Vampire Reflections Read online

  VAMPIRE REFLECTIONS

  The Chronicles of the Immortal Council #6

  by

  D.C. Young

  A special thank you to Bil Howard

  Other Books in The Chronicles of the Immortal Council

  1. Vampire Abduction

  2. Vampire Exodus

  3. Vampire Sovereign

  4. Vampire Magic

  5. Vampire Vacation

  6. Vampire Reflections

  7. Vampire Enigma

  8. Vampire Spirit

  9. Vampire Regent

  10. Vampire Intuition

  Other Books in J.R. Rain’s Vampire for Hire World

  Burning

  Afterglow

  Radiance

  Dead Ahead

  Dragon Lessons

  Vampires She Wrote

  Wolf Moon

  Fire Warrior

  Fang

  I, Samantha Moon

  Vampire Apocalypse

  Vampire Reflections

  Published by Rain Press

  Copyright © 2019 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.

  (Vampire Reflections 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

  A special thank you to Bil Howard

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Foreward

  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

  Epilogue

  Reading Sample

  Foreward

  by J.R. Rain

  Hi there and welcome!

  J.R. Rain here, and I’m so excited to introduce you to my “Vampire for Hire World”! As you might have guessed, these are written by writers other than me. Fair warning, these stories are non-canon (as in, unofficial) but they’re still a ton of fun. I’m excited to see the Samantha Moon world grow, and I’m equally excited to see all these wonderful writers exploring her world with me.

  So, sit back and enjoy Vampire Reflections!

  —J.R.

  Vampire Reflections

  Chapter One

  It was a gorgeous afternoon and for the first day in weeks since I’d returned from New Orleans, I had no clients scheduled.

  On the TV, Judge Judy was going at a young woman who was beating around the bush about the facts surrounding her custody case against her child’s father.

  It was obvious the ruling was going to be in her favor but she just couldn’t seem to get it together and just answer the judge’s questions. At one point, Judge Judy did her signature eye roll, and I busted out laughing.

  This is the point where you just shut up, lady. Let the Judge get to work for you!

  When the ruling was handed down and the court broke off for the participant commentary, my mind began to wander over everything that had happened in my life over the last six months.

  Judge Judy had that effect on me at times… careful reflection; the kind that solved cases and stuck it to the bad guy.

  Since my first encounter with the Immortal Council, and its fantastical members over a year ago, I’d been on the strangest and most exciting adventures. I’d saved immortal lives and destroyed some as well… so many new things I’d added to my resume; a resume I’d have to alter extensively before showing it to any of my potential human clients.

  There’s been a maniacal Nazi doctor, the dødehekse, or dead witch as Bjorn Ironside had translated it, Himiko the Japanese witch queen, the blood thirsty demon inside my own body… these had been just a few of the fights I’ve engaged in this year. It’s made for a freak parade and a very full calendar.

  But it hasn’t all been menacing, I thought to myself. There have been new alliances struck and friends and colleagues made.

  Thoughts of the Benoir sisters and the other New Orleans supernatural beings, the many immortal inhabitants of the Hollywood Hills mansion, Elysium House and most of all, my new ally in the East, Rennie Telfair, flooded over me and I smiled.

  No, it hadn’t been all bad stuff at all.

  With December looming just a week away, my mind was cast back to a previous Christmas. I’d had the pleasure of meeting one of the most serene and genuinely wholesome people I’d encountered in a long time. His name was Charlie Anderson and he’d walked into my home office on an afternoon when I’d more than needed a positive soul around me. He’d sported the cleanest, purest aura I’d had the pleasure of seeing in a long while up to that point, and just basking in it as I sat in my noisy leather chair across the desk from him had been balmy.

  I’d been cleaning house in the dark and watching Judge Judy rip someone’s cheating husband a new one, when my doorbell rang. Even though I probably had been enjoying the case a bit more than I should have, I hurried over to the door and opened it.

  My potential new client was right on time. He was a tall fellow with a short, gray beard, bad teeth, nervous eyes and a peaceful aura. In fact, the aura that surrounded him was so serene that I did a double take.

  I showed him to my office and he took a seat in one of the four client chairs. I moved around my desk and sat in my leather chair, picked up my liquid gel pen and opened my pad of paper to a blank page.

  “You mentioned in your email something about needing help finding something that was lost.”

  “Yes, but it was stolen, actually.”

  I clicked open my pen. “Okay, then. So, what exactly is it that’s been stolen?”

  “A safe,” he said.

  I think I blinked. “A safe?”

  “Yes. A safe. It was stolen from me, and I need your help to find it.”

  As Mr. Anderson explained it became clear the safe had been handed down through his family for many generations although it had never been opened, and no one knew what was inside. Charlie’s father had left the safe to him nearly twenty years prior when he’d passed away. But, a gang of hoodlums had recently moved into Charlie’s neighborhood, and soon after, some of Charlie’s things had started going missing. Small things at first; a gas can, the loose change from the ashtray in his car and now he was willing to bet that those same punks had stolen his safe.

  I made notes.

  “When did you notice the safe had gone missing?”

  “Two days ago.”

  “Where was it stolen from?”

  “My home. A mobile home. I kept it behind the furnace.”

  “Behind?”

  “The furnace is non-functional and if you remove the blower, there’s a space to hide stuff.”

  I nodded, impressed. “Seems like a good hiding spot to me.”

  “I thought so, too.”

  “Any chance it could have been stolen a while ago and you only recently noticed?”

  He shrugged. In fact, he often shrugged, sometimes for no apparent reason. Shrugging seemed to be a sort of nervous tic for Charlie. He said, “Last I saw it was about a week ago.”

  “Were you alone when you checked on the safe?”

  “Yes.”

  I studied my notes...tapping my pen against the pad. My house was quiet, as it should be. The kids were at school. I looke
d at the time on my computer screen. I had to pick them up in about twenty minutes.

  At about this time of the day, my brain is foggy at best. So foggy that sometimes the most obvious question eludes me. I blinked, focused my thoughts, and ignored the nearly overwhelming desire to crawl back into bed...and shut out the world until the sunset.

  Then, I became a new woman.

  Or at least a new something.

  I felt like I was fading but I was holding on desperately. I kept tapping the tip of the pen against the pad of paper until the question finally came to me. Finally, it did. “You’re hiding place seems pretty solid from what you’ve described to me. So the question is; why would the thieves know to look behind the furnace? It seems a highly unlikely place to ever look.”

  He shrugged.

  I said, “That won’t help me to help you, Mr. Anderson.”

  “Well, I don’t know why they would look there.”

  “Fair enough. Did you ever tell anyone about it?”

  “No.”

  “Did anyone ever see you looking at it?”

  “I live alone. It’s just me.”

  “Any family members know about it?”

  “Maybe a few do, but I don’t keep in touch with them and they wouldn’t know about the furnace either.”

  “Do you have any children?”

  “Yes.”

  Bingo. “Where do they live?”

  “The Philippines, presently. I’m a retired Navy vet. My ex-wife is from there and the kids stay with her most of the time.”

  “But some of the time they come to stay with you?”

  “Yes?”

  “How long ago has it been since they last visited?”

  “A month ago.”

  More notes, more thinking. I put the pen aside. I had asked just about everything my dull brain could think of. Besides, I had to start wrapping this up.

  “I can help you,” I said. “But there’s one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I get half of whatever’s in the safe.”

  “What about your usual retainer fee?”

  “Consider that waived.”

  “But what if you don’t find the safe?”

  “Then I guess you won’t owe me anything, Mr. Anderson,” I said.

  He looked at me for a good twenty seconds and then he nodded. “I’ve always wondered what the hell was in that thing, anyway.”

  “So, we have a deal, Mr. Anderson?”

  “We have a deal,” he said.

  I’d never struck a deal with a client like that before. Granted, I dealt with every case... every individual… on a strictly one-on-one basis but I’d never waived fees before. Getting on the way to financial freedom must have been taking an effect on my good sensibility.

  Nah, that wasn’t likely at that point. But Mr. Anderson had had me awestruck the moment I’d seen him standing on my front step.

  He’d been the last client I’d opened my front door to with my skin coated in sunscreen and the drapes were tightly drawn in my living room sealing out the sunlight. As it had turned out, there had been no split of the contents of the safe but as I’d been leaving Charlie’s trailer home that night something had called out to me psychically from the middle of a pile of papers in his living room.

  Chapter Two

  A few weeks later, we were standing in Mr. Anderson’s living room.

  In an effort to explain how I’d managed to get it there, I had told him that a friend of mine had helped me lug the heavy safe onto his deck. For effect, I made a show of pretending to struggle with the safe as we moved it from the deck to the center of his living room.

  Amongst the leaning towers of junk which comprised of laser jet printer cartridges, 40’s science fiction magazines, and enough clipboards to last two lifetimes, we set the heavy safe down on the ground.

  Earlier in the night, after discovering it, I had given the culprits ten minutes to clear out before I called the police. Most had taken their leave within five. To their dismay, I’d kept their weapons and ammunition, which I later handed over to Detective Sherbet of the Fullerton Police Department.

  For now, though, it was just me, Charlie and the safe… not to mention its mysterious contents. Neither of us knew what they were.

  It was clearly old and looked like it belonged on the back of a Wells Fargo stage coach. Part of the safe’s dial still gleamed brightly, although most of it was covered in blackened soot from a blowtorch the thugs had used to try to break into it. The handle was also badly dented, a result of the various hammers I had seen lying around their lair.

  But it had held fast, and that was all that mattered. Charlie stared down at it and so did I. My compensation was in that safe, whatever it might be; and that could be anything at that point. Gold. Old war bonds, jewelry, gemstones or pirate booty, for all we knew.

  I had been tempted to see if my own psychic gifts could penetrate the heavy steel safe, but I had resisted.

  “Do you know the combination?”

  He pointed to the upper corner of the safe, where, upon closer inspection, I saw a number etched, 14. Two other numbers were etched into other corners, 29 and 63.

  I said them out loud and he nodded. But the arrangement of the numbers was jumbled. A simple encryption passed down from owner to owner as to what the proper combination to the safe was.

  “Twelve, thirty-four and sixty-nine?”

  He nodded. “You’re the first person I’ve ever shared that with. I’ve never even told my son.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Twenty-one. But it’s too soon to give it to him. My father gave it to me on his deathbed.”

  “I feel honored.”

  We stood there just staring at it. Charlie made no move to open it, and I wasn’t going to. I scanned the room as one of his piles of junk shifted and I noticed the light particles behind Charlie began to coagulate. They took on shape, and in a moment, two very faint old men appeared behind him. I noticed the hair on Charlie’s arm stand on end, as his body registered the spiritual presence of his father and grandfather, even if his mind hadn’t. Absentmindedly, he rubbed his arms.

  “Well, let’s get this over with,” he said, and reached down for the safe.

  As he did so, I said, “You really don’t want to open the safe, do you, Charlie? Wouldn’t you rather pass it along to your own boy?”

  “Without you, Ms. Moon, I would have nothing to pass on to my kid. A deal’s a deal, and I want to pay you your half. Besides, it’s really a silly tradition.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s about family.”

  “We’ve been keeping this thing going for years and it’s impractical at best, like some sort of joke from beyond the grave.”

  “I think it’s an amazing tradition,” I said.

  He didn’t say it, but his body language suggested he thought so, too. He said, “Well, it is kind of fun not knowing what’s in this thing. It could be anything, right? But it’s time to find out once and for all.”

  He made a move for the safe again, but I grabbed his wrist. He shivered at my cold touch.

  I said, “This isn’t right.”

  “A deal’s a deal, Ms. Moon. Besides, I have no other way of repaying you.”

  “Not true. You have enough junk to stock a dozen houses. There’s got to be something in here that I want. Let me pick something out of your junk. The safe is yours. Keep it in your family. Pass it along to your son.”

  He processed that information, and I saw the relief ripple through him and his shining aura.

  “But aren’t you a little bit curious what’s in the safe?”

  “More than you know.”

  As I said those words, I briefly closed my eyes, and expanded my consciousness throughout the room, and as I did so, two things made me gasp.

  The first was the contents of the safe, which I saw clearly. The second was what I saw resting inside a wooden box deep under a pile of newspapers.

  “I would s
uggest you find a much better place for your safe. A very safe place.”

  “I will.”

  “You think the contents are valuable?”

  I saw, in my mind’s eye, the tightly rolled vellum document that might just be the rarest of all American documents, a document signed by our founding fathers, centuries ago. A document thought to be lost... until now.

  Then again, I might have been wrong.

  Refusing to say a word, I moved through the piles of junk and headed to the far corner of the room. I moved aside old newspapers and magazines, until I uncovered an ornately carved box.

  Slowly, I opened the lid...

  Unbelievable.

  Inside was another golden medallion. The three roses on this one were cut from brilliant sapphires.

  “Oh, that,” Charlie said. “I got it at an estate sale a while back. In Fullerton. Probably worth a lot. I’ve been keeping it for a rainy day.” He paused. “But honestly, it kind of gives me the creeps. You can have it if you want.”

  I closed the lid and held out my hand. “Merry Christmas.”

  But instead, Charlie wrapped me in a huge, smothering hug.

  “Merry Christmas, Ms. Moon!”

  Chapter Three

  The sapphire medallion he’d given to me on the last night of his case had brought me the biggest gift that Christmas… immunity to the sun’s rays. You’d think I’d have grown accustomed to getting huge surprises each time I encountered one of those bejeweled medallions but it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing one just ‘got used to’. The ruby medallion had saved my son from a rare and deadly disease, the sapphire jewel had allowed me to eat and drink all the foods I had missed out on for the past seven years. My friend Max had fashioned rings for me from the gold of the medallions, each containing one of the four original stones. They didn’t give me the full power of the medallions they’d been fashioned from but they alleviated my adverse symptoms enough to maintain a more normal quality of life.