J.R. Rain's Vampire for Hire World_Fang

  FANG

  by

  H.T. Night

  Chronicles of the American Vampire #1

  Acclaim for H.T. Night:

  “Vampire Love Story is one fast moving story, with action and romance, that held my attention throughout.” —Piers Anthony, author of Split Infinity and Virtual Mode

  “Bad Blood is fast, hilarious and sexy...the coolest vampire since Kiefer Sutherland. The Mount Shasta setting is dreamy. The cult is deliciously creepy. And Spider is as sexy as they come. I was pressing the ereader’s ‘forward’ button so fast that I broke it. Let’s hope we hear more from Spider.” —H.P. Mallory, author of Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble and To Kill A Warlock

  “Vampire Love Story is a hip and timely vampire novel filled with real characters and some of the coolest vampires since The Lost Boys! You’re going to love Night’s completely original take on the supernatural.” —J.R. Rain, author of Moon Dance and The Body Departed

  “H.T. Night is a riveting storyteller, capturing the essence of the vampire genre.” —April M. Reign, author of The Turning and Dividing Destiny

  “Vampire Love Story is a passionate story that is told from a refreshing perspective. This book was a blast. Night invents a brand new world for the Vampire genre. Great Job!” —Summer Lee, author of Kindred Spirits and The Staff of Moses

  “Hero Rising is more fun than a Carnival Cruise. Or a carnival, for that matter.” —P.J. Day, author of Musings of a Postmodern Vampire and The Sunset Prophecy

  “Night is a true storyteller. Nerd Power is thoughtful and inspirational! I enjoyed the ride.” —Elaine Babich, author of You Never Called Me Princess and Relatively Normal

  Fang

  Published by Rain Press

  Copyright © 2018 by Rain Press

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  (Fang is based on the characters created by J.R. Rain; the use of story situations and supporting characters from the “Vampire for Hire” universe is authorized by J.R Rain.)

  Dedication

  I dedicate this novel to Lee and J.R.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Other Books by H.T. Night

  About the Author

  Fang

  Chapter One

  I hadn’t lived long enough to be cynical. But I had lived long enough to know the only person who gives a shit about you is yourself. So, I guess I was cynical.

  I looked out my cell door window and saw them drag in another one. This time, he was gagged and swaddled up in a straitjacket like a psychotic nightmare. There were yammerings of a crazed individual—conspiratorial in nature to that of an insane mind.

  “You sons of bitches ate my corn dogs!” he yelled at the men who dragged him by his restrained arms.

  “There’ll be plenty of corn dogs to be had during your stay,” replied Don, Fulton State Hospital’s largest security guard. Don looked as if he had just stepped off the WWE tour bus with his long, blonde ponytail, villainously-trimmed goatee, and shoulders that looked as if they could stop bullets in their tracks.

  “Will the corn dogs protect me from the witches?”

  “Yeah, sure, why not? The corn dogs here are kryptonite to witches. What do you think, Terry?”

  Terry, the other security guard, was older and smaller, but looked as if he had been a spry linebacker in his youth.

  “Yeah, just the other day I saw a corn dog jam itself into a witch’s nose and suffocate her to death.”

  Terry nodded with a smirk and then opened the cell door across from mine. It was a holding pen of sorts. A bench, a toilet, and not much else. Not even a goddamn book to keep anyone from losing his mind even further. But this was to be expected in the maximum-security wing of the hospital where they kept the worst of the worst… including me, apparently.

  I didn’t belong here. Being bombarded with every type of mental illness imaginable made me long for the comforts of a normal prison population—even though I’d never stepped inside a normal prison before. I wasn’t crazy, and if I was and didn’t know it, I sure as hell wasn’t as demented as the hogtied fellow in front of me who was still rambling on about corn dogs and witches.

  “The witches... are bad, man. I need some corn dog sticks,” he continued. “Let me sharpen some. I already cut one of them witches.”

  Don released his grip on the man’s arm and watched Terry escort him into his cell.

  “That lady was no witch, she was your landlady,” Don said.

  “That’s her front, man! She has a cauldron in her bathroom. I seen it with my own eyes.”

  “It’s a bathtub.” Don rolled his eyes. Terry shook his head and stifled a snicker.

  Blood droplets that had soaked through the ends of the man’s sleeves, and minor scratches on Don’s bulky forearm, told me why the ‘corn dog man’ had to be restrained. Terry inspected the buckles binding the patient, making sure he couldn’t loosen the straitjacket. He secured the belts behind the man’s back, and closed the door before heading off with his hulking partner.

  The clamor ceased soon after the latch thunked closed and locked the thick and impenetrable cell door. I continued staring through the small window, trying to make eye contact with the new resident. The top of his head bobbed in and out of sight as he paced the small room like a caged animal.

  I figured if he would make eye contact with me, perhaps he’d dial down the crazy a bit. The place was lonely, and I needed to talk, or at least make eye contact with someone who didn’t think I was a monster.

  Waiting for him to quit pacing, I noticed a smell that needed addressing. The faint stench of bleach permeated the room and the hallway outside. Yes, this was a hospital, but I had yet to see an actual cleaning crew mopping the halls and making sure it remained sterile in the few days I’d been here.

  Perhaps the smell was there to keep our minds off things, obsessive things, like corn dogs, and in my case, the sweet, sweet taste of blood. I compulsively indulged in my desires and became a slave to the sanguine and scarlet liquid. Yet, my vampirism came without the benefits of immortality, flight, or shape-shifting.

  I had unforgivably screwed up the other night. I’d never imagined myself a murderer or someone capable of hurting someone. But I had.

  A part of me would always feel remorse for stopping a beating heart, but the events that night helped me come to terms with what I eventually could become.

  There was a reason God gave me these teeth—unless he had some kind of morbid sense of humor. I would hate to think the Almighty took pleasure in seeing me suffer on Earth. I thought of the way people covered their mouths as they whispered to their friends while throwing judgmental glances my way, as if I were some loser playing Halloween on a Wednesday in January.

  Nah. On second thought, I doubted the Creator was playing a cruel joke on me. After all, He’d blessed my taste buds, too. I was manufactured to ‘seek neck and suck.’ Annie, who I cared for and who cared for me, paid the ultimate price so I could recognize who or what I am.

  The crazy guy finally stopped pacing in circles and gave me a blank star
e through the small glass window. I smiled and I believe he caught a glimpse of my teeth. He immediately frowned and his emotionless eyes pooled with tears. He began pounding his head furiously against the window.

  I didn’t mean to frighten him. Nor did I want him to crush his skull against the window. Blood smeared against the glass, while I yelled through my door slot for help.

  Don and Terry sprinted down the hallway to the man’s cell. As soon as Don unlatched the key ring from his belt, the man disappeared from view. They opened his cell room door, revealing the man lying on the floor, twitching from a seizure. Don radioed for help while Terry turned to me with a worried look in his puffy eyes.

  “What the fuck just happened?” he asked me.

  “I have no idea… I just wanted to say hello. I sure as hell didn’t ask him to eat his tongue for breakfast.”

  Don crouched next to the man. He reached into his pocket for a mouth guard, but before he could insert it into the man’s mouth, blood sprayed out from the man’s lips like a geyser.

  “He just sliced his tongue in half!” Don sprang up and away from the crimson spray.

  Three blue-gloved members of the emergency medical staff, wearing face shields and smocks, rushed in to try to stabilize the inmate. Don and Terry made room for them as they stepped out of the cell and into the hallway. I noticed small specks of blood spray on Don’s left cheek and nose.

  “You showed him your teeth?”

  “Does that mean I can’t smile now?” I deadpanned, giving him a toothy grin and showing off my large incisors.

  “I got this motherfucker’s diseased blood all over me ‘cause you couldn’t keep to your sorry self!” Don barked at me as he reached for his key ring and looked as if he was going to enter my cell and pummel my ass. “You’re such a fucking asshole!”

  “Just trying to be friendly,” I smirked.

  Terry pulled the larger security guard back from my cell door, shaking his head disgustedly. “Don’t. He’s a biter, Don.”

  “I’m gonna come back with a muzzle and then I’m going to pile-drive your ass into the ground!”

  “Whatever gets you off, big guy.” I winked and blew him a kiss.

  Don’s words lost their impact as I was instead mesmerized by his neck. The meaty stalk was reddened by the Missouri summer heat. His vein pulsed and hardened with anger. A man his size, age, and temperament probably suffered from high blood pressure. One little prick from one of my fangs at the right spot would yield a bounty for sure. I had to play the long con. I was small and scrawny compared to these behemoths. They’d punch holes in me with their large fists. I had to wait for the right moment.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to sound sincere.

  My apology appeased Don for the moment, and he turned away from me while pulling a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiping the blood from his face.

  “I’ll try not to smile next time. I just have so much to be happy about and want to share the joy that’s pushing up out of my soul.”

  “It’ll suit you well if you keep that trap of yours shut,” Terry said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, not worried by his ominous tone.

  Meanwhile, the bloodied man, now passed out or dead, was then picked up and rolled out of his cell on a stretcher.

  I continued staring through my window for the next half hour. Surprisingly, no one ever came to clean up the pool of blood left behind in the man’s cell, but the smell of bleach persisted. I was in a dirty, unkempt Clorox hell. And if I stayed here long, I’d eventually stop being who I knew I was. I didn’t plan on spending the rest of my life being a medicated stiff who could only look forward to being pounded like a piece of meat.

  No way in hell would I let that happen.

  Chapter Two

  I curled up on my aluminum bed and tried using my own body warmth to repel the cold surface as best I could.

  I began counting the small holes in the white cinder blocks in front of me. There were 157 of them, and only 98 on the one above. I wondered how the holes had gotten there. Air bubbles most likely, trapped when the manufacturer molded them with concrete. They were slight imperfections in an otherwise impenetrable cement barrier, preventing me from escaping to the outside world. Yet the holes gave the blocks a sense of vulnerability. If I could somehow find a way to poke them with something sharp, over, and over, and over again, then perhaps the blocks would lose their strength.

  Who was I kidding? That wouldn’t work… Would it?

  You’d think being in isolation for as long as I had been that my mind would slow into a state of semi-hibernation, but no, it raced like never before. I could not stop thinking. About stupid shit too. Like poking holes through cement blocks, one at a time, for months on end, until the wall had the consistency of Swiss cheese.

  Five days had passed and I had lost the ability to know when I was awake and when I was dreaming. They had broken me down. Was that their intention, or did they forget about me? No, they couldn’t have forgotten about me… I had just eaten lunch. I turned over on my other side and saw the orange-colored plastic food tray with the crumbs left over from my chocolate chip cookie and an apple core.

  Then I heard a female voice say, “Aaron.” It trailed off and sounded like Annie too, the sweet goth girl who I had murdered because I had lost control in more ways than one.

  She still hadn’t manifested into a nebulous memory. I vividly remembered how pretty she had been. Her skin was pale but flawless. Dark eyeliner highlighted her gorgeous, crystal-like, hazel eyes. Perfect teeth too. All she’d needed was a change of hair color and she easily could’ve been a cheerleader or made a serious run for prom queen. Yet, she chose to be somewhat of an outcast, and foolishly chose to be with me—an animal.

  I loved her, or I grew to love her. At first, I’d felt that she was probably playing a cruel trick when she approached me and asked to see my fangs. I had always been self-conscious about my teeth because I had been ridiculed for them. Yet, here was Annie standing in front of me, with hands behind her back, and one foot in front of the other, waiting patiently for me to comply with her request. I remembered the way she’d brushed back her green-and-black dyed bangs behind her left ear when she asked me again. She’d lacked the arrogant posture others had when they asked to see my teeth. No mocking smirk.

  It was summer when we’d met at work. We had both been hired for the graveyard shift. I was a security guard; Annie was an inventory clerk. We worked for an auto parts warehouse behind a strip mall, near our homes. Her mom’s boyfriend’s brother had given her a part-time job so she could help pay the bills.

  The warehouse had a varnish smell to it and the lights above the large gray metal racks flickered like strobe lights. It was that time of night where we’d find ourselves alone, by the spark plugs and headlamps.

  I’d been doing a security camera check when she’d surprised me from behind.

  “You should smile more,” she’d said.

  “Excuse me?” I’d turned my head over my shoulder, almost falling off the stepladder.

  “You’re Aaron, right?”

  “Yeah, hi, umm... you’re Annie... Annie Hox?”

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Freaking hot in here, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” she’d said with a radiant smile. Perfect response from the most perfect girl.

  I’d needed a job, didn’t have a car, and it was the only opening within walking distance of my home. I’d happened to run into the owner of the auto parts warehouse, right as I turned in my application. I remembered him measuring me up from head to toe. There was no way he’d hire a scrawny kid like me. But I’d smiled and that was all he needed to see. No experience necessary, I guessed. Someone willing to put their life on the line for mud flaps and pine-scented air fresheners who owned a set of teeth like a menacing German shepherd was all the place needed.

  “No break-ins so far,” she’d said. “You must be doing a good job. Looks like they hired the
right man for the job.”

  “Yeah? Thanks, I guess.”

  “There was a break-in nearly every week before you came along. Place no longer carries car stereos.”

  “That’s good to hear,” I’d said as I kept my lips as close together as possible. She’d probably thought I was practicing ventriloquism.

  “So, like, what’s your deal?”

  Great, I’d thought. Here come the questions.

  “What do you mean?” I’d said, with an uncomfortable chuckle.

  Although the question was rather rude, there had been a subtle sweetness in her voice.

  She’d then pointed at her mouth.

  “Yeah,” I’d said, lowering my head in embarrassment.

  “No, no. I didn’t mean to be rude. Sorry if I came off that way. I... I think they’re pretty awesome.”

  That was the first time anyone had ever described my mild deformity with a positive adjective.

  “You think so?” I’d remained poised for a punch line at my expense.

  “Yeah. Kinda wild. I truly like it. You ever use them? Like, is it easier to chew through a piece of steak?”

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had steak. My mother worked days and evenings trying to support us after my dad left us high and dry, and steaks were one of those luxury items we never indulged in, cable TV being another. I didn’t recall my teeth making things easier working through a burger.

  I’d shaken my head. “No, no. I don’t think so.”

  If Annie only knew why God had given me these teeth, and if there was a way I could have told her right then and there without scaring her off… But Annie was full of surprises. Her next inquiry had been just as shocking as her first.

  I remembered her playfully tilting her head, exposing the right side of her neck. Her smooth and clean skin had seemed as if it were made and molded from the world’s finest vanilla ice cream. Her paleness had been the perfect backdrop for the greenish carotid artery that slightly protruded from beneath the springy musculature.