Jolie blonde, regardez donc quoi tás fait,
Tu más quitte pour tén aller,
Pour Tén aller avec un autre, oui, que moi,
Quel espoir et quel avenir, mais, moi, je vais avoir?
Jolie blonde, tu más laisse, moi tout seul,
Pour tén aller chez ta famille.
Si táurais pas ecoute tos les conseils de les autres
Tu serait ici-t-avec moi aujourd hui
Jolie blonde, tu croyais il y avait just toi,
Il y a pas just toi dans le pays pour moi aimer.
Je peux trouver just une autre jolie blonde,
Bon Dieu sait, moi, jái un tas.
There was nothing like a little Buckwheat Zydeco to put everything right in his world. Roger Glover cranked the volume a couple of notches louder as he burned up Interstate 5, heading toward Pacific Beach and home. This was one of the best things about being a cop — no gridlock, because your shifts were so random. None of those 8 to 5 things, non. At 8:00 p.m. on a weeknight, there wasn't much in the way of traffic on the freeway, and Glover pushed the pedal a little bit closer to the metal as his Mustang chased 90. Another advantage: If he got pulled over, he wouldn’t get a ticket. One of the perks of being in law enforcement was that you could bend the law and get away with it.
Glover just wanted to get those zirable pictures out of his head. He'd received copies of the Bite Me murder files from King County that day, and included was a stack of crime scene photos. Also copies, but obviously done on one of those Kodak Picturemaker machines. Very clear. Very graphic. Very disturbing.
No man could be doing this. Une tataille, pour certainment. Twelve deaths in the Seattle area. No blood left in any of the bodies. Vicious bite marks on each one’s neck. Not merely two neat puncture marks like in the movies, non. The punctures were there, oui, deep and ugly. But between them were teeth marks. Incisor impressions in gory flesh. Bruised indentations ending in broken skin. What’s more, according to the coroner’s reports, there was extensive saliva around the wounds. The bastard had licked them. Licked up every tiny droplet of plasma that had escaped his greedy mouth. Glover shuddered and crossed himself twice.
Two days ago, he'd spoken to some woman who was on the Bite Me investigative team up in Seattle. At least, she claimed to be a woman. He had been transferred to her when he'd asked to speak with someone familiar with the cases. After identifying himself, Glover had explained to Lt. McClain that San Diego had a similar murder on their hands. In a deep and booming voice, she had suggested the possibility that the two killers were in fact one and the same. That was not what Glover wanted to hear. The Bite Me murders had been occuring monthly for years, with the police force no closer to apprehending the perp than they had been at the beginning. That was an indication of une tueur très sournois. Glover knew he was good, but he was also quite familiar with the reputation of Seattle’s Best. He was neither vain enough nor naive enough to believe he would be any more brilliant at solving these crimes than they had been. The probability that he was now facing off with a devious murderer who had successfully eluded capture by the four sharpest investigative minds in Washington State was daunting, to say the least.
McClain had offered to overnight him copies of everything they had on the cases, then had yelled to someone, “Hey, Tarantella! Sounds like your vampire boyfriend is vacationing down south. He stopped in for a bite in San Diego last night.” Glover heard the sounds of some kind of va-t-et-vient, and then the line went dead. Apparently, somebody on the team was excité beaucoup to have a new lead. Too bad they had not seen fit to come down and personally deliver the files. Glover would have appreciated the help. But all he'd gotten from Seattle was the box of reports and photos.
Glover deftly swung the Mustang into his parking space, and climbed out. One of his neighbors was having a party. He smiled at the ruckus as he climbed his staircase. He was the only person in this small apartment complex that wasn't a college student, so there was always a party going on somewhere in it. It didn’t bother him. He liked noise; the boojums fed on silence. He was a big fan of anything that kept the boojums at bay, especially on a night like tonight. His brain was far too haunted by pictures of waxen white faces, glassy staring eyes and ravaged necks.
Jacob opened his door to find Jess standing on his porch. She looked ready for a smackdown, her jaw clenched in mulish determination. Her blonde hair was messy and stuck up in places, as though she'd been attempting to pull it out. No doubt he was the cause of her aggravation.
“Well? Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
Jacob stepped back and swept into a bow. “Please come in, dear neighbor, and welcome to my humble abode,” he said sarcastically.
“Oh, bite me,” she snapped. “Look, Jake, we need to talk.”
“Don’t call me Jake,” he said automatically, but his heart wasn’t in it. It didn’t really matter what she called him. He was what he was.
“OK,” Jess began, plopping down on his russet leather sofa. “So, tell me why you think you’re a vampire.” She looked around, goggling at the earthtones and hanging plants. “Holy shit. You do know it’s not 1974 anymore, don’t you?”
Jacob opened his mouth to defend his décor, but Jess waved her hands impatiently.
“No, no, never mind that. I didn’t come over here to discuss color schemes.” She glanced around again and shuddered slightly. “Although maybe I should have. But, no. This vampire business. Jake, you can’t be serious. There’s no such thing as vampires. They are fictional creatures.” She enunciated the last two words slowly and carefully, as though speaking to a child. “It’s not healthy for a grown man to harbor such delusions. Even worse, with this Gaslamp murder, it’s downright dangerous.”
Jacob stared at her. “You have heard about that?”
“Well, of course I have! It’s all over the news, for one thing. For another, the guys at work are obsessed with it. They talk about it all day long. Frankly, I’m pretty damn sick of hearing about it. But Jake, I just can’t stress enough how important it is that you get off this kick. You’re liable to find yourself locked up behind bars if you don’t.”
Jacob looked at her solemnly. “I would outlive my keepers,” he replied sadly.
Jess closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. Then she looked steadily at him and said, “All right. Tell me everything. All of it. Everything you believe to be true about yourself.”
Jacob studied her resolute face. Perhaps he should. Perhaps she should know it all, now, before their feelings for each other grew any stronger. Perhaps it would scare her away. Before she met Jakobus.
“My birth name was Jakobus Si-Badru. I was born in Egypt, in the year now known as 60 B.C. My family was quite wealthy, and as a young man, I was given a position in the Ptolemy court. There was a girl, Ibis.” His voice caught slightly on the name. “We had known each other, loved each other, since youth. She was . . . quite beautiful. She was placed as a handmaiden at court, and we saw much of each other. I . . . loved her deeply. Because of our positions, we were forbidden to wed, but we met in my chamber every night. Marriage was forbidden to us, you see, but not love. Not sex. We gave our innocence to each other, made vows to each other. We promised each other undying love, eternal faithfulness. One night, Ibis did not come to my chamber. I waited for her, watched for her till dawn. I was terrified that she might have caught the Pharoah’s eye and been sent to him, in which case to ever touch her again would have meant death for me. But she was at her duties as normal the next day, and came to my chamber that night. She had a wound on her neck, which she casually dismissed. But she didn’t stay till near dawn as she had been wont to do, not for the next several nights. And then one night, as we were . . . making love, she told me that she had received the blood of immortality. She would now live forever, never growing any older, always beautiful and young. She begged me to join her. She told me how gloriously powerful she felt, and pleaded with me to accept the gift from her.” Jacob, who had been slowly pacing the room, turned now to look at Jess. “So I took it.”
Jess was gazing at him, transfixed by the tale. “Wow,” she breathed, “What a great story! So, what, you killed her and drank her blood?”
Jacob glared at her, outraged. “I did not kill her. Yes, I drank a small amount of her blood, but it was freely given and caused her no harm whatever. I told you, I loved her.”
“And where is she now, this Ibis?”
“She is dead. She was killed by a mob of angry villagers, who caught her feeding on one of their young men. They drove a stake through her heart and burned her body.”
“I thought you claimed to be immune to all those supposed vampire-killing methods.”
“I am immune. She was not. I do not know why this is so.”
“Uh huh. OK. So you are, let’s see, 2,064 years old. And all this time, all these thousands of years, you’ve been feeding on people by killing them and drinking their blood.”
“Yes. I am not proud of that fact, Jezebel, but it is true.”
To Jacob’s utter shock, Jess burst out laughing. “Do you hear yourself? Jake, if you had been murdering people for thousands of years, you’d have been caught long ago! A person a night for 2,000 years, that’s . . . well, that’s a lot of dead bodies!”
“I do not feed every night. No more often than once per month, if that.”
“Well, how very civilized of you! But still, we’re talking 12,000 bodies. No freaking way, José!”
Jacob wondered, not for the first time, who this José person was that was always being admonished. Perhaps it was the José who had introduced him to Herradura Seleccion Suprema Muy Anejo. In which case, he most certainly deserved every admonition. Turning his attention back to Jess, Jacob smiled bitterly.
“On the contrary, my friend, my kind has been getting away with murder since time began. Far more than merely myself alone. We . . . have our ways of . . . covering our tracks.”
There was a coldness in his tone that made Jess shiver. She suddenly felt all too aware of the gathering darkness, and the fact that she was alone with a man who believed he needed to drink human blood to survive. She stood up abruptly and edged toward the door. Jacob noticed, and her fear was more painful to him than any wooden stake could ever be.
“You have nothing to fear, Jezebel. I will never harm you.”
“Oh no, that's not it at all! I’ve just realized how late it’s getting!” Jess tried to act nonchalant, but was somewhat less than successful. She smiled shakily at him as she found the doorknob with her outstretched hand.
“Listen, Jake, this has been fascinating, really. But I need to get home and wash my cats. Feed! I mean, feed my cats. We’ll talk some more tomorrow.” Outside, she was thinking as she closed the door behind her. In the daylight.
