Spider Bite: A Vampire Thriller (The Spider Trilogy Book 3) Page 2

  “Dylan,” I said.

  He turned to me with a spaced-out, dreamy grin. “Now do you understand? She’s...beautiful.”

  Different strokes, I suppose. She wasn’t my type at all, mainly because she didn’t have a single drop of blood.

  The guide with the husky voice came into the room. “Time to go, folks. Don’t worry, Dylan, she’ll still be here tomorrow.”

  Great, so the guide is on a first-name basis with him. Must be a regular.

  Dylan followed us back outside, and the salty air was welcome after the faint stench of the museum. Dylan studied the building as if looking for a weakness so he could break in.

  “Let’s go get a drink,” Parker said to him.

  I wasn’t all that excited about being in a crowd. Or, rather, I was too excited. All that warm, sweet blood pulsing through all those easy-to-reach veins...it was enough to make a vampire’s fangs throb.

  Dylan nodded absently and let Parker lead him to the curb, where a smart cabbie must have figured out it was closing time at the museum. I could have happily flown across the city and taken in the sights, using that weird gliding thing I did. But Parker wanted me to pretend to be normal. I suppose she didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of her family.

  But I didn’t see how being a vampire was any weirder than being in love with a dead woman because a witch doctor put a spell on you.

  After we climbed into the cab, Parker said to me, “Well, what now?”

  “Maybe this is none of our business.”

  “I care about Dylan.”

  “And I care about Maria,” Dylan said with a sigh.

  As the cab pulled up to the hotel Parker had booked for us, she tipped the cabbie and we got out. Although I’d piled up plenty of money over the years—a fringe benefit of both being a supernatural creature and the compound interest that adds up over several lifetimes—I let Parker handle our expenses. Although I had a driver’s license and fake documents, I tended to keep a low profile. Just because I could go toe to toe with demonic cult leaders and powerful voodoo witch doctors didn’t mean I wasn’t deathly afraid of the Internal Revenue Service.

  “See you guys tomorrow,” Dylan said.

  “We got you a room,” Parker said, and I read her follow-up thought: Because we need to keep an eye on you.

  “My apartment’s just a few blocks away, and it’s a nice night for a walk,” Dylan said. “In Key West, it’s always a nice night for a walk unless there’s a hurricane.”

  I got this, I thought to Parker. Plus, Dylan was right. It was a nice night, and everyone was out. Sure, I had some packets of blood stored away up in our room, but nothing beat drinking straight from the source.

  “Okay, see you in the morning,” Parker said to Dylan, and he waved and headed down the brightly lit sidewalk. Once he was out of earshot, Parker said to me, “You think he’s got a hot date, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know how hot she is,” I said. “But, yeah, did you see that look in his eye?”

  “Kind of like you when you see a young, attractive neck with a fat, throbbing jugular vein.”

  “I love it when you talk dirty,” I said.

  “Speaking of which,” she said, rolling her eyes to the upper floor of the hotel. “Do you have time?”

  “I’ve got all the time in the world,” I said. “But I’m not sure Dylan does.”

  “Yeah, I guess it’s selfish of me to think of my own craven carnal desires when my cousin is under the spell of a witch doctor,” she said. “Wake me up when you get back.”

  I gave her a cool kiss on the cheek, making sure the tips of my fangs were shielded by my lips. Then I hurried after Dylan, dodging amid the crowd until I saw his curly-haired head bobbing down the sidewalk. Downtown Key West was a vibrant, colorful place, with lots of bars and clubs and a pulsing backbeat. The sidewalk was packed with prostitutes—half of them male, although it was hard to tell the difference—and offered plenty of pleasant distractions for a virile young man like Dylan.

  But his heart seemed to be set on something else: a wired-together corpse with a wax face.

  And they say I’m weird.

  But Dylan would have to stand his date up tonight, because a shadowy figure slipped out of an alley and yanked him into darkness.

  Chapter Five

  One moment the love-struck fool was there, and the next he was gone.

  Admittedly, I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d just seen. But I’ve come across enough weird shit to know that it doesn’t do much good doubting myself. Act now, question later. One thing was for certain: a shadow had appeared from the alley up ahead, and now Dylan was gone.

  Parker was going to be pissed, and I couldn’t have that.

  Yes, the driving force that propelled me forward, that got my legs moving supernaturally fast, that now had me speeding along the crowded sidewalks, slipping past drunks and tourists and everyone in between, was an overwhelming desire to not have to admit to Parker that I’d lost her cousin.

  Yeah, I might have it a little worse for Parker than I cared to admit.

  I doubted many people got a good look at me. I didn’t care if they did or didn’t. I had my eye on the alley, and whatever it was that had suddenly appeared. I didn’t really have a “Spider sense” like that skinny guy in the comic books, but I had an instinct for bad business. And this was bad.

  I flashed past an arguing couple, and might have—might have—knocked the guy a little harder than I had to, especially when I heard the word “bitch” coming from his lips. As he went flying forward, I hung a quick right into the alley in question...and pulled up short.

  It was empty.

  No, not quite. I heard an engine starting halfway down. Lights flashed on. Headlights. And then a big cargo van pulled out of a loading dock and barreled directly at me, giving me a good look at the driver behind the wheel. A driver who was clearly aiming the vehicle straight at me. A driver that didn’t look me right in the eyes. I’d seen looks like that before. And they usually meant one thing.

  Except I didn’t have much time to dwell on it. After all, I might be immortal, but getting hit by a van would hurt like hell. I yelled for everyone to get back, then leaped high...

  And landed lightly on the moving vehicle’s roof. Yeah, I’m freaky like that.

  The charging vehicle hung a right, cutting off a golf cart overloaded with college students. I caught a middle finger or two in my peripheral vision as the van tore off down Truman Avenue.

  I don’t necessarily consider myself a man of action. In fact, I’ve always been more of a lover than a fighter. Well, a lover and a killer. The “killer” part was why I was in this mess to begin with. Making amends and all that.

  And for what purpose?

  I didn’t know, and it was certainly not something to dwell on as the van picked up speed. As it did, I found myself on my hands and knees, hanging on to a small lip that overhung the windshield. Not much to hold on to, granted, but I didn’t need much, either. Yes, I’m freaky strong, too, all the way down to my fingertips.

  Perhaps he’d heard me land on the roof, although I had landed lightly enough. Or perhaps he was just a damn bad driver. Either way, we were soon slewing wildly down the road and hitting turns like a man possessed, which, as I think back to the driver I had seen, might be the case.

  The swerving was meant to shake me loose. Except my fingers can be more like claws. Indeed, I felt the metal rippling and pulling up under them. You could safely say I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

  Was Dylan in the van? I didn’t know, but I was leaning toward probably.

  We blasted through a red light, and soon, I suspected, the local police would be involved. That might be a good thing. Or I could end this now before the son-of-a-bitch killed any innocent bystanders. I’d been involved in enough innocent deaths. I didn’t need any more on my conscience.

  And so I did the only thing I could think of: As the van slowed for another turn, I stood on my feet and t
ore into the metal roof, peeling it open like a sardine can. Yeah, it’s good to be me.

  I dropped down into the van.

  * * *

  Yep, the guy was possessed.

  I’d seen the look before, especially now that I’d been hanging out with Parker. In fact, Parker herself had once been possessed. And that same dreamy, wild-eyed look was on the face of the driver. In fact, I wasn’t entirely certain the guy blinked, even as I dropped into the seat next to him.

  Even as I leveled a punch into his jaw that should have sent him to the hospital. In fact, it might have broken his jaw, but you would never have guessed it.

  He still stared at me with that wild-eyed look as I heard grunting in the van behind me. Yeah, Dylan was back there. I wondered if the dope was still thinking about his corpse bride now.

  “You can’t stop me, devil,” said the man, in a voice that I suspected was not his own, the words slightly slurred because, yes, I had busted his jaw. Except it wasn’t him talking, was it?

  I doubted it. I sensed the crackling, supernatural energy. Energy that caused the hair on the back of my neck and arms to stand on end, even as we sped down a side street, passing small homes clustered together. Or it might have been the wind which blasted down through the open roof.

  “Didn’t your mama ever tell you it’s not nice to call names?” I said, and reached for the wheel and the guy’s throat simultaneously.

  And that’s when it happened. The knife appeared. From inside his coat pocket. The silver-tipped knife.

  Plunging deep into my chest.

  Chapter Six

  Silver sucks.

  I mean, it looks nice and all, and in the hands of a master jeweler can become a thing of pure art.

  In the hands of a demonic killer, though, it’s bad news. Especially for me, because silver is like poison to a vampire.

  As the driver cast his weasely eyes at me, seeing how much I hurt, I thought about giving him another punch in the jaw as my strength was fading. Instead, I forced my arm up like a rotted piece of wood and grabbed for the knife handle. My fingers couldn’t close around it, and I felt myself fading.

  There’s this thing I do where I sort of become mist, and that would have been a perfect time for it. I would have loved to see the driver’s jaw drop even further as I seemed to vanish in thin air, with the blade falling harmlessly to the seat. But the transformation takes a lot of mental energy, and the silver was fogging my brain, fast.

  So I did what I always do when thinking fails me—I act.

  I nudged the door handle just enough to open the door, and then I let myself tumble out to the sidewalk. It was a little risky but I was already dead anyway, so there wasn’t a whole lot of downside. I just hoped I didn’t crush some little old lady out walking her poodle after dark.

  The driver picked the perfect time to swerve, flinging me out at a high speed. I tumbled over a couple of times and the blade jabbed deeper into my chest until it felt like the whole thing was lodged in my rib cage. I am sure I made some sexy sounds like “Aargh” and “urk” as I bounced across concrete. I’d like to say my last thoughts were of Dylan’s safety, but I did manage to get the truck’s license plate number. That and the “Aurelio’s Pizza” emblazoned in cartoon red sauce across the back made me pretty confident I’d be able to track the truck later, assuming I made it through the night in one piece.

  I went dark with the license plate number spinning in my head like flushed toilet paper.

  * * *

  The next thing I remember, a muscular goon in white with a Mario Brothers mustache was jamming something over my mouth.

  I was in some sort of brightly lit chamber, and somebody—or something—was screaming in an incessant high pitch that made my sensitive ears hurt. I couldn’t move anything but my eyelids and my lips, so I blinked three times in rapid succession.

  “Hey, Roger, he blinked!” the goon said in surprise.

  “No way, man,” said Roger, who I couldn’t see. I had the sensation of being shot through space, with a gentle rocking motion causing me to become even more disoriented.

  “Sure, he did. He just did it again!”

  “This guy’s got a chunk of metal rammed deep in his abdominal cavity, he doesn’t have a pulse, and his body temperature is about as hot as your dead grandma’s, and you’re telling me he’s moving?”

  The mask the goon held poised over my mouth was made of clear plastic, and there was a corrugated tube running out of it. I put all the pieces together and realized I was in an ambulance. I tried to tell the guy I was okay, if he’d just dig the silver out of me I’d be good to go and he could send the bill whenever he got around to it. But nothing came from my lips, and I was strapped to the gurney, so I couldn’t really fight back.

  “His lips moved, too!” the goon said. He seemed to be easily amazed, which was kind of a professional handicap if you were in the field of emergency services.

  “Slap the oxygen on him and I’ll zap him with some adrenaline,” said Roger, still out of my line of sight. “Since he’s a goner anyway, we may as well experiment a little.”

  And at last I saw Roger, a thin, bug-eyed man who looked like he drank way too much coffee. He held up a hypodermic and jabbed it down swiftly toward my chest. I didn’t feel it, but I heard the needle snap. Bug Eyes’ eyes got even bigger, and I thought they might actually pop out of his skull. I’m sure the goon would have found that amazing.

  “Must have hit a bone,” Roger said.

  I tried to move my lips but the goon had the oxygen mask over me. In a normal state, my heart will beat maybe eight times a minute. With the silver coursing sluggishly through my veins, I was probably down to one beat a minute, and as far as these guys were concerned, that counted as “dead.”

  I’d been in ambulances before, of course—in any era, I manage to get into trouble. Hell, I’d even been in them back when they were drawn by horses. But despite all the advancements in medicine, there had yet to be much acceptance of vampires within the scientific community. That was plenty fine with me, as I had enough to worry about without being a celebrity, but it also made situations such as these a little bit sticky.

  I moved my lips again, and I thought I said, “Knife.” If nothing else, the motion got Roger to agree that I was, indeed, able to move. However, he said, “That’s just rigor mortis setting in, making his muscles contract.”

  “No way,” the goon said. “That takes hours.”

  “Look how pale he is. He was probably dead long before he hit the sidewalk.”

  “I’m still giving him the oxygen. I hope he has a good insurance plan.” The goon slapped the mask over my face.

  Roger bent over me, holding onto the gurney to keep his balance. The ambulance driver was about as reckless as the guy in the pizza van. Roger peered down into the gaping hole in my chest, his nose curling and his eyes bugging.

  “Looks like silver!” he said. “Lots of it.”

  “Right,” said the goon. “Guy’s a walking treasure chest. Get it, treasure chest. Har har.”

  “Seriously,” said Roger. He looked around as if there were security cameras, and then plunged his fingers—without wearing rubber gloves—into the wound. I felt a faint stirring inside me, a little bit of fresh pain, and then Roger grabbed hold of the end of the knife and slowly worked it out of me. My blood clinging to the blade was thick and a little gray, but Roger just wiped the fluid off on the leg of his uniform whites and whistled.

  “Sweet ground score,” Roger said.

  “It’s not a ground score,” the goon said. “You stole it from his body.”

  “Okay, call it grave robbing, I don’t care. I’m pawning this baby.”

  The goon clamped the oxygen mask on my face. “Fine, but we split it fifty-fifty. Blinky Boy here will never tell a soul.”

  What the goon didn’t know was Blinky Boy was starting to feel much, much better without all that icky silver in him. I flexed my fingers to test their strength, and then
ripped off the oxygen mask. “Thanks for the lift,” I said, “but you guys are out of my insurance network.”

  I sat up, shredding the restraints like they were crepe paper, and their heart monitor gave a couple of beeps as my heart started working again.

  The two techs retreated to the front of the ambulance bay as I wiped at the front of my shirt, where the wound was already closing up.

  “A zombie,” Roger whispered.

  “Zombies aren’t real,” I said. That was a lie, but it was a pretty cool line, given how I then proceeded to kick open the back door and soar off into the night.

  Chapter Seven

  I considered my options.

  That I sat in the shadows along the second-floor balcony of Hemingway’s home along Whitehead Street was beside the point. I think best when I’m away from the frantic thoughts of mortals...and away from their pulsing, pounding, bleeding hearts. It was a good and quiet place.

  Yes, I’d had a hell of a shitty night. Of that, there was no doubt.

  My chest was still sore. I heal quickly...hell, sometimes even instantly. But not so with silver. No, the element Ag had it out for the undead. Why that was, I didn’t know. But it did. And it did bad.

  Philosophically, I knew something had to counter the thing that I am...the thing I had become a long, long time ago. Without such a force, vampires would wander the earth unrestricted, unchecked, eventually running out of—well, blood.

  A yin for every yang. Without Kryptonite Superman was less interesting. On a side note: did people even realize how closely Superman resembled a vampire? He flew. I flew. He was all powerful. Well, I couldn’t quite move mountains, but compared to a mortal, I might as well be all-powerful. And he had Kryptonite to my silver.

  I’m Superman, I thought. Of course, Superman didn’t drink blood, or sleep during the day. Then again, his strength was connected with the sun. My strength was connected to the moon. Either way, I suspected whoever had invented Superman might have had a vampire experience or two.