Sherrilyn Kenyon - A Hard Day's Night-Searcher

Isn't it great?" Rafael Santiago wasn't a religious man in any sense of the word, but as he read the short story Jeff Brinks had published in the SF magazine in his hands, he felt a deep need to cross him­self. . . .

Or at the very least, club the college student over the head until he lost all consciousness.

Keeping his expression carefully blank, Rafael slowly closed the magazine and met his Squire's eager look. At twenty-three, Jeff was tall and lean, with dark brown hair and brown eyes. He'd only been a Squire to Rafael for the last couple of months, since Jeff's father had retired. An eager young man, Jeff had been good enough at re­membering to pay bills on time, run Rafael's business, and help to protect his immortal status from the unknowing humans. But the one thing Jeff had wanted more than anything else was to publish one of the stories he was always scribbling on.

Now he had. . . .

Rafael tried to remember a time when he'd had dreams of grandeur, too. A time when he'd been human and had wanted to leave his mark on the world.

And just like him, Jeff's dreams were about to get the boy killed. "Have you shown this to anyone else?"

Damn, but Jeff reminded Rafael of a cocker spaniel puppy want­ing someone to pet his head even though he'd just unknowingly pissed all over his owner's best shoes. "Not yet, why?"

"Oh, I don't know," Rafael said, stretching the words out and try­ing to mitigate some of the sarcasm in his tone. "I'm thinking the Night-Searcher series you're starting might be a really bad idea."

Jeff's face fell instantly. "You didn't like the story?"

"Not a question of liking it really. More a question of getting your ass kicked for spilling our secrets."

Jeff furrowed his brow, and by his baffled look it was obvious the boy had no idea what Rafael was talking about. "How do you mean?"

This time there was no way to keep the venom out of his voice. "I know they say to write what you know, but damn, Jeff. . . Ralph St. James? Night-Searchers? You've written the whole Dark-Hunter/Apollite vampire legend, and I really resent your making me a Taye Diggs clone. Nothing against the man, but other than the oc­casional bald head, the color of our skin, and a diamond stud in the left ear, we have nothing in common."

Jeff took the magazine from Raphael's hands, flipped to his story, and skimmed a few lines. "I don't understand what you're talking about, Rafael. This isn't about you or the Dark-Hunters. The only thing they have in common is that the Night-Searchers hunt down cursed vampires like the Dark-Hunters do. That's it."

Uh-huh. Rafael looked back at the story again, and even with the magazine upside down his eyes fell straight to the scene. "What about this, where the Taye Diggs look-alike Dark-Hunter is con­fronting a Daimon who's just stolen a human soul to elongate his life?"

Jeff made a sound of disgust. "That's a Night-Searcher who found a vampire to kill. It has nothing to do with the Dark-Hunters."

Yeah, right. "A vampire who just happens to steal human souls to elongate his life as opposed to the normal Hollywood variety where they live forever on blood?"

"Well, that's just cliche. It's so much better to have vampires who have really short lives and are then compelled, against their wills, and by a hatred fired by envy, to lash out at the human race. Makes it so much more interesting, don't you think?"

Not really. Especially since he was one of the people caught up in that battle. "That is also the reality we live in, Jeff. What you just de­scribed is a Daimon, not a vampire."

"Well maybe I borrowed from the Daimons a little, but the rest is all mine."

Rafael flipped to the next page. "Let's see. What about the cursed Tyber race that pissed off the Norse god Odin and is now damned to live only twenty-seven years unless they turn vampire and steal hu­man souls. Substitute 'Apollite' for 'Tyber' and 'Apollo' for 'Odin' and again you have the story of the Apollite race who turn Dai­mon."

Sighing, Jeff crossed his arms over his chest. He shook his head in denial.

"And what about this part here where the Night-Searchers sell their souls to the Norse goddess Freya, who is a vibrant redheaded femme fatale dressed all in white, to get revenge on whoever caused them to die?"

"No one is going to figure out that Artemis is Freya."

Rafael growled at him. "For the record, unlike Artemis, Freya happens to be a strawberry blonde. But you were right about one thing. She is gorgeous and highly seductive. Definitely hard to say no to her."

"Oh." Deepening his scowl, Jeff looked up. "How do you know all that?"

Rafael grew quiet as he remembered the night he'd met the Norse goddess and she had tempted him well. That had definitely been one hell of a day. . . . "Freya's the goddess who hand selects warriors for Valhalla. Or in the case of myself, she wanted to take me off with her to her own hall and add me to her harem."

Jeff gaped. "And you chose to fight for Artemis instead, what kind of stupid are you?"

There were times when the kid could be eerily astute. "Yeah, well, in retrospect it was a bad bargain on my part. But at the time Artemis was offering me vengeance on my enemies it seemed so much more appealing than being Freya's love slave . . . which gets back to Freya being Artemis in your story."

"But you just said she's not Artemis and she comes after warriors, too. So it could happen. She could make a bargain like the one I wrote about in my story."

And icicles could grow on the sun. Freya collected warriors, she didn't send them back to the mortal plane to fight Daimons/vam­pires. Artemis did that. But not willing to argue the point anymore when it was obvious Jeff didn't see it, Rafael moved on to the next similarity. "And what about this? Ralph—Jesus, boy, couldn't you come up with something better than a bodily function to name me—was a Caribbean pirate, son of an Ethiopian slave and Brazilian merchant. . . ." He glanced down to read the description: "At six six, Ralph was one to intimidate anyone who saw him. With his shaved head that was tattooed with African tribal symbols given to him by a Shaman he'd met in his travels, he walked the earth as if he owned it. But more than that, the black tattoos blended at times with his dark brown flesh, making the two of them seem indistinguishable from each other as if he bore some kind of alien skin."

Unable to read another word of the description that was so eerily close to himself that it made him want to choke his Squire, Rafael let out a disgusted breath. "While I'm both flattered and highly offended, I can assure you, this won't win you a Hugo or Nebula nomination."

Jeff pulled the magazine out of his hands again in a high-handed manner. "I resent that. It's a great story. And you don't exactly have those tattoos, either, now do you?"

Rafael's right eye started twitching from the aggravation. "I have intricate scroll work tattooed up my neck to the base of my skull and like Ralph" —he growled the word—"I have them on both arms. They're close enough to what you describe. No matter how you dis­guise this trite bullshit, it's my life, Jeff. Penned in an awkward man­ner. It's things I didn't want to see in black-and-white print. You're lucky after three hundred years that I've mellowed. In my human days, I'd have slit your throat, pulled your tongue through the open­ing, and left you tied to a tree for the wolves to eat."

"Ew!"

"Yes," he said, taking a step toward the overgrown adolescent, "and effective. Trust me, no one betrayed me twice."

"What about the guy who killed you?"

Rafael's eyes flared as he fought his urge to kill the boy. It was a damn good thing that he liked Jeff's father and the man had served him well for over twenty years. Otherwise Jeff would be meeting with an "accident" right about. . . oh, now.