Dolph fixed him with those coal black eyes and a blank face like he could spring into a flying knee kick any second. Nick knew better. This was the man's version of a smile even though it looked almost exactly like every other expression in his arsenal. It was the way Dolph's eyes glittered and the extra crinkles at their corners. Nick put his hand out almost at the same time as Dolph and rather than a soul-crushing shake, it was gentle and warm, two pumps and done.
Phoebe seemed to no longer be able to hold herself back and threw her arms around his neck and squeezed. Purple spots danced in his eyes before she let go and Nick was positively grinning after.
He knew without anybody saying what was coming. Still, he asked, if only to make it official.
“What are you guys doing here?”
Dolph slapped a meaty paw on his shoulder, almost buckling his knees. The strength he'd gained from feeding off those two vamps had faded entirely after two days.
“We came to take you home,” the man said.
Tears filled Nick’s eyes despite what he'd known the second he'd seen them. The Olivia Cole-Carter Center offered treatment for vamps and he was supposed to be getting on a bus to a halfway house in Clawson. “I…I don't live there.”
Dolph squeezed his shoulder. It hurt, but it was comforting, a good hurt.
“Of course you do,” Dolph said. “Phoebe told me all about it.”
“Well, technically, I told you.” Nick swiped his cheeks and smiled at him. “Are you fine with this?”
“No.” Dolph took a deep breath and looked at Phoebe. “But my baby is a big girl and I guess I have to start acting like it.” He sounded like he'd been trained to say that. The words hadn't come off as natural in the slightest. “The way I figure it, you lay your life down for this family, you may as well be a part of it. Let's ride.”
Nick was happy to see the Hummer still drove. Its formerly perfect black finish was marred and scratched like someone had given a set of keys to an entire kindergarten class and let them have at it. As they pulled out of the parking lot something gave a chirping screech, but it was steady on its wheels.
“You gonna get her fixed?” he leaned forward and said to Dolph.
“I know a guy back home,” he said. “I wouldn't let the hacks around here touch my baby.”
Nick hoped that was a sign that he was leaving soon, though he didn't hold out hope. Dolph was a good enough guy, but Nick didn't know how long he could be on edge with him around.
He wanted to ask where Randy was, probably at home. He sat back instead and listened as Dolph filled him in on the goings on of the outside world while he'd been out of its stream.
Lieutenant Leonard had been retired. Though his discharge had been honorable he'd been considered an embarrassment and a risk because the military's ranks had been infiltrated by one of the monsters it had unofficially charged itself with hunting.
Dolph guessed they would also be deeply scrutinizing everyone he'd served with, particularly in Afghanistan where it was suspected he’d contracted the rabisu. In the meanwhile, Leonard had already been snapped up to fill the ghostly and vague role of consultant by a military contractor.
The entire facility where they'd first met Leonard had been shut down after the bodies of more than fifty men and women had been discovered in a sub-basement. Most were homeless, but about a dozen were civilian and military employees. Apparently, the vamps that Leonard—Cain, if you insisted—had turned had been feeding on about anyone they could get their hands on.
Dolph also guessed the only reason Leonard hadn't been charged was the potential scrutiny his superiors would have been subjected to. There may also have been a likelihood the man's days could be limited.
“What about Cain?” Nick asked. “Leonard said he was unkillable.”
“Officially, he is. I have a little more lateral movement when it comes to Leonard. If I get my way, he'll wind up in a place like the Pens before he gets shot.”
“Pop-Pop, that's not real, is it? The government wouldn't just shoot him.”
Dolph looked at Phoebe. Without saying a word, he told her he had firsthand knowledge of such things.
They rode in silence for a while. He didn’t want to ask about the other vamps and he knew as much as anyone about the ones that had been infected by Cain. All of them were dead. Well, almost all of them.
Nick hadn’t consciously noticed, probably because he’d seen them all as monsters. Most of them were clothed, but a few he’d seen had been naked. If he’d been asked immediately after, Nick would have said they were all male.
He had to admit in the quiet of his mind that he hadn’t known.
Cameron, the vamp Dolph had nearly crippled, somehow had survived, as if his distance from Cain had kept him from being drained to death. However, he was comatose with no hope of waking.
Nick wondered if it were possible for Cain to have sent Alex away so some part of him survived. If she were alive he could only wait for her to show up.
He decided in that moment he would be ready.
When they made it home, Nick found himself blooming with happiness. He actually liked the changes. The kitchen walls had been painted an orangish color and it made the whole room warmer.
That and the chocolate chip cookies sitting on a plate on the kitchen counter. Nick had discovered at the Center that the ‘additives’ Dolph had hinted at were all synthesized from human blood. Dolph really had been lashing out at the time.
Nick made a beeline for the cookies and was about to grab one when a dainty hand reached out and slapped his.
“Not even cooled yet and you’re already trying to steal one,” a sixtyish woman in a blue kimono said. Nick looked at her and knew this had to have been Dolph’s wife. Her hair was silver-white and she was actually pretty—beautiful even, with slightly upturned eyes.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry,” Nick said automatically.
“And who are you, young man?” He had the feeling she already knew who he was if he was right about who she was. Introductions were probably more than a formality for her.
“I’m Nick,” he said.
“Nick who?” she asked.
Nick shook his head. “Ma’am, I don’t know.”
Randy came around a corner. His eyes fastened on Nick and he charged, screaming, “Niiiiiick!” He picked the boy up and swung him away from the counter and high into the air. Randy screamed and laughed and Nick was surprised at how much bigger he looked.
“How are you, Randy?” Nick had never called him that aloud and it kind of slipped out of his mouth.
“Good. We missed you, Nick.”
Nick held Randy up so they were eye-to-eye. He was shocked. A full sentence from Randy. He’d never been present when the boy had expressed emotion.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Are you coming home?”
“I...” He looked at Mrs. Stone. “I’m not sure. I’d like to.” He looked at Phoebe and Dolph standing near the mudroom door. “Am I?”
“Yes,” Dolph and Phoebe said in unison.
“We already have your room set upstairs,” Mrs. Stone said.
Upstairs? He felt semi-overwhelmed. That couldn’t be. Even if they did let him come back, he didn’t belong upstairs. Mrs. Stone placed a tiny hand on his bare forearm. Her skin felt like a mix between wax paper and silk.
“You’re family,” she said. “Anyone who would put his life on the line like that has every right to call himself a Stone.”
“I...” he was at a loss for words again. She had to have known—they must have told her. He didn't have a place, a family. The government didn't even have accurate records enough to tell him his last name. He didn’t think appropriate words existed to fill the space after she had spoken. “Thank you.”
“You can thank me by trying out one of these cookies after dinner. Are you hungry?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m starved.”
* * *
After dinner, Phoebe invited Nick out onto the porch. He sat
with her on the step in the cold air as the sun began its descent. Phoebe didn’t have on a jacket and she was twirling an unlit cigarette in her hand.
“You gonna light that?” he asked her. She’d told him she’d quit, but he’d known she smoked still, maybe one or so every four days when she was stressed. Whatever this was going to be was stressful.
She looked at him over her shoulder, her blonde brown hair tied up in a loose knot at the back of her head. “Look, I’m just going to say I’m sorry.”
“Hmm?”
“About… about what I did. To you. I’m sorry.”
Nick had the feeling this wasn’t a conversation she entirely wanted to have. She looked at him as if he were supposed to fill in the empty air between them and he watched her. Nick tended not to have to blink as often as humans did and she broke first.
“Randy… is like you. A hematophage.” That had always been the term they’d used when he was back at the Center and it was the same one they used on his most recent stay. Nick knew the definition. It seemed so clinical as to not feel like it meant anything.
“Okay, why all the secrecy about it?”
Phoebe put the cigarette between her lips and plucked it back out, examining the purpling sky.
“You don’t know what it was like. Back home.” She shook her head. “It was bad enough I was an unwed mother, but his father was a vamp, no less. Every day was worse than the last.”
“You had family, though. You had people you could have leaned on.”
She fixed him with a stare she had to have learned from her grandfather.
“They’re the reason I had to leave. My mother. My mother, my mother, my mother, my mother.” Nick spotted the lighter in her other hand and how tightly she had it gripped.
“You gonna light that?”
Phoebe held the cigarette out in front of her as if seeing it for the very first time. She considered it a while then held it up by the butt and flicked the lighter under it. She let it burn before flicking it onto the walkway.
“So I came here. I found a house and a job and started all over. I’m not gonna say I’m overprotective, but I’m overprotective. It kills me to know someone might think that way about Randy, so I, you know, turn into the ice queen.”
She had tears in her eyes and Nick wanted to put a hand on her leg, to comfort her. He held back.
“No, I’m sorry, Phoebe. I might not have known, but I could have used a little more caution. I mean, all I’ve been trying to do is find my connection to something. I wanted to know and I never saw how I could have been messing things up for you. But… Randy is going to grow up someday. You can’t hide him from the world.”
“Shut up with your lies!” Phoebe half laughed and Nick smiled. “I know. It’s not even Randy’s problem. It was me.”
“Can I ask about his father?”
She shrugged. “Not much to know. Thought he was the love of my life then he turned into a hematophage.”
Nick narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, ‘turned into’? He wasn’t always?”
“Nope. We’d been together for a while, both been tested clean and all of a sudden he gets really sick.”
“How old was he? I mean, when he got sick.”
She shrugged again. “I don’t know. Twenty-two, I think? I remember it was right before I found out I was pregnant.”
Nick’s mind reeled. That meant this was a new case, relatively speaking, and to someone above the age threshold. He had no idea what that meant.
“Thank you, Phoebe, for telling me.” He did put a hand on her leg and she looked at him for the first time in about five minutes.
“You can thank me by us agreeing to never have this conversation again.”
“Sure.” He wondered if this had been some sort of trade-off. That Dolph had made concessions if Phoebe agreed to have a certain conversation. He’d learned enough about Mrs. Stone over dinner to know she was the peacemaker of the family.
“Okay, then let’s hug it out. I’m freezing to death.” They held each other for a long moment then she smoothed her hand across his back. “You know, it didn’t feel right with you gone.”
“Thanks,” Nick said, his eyes dipping to something that caught his attention on her chest, where her loose-fitting shirt had exposed a patch of bruised skin. “Hey, what’s that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I wake up with these weirdo bruises sometimes. Almost like somebody is hitting me in my sleep.”
She stood and stepped onto the small porch and he looked at her. In that moment he had an intuitive leap that he could not have explained if he sat down to piece out where it had come from.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Nick said. Then, “Is Randy’s last name Barker?”
“Whoa!” she said and smiled. “That’s too much heavy for me in one day.” He stared at her. “I don’t even wanna know why you know that right now. Yeah, okay, it would have been if I’d married his father. He would have been Randall Thomas Barker.” Another cigarette had appeared in her hand. She made a fist around it. “Your friend Happy stopped by yesterday. You should call him.”
“Lucky,” Nick said as she disappeared inside. “Thanks.” He must have gotten Nick’s release date wrong. They’d actually talked that last day through while Nick was at the Center and he was lining up more jobs. As the sun winked out he thought back to the boy’s words from a few weeks ago. The ghost father, the abused mother. Phoebe had a mark on her forearm that could have been an old bruise. Nick wondered if the address had even been real. The voice hadn’t been familiar to Nick, but he should have suspected something. The boy had known the number despite not going through Lucky.
The boy had been so different, though, so unlike Randy, why would Nick have suspected? And what Thomas had said combined with what he knew now begged another question: what had happened to Phoebe’s boyfriend?
The thing at the edge of the property emerged. It turned its hollow eyes on him.
They watched each other.
Epilogue
It has been more than a week since the Nephilim has been back in his home. Over the millennia her master has had many temporary hosts and he believed falsely that this one would have been a more permanent receveur. He has paid dearly for his miscalculation, but now she knows it should have been her. Why else would she alone have been spared?
The old ones have finally left and now they're only the three in the house. It is simple enough for her to get inside. She has already been in several times. She has watched them all sleep in turn and has done nothing. She will continue to do nothing until the time is right. Until she is strong. The Nephilim was not a suitable host for the master. Over the millennia they have feared and hated one another. All of the muskim.
She feels him swimming inside her mind, this time a welcome guest. She wants him to know one of his enemies has survived. She wants to be inside his head just as he is inside hers.
She looks at her hands to show him the blood. Tonight she has killed. Tomorrow she shall kill. Each night until she has the strength to destroy the opposer of her master she will kill.
“Soon,” she says, hoping he senses her hatred.
About the Author
Gerald Dean Rice is hard at work on something right now. Whether it's vampires, zombies, or something you've never seen before, he's always dedicated to writing something unique. He's the author of numerous short stories, including the Halloween eBook "The Best Night of the Year," "30 Minute Plan," and "Fleshbags." You can find him on Twitter @GeraldRice and visit his website at www.razorlinepress.com for details about upcoming works.
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