Fang?

Yes, Moon Dance.

I waited, suddenly afraid of the answer.

After a moment, he wrote:
She wants to give me something, Moon Dance. The one thing you wouldn’t do for me, the one thing you wouldn’t give me.

Ah, Fang...

Yes, Moon Dance. Immortality.

Chapter Seven

The flight to Vegas was of the commercial airline type.

Although only forty-five minutes from John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, I had plenty of time to think about Fang and Hanner. How she had found him, I didn’t know. I suspected she had followed me or had someone watch me. That she had gone over my phone records wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, either. Generally, the police needed a damn good reason to scour one’s phone records. She could have made up a reason, or done so secretly, in a way that I wasn’t aware of. Private investigators don’t have such access to phone records. A homicide investigator would.

The plane hit some turbulence, which I ignored. Turbulence didn’t bother me. Nor did the thought of the plane plummeting to Earth in a fireball. I was fairly certain I would have been the one passenger on board to walk away from such a crash. Or fly away.

If Hanner had gone the phone record route, she would have seen the pathetic few times that Danny had called to speak to his own children—and the pathetic short amount of time he had spent talking to them, as well.

She would have also seen the occasional phone call from Eli Roberts, aka Aaron Parker, aka Fang.

Some minor research into Eli’s background would have netted a curious result: his background didn’t go very far back. A quick scan of his current background would have resulted in seeing his current employment. From there, all she would have had to do was swing by for a visit...

And scan his thoughts.

She would have known then who he was. No secrets would have been hidden from her. She would have known his murderous past, and his current desires.

But why?

Hanner had proven to be helpful in the past, but perhaps she was just covering for her own kind. After all, she had, on more than one occasion, successfully hidden my supernatural activity from the local police. More than helping me, we had drunk blood together. Discussed our kids together. Laughed together. I had found her insightful and knowledgeable, if not a little feral. Whereas I fought to hold onto my humanity—at least what I thought made me human—Hanner clearly embraced her vampiric nature. She was all vampire, through and through, and any vestiges of humanness were long, long gone.

As an immortal, her thoughts were closed to me, so I could only guess what her intentions were. Clearly, she was obsessed with me. If not obsessed, then overly
aware
. Perhaps she was this way with all local vampires. Or with any vampires with whom she crossed paths. Perhaps she considered all other vampires her enemies.

I shook my head at that thought and leaned back in my economy seat. No, if she considered all vampires her enemies, then she wouldn’t have supported a local blood dealer—the actor, Robert Mason—who, in turn, provided blood for many other vampires.

Perhaps her interest in me had something more to do with our last conversation, when she had said that I was a rare breed.

That I had special gifts.

That I could do things other vampires couldn’t.

Or perhaps her interest in me had something to do with the old vampire who had turned me seven years ago. The old vampire, now dead thanks to Rand the Vampire Hunter. He, of the cute buns.

I thought about all of this as the plane landed. A jolting landing. I, myself, landed far smoother, of course. Which reminded me: According to Hanner, I was one of the few vampires who could transform.

When the plane finally came to a stop, I stood with others, got my bags like the others, and waited in line to shuffle off the plane. Like the others.

But I was not like the others.

No, I was not like them at all.

Chapter Eight

Dr. Herbert Sculler looked like a character out of a Tim Burton movie.

The short doctor wore round glasses and a lab coat that looked far too big for him. His face was whiter than my own and he smiled far too often, at least too often for a medical examiner who spent his days around corpses.

We were sitting in his office, which was next to his examining room. There was a man lying on one of the tables, under a sheet, waiting patiently for the doctor’s return.

Sculler’s office was small. I suspected it was so because he spent the majority of his time in the examining room. There, against the far wall, one, two, three corpses were lined up in plastic bags on shelves.

More interesting was the male spirit standing off to the side of the dead man in the examining room. The spirit crackled with energy, even when standing motionless. So far, it had not taken its eyes off the body under the blanket. From here, I could see two dark holes in the spirit’s chest, which I knew to be bullet wounds. After many months of seeing the dead, I knew that spirits often mirrored their appearance at death.

Welcome to my life.

The spirit merely stood there and stared, wavering in and out of existence. Meaning one moment he was a fairly full-formed human-shape; the next, he was nothing more than static electricity. Upon closer inspection, I saw other spirits in the lab, too. In fact, dozens of them. But most were nothing more than faint balls of light.

“
Ah, here we go,” said Dr. Sculler, who was busy clicking away on his computer. “Caesar Marquez, boxer, age twenty-five, head injury.”

“
You examined him personally?” I asked.

Sculler nodded gravely. Cutting dead people open was, after all, serious business. “Yes, performed it myself.”

“
How long have you been a medical examiner, Dr. Sculler?”

“
Twenty-two years.”

“
How many fatally injured boxers?”

“
Just the one, although I’ve seen my share of brain injuries. Particularly football injuries.”

“
Was Caesar Marquez’s brain similarly injured?”

“
I’m scanning the autopsy images now, if you would like to look.”

“
I would.”

“
Then come around here.”

I hadn’t worked for the federal government long, but I had seen my share of medical examining rooms and corpses. And these days, death was something to analyze, not to fear. No, never again to fear.

There were dozens of images of a dead man in various stages of examination. The young man, from all appearances, was the same Caesar Marquez I had seen fighting in the YouTube clip.

As I leaned in behind Sculler, he clicked over to a cluster of photographs that focused on the man’s head. A few clicks later and the top half of the skull had been removed. The skin itself had been peeled down over the face. The next image showed, from all appearances, a very healthy brain. Finally, the brain had been removed and was now sitting in a small metal tray.

Dr. Sculler zoomed in on the freshly-removed brain that had been housed in a perfectly functioning young adult male just a few hours earlier. Sculler pointed to the screen, in particular to a red discoloration along the left temporal lobe.

“
Bleeding,” he said. “The brain is susceptible to bleeding, especially after trauma. Unlike other body parts, however, when the brain bleeds, it’s a major problem. Bleeding in the brain causes pressure. Pressure can shut down various functions of the brain...and can lead to death. Often quickly.”

I said, “The official cause of death is epidural hematoma.”

“
Yes.” He pointed to the screen. “Bleeding between the dura mater and the skull.”

“
A brain hemorrhage.”

“
Yes, but in this case the damage is technically classified as an extra-axial hemorrhage, or an intracranial hemorrhage.”

I nodded, taking this in. More and more it was looking like Russell Baker didn’t have much of a case. “Did you actually see the fight, doctor?”

“
I did, yes. Later.”

“
And did you see enough to warrant a brain hemorrhage?”

The good doctor removed his glasses. As he did so, a spirit of an elderly woman materialized behind him in the far corner of the office. The skin on the doctor’s forearms immediately cropped into goose bumps. He shivered slightly, oblivious to the sudden source of cold air. The old woman only partially manifested, hovering on legs that didn’t exist. If the good doctor could see what I was seeing, he would undoubtedly run for the hills.

For now, he only shivered, blissfully unaware of the spirit energy around him. The woman faded just as quickly as she appeared. The hollow look in her eyes would have been haunting, if not so familiar. At least, familiar to me.

After shivering some more, he said, “Quite frankly, no.”

I perked up. I just hate taking money from a client and then giving them nothing in return.

“
No?”

“
No. But that doesn’t mean that any punch at any point in the fight couldn’t have caused the injury. Very little is understood about brain injuries.”

“
I understand, but is it your professional opinion that you think nothing in the fight warranted death?”

“
Not professional. Personal. Unofficial.” He paused. “Officially, he died from a blunt force received during the fight.”

“
Officially, but not likely.”

He stared at me, and then started nodding. “Not likely.”

“
How old was the wound?” I asked.

“
It was within the correct time frame. I have no doubt that it happened in and around the time of the fight.”

“
Or possibly before?” I suggested.

The good doctor shrugged and rubbed his arms. After all, the old lady had reappeared in the far corner of the room.

“
Possibly,” he said.