Bloodliner

  Bloodliner

  By

  Robert T. Jeschonek

  *****

  Also by Robert T. Jeschonek:

  EARTHSHAKER – a paranormal urban fantasy novel

  Sexy private eye Gaia Charmer brings new meaning to the words "Earth Angel." This mysterious (and bipolar) bombshell has the power of the Earth itself at her fingertips, but the murder of her best friend knocks her world off its axis. Out for blood on the killer’s trail, Gaia and a tough-as-nails rock hound sheriff must overcome Landkind--a secret society of movers and shakers with the hearts and minds of landforms (mountains, rivers, islands, etc.)--and a vicious enemy with the key to her true identity. She risks everything to reclaim her legacy as Mother Earth in human form. A woman with the weight of the world on her shoulders in more ways than one.

  NOW ON SALE!

  *****

  Bloodliner

  Part One: Arizona & New Mexico

  Chapter 1

  As Jonah Ivory sat between his parents' caskets in the parlor of the funeral home in Tucson, he finished his eighth beer of the evening. His goal was to drink a whole case.

  Eight down, sixteen to go.

  Crumpling the eighth empty can in his fist, he tipped his chair back and chucked the can behind the caskets with the other seven. Before he could tip forward and reach for number nine, however, his chair rocked off balance, and he fell back and down to the floor.

  Perfect.

  After the impact, Jonah lay there for a long moment, staring up at the ceiling. His eyes burned as the tears he'd been holding back tried to force their way out.

  But he wouldn't let them.

  I'm too young for this. Too young to lose them.

  In fact, Jonah was seventeen years old...not that he looked it. He was skinny, with a boyish face, and he wasn't exactly wearing responsible grown-up clothes for a viewing: a black Jethro Tull concert t-shirt, ratty faded blue jeans, and sneakers.

  But then there was his shoulder-length hair, which was prematurely white. It had been scared that way five years ago.

  That was when he'd lost his two brothers, who had been abducted right in front of him. He'd been thirteen years old when it had happened...so maybe he wasn't too young at seventeen to lose his mother and father, after all.

  First the twins, now my parents. I ought to be getting used to this by now. So why do I miss them so much?

  It was a mystery to him.

  Jonah hadn't been close to his mother and father for ages. Though they'd been living in the same house in Tucson, seeing each other every day, they might as well have been living in separate towns for the past five years. The loss of the twins had driven them apart.

  But in the few days since the car accident that had killed his mother and father, Jonah had been feeling completely and irretrievably lost. All he could think to do was drink himself into a stupor and stumble through the motions of the prearranged viewing and the preparations for the funeral.

  Why does it matter? We were practically strangers.

  The biggest question of all, though, the one that loomed up in the gaps between lazy drunken sparks and ripples, was this:

  Now what?

  Jonah rolled off the upended chair and got to his feet. He pulled his ninth beer out of the red and white cooler that occupied two chairs in the front row of seating.

  As he snapped open the tab on the can, he looked around the empty room.

  At least I don't have to deal with anybody.

  Jonah and his parents were alone. Other than the undertaker, who had strolled through a few times, not one soul had shown up for the viewing.

  Nice turnout.

  After a long drink of beer, Jonah righted the chair he'd knocked over and sat back down on it. He glanced over at the closed caskets beside him, then quickly looked away as the reality smacked him in the head again.

  I hate this.

  Just as he lifted the beer for another drink, a young, black-haired woman walked into the room.

  She was beautiful. As soon as Jonah caught sight of her, he lowered the beer from his lips. Her body was slender and shapely under her waist-length red leather jacket and short black dress. Knee-high red leather boots accentuated the curves of her long, lean legs.

  As she approached, Jonah saw that her features were even prettier than they had looked from a distance. She had a long face and angular nose that gave her an exotic look—Italian, maybe, or Greek or Arab. She must have been wearing contact lenses behind her black horned-rim glasses, because her eyes were two different colors: one hazel, the other amber flecked with red.

  Simply put, she was a knockout.

  As bad a day as Jonah was having, he still automatically assessed his chances with her before she'd even said a word. He knew it in a heartbeat: she wasn't just out of his league, she was out of his universe.

  Even if he hadn't been having the second shittiest day of his life, he probably wouldn't have bothered to make a play for her. That was why he didn't bother to get up when the woman approached him. He just stared out from behind his long, white bangs and burped softly.

  "Hello, Mr. Ivory." She stopped a few feet away and didn't offer to shake his hand. She had a slight accent—Italian, maybe? "My name is Stanza Miracolo."

  "Don't mind me." Jonah waved at the two closed caskets. "Go ahead and view all you like."

  "Not here for that, thanks." Stanza slid two fingers into a vest pocket of her red leather jacket. "Here for you," she said, tugging out a business card and offering it to him.

  When Jonah didn't take the card, she flipped it at him. The card landed face-up on his stomach, and he stared down at it.

  Stanza Miracolo, it said. Bloodlines Genealogy & Beyond.

  Jonah brushed the card from his black Jethro Tull t-shirt. "You picked the wrong day to try to sell me something, lady," he said, and then he polished off his beer.

  "Already paid for," said Stanza. "I'm your inheritance."

  "Believe it or not, this really isn't a good time for me." Jonah crumpled the latest empty and tossed it behind the caskets with the rest. "Can't you see I'm busy?"

  "Your mother and father hired me," said Stanza. "Services deliverable to you upon their deaths. It's in their wills."

  Jonah laughed. "This is a joke, right? Who put you up to this?"

  Stanza pulled a folded bundle of papers from inside her jacket and handed it to him. "The contract. Check the signatures on the last page."

  Jonah unfolded the bundle and flipped to the last page. His eyes went straight to the familiar handwriting at the bottom.

  Isaac Ivory. Caroline Ivory.

  Without comment, Jonah flipped back to the front page and scanned the text. "Genealogical services?" he said, mispronouncing it "Genie-logal" because he was drunk.

  "Tracing your family tree," said Stanza. "Finding your roots."

  "What's this about 'per dime rates?'" said Jonah.

  "'Per diem,'" said Stanza. "It means I'll be reimbursed for costs incurred during travel."

  "Travel?"

  "With you." Stanza cocked her head as if she had heard something, then turned and paced around the room. "Won't find your family history sitting around Tucson, will we?"

  Jonah frowned.

  My two brothers were stolen five years ago, and now my parents are dead. That's all the family history I really need to know.

  "Not interested," said Jonah. "Anyway, I've got work, and my band's got gigs."

  It was true. Jonah worked a day job driving a delivery truck for the local Red Cross. By night, he played lead guitar for Crimson Wonder, a Jethro Tull tribute band. He had a gig that very night after the viewing, in fact.

  Stanza leaned out through the open doorway, looked in both directions, and leaned back. "I get pa
id only if I fulfill the contract," she said.

  "So fulfill it," said Jonah.

  "Not without you." Stanza wagged an index finger at him.

  Jonah snorted and got up from his chair. "Not gonna happen."

  Just as he was shoving the contract toward Stanza, a word on the front page caught his eye. "Protection? What's that all about?"

  Stanza snatched the pages from his hand. She winked her red-flecked amber eye at him. "You'll see."

  Then, she turned and whisked off down the hallway.

  As Jonah watched her go, he suddenly felt bad. In spite of all the negative shit that had happened in his life, he wasn't usually so rude.

  Once things calmed down, would it be so bad traveling around with a hot-looking woman?

  Maybe I should apologize and tell her I'll call after the funeral.

  Unfortunately, by the time Jonah thought of saying something else to Stanza, she was through the front door and outside. She seemed to disappear as soon as she hit the shadows, red jacket and all.

  Jonah took a step after her, then stopped. Wobbling in the parlor doorway, he looked back at the closed caskets at the far end of the room.

  It was the end of an era over there, the end of a lifetime. Mom and Dad were gone forever.

  I'm alone.

  No one left. No parents, no brothers, no family.

  I'm an 18-year-old orphan.

  No girlfriend, either. No friends, unless he counted his Crimson Wonder bandmates, who were always feuding with him anyway.

  I'm completely alone.

  And the thing was, Jonah thought he deserved it. He hadn't saved his brothers, the twins, when they were taken. He'd just stood there, frozen, and watched.

  He'd suffered for what he'd done—not done—but was it ever enough? He relived it nightly in his dreams, but that didn't change a thing.

  He was still a coward who hadn't even tried to save his own brothers.

  So now I'm alone. At least I don't have anyone left to lose.

  Jonah's eyes flicked back and forth from one casket to the other. "When you see the twins," he said, his voice a trembling whisper. "Tell them I'm sorry."

  *****

  Chapter 2

  Jonah was drunk, pissed at the world, fresh from his mom and dad's viewing at the funeral home...and he was playing what might have been his best gig ever.

  He had always been good, but he was great that night. He ripped through every song with unusual precision and ferocity. Instead of note-perfect renditions, he brought each solo alive with newfound fire and surprise. He pushed the whole band to a new level, and he could tell they loved it.

  As they drove through one Jethro Tull classic after another, from "Locomotive Breath" to "Thick as a Brick," all four musicians grinned with rare and predatory intensity. It wasn't just a run-of-the-mill gig.

  Too bad hardly anyone was there to see it.

  The bar, a downtown Tucson dive joint called Halcyon, was tiny...and nowhere near full. Not counting the bartender, Jonah didn't see more than ten people in the room at the same time that night.

  But he played for those ten people like he was playing for a full house. Like he was playing with something to prove.

  Something to forget.

  The audience, small as it was, definitely caught the vibe and egged on the band. It was the kind of give-and-take that Jonah thrived on, with band and audience equally focused and serious and unified.

  And some were more focused than others. One, in particular, was focused hard on Jonah.

  She looked twenty-something, with shoulder-length blonde hair and impossibly bright blue eyes. A tight-fitting white tank top and black leather skirt hugged the curves of her perfectly sloped and rounded body.

  If she ever took her eyes off Jonah, he didn't see it happen. She watched every move he made and locked eyes with him every time he looked out at her.

  She didn't seem to be with anyone. She just stood with a bottle of beer in her hand, six feet away from Jonah, dancing to every single song with supple, undulating movements.

  Which, naturally, made him play with even more fire. He had a pretty good idea what might be coming next.

  Sure enough, at the end of the first set, the girl made a beeline for him. With a silent, knowing smile, she wrapped his hand in her own and led him out the back door into the alley outside.

  Then, she closed the door behind them and pinned him against the wall.

  Jonah's heart pounded as she flexed her body against his. Her hands, where they locked his wrists to the wall, were cold, but her gaze was filled with heat.

  "You were amazing in there." Her throaty voice was a purr. "I am so turned on right now."

  "I know the feeling." Jonah grinned. Playing with the band had taken his mind off his troubles a little. Maybe the blonde would take his mind the rest of the way off, if only for a while.

  Without another word, the girl moved in for a kiss. Jonah's heart beat even faster as he finally made the contact he'd been anticipating for so long.

  But the kiss was not quite what he'd expected.

  The girl's lips were freezing cold, as if she'd just eaten ice cream or gone swimming. There wasn't the slightest trace of warmth anywhere in her kiss.

  Jonah pulled back. "Are you chilly?" Even as he asked the question, he couldn't imagine that she could possibly feel cold in that alley. It was a hot desert night in Tucson, probably in the nineties...plus which, heat was rolling off an air conditioning unit in the window a few yards away.

  "Low blood pressure. But we can fix that." The girl moved in for another kiss. Her fingers latched onto his belt buckle.

  "We need you," said the girl.

  We? That was when Jonah realized something wasn't right.

  He suddenly felt much hotter than he thought he should. His lower body, in fact, was quickly becoming uncomfortable, as if he were standing too close to a hot stove.

  Jonah looked down...and immediately wished he hadn't.

  He'd never seen anything like it. Thin streams of blood projected from the tops of his legs—a dozen streams per leg punching right through his clothing. They met in a glistening red veil that hung suspended in midair, rippling mere inches from the girl's face. As Jonah watched, new streams burst from his legs and added their crimson liquid to the veil.

  "What the hell?" said Jonah. "What are you doing?"

  But the girl did not answer.

  Get out of here. Now.

  Jonah was in for another shock when he tried to escape: his hands were stuck to the wall, and his feet were locked to the floor of the alley.

  He couldn't move.

  What's going on here?

  Then, it got worse.

  The girl opened her mouth wide, and red filaments reached toward her from the veil. The sinuous filaments twisted and writhed as they flowed between her scarlet lips and over her jet black tongue.

  Black tongue? Black tongue?!? Why didn't I notice that before?

  The girl spoke without closing her mouth. The red filaments splashed against the tip of her tongue when it moved. "How delicious," she said. "I love you."

  She's a vampire! Vampires are real!

  "I'll blow you a kiss," she said, and then she puckered her lips and squirted a flume of blood toward Jonah's face.

  The blood stopped in front of his nose and hung in midair. It curled and contorted and rotated, forming into a gleaming red shape.

  A throbbing cartoon heart the size of a quarter.

  Since when can vampires do this kind of crazy stuff?

  The girl giggled. "Happy birthday, baby," she said. "Wait'll you see what comes next."

  Jonah couldn't take his eyes off the floating cartoon heart. It changed as he watched, twisting and kneading itself into a new shape.

  A skull and crossbones.

  That was when Jonah finally tried to scream. He tried with all his strength to scream as loud as he could.

  And when no sound emerged from his throat, he tried to scream even l
ouder.

  *****

  Chapter 3

  It was as if someone had heard Jonah's silent cry. Seconds after he tried in vain to scream his head off, the sound of gunfire crackled in the alley.

  Multiple impacts shook the blood-drinking girl and pitched her from her knees to the dusty floor of the alley. As she dropped, so did the veil and filaments of blood. So did the floating skull and crossbones. All of it lost shape immediately and plunged down in one big splatter on the pavement.

  In the same instant, Jonah regained some of the movement in his extremities. His arms and legs still felt heavy and stiff, but at least he could finally change position.

  Now, if he could just avoid getting shot.

  As Jonah stepped away from the wall, a figure moved out of the shadows. The first thing Jonah saw coming toward him was the smoking barrel of a gun.

  A machine gun. Pointed right at him.

  Then, he heard a familiar voice. "This is what it's all about." A female voice. "Protection."

  Jonah was kind of shell-shocked, but he realized who was doing the talking just before she stepped fully into view.

  "Stanza." Jonah didn't rush to her side right away. For one thing, he hardly knew her. For another, as relieved as he was to see a fellow non-vampire...

  How do I know she isn't a vampire, too?

  "What's going on here?" said Jonah as he buckled his belt.

  "Did you know I get a bonus every time I save your life?" Stanza grabbed him by the arm and yanked him around to stand behind her. "And if you die, I get nothing."

  "Nothing?" said Jonah.

  "Not one red cent. So stay here." With that, Stanza moved forward, keeping the machine gun pointed at the blood-spattered blonde on the alley pavement.

  The blonde lifted her head and glared. "Bitch." She hissed the word through clenched teeth. "You just became my main course."