Fire Nectar (4 page)

In the old days it was fairly easy to hide a missing
person.
 
If people didn’t live in
the same town, they could only keep in touch by mail or telegram before there
were phones. It wasn’t uncommon for friends and family to lose touch - for
someone to fall away from society with little to no notice. If they did notice,
the reaction was often; “What happened to Leopold?
 
It is indeed a mystery of the highest
concern.
 
Pass the duck.”
 
Most human beings weren’t going to do
anything except enjoy talking about the drama of what may have happened.

Also, in many cultures, should there be an occasion where
one “disgraced the family” – which happened often in more conservative
times - the family would simply cut off contact and never talk to the offender
again. This was a vampire’s wet dream. No tracks and no search parties -a gift.
But these days it was different.
 
Computers made everyone track-able. A trail led to each person on the
planet, save maybe for the third-world countries. (A fact that made those
countries a veritable haven and heaven for the undead.)
 

Scientists didn’t believe in vampires, yet, but if they
did it would be disastrous.
 
The
desire to remain young would make vampires a huge commodity. They would be
experimented on and of course, more would be made.
 
A lot more.
Vampires do not want the world overrun by
vampires
as
they are far too egotistical a breed to want to be “one of many.” Besides, what
would they eat?
 
To prevent
catastrophe and discovery, most vampires held to some form of self-controlled
parameter. A rule-set that kept them - Safe and Fed.

Safe and Fed – the vampire creed.
 
In line with this code, vampires
respected the rights of other vampires, for the most part. They respected what
they were, and what they wanted - which was always to survive. This respect,
maintained by the code of conduct, always served their creed.
 
A fight, after all, vamp to vamp, would
not end easily. Pissing off another vampire meant a feud that sometimes lasted
centuries. You couldn’t sleep comfortably knowing you had an enemy. It could
make eternity agonizing and nobody wanted that.

If a vampire was a troublemaker, word would go out and
together they would deal with him or her, in whatever manner necessary, and by
majority rule. Meetings were held. Decisions were made. Alliances formed. All
to make damn sure everyone stayed the way they wanted
;
Safe and Fed. Best to get along.
 
Avoid those you weren’t fond of.
 
The world was big enough - if both parties were of that same mind.

She watched Gene, thinking of the man he’d murdered. His
victim had made truly amazing films, groundbreaking achievements that elevated
the form and inspired society. He’d started a production company that employed
over five hundred people. He’d had a wife, even though it was his third one,
and she loved him.
 
He was a
participating father to his three kids from varying marriages.
 
She’d taken the time to listen to the
family’s interviews and their words were backed up with genuine tears of loss.

The more she’d researched, the more convinced she became
of the belief that Fred Rimaldi should have stayed around to make more films,
love his children longer, kissed his wife goodnight for many more years.
 
He’d earned his millions.
 
He had earned a right to keep them. This
jerk took all of it away, and why? Out of some overdeveloped sense of
entitlement and maybe jealousy.
 

She thought of her cousin Millicent and how she’d turned
her back on Daniella and her father when they needed her, all because of
jealousy. Anger grew inside of her as she watched Gene pace his room. Plus, she
hated khaki pants.

He must have attempted to call twenty people. No one was
taking his calls. You lose friends when you’re on trial for murder. He startled
his calico cat as he threw his phone onto the floor in front of it.
 
The cat, frightened, backed up into a
small statue and knocked it off the table.
 
The statue shattered on the hardwood floor and made Gene hit the roof.
“Jesus!” He rushed the cat, grabbed it and threw it in a rage across the
room.
 
It made a horrible pained
sound as it slammed into the side of a table. “I bought that in FUCKING FIJI,
Oswalda
!!!” he screamed.
 

Dani felt her eyeteeth change form. Sharpen. Lengthen.
She ran her tongue along one and bit into it, feeling the blood break out,
tasted it.
 
Her tongue healed
immediately.
 
It was time. She was
starving.

Gene angrily walked through the double glass doors
outside and onto his balcony toward her.
 
Fumbling for a cigarette, he still didn’t see her standing in the middle
of his yard below.
 
He cursed under
his breath and grabbed for the lighter on the ledge. Damn. She hated smokers.
They didn’t taste good.

 
“Please,
don’t,” she requested from below.
 
He dropped the cigarettes in surprise. His head snapped in the direction
of her voice and he saw her for the first time.

Her looks and the fact that she was a
woman,
confused him. Was she a reporter? His mind raced, his eyes twitching as he
tried to understand.
 
She didn’t
have a notebook, a purse or anything. What was she doing there? She looked so
calm it was unnerving. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

 
“Why do they
always ask that?” she said, shaking her head to herself, annoyed. She jumped
powerfully up, clearing the twelve feet high distance to land in front of him
on the balcony before he’d even blinked and said, eyes sparkling, “I’m your
worst nightmare.”
  
He gasped
and fell backwards as she smiled the most terrifying smile he’d ever seen.
 
Scrambling from the ground, he clumsily
bolted back inside.
 
She laughed,
picked up his fallen pack of cigarettes and crushed them in her hands.
 
“God bless them, they always run.” She
watched him heading for his phone.
 
Quaint.

She beat him to it.
 
As he reached for it, it disappeared and she was there, holding it,
smiling like a she-devil. “No one would take your calls, Eugene.
 
Why keep trying?”

 
“Oh my God.
How long have you been watching me?”
 
he
spat out.

“Too long.
 
And then I got bored.”
 
She chucked
the phone out the window and it landed with a thump on the grass below. “I’d
crush it but then people wouldn’t guess suicide. Have to think ahead, you
know.” He rushed about, wild and discombobulated - not knowing what to do,
where to turn. “I’m sure you wished
you’d
thought ahead didn’t you, when
you forgot the third phone?
 
Let me
save you and the taxpayers a lengthy trial…”

She didn’t stop him as he made a break for the stairs. He
scrambled down them clumsily, fear and confusion mounting. She walked out onto
the balcony, jumped down and gracefully hit the ground below. With her right
boot she smashed the glass door and strolled into the living room.
  
She blocked his exit easily,
standing between him and the front door as he yelled out, stricken and backed
away staring at her. “Hello, Gene, rough day, huh?” She smiled and allowed her
fangs to show.
 
He fell to the
ground in horror as his brain wrapped around the truth before him.
 

 
“You’re
real.
 
Vampires are real.
 
Oh God, don’t kill me.
 
Please don’t kill me,” he whimpered.
“Why’d you shatter my door if you want to make it look like a suicide…” he
stalled.

 
“That’s what
the sculpture is for.
 
A
four foot
high mermaid statue?
 
Really?
 
Let’s put that to some use.
 
It’ll amuse me to read about it in the
news. ‘No good thieving accountant loses shit and throws a weird and ridiculous
mermaid sculpture through window, before swimming into the Pacific Ocean, never
to return.
 
Never to take what isn’t
his again.’”

 
“Pacific
Ocean?” He asked, cowering as he shot a look to a security camera above them.

She laughed, fangs bared, eyes shining brightly. “I
turned off the security cameras a week ago, Gene.
 
Gave a nice little cushion of time you
know, to make it look nice and accidental.” She imitated what the cops would
find, “Oops.
 
What happened to the
cameras? Looks like they must have malfunctioned. Can’t be connected to the
murder though. Nope. Looks like a glitch and nobody caught it. Bad timing, too,
bummer.”
 
She dropped the smile and
said, deadly serious, “I know I’m female, but I am
really
good with
computers. I’ve had eternity to study.”

 
“Shit. Why
are you doing this to me?”

 
“You know
why, Gene – because you’re a murderer.”

 
“But so are
you,” he argued.

 
“Yes, but I
have to do this. A girl’s
gotta
eat.”

In a flash she was on him.
 
She lifted him up, screaming and sunk
her teeth into his neck as he pathetically tried to fight her off. His
heart beat
faster and then flipped, slowing and slowing some
more…until it stopped. Right before he died, he stuttered, “Momma.”

 
“Shit. Why’d
he have to bring up his mother?” She dropped him and a twinge of regret crossed
her soul. “Totally stole the fun out of it. Dammit”
 

To cover her tracks she bit into her own wrist and
dripped her blood onto his puncture wounds until they vanished. With a kick she
shattered the mermaid statue amid the broken window glass on the floor, its
decapitated head rolling away to the side. She liked how that looked. Paying
attention to details, she kicked the glass around on the floor and also the
bits that remained in the doorframe, to make it appear that the glass fell
outward, and not inward. It took some extra effort but with the flattened
cigarettes, the banged up phone on the grass and the stupid shattered statue,
it now looked like he’d lost his temper in a really big way.
 
All she had to do then was to dispose of
the body in a way that people wouldn’t wonder at the loss of blood.

In the ocean about a mile off Malibu’s shore she swam,
dragging his lifeless body with her. Dead blood to vampires was like food
poisoning to humans, so she couldn’t bite Gene again. Instead she removed a
small knife from a custom pocket and sliced deep into his leg. She waved the
leg to use whatever blood remained in it as bait.

Soon she saw it, her keen vision making out a huge shadow
in the distance - its fin, its size, its shape, distinctly that of a Great
White.
 
The shark sped toward her
and the corpse.
 
She waved the leg
again and pushed herself backwards, quickly swimming away from them.
 
The shark’s jaw opened and slammed down
hard on the accountant’s leg.
 
She
watched as it turned away, dragging its meal far into the ocean depths.
 
Something about vamp blood –
animals, insects, reptiles, sharks… they didn’t want it, which was a very good
thing. Immortal sharks we do not need.

      
____________________

The next evening after Dani rose, she made a beeline for
her desk where she’d left her phone.
 
The live kill did nothing to abate her foggy heart. After all it was
just another meal in two hundred years of meals. She wanted out.
 
She searched for a solution and only
found one.
 
Picking up the phone she
saw two texts from Stewart plus a missed call and voicemail from her
agent.
 
She unlocked the phone to
read the texts first. Stewart: Want to go to an exhibition opening around the
corner from your place? ;)
 

That wouldn’t do, she thought.
 
She texted back: No.
 
Let’s go to Nectar.
 

She grabbed the remote and opened the curtains.
 
Gray dusk.
 
She’d risen extra early, as she did also
twice a year. Thank you, Gene, she thought
sarcastically.More
time, she did not want.
 
The stars weren’t out yet but the lights
were and in the dusk she liked their twinkle better than stars. Dusk felt
almost like daylight and she took comfort in that.

But it had been a week since she’d seen the fire, met the
heartbeat,
had
felt alive again. Her phone chimed a
text notification.
 
Stewart: It’s
supposed to be an amazing exhibit.
 
She sent back: I’m not in the mood.
 
I’m in the mood for fire. Tell Anj – 9:00pm.