InsistentHunger

by Lyn Gala

  “Or not,” she admitted.

  “I did some experimenting.” Brady moved over to where weak sunlight filtered in through crusty, cobweb covered windows. It was actually pretty embarrassing that anyone was seeing her basement, considering that the place was a health hazard. Reaching out, he put his hand into the weak beam.

  He pulled his hand back to his chest and rubbed it with his other hand. “It’s uncomfortable—like I can feel the sound of fingernails down a chalkboard—feel it through my skin. But it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t feel good, but it doesn’t hurt. So, if I don’t like sunlight…” Brady’s voice trailed off.

  Paige ignored Brady’s invitation to call him a vampire. It felt rude to call him one to his face. “So you probably won’t go wandering around in daylight?”

  “Um, no. Not unless you actually do set the house on fire. I’m pretty sure fire would kill me. Well, kill me more, anyway.”

  “Great, your sense of humor came through okay.”

  “It’s that or run around screaming in terror,” Brady said with a shrug. “And I am so sorry that I was so scared when I showed up. I think that’s why I bit you.”

  “Huh. And here I was feeling all complimented that you thought I smelled good.”

  Paige was almost sure that Brady blushed. “That too,” he said with a smile, and Paige found herself smiling back. Yeah, things were screwed up beyond all belief, but Brady was getting back to being Brady.

  “Anyway, that means that these guys are probably going to avoid sunlight too.” Paige chewed on her lip and rubbed her arm as she thought about that. She still enjoyed the feel of sun on her face, so that was one piece of evidence in her favor. It also meant she was better off investigating in the day. “If you were near the water, that could be Cedar Dam Road or Mill Road or William Shy Road.”

  “Or a half dozen others.”

  Paige shook her head. “Not if it was blacktop.”

  “Worthington Road is blacktop.”

  “Worthington Road is so torn up, you can’t tell it’s blacktop when you’re riding over it. I’ll check out the roads and maybe you can jump on the Internet and see if you can’t track down any information, maybe track down some of those symbols. I’ll bring the laptop down here so we don’t have any reporters getting a good picture of you.”

  Frowning, Brady moved closer to her with his head tilted to the side. “You can’t go out there alone.”

  “Sure I can. You said the sunlight was uncomfortable,” Paige pointed out. “They’re all going to be tucked away in their nice, shady little houses.”

  “I’ve only been dead about twelve hours. Maybe it gets better or they’re stronger than I am. Maybe you’re going to get yourself killed. Paige, you can’t do this.” He reached out for her, but at the last minute, he pulled his hand back.

  Paige felt the righteous indignation in the pit of her stomach. She’d been doing the job long enough to know her shit and most cops did work alone. They partnered up during big cases like the rape case and she often trained new officers, but most of the time in a small town like this, patrols were solitary.

  She sure didn’t need someone telling her she couldn’t do her job. On the other hand, Brady looked worried. These people had hurt him. She sighed and decided to go for reassuring him rather than ripping him a new asshole for assuming she couldn’t handle herself. “Brady, I’m not going to go out and get myself killed.”

  “Good. Don’t. Let someone else investigate this.” Turning around, he slammed the flat of his hand into the shelving and the entire metal structure shivered. “I shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.”

  Paige got up and had reached for his arm before her brain could warn her to be careful. “Hey, we’re partners. You came to me because you knew that and I’m not going to let someone get away with hurting you.”

  He turned to look at her. The dark of his eyes had faded, not like the film that formed over the eyes of the dead but rather as if some of the color had leached out, leaving a lighter amber color, and with the angry red veins in the whites of his eyes, for a second she couldn’t see Brady in there at all. But then he blinked and she recognized the worried expression. He ran fingers through his dark hair and she could feel him shaking under her hand. “You can’t go alone,” he whispered in a rough voice.

  “Brady, I’ve been a cop for fifteen years. I can take care of myself.”

  “Against this?” He reached up, grabbed one of the metal supports and twisted it, ripping the screws out of the shelf and bending the reinforced steel. Boxes of ornaments tumbled off the falling shelf, tipping so that colored balls she hadn’t packed well slid out and fell to the floor. They crashed against the concrete, popping like firecrackers. Brady scrambled to catch the falling boxes, but he managed to hit one so that it bounced into the air, flipped and dumped tinsel before landing near the floor drain. The shelf tilted, the one support twisted into a crude S-shape and the shelf dangling. Brady closed his eyes. “Shit. I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up.”

  Paige looked at the mess, both the spilled Christmas decorations and the ruined shelf. That had been a heavy-duty shelf she’d bought when she’d had big plans for home improvement and she’d planned to fill it with shop equipment. Brady had twisted it like a bread wrapper tie. “I think you made your point,” she said quietly. Her guts rolled as she thought about the casual power he’d just shown.

  “I didn’t mean to… I just meant to bend it.”

  “Oh I think you made your point a little better by mangling it.”

  “Then you’ll stay away from these people?” he asked, naked hope in his voice.

  Paige looked around at the mess and thought about that. She still didn’t know if there was a way to fix Brady or if she was going to turn into whatever he was or if Brady was going to get worse. There were so many questions and she didn’t have the answers she needed—the answers they needed.

  “Wait until dark and I’ll go with you,” Brady offered. “You shoot them and I’ll hit them really hard.”

  “And when we run into Alex and John from the station?” Paige asked.

  “Maybe we can skip the reunion. I’d have a hard time explaining the whole dead thing.” Brady made a funny face and a laugh slipped out before Paige could stop it. Brady smiled at her, and for one second, things felt normal. “I could ride in the trunk or under a blanket, but if you’re going to try to find the house, you need backup, Paige. You’re the one who always told me to stick to the book. Actually, you threatened to kick my ass back to Mommy and Daddy’s house if I didn’t follow the rules.”

  “I did, huh?”

  “Yeah, you did. You’re a little scary sometimes, Silver, but if you go up against these guys alone, you’re a whole lot stupider than I ever thought.”

  “More stupid,” Paige corrected him. Brady looked at her oddly. “Stupider isn’t a word. Don’t get in the habit of using words that aren’t words. Your reports will end up looking like Harris’.”

  Brady raised an eyebrow and looked at her even more oddly.

  Paige rolled her eyes at herself. She didn’t want to listen to what Brady was saying. He was making sense, but if she listened to him, she was going to have to change her plans. She was going to have to go out after dark, and right now she wanted to hang garlic all over the place and hide in the house once the sun went down. “Does garlic bother you?” she blurted out.

  And the odd looks kept right on getting odder. “I have no idea. Do you have any? We could try it.”

  “I have garlic powder,” she said after thinking for a second. “And I’m changing the subject because I’m trying to ignore the fact that you’re making sense.” Paige reached out to run her finger over the twisted metal. On top of all the other things she didn’t know, she could add one more—she didn’t know if a bullet would stop one of these guys. She did know they could snap her neck like a twig. “I’ll make you a deal. I’m going to go looking for the hou
se.”

  When Brady’s mouth came open, Paige held up a hand to stop him from interrupting.

  “I’ll stay in the car and just look for a location. We can go back out after dark.”

  Brady seemed to sag in relief, one hand holding the now ruined shelf. “Deal. I’ll back you up, no problem,” he agreed.

  “I hope so. If I get killed, I’ll find a way to come back and make you miserable. At one point, that might have been an empty threat, but now…don’t think I won’t do it,” Paige threatened, pointing a finger right at Brady. He just gave her this boyish grin that made her want to slap him upside the back of the head. “And don’t get cocky just because you won this round,” she said as she headed for the stairs.

  “Cocky? Me? Never,” he said in a smug tone.

  “God, I’m insane,” Paige whispered to herself. She was also going to carve herself several good stakes if she was going to go out after dark. And buy garlic. She wondered if the Catholic Church sold holy water. She’d been brought up Lutheran and there was a real lack of holy water in that church, but people on television always seemed to find some. Damn, her life really had gotten entirely too strange, but the only alternative included admitting defeat and Paige never had been very good at that. So…step one—find the damn house.

  Chapter Six

  Paige slowed down as the grove of black gum trees came in view. This was an isolated bit of William Shy Road and she gripped the wheel tightly to hold off a case of the shakes that seemed to threaten. A weed-covered lane led off the old blacktop between a pair of lopsided holly trees, their normally bright green leaves dull and patches of bare branches sticking through.

  Rolling to a stop, Paige studied a sign announcing that the house was under renovation by Lister and Stevenson, 1973. Clearly the renovation had not gone well because Paige could see the top floor of an old house with glass missing from the windows and bare wood. The countryside was full of century-old homes, some fixed up and some slowly rotting.

  This one was past rotting and into condemned-land. And Paige was pretty sure it was the place Brady had died. The blacktop, the trees, the sign in front of the residential house, the isolation—it all fit.

  She just couldn’t figure out how he’d gotten to her house. She lived on the west side of town and this sat on the edge of the swamp, twenty miles away. Either he’d gotten a ride or she could add speed to his other superpowers. A shadow on the edge of her vision caught her attention and Paige turned her head to see a man inching along the path to the house. He was a muscular man, tall with a receding hairline and the body language of a cop or soldier.

  Easing off the brake, she inched forward so that she could see more of the house between overgrown trees. The man had a gun out and something bulky around his neck. Paige reached for her cell phone and toyed with the idea of calling for units. She could claim that she was just driving around, but if there was evidence of Brady having died in that house, the captain was going to assume she was off on a rogue investigation. True, she was, but she didn’t need more scrutiny right now.

  So she held her cell phone in hand and watched as the guy reached the house and moved toward one of the empty windows. He watched the surrounding area and Paige was almost certain he’d seen her. With her uniform on, she stood out.

  Before Paige could decide what to do, something flew out the house window. Actually, it leapt, but the leap lasted so long that the creature gave the impression of flying as it came through the window. Paige got out of the car, cell phone in one hand and gun in the other. The other guy would be dead before backup could arrive if she didn’t help and she wasn’t going to let any more people die.

  “Freeze, Oxbow Police!” she yelled. Both men ignored her. The soldier-guy raised his gun and fired two shots, but the newcomer somehow twisted out of the way. He was a lanky guy with long hair, and the sinuous way he contorted his body made Paige’s guts coil into a knot. He wasn’t human. He also seemed to take longer than Paige had expected to look around.

  When he leaped forward, the soldier-guy fell back without looking too concerned. Paige started running, almost sure that the soldier was going to get killed, but at the last second, the lanky monster reared back like something burned him. Paige put a shot low into the guy’s side, and he turned to snarl at her.

  She froze. The monster’s skin was ruddy, almost like a mild sunburn, and the whites of his eyes were pink with pale blue irises. There was nothing human in the face, nothing at all. Even stranger, the monster looked at her like he couldn’t quite figure out what to do. The soldier raised his gun and fired three shots.

  Paige watched as the back of the monster’s skull blew out in a spray of gray matter and bone fragments, and then the body collapsed, decaying like some fast-forwarded nature film. Skin pulled tight so that the creature seemed to snarl as his mouth opened and his eyes protruded. Bone started appearing through open sores, and then the flesh seemed to melt for a split second before the body collapsed into a pile that turned to dry ash before it even hit the ground.

  The force of hitting the ground made bits of dust and ash puff up into the air and float on the breeze while vapor rose from the unrecognizable remains. Something cold ran through Paige, like when she was a kid and she’d get those shivers that her mom would call someone walking over her grave. But this time, the shiver pulled at her, making her fall back a step.

  Paige stared at the ground, her mouth open, her gun and her cell phone hanging at her side. With her heart pounding rabbit-fast, she couldn’t even seem to get her brain in gear, even though some distant part of her training screamed about having an armed suspect still on scene. The soldier turned toward the house and started moving again and Paige brought her weapon up.

  “Freeze!” she ordered. He looked over at her, almost amused.

  “If you’re going to shoot me, do it now and get it over with. After dark, neither one of us will stand a chance in hell if one of those things smells that much blood.” Without showing any sign of concern, he started moving toward the porch again, his gun held up. The regs said that you didn’t shoot a suspect in the back, but Paige was tempted. This asshole was ignoring her and Paige never handled that well.

  “Freeze or I will call this in and arrest your ass,” she warned.

  “Great, another arrest. My mother would be so proud. Go arrest someone who’s breaking a law and leave me the hell alone,” he snapped and then he jumped up onto the rotting porch, swearing when one of his feet went through a board. Pulling it loose, he headed for the door, yanking it open and aiming his weapon into the dark.

  Paige glanced back at her car. She’d promised Brady she wouldn’t go in the house without backup, but this guy had killed one of the monsters and he’d passed over a chance to kill Paige. The shock of seeing the monster turned to dust and vapor had pretty much left her vulnerable for long seconds when he could have easily put a bullet in her brain. Her chance to get answers was in that house.

  Her mind made up, Paige headed up the front steps, careful to clear the area as she slowly entered the house.

  Wild animals had nested in the ceiling and bits of straw hung like moss. However, animals hadn’t left the long streak of blood that trailed from the front door to what used to be the formal parlor. Paige headed through the wood frame of what had once been a grand arch. The blood still had a reddish tint to the brown, so it couldn’t be too old, and Paige’s stomach turned at the thought that this might be Brady’s blood.

  In the parlor, the weather-pitted wood floor had designs painted in blood—a plus sign with strange curling C’s at the corner, unfamiliar letters and a large figure that looked like stylized eyes with two lines rising up from the center to make odd eyebrows. A shiver ran through Paige, and she backed out of the room and looked around to see if she could figure out where the soldier-guy had gone.

  When a board creaked, Paige turned and pointed her weapon up the stairs. The soldier guy stood there with his own gun holstered. This close she could see t
hat the bulky thing around his neck was a huge strand of whole garlic heads woven into the world’s ugliest necklace. “That was the only one, but it looks like they were making more here.” He started coming down the stairs. “So, from your reaction, I take it that’s the first vampire you’ve watched die.”

  Paige backed up to the open door. “Vampire?” Sure, she’s suspected she might find a vampire here, but having the word said out loud still made her feel edgy, like a psychiatrist with a straitjacket might jump out from behind a corner.

  He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and shrugged. “That’s what I call them.”

  “You? Just you? I don’t suppose there’s a chance other people call them psychotics with delusion of vampirism?” she asked hopefully.

  He looked at her oddly. “Do delusions make someone vanish like mist?” he asked.

  Paige lowered her weapon without holstering it or putting the safety back on. “Hey, meth makes all sorts of impossible things happen. Meth, LSD, some of the pharms. And then there’s the increasing possibility that I’m having delusions.”

  He pursed his lips in a twisted version of a smile and shrugged. “Then feel free to keep pretending it’s all a dream.” With that, he turned and headed down the hall that led farther into the house.

  “Wait!” Paige called after him. “I have a few questions.” She took a step farther into the house and wondered if she wasn’t the world’s biggest idiot. She really should be running for the hills, not calling after this guy.

  He turned and looked at her. “I thought you wanted to pretend none of this was real.”

  “I do,” Paige said. “But I also want to be six inches taller. I’ve learned to deal with disappointment.”

  He smiled and looked her up and down as though evaluating her. “A sense of humor. Good. You’ll need it. They were trying to make new vampires here—that’s probably why that one was willing to fight over the lair. Usually, they run away unless they have a stronger vamp ordering them into battle.”