Chapter 23
I wandered out to the dock and sat at the edge, dangling my feet in the water. Wow. Now that was a head rush. I hadn’t actually stared right into someone’s eyes like that in a long, long time. When they said the eyes were the windows to the soul, they were right. You could look right inside a person and see so much. Done with the right person and it could almost get orgasmic.
Without thought, I slid off the dock and into the cold water.
The canals were saltwater and really shouldn’t be swum in. There were all sorts of nasties coming in from the open ocean: jelly fish, sharks, the occasional saltwater crocodile. But when you’re desperate…
I hauled myself out before anything could look at me and think ‘food’. The sun felt good, so I lay down and closed my eyes, letting it burn red on the inside of my eyelids. Still saw Erin there, though. She was… how could I say it? Electric. Dynamic. Open. Alive. But hidden. There was this great big part of her she locked away. And it was an important part. I didn’t know what it was, but I wanted to find out.
And her flavour. I mean, wow. The sugary crispness of ripe honeydew melon, the touch of a Moscato’s harsher sweetness, the double bitter bite of coffee beans covered in silky, rich, decadent dark chocolate. It was complex and intoxicating, a deeper, richer flavour than any vampire. They were all monotonal blandness next to this.
Somehow, I didn’t think I was going to forget Erin any time soon.
Man. What a thing to happen. Now of all times.
I hadn’t meant to go over when I recognised her. My head was like let’s get out of here, but my legs were all, no way man, she’s after you, find out what you can. And there I was, sitting at her table, grinning like some simple minded fool, flirting like there was no tomorrow. And she hadn’t recognised me. Not until the end there. I could have walked away right at the start and stayed safely anonymous. Instead I blundered right in and messed everything up.
Still damp, I went inside and back to the books. I hadn’t managed to eat much and my stomach grumbled. My head ached, whether from the lack of food or Erin’s intense eyes, I didn’t know. They were this fantastic array of blue and grey and silver and I had liked the way she looked at me when she didn’t know me. There had been this almost coy sultriness in them, tinged with a little wildness, as if she wasn’t in complete control. My imagination went off in all directions thinking about her out of control.
Argh. This wasn’t getting any work done.
Just in case she was hanging about the ’Cliffe, I took the motorbike out. Bypassing the pub I went to a little Italian place on the waterfront up the road a bit. I got a pizza and ate it out on the pier. There were a couple of old guys fishing and a woman with two toddlers. I kept looking back toward shore, didn’t know why, but guessed it had something to do with maybe wondering if Erin had tracked me down again.
Sated, I went home and kept reading. The books I had on weres were all thick, big things with lots of pictures, some of them pretty graphic. It seemed that no one felt so so about were-creatures. They either loved and romanticised them—the tragically cursed man or woman who fought valiantly against their alternate natures only to fail and be killed by their lover, brother, mother, you name it. Or there were those who could only proclaim their utter evilness—men so violent in their souls it took them over, turned them into vicious, rampaging animals that slaughtered without discrimination.
Yeah, that one touched a little too close to home.
The were phenomenon wasn’t confined to wolves, though they seem to be the most popular. Given the variety of ways a person could be turned into an animal, partially or fully, it was not surprising to learn the variety of animals you could turn into was as broad as the ecology. There were records of werewolves, weretigers, werelions, werebears and were-just-about-any-predator-you-could-think-of. It seemed big, powerful animals with lots of teeth and claws were the were-creatures of choice. But there was also mention of wereswans, wereowls, werehorses, wereantelope and so forth and so on.
But nowhere did it mention animals turning into were-animals.
I gave it up for a pointless effort, thought about calling Tony back and telling him it was a bust. Didn’t though. Couldn’t face the thought of hearing him be disappointed in me. I had another day to do something more productive on it, so I didn’t burn my bridges yet.
On to the other problem.
Kermit had said he thought Saif had come from the east, on the river. East was the mouth of the Brisbane River. I pulled out my street directory and checked it out. A lot of industrial area. Good place to find an empty warehouse or building to hole up with a big mess of vampires. I mightn’t have the whole of Brisbane to look in any more, but Kermit hadn’t exactly pinpointed it to an actual street or suburb. Still, I had a vampire detection kit.
Issue was, did I feel comfortable letting it back out of the cage?
Maybe I would be able to think clearer after a rest. Didn’t really think I would sleep, but lying down seemed like a good idea.
I did sleep. I dreamed even. Of Erin. Depending on your point of view, they were either fantastic dreams or really, really bad ones. Either way, I woke up with a smile and… ah ha, something else. I grabbed a quick hot and cold shower, hot for the knee, cold for the… yeah.
My head was clearer. On certain things, that was. I grabbed a bag of blood from the hidden fridge, went to Mercy’s room and unlocked the door. She was still asleep and would be for a while longer, but I had this niggling little desire to show her I did still trust her. Falling off the bag-of-blood-wagon last night hadn’t been her fault. She hadn’t killed the guy (yes, I was ignoring the whole interrupted-before-she-could deal) and she had done very well in getting my arse out of a tight spot. For that at least, she needed some reward.
I put the bag on the arm of the chair by the bed and let my fingers trail over the dark hair. It was silky soft and warm. Not what you would expect from an instinctual killer. She was fanatical about her shampoo and that was one of the many reasons I hadn’t put her down.
Roberts showed up not long later.
“What’s the plan for tonight?” he asked as if the phone conversation that morning had been a totally different one.
I was more than willing to buy into the delusion. We sat down at the kitchen table with a map of the Port of Brisbane, red pens and rulers. I got him up to speed on things while we laid down a search grid on the areas I wanted to check out. Roberts was pretty quiet throughout, only speaking once I’d been done for a couple of minutes.
“You like her.”
“Sorry. What?”
“This investigator chick. You like her.”
I put down my ruler and stared at him, hoping he didn’t hear the uncertainty in my voice. “I spent maybe fifteen minutes with her, and she thought I was someone else. Hardly time to decide if I like her.”
“Pah. If you got out more, with humans, not Mercy or ghouls or whatever, you would realise that fifteen minutes is more than enough time. Five minutes after saying hello to Gale and I was ready to lay down my life for her.”
I snorted. “You were not. More like just lay down.”
“Well, okay. But I sure knew I wanted to get to know her better. I’m betting that you, a misguided, tragically romantic fool, would throw yourself in front of a bus for this woman.”
“That’s nothing. I’d throw myself in front of a bus for you. And you’re not my type.”
“Yeah, but you’d think about it first. And you asked her if she liked seafood.”
“So? I was making conversation.”
“No, you weren’t. You were gearing up to the old ‘I know this little restaurant’ line.”
“No, I was going to tell her about how Redcliffe has some great seafood on offer. If she liked it. You know, being nice and welcoming to the out of towners. It’s called being polite, Roberts, look it up.” Snatching up my ruler, I slapped it down on the map, mere millimetres from Roberts’ fingers. He jerked back and scowled at
me.
“Me, Erin and buses have nothing to do with what’s happening tonight. Can we concentrate on that, please?”
“Who’s Erin?” Mercy wandered into the kitchen. Her hair was sleep tousled and she yawned so wide her fangs looked particularly huge. She wore one of my old Divinyls T-shirts.
I pointed to the corner of my mouth. She got the hint and licked the smear of blood off her lips.
I glanced at the window. The sun was barely down. “You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep anymore.” She was listless, falling into a chair at the table and slouching back.
“Erin’s Matt’s new girlfriend,” Roberts said.
Mercy’s dark eyes flashed. “Girlfriend?”
I glared at Roberts. “No, she’s not. She’s just a woman who’s looking for us, Mercy. I don’t know why and if we have any luck, we’ll never see her again.”
She looked between us, suspicious. “Is she with the Reds?”
“No.” I told Mercy about the hit on the Ipswich house and how Erin was caught in the middle of it. “I believe she’s separate.”
“Why didn’t you ask her why she’s looking for us?”
“My question exactly.” Roberts’ eyes glimmered with the urge to tease but he kept his trap shut, thankfully. I didn’t think I could handle a jealous vampire at the moment.
“There wasn’t time and I didn’t want her to recognise me.”
“But she did,” Mercy said.
I pushed away from the table. “She did. Merce, you hungry?”
It wasn’t a change of topic. It was a guilty question inspired by my worry Mercy would want to chow down on any neck she saw.
She shook her head and patted her belly. “Watching my waist line. If I eat any more I’ll get a blood belly.”
Roberts choked on his Coke.
“Go get ready. We’re going hunting, Mercy.”
She bounced out of her chair. “Hunting at clubs?”
“No, in the industrial parks around the port.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun. Why can’t we go dancing?”
Dancing. Mercy loved it. I didn’t think it was a vampire thing. I’d certainly never seen another blood sucking fiend on the floor at any club I’d been to. It was probably a left over from her previous life, which both disturbed me, because there was so little she actually remembered, and encouraged me. Maybe I was doing the right thing with her if she could remember even that much.
“No dancing,” I said.
She deflated.
“Probably. Dress appropriate for both activities.”
Which was like giving her the keys to the blood fridge. Open licence, man. She clapped her hands, gave me a hug (tricky business that, she’d broken ribs in the past) and dashed off to her room. The shower was going before I’d even sat down again.
“You sure about that?” Roberts asked.
“Last night wasn’t her fault.”
“So you’re not worried at all?” The question was so loaded it would have been confiscated at a rifle appreciation club meeting.
“One little mishap. I won’t let it happen again. Besides, it was due to circumstances out of my control.”
I knew Roberts knew it was all just so much bullshit. Thankfully, he didn’t mention that he knew, knowing that I already knew that he knew and that because we both knew, there was nothing to talk about.
“What about the Reds?” he asked instead.
“They’re not going to attack in a club.”
Roberts shrugged. “You only say that because they never have in the past. But they’ve never tried to bargain with you before, either. This is different, man. All the old rules are out the window and run over by an eighteen wheeler.”
“What did the cops say about your apartment?” Now that was a conversation change.
“The usual. They’ll do everything they can, but without much to go on, don’t get your hopes up. Spent the afternoon putting in insurance claims. Now that right there is pure evil. Forget your vampires and trolls. Insurance paperwork is the Devil’s toilet paper.”
We finished our search grid and then girded our loins for war. Roberts had picked me up a new paintball gun. Or should I say paintball semi-automatic assault rifle. Wowsers. The thing was like something out of a cop movie, you know, in the great big blow out at the end, when all bets are off and the two hardened, bloodied cops pull out the serious toys and just go to freakin’ town? Every boy needed one of these things.
Mercy came out just when the heavy lifting was done. She might be a vampire, but she’s still a woman, too. We’d packed our gear in the back of Roberts’ Prado and both of us leaned against the car and watched the vampire approach.
I think she was wearing shorts. Could have been denim undies, though, for all that they barely covered her butt. There were fishnet stockings and knee-high boots with heels thick enough to crush necks. On top, she had on a t-shirt with the slogan ‘You’re just jealous because the little voices are speaking to me’. That wouldn’t have been so bad on its own, but it was approximately two sizes too small. And Mercy wasn’t wearing a bra.
Roberts swallowed hard.
“Is that what you’re wearing out?” I demanded.
Mercy perused herself. “Yes.”
“I said something appropriate to both hunting and maybe, possibly, very slim chance of dancing.” I waved at her outfit. “That’s… it’s… Jesus, Merce, it’s hardly there at all.”
She put a fist on one hip and stuck said hip out at me like a challenge. “I’ve seen you watching those music film clips. You like this kind of outfit.”
Roberts snickered.
“Sure, in film clips. But I can’t have you out there looking like that. Every Y chromosome in the place is going to go crazy.”
“Um, actually,” Roberts murmured. “Probably not. You haven’t been out in a while. That is pretty much what a lot of girls are wearing these days.”
“Way to help, mate.” I turned back to Mercy. “What if we find a mob of vampires? Hmm?”
She displayed her boot. “Got my vamp stamping boots on.”
Roberts snorted, then damn near collapsed in absolute gales of laughter. I ran a hand through my hair.
“I’ve lost this argument, haven’t I?” I asked the world in general.
“Never had a chance,” Roberts gasped. “Come on, let’s get going.”