Blood Heavy (Blood Heavy Series)

by S. L. J. Shortt

  “Look, I never got a chance to thank you for looking out for them,” Joe said with some difficulty.

  “You don’t have to,” she smiled at him. “The truth is, Jerry is probably the most important person we’ve ever come across and we should be thanking you. We don’t like invading people’s lives like this, you know.”

  “Well, I think it would be worse if you hadn’t,” he said with a small quirk of his mouth.

  Claire didn’t seem to know how to respond. She looked away, actually feeling a bit shy.

  “Listen, I gotta get some rack, it’s been a tiring day,” Joe said quickly.

  “Of course,” she said. “Err, sweet dreams.”

  Joe nodded before walking away. Claire watched him as he left, biting her bottom lip.

  After his bedroom door closed, she took a seat on the couch and started reading her book, keeping her ears open for anything unusual.

  The night disappeared quickly, but Jerry’s dreams made it seem longer. They were a mishmash of surreal, blurred images, old horror movies, memories of his attack and the events after it and, of course, Cassandra.

  She should have been the source of his nightmares; instead she was the object of his fantasies. Maybe it was just because she’d rescued him or maybe it was the grit and powerful presence she’d exhibited at Sophinia’s house, but he just couldn’t block out her face.

  He woke the next day actually feeling quite refreshed. Better than he had when he had left the hospital anyway.

  He went to the bathroom then crept by Goose who was still comatose on the pile of pillows and cushions that had been turned into a bed for him.

  Joe was already awake and in the kitchen making coffee. Claire was sitting at the kitchen table, still reading her book and occasionally stealing a glance at him. He didn’t seem to notice. All the curtains were still drawn to allow Claire to move around without fear of being toasted by the sunshine outside.

  Jerry walked into the kitchen yawning and headed straight for the coffee.

  “Sleep well?” Claire asked.

  “Like the dead...no offense,” he said absently.

  “Undead,” she corrected.

  Jerry ignored her and grabbed a cup of black and sugars from Joe before taking a seat at the table.

  “You know what’s weird,” he said after taking a sip.

  “You mean besides waking up with a vampire in your house?” Joe remarked. Claire didn’t appear to mind the remark.

  “It didn’t even occur to me that all this could have just been a dream. As soon as I was awake, I knew it was all real,” Jerry said, sounding a little upset about it.

  “Sophinia said you were adjusting quite well,” Claire said.

  “Yeah, that’s what worries me,” Jerry said, speaking into his cup.

  “It’s not a bad thing. Hopefully it means you won’t freak out if something happens.”

  Jerry just shrugged. Truth was, he was hanging on the edge. He could handle this, but if it got any weirder then it would probably knock him off.

  “So, apart from reading, what’s on the agenda for today?” Joe asked.

  “Well, getting you guys armed and ready I suppose,” Claire answered.

  “We need to wait for Goose for that.”

  Just as Joe finished talking Jerry’s bedroom door opened and a very sleepy looking Goose walked out like a zombie.

  “Speak of the Devil,” Claire said.

  “What, is he looking for me again? I told him his cheque's in the mail,” Goose yawned.

  Jerry moved over and poured him a cup of coffee, which Goose was more than happy to receive. “Thanks dear,” he said before taking a big gulp, almost burning his throat. “What’s up?”

  “Don’t you remember? We’re robbing your dad today,” Jerry said happily.

  “Oh, right, can I shower first?” he didn’t seem to have a problem with it either.

  They all showered before heading up to Goose’s house. Claire had to remain behind of course, but she wasn’t displeased about that. They were safe in the sunlight.

  Doug’s gun collection wasn’t actually in the house, but instead in a newly built garage behind it. It was made solidly of steel girders and wall plates. The roof was wooden, but even that had been reinforced with metal piping. Doug kept his weapons under heavy guard, which was obvious from the amount of locks that Goose had to undo in order to get the door open.

  The garage was empty apart from the shelves lining two of the walls and a large metal shutter at the end. They headed over and Goose undid yet another heavy padlock. He slid the shutter up until it folded into the roof.

  Jerry’s eyebrows hit the top of his forehead.

  This is what he imagined an arms dealer’s house to look like, or maybe the armory at a barracks. The guns came in every shape and size imaginable, from little .38’s up to and including a M-134 minigun. Some were military and police issue while others seemed unique or custom made. A huge variety of pistols, rifles, machine guns and shotguns lay in front of them.

  “You didn’t tell me that your dad was Burt Gummer!”

  “A man should have a hobby,” Goose brushed off.

  Jerry whistled, looking impressed. “God bless the NRA.”

  “You sure your dad’s got permits for all of these?” Joe asked Goose. He just shrugged.

  “We gotta take the minigun!” Jerry blurted out.

  “You’re not taking the minigun, Jerry!” Joe snapped. “We’re only going to take what we need.” He looked over the weapons for a few seconds, rubbing his chin. “Okay, I say we go for stopping power over range and ammo over accuracy. Grab a few of those Barrettes, the Desert Eagle, the 12-gauge pumps and two of those M-4’s.”

  Joe and Goose started to gather up the weapons while Jerry just stared in amazement for a few more seconds.

  “What about grenades?” Jerry asked, pointing to a box of them in the corner.

  “No grenades! These are so you can defend yourselves, not invade Bosnia!” Joe growled, as he picked one of the M-4’s off the wall. “Got any empty clips for these?”

  “I think they’re in that draw over there,” Goose said, pointing.

  “Damn! Is that a freakin’ Elephant Gun?!” Jerry said, looking at a huge silver double barreled rifle with a wooden butt. It was way bigger than your average shotgun.

  “That’s my dad’s custom Holland & Holland double rifle. Here, look at what it takes,” Goose opened a small draw below the gun rack and pulled out a white box of shells. He opened it and extracted one of them. “.700 Nitro Express rounds. One of these will put a hole the size of a grapefruit through a foot of concrete.”

  That wasn’t hard to believe. The bullets were about the size of an airplane bottle of Vodka and most of that was the cartridge case. The tips were the size of the top of Jerry’s thumb.

  “Hold it wrong and the recoil will pop your shoulder out the socket. That gun could bring a T-Rex down...but it’s off limits. That’s my dad’s pride and joy, it cost him a hundred and fifty grand at auction; no one touches it but him.”

  Jerry actually looked a little upset about that.

  After a few minutes they had gathered the weapons up into two heavy bags and were on their way back to the house. Claire had to duck out of the way as the opened the door to avoid the beams of light that came through with them.

  “I really shouldn’t sit there,” said Claire, emerging from behind the counter once the door was shut.

  “Sorry, not used to knocking on my own front door,” Joe said, dumping one of the bags on the floor. Goose put the second down next to it.

  “Your phone rang when you were out. I didn’t answer, but the caller I.D. said Holden,” Claire informed them.

  “That’s Steve, I better go update him,” Jerry said.

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” Claire asked wearily.

  “He was there when we were attacked; he’s not going to forget that anytime soon. Besides, he needs to know that you guys aren’t the b
ad guys.”

  “Alright,” she nodded, but didn’t seem too happy.

  Jerry grabbed the phone and spent the next fifteen minutes talking to Steve. His voice modulated from calm and collected up towards frustrated yelling several times before the call finally finished. Apparently, Steve wasn’t taking this stuff as well as Jerry and Goose had.

  “How’s he doing?” Goose asked.

  “I think he put his therapist on hold to take my call. He ain’t taking to this very well,” Jerry sighed.

  “Actually, we were expecting you to react that way. He’s acting perfectly normally by our book,” Claire said without a care.

  “Oh, so we’re the freaks? That’s comforting,” Jerry snorted.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Uh huh,” Jerry said, looking closely at the bags of weapons.

  “You aren’t firing those until after you’ve learned how they work and I’m not showing you that until after lunch,” Joe said, tracking his nephew’s gaze.

  “I already know how most of them work - dad showed me,” Goose said.

  “Well, I want to make sure.”

  Jerry started sifting through the large box of books that they’d brought back from Sophinia’s. Some of them looked so old he was worried that they might fall apart if he picked them up, whilst others only seemed like they had been written a decade or so ago. One of them even had a laminated cover.

  “Let’s see how many New York Times bestsellers you got in here,” Jerry said to Claire, pulling a few of them out and reading the covers. “Werewolves, Shapeshifters and Skinwalkers...” he put the book down on the table, still finding it hard to believe that this stuff was actually real. “Poltergeists and other Vengeful Spirits…”

  Goose joined in and pulled a few books out to check the titles. “The Truth of Omens...Male-Malefica - I can’t even read that...”

  “The Book of Fae, what the hell’s Fae?” Jerry asked, looking like he was staring at Chinese instructions to a DVD player.

  “Fairies,” Claire said simply, causing both Jerry and Goose to look at her like she’d lost her mind.

  “Fairies? Are you serious?” Goose laughed.

  She was serious.

  “But Fairies? Come on! You’ve been watching too many Disney movies, right?” Jerry shook his head.

  “ ’Fraid not.”

  “And we just got one step closer to Narnia,” Goose grumbled.

  “Fairies, really?” Jerry just couldn’t get there.

  “Watch yourself around them. They can be vicious little bastards when they want to be,” Claire warned.

  “Yeah, well, Tinkerbell comes near me; she’s gettin’ both barrels and no clapping!” Jerry quipped.

  Claire giggled as Goose went back to the box.

  “Witches, Necromancers and Mages’...Are these like those ‘For Dummies’ books? Can we get them on Kindle or something?” Goose asked in all seriousness.

  “Some of those books are hundreds-thousands of years old. You have no idea how difficult it was to track them all down. It’s a privilege just to see them,” Claire said, looking a little forbidding.

  “Half of this stuff is in Latin or German or...I don’t even know what that is!” Goose spluttered, back flipping through the pages of one of the books.

  “It’s Cuneiform,” she said, glancing at the page.

  “Well I hate to break this to you, but I don’t speak Cuneifarm!”

  “Cuneiform!”

  “Whatever!”

  “The translated pages are at the back,” she huffed.

  Goose stopped and flipped to the back of the book where several much newer looking pages had been added in English. “Oh...”

  “Man, it’s gonna take months to go through all this crap,” Jerry griped.

  “I’ve found that people tend to learn quickly when their lives depend on it,” said Claire pointedly.

  “And thank you for reminding us just how deep in the shit we truly are,” Goose smiled, but not in a friendly way.

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Claire smiled back at him, just as insultingly.

  Jerry grabbed a random book from the pile, took a seat and started reading. After about ten minutes he looked like he was threatening to have an aneurism.

  After a hefty lunch of bacon cheese burgers, Joe started taking them through the basics of how a gun works. Honestly, Jerry didn’t expect it to be so complicated. In the movies, you never really saw someone building a gun from the ground up, you just saw the action shots and picked up how to fire and reload a weapon. There were so many springs and pins that it made him start to see guns in the same light as car engines.

  Because of his affinity for mechanics, Jerry actually picked it up pretty quickly. How the shafts slide together; how the ejection port works; the trigger pin; the hammer; the clip release...all of it started to flow in the same easy way that circuit boards and piston schematics did in his head.

  Joe would be taking them for firing practice after school on Monday. He had already booked the time off work, but that wasn’t the only thing he would be showing them. He would be teaching them how to move so that the body is protected; how to find the right firing position; how to make the terrain work to one’s advantage. Basically he was going to pass down all his years of military knowledge to them.

  Despite the fact that their workload had just doubled or even tripled, both Goose and Jerry seemed to be feeling a lot better about the situation. Having the weapons and the knowledge about how to use them made them feel safe, and having Claire as their vampire protector made them feel even safer. Of course, sitting there and learning about Banshee’s and Wraiths and Golems wasn’t quite so much fun when the damn things actually existed.

  Jerry kept reminding himself; it was better to know than not to know, but as he read more and more, his thoughts were constantly drawn to other things. His friends and family were in danger because of him and the thought of leaving and striking off on his own started to sound more and more tempting. Maybe he could lead Black Forest away and keep them chasing him so that Goose and Joe and the others would all be safe.

  Unfortunately, his brain wouldn’t let those thoughts linger. He knew deep down that if he suddenly vanished, he wouldn’t just be sacrificing his identity to them, but also that Black Forest would instantly target the people he cared about in order to draw him out. It was the oldest trick in the book.

  No, he had to stay and hash this out.

  But all of this was constantly shadowed by thoughts of his violent and dangerous savior; Cassandra. Her face was lodged firmly in his mind and it wouldn’t leave. Every time she flashed into head once more, he found her all the more beautiful and powerful and longed for her not to leave. It was a dangerous attraction, but he didn’t care. They were just fantasies after all. It would never really happen.

  At about seven-thirty in the evening, just as the sun was beginning to set, Claire’s cell started ringing. She left to answer it and spoke in hushed tones when she did. The conversation only lasted about five minutes before she came back.

  “Okay, we think we might have a lead on where Black Forest is holed up. Sophinia wants me and a few others to check it out,” she said quickly.

  “Why you, I thought you were supposed to be protecting us?” Jerry asked.

  “If we can hit Black Forest hard then it will make protecting you a lot easier. If this is where they’re holed up then Sophinia needs someone that can get in and out without being detected. I don’t want to blow my own horn, but that’s me. If it turns out to be nothing, I’ll be back before midnight,” she explained.

  “Watch your back,” Joe said.

  For a brief moment Claire’s face perceptibly softened, but she hid it well a second later.

  “Remember, stay inside, do not invite anyone in and keep one of those weapons with you at all times,” she said in the same commanding tone that Joe used. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Claire waited for another t
en minutes until the sun was low enough for her to leave. A car pulled up outside and she got in. It sped away in a hurry. Strangely enough, not having her there seemed to leave some kind of a gap. Maybe it was selfish of him, but Jerry thought that he and his friends deserved to be protected, and now that that protector was gone…it just didn’t feel right.

  It was a stupid thought. He’d only known her for two days and her sister had tried to eat him!