Vampire's Vengeance, Part Two

“What the hell happened?” Rachel shot the locks on our door. “You don’t come home, you don’t call, and now—”

            “Stay away from me!” I lifted my hands. “Just—don’t come too close.”

            She stared at me. “Oh, shit, Tom.” She lifted a hand. I backed away before she could touch me.

            Rachel’s psychic. A little. But it didn’t take a lot of psychic power to find something wrong with me

“I told you.” I sank down on the couch. “Arrikin—that’s his name—he turned me into . . .  I’m a . . . a vamp.”

            I stared at her. Her hazelnut eyes, her red hair . . . her skin. Her throat. “I’m so damn thirsty.”

            She circled the couch. “Just wait here. Don’t move.” She went into our bedroom.

            I was too weak to move anywhere. I tried to reach for the remote, but my hands shook too much for me to grasp anything. So instead I just rocked back and forth on the couch, trying to breathe.

            “Sit back.” Rachel grabbed an arm. “Hands back here . . . that’s good. Okay.” A lock clicked around my wrists. “Relax.”

            I lurched up. “Wait—why do you have handcuffs?”

            “It’s a long story.” She sat next to me. But not too close. “What happened to your phone?”

            “He took it. Arrikin. Angelica found hers . . .” It was in my pocket. I leaned forward. “I need something to drink. Anything. Please.”

            “Hang on.” She rushed into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of water. “Here.” She unscrewed the cap and poured it into my mouth.

            I swallowed, almost choking. It wasn’t blood, but it helped. “Okay. Thanks.”

            Rachel pulled out her phone. “I’m calling Sharpe.”

            “Yeah, fine.” I started to shiver. “Do that.”

            Detective Anita Sharpe wasn’t exactly a friend, but we’d worked together during the Vampire Wars. And afterward. She’d almost volunteered to become a vamp herself, but instead I’d become some kind of vampire ambassador in her place.

            It had been a long, horrible struggle.

            I put a hand on my chest. Still beating. Weakly. I wondered if I could stake myself.

            I couldn’t become a vampire. But I wasn’t sure I was ready to die.

            The sun was starting to filter through the shades on the windows. I hunched down.

            “Anita? Rachel, Tom’s girlfriend. Yeah, I know it’s early, but . . . sorry.” She switched on her the speaker. “Here’s the thing. I need to get Tom to a blood center for vamps.”

            “Huh.” Sharpe didn’t even sound that surprised. “They’re closed during daylight hours—”

            I groaned.

            “Jurgen?” She lifted her voice. “Why the hell do you need to go to an HBDC?”

            HBDC stood for Hemovore Blood Distribution Center. The city had set them up as part of the truce ending the Vampire Wars. A way for vamps to get blood without attacking people. It wasn’t perfect, and it hadn’t stopped every attack, but it had cut killings way down.

            I leaned forward. “There’s a vamp. Arrikin. He—he kidnapped me. Apparently I killed his girlfriend during the war, or something. Anyway, he . . . I’m . . .” I hung my head.

            I felt weak. Ashamed. Useless. Tom Jurgen, not-very-fearless private eye, sometime vampire hunter—and now I was one of them.

            But mostly I felt hungry for blood. I tried not to gaze at Rachel’s throat.

            “Wow.” Sharpe whistled. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do. Try not to kill anybody, all right?”

            I closed my eyes. “Yeah. I’ll try.”

I dozed on the couch. Rachel tried to feed me vegetable soup until I threw up in a conveniently-placed trashcan. Then she put on Buffy the Vampire Slayer just to taunt me and went into our shared office, locking the door behind her. But she came out every 15 minutes or so to make sure I hadn’t chewed through my shoulder to get free and change the channel.

            Two hours later Sharpe knocked at the door. Rachel peered through the peephole, checking her phone, and then slowly opened up. “Thanks. I was about to smother Tom with a blanket. Does that work on vampires?”

            Sharpe glared. Solidly built, African American, she was a good cop. But she held the brown paper bag in her hand like a crystal egg. “Here. You don’t want to know how I explained it to Hughes.”

            Commander Hughes was in charge of the Vampire Squad, such as it was these days. A small group of cops who’d fought in the wars. He didn’t like me. Pretty much cops don’t like me. Sharpe barely tolerates me.

            I missed Dudovich. We hadn’t been friends, exactly. For a couple of years she refused to believe anything I told her about the supernatural dangers around Chicago. But in the end she started to trust me, especially after seeing vamps up close and personal

Then the vampire king Asmodeus had killed her.

            I lurched up as Rachel unscrewed the bottle. “Okay . . . okay . . .”

            “Stay calm, cowboy.” Rachel knelt on the floor and held the bottle against my lips.

            It tasted like—well, I’ve never swallowed blood before. The taste didn’t matter. For a moment I felt alive again.

            I wanted to guzzle the whole bottle. But Rachel pulled it away, spilling a few drops over my chin and T-shirt. “Don’t be a hog, Tom. This has to last.”

            “Goddamn it!” I howled in rage. “You goddamn slut! I will eat you! I will rip your arms and legs off and then I’ll—”

            Then Sharpe had her handgun out, pointed straight at my face.

A bullet in the head might not kill a vamp, but it would hurt.

            “You apologize to this woman right now, Jurgen.” Her voice was low and even and full of menace. “She doesn’t deserve that. And you don’t deserve her.”

            Oh shit. I closed my eyes. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Rachel.” I tried not to cry. “Go ahead and shoot me, detective. You’ll be doing me a favor.”

            Rachel punched my arm. “Shut up. Jerk.”

            Sharpe holstered her weapon. “Does anyone want to explain to me what the hell is going on?”

            I told her the whole story, everything I could remember. From lugging groceries to staggering out onto the street with Angelica and calling Rachel.

            Sharpe took notes on a tablet. “Did you get her last name?”

            “Uh . . .” I tried to think. “No. Just Angelica.”

            She smirked. “Some detective you are.”

             “I told her to call you. By name.” I leaned over. I wanted more blood. “Wait . . . I’ve got her phone.”

            Rachel fished Angelica’s phone from my pocket and tossed it over.

            Sharpe looked it over. “Well, we’ll check it out. Good thing it’s daylight.” She shoved the phone in her pocket. “Okay. I’m leaving now. Sorry about pulling my gun on you.”

            I managed a shrug. “Thanks for not shooting me.”

            Rachel locked up after she left. “You feeling any better?”

            I nodded. “You might want to get a stake.”

            She pounded a foot on the floor. “Goddamn it, I am not going to stake you! No matter what you call me!”

            “You might have to.” I didn’t want it, but I didn’t want to live like this. Or be a danger to Rachel. “But I was thinking about Arrikin. He knows where we live.”

            “Oh. Right.” She picked up the bottle of blood. “This is going into the refrigerator. Maybe you can have some later. If you’re good.”

            I nodded. “Yeah.”

I managed to sleep for a few hours in the afternoon. When I woke up, near twilight, Rachel was locking the door again. “Hi. I’m back. Sleep any?”

            I tried to sit up, but she’d tied my legs with two yards of duct tape. “Where’ve you been? Are you okay?”

            “Getting you a new phone.” She dumped a plastic bag on the coffee table. “Here’s the box, here’s the owners’ agreement, your new earphones, and the latest iPhone 357, or whatever model they’re on. Good thing you backed up everything on the cloud. And I know your password.”

            I sank back. “Can I sit up? Please?”

            She used a Swiss Army knife to cut my legs free, and then unlocked my handcuffs. “Stay there. I’ll let you have a little blood if you promise to behave.”

            My arms were numb, and my legs barely moved. But I was feeling better. Maybe from the blood, or maybe just because the sun was going down. I rubbed my wrists and stomped my feet on the floor.

            Rachel came back with the bottle. “Here you go. Take it easy.”

            It looked like a bottle of whiskey to an alcoholic. I was afraid to touch it. But I took a swallow and then set it down. “Thanks.”

            She moved it away and closed it up. “What are we going to do now?”

            I licked my lips for the last taste of blood. “I don’t know. This is obviously going to put a strain on our relationship.”

            Rachel laughed. “You think?”

            I tried not to stare at the bottle. “I’m sorry about . . . what I said. It was the vamp in me. Not me.”

            She sat on the couch. Not too close. “I know. If I thought . . . anyway, we’ve been through too much. Demons, demon dogs, giant mutant ninja chickens . . .” She laughed. “That one was crazy.”

            “Yeah.” I reached for my phone. “Is the sun down yet?”

            She nudged my arm. “Don’t you have an app for that?”

            Actually I did. And the sun had officially set three minutes ago.

            “Okay.” I searched through my contacts. They were all there. And right on top—

            “I have to make some calls.”