Vampire for Hire: The Complete Collection of Short Stories by Rain J.R

Author:Rain, J.R.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rain Press
Published: 2023-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

***

The squarish opening that drops down is about six feet.

There’s a metal stepladder attached to the wall, and more cobwebs than I care to deal with, but I guess that’s proof this opening hasn’t been used for a while. I drop down first because I fit better, and scan the south-facing cement wall, all too aware of a black widow spider just a foot away from my face. I send a mental projection for it to scram, and it does, veritably tripping over its eight legs to get the hell out of there. Thanks to none other than Dracula, I learned to control animals... even insects. I don’t use such control often, but in the case of a spider in front of my face... um, yeah.

“I don’t see anything here to open the wall.”

“Try pushing it on the side. Might be a pivot system in place,” suggests Kingsley.

“And who the hell would have made a pivoting cement wall?”

“My guess is whoever built the tunnel.”

I’m about to put some weight behind one side of the wall, when my phone pings.

“Who’s that?” asks Kingsley.

I fish the phone out my back pocket. “It’s a text from my client.”

“He texts you at two in the morning?”

“I told him I was a night owl, that he could text me any time.”

“You used to be a night owl,” says Kingsley.

I shrug. “Old habits die hard.”

“Fine, what does he say?”

“It’s a date.”

“He asked you out on a date?”

“No, silly. It’s the date of his parent-teacher conference from fifteen years ago. I asked him to look into it.”

“I take it you didn’t tell him why.”

“Nope. Hold on.”

“What are you doing?”

“Plugging the date into my full moon app. Told you it would come in handy. Okay, whoa.”

“Whoa, what?”

“It wasn’t a full moon on that night.”

“Hmm... so it wasn’t a wolfman he saw disappear into this tunnel.”

“Appears not,” I say. “Remember, he thought it had been an apeman at first.”

“At first? What did he think it was later?”

“The devil.”

“Wow, that just did the impossible,” says Kingsley.

“Oh, what’s that?”

“That creeped even me out. You sure you want to go through with this?” he asks.

“More so than ever.”

Kingsley is right. The south wall pivots in the center, though no mortal human could have moved it. Heck, I barely budge it. It takes both of us pushing together to open it enough to squeeze through. Full disclosure... Kingsley does all the squeezing.

“Hang on,” I say, and dash back out and pull the metal doors down. We next shut the cement wall behind us.

“Great,” says Kingsley, his eyes shining yellow. “Now we’re sealed in.”

“Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Back home. Under the sheets.”

“Since when did you become such an old man?”

“I’m nearly ninety years old, Sam.”

“Except you’re gonna live to like three thousand years. So, really, you’re just a big hairy kid in the grand scheme of things. Emphasis on the big and hairy.”

“Are you quite done?”

I hold up a finger. “Almost.”

“What is it?”

“Hold on. Wow, okay. Just got a psychic hit of a man building this secret doorway.

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