Vampire Moon (35 page)

 
      
 
She laughed, but mostly she cried some more and now she leaned into me and hugged me, and when she pulled away, she looked at me closely.

 
      
 
“Your hands are always cold,” she said, her tiny voice barely above a whisper.

 
      
 
“Yes. I’m always cold.”

 
      
 
“Always?”

 
      
 
I thought about that. Yeah, I was usually cold, except when I was flush with blood, especially fresh blood. I kept that part to myself.

 
      
 
“Is that part of your sickness?” she asked.

 
      
 
“Yes.”

 
      
 
“I’m so sorry you’re sick, Samantha.”

 
      
 
“So am I.”

 
      
 
She held my hands even tighter in a show of solidarity. And like a small child who’s always looking to make things better, she swung my hands out a little. “Did you really mean the part about dancing?”

 
      
 
“Sure,” I said. “I haven’t been dancing in a long time.”

 
      
 
“I’m a good dancer,” she said.

 
      
 
“I bet you are.”

 
      
 
There was a knock on the door, and I got up and checked the peephole and let Chad in. He came bearing flowers and wearing nice cologne. I mentioned something about the flowers being for me and he said in my dreams. My ex-partner was in love, but certainly not with me. I looked over at Monica who brightened immediately at the sight of Chad, or perhaps the flowers. Whether or not she was in love, I didn’t know, but, I think, she was in a better place to explore such feelings. In the least, she was now free to love.

 
      
 
Chad pulled me aside and we briefly discussed Ira’s crazy death. He wanted to know if I had any additional information and I told him I didn’t. We both agreed Ira’s death was crazy as hell and both wondered what had happened. We concluded that we may never know, and it was doubtful the prison was coming clean with all the facts. We both concluded that there was some sort of cover-up going on. The cover-up idea was mine, admittedly.

 
      
 
Chad looked at me, but I could tell he was itching to get back to Monica, who was currently inhaling every flower in the bouquet. Chad said, “She’ll be safe with me. Always.”

 
      
 
“That’s good.”

 
      
 
“I won’t let anyone ever hurt her.”

 
      
 
“You are a good man.”

 
      
 
“I love her.”

 
      
 
“I’m glad to hear it.”

 
      
 
“Do you think she loves me?”

 
      
 
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I think the two of you are off to a great start.”

 
      
 
He nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, I do too.”

 
      
 
The two of them left, together, arm-in-arm, and I suddenly found myself alone in my hotel room for the first time in a few weeks. I went out to my balcony and lit a cigarette and stared silently up at the pale, nearly full moon.

 
      
 
My thoughts were all over the place. I was hungry. Starving, in fact. I hadn’t eaten in days. I thought of the chilled packets of blood in my hotel refrigerator and made a face, nearly gagging at the thought.

 
      
 
My scattered thoughts eventually settled on Stuart, my bald client. And I kept thinking about him even as my forgotten cigarette finally burned itself out.

 
      
 
Chapter Forty-eight

 
      
 
I was taking a hot shower.

 
      
 
No doubt it was too hot for most people, but it was just right for me. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would say that I could almost smell my own cooking flesh. Anyway, such hot showers were some of the few times that I could actually feel real heat radiating from my body. The heat would last all of twenty minutes after stepping out of the shower, granted, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

 
      
 
I did my best thinking in the shower, and I was thinking my ass off now. Danny had two things on me: First, he had a vial of blood he had supposedly drawn while I was sleeping (the piece of shit), and, second, he had pictures of me
not
showing up in a mirror, or on the film itself.

 
      
 
Allegedly.

 
      
 
Both items were currently with an attorney friend of his—
allegedly
—who kept them God-knows-where. How much his attorney friend knew about me and my condition, I didn’t know, but I doubted Danny told him very much, if anything. Danny was good at keeping secrets. Anyway, according to my ex-husband, his attorney friend had been given strict instructions to make public the files should Danny meet an unfortunate end.

 
      
 
Briefly distracted by picturing Danny’s unfortunate end, I allowed the image to play out for exactly six seconds before I forced myself back to reality. However much I hated my ex, he was still the father of my children.

 
      
 
For that, he has been given asylum.

 
      
 
For now.

 
      
 
Anyway, Danny had also threatened to go public with his evidence should I fight him on anything. And so I didn’t fight him on anything. And so I accepted his harsh terms, his mental anguish.

 
      
 
I took it, and I took it, and took it.

 
      
 
I was sick of taking it.

 
      
 
So what could I do about it? I thought about that, turning my body in the shower, letting the spray hit me between my shoulder blades. Danny’s evidence was centered around my blood. Danny assumed, wrongly or not, that my blood would be different, and that I could be proven to be a monster. He also had the pictures. I wasn’t worried about those. Hell, anyone could manipulate such pictures nowadays, and I doubted anyone would take them seriously. Danny would look like a complete idiot waving those pictures around and would be laughed out of a job.

 
      
 
So I could dismiss the pictures.

 
      
 
But could I dismiss the blood? I didn’t think so. At least, not yet. The blood worried me. I needed more information. And as the superheated spray worked its way over me, I thought about what I had to do.

 
      
 
A few minutes later, dried and dressed, I grabbed my car keys and headed for the elevator.

 
      
 
It was time for a Wal-Mart run.

 
      
 
* * *

 
      
 
Two hours later, I was back in my bathroom, this time pouring the contents of a plastic bottle of organic juice down the toilet. Wasteful, I know, but what the hell was I going to do with it? Anyway, I flushed the whole shebang down the pooper, as Anthony would call it, and spent the next few minutes thoroughly cleaning out the container in the bathroom sink. I used my hair dryer to carefully dry the plastic without melting it.

 
      
 
Once done, I carefully cleaned my right index fingernail, running hot water over it and using some hand soap. I next swabbed some rubbing alcohol on my forearm, blew the spot dry, and then carefully pressed my right fingernail into the skin of my arm. I didn’t bother to look for a vein. A phlebotomist would have been horrified. Which, by the way, would be a good job for a vampire.

 
      
 
Except you would probably be fired for drinking on the job.

 
      
 
I laughed nervously at my own lame joke while I continued to work my nail deeper into my flesh. A knife would have been good, except I didn’t have one handy. Besides, my nail worked just fine.

 
      
 
The first thick drop of blood appeared around my naturally sharpened nail. I kept pushing and slicing, and soon I opened up what I thought was a sizable incision.

 
      
 
Blood flowed. Languidly, granted, but flowed nonetheless. I positioned the empty juice bottle beneath the cut and caught the first drop of blood as it dripped free. The red stuff flowed free for precisely ten seconds before the wound completely healed. No scar, nothing. Just a dried trail of vampire blood.

 
      
 
I repeated the cutting process, caught the fresh flow of blood, and did this eight more times before I was certain I had enough hemoglobin. Eight cuts, no marks. My arm completely healed.

 
      
 
Yeah, I’m a freak.

 
      
 
I swirled the contents of my blood in the container. A smoothie fit for Satan himself, minus the wheat grass and bee pollen, of course. As I swirled the contents, I thought hard about what I was doing. I even paced the small area in the bathroom and rubbed my neck and debated internally, and in the end, I packed the sealed juice bottle full of my dark plasma into a small Styrofoam container.

 
      
 
I had a friend at the FBI crime lab in D.C. A good friend. I was going to have to trust him, especially if my blood came back...
irregular
. And if it didn’t come back irregular? Well, I had nothing to worry about, then, did I?

 
      
 
I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

 
      
 
Most important, I needed answers, and this was the best way I knew of to get them.