La Vida Vampire

Found on the beach by a Greek fisherman who adopted him, Triton was four and I was three when he came to live in the Quarter. We grew so close that we read each other’s minds, shared each other’s nighttime dreams, and never questioned why we shared The Gift. Or parts of it. Everyone in the Quarter expected us to marry, including me. I didn’t remember a day without Triton and couldn’t imagine a future without him.

Then puberty hit and, while Triton and I were playing in the ocean one new moon night, he shifted from a man to a dolphin. That would be a shocker even in this modern age when magick is more or less accepted. Back then, let me tell you, we were freaked.

The change, we soon learned, only lasted one full day and only at the new moon each month. Good news, right? The better news was that the telepathic connection we’d shared since childhood became even stronger during his shift. Triton taught me how to follow him in my mind, to astral travel the seas with him. Talk about magical. We kept his secret, of course, and I still would’ve married him and been happy. It was Triton who couldn’t be happy with me. Month after month, as he searched for his own kind, my girlhood dreams died, and our friendship changed. It changed again when the vampires caught me. I was the lookout for Triton that night and didn’t sense the vampires closing in until it was too late. After I was turned, I contacted Triton on the sly a few times, but the weight of his guilt for not protecting me became a burden for both of us. When Normand threatened to kill my parents to bring me in line, Triton helped them escape. He did the same for my few other family members until he was the last close tie to my old life. I urged Triton to leave St. Augustine, too, and we promised to stay in telepathic touch. For fifty years, I could still reach out and sense him—even from my coffin. Then one day, nothing. Total shutdown. I hadn’t heard from him since. Logic told me he was dead. Hope made me believe otherwise, but, in all my Internet searching, I couldn’t find him. Which was probably for the best, I told myself firmly as I mounted my bike and pedaled back to the penthouse. The new afterlife I was aiming to make normal would turn upside down if Triton came home.



Interesting fact: Surfer buns look great in wet suits.

Not that I looked at Neil’s when there were ten others on the beach at dawn on Thursday morning. We parked in the Crescent Beach parking lot by South Beach Grill and hiked down the beach access ramp toting our boards. The nor’easter wasn’t full on us yet but, with the wind driving rough waves, making high tide higher, only a narrow strip of sand rose above the waterline. The hearty souls on sunrise walks took the elements in stride. The frothing sea blew foam on the beach that tickled my ankles as it brushed by. I thought I saw a small boat out past the breakers right before we hit the water, but it could’ve been a stalwart pelican riding the swells. I didn’t bother looking with any vampire vision. Between the blowing mist and sand, I paid more attention to being sure my leash was secured to both my board and my ankle.

We all dropped onto our boards within seconds of each other, but Neil paddled a bit south of the others, I guess to give me more learning room. Like other sports, surfing has its rules of etiquette. Even though I ’d been in the water with at least six of these same guys, I wouldn’t want to tick them off by accidentally dropping in on a wave or doing something else to brand me as a novice kook.

After riding three sets of waves almost until my board fins scraped bottom, Neil and I straddled our boards out in the swells, waiting for a fourth run. That’s when something bumped my right foot.

I jerked my feet up, thinking, Shark.

Instead, a dead body surfaced smack between us.





SEVEN


Facedown. Nude. Slender back bruised. Long, dark hair floating like a living thing, hiding the body’s face. The impressions snapped through my brain before I screamed like a girl.

Or maybe that was Neil.

Or both of us.

It could’ve been seconds or minutes before I heard him shout and looked up.

“Grab an arm and ride her in.”

I shook my head. Not on your sweet life, bub.

“Come on, Fresca, buck up,” Neil yelled over the roar of wind and waves. “We can’t leave her.”

I failed to see why not, but Neil already had her right arm. I swallowed hard and flailed for the dead woman’s waxy white left wrist. At Neil’s signal, we flattened on our boards to let the waves carry us in far enough to stand. Balancing so we didn’t crush the woman between us was iffy, but we managed.

In chest-deep water, Neil shouted for me to hold the body while he unfastened his leash. I hugged her to my board, grimacing at the feel of bare icy skin, puffy under my hands but not as bloated as I ’d expected from reading mysteries. When Neil was free, I slid off my board and grabbed his longer one so it wouldn’t smack into the body.

“You have your cell phone?”

“In the truck,” I shouted back, feeling under the water to work my own leash free.