Last Vampire Standing (31 page)

“Rico killed at least ten vampires and their human mates, but he looks almost emaciated. Like something is draining his life force, not just his aura energy.”

“The black fog?”

“I saw it in the room, sort of spread out over the floor.”

“Is that why you’re shaking?”

I took a deep breath. “No, I’m shaking because I forgot to tell you that I got info out of Triton. He called this darkness thing the Void. He said it preys on the power of vamps and magical beings.”

“Humans, too?”

“He didn’t say, but the black fog in Rico’s house looked similar to the dark shadows Kevin caught on video last week.”

I felt Saber’s lips in my hair. “I noticed Kevin wasn’t on the tour tonight.”

“I know. When I realized he wasn’t there, I figured he’d left town. He told me he had a limited time here. A few weeks, I think, but I don’t remember more than that.”

“And now you’re afraid he’s, what?”

“I don’t know. He wore enough silver crosses to ward off most any vamp, but my little voice is screeching that something is wrong.”

“Did he give you a card? Tell you where he was staying?”

I thought back to the first time I’d met Kevin, then sprinted to my closet. The pirate outfit. If I’d kept the card he’d shoved at me, it had to be in the pocket.

It was, and it listed Kevin’s address, phone number, MySpace page, and a paranormal investigation website. Another number was handwritten on the card.

“Find it?”

“I did, but it’s too late to call if he’s gone home. I’ll check his MySpace page first.”

“How will that help?”

I activated my laptop screen. “He told one of the groups last week that he’d upload his videos to some Web page or MySpace. I can’t remember which one, so I’m starting with this.”

The page came up in pieces, and I gave a quick glance at his blog titles.

“There.” From over my shoulder, Saber pointed at Kevin’s last blog entry. “St. Augustine Shadow Man?”

I clicked, brought up the blog dated Thursday morning, and scanned it. Basically, he wrote about the amorphous shadow he’d caught on video and mentioned the differences between it and a typical shadow man. He gave a link to his video, and, when I clicked it, the two videos of the shadow and the light entities played across the screen.

“Is this the shadow you saw when you were reading Ray?”

“It’s similar, but the one in the vision stayed low to the floor. It didn’t loom up behind Rico or Ray. Or if it did, I didn’t see it.”

I tapped a nail on Kevin’s card where it lay next to my laptop and stared at the scrawled phone number. I recognized the exchange as a local one. His hotel? It went against every mannerly instinct I had to call so late, but what was the worst that could happen if I called? I’d wake him up? I’d disturb a tryst between Kevin and Leah, or Kevin and Caro? Heck, the hotel operator might tell me Kevin had checked out, and I could shut my little voice up entirely.

“I’m calling,” I said, and scooched away from my desk to go grab the cordless in the kitchen. I stood in the kitchen doorway, biting my lip as I punched in the number.

“Is Kevin Miller still checked in?” I asked when an operator answered.

The woman who was either sleepy or bored out of her skull asked me to hold, and then the line rang. Once, twice. I let it ring five times before I hit the Off key and put the unit back on the charger.

“Not there, huh?”

“No, but he’s apparently still checked in.”

“Maybe he’s out with those girls he hooked up with.”

“Maybe. I wish my little voice believed that.”

Saber sighed and scooped his keys off the coffee table. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“To Kevin’s hotel.”

Night clerk Beth Gravis wasn’t happy when Saber introduced himself, showed her his badge, and asked her to let us into Kevin’s room. Nope, not happy even when Saber flashed his sexy smile.

“Is he a scam artist? I just upgraded him to a patio room two days ago, and I’ll be in trouble if he’s skipped on the bill.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Saber said. “We’re concerned he’s had an accident.”

Alarm flared in her hazel eyes. “Should I call an ambulance?”

“Let’s see if he needs one first.”

Beth didn’t grumble as she led us to Kevin’s first-floor room, not with her lips pursed in a thin white line. She jammed the card key in the slot and pushed hard on the lever handle.

As the door swung open, I saw a flash of movement in the dimly lit room.

And smelled jalapeño, garlic, and cheap cigar.

“Saber, it’s Gorman.”

But Saber already had his Glock in his hand when he lurched inside. Beth and I crowded in on his heels.

“Gorman, stop right there, or I swear I’ll shoot you and enjoy it.”

Frozen in the threshold of the sliding glass door I assumed led to the patio and pool, Gorman sneered. “You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man.”

“You want to test me? Lace your hands behind your head. Do it now.”

As Gorman complied, Beth said, “Vic?”

I peered at her slack-with-confusion expression. “You know Victor Gorman?”

Beth swallowed. “He works here. He’s one of our maintenance engineers. He told me this Mr. Miller was writing a hotel review and talked me into the upgrade.”

“To this specific room?” Saber asked.

“Yes. Should I call the police?”

Saber nodded, and Beth scurried off, leaving the heavy door to clunk closed behind her.

“Keep your hands laced and sit in the chair.”

I held my breath while Gorman complied, and I scanned the room for signs of, what? The Covenant didn’t take kindly to vampfriendly humans, but would Gorman harm Kevin?

The bed was made, clothes hung in the open closet, and from peeking in the bathroom, I could see toiletries strewn on the counter. Kevin’s cameras and other equipment appeared to be missing, but maybe he was ghostbusting on his own tonight. Wait, Kevin’s laptop lid was half-closed. That didn’t fit.

“Saber, I think he’s been on Kevin’s computer.”

Saber hardened his cop face. “Is that right, Gorman? What were you looking for?”

“I got the right to remain silent.”

“Cesca, see if Kevin’s stuffed in the bathtub.”

Gorman snorted. “He ain’t in there. He left with two gals afore dark.”

“Where’d they go?”

“How the hell should I know? Can I put my hands down now?”

“No. What’s the deal with having Kevin moved to this room?”

“I ain’t sayin’.”

“Fine by me. I’m happy to see you stay in jail. You should be there for attempted murder, but Cesca won’t press charges.”

Gorman’s eyes shifted to me then away. “I was just fixin’ the slidin’ glass door catch.”

“Right. At one thirty in the morning.”

I saw police car lights strobe through the window, then heard the hotel room door lock tumble and open.

Saber didn’t move, but I whirled to face an astonished Kevin. Before he could speak, the EMF meter he held suddenly screeched, and then St. Augustine’s finest burst through the sliding glass door.

An hour later, the cops had sorted out the story. While Kevin, Leah, and Caro had gone on a lighthouse ghost tour, Gorman had entered Kevin’s room by simply jiggling the sliding glass door lock until it failed. Something he knew the lock would do because he purposely hadn’t fixed it. At which point Beth had muttered, “He is so fired.”

When pressed as to why he’d broken in, Gorman admitted he’d been on Kevin’s computer looking for the list of vampires who were moving to St. Augustine. Why he thought such a list existed, never mind why Kevin would have it, boggled the intellect. Then again, that was Gorman. And, though he was cuffed and led away, I was betting he wouldn’t stay in jail long. He must have a bail bondsman on speed dial.

Kevin said that, after the tour, he and the girls had trolled the lighthouse neighborhood, and made contact with a spirit who called himself the Mariner. Or that’s what he thought the voice said when he’d listened to it in a near-empty all-night restaurant. Saber and I declined his invitation to hear the recording for ourselves and left the hotel with a word of thanks to Beth. Relieved as I was that Kevin was safe, my body didn’t seem to have the memo yet. My shoulders had more knots than the berry farm, so much so that Saber noticed.

“Why don’t you go surfing this morning?” he said as we got into his car. “You haven’t been out in a week, and it might relax you.”

He was right. I’d missed the exercise and the Zen-ness of simply feeling the ocean roll under my board.

“And tomorrow afternoon when you get up, I’ll have the information you need to claim your land. You can start ripping out vines to your fang’s content.”

“Are you trying to keep me busy?”

“I’m trying to take your mind off things neither of us can do a damned thing about right now.”

“What about taking your mind off things?”

“You’ve got a king-size bed that can help me out there, so long as you’re in it with me.”

I took his hand and squeezed. “Home, Saber.”

027

The waves on Friday morning weren’t the stuff of surfer dreams, but my spirits rose the moment I hit the water. I joined some other surfers I knew by face more than name, and hung with them awhile. Later, I paddled out farther than the others, just to sit and be, but about levitated off the board when something hit my right foot. Last time that happened, a dead body had surfaced. This time a dorsal fin broke the water in an arc. Not a shark, a dolphin. Whew! I watched as it swam nearer, and wondered for a moment if it could be Triton in his shape-shifted form. But no, the moon would be full tomorrow. Triton changed only at the dark of the moon. Well, he did unless his inner shifting clock had changed over the centuries.

“Triton?” I said as the dolphin approached.

It dove under my board, then did a Marineland-worthy leap out of the water on the other side.

“Triton, damn it, if that’s you, you’d better get your flipper over here now.”

The dolphin bobbed up near my left leg, clicked and whistled, but a fast mind probe told me this wasn’t Triton. This was a dolphin out to play, willing to connect with me. I reached to touch, and it lifted its beak to my hand. For a moment suspended in simple, profound accordance, we met gazes. Then the dolphin slowly rolled away from me. It circled back once more before arching away toward the shore.

I paddled hard to follow, and in an exhilarating minute, we had both caught a wave, the dolphin and me. We were nearing the shallower water when the dolphin peeled off. I rode the wave until it fizzled into froth, and packed it in for the day.

How can you top surfing with a dolphin for a natural high?

Something in me must’ve healed that morning, because I felt better than I had in a week when I woke up Friday afternoon. It helped that Saber had news. First, Kevin had called to thank us for catching Gorman. I knew Kevin would be on my tour tonight, even if he had to crash it, and I didn’t care.

The second bit of good news was that Saber had sweet-talked his former Realtor, Amanda, into giving him the information I needed to claim my property. I’d wait to file on Monday, but I could hardly wait to talk with Maggie about fixing up the place. Even Candy had checked in with cautiously optimistic news. Vlad stonewalled them in the interrogation, but the offshore account hadn’t been closed yet.

The one surprise was having visitors ring my doorbell at six fifteen that evening. I didn’t recognize the two men in their sixties dressed in green polo shirts and gray Sansabelt slacks that I spied through the peephole, but they weren’t selling Amway. Saber stood at my back, hand on his holster as I opened the door.

“Ms. Marinelli?” the slightly taller and thinner man said.

“Yes?”

“I’m Reggie Princeton, president of the local Covenant organization, and this”—he indicated Polo II—“is our vice president, Phil Jameson.”

“Gentlemen,” I said, being pleasant as you please, though my muscles tensed for trouble.

“I’m Deke Saber. What do you men want?”

“To apologize for the actions of Victor Gorman,” Reggie said without hesitation.

“Which actions, exactly?” Saber pushed.

“All of them. The stalking, the threats, the arrow incident. None of his actions have been or will be sanctioned by our branch of the Covenant.”

“Why not?” Saber asked. “That’s part of what you do. Provoke vamps until they defend themselves, then call for an execution.”

“Some branches do those things,” Phil piped up. “We don’t. Not anymore.”

“Ms. Marinelli has proven herself harmless,” Reggie said.

“And?” Saber pressed.

“And our activities are under law enforcement scrutiny. From now on, we’ll merely keep an eye out and report problem vampires to the VPA for them to deal with. Gorman has been a—”

“Rambo wannabe?” I supplied.

Reggie smiled. “I was going to say he’s been a challenge to deal with since he joined, but your description is on target.”

“We appreciate knowing your new policy,” Saber said, “but what are you going to do about Gorman?”

“We’re tossing him out at the meeting tonight,” Phil stated. “That’s the worst we can do to him.”

“Um, can’t you do something less than your worst?” I asked. “Like fine him, or give him some very specific job?”