Courage Runs Red

by W. J. May

  “No!” Never. Over her dead body would she let a cop ask her dad about that night. The thought terrified her. “What’s your deal?” Kallie straightened and forced air through her nose. Whatever fear she had felt just a moment ago turned into irritation. “Why the interest in my dad?” Even if Liam was cute, he was still a cop and she had no interest in sharing her family. It was none of his business. Hands in fists, she pressed them against her hips. Suddenly she’d had enough.

  Liam pointed to her right foot. “You’re about to tap that foot into a pile of dog crap.”

  She shot a glance down and moved away from the small bomb. She ended up closer to him.

  He moved nearer to her as well. His blue eyes reflected bright against the street light above them and the darkness around them. “Tell me the truth. Tell me what you know.”

  Instinctively Kallie swallowed and then wet her lips. She had the strangest feeling Liam wanted to kiss her – or some kind of intimate touch. The trembling deep in her belly told her she wanted him to. She forced herself to blink and break his gaze. Answers. Get the answers. Protect your dad. Reason broke the moment of insanity. Had he planned to distract her? “Can we not talk about the accident?” She met his intense gaze again, this time with her own determination. “What do you even care? No laws were broken. That’s why they’re called accidents.”

  Whatever moment had been there a second ago was now gone.

  Liam stepped back, his eyebrows crushed together. He quickly hid the confusion on his face. “I-I apologize. It isn’t my place to pry.” He scratched the back of his head. “How about I keep my mouth shut and just walk you home? I won’t say a word.”

  She stared at him, trying to figure him out. Part of her thought he was flirting, the other thought he was just playing detective. She couldn’t make heads or tails of him. “It’s—”

  “Unless you ask me a question. Then I’ll answer it because it’s rude to ignore someone.”

  She laughed. “Why do I get the feeling you are a persistent little bugger?”

  He grinned at her, a sexy kind-of-embarrassed grin. “I don’t think I’ve ever been called a bugger, but the persistent thing… I can’t deny.”

  The tension in the air dissipated. They began walking again and Kallie quickened her pace to try and keep up with Liam. She was nearly jogging when she finally stopped racing. “Do you mind if we slow down a bit?” she huffed.

  Liam glanced back in surprise. “Sorry, I didn’t realize.”

  She dropped her head to the side and forced her breath to slow her racing heart. “You’re not even winded.”

  Liam shrugged. “It must be the running thing.” He carefully set his pace equal to hers.

  An odd thought crossed her mind but she tried to push it aside because it didn’t make sense. He couldn’t be like her father. His eyes were different.

  Chapter 5

  Kallie shook her head, as if it would clear the crazy notion from her thoughts.

  “Are you all right?” Liam’s hand slipped out to touch her.

  She moved just out of his reach and pretended to stretch. She didn’t want to know if his touch would be cold. She tried to remember if she had noticed anything different back in his office and couldn’t come up with anything that seemed out of the ordinary. The man liked to work the night shift. He was young and bad things tended to happen at night. It made sense. It wasn’t strange. “I’m fine. You just walk really fast.” She smiled and forced a laugh. “Maybe I should have brought my running shoes.”

  Liam was quiet as they walked for the next while. Her house was about a forty-minute walk from the police station, and they were already over halfway there. As they continued, she relaxed and enjoyed the view of him from her peripheral vision. He was tall, but not too tall. Muscular without being bulking and bodybuilder material. His dark hair made her hands itch to run her fingers through it.

  He pointed as they passed a street not far from her house. “That’s my street.”

  “It is?” She had never seen him around the neighbourhood. It surprised her. He lived about a ten minute walk from her house. “Which house?”

  “Are you preparing to stalk me?” Liam joked.

  “No.” She was horrified at the thought. She waved her hands. “I just meant I like walking. I was curious which house it was.”

  “It’s the one slightly set back from the road.”

  “With the old corvette under a tarp?”

  He nodded, clearly surprised. “Yah, that’s it.”

  She knew his house. It was a ranch style bungalow with the shutters always drawn. Nice house, the lawn was immaculate.

  “How did you know it was a corvette?”

  “The shape. My dad loves old cars. Your corvette reminds me of the bat-mobile.” She tilted her head. “You’re not some vigilante, are you? Pretending to be Batman at night? Do you have a butler? Is his name Alfred?”

  Liam chuckled and the sound made Kallie shiver in a good way. “No Alfred I’m afraid. Just me.”

  “How long have you been there?”

  “I’ve been there about three years.” Liam gave her a sheepish grin. “I’m a bit of a recluse when I’m not at work. I guess I should get out more.”

  “What do you do when you’re not saving the city from its vicious criminals?” She pictured him at a bar on his own, picking up a woman with just a bat of his eyelashes.

  “I used to play video games. Now they’ve, uh, kind of lost their appeal.” He shrugged. “What about you? What do you do when you’re not at school?”

  “Hang with my friends. Dance. Write.”

  Liam pressed his lips together when he looked ahead. They were about to pass the large tree that Kallie had crashed into two years ago. He stared up at the old tree at the same time she did and they both sighed, as if each lost in a bit of history of their own.

  Kallie purposely crossed the road as she always did, and Liam followed her without a word. Her street was the next one.

  “I don’t have many friends, and I can’t write worth a hill of beans.” Liam walked closely beside her. “But I can dance. Sort of. Maybe you want to hit the town one night. Sometime. With me. Or not.” He shrugged as he stumbled over his words. “It’s not that I don’t have friends, I just mean, with my kind of work there isn’t much time for hanging out.”

  Kallie smiled. He was a decently nice guy who seemed to be hitting on her and was having an awful time trying to get the words out. “That sounds like fun.”

  He stared at her surprised. “Really? I mean that would be cool. Let me check my schedule and I’ll send you a text when I have an evening open.”

  “Okay.” She actually had the urge to skip while they were walking. It was silly to be so excited over just a simple date, but Kallie had managed to rope an interview from the guy and now was going out on dates with Mr. Hotness. If he didn’t push her for information about the accident or her father, they could actually have a good time. She liked that he had admitted that he didn’t have a ton of friends, she was kind of in the same position. Since the accident she too had become a bit of a recluse. He was interested in her and she definitely was taking a liking to him. “Just let me know when you have a night off.”

  He nodded toward the house they were now standing in front of, at the same time the phone on his hip began requesting his presence. “Looks like duty calls, perfect timing.” He hesitated a moment, as if unsure what to do next. Then he surprised her by leaning in, his lips hovering close to her neck. He whispered in her ear, “I will. Take care, Kallie.”

  She closed her eyes, the nearness of his mouth by her skin intoxicating. She swallowed, hoping he would kiss her. “Bye,” she murmured. When she opened her eyes she saw him already down the street, jogging toward the precinct. He turned around and waved once before heading onto the main road. It was only when he was out of sight that she realized he knew where she lived.

  “Stay in the car, Kallie.” It was nearly midnight, the moon hung bright in the
clear sky. Her dad stared straight ahead, his hands squeezed tight on the steering wheel. “Under no circumstance do you get out.”

  Kallie licked her lips, trying to quell the dryness in her mouth. Her dad may not be looking directly at her but the red in his eyes burned brighter than usual. She couldn’t miss it. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry—”

  “Stop it! Stay in the car,” he snarled. The street light flashed against his elongated, pointed canines. He half covered his mouth with his hand. “Sorry, love. Just get in the driver’s seat and keep the car running. Go home if I’m not back in ten minutes. Not a second longer.” He stared at her, his eyes brighter than their usual burnt orange color. “Promise me, not a second longer?”

  Her heart stuttered against her rib cage. What did he have to do once a month that made him so afraid? Six months ago he had tried to appear casual when he asked her to drive him downtown. She’d fired a million questions as they drove but he refused to answer anything. He just said the same words; Stay in the car. Don’t get out. Wait ten minutes. If I’m not back, leave. “Ten minutes. I promise.”

  He never got scared after the accident, except when she drove him here once a month. Did he fear for her or himself?

  Terrified, she un-clicked her seat belt with a shaky hand. She slipped her hand under her leg, not wanting him to see her fear. “You going to be okay?” she whispered, part of her wondering what ears might be listening to them. She still didn’t know what happened when he disappeared for those ten minutes, but the staggering walk and beaten look on his face when he came back to the car always stopped her from asking any more questions… till the next month. She knew he only asked her to come because he couldn’t make it home on his own before sunrise. Mom wouldn’t have the strength to do it and he would never even consider asking her.

  “I’ll be here, Dad.” She tried to smile but her facial muscles preferred to pull the corners of her mouth down.

  “Ten minutes. Start your watch… Now.” Moving faster than humanly possible, he slipped out the door and disappeared into a dark alley where no street lights reached.

  Kallie started her digital watch and crawled over to the driver’s side of the car. She double-checked her dad had locked the doors and sure enough, they were. She slouched down low in the seat and tried to quell the butterflies – or mammoth moths – banging around in her stomach. They seemed to be working their way up her esophagus and constricting her ability to breathe properly. These ten minutes were probably taking years off her life. She feared for her dad, but she was also petrified who, or what, might be lurking around the car as she waited.

  The digital clock on the radio flipped to the next number. She checked her watch. Barely two minutes. Tempted to grab her phone out of her purse and check messages or play a game, she held back. The iridescent light would brighten the inside of the car like setting off fireworks.

  The thought sent the bugs in her stomach flurrying faster. Who did her dad have to meet? Could it be one person or more? She shook her head. There had to be more. One person couldn’t beat her dad up that bad. It took him over a week to recover each time. The bruises were always gone by the morning so her mom never knew, but Kallie did. The image of him each month was etched in her brain.

  Why would someone want to do this?

  That night of the accident had changed her dad, but he was still the same good, super-nice guy. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. She knew what he was now and so did her mom, but he never harmed either of them. Even when he’d just woken up the night after the accident, he was starving from a different kind of thirst and yet he didn’t feed on them. He could have. He probably should have, but refused to give in. How he survived two days before mom snuck a couple of bags of blood from the hospital showed the strength of his willpower. Thank goodness mom’s a nurse.

  Two years and her now-vampire father had never killed a human or fed off of one. At least not directly. He drank from the blood bags mom brought home and when they needed to, they gave blood to him. mom kept a small stockpile in the fridge in the basement. Kallie tried getting mom to take more of hers, but she always refused. It seemed crazy at times, and completely in their control at other times.

  How they had managed to keep the secret between the three of them and no one knew, was beyond her. She believed the people her dad saw once a month knew, or maybe they didn’t and kept beating the crap out of him just to see how he could take it.

  Ha. Wishful thinking. Her dad would have torn them into bits. Something terrible went on in those ten minutes. She hit the indiglo on her watch. Seven and a half minutes.

  Still two and a half minutes to go. She swore the seconds slowed their tick till they were barely even moving. The next two minutes would take longer than the past eight had. Her thoughts turned to Liam and she wondered what he was doing this evening. He got paid to stop the bad guys so why wasn’t he and his men here stopping what was happening to her father? Because he doesn’t know.

  She wondered when he would call her to go out. She couldn’t believe she had actually considered him the same as her father, there was no way he was a vampire like her dad. Her dad had told her that only vampires had the same colored eyes as him. Liam had joked around that he was a recluse, but an image of her father probably showed up beside the definition of the word in the dictionary.

  After the accident he had sold his trucking company. He had started the business right out of high school and then made enough for him and mom to retire on. He couldn’t leave the house during the day because the sunlight burned his skin and he spent most of his evenings at home with mom, or if she was working he stayed locked up downstairs in the room he now called his office. Kallie had no idea what he did when she wasn’t around, nor did she ever ask him. He never offered any information either.

  A tap on the passenger window made her jump. Blood smeared the glass leaving a perfect bloody handprint on it. She automatically hammered her foot to the gas pedal completely forgetting that the car was still in park.

  “Kallie,” her dad said meekly. “It’s okay, it’s just me.”

  Kallie hit the automatic unlock on her side of the door and reached around for the plastic tarp her father always put in the back seat before they left. She opened the door for him from the inside and handed him the tarp. Her heart thumped at an incredible pace as she waited for him to put the blue plastic around his shoulders like a towel. It prevented his blood from staining the seat.

  He dropped against the passenger seat, a slew of obscenities coming out of his mouth as beaten parts of his body tortured him.

  Kallie tore out of the driveway before he’d even closed his door. She hated this part. There was nothing she could do to help him. Unless…

  She held her arm out to him. “Dad, drink from me. What if it heals you before we get home? Then you don’t have to suffer.”

  He inhaled sharply as her wrist hovered close to his mouth. He weakly pushed her arm away. “Don’t tempt me. I can barely hold back with you sitting beside me.”

  She held her wrist out to him again, refusing to give up. “Then drink. Stop this madness.”

  “I can’t.”

  She shook her arm at him. “Yes, you can. I’m offering it. You’re not forcing me to.”

  He sniffed her skin, his eyes burned brighter than she had ever seen before. He hesitated before finally pushing her arm away again. “If I do, they’ll come after you.”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  Her father sat quiet beside her until he let out a long and painful sigh. “I’m pure. I haven’t fed directly from a human. It makes my blood different. They say if I do, they’ll kill you and your mom.”

  “Why do they beat you, then?”

  “I fight back. It’s a natural instinct to protect oneself.”

  “Fight back?” Kallie didn’t understand what he meant.

  “They feed off of me, Kalls. They want my blood.” He leaned forward, his face buried inside his hands. “There are dozens of them. I
can’t fight them all. I don’t know how.”

  Tears slid down her cheeks. It felt like the night of the accident, without the rain or the storm. She was helpless to save her father, again.

  Chapter 6

  It took a week before her father emerged from the basement room he kept himself locked in. Worried, Kallie concentrated on her paper and stayed home while her mother went to work. Kallie finished her interview and published it with the school paper. The next day the local paper contacted her, asking if they could publish it as well.

  Wednesday evening she emailed Liam to let him know the interview was in the school paper and that the newspaper was interested. She didn’t want the paper to run the article without his permission. She was sure he wouldn’t mind, but it gave her the needed excuse to contact him since he hadn’t made an effort since walking her home. She tried not to be disappointed when he didn’t reply back by the next evening. The paper wanted to run it in the Saturday edition and needed confirmation before noon the next day.

  So it was no surprise Friday afternoon they called her. Kallie told them to run it. Screw Liam for not bothering to get in touch with her. She planned on telling him the same thing when, or if, he finally did. She knew she wouldn’t, but it made her feel better to vow it inside her head.

  The long week had taken its toll. She’d barely slept, worrying about her dad. Something had to be done. It hurt something fierce that she felt so helpless. Her dad didn’t complain, never said a word to her mom. It sat on her shoulders even though he didn’t mean it to. He seemed to be growing more and more reclusive. He couldn’t leave the house during the day, but in the past year, he seldom left it at night. Except for the one time during the full moon.

  Just after dusk she decided to go for a walk. Her parents were snuggled on the couch in a weird way she had no intention of sticking around to watch. Her father was obviously feeling back to his old self.