“You have been watching me,” the vamp said. “You saw what I did… to those people.” It sounded more statement than question.
“Yes,” Nick said again. “They were vamps. Like us.”
“Vamps.” The man snorted. “If you ever call me that I’ll break your neck. Yes, they were like us.”
“Okay. I won’t.” Nick wanted to talk to this person with as much desperation as he could muster given his state. “How do you know I’ve been watching you?”
“Because I can feel you. Just like you can feel me in your head right now.”
Nick felt some mental part of him withdraw—just a little—reminding him he wasn’t in this person’s physical presence and giving him mild vertigo as he stared at a blank white wall in Valerie’s house through one eye and a bathroom a million miles away out the other.
He didn’t want the euphoric feeling back, but he felt it sinking in anyway. It was like punching a light breeze as he fought it.
“You killed that woman. And that man too. And I think… others?”
“I have killed no one. I set them free.”
“Okay.” No, it wasn’t okay. Nick felt like he was being shoved into the passenger seat of his own body. He pushed back and found himself actually gaining some traction. “You killed them. I saw you.”
“Saw me?” He laughed softly. “No. I don’t think so. You saw what I saw. What I wanted you to see.” Something about that last part rang untrue to Nick and it took a couple of beats of forceful thinking to remind himself that… that what? He’d lost the track of thought as it had begun and found himself being lulled back into the pleasant sensation of straddling two worlds.
“I am coming for you,” the man said. He tilted his head back and sniffed the air. “I can smell you. I am getting closer.”
“Why are you killing them?” Nick asked.
“I’m not killing anyone. I told you, I’m setting them free.” He sounded agitated at the accusation.
“Why are you setting them free?”
“You will soon see. Why don’t you tell me where you are? I’ll come to you tonight. I’ll set you free.”
Alarm bells clanged somewhere in the back of Nick’s mind. Even in his hazy state he knew that was an ill-advised idea.
“No. I don’t think so,” Nick said. “I don’t want to be set free.” He felt himself pushing back, regaining some semblance of control of his mental state. He blinked and saw through both eyes, the sense of nausea returning. The bathroom and everything in it had turned black and white, which was really only the room’s lone occupant. The vamp turned around and what Nick saw almost wrenched a scream out of him.
In place of a face the man had static, like from a television not turned to an actual channel.
“I see you,” the vamp said. Nick felt his arms and legs crab walking him backward even though he’d had his back to a wall a moment before. He lost his balance and fell onto his back, nearly dislocating the two middle fingers of his left hand.
He lay there, panting and staring up at a yellowish-brown spot on the ceiling. Valerie must have had a leak in the roof. Nick realized from the work he’d done on his own house a few days ago he could probably fix it. Maybe when it warmed up outside again.
Nick felt then smelled the heavy-hot breath of a bitter-sour mouth much closer to his face than he would have cared for. He turned his eyes and saw Barney standing directly over him. The dog poked its head back into the bedroom, turning his brown-eyed gaze away from Nick. Barney closed his mouth with a quick slurp of his tongue before letting it drop open again.
“Get out of my house,” the dog said.
Well, it hadn’t actually spoken. He hadn’t actually spoken, it had been more of a grunting-whining noise and Nick had understood it just as easily as if the dog had spoken the King’s English.
Nick propped himself up on one elbow as Barney turned back for his pillow in front of the television.
“What did you say?”
Barney regarded him before slumping back onto his pillow. He made another noise in his throat, short and semi high-pitched.
“Leave,” Barney said, “or I’ll bite you.”
Nick was rising off the floor by the time Valerie had climbed the stairs. He had no idea what had taken so long to get a glass of water; he also didn’t know how long he had been sitting on the floor talking to the vamp in the bathroom. Perhaps time had sped up in his head or maybe Valerie had examined her glasses until she found one clean enough to serve him.
Nick guessed the latter. Either the glass had a yellow tint or the water did. He shook his head when she held the glass out to him.
“I have to go.”
“What about my vamp?” she said. Her voice had resumed its former tenor and cadence. Gone were the clipped words and semi-southern accent.
Nick was surprised he did have a solution to her problem. He didn’t know the reason for the blood on the floor and now could sense that one of his kind had spent a significant amount of time in her home. It was glaringly obvious now.
“Put some chocolate out for him,” Nick said. “The fancy kind. Then feed him if he’ll eat.” Nick didn’t want to believe the vamp in the walls was a feral; he’d seen many of those when he was in the Pens and had been told they would never see the light of day. It was odd for one to live inside the walls of a stranger’s home.
Unless…
“Valerie, did you move into your home recently? Like within the last few years?”
“Yes, I did. Why?”
“Did you have Barney with you when you moved in?”
“Yes, I did. Why?” she said again.
Nick turned into the bedroom where the dog lay on his pillow. He figured a way he could do this and not seem like a complete psycho.
He got down on one knee about three feet away from the dog. Barney sighed and it sounded to Nick’s ears like he was annoyed. He didn’t bother moving his big head or even looking in Nick’s direction.
“Barney,” he began in a cartoonishly cheerful voice, “I’m about to leave. Oh, you’re such a good boy.”
The dog gave him a look as if to say ‘what are you doing?’ but ‘said’ nothing. Nick went on speaking to him in that over-the-top happy voice, sensing that even Barney took it as condescending.
“Where was that scary man when you and Valerie moved in? Where was he, fuzzy-wuzzy?” Nick almost got carried away with the act and leaned in to nuzzle the dog and Barney warned him off with a short, throat-clearing growl that needed no translation.
He got the point. Barney played along, turning halfway onto his side, exposing his soft belly. Nick obliged by scratching his chest and repeated his question in an even cutesier voice.
“This is his home,” Barney said. “He came here before us and his smell was here before then. Like he left for a long time and came back.”
Barney spoke with a series of groans and Valerie was none the wiser of the actual conversation occurring. “Oh, he really likes you,” she said. “He never talks so much. Not even to me.”
Nick ignored her, wanting to get an idea of the vamp before he left. “Was all that blood scary, boy? Did it scare you?”
“It was his blood,” Barney said. “Someone hurt him, another person like you. She put poison in his blood.”
She?
It was surprise enough that the vamp had been attacked by another vamp. That had immediately conjured images of the killer the military was looking for. He’d been male, though. Nick couldn’t have been any more certain of that. He’d spoken to the killer and been inside his head. He’d—
—wait a minute. Each time he’d been inside the killer, every sensation stroking his own senses, even his emotions—excitement, fear, bloodlust—in tandem with his host for lack of a better word he’d known the person in those few moments.
He hadn’t been inside the body of the vamp in the restroom, he’d been behind him. For a moment Nick thought it might have been remote viewing, seeing inside the restroom from
some unattached point. Had Nick not had cause to think about it, he might have forgotten the detail and assumed that was exactly what had happened. He had been tied to something physical, something that had actually been there. Nick remembered the feeling of curiosity and amazement. Even the euphoric feeling had not been his own.
He had been seeing through someone else’s eyes. That person had been careful to not hold up a hand, look down at himself, or at any other point in the restroom that might have given him away. This second person had been male, not the female Barney had indicated.
Which meant there were at least three people, three killers.
Nick realized he was still stroking Barney. The dog was eyeing him suspiciously.
“Three of them,” Nick mumbled.
“Three of who?” Valerie said. He had forgotten she was behind him.
“Uh, in the walls,” he said. “There were three. Two left.”
“You can tell all that from walking in the room?”
“No,” Nick said and smiled. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that her vamp was more than likely dead, rotting inside one of these walls. “Your dog told me.”
Valerie pressed five twenties into his hand. Immediately, thoughts went to Lucky. He felt guilty about how they had finished things. Nick had been angry and he still felt justifiably so, though he admitted he had been wrong too. It hadn’t been only Lucky to have treated him like a child. That had dated all the way back to the Center and had been building up, unbeknownst to Nick, ever since.
He considered calling him, and thought better of it. The next thing he needed to say to Lucky was ‘I’m sorry’ and he felt the need to do that in person. Even if he’d been wrong, Lucky didn’t deserve some of the things Nick had said. Maybe he could take a walk over to the Big Pig and find him there.
So much had happened today. He should probably head home. Nick didn’t think he could count on staying at Lucky’s tonight and with Dolph in the hospital anyway it was a safe bet he could stay at his actual home, in his actual bed. The thought put a little extra pep in his step as he headed east.
He didn’t let himself get too lost in thought. Now that he knew there were people looking for him who wanted to do who knew what, he had to be aware. What had been so offensive to him a short while ago was now palpably missed. He kept looking over his shoulder, hoping to see Ti on a motorcycle, expecting to see a black limousine or a white truck.
It wasn’t paranoia if you knew people were really out to get you.
Sundown was coming soon and that helped hurry him along as well. Nick wasn’t silly enough to think he couldn’t be kidnapped or attacked in broad daylight, but under cover of night the two possibilities carried more weight, like the likelihood was exponentially greater.
He watched each person he passed with suspicion. Most paid him no mind, occasionally, though, he saw someone watching him back. A woman and her young daughter passed him slowly on the sidewalk. He thoroughly expected the two to cross, being aware of how out-of-place he must have looked. He wasn’t dressed properly for the cold, probably looked as paranoid as he felt, and he was a vamp. Sure, he knew that in the space of a few seconds people couldn’t tell that, but he felt like he attracted extra attention for that fact alone.
Nick wondered if he should actually go home. What if someone was watching him? Someone he was not able to see? People were trained to do this sort of thing without being detected by the people they followed. They followed in shifts or something like that. A man behind him for a few blocks who would turn down a street at the moment Nick would begin to suspect, and very shortly after a woman would replace him, or an old couple, or a car.
He began trying to memorize the faces he saw and the clothes the people wore. If he sensed he was seeing repeats of any kind he would run, knowing it would probably already be too late. Nick didn’t want to be taken. The one consolation was that if he were being followed, they probably wanted him alive. The one he wouldn’t suspect would probably be a fellow vamp who would tear his throat out if he could. Nick gave himself a minor amount of comfort by telling himself that more than likely wouldn’t happen while the sun was out.
There was only one instance where a man in a camouflage jacket coming out of a Dairy Queen had given Nick way more eye than was comfortable. He was a vamp, which was glaringly apparent by whatever sense that allowed him to identify his own kind. It was too cold for ice cream, but there he was, standing outside with chocolate soft serve, one hand stuffed inside his jacket, watching the minor amount of foot traffic until his gaze settled on Nick.
He tried to tell himself it was the chocolate and that the cold didn’t bother vamps the way it did humans. Both rang true, however, it was just the sort of thing the killer might have counted on to put Nick at ease. They had tuned in to his brain, was it that much greater a step to locate the rest of him?
He was ready to run, forcing himself to continue in a straight line. It felt like they were two north magnets coming into proximity of each other, tension building between them like a spring that would eventually shoot them both in random directions. Except the other vamp didn’t really seem to notice that part. He went on licking his ice cream.
Nick passed him, fully expecting a hand to clap on his shoulder and spin him around. When that didn’t happen, he felt the man step onto the sidewalk and begin following him. His eyes danced left and right for the other two who would begin converging on him so there was nowhere for him to go. He forced himself to walk a full block before he turned to see behind him.
Nobody was there.
The sun had begun its slow crawl over the horizon, the sky a handshake of blue and violet. Nick wanted to run the rest of the way home, he was a couple stones’ throw away. Just in case, he weaved left and right at the next few corners to be sure there was nobody behind him.
Then he realized he had no way of being sure. Nick had never felt so insecure in his life. This was the city he had grown up in. He’d gone to school here and presumably made friends here. Nick didn’t believe you were supposed to be this afraid in the place you knew better than anywhere else. It made everything around him feel like the complete opposite of home, like it had been spoiled.
He made it to his house from the opposite direction he usually came. All seemed quiet. In fact, if he were in a movie he’d say it was too quiet. The neighbors directly across the street tended to be outside their house right around sundown having one last smoke before being locked in for the night, the two of them puffing away in each other’s faces like a toy surprise had been packed into a random cigarette. Smoking to him was as effective at warding him off as garlic or sunlight had been to actual vampires if such a thing had ever been true.
Nick strolled across the lawn, up the walkway and stairs, and rang the doorbell. He was surprised when Phoebe yanked open the door and stared, like she’d been waiting for him.
And crying. Her eyes were red and puffy and for a moment he thought he saw a flash of anger before she turned and walked away from him toward the kitchen.
“Phoebe, what’s wrong?” Nick chased after her. Randy was sitting at the nook table playing with some of his toys. Had Nick not been distracted by the boy—who never seemed to take joy from anything, and was playing and actually making little child sound effects—he might have seen her coming.
“Hi, Nick!” Randy said and he was caught off guard. He would have guessed the boy had spoken a total of a dozen words in front of him in the last three months.
“Hey!” Nick said. “Randy!”
“Why aren’t you with him?” Phoebe said in a low voice. For a moment, he thought she was talking about her son. Nick wasn’t just smiling—he felt genuine happiness radiating from the center of him as he watched Randy take his hand, parted the pinky and thumb from the rest of the group and buzzed it over a cluster of traffic-jammed Hot Wheels, looping the fleshy jet back around for a repeat buzzing.
It was simply too wonderful to ignore.
Nick had heard what Ph
oebe had said to him, but with his attention so divided in Randy’s favor his ear hadn’t broken the words down into digestible pieces. There were wrappers of the same kind of chocolate Dolph had given him rolled up into little balls on the table, outlining a wide weaving highway where several cars were randomly parked.
That was wrong. Phoebe was a no frills, no shortcuts, holistic type who didn’t allow her son to deviate from a strict diet. In fact, now that he thought about it, it was very similar to the type of diet prescribed to him by the dieticians at the Center, further evidence of Randy’s condition.
Nick dragged his eyes away from the boy. He saw from the look in her eyes she wasn’t happy about the current situation, no matter how miraculous it appeared on its surface. There was something skewed here he couldn’t place, Phoebe’s expression the only indication anything was wrong.
“My grandfather is in the hospital.” A tear spilled from an eye and she swiped it away.
“I know, he ate something with peanuts.” The words spilled from Nick’s mouth and he felt he should have been filtering himself somehow.
“So, it was you there.”
Whoa. Nick didn’t like the sound of that. It sounded like an accusation.
“Well, yeah,” he said, sounding as if he wasn’t certain.
“And you didn’t think to go with him?”
“Go with—what could I do?” Nick felt like he was still catching up, but it sounded a lot like he was catching blame.
“I need you to leave.”
“Phoebe—” Nick was about to say something along the lines of ‘but he’s not here’. That would have put her in the red, though. “I—” he began, attempting to change direction.
“—you’re going to tell me you couldn’t go with him? That you asked and they just left you there?”
“No, I—yes, but—”
“—didn’t think, right? Oh, but you thought to call me after then, right? On the off-chance my Pop-Pop died?”
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