Nick’s stomach went cold. He could have done that. He’d certainly thought to call her about Randy. He silently hoped that jab didn’t come.
Rather than continue her verbal attack her mask of anger melted into agony. She dropped her face into her hands and wept. Nick had already lost the fight before he’d known he was in one.
He tried to wrap his arms around her in a hug. He thought he understood. She was angry and afraid, not at him in particular, Nick had just been in closest proximity, both to Dolph and her. She needed to vent, and considering he’d done pretty much the same thing to Lucky, this was due penance.
Phoebe didn’t resist and didn’t mold into him when he hugged her. She remained as she was, silently crying and quaking beneath his arms. Nick allowed himself to feel her for the first time, sipping at the fountain of emotion pouring out of her. It filled him quickly and he was soon tearing up, wondering if this was some sort of Skill to co-opt another’s emotion or if he truly did understand and feel what she was feeling. Was it like she’d touched a live wire and by virtue of making physical contact with her the current was surging through him as well or was there something more sinister?
Could he only be pretending to have these sour emotions?
As oddly disjointed as they’d been, they were a family of some sort. He’d been trying so hard these last few weeks to earn money to pay his share of the bills and others Phoebe couldn’t afford and though he’d paid them in secret, he thought it made him feel even more like they were together in some sort of mutual situation.
He loved her.
Not in a boyfriend-girlfriend sort of way, it was more familial than that. Not siblings, but something in that direction. He realized this was one more thing about his life that was undefined and the added feeling of self-pity widened the aperture of his sadness.
She was finally beginning to relax when Randy tugged on Phoebe’s pant leg.
“Mommy, Nick, don’t cry!” he said. Nick was shocked. He didn’t think he’d ever heard the boy string so many words together. He’d never encountered any vamp children so this was all new to him.
Phoebe went stiff again. She lifted her head from his chest and looked at her son.
“I need you to leave.” Her voice was flat and dry. Nick half-smiled, for a moment thinking she was talking to Randy. The boy looked at them quizzically, his still raised hand hovering near his chin. Then she turned her hazel eyes on him. “Now. Tonight. I need you to go and not come back.”
“What?”
“You need to find someplace else to live.”
He took a step back from her. “Phoebe, we have an arrangement.”
“I don’t care. If you want to press it and say this is your house, so be it. We can let whatever authorities sort it out and if they say Randy and I have to leave, we’ll go. Tonight, however, you have to leave.”
He stood there watching her, not believing, like she’d just divided in two by mitosis. Randy took a step toward him and Phoebe swept him behind her. She gave Nick a fiery look that melted somewhat a second later.
“Please,” she said. The word was loaded. She’d do what she’d said if he made her and she’d battle him if he wanted to argue. Probably fight him physically if she felt threatened.
In that moment, Phoebe was like a wild cat protecting her cub. He could see in her wet eyes she meant it and would come as close to death as necessary to fend him off.
“All right,” Nick said after a long, pregnant moment. “I’ll go.”
He nodded as if in acknowledgment of what he’d just said. He had nothing to pack, all his things were in the bag he had on him. Nick felt lower than at any point since leaving the Center. He felt worse than being in the Pens with those things that had been people in name only. As low as he felt right now he may as well have been right back there.
Randy began to cry, sensing something wrong. The knife in Nick’s guts twisted even more. He’d never heard the boy cry. Randy held out a hand that Phoebe didn’t notice, holding her steely gaze on Nick.
His eyes felt like they were boiling. Nick turned away before the tears came and was out the front door before a whimper escaped him. His throat closed around what felt like a jagged stone as he fled in no direction in particular.
That thing was outside again, in the same spot. Tonight he didn’t care. He passed it either without it noticing him or it had simply watched him in curiosity.
Nick didn’t know how many blocks he’d walked before realizing it was fully dark. The purple of the sky was being uncurtained with each passing second. If he didn’t have someplace to go he’d have to find someplace to hide. Then he remembered the money Valerie had given him. He had enough to stay at a motel.
Nick looked around to find his bearings. He was still on Square Lake. He’d rarely traveled this far east. There probably was something on Big Beaver or Maple. He would have to walk the three or four miles to find out. Nick realized he’d been in this exact same situation almost a week ago and the smile that met his lips was bitter.
So be it.
He was feeling careless and empty at the moment even though he hadn’t stopped crying. He felt in the mood to dare the world to try something with him and he’d be ready for it. Even if it took him down, that would be fine too, so long as he didn’t have to feel anything, so long as he didn’t have to recognize the certain knowledge that he had no place at all. Nobody wanted him and there was nowhere for him to go where he would matter.
It wasn’t about the house. If anyone should have it, it should have been Phoebe. She had a child and Randy deserved to have a place with a backyard he could play in. Nick realized what appealed most about the house was the two other people in it.
He’d decided to continue walking east, crossing the street and into Sterling Heights. The motels would probably be just as far and less expensive. He needed to keep his thoughts rational, he was on his own and had to look out for himself now.
A wolf howled somewhere behind him. It sounded lonely to his ears and he felt a kinship. He had no pack, either. The creature didn’t bother showing itself. Since the Conflict, the animals had encroached into the cities, probably sensing that humans were no longer the dominant species they once were or that they were much too occupied with trying not to become extinct.
Nick decided he would feel so much better if he could punch something. The bitter air helped somewhat. He exhaled hot, directionless anger and inhaled cool, crisp detachment. Never would he let someone close to him, emotional proximity to people left a vulnerability to the parts of him no one had a right to. Especially when they never opened up in return.
Even though he’d never said it out loud or realized it before today, Nick had fallen for the two of them. He didn’t know when, it had probably been gradual. He’d adopted them as his family and felt an ache in his heart now. However, he’d never gotten any sense that Phoebe had felt anything close to what he had.
Headlights flashed somewhere up ahead and Nick ducked then scuttled to the side of a house, crouching beside a bush until the vehicle passed.
He had the feeling he was going to be doing a lot of that for a while. He realized there were only two ways this would go: either he’d find a way to turn his mess of a life around, get a real job and residence or he’d be on the street until someone killed him or he was rounded up and put back in the Pens, this time for good. He told himself he didn’t care, wallowing in self-pity for a brief moment.
Nick did care about his life, it just hurt because he felt like he was the only one who did. Maybe he would find some sort of companion and maybe he would let him or her in. He could probably start by finding Lucky and giving him a real apology. He didn’t want to dwell on their last conversation because he didn’t want to feel any worse than he did at the moment.
His cell rang.
Nick snatched it off the holster on his hip and answered the call, not paying attention to the number on the display.
“Hello?” he said, expecting it to be Ph
oebe, hoping she would tell him to turn around and come back home.
“Hello,” a gravelly male voice said. It sounded put on, like a teenager trying to sound tougher and older.
“Who is this?” Nick said.
“Over here,” the voice said.
“Wha—” he said, standing up to look around. He realized his mistake half a heartbeat before the high beams of a car behind him switched on, crawling over the sidewalk and onto the lawn of a house two doors back.
Nick was semi-blinded, turning away from the car to run. He hesitated, remembering the person who had spoken to him on his phone, also not far away from him. Nick zagged, hoping to pull away from these people long enough to recover his vision and make a break for it. He tripped over something, somehow managed to keep his feet, waving his arms like a madman to keep from running into a tree or signpost.
Something thudded off the side of his head, white flashing beneath his hazy view of a medical building lit by the orangey glow of a streetlight.
Nick’s legs came out from underneath him and the asphalt came up and crashed against the side of him, taking a bite out of his cheek. He tried to do a push-up to get onto his knees and pain exploded in his ribs. He tumbled onto his side and groaned. He kept rolling, trying to get out of reach of his attacker.
He managed to get to his feet, his arm wrapped across him. His vision cleared just as he saw a skinny man, several inches shorter than him, charge in his direction. Nick willed down the volume of the pain. The man raced at him as if in slow motion. He stepped to the side, letting a leg drag behind him. The little man turned, but not in time to avoid tripping over Nick’s foot.
He saw the look of shock dawn on the man’s face as he tumbled to the street. Something inside Nick said to chase after this man, to catch him as soon as he fell. He wanted to stomp on some vital part of his body, maybe his pelvis or his throat. He wanted to tear some part of him off, not because he thirsted for the man’s blood, just out of some advanced sense of self-defense. Even if he were hurt from the fall, the man would get up and come after him again. Nick needed to put him down for good before his partner—
Nick’s skin felt like it was on fire and he couldn’t control his body anymore. He shook violently, his legs spilling out from underneath him as the ground came up for another kiss. He went on convulsing for several more seconds until a man stepped into his peripheral vision, holding something in his hand.
“He almost got the best o’ you, Wendell,” the man said. “Now what would you ‘a done if I wuddn’t there?”
Wendell scraped himself off the street. “I think I chipped a tooth,” he said. Electricity stopped coursing through Nick, however, he still couldn’t move. He smelled something like burning hair, hearing himself make some sort of gulping, groaning sound like he was starving for air. He was a rear passenger in his own body, unable to reach for the wheel.
The first man rolled him on his stomach and wrenched his arms behind him. Nick felt the all-too familiar zip-ties strapped on his wrists and then the two men yanked him to his feet. Nick’s legs were still jelly and they had to drag him toward the blaring high beams.
He became aware he still had his cell phone in his hand when it began to ring. They stopped and Wendell plucked it out of his grasp. Nick was trying to make a fist around his phone, hoping to keep his lifeline to someone he could tell he was being kidnapped.
“Hello?” Wendell said in a pleasant tone. “Nick? No, this is his phone. Oh, I’m sorry, he isn’t available right now. Could I take a message? Sure.” He ended the call and pocketed Nick’s cell. They started walking again.
“I’m gonna need that back,” Nick said, his words sounding slurred. His throat felt sore as if he’d been screaming, though he hadn’t heard himself doing that.
“Don’tchoo worry none,” the other man said as they began walking to the car again. “We’ll make sure to log all yer personal effects. You won’t be needin’ ‘em, though.” He smiled and Nick got an eyeful of gold teeth and a noseful of sour milk breath. “You know where you people go after gettin’ arrested, right?”
Nick knew.
“The Pens! We get a sixty-five dollar bounty for each of you we catch out after sundown.”
Their car was actually a rusty white Ford F-250 with a canopied flatbed. Wendell opened it with one hand, wiggling a tooth with the thumb of his other one.
“I think I’m gonna lose this tooth. Man!” he said. Nick was only able to offer a modest amount of resistance before they propped him up on the tailgate and slid him in. They shut him inside and Nick could smell the three other vamps he was locked in with. Save for the relative few he’d gotten to know and like at the Center, he didn’t really like vamps. Almost all the ones he’d encountered were awful. He didn’t like ‘regular’ people for much the same reason.
Three pairs of tapetum lucidum stared back at him. They were all Nick could see for a second before his own eyes adjusted and he spotted the two males and one female. Two of them looked homeless.
Nobody said anything. After a few seconds two doors slammed, the truck jerked slightly, and then pulled away. Nick found an empty spot as close to the rear as possible, noting the strip of white tape between him and the others on the floor of the flatbed.
“I suggest you scooch back behind the line,” one of them said. Nick looked at an older vamp who looked around twenty-five or so. He smelled of sour alcohol and cigarettes and had an overall grizzled appearance. “They taser you if you sit too close to the door.”
He looked at the man then at the line. He waited several seconds and then shuffled over on his butt, sitting on the other side of the wheel hub. He looked down at the floor, not wanting any more eye contact. There was no need to assess the situation, Nick was totally screwed.
The best he could hope for was one of those re-education halfway houses where they went over all the rules regarding release. Nick didn’t want to go back to the Pens. He wasn’t suicidal, but death would be preferable to being shipped back there. He looked up and stared at the vamps he was in company with. The woman and the one who had spoken to him were looking back. He wondered if they had ever been there.
Nick’s wheels began turning. He had to figure a way out of here. Only his hands were tied and he could move around. They all could. Maybe he could get them to work together and they could overwhelm their captors. The others couldn’t want to be in here.
“Hey,” Nick said to all three, “why don’t we try to break out of here?” The other one who hadn’t spoken raised his head in Nick’s direction and smirked.
“That’s it, boys!” Wendell shouted from the front. “I thought I said no talkee!” Nick heard a whispering sound all around him and then he could taste copper at the back of his throat.
“That’s why,” the woman slumped at the front of the flatbed said. She had a soft smoker’s voice and a head that seemed like a giant mass of black hair.
Nick licked the corner of his mouth. It was blood. He didn’t get it. Blood made vamps stronger, didn’t it? Nick didn’t remember where he had actually heard that or if he had figured it on his own. It didn’t taste like there was anything in it. Then again, he had never consumed blood before. And it wasn’t like he had a sophisticated drug-taking palate. So far as he knew there could have been any number of tranquilizers laced in the mist.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“He probly thinks that blood is going to turn him into Superman,” the man who had spoken earlier said.
“There could be any number of odorless and tasteless poisons in that.” The other man was looking at Nick with a smile on his face. He didn’t look happy, though, he looked deeply exhausted. Something in his eyes said he was old despite his unseamed face. He had on a suit, complete with expensive-looking shoes.
Nick had been trying to collect as much of the mist into his open mouth as he could, and froze at the man’s words. The man’s smile dropped into a smirk and he stuck his tongue out, licking the part of his
face where a mustache would go if he’d grown one.
“Of course, we would have already been poisoned, wouldn’t we?” Nick noticed his suit was already stained red, feeling slightly embarrassed at the man’s minor manipulation. “I’m Grant O’Neill, by the way.”
A last name. Grant the vamp had a last name. Not many of the ones Nick knew did. Perhaps he had more recall of his former life or a family who still claimed him. The doctors had said partial memory recovery was possible.
“I’m Nick.” He felt like they should shake or something. Nobody had a free hand.
“Nick.” Grant said it with a degree of authority, like a command was going to follow his name. “I always repeat a person’s name upon first meeting. Helps me commit it to memory.”
“Okay.” The mist cut off. “So what’s the purpose of giving us blood?”
“Look, kid, it’ll be obvious in a moment or two.” The first man had jumped back in the conversation. He blinked slowly several times and for a moment, Nick thought he was trying to tell him something.
Then everything began to feel like it was slowing down. He didn’t remember closing his eyes, but suddenly he was lying on his side.
“It tastes like cow’s blood,” Grant was saying, “but the effect is largely the same. Blood doesn’t give you super strength, it gets you high. Large quantities can make you violent. They spritz us with enough to make us nice and docile.”
His voice sounded like it had dropped a few octaves. Nick found himself having trouble listening.
“Yeah. He’s going to sleep,” the woman said. “Definitely a first-timer.”
“Why… why are you all fine?” Nick yawned.
“We’re not,” somebody said. “We just have more experience with it than you, newbie.”
Nick struggled to keep his eyes open. He wanted to ask something else. He opened his mouth twice; no words would come. It came to him with perfect clarity that Lucky had given him blood before and he couldn’t remember feeling like this. Then he recalled he’d slept for three days while his body miraculously knitted flesh back into a hole shot in him with an arrow.
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