by D. R. Perry
She drains her cup, then stands. “I’ve got no stomach to stay and chat while—” She snaps her fingers, as though searching for something other than the right word she doesn't want to use even though nothing else in the English language fits Frankie. For once, she fails. “He remains. Please contact me when you’ve no longer got this houseguest.”
My sire leaves without another word. Also, without even putting my favorite cup into the sink. And she had the nerve to complain about the dude who’s asleep. Except he’s not sleeping. Not anymore.
Frankie hasn’t moved his body, only opened his eyes. It’s a bit creepy, the way they follow me. Well, no. That’s not really true because this reminds me of Scooby Doo and other cheesy horror or mystery shows with the goofy paintings that have people hiding behind them. And I’m a vampire, so I’ve got no reason to get creeped out by something so campy. It's supposed to be other people getting creeped out by me.
As much as I try to do something constructive with the biological changes that make me into a monster, I still am one. Only technically because I still feel guilty and say sorry when I screw up. But anyway, being a monster means that when it comes to dealing with potentially dangerous humans, I’m allowed to act totally fearless. I've really got to start owning that.
“So, Frankie,” I say. “What the fuck is up with you, man?”
He doesn’t reply or even blink, but his mouth drops open, and he lets out the most heinous croaking belch I’ve ever heard or smelled in either of my lives. It’s as though with one eructation, he turned the atmosphere in my apartment into a fish market operating in late afternoon during the hottest day of the year.
I wrinkle my nose. My eyes would water, too, but since I’m a vampire, that doesn’t happen so much. “Let’s get you into the bathroom, buddy. Can you stand?”
“Tryin’.” His feet are on the floor, but when he tries putting weight on them, the rest of his body threatens to follow the bottom of him down.
I get an arm under the poor unsteady guy and remember that tendency Frankie has to be off-balance. It’s puzzling as all get out, too. How does he function if he has no center of gravity? And whoever heard of a human who defies the laws of physics this way. Or at least seems to. I’m not well-versed in the scientific kind of laws, just the kind police enforce. Maybe it has something to do with what happened to him, the bad mojo. Or the smell. Or both.
One good thing about living in a studio apartment is that it takes only a handful of steps to get from one side of it to the other. Frankie’s in the bathroom before I can lose my balance too and tumble us both on to the floor. Once he’s in there, the man does the most natural thing in the world for a human.
He drops trou.
I turn away because it’s a dick move to stare at a dude while he’s on the can. And also out of a sense of superstition. Last month, my unlife-threatening troubles began with a man in distress while on the john. Supernatural creatures don’t generally believe in coincidences.
Even though I give the guy a little privacy, that bad luck feeling has overruled any ideas I might have had about walking out and shutting the door. This means my ears get a front-and-center listening experience as he does his business.
My inside voice doesn’t break free with any of those thoughts, thank goodness. When Frankie’s done, I hear a flush and a rustle of clothes. Thinking it’s safe to face him again, I do. But as it turns out, that’s a bad idea.
Frankie’s in the altogether. By that I mean, he’s wearing his birthday suit. Catching a breeze around his knees. Bare-ass naked. His clothes sit in a sad and faded black heap. I look only at his face because the last thing I want to see is Esther’s uncle’s skinny backside.
I’m about to exit stage left, but he groans in genuine pain. His hand is on the side of the shower, and his eyes are wide with some sort of hurt and red-rimmed with an impending deluge of utter misery. And that’s when I see them—the marks and the other stuff on his body, things that don’t make sense.
And that’s why I do everything in my power to stop my naturally inquisitive mind from going down any dark paths. Instead, I let my body act, reaching out to turn the shower on and draw the curtain after the poor young man gets in. I pick up his discarded clothes and leave the bathroom because no matter where I go in my apartment, I’m still close by in case he falls down or whatever. I’m fast enough to get in and help him, even by vampire standards. Turns out, I’m speedier than all of my vamp peers, and even some of the elders.
As I bag his shirt, pants, shorts, and socks in a large evidence sack, my brain turns back on now that Frankie’s busy in the shower. It’s easier to think about what’s so horribly wrong with him now that I don’t have to look at it. He’s in rough shape, and it has nothing at all to do with inebriation from alcohol. At least that’s what I gather, so I sit on my bed, trying to take stock of everything I saw.
Half-inch cuts covered most of the poor guy’s belly, upper thighs, stripes across his back, and some of his chest. A slimy glistening substance either covered or oozed out of them, deep purple where blood should have made a ruddy tint. That's probably what was in his hair, the stuff I mistook for gel. The indigo slime almost completely covered Frankie across his groin. Gunmetal gray scales clung to that, some sticking either into or out of his flesh. And all of this clung to his body without much smearing even through the clothes and his misadventures in the studio and on the way here.
Snagging my notebook out of my nightstand, I jot all of that down. Since I’m so new to the idea that anything other than regular people even exist, this is stuff I’ll have to look into with those in the know. But I think I understand now why everyone’s flipping out about poor Frankie. And I’m not likely to get far unless I can find some friendlier sources.
Whatever left him such a mess is a type of creature so universally reviled, both vampires and werewolves are reluctant to even speak words describing or naming it. Either that or there's some sort of compulsion. Or maybe a little of both. Out of my three closest supernatural contacts, only Esther seems remotely tolerant. And she still kicked her own uncle out of her working space the moment she had the chance.
So, I either need to chat up a magician who’s not busy cooking up spells, or a vampire with less prejudice against even the victims of whatever the slime-covered scale monster is. I grab my phone and send out a text. It’s getting near dawn, so I don’t expect a response, but that’s fine by me. I don’t want to ask directly about Frankie’s trauma while he’s here recovering from it, probably posing both stupid and upsetting questions in the process.
I put the notebook away and my phone on the charger. Then, I rummage through my dresser and the coat closet, trying to find a change of clothes for the supernatural rape victim trying to get clean again in my shower. At least he’s leaner than I am so everything should fit. Once I have a shirt, gym shorts, boxers, and socks set on the bathroom vanity, I sit down to drink more of the heated blood from the coffee maker.
It’s going to be a long day.
Chapter Five
The first thing I do when Frankie emerges from the bathroom, fully dressed in a t-shirt and my now-totally-useless gym shorts, is offer him my bed so he can catch some winks. Instead, he lowers himself into the seat across from me at the little breakfast table, rubs his eyes, and mumbles something about not wanting to owe a vampire because he knows we trade in favors.
“Look, Frankie.” I set the cup down and lean on the table, striking my best good-cop pose. “The whole fangs and blood gig is new to me, but I’m an experienced investigator. I’m in business with my partners for plain old cash to help people like you, no vague future favors required.”
“People like me?”
“Yeah. Folks who are just going about their business and get caught in a supernatural shitshow.”
Frankie puts his hands on the table, palm up. On his left wrist are a web of scars; horizontal, vertical, diagonal. A semicolon, stark black, is inked over the convergence of the attem
pts he survived. He takes a deep breath and hangs his head. Tears rain on the table’s green faux marbleized veneer.
“Been caught my whole life.”
I’m silent, unable to think of something comforting to say. Part of this comes from the fact that I had a good life coming up as a regular mortal kid. The other part is straight out of Catholic dogma. Suicide’s a mortal sin, and I can’t imagine any good Catholic attempting it once, let alone as many times as there are scars on Frankie’s wrist.
But he’s Esther’s uncle. That means he’s probably Jewish like her. I’m not well-versed on the nature of sin according to the older faith, but that doesn’t matter. What’s important is that I stop making assumptions about Frankie’s situation and just give him the space to speak. Or breathe, cry, or scream if he has to.
I burn blood, using my vampiric speed to nab the box of Kleenex Scott left on the kitchen counter last time he was over. Once they’re on the table next to Frankie, I gulp down the remainder of the warm blood in my mug. I’m going to need a refill now but wait until he reaches out with one trembling hand to ease a tissue past the plastic barrier on top of the box.
Papery rustles echo in my ears as I carry my cup back to the coffee maker. The slow, deliberate action gives him time to compose himself with relative privacy. I pour the last of the warmed blood into the mug, then get a new bag from the fridge along with a bottle of water, another one of Scott’s recent additions.
This whole situation must have me more shaken up than I expected it to because I almost pour the water in the carafe instead of my bagged blood. Once I correct the impending mistake, I sit back down. When I place the water within Frankie’s reach, his left hand shoots out, grabbing my wrist.
“There’s nothing to investigate.” He looks up, amber eyes gleaming from above his hook nose and under his mop of freshly washed jet curls. He reminds me of my best friend, Maury Weintraub, about ten years ago. I realize Frankie isn't much older than Scott, not some strung-out guy in his late twenties. More like of age to enlist in the Army but not to buy a beer.
I don’t ask him for clarification or try to naysay him. Instead, I go with the hunch that comes at me from that fleeting moment of recognition. Some people need prompting, structure, interrogation. But my instinct tells me Frankie isn’t one of those. He just needs a chance to say his piece, something I’ve got the suspicion he hasn’t had for most of his life.
He opens his mouth again. And of course, that’s when my phone beeps. I ignore it, keeping my gaze on Frankie, my wrist unflinching in his grip. Even though this guy isn’t a Hallmark movie tween who lost her pet, my desire to help is just as strong for him as it was for Leora. I realize at that moment, I don’t even care if I have to work his case alone in order to do it without pay. He deserves to have someone on his side for whatever my sympathy might be worth compared to older and more experienced vampires.
“Listen. I knew my whole life that this would end up happening to me. Everybody did. In fact, they made a deal on purpose so it’d happen.”
“Who’s they?”
“Mother and Father.”
I search my mind for any scrap of information it might harbor about magical families. The only thing it comes up with is that there are three kinds, and one of them is Alchemy. There’s nothing I can ask or even say, so I wait again.
“That’s just the way things are in our house. It's the Pickering way. Always has been, for as far back as memory goes. One mundane son gets sacrificed every generation to keep up our end of the bargain. And it's not a blood sacrifice, either. They take us for breeding. Almost every time, they kill us afterward, too.”
“So, you’re not a magician like your niece?”
“No, I’m completely normal, except for my upbringing.” A throaty sound somewhere between a bark and a chuckle escapes his throat. “It took me years to figure out that my family’s twisted as a cyclone. Not normal. They treated me like an appliance. I can’t even remember them hugging me. They already sold me to a gang of perverted monster women, so why bother getting attached? Today, they refused to take me back when I ended up surviving. There’s nothing you can do for me. I’m stuck, like I said before. Always have been.”
But if that were true, poor Frankie would have been in his grave a long time ago instead of battling through his depression despite knowing his eventual fate. There’s got to be something he lived for. No. Not a thing. A person he's protecting.
“Maybe I can help someone else, though.” I go with a hunch, reaching out with my free hand to run my pointer finger along the tattoo on his wrist. “So. You did everything you could to escape your fate. But at one point, you quit that. Why?”
I expect a one-word answer, a name.
“Levi. My kid brother.”
“He’s got no magic, just like you.”
“He’s only thirteen. All we had was each other for his whole life. I wanted to off myself so bad, meet death on my own terms. But I couldn’t let it be him instead of me. And that’s what would have happened. If I’d succ—”
“Completed. Completed suicide, Frankie. There’s no such thing as success in that.”
“What are you, Catholic?”
“Yeah.” I grin just wide enough to let him see the tips of my fangs. “Well, I was. No more church for little old undead me.”
Frankie blinks. The dregs of his tears seep out at the corners of his eyes. Then, they multiply. Finally, he throws his head back and guffaws. He’s still got my arm in a vise grip, so I shake right along with him. We're laughing in tandem.
Some pain cuts us so deep through the heart after the fact. At the point where we just can’t bleed anymore. And that’s when we’ve got no choice but to laugh. I was there just over a month ago, the last time I tried to go into my church. But I went through that mostly by myself, unable to tell my parents or friends, and surrounded by older vamps who assumed I’d screw up and get myself killed. But Frankie shouldn’t have to go through his physical and mental shitstorm the way I went through my spiritual one.
He takes a few hitching breaths after the fit passes. “Tino, you might not be a Lamb, but you’re a pariah just like me. Outcast. Unclean. Alone.” I’ve got no idea what he means by “Lamb” yet, but that doesn’t matter. I understand exactly what he’s saying and the fundamental element he’s missing.
“Wrong on one count. I’m not alone. And neither are you. Not now and not going forward, either.” God help me, I’m making a new friend. Thought that sort of thing stopped happening after college.
“I guess you learn something new every day.” Frankie sniffles. He lets go of my wrist to snag another tissue.
“I guess so.” I grin, without the fangs this time.
“Did it hurt?”
“You mean, getting turned?” I blink. This wasn’t the question I expected, and nobody’s thought of asking since it happened. “Yeah, when her teeth went in. It was like bee stings. I got dizzy, passed out, woke up here. Got the facts of unlife talk from the sire, plus an apology. She was ordered to do it. And she’s still a pain in my neck. You know what’s fucked up? It hurts more that I can’t go to church than it did when she bit me.” I take a breath, hoping my light description doesn’t spook him. “How about you?”
“I—” Frankie blows his nose. “When they told me about it, that actually hurt more than when it happened.” He glances at his tattoo and the scars under it. “They always treated me differently from my little sister, Sarah. She's the middle child, the one who got the magic. I was five. That’s when they laid it on me. The fact that I’m the Lamb this time, the sacrifice. I’m surprised the monsters left me alive. So were Mother and Father. Doesn’t usually happen that way.”
His revelations are halting, disorganized. Natural for someone who’s never spoken aloud about their damage. I’ve had practice. I’m hoping Frankie will give himself time to get his own. But as we gaze into each other’s eyes, I understand that his entire existence is precarious. Supernatural beings like their m
asks and will kill to keep their privacy. Now that he’s talking, Frankie needs what little protection I can offer. But he’s got to agree to it first.
“So, are you going to let me help you?”
“Don’t know.” Frankie’s mouth stretches in a cavernous yawn. The whites of his eyes are veined with red. “Should sleep on it.”
“Do what you’ve got to.” I glance up at the clock above the kitchen sink. “The sun’s coming up. I can’t make sure you get out of the building safely.” I stand, head to the curtains over the closet door, and open them, revealing the bed. “So you should stay here.”
“Okay.” He shuffles past me and gets in. Frankie’s breathing turns long and even only seconds after it hits the pillow. I grab my notebook and close the curtains to let him sleep.
I jot down all the new information before I forget it. After that, I need to clear my head, so I wash the dishes. Two mugs and the carafe aren’t much, so when that’s done, it’s my turn to shower. I grab some pajamas and bring them into the bathroom with me. The notebook, too. My guest knows about vampires, but I’m not sure how much. Even though it’s all in Latin, I can’t assume he hasn't studied that language. The notebook has some sensitive information in it. That’s an understatement.
I didn’t get too messy in the tunnels we chased Sparky through, which is a relief. But when I take off my shirt, I notice a stain on the back. It’s slimy and glistens, even though the fabric is dark gray. That patch bothers me, so I run out to grab another evidence bag. It can’t hurt to have that checked too. Even if it’s got nothing to do with Frankie’s problem, it might give us insight into Leora’s.
While I’m out there in the main room, my phone beeps again. I bring it into the bathroom, where the steam from my shower obscures the screen. Oh, well. Whatever it is, it can wait until I’m done.
Vampires don’t need showers, but every vamp I’ve ever had the chance to ask loves them. It’s about the only way we can change our body temperature. Some vampires can do things like fake a blush. One of them, the amazing Maya, taught me how that little parlor trick works. But it’s not the same as a shower hot enough to make you feel a just a little bit human for ten minutes or so.