by D. M. Nash
I knew the stubborn pride streak inside Ray Briar was kicking at the pricks, but there was just nothing negative to be said at the moment about this young man aside from the fact that he was a vampire. He’d done Dad a huge favor today in doing everything that had been asked of him (and nothing more).
Through gritted teeth, Dad said the first openly kind thing I’d ever heard him say to a member of the undead. “Thank you for your help today.” It must have killed him to add, “It might be good if we… if I could count on your help again. Until we’re done with these guys, anyway. Are you going to be in town long?”
“Maybe we should talk about that, Mr. Briar.” Dad took a deep breath, trying to calm himself from the inward fires fueled by his prejudice. Richard gave a little bow of the head—dramatic, but it couldn’t hurt—and said, “Could we maybe speak in another room?”
I wanted to argue that anything they had to say they could say in front of me, but I still felt weak all over, and going back to sleep at that moment seemed more enticing than being a fly on the wall to their no-doubt tense conversation.
Dad stared Richard down a few seconds longer, and Richard held his gaze patiently, somehow managing not to make it seem like a challenge. No doubt about it, this was the least vampire-like vampire I’d ever met. Finally Dad nodded, and they left me to the peace of a dreamless sleep.
XV
Richard was long-gone by the time I woke up again that evening.
Dad told me he called the school and told them I hadn’t been feeling well, which was true enough, I guess. Becca texted me my reading for English, and I hoped that was the most important thing I missed, but honestly school wasn’t my top priority that night.
Dad also ordered a pizza, and when the food came and we’d gotten settled at the table, what I wanted were answers. Problem was, I wasn’t sure where to start. I didn’t know what my first question would be until it popped out of my mouth.
“Why don’t you hate Richard?”
In my dad’s huge hand the pizza slice looked like a doll-house version. He took a bite. “Who says I don’t?”
Fair enough. “Okay, then why do you trust him?”
Ha! That one was obviously a bit trickier. He chewed. And then I saw in his eyes that he actually knew the answer, he was just debating whether or not to tell me. You don’t have a million conversations like this one with somebody and not learn to read the signs.
“Out with it,” I said.
“I knew his mother.”
“What? Are you serious? Who is she?”
“Now? She’s not anybody now. She’s dead. But she was a hunter. Damn good one. Loretta Walden.”
“Wait,” I said, “his mom is that Loretta Walden?” I hadn’t thought about her in years, but before we lived in Florida my dad and her had teamed up a few times in some of the Appalachian states. Back then Abby and I used to sometimes wonder if she and my dad were dating, or if it was strictly business. If I’d actually had any conversations with her beyond just saying hello I didn’t remember them now. Still… “She’s dead?”
“Guess so,” Dad said, the pain in his voice at odds with his flippant words. “That’s what Richard says, anyway.”
“How do you know he’s really her son? Or that he’s telling you the truth?” My pizza was getting cold, but my appetite was for knowledge at the moment, not crust and cheese and sauce. Ick. That sounded like I was one of the black suits myself.
My dad’s eyebrow rose. Maybe he’d thought I was going to stick up for Richard no matter what. Just goes to show the credit the guy gives me, sheesh. He said, “I met him a couple times when Loretta and I did jobs together. He wasn’t… you know, he wasn’t a vampire then. He was a good kid.”
“Seems to me like he’s a good kid now.”
“Well,” Dad said, and let the word hang in the air. I could understand his reluctance to admit it. It would be like a bigoted creep down South admitting that he might have been wrong on a few counts. The big difference here being that unlike the people of any race, most vampires really were something to be feared. There was a heavy sadness too, and I couldn’t tell if Dad was more upset about Loretta’s death or Richard’s transformation.
“Why do you hate vampires so much?” I asked him, not for the first time. “And you know what I’m asking, so don’t give me the same old runaround. We all want to stop the ones that cause problems for natural humans. We all fear them.” I meant everyone in the hunting community. “But nobody feels the way you do about them.”
He shook his head. It was almost an imperceptibly small movement. “Not getting into all that now. Especially not now, when we might actually need one around for a little while… Hey, Catherine?”
“Hmm.”
“This is going to sound odd, coming from me. But I think you can trust Richard, too. At least until this whole thing with the black suits has blown over. You see him around, go ahead and stick with him. He should be able to keep you safe.”
“Oh you’re not hell-bent on reminding me that any vamp can go bad at any time? Seems like that used to be just about your favorite—” I was getting snarky, but the look on Dad’s face stopped me. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d said, but he looked like he’d just been sucker-punched in the kidney but was trying to save face. “Sorry,” I said. I finally picked up my first slice of pizza, the good smells getting to me. “Richard told me he asked to be a vampire.”
I was glad to see the slim smile this coaxed from Dad. “I said I think you can trust him. I didn’t say he was smart.”
XVI
“Where were you yesterday?” Becca demanded after my dad dropped me off at school. “I was worried sick I was never going to see you again. And why didn’t you walk to school with me? Were you really sick yesterday?”
“Becca,” I said, “calm it.”
“I don’t think so. Is everything okay with you and your dad? What about that guy I saw you with?”
Our lockers were only two apart, and there was no one between us as I asked, “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. What the heck were you doing up so late?”
She said, “I don’t know. I guess I couldn’t sleep.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “And you just so happened to be wandering around the streets after dark, waiting for sleep to just hit you out of nowhere?”
“I gotta get to class,” she said with a start so believable I realized it wasn’t just an excuse to get her out of the conversation. We really were going to be late if we didn’t hurry. I had biology on the opposite end of the school in three minutes.
We parted ways, but I made a mental note not to let that slide with Becca. I would find out what she’d been doing the night she saw me and Richard. Another of the lessons Dad had taught me along the way, knowingly or otherwise, was that when something seemed strange, it often was. That went quadruple for anyone “in the know” about the more supernatural side of things.
The day passed, but it felt more like I was watching it on TV than like it was really happening in real-time or to a real person, which is weird for me. Before Campville, sure, everything just kind of blurred together. A big part of the reason I didn’t have a lot of friends was because I didn’t want to get too attached to anything only to get ripped away from it again, but this place was just… different, and even though the school year had only been going for a few months, I’d spent every day of that time fully present, laughing with my friends, checking out cute (if a bit boring) guys, taking my projects, my homework, and my reading seriously.
Not today, though. It was like I’d been thrown back in time to when I was just skimming along the social surface. I couldn’t stop thinking about my dad going after those things. After lunch, I was half-listening to a math lecture while thinking, He’s out there right now. He could be getting killed right now and I wouldn’t find out about it for hours. Maybe days.
I knew he said he would have still hunted the black suits even if we had moved like he wanted to, but I couldn’t help f
eeling responsible. He couldn’t be as cautious with his time now that he knew I could get caught in the crossfire, and he might do something more reckless than he would have if I’d been safely packed away to some new town the way he’d wanted.
At least there was Richard.
My mind snagged on that thought. There was a temptation to get lost in that thought. I wished I could have met him before, back when he was just a human guy. Because even though the concepts of “Richard” and “vampire” seemed totally at odds with one another, that was what he was, and I knew from my dad’s teachings I could never forget that.
I’d never met anyone like him, someone so fully straddling the world of hunter and hunted, but even the tamest vampire was still a vampire and had passions and needs a normal person could never understand. He was…
Oh let’s just be honest: he was the one of the most fascinating people I’d ever met. And regardless of what he was, I was happy he was around. It did make me feel safer even though I didn’t have all the answers I wanted about why he was here now, or why he’d wanted to be changed.
Finally the school day got out and I went home, hoping to see my dad, just to make sure he was okay. When I saw that someone else was home—speak of the devil—I tried not to think of him as “the next best thing.”
“Hi,” I said, dropping my book bag on my dad’s easy chair and taking a seat at the couch. Richard was by the TV stand, looking out the window. He was standing in a perfect spot to see, but not be seen by, anyone who might be outside the house. “Have you heard from my dad?”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “We’ve been tracking the black suits all day, but he sent me here so I could tell you he was alright. He knew you’d be worried.”
“It’s a bummer he can’t just keep his phone with him.”
Richard nodded, but didn’t turn his head. I couldn’t guess at why, but I got the feeling he was trying not to look at me.
My comment had been a test of sorts. I knew his mom had been a hunter, but that didn’t mean he knew as much as I did. Some hunters kept as much as they could from their kids. Looks like that wasn’t the case with Richard, since he hadn’t asked me what I meant about the phone.
This was just Unknown Monster 101 if you were a hunter. Some of the creatures out there can detect things like cell signals. Not a lot, but some. Since black suits were so rare there was no hard data on them. It was unlikely they could detect an incoming text or phone call, but that wasn’t the kind of risk my dad was willing to take.
“Well, have you guys made any progress?”
“I think they might be ideolis.”
Huh.
Okay, if I thought I was going to start stumping Richard with hunter factoids, it looked like I was mistaken. Dad had dealt with an ideolis once—basically an idea that takes the form of a spirit—but they were really rare, too. I would guess most hunters had never heard of them. It was strange to have to admit this, but I guess I had no way of knowing if I actually did have more hunter-based knowledge than Richard. I usually just assumed I knew more about this kind of stuff than just about anyone who wasn’t a full-time hunter.
But then it kind of hit me: Richard was a full-time hunter now, wasn’t he?
I hadn’t really thought of him that way. Unfortunately, this kind of derailed me from forcing him to explain more about the black suits. Seeing him in this new light, I crossed the room over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He wasn’t that much taller than me, and it was comfortable to reach up like that.
“You said you asked to be a vampire,” I said. “Is that because you thought it would make you a better hunter?”
He almost growled out his answer. “It does make me a better hunter.”
“I’m really sorry about your mom.”
He looked at me with surprise, but then it melted into resignation. “I guess I don’t know why I thought Ray might keep that part to himself.”
“No. He and I are pretty close. But I’m guessing you know all about that. Were you and your mom the same way?”
He didn’t answer for a while. I could tell he was tense beneath my touch, so I let my hand drop to my side.
“Yeah. At least, we used to be. When I was your age? Yeah, I was just as close to my mom as you are to Ray.”
When I was your age?
Ouch.
I kind of liked to think Richard and I were peers, but I guess he could technically vote and join the army and buy cigarettes and get an autopsy and everything, while I was still sixteen and still technically alive.
“What happened?” I asked. “Why weren’t you as close later on?”
“She wanted to quit.”
“Quit being a hunter?”
“Yeah. She said we would never be safe as long as she did it.”
I had to think twice about this. I was starting to think Richard and I were two sides to the same coin, almost like he was the male version of me, but this put a kink in that interpretation. Even though I was kind of ashamed to admit it, I don’t know for sure if I’d be crushed to hear my dad say he was quitting the biz. I say ashamed not because it’s a bad thing, per se, but because my reasons were childish and selfish. For one thing, if he quit, nothing would take us away from Campville. For another, Abby might actually want to live near us.
A practical little voice inside my head reminded me why we had hunters in the first place by adding, Well, as long as Campville wasn’t wiped off the map by black suits, that is.
“You didn’t want her to quit?”
“No,” he said through gritted teeth. “For now let’s leave it at that. I’m…” he paused as he fled into the relative darkness of the hallway that led to the bedrooms and bathroom. “I’m not trying to be rude. It’s just, nowadays my emotions have a tendency to get out of control fast.” His voice was dead calm, but I could sense the tension behind it. If he had less self-control I was sure he’d be yelling or dripping with sarcasm at this point. But he just said, “I don’t like to let that happen.”
“I understand,” I said, and it was almost true. I didn’t know what it was like to be a vampire, of course, but I’d known a few in my time. I thought again of Victoria and how much I missed her. “I knew a vampire once who told me about that. A woman about my dad’s age. Well, I mean, you know, when she died she was. She was a good friend to me and to my dad, even though he’d never admit it, and sometimes she just had to get away from us. I never took it personally.”
Never might have been a stretch, but I didn’t feel that moment was the one to be splitting hairs.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m going to go lie down. Just shout if you need something.”
I watched him disappear into my bedroom. I wasn’t sure how I should feel about that. Annoyed that he hadn’t asked, or glad that he’d chosen my bed and not my dad’s. There was something kind of exciting about just knowing he was in there, lying on the same comforter I slept under, smelling whatever scent my body had left behind with his heightened sense of smell. I know how that sounds… but what can I say?
XVII
I had homework to do, and while I had to laugh a bit at how mundane it seemed, how utterly unimportant in light of other events, I couldn’t really think of anything else to do. And anyway, I wasn’t really all that interested in flunking high school.
I was actually not having as hard of a time focusing as I might have guessed, and I was making good headway on The Great Gatsby when I saw a woman coming up the drive, headed for my door.
My pulse went up right away, even though she looked normal enough. She had long blond hair that looked dyed and a skinny waist with big hips underneath. A button-up shirt had been tucked into her pants, flattering her figure. The doorbell rang, and I looked toward my bedroom. No way Richard was still asleep. Vampire hearing would have his brain proverbially barking like a lap dog with a stranger coming to the door.
I didn’t go get him though; it’s not a good idea for normal people to get a good look at vampires. If the person is
n’t very observant, there probably won’t be much of a problem, but if they are… Well, it’s just better not to risk somebody becoming suspicious.
Trusting that he was listening from my bedroom, ready to offer whatever assistance I might need, I answered the door.
“Hi, can I help you?”
“I think so,” the woman said, slick and cool as ice. “Have you seen my boys around?”
“I’m sorry, your… boys?”
Her gaze arrested mine. I couldn’t look away from her piercing eyes. “Yes,” her voice went low. “My boys. They wear black suits. I think you and your father ran into them yesterday. Where was that?”
“On Lark Avenue,” I said automatically.
She smiled. “What exactly were they doing?”
“They were trying to kill an old woman.”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.”
I let her in. I felt weird, but there weren’t really any major alarm bells ringing.
“Would you like to sit at the dining room table?” I asked her.
“I’ll be asking the questions. Alright?”
“Yes.”
I shut the door and we stayed standing where we were, just inside.
“How were they going to kill the old woman?” she asked me.
“They were going to ask her a series of questions, suck the life out of her somehow, and then they were going to slit her throat.”
“How interesting. How do you know this?”
Faintly, dimly, something like a red flag raised in my head. To answer her question, I’d need to tell her about my father’s profession, but I couldn’t do that, right? I couldn’t tell anyone he was a hunter. It was dangerous. But at that moment, I only knew this the same way I knew there were a lot of atoms in the sun: the knowledge was like a number in my head, totally devoid of any emotional connection.