Kissed by Ice(23)

"The vamp came here?" I couldn't keep the incredulity from my tone, but seriously, this wasn't the kind of place vampires usually hung out. It was both too remote and not remote enough. In such a small community, people tended to notice when their neighbors started getting snacked on.

"This is where the car dropped him off." Haakon propped his hands on his hips and glared around him as if the village would spit up its secrets. A rooster crowed in the distance.

"Okay, so where did he go after that?" I asked, glancing around as if I might catch sight of our prey. Unlikely. The sky was starting to turn gray, which meant the vamp had gone to ground. If he was smart.

"No idea," Haakon admitted.

"What? Your fancy schmancy satellite whatsis couldn't tell you that?"

He glared at me. "It could have, but my guy had to get off the system before he got caught."

"Enough, you two," Kabita interrupted our spat. "This isn't helping. Let's split up and see if we can find any sign of the vampire."

"Good plan, but you and I left our phones back on the ship," I said. We didn't have Haakon's fancy little plastic pouch and there hadn't been time to hunt down a Ziploc. "How are we going to let each other know if we find what we're looking for?"

"Sun's coming up. The vamp isn't going anywhere," Kabita said. "So, we meet back here in one hour."

I didn't bother pointing out that since I didn't have my phone, I also couldn't tell time. No watch. It didn't matter. The town was so small, it wouldn't take even close to an hour to search it. I nodded in agreement.

"I'll take the east side," Kabita said, nodding toward the side of the street with the market.

"I'll go west." Haakon moved off toward the cafe/bar.

"I guess that leaves north for me since there's nothing south. We would have seen it." But I was talking to myself. The others had already disappeared into the pre-dawn gloom.

I continued along the main street running through town. Beyond the market and bar, more of the low cinder-block houses marched neatly on either side of the road. Narrow dirt tracks crossed the street in a couple places, creating haphazard blocks. About three blocks from the intersection stood a lonely one-pump gas station that had seen better days. A hand-painted sign noting the price of gas leaned against the side of the building. By my calculations, it was in the neighborhood of five dollars per gallon. Holy crap.

Past the gas station, the houses thinned out, the lots growing increasingly larger until we were back to jungle. After a while I stopped walking. I'd gotten no sense the vamp was near and there was no way to tell where he might have gone. I turned around and walked back into town until I came to the first dirt crossroad. There was no street sign to tell me the name, just a track headed east, disappearing between two houses. On the west side, the dirt track was even narrower. More like a trail. My guess was it led to the ocean. I took the road on the east side.

A cat glared at me from its precarious perch on the fence post next to the road. It blinked glowing yellow eyes and flashed a bit of fang. I wondered if it sensed the Darkness in me, or if it didn't like people in general.

Ignoring the cat I moved farther down the road between a second pair of houses. These faced the dirt road instead of the main street. In one, a light glowed in the front room, so I hurried by as quickly as possible. The last thing we needed was to get the locals riled up about strangers lurking in their yards.

A few more feet, and the road dead-ended onto a second dirt track running parallel to the main road. This one was slightly wider, big enough for a small car to pass, as if someone planned to pave it in the future but hadn't gotten around to it yet. Potholes had been filled in with pebbles and sand, making walking marginally easier. Like the main street, this one was lined with cinder-block houses in varying states of disrepair. Clearly the town was not on the tourist map, and it showed. Either people didn't have the money to fix up their houses, or they didn't care.

I still hadn't caught any sign the vamp was nearby. There was only so far it could or would walk, especially since it had been close to daylight when it hit shore. It would have gone underground somewhere nearby. Of course, it could have left at nightfall. It would have had several hours to get out of town before we arrived. I sighed. Might as well check the north end of the street while I was here.

I walked past more of the cinder block houses with more of the same overgrown yards studded with fruit and palm trees. The thick air was fragrant with the scent of frangipani and other tropical flowers. I really wished I was here on vacation. And that Inigo was here with me.

I shoved that thought down ruthlessly. Thinking about Inigo would only take my mind off the task at hand and send me tumbling down a very dark hole. I needed to stay focused.