Night Owls

by Lauren M. Roy

  “Done? I’ve helped kill fifty Creeps in the last three years, and there are still more out there. How can it be done?” It probably wasn’t too polite to yell at him, but she couldn’t help the anger that crept into her voice. How could he say that? How, after hearing her story, after she’d told him that a nest of at least six or seven had come after them the other night?

  At the rise in her voice, he came back to the present. “Fifty in three years. That’s, what, thirteen or fourteen a year? There was a time when we’d kill thirteen or fourteen in a week. And that would only be enough to keep their population under control. Don’t get me wrong. What you two have done is admirable. However, they’re dying out, and soon enough they won’t be a worry any longer.”

  “Shouldn’t you have stayed long enough to see it through, then? To finish them off for good?”

  “I thought it best to let their natural predators do the job. It was quite a point of contention between Father Value and myself.”

  Elly blinked. As far as she knew, the only ones hunting the Creeps in the first place had been Father Value and herself. He’d mentioned a few other scattered branches of the Brotherhood now and then, but there weren’t any formal reports, no tally board boasting the numbers of dead Creeps across the world from week to week. “What natural predators?”

  Professor Clearwater sat forward, peering at her like she’d said something outrageous—I’ve never seen the color blue, or Electricity? Never heard of it.

  “He never told you?”

  “Obviously not.” She bit back her frustration. It wasn’t this man’s fault that Father Value had been secretive and paranoid. He’d withheld information. She’d always suspected it, but no amount of wheedling or coming at questions sideways had ever worked. Once Father Value decided she didn’t need to know something, that was the end of it. “I don’t suppose you’d care to fill me in?”

  “Of course.” He cleared his throat, took a sip of whiskey, and cleared it again. “We’re not quite certain what the Creeps are, at heart. They take the bodies of their victims, usually after death, but not always. They’ve been able to turn the living as well. Whether the original personality remains seems to depend on the circumstances of their turning. Some retain pieces of themselves, some don’t.”

  “I know. I’ve seen it happen.” She thought of poor Billy Chambers, the sweetest kid ever to have Silver and Pointy rammed into his belly. He’d recognized her, but he’d also been a colossal jerk in his last moments: Billy, but not Billy.

  Professor Clearwater stood up and began pacing, hands folded behind his back. All he needed was a chalkboard and a podium, and he might as well have been teaching a class. “We don’t know precisely what it is that enters the bodies. Some kind of wraith, perhaps, or lesser demons too weak to have forms of their own. But once it’s done, the change is permanent. They’ll go around, killing indiscriminately, feasting on flesh and causing a panic.” He paused and looked at her. “They give others of similar ilk a rather bad name.”

  He wants me to make some kind of connection here. Her palms started to sweat. Ask her to figure out why a crossbow was jamming, and she’d have it apart and fixed in seconds. Hunting the Creeps had always been ninety percent instinctual for her—she knew the things she needed to know, and acted on them. But delving deeper, putting disparate things together . . . that had been Father Value’s job. His and one other. But they’re both gone now. It’s just me, from here on out. Think, Elly. Similar ilk. Something else that took over bodies and ate people for a hobby. She groaned. “Vampires.”

  Henry snapped his fingers. “Correct. Some werewolf packs, too, but primarily the vampires.”

  Elly couldn’t help the proud flush that rose to her cheeks, but this was no time to bask in success. “So, what, the vampires pick off the Creeps over food?” If by food, we mean people.

  “In some places, it is as simple as that. But those kinds of conflicts are mostly in . . . less civilized places. Places where the human inhabitants don’t have the same means of hunting as we do. I see you’re nodding. I assume Father Value educated you at least somewhat about the vampires, then?”

  “Mostly that we leave them be. That they tend to police themselves, and only drink from willing donors. But that any of them we found preying on unwilling humans were fair game.” In all her time hunting, she and Father Value had only come across one rogue vampire. The kill had been clean and easy, but Father Value had been summoned away the next night by somber-looking, pale-skinned men. All he’d said, once he’d returned, was that he’d spent several hours “playing politics,” yet he’d walked like a man who’d been badly beaten. There had been no bruises to speak of, but he’d gone through nearly a whole bottle of aspirin over the next few days.

  “Indeed.” Henry’s voice tugged Elly back from her recollection. “But where vampires can subsist on blood alone, the Creeps need more. They’ll eat flesh, and if their victims are afraid first, all the better. You can see how that might negatively impact the vampires’ food source. So they police the Creeps, too. They know where their local nests are and keep an eye on them. Now and then, they’ll simply send out a party to eradicate them.”

  “But they can make more. You said it yourself—you were only killing enough to keep them from creating a whole swarm. We’ve been nowhere near those numbers.”

  He shook his head and returned to the chair. “Elly, before I left, we learned something, Father Value and I. We caught one just before daybreak and interrogated it. Sunlight works on them like bamboo shoots under the fingernails. So we—” He licked his lips and bunched his hands into fists, dredging up a memory he’d rather leave buried. “We tortured it. We sat it in a chair beside a black-curtained window, and whenever it stopped talking or resisted, we pulled the drape aside. It was in agony. Probably half the things it said were lies to get us to stop. But it told us something we’d already suspected: they were losing the ability to procreate.”

  He shuddered and turned a haunted gaze on her. “Without that, the vampires will take care of them all, over time. The vampires are immortal; the Creeps, less so. Especially if they’re not feeding as much as they’d like. It slows their aging, but it doesn’t halt it altogether. The vampires don’t have to rush.”

  He was quiet for a few minutes. When he spoke again, his voice was hushed. “You asked why I left the Brotherhood. It was that knowledge, and the knowledge—that I could spend ten hours willingly torturing another living being—that made me say ‘enough.’”

  “It wasn’t a human, though. It was a Creep. It would’ve done worse to you if it could.”

  He regarded her sadly. “So I should stoop to its level? No, Elly. Not that. Never that, ever again.”

  Part of her wanted to comfort him, to tell him he’d done something important, as painful as it was. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear, though, and she suspected he’d pick up on the hollowness of the sentiment: she’d torture one of them without reservations. It was the least they deserved. Something else itched at her, though, something Professor Clearwater was missing.

  She thought of Billy Chambers’ face, his eyes wide with surprise as his skin turned to ash and flaked away around her spike. “Professor, you’re wrong. They can make more. I watched them do it to a friend of mine.”

  He held up his hands. “They still can, certainly, but only in rare cases. It’s taxing on the creators and what comes through is often too weak to survive the first night. When did your friend turn?”

  “Three years ago.”

  “Have you seen it happen since?”

  “No, but . . .” She scuffed her feet against the floor. Her right foot met resistance: her backpack. “Oh no. Professor, do you think . . . What if that’s what’s in here?” What else would Father Value have given his life to keep out of the Creeps’ hands? What else could be more important?

  “In where?”

  “The book Father Value and I stole. What if the secret to . . . to being able to make more is what
they were after?” She leaned down and unzipped the backpack. The book she withdrew was sealed in a huge Ziploc bag—even if she’d dropped it in the water back at the beach, it would have been all right, though the Creep hadn’t known that. Now she yanked the bag open and set the book on her lap.

  It was plain, bound in old brown leather. The corners were bent and dented, as though it had been taken off shelves and replaced many a time. Most of the gold leaf had flaked off the cover, but the writing was still there, stamped deep into the leather. Only, the language . . . “Aw, crap.” She held it up for Professor Clearwater to see. She’d been hoping for English, but would have settled for Latin or German or anything that could be easily translated.

  No such luck.

  Scrawled across the cover were a dozen or so letters she’d never seen. Elly had a decent eye for runes, but these were unlike anything she’d ever come across. “Maybe it’s different inside,” she said, lowering it again.

  Before she could open the cover, Professor Clearwater was out of his chair. He sprinted over and snatched the book away from her. “Don’t!”

  Elly scrabbled up herself, putting distance between herself and the professor. If he was going to go batshit now . . . But he’d retreated to the other side of the room, the book clutched against his chest. He wasn’t going to attack her. “Professor, what the hell?” Then she thought of his collection, and understanding dawned. “I know how to handle old books.”

  He gulped in a few breaths. “I don’t doubt that, Elly. But this. It’s not fit for human eyes.” He turned to glance outside. The sun was well above the horizon now. Further in the house, a clock chimed seven. “I have somewhere I can take it. Somewhere safe, until we can figure out what to do with it. Will you let me do that?”

  She stared at him. It’s mine, though. It’s what Father Value died for. If I give it away, I’m giving away the last thing he fought for. But wasn’t this where he’d always intended to bring it? Wasn’t this man the one person he’d trusted with the book? Maybe she wasn’t abandoning their last mission by letting Henry Clearwater take it away; maybe she was completing it. She cleared away the sudden lump in her throat. “Okay. Okay, yeah. But I want to be part of any decisions about it.”

  “Of course.” He relaxed and set the book down on his desk. “My coat’s in the front closet. Would you fetch it for me? I’d like to check this for wards before I go.”

  Trust was leaving an old man you’d known for all of four hours alone with the one thing you’d sworn to protect. Especially after the one person you’d sworn to protect was dead. If Father Value had been a little more trusting and come straight here rather than running, he might still be alive. Elly would have to do better than he had.

  She’d start with fetching Professor Clearwater’s coat.

  6

  CHAZ WAS OUT back, counting up the day shift’s register when Justin came in. Four p.m. had come and gone, and four thirty wasn’t far away. Tardiness and Justin simply didn’t go together—it was probably even a picture in some beginner science textbook, Things That Don’t Mix: oil and water, toothpaste and orange juice, Justin and not-on-time. “You’re late,” Chaz said, looking up as Justin shrugged off his backpack.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” Justin bent over the keyboard to punch in, and Chaz caught the shadows under his eyes. He decided to let the kid off the hook; after all, it was Val that had him annoyed, not Justin.

  “You look like shit. Late night?”

  Justin’s shift had ended at one, but Chaz had never known him to head out after work in search of a bar to close down, especially not when he had classes in the morning. His short, dark hair corkscrewed in the back like he’d just woken from a nap, and his face split into a yawn as he straightened up. “No,” he said, when his jaw finally returned to normal size. “Early morning.” Justin knelt and unzipped his backpack, removing the item within as though he’d carried the Holy Grail across campus and down the hill to work.

  The book was stuffed in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag. It looked old, but Chaz couldn’t make out a title or anything else that identified it. “What’s that?” He motioned for it, but instead of handing it over, Justin drew it close to his chest. World’s nerdiest teddy bear.

  “Professor Clearwater called me this morning and asked me to meet him before office hours started. He said he doesn’t want anyone opening it up unless he’s here. Not even Val.”

  Chaz frowned. “The professor was just here last night. Why didn’t he bring it then? Or swing by after classes?”

  “I don’t know. He said he had things to do today. As soon as he gave me this, he canceled all his classes and his office hours.”

  “He sick?”

  “Didn’t seem it. Tired, maybe. He probably stayed up grading papers. He does that sometimes.” Henry Clearwater was Justin’s favorite professor, and the respect went both ways. Some students wrote extra research papers to boost a flagging grade; Justin wrote them for fun, and Professor Clearwater encouraged it. They were two nerds in a pod. It was kind of endearing. He spent as much time talking Shakespeare and Milton in the professor’s office as he spent working or sleeping.

  “Okay. Well, do you want me to put it in the rare books room until Val gets here?”

  Justin bit his lip.

  “Let me guess. He told you I’m not to be trusted with it.”

  The wince said it all, but Justin went for the diplomatic answer anyway. “He just really doesn’t want anyone else handling it, is all.”

  “Uh-huh.” Chaz had no idea what he’d ever done to piss the old man off, or to make him so oddly suspicious, but he wasn’t going to drag Justin into it. Yeah, your mentor thinks I’m some sort of werewolf. Isn’t that crazy? What a kidder. Easy enough to laugh off unless Justin started believing it, too. Then it wasn’t Chaz’ cover that was in danger of being blown, it was Val’s. “Go ahead and stick it on the desk in there. We’ll let Val know about it when she gets in.”

  Justin headed out front, the book cradled in his arms. Chaz glanced up at the clock. Val would be here within the hour, and she had some explaining to do of her own.

  In five years as her companion, he’d never been dismissed the way Val had dismissed him last night. It had managed to both piss him off and terrify him.

  On one hand, he was her right-hand man, wasn’t he? Shouldn’t she trust him with whatever she’d smelled on the air last night? Shouldn’t she have told him to grab a crowbar and try to keep up, rather than bundle him in the car and send him away? He was supposed to be useful for more than making sure the bookstore’s electric bill was paid, and yet when something was going down, she’d sent him home.

  Then again, he’d only seen her scared like that once, and even that memory was hazy and half-formed; sometimes he thought he’d only dreamed it until he rolled up his sleeve and looked at the souvenir twisted into his flesh. Which was a good argument for her maybe thinking he couldn’t handle the heavy shit, and that pissed him off all over again.

  After Val had sent him packing, he’d gone home and fretted, staring at infomercials and resisting the urge to call her cell to make sure she was okay. If she was off sneaking around—which was what he figured she’d headed out to do from the way she sniffed the air—a ringing cell would be bad. He’d dozed fitfully for an hour or so, waking up anytime the infomercial audiences clapped on cue. Finally, with dawn lightening the sky, he’d grabbed his keys and headed to Val’s.

  The window screen he found on the ground in the backyard had nearly given him a heart attack. He’d gone tearing into the house—a spare key was one of the first things Val had given him when he became her Renfield—and took the stairs three at a time. He didn’t breathe until he turned on the bedside light and saw Val’s red hair spilling over the pillow. She was sprawled awkwardly atop the comforter, one leg thrown over the side of the mattress. Chaz had lifted her gently, resettling her the rest of the way onto the bed so she wouldn’t wake up with a crick in her neck.

  That was w
hen he’d noticed the fangs and claws, and the dark blood caking her fingers. She was covered in dirt like she’d been rolling in it. Leaves clung to her hair. What the hell has she been up to?

  He’d stood over her awhile, wondering what to do—was whoever she’d gone after truly gone? Should he stay and stand guard in case someone sent a minion to stake her?

  But, no. If she’d made it home, it meant she was safe. Otherwise she’d have called him. Val was proud, not dumb. Chaz wouldn’t get any answers until she woke up, though, and the combination of knowing she was safe for the time being and seeing her fast asleep had made his own weariness kick in.

  Now he sat in the bookstore’s back room, stewing and eyeing the clock and the sunrise/sunset chart he kept tacked to the corkboard. She wasn’t due in for five hours yet. When she comes in, she’s getting an earful.

  • • •

  IT WAS JUST after nine thirty when Val slipped into Night Owls’ back room and closed the door behind her. She was grateful to have the space to herself for a moment, the haven of controlled chaos promising her everything was normal, everything was fine, despite this morning’s brawl. Once or twice a year, she’d get it into her head to give it a thorough cleaning and organizing, but even her best efforts were reversed within a week or two as shipments came in and returns went out. Val embodied the concept of knowing where everything and anything was in the piles of clutter. It was her clutter, damn it, and after what she’d smelled on the air this morning, the scent of dust and books and someone’s tuna fish sandwich was a comfort.

  Her peace and quiet didn’t last long.

  Chaz must have been lying in wait out front, waiting for the telltale creak of the hinges, judging from the way he burst through the back room door and swooped down on her. “The hell was that about last night?”

  Val glanced up at him and winced. Under the best of circumstances, she’d never have called Chaz intimidating. His build was too scrawny, the muscles cording in his folded arms more like stereo wire than steel cable. He did, however, do a high fury extremely well. She could hear his pulse pounding away in his throat. The smell of anger rolled off him in waves.