Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
C ody was caught between wishing the sun would set and for daylight to remain long into the night. All through lunch, Zenona had never explained the reason for her cryptic invitation. She simply told them to meet her in the lobby of the hospital just before the sun went down. At least she’d paid for their meals on her way out the door.
“I wish we had some idea what was going on,” Demmy said from the passenger seat.
“Why should this be any different from all the other times?” Cody said, perfectly aware of his grumpy tone.
“You doing okay over there?” Demmy placed a hand on his thigh.
Cody glanced over. “Honestly?”
“Always.”
“I’m conflicted.”
“About meeting Zenona?”
“About all of it.” Cody blew out a breath. “I mean, what we saw last night, and Spiffy just… gone. And now Pete’s even more out there. It’s escalating, and I don’t like when these kinds of things escalate.” He was quiet a moment, then shivered and wiped at his face. “And I really hate the fact that suddenly a whole flock of bats can now drop out of the sky and flap all around us. What the fuck is that about?” He looked over long enough for Demmy to give a shrug, then turned his attention back to the road. “Sorry. Just freaked me out. Both times!”
“I know. I’m sorry we’re getting pulled into something like this yet again.”
“Yeah,” Cody said, but in a noncommittal tone, because he didn’t think Demmy was sorry about it at all. “Let’s find out what Zee has to say, and then we can decide about our level of involvement.”
“That’s a good plan.”
Cody found a space in the parking garage attached to the hospital, and they walked across the connecting breezeway. They bypassed a group of people standing by the elevators and took the single flight of stairs down to the lobby. The familiar grouping of benches and chairs they usually occupied for meetings such as this was available, and they both automatically headed in that direction. The benches were surrounded by containers of tall plants, their leaves green and shiny in the overhead lighting and providing some semblance of privacy.
“Nice that our usual monster debating positions are available,” Cody said.
“Think they reserve them for us?” Demmy asked, and turned away to hide his smirk as Cody glared.
Before they reached the benches, Cody stopped at the sight of a figure coming toward them from the cafeteria. The woman was short and thin, with an unruly tangle of hair and plastic-framed glasses with oversized lenses. A neon green polo shirt she must have bought from the Big & Tall section hung to just above her knees, belted around her waist, with black tights underneath. A pair of Doc Marten boots appeared to be the only upgrade to her wardrobe, replacing her previous Crocs. But Cody saw they had been decorated with what appeared to be flying saucer decals.
“Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse,” he said.
“What?” Demmy stopped a few feet in front of him and looked in the same direction. “Oh, it’s Clarabell.”
“What if we pretend she’s a ghost and we can’t see her? Like the lucky husband on that TV show?”
“Stop,” Demmy said, then, like a traitor, smiled and waved. “Hi!”
Clarabell Remington, member of the UFO society—Unusual Fauna Observers—and a small, over-friendly, fiercely intelligent and determined woman who managed to annoy Cody on a minute-by-minute basis, approached. Her smile was big enough for her cheeks to push her glasses a bit up off her nose, and she carried a beverage holder with six coffees, the weight of which appeared to nearly be putting her off balance.
“Evening, gents,” Clarabell said, her voice scratchy enough to shatter glass. “The good doctor told me she’d invited you, so thought I’d get us all a little go-go juice.”
Dear God, the images that forced themselves into Cody’s mind when Clarabell said ‘go-go’. He took a coffee from the tray and couldn’t suppress the slight grimace. Which seemed to brighten Clarabell’s smile even more, dammit.
“I’ve heard you’re moving here to Parson’s Hollow,” Demmy said. He smiled after taking a sip of the coffee. “Hey, this is exactly how I like it. Thank you.”
“I pay attention to the little things.” Clarabell beamed up at Cody. “And the big ones. How’s it going, Stretch?”
“It’s going about as well as it ever is when the situation brings you around.” He sampled his coffee and hated that it was exactly as he would have prepared it himself. But he smiled and lifted the cup. “Thanks for this.”
“You’re welcome.” She turned back to Demmy. “There’s been a lot of weirdness going on in your town for a while. When I’ve visited before, I always liked the vibe of the place.”
“Monsters and weirdness?” Cody said. “That’s your vibe?”
“You know it, Stretch.”
“Don’t call me Stretch.”
Clarabell ignored him. “So, I decided to move here and do some more intense research.”
“How long of a lease did you sign?” Cody said, trying to sound grumpy even as he took another long drink of his perfect coffee.
“A year.”
The coffee suddenly tasted worse.
“That’s great,” Demmy said, conveniently out of Cody’s smacking zone. “It’ll be nice to have you in town, and not just for any unusual situations that come up. It’s always good to see you.”
Apparently there was a conversation that needed to be had when he and Demmy were alone.
Lucia and Deputy Walsh walked in the front doors of the hospital, both in uniform. Cody was glad to see Deputy Walsh up and moving around, her injury from the night before apparently minor. As they approached, Walsh’s smile widened when she caught sight of them. To his dismay, he realized her reaction had been at the sight of Clarabell. What the hell was it about her? Maybe it was Clarabell’s voice. What if that foghorn-wannabe, paint-peeling voice was like the nix’s singing, allowing her to hypnotize people into liking her, and only Cody himself was immune?
“Clarabell!” Walsh bent over to give the woman a hug. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You, too,” Clarabell rasped.
Walsh stepped back and looked her up and down. “Your outfit is on point, girl.”
“Kill me now,” Cody muttered.
“Get in line,” Lucia muttered back.
After Clarabell distributed the remaining coffees—all perfectly prepared, of course—Lucia checked her phone. “Zenona said she’d meet us in the lobby. Anyone see her?”
They all looked around, but Zenona wasn’t in sight.
“What time is it?” Clarabell asked. “Has the sun gone down yet?”
A nervous chill went through Cody, tightening his stomach around the coffee and making it gurgle unpleasantly. “I don’t know.”
Clarabell looked at her phone. “We have another couple of minutes before sunset.”
Cody exchanged a look with Lucia and was glad to see his own intense dislike the turn the situation was taking reflected in her expression.
“Why, I’m going to regret asking, do we have to wait until after sunset?” Lucia said.
Clarabell looked at each of them in turn, her surprise clear. “You don’t know?”
“We don’t,” Walsh and Demmy said together.
“Babies, you’ve got a vampire infestation in your town,” Clarabell said.
Cody lost track of the conversation once Clarabell had said the ‘v’ word. It ignited a high-pitched buzzing in his brain that pretty much drowned out all other sounds. His head felt light and only loosely attached to his body, and the lights in the hospital lobby suddenly seemed much too bright. The sensation that his mind floated slightly above their group wasn’t really bad, but he also knew it wasn’t a good thing.
Demmy stepped in close and took his hand. At that simple and familiar touch, Cody’s mind thumped back down into his body with what had to have been an audible plopping sound. He looked at Demmy, tried to return his reassuring smile, but feared it may have come out as a grimace.
It wasn’t a total surprise, of course. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Cody had reasoned that everything had been adding up to a vampire. But still, to hear it called out so casually, as if this kind of thing happened every other day, was a tough adjustment.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Lucia said in a harsh whisper.
Apparently, not everyone had followed the clues to the vampire treasure chest.
Lucia threw a cautious look around the lobby, then jerked her head off to the side. They all followed as she led them the rest of the way to the grouping of chairs and benches where they all sat. Fixing Clarabell with a fierce glare—which, Cody was impressed to see, did not seem to phase her—Lucia continued in a lowered voice. “How in the hell do you know there are…” She looked around again and lowered her voice even more. “Vampires here in town before the sheriff’s department or these two?” She waved toward him and Demmy.
“I think I can explain.”
Cody turned with the rest of them to find Zenona standing a few feet away. She had her hands in the pockets of her white doctor’s coat, and her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail.
“Zee,” Lucia said. “What’s going on? Why didn’t you come to me? To us?”
Zenona took a breath and let it out. She looked down at the floor, slowly shaking her head. “It’s very complicated.”
“I’ll say,” Cody said. “First we had the stumbling undead, now we get the smart and strong version that want to drain all our blood?”
She gave him a sharp look. “That’s not exactly how it is.”
Lucia stood and approached Zenona, her voice surprisingly more gentle. “Then explain it so we’ll understand.”
“I will. But I’ll need some help to explain it clearly. From Dr. Graham.”
Icy fear ran through Cody like some kind of awful internal roller coaster. “The medical examiner?”
“Yes.”
“So, we’ll have to go downstairs?” Cody said. “To the morgue? Again?”
“That’s right.”
Cody groaned. “Can’t we ever all meet out on the street on a nice sunny day where there are birds singing and people laughing?”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Clarabell screeched at him.
He watched her set off after Zenona, firing rapid questions at her back.
“Let’s find out what’s going on,” Demmy said, standing and reaching down for his hand. “We should at least understand the situation.”
Cody felt the sadness reflected in his expression. “I haven’t understood any of the previous situations. Promise me we won’t get involved?”
Demmy made a face and shrugged. “We’re already involved, you know that.”
“Yeah, I know. But still, it would be nice to believe for a minute we could back out.”
“Come on.”
As Cody allowed himself to be dragged after the others, he dropped his half-full coffee in a trash bin. No way he could finish that now.
They took the elevator down to the morgue. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, and they all followed Zenona along the hall toward the two swinging stainless steel doors. Cody’s nerves prickled right beneath his skin. He wanted to turn and walk quickly back to the elevator, go up to the lobby, leave the building, and never return. But instead, he trailed after the rest of their group.
It was cold inside, and gooseflesh rippled up Cody’s arms and back. He glanced around at the three stainless steel tables on their left, each with its own set of lights, sink, and workbenches with tools neatly arranged. Thankfully all of the tables were empty. For the moment. To their right, the doors of coolers to store bodies were stacked three rows high and three columns wide, like the most gruesome game of Tic-Tac-Toe ever invented.
At a sink in a far corner, Dr. Michael Graham stood washing his hands. He was Parson’s Hollow’s nighttime medical examiner, and he wore blue, short-sleeved scrubs that showed off a more powerful upper body than Cody had noticed when he’d met him over the summer. Dr. Graham looked over his shoulder when they entered and smiled.
“Hello, everyone. I see the gang’s all here.”
He had an English accent, which helped calm Cody’s nerves slightly, and he approached their group, drying his hands with paper towels. Slightly taller than Demmy and broader across the shoulders, he had a pale face with a thin nose that ran almost to a point, and a narrow, sharp chin. He shifted his bright blue eyes between each of them, taking in details.
“Everyone except Oliver,” Zenona said.
“Ollie?” Cody said. “You invited the monster blogger as well?”
“Hey, he’s getting pretty good at digging up information in that library of yours,” Clarabell said. She checked her phone and shrugged. “He hasn’t responded to my text. We can go ahead, and I’ll catch him up later.”
“All right. Good.” Dr. Graham looked at them each again, rubbing his hands together. He finally set his gaze on Zenona. “Where should I begin?”
“How about just the information you know from the past year or two,” Zenona suggested.
“Year or two?” Demmy said in surprise. “Wait, does that mean there have been vampires in town for two years?”
“Perhaps,” Dr. Graham said, then held up a finger. “Most likely. I’m not sure when they first arrived, but they have been here since at least the end of last year.”
“Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to us,” Cody grumbled. “Here’s a terrible monster to quietly invade your town. Again.”
“You joke, Mr. Bower, but that’s about what it comes down to,” Dr. Graham said.
“Call me Cody.”
“All right. Please call me Michael.”
“How do you know this?” Lucia asked. “And why haven’t you let me know about it?”
“Well, that’s where it gets a bit sticky. You see, I’m here because of the vampires. Well, because of two vampires in particular.”
“Are you some kind of vampire hunter?” Deputy Walsh said. “Like that guy in Dracula . What’s his name?”
“Van Helsing,” Zenona said, and she and Michael shared a smile Cody noticed looked like it carried a lot of private jokes and personal attraction with it. That was interesting.
“Right, Van Helsing.” Deputy Walsh lifted her eyebrows. “Are you some kind of blood descendent of his or something?”
“No, nothing like that. I just have a personal connection with a very old and very powerful vampire who, it turns out, has set his sights on your wonderful small town.”
At that moment, a buzz sounded from a back corner of the room, startling all of them. Michael excused himself and walked past the stacked coolers to a metal roll up door Cody hadn’t noticed before. The doctor pressed a button and the door slowly opened, allowing two ambulance attendants to wheel in a stretcher with a black body bag on it.
Cody’s stomach dropped to his feet, and he exchanged a nervous look with Demmy. He was glad to see a healthy dose of discomfort in Demmy’s expression as well. At least he wasn’t the only one feeling queasy about the arrival of a corpse as they talked about vampires.
Dr. Graham spoke quietly with the attendants, signed some kind of electronic device one of them held, then helped them shift the body bag to a long, wide stainless steel gurney. The ambulance attendants glanced curiously at their group before wheeling the stretcher back through the opening, which Michael closed behind them.
“Apologies for that,” Michael said. “Just be a moment.”
He crossed to the sink, washed his hands, and then stopped at a counter to type some notes into a computer setup on a wheeled cart.
“Zenona,” Lucia said. “How have you been involved in all of this?”
“Michael and I have gotten to know each other very well since he arrived. Our casual conversations took a more serious turn over the summer with all of the, um, unusual occurrences.”
“Zombies and a murderous, shape-shifting water sprite?” Clarabell offered, then turned to the rest of their group and said, “Oh, by the way, just to be safe: nix!” Everyone stared back at her, and Clarabell gave a satisfied nod. “Just making sure.” She turned back to Zenona and gave a wave. “Sorry, Doc. Go ahead.”
“Right, yes,” Zenona said. “Those conversations led naturally into his suspicions about, well, vampires, but there always seemed to be some new and more immediate monster threat or staff shortage to deal with. And we didn’t have any proof that what he suspected was happening was really happening. Not until just recently.”
“That’s when she contacted me,” Clarabell said. “And asked for information.”
Michael returned. “Again, my apologies. Business first, I’m afraid.”
Cody glanced uneasily at the body bag lying in the shadows across the room. Who was inside that thing? Could it be someone he knew? Someone he cared for? With this recent revelation about vampires in town, would this new arrival to the morgue be back up and running around again soon, biting people on the neck and draining them of blood?
“So, what brought this vampire to Parson’s Hollow?” Demmy asked, bringing Cody’s attention back to their group.
Michael exchanged another look with Zenona. He grimaced slightly, but then met Demmy’s eyes. “Me, I’m afraid.”