by J. R. Rain
“For protecting a girl?”
He smiled gently. “For fighting, Ms. Moon. We have a strict policy on that. The other boys will be severely dealt with, trust me. But let’s let things cool off for a few days. Your son has caused quite an uproar. And, of course, there could be legal consequences.”
A few minutes later, as Anthony and I exited administration offices, I couldn’t help but notice everyone staring after us. The principal, secretaries, students and teachers.
Staring at the freaks.
Chapter Thirty
We were at Cold Stone Creamery.
The place was empty. No real surprise there since it was the end of January, still cold even for southern California. Of course, the cold weather didn’t stop the sun from searing my skin as I dashed across the parking lot. Now, as Anthony hungrily ate his bowl of ice cream, I sat huddled as far away from the windows as possible.
“I’m sorry, Mommy,” said Anthony, in between mouthfuls of ice cream, a masterful concoction of chocolate ice cream, brownies, and Snicker bars, all prepared on a cold stone which, apparently, made the ice cream magical. I wouldn’t know, but I think the brownie and Snicker bar had something to do with it.
“Sorry for what?” I asked.
“For fighting.”
“Are you sorry for helping the girl?”
“No. She was crying.”
“Are you sorry for hurting the boy?”
He thought about that. There was ice cream on his nose. “Well, yes. I didn’t mean to hurted him so bad.”
“Maybe you can apologize to him someday for hurting him so bad then.”
“Okay, Mommy.”
He went back to his ice cream, which was nearly gone. How he could eat ice cream so fast, I hadn’t a clue. I distinctly recalled a little something called brain freeze. Anthony, apparently, powered through it.
“Tammy tells me that you can wrestle seven boys at once.”
“Sometimes ten.”
I think my eyes bulged a little, but Anthony was too busy dragging his plastic spoon along the inside edge of the bowl to see my reaction. His little face was the picture of concentration. Ice cream was serious business.
“That’s a lot of boys against just one boy, don’t you think?”
He shrugged. “I guess. I dunno. Maybe I’m just stronger. Can I have another ice cream?”
“One’s enough. I’m making dinner soon.”
He stuck out his lower lip the way he does when he wants something. He hardly looked like a kid who just sent the school bully to the hospital.
I said, “Do you like being so strong?”
He gave me a half-assed shrug, since he was still officially in pouting mode. “It’s kinda cool, I guess.” Then he began poking his fingers through the Styrofoam bowl and wiggling them at himself, then at me. “Ice cream worms!”
I took the bowl from him. His fingers, I saw, were now covered in chocolate ice cream. He pouted some more.
I said, “Do you wonder why you’re so strong?”
He shrugged, though some of his pouting steam was dissipating. “Not really.”
I looked at my son. He was still quite little for his age. Too little to be beating up three school punks. Too little to be wrestling a whole group of kids. His dark hair was thick and still a little mussed, no doubt from the fight. He showed no signs of having fought three older boys, although he had put one in the hospital. I suspected a legend was being born about him as we sat here at Cold Stone, whispered throughout school. His life, I suspected, was about to forever change.
No, it changed seven months ago, I thought. When you changed him.
When I saved him, goddammit!
I took a deep, shuddering breath. Presently, Anthony was using his fingertip and a few chocolate drips to make shapes on the table. Circles. Happy faces. Sad faces. Such an innocent boy.
What have I done?
“Anthony,” I said. “I need to talk to you about something very important.”
He looked up, terrified. “But you said you weren’t mad, Mommy.”
“I’m not mad, baby. This is about something else.”
“About Tammy?”
“What about Tammy?”
“Because she smells so bad?”
And he started giggling, so much so that he passed gas, too. This led to more giggling and a scowl from the Cold Stone manager. And when a wave of gassy foulness hit me, I leaped up from the table, grabbed his hand and we made a mad dash to the minivan, where Anthony continued giggling. Myself included.
Laughing and burning alive.
Chapter Thirty-one
Anthony knew the drill.
He knew that Mommy had to have the shades drawn in the car. He also knew that Mommy tended to shriek when sunlight hit her directly, so as I faced him in the front seat, as I pulled my knees up and kept my arms out of any direct sunlight, he didn’t think much of it. Mommy, after all, was sick.
Or so he thought.
It’s time, I thought. Time to tell him the truth.
Easier said than done. At least eight different times I opened my mouth to speak, and at least eight different times nothing came out. While I sat there opening and closing my mouth, Anthony played his Gameboy. There was still chocolate on his nose.
I pushed through the nerves and fear and got my mouth working. “Anthony, baby, I need to talk to you about something important—and, no, it’s not about Tammy’s B.O.”
He giggled a little, then looked over at me, suddenly serious. “I’m sorry about those boys, Mommy.”
“I know you are, honey. Put the Gameboy down. I want to talk to you about something serious, something related to what happened today.”
“Related?” he asked, scrunching up his little face.
“It means ‘connected.’”
“Like how relatives are connected.”
“Yes, that’s right. You see, Mommy is...” Except I couldn’t finish the sentence. I paused and thought long and hard about the wisdom of continuing it. I paused so long that Anthony looked up at me, squinting with just one eye the way he does sometimes.
He needs to know. He has to know. It’s only fair. He can’t grow up not knowing. But he’s so young. So young...
“Are you okay, Mommy? Is the sun hurting you bad?”
“I’m okay, baby.” I took in some air to calm myself, then plunged forward. “Anthony, I’m not like other mommies.”
He nodded. “I know. Because you can’t go in the sun.”
“That’s part of it, honey. You see, I’m different in other ways, too. I’m stronger than other mommies.”
“Stronger?”
I raised my arm and flexed my bicep, although I don’t think much of anything flexed. “Yes, stronger. In fact, I’m stronger than most men, too.”
“You mean strong like me,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Well, duh, Mom. I’m only your kid. Kids have the same stuff their mommies have. But only half of the daddy’s.”
Now I was confused. “Only half of their daddy’s?”
“Duh, Mom. Kids come from their mommies, not their daddies.”
“I see,” I said. “Very logical.”
Anthony nodded as if he’d spoken the truth. Then he turned to me, squinting with one eye again. “Is Tammy strong, too?”
“No. She’s not like us.”
“Why not?”
I shifted in my seat. I wanted to look away. I wanted to avoid his innocent stare. How do you look a little boy in the eye and tell him what I was about to tell him? I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. He had to know. He had to. I believed that with all my heart and soul. My dead heart and damned soul.
I said, “Do you remember when you were sick last year?”
My son nodded absently. Mercifully, he looked away and was now playing with the zipper to his jacket.
“Well, last year you were very, very sick, so sick that Mommy had to make you stronger.”
“Why?”
/> “So that you could fight the sickness.”
“Oh, cool.” He stopped playing with the zipper. He stared at it for a few seconds, then his little face scrunched up the way it does just before he asks a question. “But how did you make me stronger?”
The question I knew he would inevitably ask. Baby steps, I reminded myself. He needed only to be made aware that he was different...and why he was different. Baby steps for now. More later, when he’s older.
“I gave you a part of me.”
“What part?”
Looking into those round eyes, those red lips, those chubby cheeks...cheeks that were rapidly turning sharper and sharper...I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell him that he fed from my wrist.
Not yet, I thought. Someday. Perhaps someday soon. Not now. Baby steps.
Instead, I tapped my heart. “I gave you love, baby. All the love I had in the world.”
“And it made me stronger?”
“It made you strong like me.”
“Wow.”
“But this is our secret, okay?”
“Why?”
“Because we’re a little different than other people.”
“Can I still go in the sun?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But how are we different?”
“Well, we are stronger than most people.”
“Oh, cool.”
“But it’s our secret, okay? The way Superman keeps his identity secret.”
“And Batman and Spider-Man!”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Oh, my gosh! Are we like...superheroes?”
I thought about that. I thought of my son taking care of the school bullies. I thought of myself taking care of Johnny and his gang.
I nodded. “Yeah, a little bit.”
“Oh, cool!” He paused and cocked his head a little. “But will I ever be normal again?”
His question hit me by surprise. Maybe I was dreading hearing it. Maybe I had hoped he would never ask it. I looked at him, then looked away. I rubbed my hands together, then ran my fingers through my hair. My son, I knew, would never be normal again. Ever. I was suddenly overwhelmed with what I had done to him.
“Why are you crying, Mommy?”
“I’m sorry, baby.”
“Sorry for what?”
So innocent. So sweet. He didn’t deserve this. Shit. I started rocking in my seat as my son watched me with wide, concerned eyes. He started patting me on the arm the way he does when he’s nervous.
“I’m sorry, Mommy. I’m sorry I made you cry. I didn’t mean to.”
I covered my face and did my best to hide my tears, the deep pain that seemed to want to burst from my chest. I held it in. Or tried to.
“I’m so sorry, baby.”
“It’s okay, Mommy.”
And he kept telling me it would be okay, over and over, as I rocked in my seat, weeping into my hands.
Chapter Thirty-two
On the way home from Cold Stone creamery, I was certain we had picked up a tail.
It was a white cargo van with tinted windows. It had pulled out behind us as we exited the Cold Stone parking lot, then had dropped back four or five car lengths.
Where it held steady.
Until we were about halfway to my house, when it peeled away suddenly. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, except that my inner alarm system had begun buzzing steadily.
A block later, another van appeared behind me. A blue cargo van. Tinted windows. Again five car lengths behind. They were using a tag-team system. I was sure of it. If done right, it’s a system that’s nearly impossible to detect by the mark.
Except when your mark is a vampire with a highly sensitive inner alarm system. Except when your mark is an ex-federal agent trained to pick up tails.
I made a few random turns, and it kept pace. Anthony turned and looked at me curiously but didn’t say anything. Mommy was weird, after all.
I led the van to a quieter street, one with only a single lane, and soon it was directly behind me. I didn’t recognize the guy behind the wheel.
Soon, we stopped at a stop sign. Another thing I’d learned to do: reading license plates in my rearview mirror.
Backward.
* * *
At home, I ran the plate.
The owner was A-1 Retro Services out of New Jersey. No address. I did a Google search on A-1 Retro Services and got nothing.
This might seem like a dead end, but it wasn’t. It was proof that I had, indeed been followed. In particular, by someone who knew how to stay anonymous. Not hard to do, actually, but it did take some creative accounting.
I stared down at my screen, drummed my fingers, let the information soak in. Ultimately, the question remained: why was I being followed?
I thought about that as I sat back in my office chair and listened to Anthony playing something called Skylanders on his Xbox. Tammy was still at school. I’d arranged with her best friend’s mom to pick her up as well. These days, there were only so many times I could dash out the door and into the sunlight.
Either my condition was getting progressively worse, or I was becoming more monstrous.
Or maybe they were one and the same.
My inner alarm hadn’t stopped jangling since we’d gotten home; now, it was just one long, continuous buzz inside my inner ear. Enough to rattle me and keep me on edge.
It’s not uncommon for a P.I. to be followed. Granted, it certainly doesn’t happen as much as it might in movies or books, but it can happen. The last time I’d been followed was seven months ago, by a handsome, blond-haired vampire hunter with issues. He was last seen heading west on a Carnival Cruise ship to Hawaii, courtesy of yours truly.
So who was out there now? Who was watching me? And why?
The two vans had been driven by experienced surveillance drivers, working in tandem with each other. Now, private eyes piss a lot of people off. Especially cheating husbands and wives.
Except cheating husbands and wives did not use an advanced tag-team surveillance technique.
Down the hallway, in his bedroom, my son laughed loudly. Maybe I shouldn’t let him play video games. Maybe a good mother would have punished her son for being suspended from school.
But I just couldn’t justify punishing him for helping a girl. Punishing him for doing something right.
The inner alarm continued to buzz, so much so that I nearly yelled, “Stop!”
Instead, I got up and paced.
After a few laps, I realized the warning bells were only getting louder.
Jesus, what was happening? What was going to happen?
I didn’t know.
Although my psychic abilities had grown, I still could not predict the future. And as I paced my living room, I paused twice to glance out the big living room window that overlooked the front lawn and the cul-de-sac leading up to my house. The cul-de-sac was empty. The street beyond was empty, other than two teenagers sitting on a neighbor’s fence, talking and texting.
Random cars were parked here and there.
No sign of any cargo vans.
The buzzing between my ears sounded like a swarm of gnats circling my head. I nearly swatted at them, like King Kong swatting at airplanes on top of the Empire State Building.
I forced myself to sit on my couch, forced myself to take deep breaths, to calm down. I focused on my breathing.
There. Easy now. Calm down.
And from this state of semi-tranquility, I closed my eyes and was able to cast my thoughts out like a net. An ever-widening net that trawled through my house, through the different rooms, and out into the back yard—
Where I saw two men creeping through my back yard.
They were both armed with crossbows.
I gasped and snapped back into my body, just as glass broke from down the hallway.
Anthony’s room.
Chapter Thirty-three
I stumbled off the couch, disoriented and dizzy, braced myself on a wall, then
hurtled through my small house.
“Anthony!” I screamed.
I was in my son’s room in a blink, and what I saw took a second or two to absorb. The bedroom window was broken. The sound of running feet. My son standing there in the center of his room, breathing hard, fists clenched.
“It’s okay, Mommy. They’re gone now.”
I looked my son over wildly, then hurried over to the broken window. Our house abuts the Pep Boys parking lot, separated by our backyard fence. From inside the house, I could just see a white van peeling away from the fence, zigzagging briefly.
Sweet Jesus.
I considered pursuing, but there was no way in hell was I leaving my son. I noted the broken glass wasn’t inside the bedroom, as I had expected. The glass was outside, littering the dry grass, sparkling there under the last of the setting sun. A sun that was even now burning me alive.
I fought through it, grimacing, trying to piece together what had happened. The glass was broken out, which meant...
And then I saw it, a few feet away. Anthony’s Xbox controller was lying in the grass, too, broken into two or three pieces.
He had thrown it. Through the window. I looked back at my son. But he wasn’t looking at me. He simply stood in the center of the room, fists clenched, looking out through the broken window.
“What happened, Anthony?”
“There were two of them,” he said calmly. He did not sound like my little boy. He sounded years older. “I saw them climb over the wall. One of them looked in the window.”
“And you threw your controller at him.” My voice, still shocked, was now full of something close to awe. “Through the window?”
He nodded. “It hit him in the face. He screamed and fell down. When he got up, he was bleeding bad. I think some glass was in his face. Maybe his nose was broken.”
Holy shit.
“Then both of them ran off again. They jumped the wall, and that’s when you came in.”
My God.
“You need to get out of the sun, Mommy.”