The Fall: Sanguine Series: Book One

by Chris Laughton

  The man looked up and locked eyes with her while the gas pumped. “I see,” was all he said, as he seemed to be mulling his options. He glanced around the parking lot, likely checking to see if she had any obvious companions that would tail them out of town before helping her to rob him.

  “I can pay you. Not much, but it’s only about two miles off the Interstate, and it would be plenty to cover your gas,” she said, trying to convince him that he was not a mark. She did have a little money that Mason had given her, but she hoped this man wouldn’t actually take her up on the offer. Unless she could find Mason, that money was all she had. She felt a twinge of disgust for how much she relied on him and vowed to try to find a job when this was all settled.

  The man in front of her certainly seemed decent enough, if a bit awkward. She felt bad lying to him, but the real story would take far too long to explain at a gas pump, and added too much risk that he would refuse to help her.

  He seemed to have a change of heart. “You know, I think I could use some good karma coming my way right now.” He re-holstered the gas nozzle. “Hop in.”

  She smiled. “Really? Thank you so much!” She walked over to him, and extended her hand. “I’m Rebekah. Thank you so much.”

  “Paul,” he said, shaking her hand.

  39

  Mason could hear humming coming from down the hallway as the group walked towards their vampire’s room. He could smell her from here, but she was different from the one in the basement or the cabin. It was difficult for Mason to describe the subtle smells he could pick up, even to himself, since being the only person who could detect them meant there were no words that gave a proper description. He could smell the cold coppery smell all vampires seemed to have, that much was easy enough, but there was an undercurrent of a soft spice. Not like a pepper, but almost the scent of nutmeg. It was an entirely new smell for him, but there was still something familiar about it.

  “When we freed her from Alexander’s prison, she warned us that she’s a tad unstable. This is not the ideal time to meet her,” Trevor cautioned him. “She has mood swings of a sort, so don’t hold anything she says now against her. She’s almost back to herself though, so she’s perfectly safe. She just might appear a bit quirky.”

  “Quirky?” Mason asked, hoping to clarify exactly what he was about to walk into.

  Aidan chimed in. “She’s a few cards short of a full deck. Sometimes she’s missin’ a few more cards than others. I’d say right now, she’s missin’… three.” He nodded, satisfied with his calculation. Mason glanced at the rest of the group, but if any of them also found Aidan’s comment ironic, they weren’t showing it.

  When they were almost to Maya’s door, the humming stopped, and Mason heard a quiet whisper. The voice seemed familiar somehow, but it couldn’t be…

  “Shhh, not now. He’s almost here,” the voice said, so quietly a normal person would’ve been hard pressed to hear it even if she’d whispered it into their ear.

  Aidan took a few quick steps ahead of the group to be the first one in the door. “You ‘ave a visitor, love,” he announced as he opened her door.

  As Mason continued to the door, Trevor held his arm to his side, blocking the rest of the group. He was obviously worried about overwhelming this vampire, but as Mason finally entered the doorway and saw their vampire, he realized it was him that would be overwhelmed.

  There she was, barefoot, but dressed differently in sweatpants and a sweatshirt and with shorter hair than he remembered, but there was no mistaking that this was the woman who’d been showing up in his ‘dreams’. He was frozen while his mind raced. How was this possible? The fact that she was real made a weird sort of sense. He still didn’t understand what his ‘dreams’ actually were, since he didn’t sleep, but if she was somehow involved in causing them, it at least answered a part of the question.

  “Maya, this is Mason. Mason, Maya,” Aidan gestured back and forth with his hand, making introductions. Maya scoffed and waved Aidan off.

  “We’ve met before, silly!” she said, giggling at the confused look on Aidan’s face. She turned back towards Mason. “Mason, you’re early!” she told him, winking as she ran over and gave him a big hug. He just stood stark still, the rest of the group having moved behind them in the hallway, so they could see and try to figure out what was going on.

  Trevor spoke from his new vantage point. “I’m sorry, you two know each other?”

  Maya tapped Mason on the side of the head. “I’ve been in his noggin a few times.” She brought her hand down to beside her mouth and lowered her voice to tell Mason a secret. “Sorry, I know it’s rude to go in there uninvited.”

  Mason struggled to find words. He was still looking at Maya, but addressed the others, “Um, yeah. I’ve been having these weird dreams with her in them.” Maya turned and skipped back to the middle of the room, resuming her humming.

  “Dreams? I thought you didn’t sleep,” Aidan pointed out with a hint of jealousy in his voice over this apparent connection Mason had with Maya.

  “I don’t. Long story, but that’s basically how I know they’re weird,” Mason answered, but he was still watching Maya. “Did you give me those dreams?”

  Maya scrunched her face as if that was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. “Your visions are your own. I just tuned in a few times.” Her eyes went wide as a thought struck her. “You should come with me on one of mine some time.” She ran to him and took his hands in hers. “It would be so much fun. Nobody else has ever seen mine! Well, not with my permission anyway,” her expression soured, and she drifted off.

  Simone was the first of the group to attempt to regroup. “Maya, what do you mean ‘visions’? He can see the future like you can?”

  Maya had begun spinning in a circle with her arms straight out, but at least she answered Simone. “No, mine are what will be. His are what could be, but all jumbled up. Very confusing. Even for me.”

  Trevor was looking at Mason, “Anything we could use?”

  Mason found a chair at the side of her room and sat down. He needed time to try to figure all this out, but everyone seemed to have questions for him, and he had more questions for Maya. “No, I don’t really remember much from them, but I don’t think they were very relevant. Maya, do you know what they meant?”

  Maya stopped spinning and stumbled around the room, smiling, having fun with being dizzy. “She speaks to everyone in their own personal language. I don’t speak yours.”

  Simone asked the obvious: “She?”

  Maya shrugged. “The world. The universe. Destiny. God. Who knows? I just always thought of her as a ‘she’.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mason pivoted, “how could you be in my ‘dreams’?”

  Maya had steadied herself now and was finally standing still. It was easier to take her seriously now. “How can I take a thought in my head, and then makes noises with my mouth that put the thought in your head? Communication is strange.”

  Trevor turned to Dr. Monroe, “How is this possible?”

  “How?” Dr. Monroe chortled, “I’d need a lot more time to even posit a guess. But it certainly doesn’t strike me as impossible. We know brain waves can be detected outside the head. From what you’ve told me about the gear where Alexander was keeping Maya, they were using this very fact to read her visions.”

  Maya interrupted him, “Speaking of rude! I never invited them!”

  “Yes, well,” Dr. Monroe struggled to get back on track. “Be that as it may, perhaps it’s a Sanguine/Vampire thing. Mason and Maya can just pick up on those brain waves from much further away than the most sensitive equipment.”

  “A Sanguine thing?” Trevor turned to Aidan, “You holding out on us?” Mason noticed Trevor was smirking. He must be trying to lighten the mood.

  Aidan struck a thoughtful pose. “Now that you mention it, I frequently ‘ave visions of Simone and I ‘avin’ long nights full of-”

  “So that’s a ‘no’,” Simone in
terrupted him.

  Aidan appeared offended, “I was just answerin’ the man, love.”

  Mason had ignored the banter. He was still trying to get his bearings and hoping someone would give him an explanation that made this much less confusing. What did it even mean that Maya knew about his ‘dreams’? One more thing to add to the list of weirdness in his life lately. Trevor read the look and stepped forward.

  “Alright, Maya, we’ve got some more things to show Mason. Let’s say ‘goodbye’ for now?”

  Maya put on her best pouty face. “Come back soon?”

  Aidan took advantage of the opportunity to get her attention. “I can stay, love.”

  Maya turned her attention him. “Yay!” she exclaimed as Trevor led Mason out of the room and closed the door.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that would be so intense,” he said to apologize to Mason.

  “A week ago, I didn’t know vampires existed. Now I know there’s a telepathic one. It’s a lot to take in,” Mason said, thinking out loud. “And if they’re telepathic, then me being here won’t be enough to keep Rebekah safe.”

  Mason was saying this mostly to himself, but Trevor was trying to keep up. “Rebekah?” he asked, his guard up as he remembered Maya’s warning that ‘the girl can’t come with him.’

  “My girlfriend,” Mason answered. “She’s why I’m here. After I got attacked by that vampire, I needed to put some distance between us so she’d be safe in case they came for me again.” He realized how long it had been since he’d spoken with her. He’d been ignoring her calls while he pieced this together, but he knew how worried she must be. “I need to call her. We need to pick her up as soon as possible.”

  Simone and Trevor looked at each other awkwardly. Simone, silent until now, spoke up. “Let’s head back upstairs. We need to talk.”

  40

  Paul fidgeted in his seat for the millionth time. He’d become suddenly impetuous of late, one rash decision cascading off the last, and this was no different. His careless idea to sell the blood, his impulsive decision to spend some of his windfall on this luxurious vintage SUV, his quick agreement to meet the government agent, his hasty retreat in his new SUV once that meeting spooked him, and now picking up a random stranger who, for all he knew, was trying to pull some sort of honeypot scam on him. It wasn’t hard to envision her ‘friend’ lying in wait in this cabin to ambush him when they arrived. If that were the case, they’d chosen their mark well. The way he was trying to leave town, all of his crypto coins were on him. Anyone who robbed him would have quite a haul to show for it.

  There was something his passenger wasn’t telling him too; that much was clear. While they talked, she was genuine enough, even likable (which was not a trait Paul usually found in other people), but the way she flashed her practiced charm any time she spoke of the reason she needed a ride belied her dishonesty. He had resolved miles ago that he would stop the car far from the cabin to let her out, just to be safe. He had tried to think of an excuse to use, but decided honesty was the best policy. “I’m sorry, it’s just too risky for me to get close to a place I don’t know,” he pictured himself telling her. She was certainly dressed well enough for a walk of a few hundred feet in the snow.

  She was leaning to the side and staring out his window up at the snow-covered tops of the trees. “It’s easy to forget our problems when you come out here, isn’t it? These kinds of places haven’t changed much. They didn’t notice that we were here, and they won’t notice when we’re gone,” she said.

  “I certainly wouldn’t mind forgetting a problem or two,” he offered.

  She smiled, and said teasingly, “Oh yeah, Paul? What problems are you trying to forget? You certainly seem like you’re doing alright for yourself,” she said, patting the top-grain leather center console. It was true, the ride on this decaying Interstate had been fairly smooth in this rolling fortress of a vehicle. But he had too much on his mind to appreciate the relative luxury of his new wheels.

  His memory flashed to that damned government agent who smiled too much. William Fullerton, he called himself, but he said the name like he’d never said it before. Said he wasn’t government, too; that he represented a private party interested in finding the owner of the blood that Paul’s office had obtained, but the veiled threats reeked of classic government strong-arming. Only worse, because this guy seemed competent, and if he wasn’t falling all over himself to show you some government badge or another, it only meant he knew he could get results without it. Once a man like that came calling, it was like a cracked foundation in your house: time to move.

  “Everyone’s running from something,” he replied.

  “Amen,” she said softly and went back to looking out the window.

  They drove on in silence like that for ten more minutes before she sat upright and pointed at the road sign, denoting the next exit. Half the sign was missing, and gunshots rendered the rest unreadable, so Paul wasn’t exactly sure what town it was calling out, but Rebekah had recognized it.

  “Almost there. It’s this exit and then a left,” she said. Had it already been the hour she said the trip would take? He glanced at the clock on the dash screen and realized it had been. The conversation and all his thinking had made the time fly by, but it was time to start psyching himself up for telling her he wouldn’t pull up to whichever cabin she led him to. He hated confrontation, but he hated getting robbed more.

  He put on his left blinker and rolled to a stop at the top of the offramp. He realized it was ridiculous to use signals and complete stops on these nearly deserted roads, but he supposed his strict adherence to old traffic laws was a subconscious effort to make up for the lack of control he currently had over the rest of his life.

  “Thank you again for this,” she said. He turned to look at her, momentarily confused about what she meant. He had been marveling at the vehicle’s power steering and her comment had shaken him out of his reverie.

  “Oh, it’s no problem. I was going this way anyway,” he replied meekly.

  “No, you’re a lifesaver. It took a lot of trust to bring me up here and not just assume I was trying to pull some scam.” He glanced at her again, and there was genuine appreciation in her eyes. If she was indeed about to rob him, he couldn’t decide if her mentioning it so directly was genius for being disarming, or her first mistake for putting his mind back on it.

  “Like I said, I could use some good karma right now.”

  “Well I’ll put in a good word for you,” she said, smiling, before turning her attention back to the road. “It’s this next right and then just a little way down the drive.”

  This was it. Once he pulled off the road and onto the cabin’s drive, he would watch for the cabin. Once it was in his sights, it was time to shatter her image of him as a gullible mark. He doubted she and her friend would have a contingency plan for that. If he stopped that far from the cabin there was no way her team was big enough to have someone hidden at enough intervals to still get to him. He’d call her bluff and she’d be forced to get out and walk to the cabin to tell her friends it was a bust.

  He turned off onto the drive and heard the snow crunching under the tires. He could feel a cold sweat starting to form on his forehead. He wasn’t sure when her team had gone from an accomplice to multiple assailants in his mind, but now he pictured an entire gang waiting to do God knows what to him when they arrived. This had been such a stupid idea. Why had he picked her up? She was certainly attractive, but he was far too fearful for his baser instincts to be the reason. What an idiot he’d been.

  “Wait, stop the car. Something’s wrong,” she said, surprising him. His plan was now coming out of her mouth. Was that it? She’d planned for him to get cold feet, so her accomplice was actually waiting at a prearranged spot away from the cabin, where she’d make him stop? He looked over at her and saw her white as a sheet. There was legitimate panic on her face as she craned her neck and squinted her eyes trying to see something in the distan
ce. As he slowed the truck, he followed her gaze to the cabin and saw the door wide open. Something of a snow drift had formed leading into it. If someone had been here, it had been long ago.

  “It doesn’t look like your friend is here,” he offered, noting the lack of any other cars, or even tire tracks in the snow for that matter. He put the SUV in Park.

  “Would you wait here while I check it out?” she asked.

  He sighed and shook his head. He realized now she’d never had any intent to hurt him. There was the same fear in her voice that Paul was feeling about his own precarious situation. He put the truck back in Drive. “We’ll both go check it out.”

  41

  Mason was red-faced. “So that’s it? No discussion, she just can’t come?” Simone had just revealed to him that Rebekah was not invited into their little club. Probably never had been. But they’d waited until now to tell him. They were sitting in their briefing room, chairs surrounding a long oak conference table. Aidan and another – Mason thought Trevor had called him Jackson? – stood at the door, but Dr. Monroe had retreated to his lab, likely knowing how this conversation would go and wanting no part of it. Mason was seated at the end of the table, but turned away from it, facing Trevor and Simone in their own chairs. These two were the ones responsible for breaking it to him, and Mason had noticed these three chairs away from the table when they entered the room. They must have discussed the best way to tell him, and thought that not actually sitting at the table would let it feel more personal, like they were on his side. The planning he pictured going into this was insulting.

  “We don’t have the space or resources to house people that don’t contribute,” Trevor told him bluntly. He was leaned in like at any moment he would reach over and pat Mason on the shoulder. The attempt at forced comradery was blatant.

  Mason turned to address him. “Who said she couldn’t contribute?” He knew Rebekah was quite capable and it would be hard to suffer a relapse when you were underground.