Angler In Darkness

by Edward M. Erdelac

  But he put himself between her and the handle of her car door, jutted his narrow hip out and blocked the key hole.

  He wasn’t fat like most of them, but he had one of those foam and mesh hats, so dirty she couldn’t read the phone number for the garage it advertised, the frowning brim frayed in bursts of green thread. He had on a black Jack Daniels t-shirt, the white writing like an old time epitaph and tight black jeans fastened to his waist by a huge yellow enamel belt buckle, an unfurling Gadsden flag with the coiling rattlesnake. Don’t Tread On Me. Boots. Not cowboy boots, heavy, treaded workmen’s types with steel toes, like tanks on his big feet.

  She couldn’t remember what Noodler said to her. She could only see his teeth and big round eyes in the dark. She tried to push past him, but all of a sudden he was all over her, hissing in her ear, hard, rough hands on her arms, body bulging against her, pushing her against the car.

  His face was prickly and scraped her neck. He smelled of liquor.

  Her favorite story growing up had always been Peter Pan. Her mother had told her her name Gwendolyn was like name of the girl from the story, Wendy.

  She could not help but equate the trucker to a pirate. He sneered, and he was dark, and rough and strong and drunk, just like one of Hook’s crew.

  That was when he had appeared.

  Brendan.

  Her dark angel.

  Her Peter Pan.

  Noodler was off of her suddenly, jerked away as if someone had hooked his belt to the back of one of the departing Freightliners. He slammed against Ron’s Nissan and fell to the oily pavement.

  Noodler came up though with something shiny in his fist, sharp, like a lion’s tooth made out of steel. She heard it click as it opened.

  He jumped up to his feet lunging. Her savior was just a boy her own age. Slight and short haired, the back of his neck very white and clean. She saw the trucker’s knife disappear into his stomach, heard the sound it made punching through his skin, tearing his shirt.

  She screamed, but it was muffled, her own hands flying up to her mouth to stifle it.

  The boy didn’t fall. He swiped his hand down as if to brush the offending weapon away, and she heard another sound, a crackling. This time it was the trucker who screamed. The knife clattered on the ground, the hand twisted horribly, hanging loose at a severe right angle from his broken wrist, like Noodler, the pirate from Peter Pan with the backwards hands.

  The boy’s other hand shot out and caught Noodler by the throat, the fingers pushing together hard enough to pinch out the scream.

  He lifted the bigger man up with one spindly arm and brought him down hard on the hood of Ron’s Nissan Sentra, hard enough to crack the windshield and dent in the metal. Then he sprang up and straddled him. He put his other hand to Noodler’s throat and leaned in as if whispering a secret.

  The only sound Noodler made was when his heels battered and scraped at the hood of the car His arms swung at the boy, dealing hard blows to the side of his head with his good hand (the other flopping grotesquely at the end of the snapped wrist), to his neck and ribs. The boy didn’t even flinch. The flailing arms weakened and fell to clawing, then surrendered all effort completely. His limbs twitched as they dangled over the edge of the Nissan, and the boy straightened, just as a car swung away from the pumps.

  The headlights briefly illuminated him as he reared back.

  He was young as Gwendolyn, and more beautiful, with ivory, blemishless skin, unmarred by any body hair that she could see. His loose red shirt was partially unbuttoned, revealing a narrow, lean chest. He had an angular look, a narrow, sharp face and dark eyes. His hair was brown and neatly trimmed, the natural waviness barely constrained.

  He stared at her from beneath a downturned brow in that moment, and she saw his lips were bright red with blood, as were his abnormally long teeth. But she wasn’t scared. She felt the first flutter, as he touched her with his eyes.

  She knew right away what he was.

  She had read all the books in the break room, in the car before and after work, in the secret place of her room. Lestat and Edward Cullen had long ago supplanted Peter Pan in her girl’s heart. Just like she had prayed as a girl for Pan to float into her room and lead her past the first star on the right, now she would every night amid her pink bed sheets wish to see a pale, longing face at her dark window beckoning her to step into the dark.

  The headlights turned their attention back to the entrance ramp and he moved. She heard the hood of the car groan and pop as his weight was lifted.

  “Wait!” she called, breathless. “Please wait!”

  A shadow moved and became the boy. The blood was gone from his lips, and his teeth, still sharp, but nowhere near as long. Had she imagined it? He was so close. Vampires moved faster than regular people she knew. His eyes were like a wolf’s. His nostrils flared like those of her pet rabbit Bunnicula, taking in her scent.

  “You know what I am?” he asked. His voice wasn’t deep, but it wasn’t a boy’s either. He could be a hundred years old, she knew.

  She nodded, unable to even say.

  “You’re not scared?”

  She shook her head. She was only scared he would leave.

  She couldn’t smell him. He had just fought and killed a man and there was no sweat. His hair wasn’t even mussed or damp. He wasn’t breathing.

  She smiled, thrilled.

  He smiled back. His teeth looked completely normal now.

  “Your teeth...”

  He drew his lips closed, as if embarrassed.

  “No,” she said, touching his lips with her fingertips, feeling the thrill of it deep within. “I love them. But....”

  “They only come out when I’m....,” he shrugged, letting the words trail of meaningfully.

  She nodded, understanding.

  He had the face of an angel. A dark angel.

  She felt something ice cold close around her hand and looked down. The blood in her palm grew warm and shot up her arm, filled her cheeks. She trembled at his first touch.

  “Come with me?”

  She nodded.

  They ran off through the maze of silver trucks, into a new and wild night, newer and wilder than any night in her life.

  She was not afraid with him. He had killed to protect her. She would do anything for him.

  But that first night, he didn’t ask for anything.

  He held her hand tightly, and they walked, along the road, through the fields, and down the dark streets of town, for hours and hours.

  And they just...talked.

  But the things they talked about!

  She gushed a lot, babbled out to him her whole life story, all her daydreams, her secret surety that some of them were real, her boundless delight in vindication. When she was finished, she begged to know his story.

  He told her his name was Brendan, but that he had once had another name back when he’d been mortal, ‘in Bible times.’ He told her he had come from a wealthy family of merchants. He had befriended a young Roman soldier named Messala who one day rose to the position of provincial governor. When the Romans had marched into his city, Brendan and his mother and sister had been standing on a roof and accidentally knocked a loose piece of tile down into the street. The tile had hit Messala and for the offense, Brendan had been sentenced to slavery, chained to an oar on a warship while his family was imprisoned in a Roman dungeon. During a sea battle with Egyptians in which their ship was sunk, he had saved the life of the Roman captain and been freed, then granted Roman citizenship in gratitude.

  Soon after he’d learned that his family had died of leprosy while he’d been away. He renounced his newfound citizenship and instigated a revolt, leading an army of gladiators to the palace of his former friend. He ran him down with a chariot.

  As he told her this, tears spilled down Gwendolyn’s face. What tribulations he had faced! His life could have been a book itself, maybe even a movie.

  Heartbroken by the death of his mother and sister, Brendan h
ad for a time found love in the arms of a slave girl he had freed from Messala’s house, but the gladiator army was ambushed by the Romans and they were both taken prisoner and crucified. He said the greater suffering had been to watch her die slowly just out of his reach. Then that night as he hung on a cross, a pale traveler had come upon him. Seeing he was still alive, he had taken a ladder from his cart, set it up against his cross and climbed it. Brendan had thought the man intended to cut him down and save him out of pity, but he had been a vampire, looking for an easy meal. A passing cohort of legionnaires had surprised the stranger, and he had run off, but not before his bite had infected Brendan. Using his new supernatural strength, he had agonizingly freed himself from the cross and hid from the rising sun in a cave.

  He said he had never been back to Italy since.

  “And that’s why to this very day....I still hate wops,” he finished, brushing her hair from her face. “You know, you remind me of her, the slave girl who died. She was a Trojan.”

  “What was her name?” she asked.

  “Helen.”

  Then, as it was near dawn, he got up to leave.

  She begged to see him again, and he swore that she would, sealing the immortal promise by leaning in and kissing her softly. It was like licking an ice cube, or a patch of snow. His breath smelled metallic, like the groaning pipes beneath the sink. When they parted from that first, wonderful kiss, her breath roiled in a little white cloud in his sad smile, across his deep dark eyes, brimming with a pain and sorrow that seemed to span the ages.

  She knew right away that she loved him. Who else could she ever love?

  Of course the police were waiting for when she got home, both because of her hysterical mother and because Ron had found Noodler’s body sprawled on his car after locking up. Everyone was so concerned. She answered all their questions, said she’d decided to walk home as it was such a nice night, and hadn’t seen anything.

  A policewoman told her she was lucky. Noodler had been identified as a serial rapist, and no one was going to lose much sleep over him. Gwendolyn only shrugged, and thought of Brendan.

  That night she dreamed of him in green tights and a red feathered cap, circling the ceiling of her bedroom and smiling down at her.

  She went right back to work because she knew he would be there at the end of her shift. She knew because of the kiss.

  And he was. Every night afterwards he met her in the parking lot. Sometimes they drove, mostly they walked, and talked, and kissed. He told her all about the long life he had lived all over the world, about all the people he had known through history, Genghis Khan, Abraham Lincoln, even Sherlock Holmes.

  He held her till she shivered in his cold arms (but he was always a perfect gentleman, even though sometimes she sort of wished he wasn’t), and he answered every question she had about vampires.

  All but one.

  “When will you take me to your lair?”

  “Soon,” was all he said, and drew her closer, taking in her scent with a flare of his nostrils, then kissing her deeply.

  She always knew the time would come.

  And tonight it had.

  She had somehow woken in the morning knowing this would be the night they would be together at last. She had packed an outfit in the car and changed before she clocked out. A sexy black top with lace trim and her best jeans, her Victoria’s Secret panties, the red ones with the matching bra. She had worn perfume for him too, something with a name she didn’t dare try to pronounce in front of him for fear he’d laugh at her.

  She’d brought condoms. She wasn’t sure if she could get pregnant, but it was best to be safe. Did vampires cum? She didn’t honestly care if he did get her pregnant. She would gladly have his child, but she didn’t know how he felt and thought it best to wait until another time to bring it up. She thought she might like to bear his child before he made her a vampire, just in case vampire women couldn’t have babies.

  She wondered if Brendan’s baby would be a half vampire, like Blade.

  If he was, would other vampires hate him? She would teach him or her to be good, to love both halves of him or herself, to accept him or herself first.

  She had never thought to ask him about other vampires. Had he met any in his travels? There would be time enough to ask later. All the time in the world.

  Brendan would turn her, and they could travel the world together, all three of them, see the things she never thought she’d see.

  Well, everything except Italy maybe.

  * * * *

  He led her through the trees.

  They were in a forest preserve across the highway from the Flying J. She had never gone into these woods, never had a reason to. She wondered what his lair was like. Was there some dilapidated mansion deep within the woods that no one remembered? Did Brendan keep a normal house, or maybe a trailer with blacked out windows like the vampires in Near Dark? Well, she hoped it wasn’t that. She hated that movie. She supposed she would be happy no matter where they were of course, as long as there was someplace they could lay down together, as long as they were alone.

  She had waited for this so long it seemed. Really only a week, but it felt like an eternity.

  She giggled. She didn’t really know anything about eternity, did she?

  But her dark angel, her boy that would never grow up, would show her.

  She would be like Wendy if Wendy had decided to stay in Neverland. Gwendolyn had never understood why Wendy had gone home. She had been responsible for her brothers, yes, but Gwendolyn had always thought had she been in the story, she would have brought her brothers back to her parents, told them not to worry, then dove out the window with Peter and Tinkerbell and flown in the ship back to Neverland. Anyway with the Lost Boys to take care of, Mr. and Mrs. Darling had plenty of kids, and wouldn’t have missed just one that much.

  It was such a silly thing to be thinking about now. Fairy tales.

  “What’s so funny?” Brendan asked, looking back over his shoulder.

  “Nothing,” she said, beaming at him. “Are we almost there?”

  “We’re here,” he said, drawing her into a moonlit clearing.

  There was a creek nearby, which Gwendolyn heard before she saw. The silver light cutting through the trees dappled the flowing water like icing. She didn’t see a house anywhere.

  He put his arm around her and pointed.

  Up the creek was a stone retaining wall, and in the wall was a great black hole, a dark culvert that trickled into the creek.

  “Through there?” she whispered, laying her head against his shoulder.

  “Mm hm,” he said. “Come on.”

  He started to splash across the creek, felt her stop short, and frowned back at her. Then almost immediately his brow slackened and he hoisted her up in his arms, carrying her to the culvert across the water. She laid her ear to his chest and closed her eyes. No heartbeat of course. She couldn’t stop smiling. She felt like a bride being carried across the threshold.

  “What’s that smell?” he asked, when they had reached the yawning black gap in the wall.

  “I wore it for you,” she said. “Do you like it?”

  When she opened her eyes and looked up into his, her smile fell a little. He was grimacing at her.

  “Have you ever sprayed perfume on a cat?” he asked.

  “Once,” she admitted. Her grandmother’s cat, Jake, had come in from the alley one night reeking of whatever garbage can he’d been into. She’d thought she was doing the animal a favor, since cats didn’t like water, and spritzed him with her atomizer. Jake had gone into a terrible hissing and scratching fit, every hair on end, like a wild thing. She still had the scar on her forearm.

  “It hated it didn’t it?” his tone was sharp, almost scolding. “It’s the smell. It’s too much.”

  Of course! He had heightened senses, like a cat’s. She pursed her lips, disappointed. Had she ruined everything? Stupid! He wouldn’t even want to touch her now. She felt her eyes brim
. She wanted to jump from his arms and scrub herself clean of the perfume in the cold creek.

  “I’m sorry,” she whimpered.

  “No, it’s alright,” he said after a minute. “It’s OK. I can deal with it.”

  “I’ll never do it again,” she promised. She meant it.

  “I know,” he said, finding his smile again.

  He set her down and climbed up into the hole. He crouched inside and turned to stare down at her, perched and smiling. He held out his hand.

  “Don’t you have a flashlight or something?” she asked, craning her neck to look over his shoulder at the thick darkness from which he seemed to spring.

  He shook his head slowly.

  “Are you scared?”

  She straightened, and held back her shoulders.

  “Not if you’re with me.”

  She took his hand.

  He pulled her lightly up into the culvert, turned, and led her into the shadows.

  It was damp and the only light was from the moon behind. Her shoes splashed as she walked, and she heard his feet too. Her breath echoed back at her off the walls of the concrete tunnel. How far did this go? Would there be some kind of side tunnel leading to a maintenance room he had claimed? Maybe something he had made himself? Furnished with antiques from around the world?

  It seemed they walked for a long time, until the light of the entrance was a pinprick behind. She had never been in a tunnel so long. She couldn’t see the other side either. It was just black ahead. She gripped Brendan’s hand tighter. She didn’t think of herself as claustrophobic, but suddenly the knowledge that they were well beneath the earth weighed on her. How old was this pipe? Was the concrete sound?

  “You OK?”

  “How much further?”

  “We’re here now,” he said, stopping at last. “Home sweet home.”

  “Here?” she asked. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Do you want to see?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  She heard him moving about something in the dark. Something clanked, and after a bit a camping lantern hissed to life, casting a whitish orange light all around.