Clan Novel Gangrel: Book 3 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Gherbod Fleming

  “You don’t sleep here during the day,” Darnell pointed out.

  Ramona sighed again. He was right. There was no point taking stupid chances. She nodded to Jen, and the light went out. They stood in the darkness for a while. Ramona could hear Jen grinding her teeth, and Darnell shifting his weight from one foot to the other, crossing and uncrossing his arms. Very shortly, they could see fairly well. Not as much detail as with the light, but more range.

  “There are others here too,” said Darnell finally. Ramona nodded.

  “Others? Where?” Jen looked around frantically as if they were on Darnell’s heels and going to break down the door any second.

  “Here in the city,” said Darnell. “I followed ’em. Watched ’em feedin’.”

  “Followed them?” The idea upset Jen. “Did they see you?”

  “They didn’t see me.”

  “They might’ve followed you!”

  “They didn’t follow me.”

  Ramona looked on as Darnell glared at Jenny. He constantly discounted her fears, but he couldn’t seem to ignore her hysteria. He forgot how much they’d each helped one another. They all tended to forget that, Ramona realized, when the danger wasn’t right at hand.

  “Eddie didn’t think nobody was followin’ us,” said Ramona quietly. A heavy silence fell over them. Darnell shot her a hard glance.

  “That was different,” he said. “That was a werewolf.”

  “Werewolf, ha!” Jen snorted.

  Darnell turned his ire again to her. “Why the fuck not? It wasn’t a bear, and it sure as hell wasn’t a wild dog.” Jenny’s rolling her eyes served only to spur him on. “You’ve seen what we can do, what we are. Why the fuck not a werewolf?”

  “Doesn’t matter what it was,” said Ramona. “We got away.”

  “Tell that to Eddie,” said Darnell.

  Again, silence enveloped them. Jen set the extinguished light on the floor then sat, feet dangling over the edge of the pit. Ramona watched Jen and knew that they probably never would’ve met had they not become what they were. They certainly wouldn’t have become friends. Jen came from a life of privilege, and this new sort of life had cost her the most. She could be infuriatingly difficult at times, but she’d been one of the few people Ramona had known—ever, before or after the change—to offer kindness when Ramona had needed it. That, Ramona realized, was why she came back to be with this woman who was more troubled by everything that was happening than was Ramona herself.

  Darnell was a different story. Unlike Jenny, he could make it on his own. At least he could if any of them could. Ramona watched him as he pulled over a large box to sit on. Like herself, he didn’t talk much about before. She knew he’d lived in Compton and that he came from a big family. He’d talked once about his mother dragging him and all his brothers and sisters to church. That was about all that Ramona knew about his old life, and they didn’t know much more about hers. The strange thing was that it didn’t matter really. Those old lives were dead and gone, and here were the three of them with people they never would’ve hung with if it weren’t for—

  “Where did you see them?” Jenny’s voice broke the silence. She was shivering in the darkness.

  “Farther in the city.” Darnell sat on the box, but he wasn’t at ease. He was never at ease, Ramona thought, unless he was in motion. Sitting still made him nervous. “I could tell they were huntin’,” he said, “so I hung back, stayed out of sight, followed ’em. It was weird. Even before they caught somebody, I could tell they were vampires.”

  “Vampires…” Jen shook her head and let her voice trail off.

  Instantly, Darnell was on his feet. “Fuck you! You don’t think we’re vampires?”

  Ramona sighed to herself. They’d had this argument maybe a hundred times. “If you’re gonna yell, we might as well turn the light back on so everybody’ll know we’re here.”

  Darnell took a step back from Jen, lowered his voice a little. “We drink blood.” He bared his fangs at Jen and pointed to his mouth. “These look familiar? And I don’t see you lyin’ out in the sun to tan your lily-white ass. What else you think we are?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jen, and then added under her breath, “but I’m not a vampire.”

  “You sure they didn’t see you?” Ramona asked.

  Darnell shot her another dirty look but then decided it was an honest question. “I’m sure.”

  “I saw one too,” said Ramona. Darnell sat back down. He didn’t seem surprised.

  Jen sat up straight, her eyes wide. “The biker?”

  “Mm-hm.” Ramona looked over at Darnell. “Said he was with the Sabbat, that he’d be back.”

  Jenny fidgeted nervously, but Darnell met Ramona’s gaze.

  “Let him come back,” he said.

  A loud crash filled the garage—the explosive echoing of the heavy door slamming shut. They all three jumped at once. Darnell was down from his box. Ramona dropped into her crouch and was ready to spring in any direction. Jen was halfway down the steps into the pit. She peered up over the edge.

  “You leave that open?” Ramona asked Darnell, nodding toward the door.

  “Must have.”

  Ramona didn’t see anyone else in the room. She edged toward the door, ready to attack or retreat if either were necessary. At the door, she sniffed the air. A faint scent lingered just below that of old motor oil and cigarette butts. It was a smell she recognized. She’d noticed it several times recently, but she still couldn’t place it. Now it was gone again, and she was left standing by the door.

  “What is it?” Jen asked from the pit.

  “Don’t know.” Ramona stood perfectly still. She listened for any movement from the other side of the metal door. Nothing. Could the door, only able to open a few inches because of the chain on the outside, have slammed that hard from the wind? She didn’t remember feeling any breeze.

  Darnell was at her shoulder now. He moved almost as silently as she did.

  Slowly, Ramona reached for the handle. With one quick motion, she turned it and pushed the door open. It caught against the chain. She waited. Nothing.

  Satisfied that no one was coming in, Ramona counted to three in her head, then shot out the opening. As quickly as she moved and as narrow as the crack was, she barely brushed against the door as she slid out. Darnell followed her.

  Again she thought she noticed the strange, lingering odor, but then it was gone, drowned by all the smells of the city and the familiar scent of Darnell beside her.

  “I guess we’re alone,” he said.

  Ramona stared into the night, shook her head. “We should be so lucky.”

  Saturday, 17 July 1999, 11:38 PM

  A tenement in Harlem

  New York City, New York

  “She can send me there, and she’s gonna,” Zhavon said into the phone with an urgency that almost defeated the purpose of her whispering.

  “Girl, you tell her you just not going,” said Alvina.

  “You wanna tell that to my mama?” Zhavon asked. Silence answered her question. Alvina had been around enough to know better than to mess with

  Mama. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Well, what you gonna do?”

  “I don’t know.” How was Zhavon supposed to know what to do? That’s why she’d called Alvina in the first place, but so far, Alvina hadn’t been much help. “I guess I’ll go.”

  “It’s your own damn fault,” Alvina said.

  “I know it’s my own damn fault,” Zhavon said. How many times had Mama drilled those same words into Zhavon’s head? Except Mama didn’t swear, of course. “I don’t need you to tell me that.” Zhavon lay back on the bed. With her free hand, she lightly tested the swelling that was almost completely gone from her face now. No permanent scars. Most of the bruises were already gone. As soon as a few scratches finished healing over, she’d be as good as new. So what, she wondered sometimes, was everybody making such a big fuss about?

  “If you�
�d just stayed away from Adrien—”

  “I wasn’t goin’ to see Adrien!” The lie came quickly to Zhavon but wasn’t convincing.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What you mean, ‘uh-huh’?”

  “I mean, uh-huh, sure you wasn’t goin’ to see Adrien,” said Alvina.

  “I’m not that stupid,” Zhavon said, realizing fully, as she spoke the words, how stupid she’d been—but that didn’t mean she wanted to be constantly reminded of the fact. “Look,” she said, “I don’t need you bitchin’ at me and tellin’ me I’m stupid. I can talk to Mama for that.”

  Another long silence hung between the two girls. “I know….” Alvina said at last. “But sometimes you’re just so stupid.”

  Zhavon laughed despite herself. Everything had been so serious for the past week and a half since she’d been beaten and almost raped. This might’ve been the first she’d laughed since then. She couldn’t remember for sure. Zhavon smothered her laughter so she wouldn’t bother Mama—not that Mama didn’t already know that her daughter was on the phone. “Hayesburg probably has better schools anyway,” Zhavon said, not so much because she cared, but because she could think of nothing else hopeful to hold on to. The last thing she wanted was to be trundled off upstate to Aunt Irma’s, but Zhavon didn’t seem to have a lot of say in the matter.

  “Better schools, but no Adrien,” Alvina said.

  “Forget you, girl!” Zhavon clamped her hand over her mouth. She really didn’t need to piss off Mama again. “Listen,” said Zhavon, “I’m leavin’ day after tomorrow. So how ’bout tomorrow night, you bring your sorry ass over here with my stupid ass—”

  “And we’ll call Angelique’s fat ass…” said Alvina. They broke into giggling again.

  “And we’ll call Angelique’s fat ass,” Zhavon agreed, “and…” but suddenly the words caught in her throat. The laughter turned into a big lump in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t force out the rest. “And…” And then they wouldn’t see each other again.

  “And we’ll have a good time,” Alvina said.

  “Yeah,” said Zhavon, though they both knew that wasn’t what she’d wanted to say. “Look, I gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  After she hung up the phone, Zhavon heard the quiet sound of the TV on the other side of the wall. Probably Mama wouldn’t sleep tonight. Just like most of the nights the past week and a half.

  Sunday, 18 July 1999, 12:34 AM

  A tenement in Harlem

  New York City, New York

  Ramona perched on the top rail of the fire escape and watched Zhavon sleeping peacefully. The first nights after the attack, the girl had tossed and called out, trying to escape whatever hoodlums haunted her dreams.

  There’s worse out there, Ramona silently warned her.

  From several blocks away, car tires screeched. Ramona cringed and waited for the crash, which never came. Almost as a second thought, she glanced back and made sure that the noise hadn’t awakened Zhavon. The girl still slept quietly. Over the past few weeks of watching, Ramona had developed an uncanny sense of when the sleeper would awake—the slight turn of the head and stretching of the neck just before the telltale fluttering eyelids. Ramona was sure that, aside from the night of the attack, Zhavon had never seen her, and even that night was easily explained away as hysteria or trauma. Even so, there were times when Zhavon was awake, times when Ramona knew beyond a doubt that she was out of sight, that the dark-skinned girl seemed to know that someone—or something—was watching her.

  I remember that feeling, Ramona thought.

  She was distracted for a moment by the sound of movement from the shadows below, but there was nothing there.

  You’re jumpy tonight, girl. Probably because of that biker last night, she decided—the thought of which reminded her that she shouldn’t leave Jen alone so much. Darnell didn’t spend any more time with her than he had to, and what if the biker did come back?

  But Ramona’s gaze drifted back to the sleeping Zhavon. Ramona understood Jen’s fears, and even shared a few, but with Zhavon, a strange affinity ran more deeply. Jen was the monster that Ramona had become, and there was a connection there, but Zhavon was the human Ramona had once been. The mortal girl looked so peaceful lying there beneath the sheet. When she was awake, however, she possessed a certain defiance, a naïveté coupled with a wrong-headed sense of invulnerability.

  I remember that feeling too, thought Ramona. She had once felt almost exactly that way. Now she knew better. She knew better than to think everything would turn out all right. She knew better than to expect nothing too bad to happen to her. Zhavon, though, continued sleeping, oblivious to the worst fears the night had to offer.

  After a few minutes, Ramona realized that she’d been staring at the mortal—and that’s what normal people passed for these days: mortal, meat, blood. Above the line of the white sheet, Zhavon’s hand rested limply on her chest, and above her hand was her bare neck. Ramona imagined that she could see the pulse of the jugular—or could she really? The surrounding sounds of the city faded away beneath the thump-thump, thump-thump of a single human heart, beneath the intermittent swish of blood forced through arteries and veins.

  Ramona was halfway through the window—licking her lips—before she caught herself. She retreated back to the fire escape and shook her head forcefully.

  “I hate that!” Ramona growled under her breath as she sat and hugged her knees to her chest. Losing control like that, even momentarily, brought memories of the change flooding back, of the first night she’d tasted blood at her lips and lost herself to the undeniable hunger.

  Sitting there, Ramona wanted to look over the window sill at Zhavon but was afraid to let herself.

  What if it happens again? What if I can’t stop? Why’d I even bother to save her? Ramona wondered, though she knew that ripping those two men apart had been less an act of heroism, and more the predatory impulse of a hunter whose prey was being stolen away.

  Hell, if those bastards hadn’t stepped in the way, she fully realized for the first time, I might’ve killed Zhavon myself.

  The instinct for the hunt had taken over, as it had so many times. Who was to say when it would happen again? Ramona knew better than to think it wouldn’t. For all her newly found powers, it was another way she was helpless.

  Angry with herself and seeking distraction, Ramona pointedly did not look at Zhavon, but instead tugged at her own shoes. They’d been bothering her for some time, and she was in no mood, at the moment, to take crap from inanimate objects. She yanked at the tongues of her leather sneakers as if they were the source of all her problems, and when she pulled her feet free, the cause of her physical discomfort was readily apparent.

  The shoes were fine. But Ramona stared in horror at her feet. From the heel to the ball of each foot was mashed together and only about half as long as it should’ve been. Her gnarled toes, however, were abnormally elongated. They stretched almost like tiny fingers, tipped with thick, curved nails.

  Claws, Ramona thought, aghast.

  She’d watched before as her fingers transformed into razor-sharp claws, but that had only happened when she’d been angry or upset, and it hadn’t lasted long. She continued to stare at what couldn’t be her feet and waited for the illusion to fade, or, at the worst, for them to change back.

  But they were her feet, and they didn’t change to suit her.

  Oh my God.

  Ramona tentatively reached out and was actually surprised that she felt the sensation in her foot of her own fingertips brushing across wrinkled and twisted skin.

  “You gave in to the Beast,” said a voice from below.

  Ramona jumped to her deformed feet. A level below her on the fire escape stood, not the Puerto Rican man from the downstairs apartment she’d expected to see but, instead, a complete stranger.

  The hair on the back of her neck shot up straight.

  The stranger neither retreated nor advanced. He stood there with a blank, unfri
endly expression. Dark sunglasses and his long, tangled hair partially obscured his face. The shades of the torn, wrinkled clothes he wore blended almost perfectly into the night-time cityscape.

  Ramona’s initial shock quickly gave way to the low growl that rose up from her gut, but the stranger raised a finger to his lips. “Shh.” He nodded toward Zhavon’s window.

  He was right, Ramona knew. She didn’t want to risk waking Zhavon. Even so, Ramona bristled. Who was he to tell her what to do? She swallowed the growl, but her anger demanded an outlet, and before realizing that she was going to, she leapt down the steps at the stranger.

  He seemed less surprised by her actions than she was. With one fluid motion, he placed a hand on the top rail and vaulted off the fire escape.

  As Ramona’s knees uncoiled from the impact of her landing, she sprang after him without the slightest pause. Her shift in momentum carried her over the rail, and she landed crouched and ready to attack in the alley only feet away from the stranger.

  “Hold still, you bastard,” she growled, now that she was safely away from the window.

  The stranger cocked his head as if he heard a distant sound and then gazed up toward Zhavon’s window. “Who will you leave unwatched?” he asked.

  The question froze Ramona. He knows about her, she thought with alarm, and in the instant she followed his gaze to the window, he was gone. Ramona stood alone in the deserted alley.

  The stranger was gone, but his scent lingered—a faint yet distinctive smell that Ramona had noticed other times, but never before had she been able to connect the odor to its source. At once, she began in the direction her nose told her the stranger had gone, but she stopped after only a few steps.

  Who will you leave unwatched? His words of just moments before came back to her.

  She glanced again up at the window. Was there a threat to Zhavon?

  Who will you leave unwatched?

  He obviously knew about the girl, although not even Ramona understood what drew her here almost every night. The smell. Ramona forced herself to think. Her instincts had swung instantly from aggression toward the stranger to protectiveness of Zhavon, but Ramona needed to think. She’d noticed the smell last night at the garage. Did that mean he also knew about Jen and Darnell and of their resting place?