The phone rang four times and went to voice mail. Chuck hung up. “Do you want me to leave a message or try another number?”
Then his phone rang.
On the other end, I heard my mom. “Chuck?”
Chuck put the phone back to his ear. “Yeah, it’s me. You said you wanted me to call if…” He paused. “If I heard from Lucy.”
“You heard from Lucy?”
“I ran into her actually,” said Chuck. He looked at me. His eyes asked me if I wanted to take the phone from him.
I did want to. But I didn’t actually do it.
I heard Emma attempt to protest what was happening and wished that I’d had Chuck do this on the walk over. Too late now.
“Where?” said my mom.
“At a coffee shop. She was just walking by, and, I don’t know. I saw her.”
“Where is she now?”
Chuck looked at me again. My hand moved of its own accord, flexing. It wanted that phone. I couldn’t feel a tightness in my chest or tears in my eyes but I knew I would if I could.
“I don’t know where she went,” said Chuck. “She told me not to call you. Then she told me that if I did call you, to tell you that she was fine, and that she’ll get in touch when she can. She said she had some things going on right now that you can’t help with. But she’s okay. She said not to worry. That she’s okay.”
Chuck had reached the end of his obligation to me.
“Did she look okay?” said my mom. I could hear her holding back tears.
In the background, I could hear my dad say something like, “Someone saw Lucy? Who is that?”
Chuck looked at me with my missing hair and cuts. “Yeah, she seemed fine,” he said.
“Do you know where she was going?” said my mom.
“No. I said I had to go to the bathroom and when I came back out, she was gone. I think she thought I was calling you or the cops and trying to keep her there.”
There was a long silence on the other end. Finally, my mom asked limply, “Is there anything else you can tell me?”
Chuck looked at me. Last chance to take the phone. I shook my head.
“No,” said Chuck.
“Thank you,” said my mom. The last part of her words choked off as she hung up.
Back at my house, I was sure my parents were having a good cry.
Chuck cleared his throat, trying to get his emotions under control. “Is there anyone else?”
Becca, I thought. Only what was there to say? And how would she react to Chuck, a total stranger, calling her out of the blue?
I looked down at Emma. At Wash. These were my friends now. And my family.
Something inside me clenched and I finally understood something. That life, that family, my best friend. I was dead to them. And they had to be dead to me. Especially if I wanted to keep them alive.
Emma might not have been able to speak but I was certain that’s what she had been trying to tell me.
I looked back at Chuck and shook my head. “No.”
Chuck handed me his phone and I put it in my pocket. He looked very tired. It made sense. Most days he probably would be home and thinking about going to bed by now.
“Is there anyone you want to call? Say goodbye to?” I said.
Chuck considered for a long moment. He shook his head. “I think everyone already knows what I have to tell them,” he said. “When you start dying, you start talking. I’m out of words.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
I looked at my two companions. Wash could barely move at all. Emma, however, still looked somewhat human. I decided she was my best bet.
I found some dusty tarps and built a makeshift bed next to Emma, and instructed Chuck to lie down.
I opened my mouth to give him instructions on what to do and instead said, “Thank you, Chuck. For everything.”
He looked up at me. He resembled a child about to fall asleep. “Thank you,” he said.
“No, really,” I said in return. “Without you and your broken-down car, I wouldn’t be here today.”
Chuck looked around at my two nearly-dead friends. At my wounds. And he smiled, softly. “You’re welcome then, I guess.”
“Okay,” I said. “Lie back. Take a deep breath. Trust me, what comes next is pretty amazing.”
Chuck followed my instructions and I moved over to Emma. Just before I lifted her, I said, “Brace yourself,” then I turned her over, listening to the scream of pain trapped in her dry throat.
I placed Emma’s head over Chuck’s neck. I pushed down, ever so slightly. Emma’s teeth sank in and she drank.
CHAPTER 68
Emma fed for a little less than a minute and I heard her insides creak and groan as they repaired themselves. Given her injuries, I thought she’d need at least four pints. A little less than half of Chuck’s blood.
But she stopped short of that.
“Drink,” I said.
Emma shook her head. “You. Then Wash.”
“I’m okay,” I said. And I felt like I almost was. I doubted I could go for a long, thirsty haul like Wash or Emma, but I felt like I would be all right if I didn’t drink right away.
“The thirst will sneak up on you and we don’t need that,” said Emma. “Drink.”
I sucked for about thirty seconds, feeling my cuts and scrapes healing themselves. Oddly, after my scalp healed, some of my hair grew back in. It was a little bit beyond five o’clock shadow.
Emma smiled. “That’s going to take a little time to grow back,” she said.
I stuck Wash’s hat back on my head. Problem solved.
Chuck was still breathing, very softly, and not very often. His heart had slowed. Once his heart stopped, it would be hard to get much blood out of him using our conventional means.
Emma looked at him. “Cancer?”
I nodded.
“Too young,” she said. She looked at Wash, and me, and herself. “But aren’t we all?”
Emma lifted Chuck, and I moved his bedding next to Wash. She arranged Chuck on the bed, and then went to Wash, preparing to move him.
“You’re not going to enjoy this,” Emma said to Wash.
Just before she lifted him, she looked at me. “You know CPR?”
“Yeah?”
“Let Wash start drinking, then massage our new friend’s heart. We’ll get more blood out of him. Wash is going to need it.”
I nodded, and Emma placed Wash at Chuck’s neck. Nothing happened.
“Come on, Wash,” said Emma, and she pushed on Wash’s head. It wasn’t working.
She pushed harder, and instead of a light sliding through the skin, Wash’s teeth mangled their way in. Chuck shifted. I could tell it was hurting him.
Wash drank. One sip. Two. Then he drank deep and Chuck shifted, moaning.
Emma lifted Wash’s head, bent over, and gave Chuck a sloppy wet kiss where the wounds were.
They closed and Chuck stopped shifting.
“Softly,” said Emma to Wash, and this time, Wash drank instead of guzzling.
After half a minute, I began the chest compressions and bit by bit, Wash returned to normal. It was like watching a half-deflated balloon getting refilled with air.
In particular, I watched his stump, waiting for his hand to come back. The end of his wrist healed over but his hand, it seemed, was gone for good.
Finally, Wash pulled away and I stopped pressing on Chuck’s chest.
He lay there with a smile on his face.
CHAPTER 69
So that’s my story.
Not my whole story, of course. When you’re immortal, your story goes on and on and on and on.
And also on.
You get the point.
But for now, let’s tie up the loose threads and say that this tale is done.
Emma, Wash and I debated for a while what to do with Chuck’s body. In the end, Emma used Chuck’s phone to make a 911 call. She said she’d heard a noise, found a hole in a warehouse wall, and found some poor man dead on the
ground. She said she’d wait.
Then we left.
If there was an autopsy, it would show Chuck had died of natural causes probably related to his cancer. Of course, they would also discover he was almost empty of blood.
But after the death of so many homeless folks in the city, we doubted anyone would notice that a non-homeless man with late-stage cancer appeared to have died of blood loss with nearly invisible wounds.
The three of us went back to the Sundown shelter and found that it had been left shuttered with a scribbled sign, “Closed Until Further Notice.”
We suspected our policeman friend had slapped the sign up once he realized his gun was missing and no one was answering the door or his phone calls.
We took a couple of cots out of the main room and stuck them in Wash’s hidden chamber. We slept all day.
That night, we heard some noise when the sun came down. But no one opened the door and the homeless folks in need of shelter went on to the next place on their list.
They still had to fear the elements, of course. But they didn’t have to fear John Smith.
We spent the day cleaning up the shelter and ourselves. We all got into clean clothes and put our destroyed ones in a trash bag to be dumped in a far-off location.
Wash emptied his hidden chamber of beds and other comforts. We left the vampire kit in the chamber, tucked into a corner, as we doubted anyone would find the hidden room and I was reluctant to throw away the one memento I had of my grandfather. We washed all the sheets and towels and arranged all the nighttime kits.
Wash closed up the Coleman stove and washed the pots clean of congealed oatmeal. Apparently our police buddy had kicked everyone out and left the place a mess out of spite.
Or maybe he just didn’t know how to wash a dish. Who can say?
All the trash went into a bag and we cleaned the place up as best we could. Wash wanted to take the books with us somehow, or donate them to Goodwill but Emma and I told him that someone would get them eventually without our help. And with the new phone Emma had given him, he could have almost any book he wanted, any time of day or night.
That, he liked.
Wash wrote up a much more useful sign explaining that the shelter was closed and offering directions to three other shelters nearby. While he wasn’t pleased about losing his hand, he was grateful that he’d managed to hang onto (ha-ha) his writing hand.
The sun fell. We taped up the sign.
And we left the city.
CHAPTER 70
Well, okay. One more thing happened.
As we were heading into the airport to figure out how best to get out of Dodge, Emma’s phone buzzed.
She looked at it and grimaced.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Emma looked at me. “My friend with all the info? The one who told me where a person can get a late-night meal in Denver? He’s calling in his favor.”
Wash’s face registered surprise. “That was quick.”
I looked back and forth at the two of them. “Really?”
Wash turned to me. “Vampire favor-trading goes back thousands of years,” he said. “Usually it’s polite to wait a while before calling one in. A year is good. Ten years is better.”
“Why is that?” I said.
Emma bit her lip lightly. “It implies that you’re just giving favors to get favors when you cash in your chip this quickly.”
I didn’t really understand but what did I know? I was a baby.
“The good news,” said Emma, “is that now we have a destination. We’re headed to Pittsburgh on the next flight.”
Wash blinked. “Pittsburgh? I haven’t been there since that one time…”
Emma grinned. “Yeah, yeah. I remember.”
“Remember what?” I asked.
“Tell you later,” Emma and Wash said, at the exact same moment. Then they laughed tiny, quick, vampire laughs. And we went off to book our flight.
That’s a whole other story. I’ll tell you that one sometime.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joshua Grover-David Patterson is a freelance writer, screenwriter and blogger. His articles on pop culture, film and the Internet have appeared in The Post-Crescent, Bull magazine, delight! magazine and Film Threat. Patterson's films have won 13 awards and appeared in 29 film festivals worldwide, including Japan, Australia, Hungary, Norway, the UK and throughout the United States. Patterson lives in Wisconsin with his wife and their daughter.
10% of all his book profits go to the nonprofit organization Ethiopia Reads (ethiopiareads.org). Sign up for his mailing list to get an email alert when his new books come out! smarturl.it/joshpatterson
Twitter: twitter.com/GroverDavid
Facebook: facebook.com/JoshuaGroverDavid
Blog: groverdavid.blogspot.com
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Smitty’s Story
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Emma’s Epic
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Wash’s Story
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
About the Author
Blood Calling (The Blood Calling Series, Book 1) Page 19