MOON MATADOR

  Vampire for Hire #31

  by

  J.R. RAIN

  The World of Samantha Moon

  VAMPIRE FOR HIRE® SERIES

  Moon Dance

  Vampire Moon

  American Vampire

  Moon Child

  Christmas Moon

  Vampire Dawn

  Vampire Games

  Moon Island

  Moon River

  Vampire Sun

  Moon Dragon

  Moon Shadow

  Vampire Fire

  Midnight Moon

  Moon Angel

  Vampire Sire

  Moon Master

  Dead Moon

  Lost Moon

  Vampire Destiny

  Infinite Moon

  Vampire Empress

  Moon Elder

  Wicked Moon

  Winter Moon

  Moon Blade

  Sasquatch Moon

  Wild Moon

  Moon Magic

  Moon World

  Vampire Deep

  Moon Matador

  SHORT STORY SINGLES

  Teeth: Fang’s Story

  Vampire Nights

  Vampire Blues

  Vampire Dreams

  Halloween Moon

  Vampire Gold

  Blue Moon

  Dark Side of the Moon

  Vampire Requiem

  Moon Love

  Vampire Alley

  Moon Musings

  Moon Beast

  Vampire Widow

  Moon Maze

  Silver Hammer

  When Sam Met Santa

  One Swallow

  Vampire Reich

  Little Moon

  Leprechaun Moon

  Vampire Fly

  SAMANTHA MOON ADVENTURES

  Banshee Moon

  Moon Monster

  Moon Ripper

  Witch Moon

  Moon Goddess

  Moon Blaze

  Golem Moon

  Moon Maidens

  SAMANTHA MOON CASE FILES

  Moon Bayou

  Blood Moon

  Parallel Moon

  SAMANTHA MOON ORIGINS

  New Moon Rising

  Moon Mourning

  Haunted Moon

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Moon Tales

  Moon Extras

  Moon Vacation

  Moon Shots

  Moon Cases

  Spin-off Series

  ALLISON LOPEZ

  The Witch and the Gentleman

  The Witch and the Englishman

  The Witch and Huntsman

  The Witch and the Wolfman

  The Witch and the Hangman

  ALEXIS SILVER

  Silver Light

  Deep Silver

  Silver Quarrel

  Silver Crucible

  Silver Heart

  Silver Kingdom

  J.R. Rain’s Vampire for Hire World

  STANDALONE TALES

  Fire Warrior

  Fang

  I, Samantha Moon

  Vampires She Wrote

  Dragon Lessons

  Dead Ahead

  Wolf Moon

  Crystal Moon

  Vampire Apocalypse

  CHRONICLES OF THE IMMORTAL COUNCIL

  Vampire Abduction

  Vampire Exodus

  Vampire Sovereign

  Vampire Magic

  Vampire Vacation

  Vampire Reflections

  Vampire Enigma

  Vampire Spirit

  Vampire Regent

  Vampire Intuition

  VAMPIRE CRIMES SPECIAL UNIT

  Moon Hunt

  Moon Gone

  Moon Crimes

  Moon Castle

  BROTHERHOOD OF THE BLADE

  Burning

  Afterglow

  Radiance

  SAMANTHA MOON, GUARDIAN VAMPIRE

  Twisted Sister

  Harvest Moon

  Moonbow

  Moon Matador

  Published by Rain Press

  Copyright © 2023 by J.R. Rain

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. All rights reserved.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Also Available

  Reading Sample: Killer Whale

  Reading Sample: The Witch and the Gentleman

  About J.R. Rain

  Moon Matador

  Chapter One

  Judging by her sparking aura, a woman with an apparent dilemma pauses outside the glass door of my downtown office.

  Well, downtown adjacent. I’m one street over on Raymond. Harbor Boulevard, the true downtown, is where all the action is: boutique stores, restaurants, bars, bistros, and coffee shops. Also, one particular park. Hillcrest Park, to be exact. Yes, I still hike through it. And yes, I often pause at the very tree I’d been thrown against and feasted upon.

  A decade later and here I am, running Moon Investigations, just a hop, skip and jump from where my mortal life ended so violently. Such is the circle of life, I suppose. Or the fact that I really love Fullerton and don’t have any plans to move from here anytime soon. Not to mention, the object of my affection lives one city over in Yorba Linda.

  I’m looking at you, o’ hairy one.

  Meanwhile, the woman standing outside my office door seems to have made up her mind.

  She turns and starts walking away.

  Wait, I command. Come in and let’s talk.

  No, I can’t read her mind. I have no idea what her problem is or why she came here to begin with or what prompted her to leave, but her aura is veritably sparking with confusion and anxiety. Luckily, confusion and anxiety are my specialty.

  Though I can’t read her mind, I can offer suggestions. No, not mind control. Not in this situation. More like gentle encouragement to get over whatever is hanging her up. She obviously needs help (why else is she standing outside my door?), and I wouldn’t mind something to do. Despite what TV shows suggest, people don’t necessarily flock to private eyes. We are often a last resort. And an expensive last resort, at that.

  She needs help. I need something to do.

  Let’s do this thing!

  With my prompt, she pauses, and then cocks her head to one side. Next, she turns on her heels and makes her way back to my glass door. There, she confidently pushes it open and the little bell above it tinkles merrily.

  “Hello,” I say pleasantly. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m... not sure what I’m doing here, quite frankly.”

  “You need the services of a private investigator?” I ask.

  “Yes. I thought so. Then I talked myself out of it, and now, here I am, standing in your office like an idiot.”

  I gesture to one of my three client chairs, the middle one, in fact. “Not an idiot. Hiring a private eye is a big deal for many people. Just means you need help.”

  “I do need it, I think. But I feel like an idiot.”

  Far be it from me to convince someone they’re not an idiot... unless I know what she’s talking about. I wait behind my not-small desk. Probably, it doesn’t need to be this big. I’m sure my stature makes it look even bigger to a client walking in. That said, having a ridiculously heavy (and wide) desk has proven beneficial in the past.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not usually this wishy-washy.”

  I smile. “I take it you’ve never talked to a private investigator before.”

  “No, and sitting here now just sort of affirms...”

  “That you really do have a problem?”

  “Yeah. It makes it more real, in a way.”

  “Whereas before you thought it was in your head?”

  “Yeah, something like that.” Like a nervous mouse, she settles into the chair. “You offer a lot of services on your website.”

  “I do. Oh, that reminds me. I need to add sea rescue.”

  “That’s incredible.”

  “More than you know.”

  “You must live a very exciting life.”

  The ‘more than you know’ response might work even better here; instead, I say, “How can I help you? And I mean that in every sense of the word
. I’m here to help.”

  “Right, okay. I guess I’m really doing this.” She nods, psyches herself up, and says, “You mention on your website that you can find ghosts, identify them, and help remove them, if need be.”

  I sigh. “I might need to update that as well.”

  “You don’t help with, um, spirits?”

  “Well, I used to be a good deal better at it than I am now.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I used to actually see them. Now, not so much.”

  She cocks her head, waiting for an explanation.

  The honest answer is, of course, is that with the eradication of Elizabeth, I lost some of her gifts. In particular, her ability to see into the night. Yes, I still have night vision, but gone are the flowing waves of light, the very waves that ghosts are made up of.

  Instead of going on about dark master, vampires, and things that go bump in the night, I tell her it was a gift I’d had that now appears gone, but that I have other resources to aid me in detecting them and removing them. That one of my resources is a ghost herself, I decide to keep to myself.

  She nods, looks at the door, ready to bolt. It’s just all too weird for her. Welcome to my world, lady. I sit back in my chair and decide to let her leave if she truly wants to go. Talking about ghosts in any official capacity can certainly affect her in any number of ways, from how her family sees her, to friends and business acquaintances. Now that I see the crux of her issue, I don’t want to push her. Had it been a cheating spouse case, I might have pushed.

  “Let me guess,” I say before she runs for the hills. “You never believed in ghosts until recently.”

  She looks longingly at the door, but clearly, her problem is too great. She exhales and seems to sink in her chair. “Pretty much. I sound so crazy when I talk about it, so I just keep it to myself. It’s driving me nuts.”

  “Then let’s talk about it. You don’t have to hire me and anything discussed here won’t get out. Have you seen said ghost?”

  She shakes her head. “No, but I’ve seen shadows, heard footsteps, seen things move on the CCTV cameras we have set up. My workers have seen it, though.”

  “Is this a residence?”

  Another shake. “It’s an abandoned stadium that I inherited decades ago.”

  “A stadium?”

  “Yes.”

  I sit forward. “Wait. Do you mean that old stadium out on Gypsum Canyon Road?”

  “That would be the one.”

  “Get out! I’ve always wondered what the deal was with that thing.”

  She points to herself. “I’m the deal, I guess. My father brought it over from Europe fifty years ago, brick by brick, plank by plank, seat by seat. It was an old bullfighting ring.”

  “That’s why it looks so different,” I say with more enthusiasm than might be warranted. Truth is, I have wondered about that damn stadium for years now, ever since I first saw it sitting off the side of the road, alone in a field, derelict and seemingly forgotten. A sort of mystery hung over it. Why was it there? Who built it? Strangely, the building itself sort of gives off a presence, an energy, something I have never been able to put my finger on. Each and every time I drive past, my eyes are drawn to the unlikely structure, and my imagination runs wild.

  “So, to be clear,” I begin, hardly believing my luck, “you own the stadium?”

  “I do, yes.”

  “And your father built it?”

  “Well, he re-built it. It was given to him by his own father like sixty years ago. His family is from Spain. Madrid, to be exact. My father came here as a young man. Met my mother here, fell in love, and never returned to his home country to live, though we visited often. The stadium has been in my family for well over a century. Bullfighting runs in my blood, you could say, though I abhor the sport. Well, the bloody side of it. There is a certain grace, beauty and poetry to the movements. Just wish the animal didn’t have to die. Which is something—”

  She stops and I wait.

  “Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. To back up a few steps, my ancestors were bullfighters and businessmen. In particular, my grandfather chose the business side of things and ran a very popular bullfighting ring in Madrid.”

  I have to admit, I wish I had some popcorn. I was positively soaking this up. It’s like one of my wishes finally coming true: discovering what the hell that abandoned stadium is doing out in the middle of nowhere.

  “Go on,” I say, perhaps a little too eagerly.

  She nods. Oops. My words came across as a little more commanding than I had intended. Oh well, no harm, no foul.

  “My father, like me, was against the cruelty of the sport and wanted nothing to do with it. True, he hadn’t planned on meeting my mother here in California, but he certainly didn’t fight it and never looked back.”

  “But... he brought the stadium here, brick by brick, plank by plank...”

  “Right. I’m getting to that.”

  Oops. Now I’m getting ahead of things. “My apologies. Please continue.”

  “Oh, no worries. My parents would go on to build a life here in Orange County. He started a roofing company. She had already been on the path to becoming an elementary school teacher. Like my father, I was an only child. I grew up hearing stories about the old country. My father never looked back, true, but he admitted to missing the energy of the bullfights, the energy of the crowds, of his family, especially the bullfighters among them. His uncles and cousins were elite fighters, though he wasn’t so much impressed by that. He would have preferred the stadium be used for soccer matches, as he stated often. But his upbringing had been what it was.

  “Later in life, despite the cruelty, he realized how lucky he had been to grow up in such an electrifying environment. Surely, his life would deviate far from the lights, the crowds, the pulse of anticipation... and sadly, the destruction of beautiful creatures. No, he did not miss the carnage. But the lifestyle was in his blood in just about every other way. He grew up witnessing throngs eager to fill the stadium. He grew up with matadors elevated to superhero status—with the smell of blood and dust, the thunder of hooves, and the pageantry of it all.

  “And later, he would find himself living in a small home, with a small family, far away from the lights and sounds and smells of that which made him who he was. He felt he had abandoned his family’s legacy in a way, his ancestors who had worked so hard to build the business of bullfighting. He didn’t want to care, but he would confess later to me that it always bothered him. The fact that it bothered him seemed to bother him even more, if that makes sense.”

  I nod. “He didn’t love the cruelty, but he appreciated those who came before.”

  “That, and the excitement. Always, when the bullfight would start, he would keep his eyes and thoughts busy on something else. Never could he watch the destruction of the bulls themselves. But he would listen to the crowd, even if he was mopping floors or cleaning bathrooms. How could he not? The crowds were deafening.

  “To put it simply, it was both difficult and necessary to walk away from the lifestyle, and it is a lifestyle, an all-consuming one. His father—my grandfather—was not happy with his decision. I admire my father for finding his own path. Had he enjoyed the family business, life would have been easy for him. The bullfighting business is a lucrative one, even to this day. He could have continued doing as his father, grandfather, and great grandfather had done before him.

  “But he chose a different path, even if the lifestyle never left him. Why did they have to kill the bull, he would always ask. Why not engage it, escape it, and both live to fight another day?” She pauses, looks down at her hands. “Except I know the answer and I am not here to judge an entire culture. The thrill of the fight is enhanced because of the looming specter of death. No, I have not watched a live bullfight, though I have seen them on various media. I grew up with my father’s stories. The matadors... so macho, so full of swagger, so esteemed in the community. A community my family was not only a part of, but brought together with each new fight. It was more than culture. It was a way of life for my family.”

  She lapses into silence, chin pressed against her chest.

  “And yet,” I say tentatively, “that very same stadium is now sitting in an open field, forgotten.”

  She looks up sharply. “Not quite forgotten. Have you not heard of the Madrid Fire of ‘84?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Most haven’t.” Her voice trails off. She rubs her eyes. I scoop up the tissue box and lean across the desk. She takes two.