Annie of the Undead Read online

  He answered in that other voice of his, the distant one with no theatricality and no fun.

  “That has never happened to me before.”

  “Never been attacked by vampire hunters before or never had them almost win?”

  “They are not what you think they are.”

  “I don’t know, I’m pretty sure that was a stake that bitch nailed you to the bed with.”

  No answer.

  “Look, hombre, I don’t know if you caught this part, but I just saved your ass back there. I’m thinking you’d better cough up some answers.”

  He remained utterly calm as he answered.

  “They were hunters, but not righteous defenders of mortal morality. They were members of a cult who capture immortals to extract our power. They planned not to slay me, but to enslave me.”

  “So there’re more of them.”

  He nodded, keeping his eyes on the road.

  “How many more.”

  “Many.”

  My favorite.

  “So will they come after us again?”

  “Us?”

  “Well, yeah. If you hadn’t noticed, you owe me big. I’m not cutting out ‘til you pay up.”

  “They will try again to take me. They have kindled a spell against me. They will carry a charm, charged with a mote of my own blood, which will lead them to me wherever I am.”

  “How’d they get a hold of your blood?”

  “That is not readily apparent,” his voice was suddenly charged with bitterness, “You must understand: This situation is critical for me. They are not often as brazen as they have just been, and they will not like for others of my kind to know what they have done. It does not matter where I go; they will follow.”

  “They’ll want you dead, so you can’t narc on them to all the big bads.”

  “They would settle for dead.”

  Then they would prefer something worse. It sounded to me like this vampire had even bigger problems than the quadruple murderer he was sitting next to. So much for his offer of carefree nights of delightful debauchery.

  “They cannot take me by night. They are mortal. But they will try by day. We must run. It will take some time for the charm to work if I am at distance.”

  “Now, hold up. We’re just gonna run? How long? Wouldn’t it be better to go after them? Kick their asses with you vertical? Bullets seem to work on ‘em pretty good. We could knock over sporting goods store, get armed. Let’s put them on the run-“

  I interrupted myself, breaking into a coughing fit.

  His cold hand suddenly touched my shoulder. A little mirth returned to his manner.

  “Your verve thrills me. The way you gunned down those witches…”

  “Can you put that hand on my forehead? Ahhh….”

  Fever, meet the undead.

  “We will have vengeance for this transgression, but the resting place of a vampire is a sacred thing. I will not bed down in doubt. I will punish these hunters, but not with such a weakness.”

  “There’s some way out of this –this spell, then, right?”

  “Yes. Their magic is potent, but I hold an ace, if he can be reached.”

  I sensed that he was about to tell me something he was hesitant to share –someone he was hesitant to share. But he went ahead with it.

  “He and I have a history…an intimate history. If I can find him, and if he will share his blood with me, the blood bond will be broken and their charm useless. Even if they know where I am then, they would not dare to challenge an alliance of vampires.”

  Oh, goodie. Another vampire around. The idea set me ill at ease, but it was better than being hounded by bloodthirsty cult members indefinitely. Maybe.

  “So how do you summon this blood donor?”

  “I call his secretary.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “If he contacts her, she will relay my message, and then, if he wishes, he will come.”

  “Lots of ifs.”

  “It is the way things are.”

  “You can’t just go to him?”

  “No, I cannot. Even if I did know precisely where to find him, for a predicament of this nature, it would be considered inappropriate, presumptuous, for me to do so.”

  Inappropriate and presumptuous to ask an old, intimate friend for help? That sucked. It sounded to me like his associations might not be any better than mine.

  “So what now, vampire?”

  “We go to a prearranged place of meeting, a city where other individuals of unnatural affiliation do not operate. We diminish complications.

  Oh, complications. I was fresh out of those lately.

  “There are places like that?”

  “Some.”

  “So where’s ours.”

  “New Orleans.”

  “How’s the grub down there?”

  “Diverse.”

  He paused.

  “You don’t find our destination droll?”

  “No. Why would I?”

  He smiled a little, apparently pleased with my answer.

  “Never mind.”

  All I knew about New Orleans was that they had a big-ass street party there every year during which they got drunk and naked and somehow managed not to get beaten, tazed, tear-gassed, and shot by rubber bullets (the Motown heat never would have let that shit fly), and that they had a big-ass storm that brought on another national spectacle for the media to lavish upon the viewing public. Whether or not Kanye West was right when he proclaimed so boldly what we were all thinking when the hurricane struck, no one could deny the indelibility of the images of houses flooded to the eaves, bloated bodies rotting in the sun, black mothers clutching dehydrated babies on overpasses, and anarchy that burned Detroit’s Devil’s Night rep.

  “You sure that’s the kind of place you want to run to?”

  “It is ideal. It is currently an open city. No immortal currently claims ownership of it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We try to be aware of these things.”

  His teeth flashed as he spoke. He did not try to hide them. I found myself for the first time, in what would be an ongoing thing with me, wondering how in heck people didn’t know about vampires.

  “Government conspiracy,” I mumbled.

  Miguel, who was fully aware not only of my observation of him but of the exact thought going through my head, said, “You will find that very few people will believe in the unnatural even when it has them by the throat.”

  “I did.”

  “Yes. You are unusual.”

  “I’ve had enough. I’m passing out now. Wake me up when we get there, if I’m still breathing.”

  “Rest. I will need you to keep watch when we stop before dawn.”

  “Just stop somewhere with ice.”

  As he turned onto the snow-covered interstate, I fell into fevered unconsciousness.

  5

  Due South

  “Annie….Annie.”

  I whimpered.

  “Annie.”

  I swallowed. Christ, my throat hurt.

  “Annie.”

  Oh, God, and everything else hurt too.

  “Annie.”

  A cold hand on my arm.

  “Annie.”

  “Ohhhh,” I groaned, “Go away, vampire.”

  “Annie, you must arise. We are spending the day here.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “No, Annie. Open your eyes.”

  “Rrrrr,” I complained, but I did.

  And I beheld Ice.

  The vampire held a whole ten pound bag of ice. He held out a cube to me. I greedily put it in my mouth.

  After three more, I recuperated enough to croak, “Where are we?”

  “Chattanooga.”

  “Whatanooga?”

  “Tennessee.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Four a.m.”

  He put his hand on my forehead.

  “You’re temperature is 100.6 Fahrenheit. Come, you
must rest.”

  He helped me out of the car and across the parking lot of the little roadside motel. I noticed we were not on the interstate anymore, but on a quieter two-lane. The air here was cool, but not frosty, and there was no snow to be seen. I noticed a light blinking high up in the dark above the lights of the parking lot. It looked like an airplane, but it was stationary. I could make out a massive dark area beneath it where no stars shone.

  “Is that a mountain?” I asked as he opened the door for me.

  “Yes,” he replied, as he shuttled me through.

  “Is this the safest place for us to stay?” I asked doubtfully.

  “Yes,” he replied not doubtfully.

  The room was small, dimly-lit, badly decorated, and had a seedy, smoky motel smell. I felt right at home.

  He turned down the covers on one of the double beds, ushered me to it, and tucked me soundly in. Then he set a plastic cup full of ice on the bedside table.

  “The rest is in the refrigerator,” he said and turned out the light.

  I could see his silhouette framed in the light from the parking lot.

  “I will return in two hours. Rest.”

  I very rapidly obeyed his instructions.

  “Annie.”

  “What now?”

  “I have returned.”

  “Already?”

  With the finesse of a slug, I crawled into a sitting position and knocked back the cold cup of water that had once been ice.

  He touched my face.

  “Your fever has lessened.”

  The vampire put something into my lap. I felt the familiar shape of a pistol with my hands. Then he set something else heavy beside me on the bed, then something else.

  I turned on the lamp.

  The long thing was a shotgun, the handgun was a .40 caliber P226, and in big green ammo box I found, what else, a dozen boxes of ammunition. Five boxes contained .40 caliber Smith and Wesson, and the rest was shot. The trove totaled over one thousand rounds. I was moved.

  “How did you know it was my birthday?”

  “You did so well with so little last time. I’m curious to see what you can do with this.”

  He offered me a fresh cup of ice. I took it. He was smiling.

  “You expecting an army?” I asked, already loading.

  “They try to operate in inconspicuous numbers, often maneuvering in the shape of house cats.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. Never feel at ease in the presence of a cat. Never feel unobserved in any place where a cat might be concealed. Their most powerful weapons are magic, but they employ them infrequently. They are adept with mortal weaponry, but, as both they and I have recently discovered, so are you.”

  “Short John had his own firing range.”

  “I would not have guessed.”

  “He didn’t use it much. I did.”

  The vampire handed me another bag, as though there was room on my lap for any more presents. In it was a set of clothes, used but not dirty: jeans, a T-shirt, a sweatshirt, socks, tennis shoes. Simple. Perfect. He had even brought me a big bandana with which to confine my bush. So it was emblazoned with the Battle Flag of the Confederacy –we were heading south, after all.

  I stared at him, tall, thin, clean and finely dressed, his punctured pajamas replaced by his walking clothes. He looked sheik and dangerous, like a Fairbairn-Sykes dagger. He dwarfed the claustrophobic motel room with his presence. He was still rosy-gold from the prior evening’s kill. Or had he killed again? His eyes sparkled like peridot.

  Whose clothes had he given me?

  He was looking somewhere off into a hypothetical distance, seeing or hearing something that only vampires see or hear.

  “Dawn comes,” he said and sat down on the floor beside the bed. I watched as he slid beneath it and out of view, taking an extra blanket that had been sitting folded on a chair with him.

  “That’s a smarter place to sleep,” I said, “If not as sexy.”

  “It gets better,” he said from beneath the bed, “You would not believe some of the places I have lain.”

  “You wouldn’t believe some of the places I’ve slept either.”

  “The old way was to sleep below. The pyramid tombs at Tikal. The catacombs of France. The sunken ruins of the place once called Atlantis.”

  “I was thinking more about the dumpster behind Badd Burger, the floor of the crack house next to Motown Bowling…Wait a second. Did you just say Atlantis? And you’re not talking about the resort, are you?”

  “I will take you there one day.”

  “The resort or the Lost City of? You know I’d drown, right? I can’t hold my breath for more than a couple minutes. I’m not a vampire. I’m not a…Wait a second. Are you implying…Hey, Miguel…Hey…”

  I leaned over the edge of the bed and peered upside-down at the blanketed shape underneath. But there was no answer. Morning had come.

  The army of bad pussies never came that day. I laid in bed, icing my ankle, sucking ice, and getting up to pee every ten minutes for hours, peeking through the blinds for a glimpse of would-be do-badders, watching TV insatiably, looking for word of a manhunt, or womanhunt underway in Michigan. I saw no police sketches of my face or Miguel’s, nor mention of our names. But there was a bit on the news about the shooting and the fire. It was labeled as a business transaction gone bad. The receptionist described the prostitute and her client who had checked in late at night. Apparently, they had shot each other. A portion of the hotel had burned so badly that details were difficult to discern, but two unregistered firearms were found at the scene, as well as the remains of two bodies containing lead.

  Now I realized what Miguel had done so quickly that night before diving out the window, and why he had disposed of the odd corpse out. He had really complicated things for the investigating authorities –maybe enough for us to make a clean getaway, or at least a getaway. He was a smart fucker after all, and very quick-thinking.

  Another interesting detail from the report was that the man had checked in under the name Raymond Sanchez. It had to be a false name. I wondered how many false names he had used in his unlife, what his false name was now that Sanchez was dead, and if Miguel was a false name too.

  How much of this vampire’s life had to be false in order for him to survive, not only as humans do, on the run for a few short years, a few decades, but for an unlife? How long had he been hiding, faking it, skirting society, handling humans with kid gloves? How long had he been what he was?

  I couldn’t resist taking another peek at him in his incapacitated state. I got down on the dirty motel carpet and shimmied under the bed, folding back the blanket just a little from his face, careful to shield him from the modest glow of sunlight filtering through the cheap curtains and the blanket he had stripped from the spare bed to hang over them. I put my hand on his chest and felt the lack of motion, of breath, of heartbeat, of life. I touched his jasper skin with one finger. So much power, and yet he was so vulnerable in this moment. So powerful, and yet he had treated me with such deference, such respect, when so many less able men had felt the compulsion to force themselves on me, to take what they wanted, to take and take. Yet, this one –this rare one, I could trust. I could trust him as he trusted me.

  Moved by a compulsion of my own, I leaned in and pressed my lips to his. They were soft and cool and tasted nothing at all like death. They tasted…clean.

  He did not move, and I pulled back, feeling naughty. It was a little like molestation, taking advantage of him in his helpless state. But, as he had said the night we’d met, “never miss an opportunity to enjoy yourself”.

  I covered him back up and crawled back into bed, cozy with my shotgun in my lap, and the vampire who had given it to me under my bed.

  The next evening, Miguel dropped me off in the parking lot of a shopping mall. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a clip full of cash. He handed it to me.

  “I will return in three hours. Buy whateve
r you need.”

  I eyed the money suspiciously.

  “You still don’t get to call me ‘Shorty’.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Never mind. I like you better not even having heard of it.”

  “Three hours.”

  “What, you think I can’t get what I need in that time?”

  He shrugged and pulled away. He was going to ditch the stolen car, the car that had belonged to the dead people, and to buy a new one. We were cleaning up what was left of the trail that could lead the authorities to us. Miguel’s magic trail of blood on the other hand? That would take a while.

  I eyed the mall. I didn’t want to go in there. I was feeling much better after a full day of lounging around, but I wasn’t quite well enough recovered to want to face all the pretty little girls and the preppy little shops and the trendy little clothes. Then I looked across the street and my mood brightened. On the other side was a Jaeger’s Sporting Goods, the place where all fun things (sports equipment, workout clothes, firearms) were sold, and where I had spent many a hard-earned dollar. Just seeing it made me feel at home.

  I headed for the crosswalk.

  A little later I did return to the mall. There was one service that I could obtain there –one that I desperately needed.

  I walked into the salon to be greeted by many horrified faces. My bush had that effect on people.

  A woman with too much makeup and traditionally over-ironed, over-dyed, over-styled salon-stylist’s hair regarded me through her pink-rimmed bifocals.

  “Girl, what did you do to your hair?”

  “Cornrows,” I replied, “I need cornrows.”

  Pushing a less tragic girl out of the way and herding me directly to a chair, she said, “Honey, you need somethin’.”

  Glorying in the freedom of my new do, I waited on the curb, snarfing down a BLT that had happily not come from Badd Burger. After precisely three hours from the time of our divergence, a shiny new car pulled up before me in the parking lot. I said ‘car’, but what I should have said was ‘spaceship’.

  “You’ve gotta be shittin’ me.”

  It was another Mercedes, the SLR coup, otherwise known as the McLaren. You go look up what those things cost. It was all metal and testosterone (I didn’t know about the carbon fiber body –I just play like I know everything), and my vampire was driving it.