I looked around for the source of the voice. Hallow wasn’t there. At least not physically. Well, great. Maxie’d just taken off. Abandoned me. So, how was I supposed to get home?
“Surely you haven’t forgotten the new skills I’ve given you?”
I grabbed the sides of my head. Something about his voice caused the bones to vibrate and gave me the beginnings of a headache. I walked fast toward the obvious entrance to the park, hoping his voice would fade like a cell phone signal if I put distance between us. What new skills was he talking about?
“Come now, Doctor. How could you forget something so momentous, so otherworldly? Surely you recall your unexpected trip to your office earlier this evening?”
“Hey!” I yelled, pain radiating through my skull. “Will you get out of my head before it explodes?”
Silence.
Had I just scolded a homicidal vampire? Something was definitely up with my impulse control lately.
I stopped dead and grabbed onto the splintered wooden counter of the ticket booth at the gate. My knees almost gave out. The absence of Hallow’s reverberating voice in my mind sent a wave of relief through my body. I hadn’t realized the deep sound had been so invasive. So overwhelming. Devereux communicated telepathically with me all the time, but his voice never made my head hurt.
I was reminded of some research I’d read about using sound waves as a weapon—how the mere resonance could obliterate solid objects. I wondered how much sound pressure would have to be exerted to split open a skull? I wasn’t about to volunteer to find out. How could a disembodied voice produce sound waves anyway?
More occult bullshit.
Anger and discouragement wrestled for position in my emotional control center. I couldn’t count the times over the last five months I’d regretted my decision to involve myself with supernatural and metaphysical beings and philosophies that most people only fantasized—or had nightmares—about. I often had second thoughts about wading into the preternatural muck. Not only because it was often terrifying, but because there was no way to make sense of anything. No rule book. Never knowing what was lurking in the next shadow was a recipe for ulcers and insanity.
As I stood alone in a burned-out amusement park in the middle of the night, I definitely wished I could press the rewind button on the cosmic video camera, and go back to my simple, safe life. Okay, it was boring. But secure. Predictable.
But, would I really go back? Pity party aside, would I give up my new life if I had the chance? Give up Devereux? Right then I didn’t have a clear answer, and I had more immediate problems to deal with.
Carson had been murdered. My first instinct was to call the police. I reached into the pocket of the coat and fished out my phone, started to punch in 9-1-1, then stopped. What was I doing? If I did call them, what would I say? A sadistic vampire—yes, they really did exist—captured and staked a radio talk show host in front of an audience of vampire wannabes, a rag reporter, and a local psychologist? Then the bad vampire caused the audience to pass out, ordered his servants to snatch the reporter, and traveled through thought to capture the psychologist? Send the guys with the white coats, please. Talk about déjà vu. Reporting a murder I had no rational explanation for would only trap me into another legal ordeal, and I’d just begun to recover—professionally and personally—from the first situation five months earlier.
Too bad Lieutenant Bullock, the lead investigator on that serial murder case, and the only other local human aware of the vampires, was off training at Quantico. She would’ve known what to do to straighten out this mess.
Thinking of her reminded me I was on my own.
Well, what if I called in anonymously from a phone booth? I could just report the crime, give the location—supposing they knew where the old amusement park was located, because I certainly didn’t—and hang up. Yeah, I could do that.
I put the phone back in my pocket and stared at the vast sky. Barely perceptible light softened the eastern horizon, announcing the approaching dawn. All the little vampires—except the day-walking Hallow—would be snug in their coffins soon. The immortal horror show concluded for another night. Of course, the human monsters were still free to spread their own brand of ghastly chaos, impervious to the numbers on the clock.
As much as I hated to admit it, Devereux had been right. He hadn’t been crying wolf about Hallow. The sociopathic bloodsucker was dangerous. What did the lunatic mean about having other plans for me? I’d witnessed his idea of fun, and remembering the sound of the large spikes piercing Carson’s limbs made the bile rise in my throat. What could I possibly do to fend off such a monster?
The cautious portion of my psyche took center stage and began reciting the reasons I should go hide in Devereux’s penthouse. She was enthusiastically giving voice to my fears, and hadn’t even gotten halfway through her arguments, when the smirking, rebellious part who’d thought it would be fun to leave Devereux out of the information loop swaggered into the spotlight and pushed Caution aside and grabbed the metaphorical microphone. They yelled at each other in my inner rubber room, attracting the attention of another indecisive group of my sub-personalities, who stepped into the scene, observed the conflict, decided not to get involved, and left Caution and Rebel to duke it out.
As I watched Caution leap onto Rebel’s back and wrestle her down, I hoped she’d have the strength to retain control. Who would I be if I wasn’t her? Then it occurred to me to wonder which part of me was doing the watching?
Schizophrenia, anyone?
I—whatever I meant at that point—turned my thoughts back to Hallow. What if he’d lied about Maxie? What if he’d done something to her? As I thought that, I braced myself for a mental onslaught—more head-rumbling opinions from Hallow—but didn’t receive one. Had the murderer really stopped talking in my mind just because I’d asked him to? No. I didn’t believe that. Nothing about immortals was that simple. I was sure the situation would prove to have more horrifying layers than I could anticipate. Yet another aspect a human mind couldn’t comprehend.
I surveyed the empty landscape and wondered again how I’d get home. I could call a cab. Surely the dispatcher would know where this old park was located? That would certainly be the normal—rational—thing to do.
But then I thought about what Hallow had said about his little gift. Why not test out the traveling-through-thought thing? What if it wasn’t just a one-shot deal? It had worked before, although, granted, by accident. Was I refusing to try just because Hallow suggested I should? There was definitely that. Could any good possibly come from following the advice of a murdering lunatic? Maybe he was setting me up. My attempt to replicate my previous experience would no doubt amuse him. He’d probably get a kick out of watching me fail. Vampire or not, sociopaths shared some characteristics in common. Characteristics I was very familiar with.
Wait a minute. What if I got caught in some weird vortex of time and space? I didn’t know enough about how vampires manipulated energy to have any options for rescuing myself if I got stuck between dimensions. A particularly gruesome episode of Star Trek came to mind where, due to a transporter malfunction, some poor man screamed as his molecules were wrenched apart and scattered into the universe. Sometimes I wished I didn’t have such a fertile imagination. I was sure there were worse ways to slough off this mortal coil, although I couldn’t think of any at the moment.
Actually, I’d be more comfortable if there was some kind of contraption to step into like on the television show. Solid walls and a floor to stand on. Someone in charge of the process. Just intending to blink from one place to another seemed like leaping into a bottomless abyss and hoping for the best.
But, despite my rational fears about transcending consensus reality, my sensing system was eager to give it a go. My intuition chimed in, nodding its head, willing to sign off on the experiment. Or maybe that was Rebel’s voice. Hard to tell. It was getting so crowded in my psyche that I wasn’t sure which part of me was at the controls. But who was I to quibble about a tiny thing like my molecules scattering to the winds?
I closed my eyes, visualized my favorite chair in my living room, and scrunched my face into a serious pose of concentration. After a few seconds, when I didn’t feel the usual breeze against my face, I opened one eye to investigate. I was still frozen in the same spot, all the muscles in my body tightly contracted like I was braced for attack.
Well, shit. I was obviously doing it wrong. How had I managed it before? I’d just thought about the location of my purse and briefcase and found myself there. I forced myself to relax my shoulders, circled my head to release the tension, and shook my hands in front of me to restore the circulation.
Okay. All I needed to do was think about sitting on my oversize chair, putting my feet up on the ottoman, and drinking a glass of wine. Yeah, that felt good. I’d just smiled at the pleasant vision when my solar plexus began to itch, my hair blew back from my face, and I had the sense of being in an elevator again. Falling without a parachute for a nanosecond. The next thing I knew, I was flat on the floor next to my chair. I huffed out a breath at the rude landing, raised my head to look around, then sat up.
The living room light was on. I must have forgotten to turn it off when I left with Maxie. I slowly climbed to my feet, patted myself down to make sure—as before—that all of me had arrived in the same time zone and zip code, and smiled.
“Hot damn! I did it! At least there’s one good thing that came from all the vampire crap!” I promised myself I’d enjoy this mysterious ability for as long as it lasted.
Caution pursed her lips and gave me a disapproving scowl. Which I ignored.
I danced around in a circle, chuckling, threw off the heavy parka, and moved to the stairs leading up to my bedroom and bath. And froze. Was my shower running? Had I left it on? What the hell was the matter with me? I’d never done anything like that.
Stress hormones surged through my body and the indicator on my radar shot from zero to a thousand, letting me know in no uncertain terms that something was wrong. My fight-or-flight instinct shifted into high gear.
Remembering the gun in the pocket of the coat, I tiptoed over to where I’d thrown the bulky garment, retrieved the gun, and crept to the staircase. Holding the gun with a trembling hand, I climbed the stairs, cursing under my breath at every creaking sound my footsteps made. I paused halfway, noticing the light was on in the bathroom and the door was open.
I sneaked up the rest of the way, preparing to walk along the short hallway, and was startled by a loud noise. Since I often made that noise myself, I recognized the clatter of a bar of soap hitting the bottom of the shower. Somebody was in my damn shower! I paused, straining to remember if any visitors were expected from out of town, or if I’d given my house key to anyone recently. No one came to mind.
I lifted the gun, held it with both hands in a futile effort to stop the shaking, and stood in the bathroom doorway.
The water suddenly stopped and I waited through a few seconds of heavy silence. A hand whisked back the shower curtain, causing a loud ripping sound, and a wet, na**d man grinned from inside.
“Kismet! Surprise!”
Chapter Nine
I automatically raised the gun with trembling hands and pointed it at the chest of the intruder.
He lifted his arms into the air and widened his smile. “Hey, don’t shoot me. I’m not immortal yet.”
His skin was lighter than I’d ever seen it, and his black hair had grown well below his shoulders, but as I slid my gaze down his lean frame, I recognized a familiar body part. We hadn’t seen each other for five months—and it had been a lot longer than that since I’d hung out with the portion of his anatomy in question—but there was no mistaking the unique endowment of my superficial, materialistic, narcissistic ex-boyfriend, Dr. Thomas Radcliffe.
I lowered the gun. Relief swamped me and I stared into mischievous dark brown eyes.
“Tom? What the hell are you doing here?”
My na**d visitor flashed an even-more-blinding Hollywood smile. “Didn’t you get my message? I told you I want to talk to Devereux. Zoë tells me he’s the big vampire cheese.”
I struggled to keep a stern expression on my face, but couldn’t quite manage due to the fact that “Tom Junior,” as he used to call it, was twitching and bobbing like a dowsing rod. Almost as if it was trying to say hello in its own fleshy way. I couldn’t seem to shift my gaze. The kinesthetic memory was so strong that my hand almost reached out to pat the little guy’s head. To keep myself from doing something I was certain I’d regret—same old song, different verse—I grabbed a towel from the nearby rack and shoved it at Tom.
He smirked as he dried his hair, aware of his effect on me.
I cleared my throat and glared. “How the hell did you get into my house? I’m absolutely sure I locked the door when I left.”
He threw the towel on the floor and stepped out of the shower. Junior was displaying his best posture, apparently happy to see me. “Zoë brought me. It was amazing. She just thought us here all the way from Los Angeles. Hanging out with vampires is so awesome.” He chuckled. “Listen to me telling the big vampire cheese’s girlfriend about hanging around with vampires.” He looked me up and down. “What’s that all over your sweater? And your jeans? Have you been partaking in Cow Town’s favorite sport, mud wrestling?” He threw back his head and laughed. “I would’ve paid money to see that.”
I glanced down at the dried blood on my clothes. Tom’s obliviousness saved me from having to give any normal explanations. “Very funny.”
He closed the distance between us and pulled me into a wet hug, apparently not concerned about the “mud” on my shirt. “It’s great to see you, Kismet. I’ve missed you.”