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  VAMPIRE REQUIEM

  A

  Samantha Moon

  Story

  by

  J.R. RAIN

  Acclaim for the Stories of J.R. Rain:

  “Be prepared to lose sleep!”

  —James Rollins, international bestselling author of The Doomsday Key

  “I love this!”

  —Piers Anthony, bestselling author of Xanth

  “Dark Horse is the best book I’ve read in a long time!”

  —Gemma Halliday, award-winning author of Spying in High Heels

  “Moon Dance is a must read. If you like Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter, be prepared to love J.R. Rain’s Samantha Moon, vampire private investigator.”

  —Eve Paludan, bestselling co-author of Witchy Business

  “Impossible to put down. J.R. Rain’s Moon Dance is a fabulous urban fantasy replete with multifarious and unusual characters, a perfectly synchronized plot, vibrant dialogue and sterling witticism all wrapped in a voice that is as beautiful as it is rich and vividly intense as it is relaxed.”

  —April Vine, author of Unbound

  “Is it possible to redefine two genres in one book? I don’t know, but J.R. Rain has left a lasting impression for the vampire and mystery genres.”

  —P.J. Day, author of The Sunset Prophecy

  Other Books by J.R. Rain

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  Winter Wind

  Silent Echo

  The Body Departed

  The Grail Quest

  Elvis Has Not Left the Building

  The Lost Ark

  The Accidental Superheroine

  LavaBull

  Jack and the Giants

  Dolfin Tayle

  Dragon Assassin

  Lost Eden

  Judas Silver

  The Vampire Club

  Cursed

  VAMPIRE FOR HIRE SERIES

  Moon Dance

  Vampire Moon

  American Vampire

  Moon Child

  Christmas Moon

  Vampire Dawn

  Vampire Games

  Moon Island

  Moon River

  Vampire Sun

  Moon Dragon

  Moon Shadow

  SAMANTHA MOON CASE FILES

  Moon Bayou

  Blood Moon

  Moon Magic

  JIM KNIGHTHORSE SERIES

  Dark Horse

  The Mummy Case

  Hail Mary

  Clean Slate

  Night Run

  THE WITCHES SERIES

  The Witch and the Gentleman

  The Witch and the Englishman

  The Witch and the Huntsman

  OPEN HEART SERIES

  The Dead Detective

  Deadbeat Dad

  NICK CAINE SERIES

  Temple of the Jaguar

  Treasure of the Deep

  Pyramid of the Gods

  THE SPINOZA TRILOGY

  The Vampire With the Dragon Tattoo

  The Vampire Who Played Dead

  The Vampire in the Iron Mask

  THE ALADDIN TRILOGY

  Aladdin Relighted

  Aladdin Sins Bad

  Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman

  THE WALKING PLAGUE TRILOGY

  Zombie Patrol

  Zombie Rage

  Zombie Mountain

  THE SPIDER TRILOGY

  Bad Blood

  Spider Web

  Spider Bite

  THE PSI TRILOGY

  Hear No Evil

  See No Evil

  Speak No Evil

  Flight 12: A PSI Novella

  THE GHOST FILES

  Ghost College

  THE VAMPIRE DIARIES

  Bound By Blood

  THE ABNORM CHRONICLES

  Glimmer

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Red Rain: Over 40 Bestselling Stories

  Vampire for Hire: First 8 Stories

  Blood Rain: 15 Dark Tales

  Black Rain: 15 Dark Tales

  SHORT STORY SINGLES

  The Vampire on the Train

  Vampire Requiem

  Ghosts of Christmas Present

  Easy Rider

  Dark Side of the Moon

  Blue Moon

  Vampire Gold

  Halloween Moon

  Vampire Dreams

  Vampire Blues

  Vampire Nights

  Teeth

  Vampire Rain

  The Santa Call

  The Bleeder

  YOUNG READERS

  (Writing as J.K. Drew)

  Little Wolf

  The Secret of the Sphinx

  The Emerald River

  The Angel and the Gift

  Forever Silent

  Dare to Enter a Distant World

  Dare to Rule a Distant World

  Dare to Escape a Distant World

  The Mystery of the Walking Statue

  The Mystery of Stonehead Island

  Deep Sea Danger

  The Legend of Eagle Eye Mountain

  Playoff Pressure

  Vampire Requiem

  Published by J.R. Rain

  Copyright © 2015 by J.R. Rain

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. All rights reserved.

  Dedication

  To Kathleen and Elaine...the two people who inspired Samantha Moon.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Vampire Requiem

  Reading Sample

  About the Author

  Vampire Requiem

  Requiem: a song, chant or poem for someone who died.

  “If death is the great equalizer, then some of us are just more equal than others.”

  —Diary of the Undead

  She was the last person I ever thought I would be friends with.

  Then again, when you’ve been through what we’ve been through together, well, maybe it’s not so surprising, after all.

  But still...

  We sat together on the back steps of my house, facing my expansive back yard and the Pep Boys sign that hung like a god over the far wall.

  Friends, of course, might be too strong a word. And acquaintances just didn’t feel right, either. She was certainly no acquaintance, that was for sure. Not after some of the shit we’d shared.

  A comrade, I thought. A comrade-in-arms.

  Yeah, I liked the sound of that.

  “Sounds, I dunno, a little Russian,” Nancy said, picking up on my thoughts a little too quickly for my liking.

  “Well, we’re going with it,” I said.

  “Suit yourself,” she said, shrugging, nonplussed. “And, for the love of God, will you blink?”

  Admittedly, I didn’t blink much when I was around her, since I knew it freaked her out. There was still some sass in me. Anyway, I could go for days without blinking. Generally, I had to remind myself to blink.

  I now made a big show of blinking and she laughed and shook her head.

  We were drinking wine and smoking cigarettes. One of us was buzzed and possibly laying the groundwork for lung cancer. The other would never get drunk or die of lung cancer, or die of anything other than silver to the heart. That someone, of course, just happened to be me. After a few minutes of silence, I asked, “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “You were...” I did the math “...twenty-two when you met him?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You were old enough to know better,” I said.

  She shrugged, s
ome of her old defensiveness coming through. That she was a functioning human after what she had been through, was amazing. That she could acknowledge someone else’s feelings was a surprise. After all, my dead husband’s mistress had had a helluva childhood. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

  She exhaled a long, billowing plume of blue-gray smoke and turned to me. “How old were you when you married Danny?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “Back when you were human?”

  “I’m still human,” I said, and might have snapped at her a little. “I’m just, you know, weird.”

  She laughed. “You are far more than weird.”

  I shrugged and smoked and wondered again how, of all people, she and I had become friends. Through Danny, of course, a man we had both slept with, shared life experiences with, and might have even loved. Well, I knew I had loved him. I couldn’t vouch for her, although I could vouch for her if I scanned her thoughts. I didn’t scan her thoughts. Truth was, I never wanted to scan her thoughts again. Her thoughts were dark and twisted—full of memories that no one should ever have. Also, the last thing I wanted to see was an image of Danny in there, with her—and them going at it like feral rabbits.

  “We never went at it like rabbits, Sam. Feral or otherwise.”

  “How much did Danny tell you about me?” I asked. I often wondered just how much he had blabbed. And were there others out there who knew my secret?

  Other strippers and prostitutes, no doubt.

  “I’m sure there are, Sam,” she said, exhaling and looking away. Nancy never hid from what she did then and what she currently did now. Although I didn’t ask, I got the very strong feeling—and these days I always trusted my feelings—that she made her living as a very high-priced call girl.

  “Something like that, Sam. I could tell you about it if you really want to know.”

  “I don’t want to know. Not now, not ever.”

  She shrugged and smoked and if my judgmental tone had affected her, she didn’t show it. These days, I tried not to judge her. I tried to welcome her as a friend.

  “I do what I have to do, Sam. I’m glad you don’t judge me...too much. Anyway, he told me your whole story. How you were attacked. How you were turned. How you guys kept blood in the garage fridge. He told me more. Lots more. How you threatened him, scared him.”

  Danny had blabbed my secret.

  Months ago, when Nancy and I had first met, I could have denied it. I could have even changed her opinion of me. Controlling others was something that used to not sit well with me, but was now, admittedly, a feasible option. Of course, the demon bitch within me loved to control others. Loved it more than anything, if I had to guess. So, I rarely gave in to controlling others. And, yeah, that pissed her off to no end. Now, that I enjoyed.

  “Are you taking his side?” I asked.

  “Well, you did threaten him, Sam. He told me all about you throwing him down on the bed and choking—”

  “He tried to have me killed! By other vampires. And he nearly got my sister killed, too.”

  She shrugged. She usually shrugged. It was her defense mechanism. Her shrugs seemed to indicate: I’ve seen worse.

  I shielded my thoughts. I had to. They had turned dark. Far darker than I was willing to share.

  “You’re taking that rat bastard’s side, aren’t you? And if you shrug again, I’m going to remove your shoulder and feed it to my neighbor’s dog.”

  She shrugged again, and this one was defiant, snotty. It also came out with a surprising lack of concern for her own safety. She should have been very, very concerned for her own safety.

  Very.

  Maybe we weren’t comrades after all. Maybe it was impossible to put our past behind us and to forget the hurt, the jealousy, and the complete disruption of our lives.

  And this, a defiant shrug, coming from the woman who’d slept with my husband, back when he and I were still trying to work things out, back when I still loved him, back when I needed him most.

  I snapped.

  Literally. I knew the bitch within me helped me to snap. Gave me just the right amount of hate to fuel what I did next...and what I did next would horrify me later.

  But it didn’t horrify me now. Oh, no, what I did now felt just right.

  So very, very right.

  ***

  When I was done feeding from her neck, I was tempted to kill her. Tempted, of course, by the demon within me.

  Instead, through superhuman effort—or, perhaps, supernatural effort—I pulled away from her torn throat, wiping my mouth like the ghoul I am. Then I licked the back of my hand.

  Yeah, definitely a monster.

  Kill her, chanted a voice in my head, a voice way, way, way down deep. A voice I never, ever trusted. Until now, I had done such a damn good job of ignoring her, too. So good that I almost, almost, thought I was normal. Especially with the two rings I now wore: one that helped me to eat normal food, and one that helped me to live in the light of day. Both rings, of course, were created and forged in an alchemical process that few on Earth would ever know.

  I had made a valiant attempt to not feed from humans over these past few months—or to even feast from anything living. My sole source of sustenance had been my bloody packets of filth delivered from a slaughterhouse.

  Now, as I sat back, I watched Nancy sort of come back to her senses. I had seen this before. Victims slipped into a catatonic state of shock, I assumed. Allison never had, though, when I’d fed from her each week. Perhaps a friendly bite to eat was much different than a full-fledged vampire attack.

  And I had attacked Nancy, too. Criminal charges could be pressed against me. Hell, I should be in jail for what I just did to her.

  Except that no jail could hold me.

  She blinked and I saw the tears roll down her cheeks. She came back to her senses slowly. Jesus, had I put her under a sort of spell? The way a dolphin stuns its prey with a sonic blast. She rolled her head in my direction. More tears streamed out. The wound in her neck had already coagulated, although it still seeped some blood.

  I tried to feel really bad about what I had done.

  The old me would have been mortified. The old me would have hated herself for attacking this woman. The old me would have feared that such an attack would prompt more such attacks, that it would, in fact, signal the end of my humanity.

  The old me was a wuss.

  Besides, humanity was overrated.

  Yes, I knew that was her talking, the demon within. But sometimes, she made sense. And sometimes, people just deserved what they got. And sometimes, I just needed to feed.

  All good points, I thought.

  I knew I was slipping. I knew the demon within me was gaining a stronger foothold, gaining more and more access to my thoughts...and to my actions. There was a war raging within me, and I was losing ground. The enemy was advancing.

  And I didn’t care.

  ***

  “Are you okay, Sam?”

  I had erased her memory of the attack, of course. Under the circumstances, it seemed the prudent thing to do. With a few well-placed words and a suggestion that the past few minutes had never happened, I was in the clear. There was some blood on her shirt, but I’d suggested to her that the blood was from an old scratch that had since healed.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” I said, my thoughts shielded deep behind an impregnable wall.

  “Okay, good. You sort of got this funny look on your face...” Nancy said.

  “And then?”

  “And then, I asked how you were doing.” She laughed. “Look, I’m sorry if I pushed any buttons. I never thought we would be friends, either. It just sort of fell into our laps...and felt, well, it felt comfortable. All that other stuff...we were different people then. I didn’t know you. You didn’t know me. Danny was playing us both. I’m glad we can see past all that and be friends.”

  I tried to smile and might have even succeeded. I took in a lot of useless air and, with the guilt setting in,
thought, Yeah, some friend I am.

  ***

  “You attacked her?”

  “A little bit,” I underreported to my psychic friend, Allison. We were having lunch at Lazy Dog in Brea, a place that allowed customers to bring their dogs on the patio. I didn’t own a dog, which was probably a good thing. We didn’t want Fido to go missing like my neighbor’s cat. “And could you say that a little louder?”

  “I’m Latina,” she said. “We’re loud, deal with it.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  Allison shrugged and shoved a forkful of her iceberg wedge salad in her mouth. I might not be much of a salad expert—especially after not eating the stuff for over seven years—but iceberg wedge salad looked like a lazy-man’s version of a regular salad.

  “It’s all about presentation,” said Allison, picking up on my thoughts, which, nowadays, just about anyone seemed to do—at least, anyone with any kind of connection to me. Allison’s connection just happened to be stronger than just about anyone’s, since, well, up to a few months ago, I’d been ingesting her blood on a regular basis. Consensually, of course. Her willingness to provide me with small snacks of human blood had a happy side effect of enhancing her psychic abilities. So, our give-and-take arrangement was quite symbiotic.

  “It’s all about marketing,” I said, not impressed with the presentation of the salad.

  “Or that, too. But I’m confused, Sam—”

  “Confused about why you paid ten bucks for a side salad?”

  “Never mind that, and this is much more than a side salad...it’s an experience.”

  I snorted. Damn loudly, too.

  “Anyway,” said Allison, with tons of emphasis on the ‘any’ part. “I thought you had, you know, kicked the fresh blood habit.” She looked at me hopefully. She was more than willing to go back to our old arrangement, but feeding the beast within me fresh blood had only created a bigger problem for me. A nearly uncontrollable problem.