Dark Rain: 15 Short Tales by J. R. Rain Page B

haven’t looked me in the eye yet, Mr. Spinoza. I don’t bite. Not like the others you’ve come across.”
    “What others?”
    “Vampires, Mr. Spinoza. You’ve made the press, and I know how to read between the lines. Do you deny that you’ve seen your fair share?”
    The train lurched forward, then proceeded a little more smoothly. We were off. Two women waited in line, one holding a coffee, the other a can of Diet Coke.
    I said, “I’ve come across things that I don’t understand.”
    “Don’t understand—or don’t want to understand?”
    “Does it matter?”
    “The former seems unlikely. The latter suggests you are in denial.” He smiled at me, and I saw it then: the deadness in his eyes.
    “Tell me, Mr. Spinoza, do you deny vampires exist?”
    “Let’s just say I’m uncomfortable with the term.”
    “Why is that?”
    “You tell me.”
    He smiled again, and, try as he might to come through genial and gentlemanly, there was no warmth in his eyes. The eyes of a cadaver at the UCLA medical school.
    “Perhaps you are afraid to admit the reality of vampires. Or afraid that using the term might summon one of us. How’s that working out for you?”
    “Not very well.”
    “You are looking at my eyes, Mr. Spinoza. Or, at least, thinking about them, wondering about them, perhaps even fearing them.”
    I considered the weapon inside my light jacket. “Not fearing,” I said. “Never fearing.”
    “Good. Of course, you aren’t afraid. Perhaps I am the one who should be afraid. After all, there is a reason why your gun is loaded with silver bullets.”
    I said nothing. The weight of my weapon was comforting. I wondered how fast I could reach it. I also wondered why I had ever agreed to meet him here. Or how he knew about the bullets.
    “I am not here to accuse you. Whether or not you have killed some of my kind is your business. I surmise you had every reason to. Like I said on the phone, I only want to hire you.”

    “I’m not like other vampires, Mr. Spinoza.”
    “You throw that word around pretty liberally.”
    He shrugged. “There’s no denying it.”
    “There’s denying it a little.”
    He held my gaze. “Not here, Mr. Spinoza. Not now. It is, as you will see, important for me to offer you full disclosure.”
    “You’re sure about that?”
    “Never have I been more sure.”
    I told him to fire away, and he did.
    With both barrels.

    “I was never very concerned about pursuing my vampirism. You see, although I was turned over a decade ago—turned very unwillingly and unexpectedly, I might add—I have mostly continued to live my life the same as I always have.”
    The train picked up some speed. We were traveling south from Union Station in Los Angeles to Orange County. The train, called the Pacific Surfliner, did just that: ran up and down the Pacific Coast, in particular, all of Southern California. At present, we passed between warehouses and industrial parks as we made our way toward the coast. We were mostly alone in the cafe car, save for the cashier and a young kid who sipped idly on his straw and scrolled through his phone. I wondered if he could overhear our conversation.
    “No one’s listening to us, Spinoza.”
    “You can read my thoughts,” I said, then realized just how crazy my words sounded, even to my own ears.
    “I do, yes. I somehow developed this gift—or curse. The stronger, the more focused the thought, the more likely I am to pick it up. That boy next to us is lost in his own world. His thoughts are scattered and nearly incoherent.”
    I said nothing; hell, I tried to think nothing, too. The cafe, located on the bottom floor of a bi-level train, was the second-to-last coach on the train. For commuters, this was the end of it, but the company men could pass behind the counter and continue on to the crew car.
    I sat facing the cafe, my back to the bulk of the car. Above me hung a wide mirror that afforded me a view of the reserved business class behind me. In