Very Superstitious

by Delany, Shannon

  The beast would not be tamed, would never stop killing. And I couldn’t let it hurt anyone else. Especially Eva …

  My heart breaks into a million miserable pieces as it becomes clear whose journal I’m reading. The handwriting is his, the words … all his.

  It came for me every year. On the solstice. My brother was the only one who could satiate its bloodlust, trapping me all week and feeding me goats. When he was murdered, and Eva was gone forever, there was nothing left for me, save one thing. Vengeance.

  “It’s me,” says a dark voice from behind.

  I don’t have to turn to know who it is.

  Diego. Diego is the monster from my childhood dreams. He is the beast, the legend, the horror story. He is the chupacabra.

  Still staring at the book, I force myself to speak. “Even … back then? You were … ?”

  “Yes.”

  I nod, trying to force reality into my head. “Your grandmother knows what you are, doesn’t she? She said … the chupacabra killed Carlos.”

  “I had nothing to do with my brother’s death.” His tone leaves little to be argued with.

  “Are you? The chupacabra, I mean?” It’s obvious at this point, but I need to hear it.

  I hear a deep sigh, and I remember all the times he used to do that when we studied calculus up in the hayloft of his family’s barn. Exhaustion more than frustration was what plagued him then. I hear it now, too.

  “Some call me that,” he says. “I call it the beast. My curse.”

  “And you were born like this?”

  “Far as I can tell.”

  Meaning one of his parents has shapeshifter blood in them. Shapeshifters are only created by birth, and the gene is recessive, skipping generations, bouncing around the family tree, petering away until it dies off altogether. Since the chupacabra legend is so old here, I imagine generations of the Rodriguez family have been changing into the beast I saw last night.

  “I know why you’re here,” Diego says.

  I still haven’t turned around to look at him, and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to look at him again.

  “I know, too,” I say. “You wrote about it here … at the end.” I pass my finger over the words … I was destined to be a killer. So I would let Eva end it. “I take it this means you got your revenge? You killed Raphie.”

  “He killed my brother first. Bled him dry and left his blood for me to drink on the last solstice. Raphael … he had been following Carlos when he figured out his wife was cheating. That’s when he discovered what I was, and what Carlos had to do to keep me under control. I guess he thought it would be … poetic if I drank my own brother’s blood when I couldn’t stop myself. Or maybe he was just sadistic. Liked torturing people the way he did his wife.” I hear him step closer. “I’m not sorry for killing him, Eva, I’m really not. I did what I had to do. And I don’t regret it. But without Carlos … I can’t live this life anymore. It’s not safe.”

  I turn around then, because I can’t not look at him anymore. He appears the same, only thinner. Taller. His dark shock of messy hair, his full lower lip, his angular hazel eyes … those long, lean fingers. I remember all of it. Although, maybe not the scruff on his chin or the circles around his eyes, or the way his stomach is sunken-in.

  “You look the same,” he whispers. “But different.”

  I puff a breath. “I was about to say that about you.”

  I finger the dagger in my back pocket. He wants me to kill him. And I should kill him. He’s a murderer, and a monster. He’s exactly the kind of thing Jeff and Marie hunt for a living. But he’s also my first true friend, and my first love. I imagine sinking the blade of the dagger through his flesh and wince.

  “You have to,” Diego says. He kneels in front of me, and his warm hand closes over mine on top of the diary. “You read this, so you know I have to die. I wish … I wish I was strong enough to do it myself, but I can’t. I’ve tried, believe me.” In his face, I see the lifetime of pain he’s endured and my heart breaks for him.

  Funny, when I’ve watched Jeff and Marie kill creatures like shapeshifters and vampires and demons, I never paused to think about their story. Are they all like Diego? Tortured souls trapped in a life they never wanted?

  He pulls the blade out of my pocket and hands it to me, his skin sliding against mine as he drops it into my palm. He stands.

  “You came here to find out what killed your sister’s husband,” he says. “You came here to kill that being, didn’t you?”

  I nod at him.

  “Then do it.”

  I stand, too, but I keep the dagger at my side. “I … ” I clear my throat, because it sounds like I ate sandpaper. “We can … we can work something out. I’ll tell my aunt and uncle that I killed you, so they won’t hunt you down. And I’ll tell Emily, too. But you don’t have to die. You can run. Go someplace remote. Do what you’ve been doing, just without Carlos.”

  He shakes his head. “You don’t get it. Carlos literally pinned my body to the floor with stakes and hand-fed me goats. Without him, I’m free. And that means people die.”

  “If that were true, you’d have killed me last night.”

  He swallows hard, his jaw stiffening. “You … you’re a special case.”

  I stare up at him, feeling that magnetic pull that used to enchant me when we were younger. “That’s why you need to stay with me,” I say. “You won’t hurt me, and I can restrain you when you shift. I’m … kind of a professional. In training. I’m going to be a pro after I graduate, anyway, and then we can be hunters together. I can teach you. There are things out there that are evil—really evil, not like you—and you can help me destroy them. We can be together, Diego. We can figure this out together.” I put my free hand on his cheek and hear his breath catch. “You don’t have to be alone anymore.”

  It takes what seems like a million years for him to respond, and when he does his words shatter me. “You know I want nothing more than to be with you, Eva. It’s what I’ve always wanted. But I can’t jeopardize your safety and the safety of others for the sake of my selfishness.”

  “It’s not selfish to live, Diego!”

  But he shushes me, putting both his palms over my cheeks, rubbing his thumbs across my lips. “Did you read the last line of the journal?” he whispers.

  I nod.

  “Then you know that’s all I want from you.” One of his hands drops and it closes around mine, forcing my palm closer to the hilt of his dagger. He tilts my face to the side as he positions my dagger hand around his back. If not for the blade, we would be embracing. But I know what he wants me to do. Tears fall unbidden down my cheeks, and slowly, carefully, he kisses them away, light touches that make my head explode. Then a trail of salty water traces down to the corner of my lip and he kisses it, our lips touching for the first time.

  I turn just slightly and we fit together, my lips against his. I taste the salt and sweetness of him, and it only breaks me further. He’s tense in my arms, his fingers biting into my face as he holds onto me like I’m the one who’s going to go away.

  But I’ll be damned if I ever leave him again.

  I drop the dagger on the floor and feel him jump. But I grab onto his arms and hold him to me. I break our kiss only to say one thing. “In case you were wondering, that was no goodbye kiss.” I hold his burning gaze steady and watch as he gradually relents, his expression growing soft, disbelieving. “I will never say goodbye to you, Diego. Never again.”

  And he kisses me once more.

  “Please don’t die on me, baby,” Gwen whispered as she pulled to the side of the road.

  The ’74 Blazer shuddered as it slowed and Wake jerked to attention. He’d nodded off about a mile back, just after they passed a zoo.

  “Big cats,” he’d murmured with a dopey grin, focusing his pinpoint pupils out of the window instead of on the map he was supposed to be studying.

  Gwen had reprimanded him then. “Wake, pay attention! What street is that?
Do I turn or keep going?”

  “First Avenue, I think,” he’d said, squinting through the windshield, miraculously able to read through the thin fog outside and the thick one clouding his brain. “Keep going until Harlem, then left, north …” He had trailed off, head drooping over the map, and Gwen hadn’t had it in her to rouse him. She was already dealing with too much—the unfamiliar road slick with drizzle and the nineteen-year-old truck, which had started to lose power, forcing her to get off the highway. Accelerating slowly and evenly to keep the engine from misfiring took all of Gwen’s concentration, and much as she needed him, Wake was no good as a navigator in his state.

  In fact, she realized he was useless. The road had come to a T a little ways past the zoo, and the street she turned on was called Des Plaines, not Harlem. She’d gone left anyway, sighing angrily, and Wake still hadn’t stirred. He’d taken something in the bathroom of that gas station while she’d been looking at the engine; she was sure of it. He claimed he’d only been taking a piss—and stealing the Chicago area street map that would get them the rest of the way to her uncle Jimmy’s without the highway—but before he went in there, he’d been fidgety, and after, so stupid-calm he could barely read the map. And map-reading was supposed to be his thing. He loved his atlas as much she loved her dad’s old Blazer. It was another way they complimented each other perfectly—like how her voice sounded with his guitar. But now he’d found the drug he loved more than maps or music … and possibly even her.

  “Wha … Why you stoppin’? Is this … Are we there?” Wake stammered as he came to awareness.

  “No, we’re lost, but maybe she can give us directions and we can give her a lift depending on where she’s going.” Gwen pointed to the girl standing at the side of the road a couple yards ahead. She was clad in a lilac dress and swaying—not like the drunks on Bourbon Street, but like Gwen did at concerts, or when she was cold, which the girl had to be, outside without a coat in early April.

  Wake forced himself to blink a few times. “Wait,” he said slowly. “That’s a hitchhiker and you’re going to give her a ride?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think she’s a serial killer or anything. She looks our age. Besides, that lady in Missouri gave me a lift to the service station when we needed coolant. It’s bad karma not to return the favor.” Gwen didn’t want to think what might have happened if a cop had stopped to help them instead. A simple I.D. check would have revealed that they were both under eighteen and from out of state. And then there was the matter of Wake’s stash … Determined to fulfill her karmic obligation, she waved to the girl, motioning her over to them.

  Wake smiled at Gwen and kissed her cheek. Her stomach still cartwheeled like it did the first time they kissed last summer, though it sunk a bit when he slurred, “Tha’s why I love you, babe.” Then he clambered over the console between them and onto the bench seat in the back. He moved like all of his limbs had fallen asleep after his five-minute nap. “I’ll let ’er sit up front. This big ol’ truck is prolly scary enough. If she sees my ugly mug and then has to sit with this mangy mutt, she’ll run screaming.”

  Despite the unwashed, choppy hair that hung almost to his shoulders and the patchy stubble on his chin, Wake’s smooth pale skin and enormous blue eyes made him look angelic. Several of the Jackson Square tarot readers had commented on this.

  Gwen rolled her eyes and said, “You know you’re not ugly and Grover’s definitely not mangy.”

  “No, he’s not.” Wake lifted Grover’s head and sat it on his lap.

  The Shepard/Lab/Who-Knows-What-Else mix barely opened his eyes at first. Even though they were on the road, he knew it was late at night or too early in the morning to be awake. Then, the chocolate-colored fur along his back bristled. He lifted his head, bared his teeth, and barked sharply, causing Gwen to jump.

  “It’s okay, doggie,” assured a musical voice.

  Both Gwen and Wake’s heads snapped toward the passenger’s seat. The girl from the roadside smiled at them as she delicately crossed her legs and smoothed the fringed skirt of her drop-waist chiffon dress toward her knees.

  Gwen couldn’t even say anything at first, too blown away by the girl’s beauty. She had skin like a porcelain doll, rose-colored cupid’s-bow lips, and bobbed hair the same shade as Grover’s fur. It was finger-waved perfectly despite the rain. Gwen’s naturally curly hair would have frizzed and left her looking like a dandelion gone to seed if she cut it that short. But this girl had the poise and elegance that Gwen couldn’t even dream of possessing—she managed to open and close the heavy truck door without a sound, even though its hinges almost always whined.

  Wake just stared at her, too. Grover growled and flattened his ears, then lowered his head.

  “Sorry about Grover,” Gwen finally managed to say. “He don’t mean any harm. I think you just spooked him. He’s a sweet old guy, I promise.” As if to prove his companion’s point, the dog buried his face between Wake’s thigh and the seat.

  “You named your dog after a former president?” the girl asked with an incredulous laugh. Its bell tone matched her voice perfectly. She seemed the embodiment of a sweet, old song.

  “No, after a muppet. Sesame Street,” Gwen added when the girl’s brows—or more accurately, the dark lines she’d drawn in just below where her brows had been—knitted together. “I got him when I was six and Grover was my favorite.” She reached back to run a hand over the dog’s soft fur, stirring the decade-old memory of the squirming pup in her dad’s arms.

  Gwen let herself visualize his face—the ever-present Marlboro Red dangling from his lips, the thick brown mustache that tickled her cheek when he kissed her goodnight, the hazel eyes that matched her own—and remembered him saying, “Grover’s a damn fine name.” But, she had to slam the door on her past. Otherwise, she’d hear the argument that ensued as soon as her mother had gotten home: how could they afford a puppy when they could barely pay rent? Of course, as much as her parents fought about money, they always managed to keep themselves in cans of Dixie and bottles of vodka to fuel their battles.

  “I’m Wake and this is Gwen,” Wake said, pulling Gwen back from the brink of her worst memory: coming home to the sight of two-year-old Grover curled in a tight, furry ball, blocking the closed bathroom door.

  Gwen forced a smile as the girl shook Wake’s outstretched hand and introduced herself as Lulu.

  “Hi, Lulu,” Gwen said, sliding her palm off of Grover and offering it to the girl. She took it, her grip light and her skin cold as Gwen imagined snow to be. “Jeez, you been standing out there all night?”

  “A very long time,” Lulu replied. “Thank you for stopping.” She turned back toward her door and stared out the window with the same look of confusion she’d worn at Gwen’s mention of Sesame Street. “I thought there would be dancing,” she added sadly.

  “That looks like a rec center, not a Goth club,” Wake commented. Though Lulu’s dress was colorful, she had the same pale skin and kohl-smudged eyes as the kids who hung out at a certain nightclub on Decatur. Kids who smoked clove cigarettes and danced to haunting keyboard melodies until just before dawn when they stumbled back to wherever they slept the daylight away. They’d come to New Orleans dreaming about the kiss of a vampire, a vampire to transform them from drunk and lonely teenagers into fearsome and beautiful children of the night.

  Apparently he’d misjudged her, though. “A what?” Lulu asked, glancing back at Wake and slowly blinking her long, false lashes.

  “You know, a Goth club. The Cure, Bauhaus. Lots of people in black velvet doing macabre versions of the hippie swirly dance.” He raised his hands up in the air and fluidly brought his fingertips together as they drifted down in front of his face.

  Gwen couldn’t help but laugh. Wake might have passed for a grungy Goth kid if it weren’t for the three-inch blond roots in his dyed-black hair and the punk patches that covered his hoody. Lulu still seemed puzzled.

  “I guess Chicago has moved on from the eightie
s,” Wake said. “Good for y’all. Don’t get me wrong, I like some Goth bands, but there’s so much great stuff coming out right now. We should ride that wave, you know? Like I can’t wait for the new Nirvana album. Should be way less polished with Steve Albini producing it. Hey, he’s a Chicago guy. You heard Big Black?”

  Lulu shook her head. “The eighties. Time, it just keeps …” She swallowed hard and faced her window again. “Melody Mill. I was looking for Melody Mill. The dancing there is the best. They have live bands—”

  Wake immediately jumped on that. “Live bands? What kind of music?” He was probably hoping to score a gig, even though he and Gwen weren’t technically a band, just two people who had co-written a handful of songs.

  “Jazz, of course.” Lulu brightened as she toyed with the silver beads sewn to the fringe of her dress.

  There were plenty of jazz clubs in New Orleans, too, but Chicago must do it differently, Gwen thought. From the look of Lulu’s outfit, it seemed they had a real twenties-revival scene. Even though Gwen only wore T-shirts and jeans—or tank tops and shorts when the heat got unbearable—she had spent her fair share of time gazing in the windows of New Orleans’ best vintage shops. She’d think maybe, when she and Wake were ready to perform at some place other than a street corner, she’d buy something swanky—the kind of dress Billie or Ella might have worn. But Lulu’s dress was even older, from the height of the flapper age and Gwen had never seen one so detailed and authentic—decorated from top to bottom with salmon pink, baby blue, and silver glass beading. Maybe it was a really good reproduction since it was hard to imagine something so flimsy holding up for more than sixty years.

  “Well, that’s definitely no jazz joint,” Wake said, gesturing at the neatly kept grounds of the community center. “Do you think you got the street wrong?”

  “No. If it’s not here …” Lulu grew flustered again. “I really want to go home.”

  “Of course,” Gwen told her. “We’re happy to drop you off if you aren’t going too far, and um, maybe you can help us figure out how to get where we’re headed? We were supposed to get off the highway at Harlem and take it to Roosevelt, but then the car … Oh, for fuck’s sake.”