Vamp-Hire Read online

  A PERMUTED PRESS book

  Published at Smashwords

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-401-1

  Vamp-Hire (Book 1) copyright © 2015

  by Gerald Dean Rice

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Hunter Walker

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Dedication

  To my wife, who I've always wanted to be proud of me. Hope this helps.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Thursday

  Nick walked swiftly up the walkway, trying to keep his stride long and confident. He didn’t want to give any who were possibly peeping out a window the impression he wasn’t supposed to be here. These days, people were being shot simply for not looking like they belonged. He went over the details in his head. Name: Nancy; digs vampires and doesn’t like guys who talk too much. That last part was fine with him. He was nervous as it was to even be thinking about doing this. Selling vamp blood was as illegal as prostitution, although laws against the latter were less rigorously enforced. If he got caught doing this he was as good as back in a cage.

  Nick didn’t know what she wanted with his blood and didn’t care. If she had the cash he was fine so long as he could get a bandage when this was done. Despite what a fringe percentage believed, vamp blood was no more a healing poultice than snake oil, no more a narcotic than baby powder, no more aphrodisiac than Spanish fly.

  He took the two porch stairs in one step and breathed a minor sigh of relief. Though he could see almost perfectly, any of those window peepers could not. He cast a final glance over his shoulder before ringing the doorbell. No need to waste time out here having second thoughts. Regret still tugged at his insides despite knowing exactly what he was doing.

  He didn’t wait long. The security door opened, revealing the white slip worn by a slender, dark-haired woman. The smell of roses greeted him at the same time. For a second, he thought she was a ghost because he couldn’t see any of her body. Then she pushed the screen door open, giving him a view of a long, slender, olive-skinned forearm.

  “Come in,” she said with a quiet, husky voice.

  Nick hesitated. Even with his keen night vision, he still couldn’t see her face. She withdrew, leaving him with no choice other than standing there or following her in. Remembering the pile of unpaid bills on the table yesterday morning, he took a deep breath and stepped inside.

  “Half is on the coffee table,” she said.

  “Okay,” Nick said. He looked at the envelope, took a step toward it and stopped. He didn’t know if it was proper to pocket the money now or wait until the job was done and she gave the rest. And alright, he was man-whoring. He would wrestle that particular alligator later.

  He followed her upstairs.

  Not knowing anything about this house, Nick assumed it was older. Maybe 1970-something. The stairs—at least where she was walking ahead of him—were quiet, but they began to creak under his feet. He didn’t know anything about architecture, so he had no basis for his guess as to the age of the house. It seemed unlived-in somehow, though. The same way he imagined a new house would be for someone who had just moved in. The walls were painted maybe a purple or blue color, it was impossible to tell in the dark.

  Nancy turned around at the top of the stairs as if waiting to push him down. The thought nagged at him for the few seconds he was behind her until finally he was at the top. She smiled at him and somehow he still couldn’t make out her face. It was a thick mass of dark hair, spilling down to the middle of her back. With a slight turn of her head, the curtained hair closed around the lower half of her face.

  The thought crossed his mind to ask if she were a ghost before she took his hand, lacing her fingers through his. Her palm was warm, slightly moist. It occurred to him that she might have been as nervous as he was. Why had he assumed that she was more knowledgeable in this sort of thing than him?

  It was a narrow hallway, so Nick wound up trailing behind her even as they held hands. They passed by a bathroom and a bedroom before coming to another bedroom at the end of the hallway. He didn’t know why he’d been expecting a table as he entered, but there was only a bed. Only a bed. Nick got an uncomfortable feeling with a tinge of déjà vu. There was a lot he couldn’t remember even though he had a good idea where she might have been heading.

  “So…” he said after she let several seconds of silence pass after shutting the door, “…here we are.” He held out hope she would pull a bowl out of somewhere. She didn’t move. It wasn’t like Nick didn’t know the mechanics of what to do; he’d prepared himself for a specific illegal act and here he was, presented with another one entirely. Should he even consider it? If he begged off, could he take the money on the coffee table downstairs?

  Nancy let go of his hand and crossed to the other side of the room by the bed.

  “Come. Sit.” She put her knee on the mattress in a way that should have been alluring. Nancy was an attractive woman¬—what he could see of her—but there was something unsexual about her. Like a department store mannequin with all its clothes off.

  Nick took a cautious step forward. He realized he was bound to disappoint. Had they met under natural circumstances and wound up in this situation, he wouldn’t have had the moral knot in the pit of his stomach. He took a second to mentally ponder exactly what it was that bothered him about this situation. It certainly wasn’t the illegality of it; he’d been fully prepared to risk his freedom as soon as he’d left home after the sun had set. And it wasn’t as if she were repulsive. Nick didn’t know if he had a type and Nancy seemed to have everything pleasantly in the right places.

  He realized it had to have been the luring under false pretenses. Perhaps she was too… chaste to be up front about what she really wanted and asked for something else equally taboo instead. Yes, that made sense to him and Nick found himself breathing a small sigh of relief.

  Why a vamp, though? Did she want to get bitten? Or want him to drink her blood? Maybe she was looking for him to turn her. Nick only had a minor set of fangs. Sure, they looked menacing enough if he smiled or wasn’t careful when he was talking to someone and flashed them, but they weren’t that much longer than average canine teeth in a human mouth. No, he couldn’t turn her and the drinking of human blood, even if that weren’t disgusting, was completely illegal, though Nick could hardly claim any high ground there.

  Maybe he would just nip her if that was what she was into.

  Yeah, she was probably some yuppie-type (was that even a word anymore?) who had somehow managed to avoid having a hand in the Conflict and wanted to see what all the fuss about.

  Nick felt his confidence rise, convinced this wasn’t something more dangerous than what it had been presented as. Maybe he might even enjoy himself. Although, not too much. He put an arm around her waist to draw her closer to him and she pushed it down.

  “No touching,” she said. Nick could make out a moonlit column of her face, from the narrow point of her chin, across the thin bridge of a nose, with two shallow pools of dark where her eyes hid, and the crest of her forehead. Even though he had detail, Nick still couldn’t say he’d actually seen her. Her face seemed like a bunch of individual parts
that wouldn’t coalesce into a whole.

  “I kind of have to. You know, for us to do, you know…this.” He wasn’t exuding the kind of confidence he’d hoped. His only saving grace was that she seemed as shy as he was, if not more.

  She nodded and when Nick thought she was about to call the whole thing off, she grabbed his hand and placed it on her breast.

  Immediately, Nick felt a reaction. Not lust… at least not just lust. It was the physiological equivalent of some hidden, terrible engine snarling to life, powering some beast of a machine that fueled up with blood and produced only death. He could feel it seeping into his bones as if they were hollow like a bird’s, filling him with a heat that had nothing to do with body temperature.

  Suddenly, he could see much more in the dark, much more than was previously there to be seen. The veins beneath Nancy’s olive skin silently throbbed to life. The heat of her was like a blanket he wanted to roll in. Right then Nick knew he could be inside her in four quick movies, only it wouldn’t be pleasurable. At least not for her.

  Nick removed his hand and stepped away.

  “I can’t do this,” he said, looking at the floor. “I’m sorry.”

  “You have to,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  He figured a lie at his expense was better than the horrifying truth.

  “It’s the medication they have me on,” he said. “My blood, it’s… not good for what you want.” Nick figured speaking about the official reason was here was best.

  “You can’t give it?” she began. “Or won’t?”

  “It’s not like that. You’re a pretty girl—woman. Very pretty.” He said it regardless of knowing if that were true. “If I met you on the street and I was healthy, I’d probably try and talk to you.”

  That he didn’t know to be true. Since his release, he hadn’t felt desire on any level until a moment ago. He could still feel the heat of her, even with several feet of space between them, and felt like… like grabbing her and… and he didn’t know what. That was the scariest part of all. Something inside him knew how to complete that sentence. Something else Nick hadn’t even known existed wanted something more.

  Despite his condition and what society thought of people like him, Nick still considered himself to be human. He had been human all his life right up until he had slipped into that coma. Having a virus coursing through his body didn’t change how he thought of himself any more than someone who had AIDS or cancer would have. He had a condition and he was just as determined as anyone else with a condition to manage it.

  “I have to leave.” He turned for the door.

  “Please, don’t go,” Nancy said, suddenly at his arm. Had she moved that fast or had Nick just been that entranced by the warm red stuff coursing through her?

  Nick shook his head and pushed her away as gently as he could. He made for the door.

  “My husband will kill you.”

  That stopped him cold.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  She settled back onto the bed, sitting with her knees slightly parted. It was mildly suggestive and tugged at the hungry thing inside of Nick.

  “My husband,” she said as if that explained everything. She let her hands drape between her legs, bowing the perfect plane her dress made at her lap. “He’ll be home soon and when he gets here, he’ll kill you.”

  “You planned this?”

  “I did. My Fenton wanted to try something new. Something dangerous. He wanted to see me, y’know… with someone else. And Fenton, ever since the Conflict, he’s been wanting to kill someone. He never got the chance because he couldn’t enlist. He passed all the physicals, but the doctors said he wasn’t mentally sound. So you might as well enjoy the time we have left.”

  “Hell no,” Nick said and walked out. She stepped behind him, following quickly.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Because you’re a vampire you can’t die by traditional means.” Nick was running down the stairs now and Nancy was in hot pursuit. “I’ve done all the research. WebMD, Wikipedia. Please, I’ll double your fee.”

  “No,” he said, turning and seizing her by the shoulders. Nick was angry and at least for now that emotion trumped any others. “No. If someone kills me, I die. Just like you.”

  “You can withstand more physical damage than a human and Fenton—”

  “Just. Like. You.” Nick said, grabbing her by the shoulders and giving her a shake with each word.

  Her head slumped. “Fenton’s gonna be so mad.”

  “I can’t help you with that.”

  She touched him in a plaintive gesture, everything about her pleading. Whatever he was feeling before had been chased away by revulsion. He had a strong urge to push back her hair and see her face fully. Something in him wanted to know who this person was and a name wasn’t enough. He needed to look into her eyes to know her in a much more basic sense. Something she had said was sticking with him aside from the part about murder. He realized it an instant later, looking at her again and he did sweep her hair away from her face, parting the long black hair like curtains. She flinched.

  She had large, dark eyes, a point of a nose that angled upward, and full lips to the point of looking swollen.

  Nancy couldn’t have been more than twenty. How had her husband been in the Conflict? She couldn’t have been more than ten.

  He wanted to ask, then headlights flashed through the front windows as a truck turned into the driveway. Nick swore, not wanting to run out the front door and right into Fenton’s waiting arms. He turned to Nancy. “Where’s your back door?”

  “You changed your mind?”

  “How the hell do I get out of here?”

  She was sitting on the stairs, her face cupped in her petite hands. Damn, that was odd how her hair had enveloped her face again. She pointed to her left.

  He jogged around a corner as his preternatural ears picked up the sound of the truck door slamming. To Nick’s left was a small kitchen. Immediately in front of him was a nook area, suspiciously bare, to his right an empty family room with a fireplace and a doorwall directly in ahead of him. The front door opened as he was sliding it open.

  He ran.

  It was a shallow backyard that terminated in an embankment with a fence atop it. Nick realized how out of shape he was, his taxed muscles slower to respond than he would have liked as reached the end of the yard and hauled himself over. He tumbled to the ground, a jagged rock or mound of dirt poking him in the back.

  Nick ignored the pain when a geyser of dust exploded in his face as he rose. The report of a gunshot came a millisecond later and he propelled himself in the opposite direction, tumbling over something hard and moored into the earth.

  He scrambled to his knees, felt another shot whizz overhead. There was something rectangular just ahead of him with a rounded top and he circled around it. He came to another one, then another, all in a row before realizing he was in a cemetery.

  Contrary to the stereotype that his kind liked hanging out in graveyards, Nick was actually deathly afraid of them and that dated back well before the world had turned upside down. He almost stood to run again when another shot punched the headstone in front of him, spraying cement dust into his eyes and mouth.

  Nick grasped blindly, trying to blink a thousand burning specks out of his eyes. There was another shot that struck something much farther away and then a woman’s scream, lasting what seemed like fifteen seconds or more.

  He had to get out of here. Even with the moon now behind heavy clouds, Nick knew it was only a matter of time before Fenton found him if he stayed put. Plus, there were dead people right underneath him.

  The earth-smell all around him clogged his lungs. It was all he could do to force himself not to cough as his mind scrambled for what to do. He couldn’t stay put and he couldn’t stand. His only choice was to crawl blind until Fenton killed him. Nick wondered if it would help to tell him he hadn’t slept with his wife or if that would be even more reason to blow his brains
out.

  Another shot never came. Nick thought Fenton might have been following him along his haphazard crawl, poised and waiting to plunge a knife in him. The knife never fell.

  Finally, Nick rested against a headstone that felt as though it had been cut in half. The earth beneath him felt warm despite the chill air, as if someone had been sitting there right before him. It was comforting, at least enough to take the edge off the urge to run screaming until he was shot or he impaled himself in some phallic grave marker.

  He couldn’t mark the time; it felt like hours as he sat there with only the reeping of crickets to keep him company.

  Gradually, his vision returned. He kept wiping little bits of rock from his eyes. Everything looked a little foggy, which might have been the result of his panic making him believe he’d partially blinded himself.

  He wiped his face, wet with equal parts tears, sweat, and snot. He looked around and spotted a streetlight on the other side of a black wrought-iron fence. Out was somewhere over there. Nick made his way over on hands and knees, only daring to stand once he’d touched the fence, almost afraid it was an optical illusion. He followed the fence until he came to an opening and walked out onto the sidewalk. He took comfort in knowing that if Fenton murdered him now it would be one stranger killing another as opposed to him killing the man who had intended to sleep with his wife.

  Thankfully, the idea he could be killed any moment faded with each yard he put between himself and that house until a new fear arose: curfew. It was after ten and no one without a permit or who was not an emergency worker was supposed to be out. If he were arrested that would cause all kinds of complications he didn’t need.

  From his limited time at the Pens he knew there was a lot that would go on before someone like him was given the benefit of the doubt. The only reason he had his freedom right now was for lack of room. They couldn’t exactly put a tether on him, not legally, but they sure as hell wouldn’t hesitate to make room if he didn’t fit in outside.