911 vampire, p.1
911 Vampire, page 1
Table of Contents
Blurb
Dedication
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
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Keep reading for an excerpt from Dark Blood
More from Caleb James
Readers love Caleb James
About the Author
By Caleb James
Visit DSP Publications
Copyright
911 Vampire
By Caleb James
A vampire succubus created during the Black Plague, Godfrey works as a Boston paramedic and battles loneliness and exhaustion as he fights to keep humanity safe from twin COVID and opioid epidemics.
He has always pursued that which provides him hope—medicine, the cello… love. But yielding to his feelings for his work partner, Trevor, would conflict with Godfrey’s complicated moral code. Instead he feeds on sexual energy when he must and investigates a drug ring in his spare time.
But even a vampire can’t ignore his feelings forever.
For: G. S. Jayson
Chapter One
My name is Godfrey. What’s yours?
I CAME with no owner’s manual. It was London, and the year was 1356. My father, Gaius, died in childbirth. His words seared in my brain—“You are smart, you learn, and you are funny.” That last bit loses in translation and is open to interpretation. His last utterance, “Ti amo”—“I love you.” With that, he slit his throat, and I was born in a cataclysm of blood and pain. But that’s birth, isn’t it? A fresh canvas. Who—or what—will survive? All new sensations as you barrel through the birth canal, or in my case, slosh drunk in an abandoned Roman bloodbath in what is now a London suburb, soaked from head to toe as he gushed out a rare distillation of unknown vintage and tremendous potency. Sorry about that. If graphic and gory offend, I’ll keep it down, but you might want to download something else.
My vampiric birth, if that’s what I am, at the age of twenty-four, was more akin to my first birth than different. Both cost me a parent. I never met my human mother; my stepmother was nice enough, but it’s not the same. I was the last of nine and the only one to survive into adulthood. My decade with Gaius was brief, wonderful, and short. A black-plague love story that ended as expected. He died, when by rights it should have been me. But I don’t die. I could—he did—and perhaps one day I will. Perhaps that’s where this one ends.
Gaius knew what he was about when he picked me, though I’m not certain he meant to die. I mean, yes, a slashed throat doesn’t often end well, but did he know? Or was he more like me—trying to figure things out, hunt for clues, find that fucking owner’s manual?
Which brings us to today’s tale. I don’t know if I’ll send this to a publisher, and if I do, which name I’ll put on the cover. This is a conversation. If it’s just between me, myself, and I, the return is limited. But when I finish a book and send it into the world, it feeds me. Which right there, if the thought of nourishing a vampire, possibly a succubus, with a wee bit of your life does not appeal, stop now. I won’t be offended. I won’t stroll up your drive in the dark of night… but if I do, you will not hear the scribble-scrabble as callused fingers scramble up your wall or the clink of broken glass as I enter and gaze with hunger upon your luscious and vulnerable body. You will dream, unaware of how beautiful you are—your tender breaths or drunken snores, the splay of your limbs, covered or bare. You are delicious. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. And when you wake, you will mourn the loss of that dream—it’s a juicy one—and wonder at the broken glass. You will see the fallen branch and think, It must have been the wind. You’ll languish in bed, try to go back to sleep to find what you’ve lost, but you will not resent what I took. I promise. And sometimes, if you are especially tasty or comely or… convenient, I might return. Though here’s a funny bit and something to store in the manual I hope to write one day. You will replace the glass in the window, but dialing for dollars, and dollars to donuts, you will never again lock it.
My, how I dribble. It’s now five thirty on a Friday morning. Time to shower, shave, and go to work.
Chapter Two
Godfrey’s Day Begins
“WHAT IN God’s name were they thinking?” Frustrated, Kate muttered as she gripped a company tablet and wrinkled her nose.
“Something new?” I unzipped my hoodie and pulled a freshly laundered sky-blue work shirt from my locker.
“A whole new system for tracking overdoses. Like what the fuck? Like this is what we need right now? Who thinks up this crap? So not only do we have to revive the poor bastards who won’t go to the hospital and run right back to the dealer who nearly killed them, we now have three new screens of boxes to click and a number to call and report the event. But wait—.” She read off an email from the executive suite of Boston’s Cavalry Ambulance Company. “—we have a whole twenty-four hours to get this done, to be… in compliance with the state mandate. Fuck this!”
I took a deep breath of the station house—a mix of sweat, detergent, a whiff of alcohol-based hand sanitizer, and someone’s chicken parm from the night before that had been nuked too long. I thought of the Mr. Rogers show for children as I worked my fingers up the buttons one by one. “Where’s Trevor?” I asked as I tucked my shirttails and got a funhouse view of poly-blended paramedic me in a warped Dollar General mirror fixed to the back of the men’s locker room door.
“Hosing down your truck.”
“Guess that means I do check out. What number are we in?” It was nearly eight and the start of a twenty-four-hour shift on the ambulance. I’d been there a year and would stay a second—a bit short, even for me, but time should never be wasted, even when you have lots of it. End of the day, it’s all anyone gets.
“Seriously? You know he grabbed Eight. He always wants Eight.”
“That’s because it’s new and shiny.” I snatched a fistful of turquoise nitrile disposable gloves from the box and shoved them into my back pocket. There’d be plenty on the truck, but between the mask mandates, the constant spritz of hand sanitizer, and always wanting a fresh pair of gloves, it was good to be redundant. None of this was for my sake, but when you’re a taker, it’s essential to give. Nature demands balance.
“Yes, and it goes fast and has more siren options than any of the others.”
“He sulks when he can’t have it,” I offered.
“Wouldn’t want that.” She followed me from the locker room to the clubhouse area with its mismatched tables and chairs and ripped vinyl couches.
It felt good, like clock gears. Kate would be on dispatch for the first eight of my twenty-four with Trevor. She’d gripe and moan and get things done with blistering efficiency. No checkbox would be left blank, no ED triage nurse would want for a patient’s insurance information, and by shift’s end, she would have memorized the overdose memo, devised a strategy to ensure the company would be 100 percent compliant, and forwarded an all-staff email with bulleted instructions to ensure said compliance.
“You’ve got something in your hair,” she said, and without pause, without mask, without gloves, and without permission, she plucked a bit of white down from my shower-damp curls.
Kate’s smell, a mélange of Garnier Fructis, well-crisped bacon, coffee with 2 percent milk and turbinado sugar—lots of it—and arousal sent a pleasant tingle from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. Her interested touch played in my hair. She knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t stop.
“It’s so unfair that you get hair like that.”
I inhaled a gentle sip of her through the pores of my skin. It was clear she’d had home fries—diner ones with bits of red pepper and chunks of sweated onion. She, and they, were tangy and delicious.
Emboldened by my silence, she played with my silken corkscrews. She stretched one out. “It’s so long and soft, and there’s another… why do you have feathers in your hair?”
“Leaky pillow,” I replied. I gathered my locks into a ponytail, tied it back with a blue satin ribbon, and tucked it beneath my shirt collar.
“Maybe you should get a new one.”
I lingered for another gentle draw of tasty Kate and then pulled back. “Maybe it wasn’t mine.”
“Tease.”
“Never.”
“Details?” she asked.
“You wouldn’t like them.”
“You don’t know that.”
Sadly, I did. And this would not be the first or last time my morning shower neglected to remove traces of the n
“I’ll tell him you called him that.”
“Don’t be crude.”
“Have fun,” she said. Her gaze narrowed, “But you do, don’t you?”
I smiled and strapped on a cloth mask with the company logo stretched over my mouth and nostrils. “Later.” And I pulled out my cell.
As I pushed through the outer door of the substation, I was greeted by a toot of the siren. Number Eight, a spanking new half-million-dollar red-and-white panel truck, sparkled amid drips of sudsy water. Trevor, unmasked and eyes shaded, strong Celtic jaw, his thick auburn James Dean forelock tamed into a semblance of order, sat poised at the wheel. The flashers were on. With my cell on speaker, I put a finger to where my lips were hidden by the mask to get him to cool it with the horns. “What have we got?” I asked the city dispatcher.
“Twenty-seven-year-old male. Probable cardiac arrest. Unresponsive and pulseless.”
As he fed me the details, I popped into the truck, and we were in motion with lights, sirens, and speed. The LED GPS gave us an eight-minute ETA, which did not bode well for unresponsive and pulseless.
Trevor’s blue-mirrored gaze was fixed on the road. “I got you a coffee,” he said in a half-tamed “South Boston by way of Brighton” twang. As he accelerated, he added the air horn to the siren to move a Mercedes S series out of the left lane. “Moron,” he muttered.
“Thanks.” I cracked the lid and took a sip of black and bitter goodness.
“I got donuts,” he added as he threaded the needle of a tight curve with maximum speed and the tiniest sense that we might roll over.
“I’m good.” I held back the rest of the sentence, I just had some Kate. Not that I don’t like donuts. Though their flavor took a nosedive when they ditched lard for shortening, and it really went south when they eliminated trans fats. “How was your weekend?” I asked as the red line of our route shortened and the eight minutes got halved by Trevor’s lead foot.
“Meh,” he replied and tailgated sluggish cars who had not caught the siren’s wail. “Eye on the prize, and it’s not fair how you sailed through premed so easily. I’d kill for your GPA. But nothing I can do now. Just that stupid test.”
“Just don’t get behind.” I braced as he took a fast sharp left. We were less than a minute away.
“I don’t think that’s it. You got secrets, Godfrey. Don’t think I don’t know that.”
“True. I slept with all my teachers.”
He cracked a smile over toothpaste-commercial-perfect teeth, minus one chipped incisor damaged in a high school brawl. “Probably.” He braked and drove up onto the sidewalk in front of a three-family home in Dorchester that had gotten a San Francisco painted-lady makeover. I didn’t need to check the address or the GPS. The scene in front said it all. Neighbors in bathrobes, some half-dressed for work, kids—none wearing masks—their gazes shifted toward us, and an empty police cruiser parked on the postage-stamp front lawn.
“He’s on the top floor,” a woman offered as we donned nitrile gloves and pulled the gurney from the back. Excitement surged as we rolled with our valentine-red kit box and a fresh green oxygen tank strapped across white sheets with the Cavalry logo that was meant to be a crested knight’s helmet but looked more like an adult toy favored by segments of the gay community.
“Of course he’s on the top floor,” Trevor murmured as we hoisted and headed up at a cadenced jog with me in the front. We were like a pair of well-matched dancers. I was an honest six feet, and he had me by an inch, which back in the day was wicked tall. Now not so much. At least I don’t shrink.
The stairwell echoed with our unison footfalls. I remembered when these affordable and spacious homes were the thing. A couple thousand dollars, depending on the bric-a-bracs, shutters, porches, and turrets you wanted. Sears Catalog castles for the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Poles. Plenty of room for the new arrivals, and after that you could rent out a floor or two. Everyone in everyone else’s business. But no longer. This close to Boston, walking distance to the trolley, these two-bedroom flats were far beyond the reach of any new arrival.
A tangle of people milled on the top landing, where a uniformed officer tried to take a statement from an unmasked skunk-root blond in baggy sweats.
“When did you find him?” the cop asked.
“When I got up for work. He was….” Her voice flat.
“Which was when?”
“Seven. He had no pulse. He was cold.” She shivered.
I shifted my gaze to the black-and-white-checked linoleum floor. Another officer, his broad back to us, gave CPR to a heroin-thin man, naked save for a pair of paisley-print boxers. He was cold, gray, and too young for a heart attack, at least the normal kind. Behind him was an open bathroom door where I spotted a small stack of glassine drug packets and a syringe and spoon on the sink.
Trevor whispered, “Overdose.”
We set to work. “Did you Narcan him?” I asked the officer giving CPR as I knelt and felt for a carotid. There was no pulse.
“Once,” he replied as he continued compressions. He glanced at a small pile of familiar black, red, and white pharma packaging. “I was just about to give a second.”
“Good man. How long you been here?” I asked as Trevor handed me a light and a number six endotracheal tube.
“Less than five. I should give it?”
“Do it.” I’d done enough of these to know that cold and gray does not mean dead. And while this dude might be headed toward that bright light, he wasn’t there. He was in that room, confused and hovering over the stove, a small tether of his life still attached to his belly like an umbilical cord in reverse.
With practiced efficiency I tilted his head back, felt with the gloved fingers of my left hand for the right angle, slid the tube down his throat, tapped his larynx like a melon for the hollow ring that let me know it was in, reached back to where Trevor had the oxygen tube, hooked it up, and taped it down.
“Six liters?” Trevor asked as he cranked the tank.
“Wide open,” I said.
“Should I keep going?” the officer asked, the muscles of his upper arms corded from his exertions and three days a week on upper body.
“One more set and then let’s get him on the stretcher.” My gaze fixed on that thin thread of energy between spirit and body. It hadn’t weakened, and between the Narcan, the oxygen, and the blood being forced to pump by officer gym bod—or Gymbo as I’d dubbed him—we had a chance for a save.
We rolled the naked man onto our backboard, and the three of us hoisted him onto the stretcher. As he landed, I pressed two fingers into the notch of his neck. I waited and made eye contact with the disembodied specter. He spoke. “Am I dead? Is this it?”
I shook my head as I felt the sluggish surge of blood beneath the tips of my cello-callused fingers. Not yet. Find your way back. Will yourself back into your body, back into this life. And so began a fun and private conversation.
I fucked up, the almost-dead guy said.
Yes, you did. Everyone does.
I told Annie I’d quit for good.
I glanced up at the Annie in question and was struck by the depth of her anguish. It was moments like this that dropped the floor out of my world. It was clear that this naked man, with his Jesus hair, perched between worlds, was the love of her life. On him, she had pinned dreams of children, marriage—the whole enchilada. He was her one. She’ll forgive you.
She shouldn’t. This was the worst time. You don’t understand.
Dude, people fuck up. We can’t help it. But here’s the deal—do you want to die or do you want to live and maybe do better? Annie clearly loves you.
I don’t want to die. She shouldn’t love me. I want to do better. This was the worst. What’s wrong with me?
I’d missed something. He did not want to die, but…. Why was this time the worst?
She’s pregnant. We’re going to have a kid… she just told me. And this is what I do.
Do you want to be a father?
Fuck yeah. I’ve got to stop doing this. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be a junkie. Leave my kid with nothing but a trust fund for a father.
