“Black in Back” (Part I)

Tess understood the logic of lying low at night, but that meant she was in charge during the day and she didn’t like being scared at the same time. She didn’t like being scared at all, but after everything that had happened, “scared” had become her predominant state.

She tried to hide it since it served no purpose but to annoy her whatever-he-was. Partner? Mentor? Keeper? Nothing seemed to fit. Nothing, that is, but “vampire”.

Tess had a vampire. She wasn’t particularly happy about it, but neither was he. He probably felt as shackled to her as she felt to him; it was hard to say because she wasn’t singled out for special treatment. Black was abrasive with everyone. But he had helped her to solve the mystery of Trav’s murder and now they were stuck with each other.

Stuck and on the run.

The life she had known was no more. Travis was still dead, still filed as a suicide though he had died like a stag in the crosshairs of a hunter. They were clever, the vampires. The one who had killed Trav—the female Black had set on fire with a flare gun—had cut his wrists and left him in the shower, letting the running water explain why so much blood had been missing. His troubled past had supplied the cops with an easy motive, but Tess had refused to accept any of it. She had spied the tiny bruises straddling the gash in one wrist and felt the chill of innate reckoning. Vampires existed. Some people thought that was cool. Others thought it was a media ploy for ratings. Some stubbornly clung to denial, but denying the truth didn’t make it any less true. Tess hadn’t thought anything at all until one had stolen the soul she treasured more than life itself. Once it got personal, vampires became very real.

She tried to spot them in a crowd, frustrating Black with her persistent ineptitude. “You don’t find them, sweetheart. They find you.”

Tess objected. “I found you.”

That pissed him off. “You were aimed at me, sister.”

It irritated her as well, since if she hadn’t pursued the matter, he would still be haunting the waterfront and she would still be blissfully ignorant. Grieving, but ignorant. The more sympathetic cop on Trav’s case had recommended a private investigator, who hadn’t taken the job but who had suggested she try a guy he knew on the docks. “He’s a little twitchy, so you don’t want to approach him right away. Watch him for a few days, get comfortable with his routine, then hit him up.” Strange advice, but desperation had given Tess more courage than brains and so she had followed it.

The guy had turned out to be Black. She wondered now if the PI had been a vampire, too—she had left a message on his voice mail and he had returned her call after dark. Black’s suspicion that she had been sicced on him by his own kind certainly seemed more feasible after the way things had gone at the Four Seasons.

In a word, badly.

Oh, Travis had been avenged and so had Black, given that the same female—Tess refused to consider her a woman—had used him as a chew toy in his day, but vampires killing vampires was a no-no and Black had flamed Trav’s killer in front of her maker. Tess didn’t know a whole lot about the one called Raymond, but he worried Black the most so she took her cue from that.

“Can’t we just kill him?” she asked. They were damned for one already. Surely a second would make no difference.

“We’d have to get near him first, and you only get near Raymond if Raymond wants you there.”

“How did he get so powerful?”

“How do you think?”

Tess didn’t want to think. She was tired of thinking and wanted to go home, to take a bath and change her clothes and catch up on The Good Wife.

Black was relentless. “Come on, sugar, think.”

“I don’t know. Is he like the Godfather?”

“Raymond?” Black almost laughed. “He’s more the head of the serpent, but if you need a movie reference, that’s as good as any. He keeps the peace among the monsters.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. “How many are there?”

“More than the cops could manage if they got out of hand.”

There by the grace of Raymond go I. “You’re saying we have to leave him where he is.”

“I like it less than you do, sweetheart, but the best thing you and I can do is get the hell out of his reach, so when is your car out of the shop? because your boyfriend’s BMW has been made.”

Tess bit her lip to redirect the sting. “It should be ready tomorrow.”

“Use the desk phone in the morning to find out.”

She glared at him. He’d dropped her cell phone down a sewer grate to punctuate his distrust of technology. Telling her to use the hotel desk phone was insulting—not to mention a health risk. “I’ll go to the shop in person.”

“In that getup? You look like the Energizer bunny without the ears.”

Despite her best effort, tears glazed her vision. “I’m a girl. I like pink, and you told me to put on the sweatpants. If that stupid flare gun wasn’t so big—”

“—you’d be dead,” he snapped.

“Maybe I’d rather be dead!”

He looked like he wanted to slap her. She could tell by the set of his jaw and the way his lips thinned, not because it showed in his eyes. Nothing showed in his eyes. She had only seen them once and once had been enough. She was glad that he always wore sunglasses, even at night, even in the rain, even if it meant that she saw her own reflection in the dark lenses, small and pink and pitiful. She dropped her gaze and plucked feebly at the fleece pants that matched her sweatshirt.

“I know you’re only trying to help me.”

“Do you know why?”

She shook her head.

“Damn. I was hoping one of us did.”

Her gaze lifted, followed by the threat of a smile. Black sat on the floor across from her, wrists resting atop his drawn-up knees, his face a stony mask behind the shades. Her impulse to smile popped before it got momentum. “I can never tell if you’re joking.”

He deadpanned. “Neither can I.”

If Tess had ever imagined meeting a vampire, Black was the furthest thing from her imagining. PR had vampires masquerading as impeccably-mannered society icons in evening clothes and expensive cars. Black was dirt poor and mean as an abused mutt. He was shaggy, too, sporting a rough-chopped mop of dirty blond hair that fell past his shoulders. Tess itched to tie it back if not cut it off; she didn’t have to look closely to see how handsome he would be if he could be made to give a hoot.

An idea occurred. “You know, that ten grand I offered you for solving Trav’s murder could go a long way to helping us get out of town.”

“Seems to me I turned down that ten grand.”

“You did, but since we’re a team, I don’t mind footing the bill for a makeover.”

Suspicion lent an edge to his voice. “What makeover?”

“Raymond’s goons are looking for a fluffy pink blonde and a scruffy derelict. They don’t know where we are right now. They don’t know my car, either. That’s an advantage, especially if a brunette is driving it. What if we dyed my hair and cleaned you up? It’s the oldest trick in the book, but it might work.”

“What do we do about these?” Black pushed up his shades and cocked his head at her.

Tess made herself hold his gaze … such as it was. She knew he could see, but how much and how well he had yet to say. Light bothered him; she knew by the tension around his eyes as he struggled to keep from squinting in the overhead bulb’s low-watt glow. “I could get you a white cane,” she said.

“That’ll fool ’em.”

“Different shades, then. Something pricier, with tinted lenses instead of full black.”

He dropped his current pair back into place and Tess felt the tension ease from her shoulders. She wasn’t sure, but it looked like he was fighting a smirk. “You gonna make me a star, sugar?”

“Nope,” she replied, mimicking his smartass drawl, “just a face in the crowd.”

………

She needed clothes before she dared to collect her car. Enter Black’s buddy Aurora, who had squirreled them away in a different cheap hotel from the cheap hotel where he had been living before Tess had come on scene. As far as prostitutes went, Aurora had better fashion sense than her peers. She was also taller and bustier than Tess, so borrowing from her closet was out of the question—as if it had ever been in the running—but she was willing to scour the thrift stores for attire that wasn’t an animal print or faux leather. She also hit the drugstore for a box of light brown hair colour, and arrived at the hotel laden with bags and greasy takeout just as Black was waking up. After a quiet word with her, he slipped out the door without acknowledging Tess at all.

“Is he going to hunt?”

“Hell, no. Black doesn’t hunt. Eat up, honey, then we’ll dim your light.”

Mexican wasn’t Tess’s favourite, but the burritos Aurora had brought were unexpectedly tasty. They sat together at the rickety table, sharing an order of spicy tater tots and sipping Coke spiked with Bacardi poured from the elegant silver flask in Aurora’s purse. She handed it over when she noticed Tess trying not to stare. “A parting gift when I left my office job.”

“You worked in an office?”

“More or less. You sweet on Black?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me, honey. Are you sweet on Black?”

“I’m not sure that’s your business.”

“I’m asking just the same.”

Tess toyed uncomfortably with her straw. Aurora was friendly enough, but something in her chocolate brown eyes called to mind Bambi with a machete. She and Black were close, but how close? “Maybe I should ask you the same question.”

The smile Aurora gave her was almost coy. “One way or another, I don’t know a soul who don’t have it for ol’ Black.” The coyness vanished, leaving ice shards to glitter in her smoky contralto. “He’s one of us.”

“And I’m not.”

Aurora pulled a pack of Marlboros from her bag. “How many years at college taught you to figure that out? Honey, I’m not dissing you; I know how his mind works, and he’s a chump for pitiful creatures. He lives by this medieval code from the days of King Arthur or something and, like it or not, you are a damsel in distress.” She paused to light a foot-long cigarette then arched inquisitive brows at Tess, who didn’t dare to wrinkle her nose, let alone ask the dusky Amazon not to smoke.

“I guess you live by the same code, or you wouldn’t be helping us.”

Aurora took a deep drag and forced the smoke out through her nose. “There is no ‘us’, honey. I’m helping Black. So, are you done eating? ’Cause I promised him a brunette when he gets back and I wasn’t talking about myself.”

………

It was weird to look in the mirror and see dark where there had always been blonde.

“What,” Black said when she remarked on the oddity, “did you dye there, too?”

Some white knight. Aurora guffawed, but Tess was not amused. “You need a haircut.”

“And I suppose you’ll be the barber?”

She had cut Trav’s hair. She wasn’t a professional, but she knew how to use a pair of scissors—though the kitchen shears in Aurora’s bag of goodies proved more cumbersome than she had expected, especially when trimming the uneven ends. Black sat with his eyes closed, his sunglasses resting on the table by the burrito wrappers. Aurora sat, chain-smoking, in the other chair. “Missed a spot,” she offered, pointing with her cigarette. Tess followed the sightline and brought the shears to bear on an errant strand. She had to tug Black’s t-shirt from his throat to get the right angle.

Snip, snip.

“What happens if I cut you?” she asked.

“You don’t want to know,” he answered, eyes still closed.

She ran her fingers through his damp locks, comparing them to Travis’s despite her resolve to the contrary. Trav’s hair had been soft and silky, naturally wavy no matter how long he’d worn it. Black’s was stick straight, thicker, coarser, and harder to manage—kind of like Black himself. Tess did the best she could with it, but promised him a trip to a salon once they got out of town.

“Yippee,” he said, flatly. He slipped his shades back on and faced Aurora across the table. His tone changed for her, becoming as playful as surly could get. “Well, sugar? Red carpet material?”

Aurora didn’t answer right away. She stubbed out her smoke with unnecessary violence, chewed on her lips when she thought Tess couldn’t see, then raised her head, forced a smile, and said too brightly, “Look out, George Clooney.”

That was when Tess realized that she was taking him away from more than town. She was taking him from his friends.

To be continued …