MATTHEW LOVECRAFT PRESENTS: THE EL DORADO HUSTLE
PSY PUBLISHING
&
MATTHEW LOVECRAFT
PRESENT
A PARANORMAL CRIME CAPER
BY
K.D. KILGORE
THE EL DORADO HUSTLE
PART TWO
____________________________
THE EL DORADO HUSTLE
PART TWO
SEPTEMBER 27, 1921
DAYTIME - MICHIGAN AVE
When you’re meeting an Immortal Witch and a Werewolf it’s always best to find a public place, even if you are a Wizard turned Vampire and they are about the only friends you have and can trust. Not because of what they might do… but because of what someone might want to do to them.
I don’t get nervous often, but when it comes to staying alive things have gotten more complicated over the past two hundred years.
The sidewalk café was a perfect meeting place. I could sit with my back to the window waiting for Vivian and Frankie to show.
Frank arrived first. Everyone called him Frankie the Wolf. He was a huge hulk of a man, a Scotsman who could drink anyone under the table even when there was no moon in the sky and to his chagrin a werewolf for almost 400 years.
Frankie wasn’t as old as Viv or myself, but 400 years is a pretty good run for a guy who only has supernatural powers when there is a full moon.
Frankie sat to my left.
Lady Vivian Isabelle Winterbourne, came sashaying down the sidewalk towards us looking like Morticia Addams; long black gown and blueblack hair flowing out behind her, face half-hidden behind huge sunglasses and a large black hat that would have looked comical on anyone else.
She sat down to my right, crossed her legs and looked at Frankie and I over the tops of her gargantuan Sunglasses.
Vivian is descended from Cassondra the Witch of Greek Mythological fame and was found guilty of being a “practitioner of magic” during the Glastonbury Witch Trials.
They tried to burn her first. Being rather fresh at the business of immortality and still a little cocky about it, she simply stood, smiling, tied to the stake letting the flames rake her body as she stared out into the crowd while her clothes turned to cinders and blew away with the whirlwind of the fire as it grew, leaving her naked as the day is long.
When they tried to drown her instead, she decided to pretend to be dead and let them bury her in a shallow grave that she prayed she could at least dig herself up out of, before they finally figured out her only physical weakness and beheaded her.
The one side effect of being a Witch turned Immortal by a Vampire lover? She does not thirst for blood. She can dance in the sunlight just to tease a typical blood sucker, and has.
Her weakness is not physical, but emotional. She is a Psychic Vampire. She can read an emotion on your face or in your eyes as if it were a daily headline on the front page of - The Daily Herald.
You feel it, she feels it – and when she can, or must, she steals your gladness, your sadness, your happy little thoughts and feeds on them. Not too much, but just enough to keep herself going and not so much as to steal all of your precious little emotions and leave you a vegetable no longer good for much of anything other than lying in a hospital bed waiting to die, but she could; if she wanted to.
Viv, doesn’t need to be able to read emotions though when it comes to pushing Frankie’s buttons.
“Still chasing after myths, Frankie?” Viv said. In a crisp London accent.
“You didn’t believe Atlantis existed either until we went chasing after Blackbeard’s Treasure down in Bermuda,” I said.
“So what’s the plan here?” Frankie asked. He is a brute of a man. Good with a gun, but he was no mastermind.
“First we need to keep the guard away from the store so that Ambrose can compel him to take the day off work. Then we can send you in his place, Frankie” Viv said. “We’ll set up a street hustle and cause a scene to distract him as he’s headed into work that will give Marcus time to compel.”
“We’ll send Viv into the jewelry store to make the switch on the necklace and I’ll follow her in, posing as a Private Dick,” Marcus said.
“Why don’t you just walk into the store and compel the clerk to give you the necklace?” Frankie asked me.
“I need Viv, to verify the authenticity of the necklace. There are a lot of knock offs out there and if you want the real deal, then we need someone with a better eye for jewelry than me,” Marcus said.
“And I do have an eye for jewelry,” Viv said.
“Alright, now we’re getting somewhere,” said Frankie.
Frankie waved down the waitress and ordered a drink while I explained the rest of the plan.
TO BE CONTINUED...
MATTHEW LOVECRAFT PRESENTS: THE EL DORADO HUSTLE
PSY PUBLISHING
&
MATTHEW LOVECRAFT
PRESENT
A PARANORMAL CRIME CAPER
BY
K.D. KILGORE
____________________________
PROLOGUE
My name is, Marcus Ambrosias. I used to be a Wizard – until I was TURNED.
When you become a Vampire, your life is over. No one trusts you and nobody wants to work with you.
You depend on whoever’s still talking to you.
An old friend who used to work for Scotland Yard, that moonlights as a Werewolf..?
An immortal witch who wants to curse everyone that crosses her path..?
And don’t forget the dark cadre of supernatural beings from your not so recent past – if you’re desperate.
In other words, until you figure out who turned you: you’re trapped here for eternity.
TO BE CONTINUED...
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FIRST INSTALLMENT OF - THE EL DORADO HUSTLE (PART 1)
MATTHEW LOVECRAFT PRESENTS: THE EL DORADO HUSTLE
PSY PUBLISHING
&
MATTHEW LOVECRAFT
PRESENT
A PARANORMAL CRIME CAPER
BY
K.D. KILGORE
THE EL DORADO HUSTLE
PART ONE
____________________________
ADAPTED FROM
THE JOURNALS
MARCUS AMBROSIUS Phd. M.D.
PART ONE
How do I define a town, a place, a particular moment in time? I’ve lived a thousand years in one hundred places and more. Each one haunting; familiar.
I always felt that there was an air of refinery to the Roaring 20’s. Everything was filthy yet managed to gleam. It was fantastic to see and hear. You wouldn’t want to taste it or smell it, though.
When you’re a vampire, your senses are heightened. I can describe sights and sounds with words. How the sunlight looks as it touches human skin or how the full moon lies fat and bright on a dark cold winter horizon, but I cannot feel it; and I cannot make you feel it.
I have a memory to be marveled at. I can tell you what scent the woman next me in a crowd in 1534 was wearing, but I cannot describe the sensory overload of what it is like for me other than to say that if you imagined life being 1000 more times intense and beautiful and scary all at the same time I would be underselling the experience.
The scuffling of feet shuffling and kicking up dust on a bustling Chicago street - that is something you must experience for yourself. The smell of oranges, almonds and vanilla wafting up from the woman next to me – I can use the right words and with our collective imaginations we can communicate...
I was human once. I was a Wizard, but I was a human Wizard – a descendent of Merlyn Ambrosias and for almost 500 years went by the name Prof. Marcus Ambrosias, Phd. Md. – that was before I was turned into a vampire. Now I live in the shadows and feed off the underbelly of the crime world.
I’ve lived with this curse for a quarter century and at times it’s served me well, but I would give anything, even my life, to be rid of this thirst for blood. It has led me to dark places and as my Witch of an ex-girlfriend, Vivian, always likes to remind me - it turned me into a real asshole. She still loves me though. She doesn’t like me much anymore – but love and people who love you are a hard commodity to come by. People who like me are easy to come by. I’m naturally charming. People who love me are not so easy to come by for the charm comes with a price.
Of course Frankie likes to remind both of us that I was still an asshole before I was turned into a vampire. I like to remind him that if it wasn’t for his wild schemes I would be holed up in a dark loft sleeping the day away like normal vampires do, instead of running lookout for street games and setting up two-bit-back alley hustles.
TO BE CONTINUED...
