Gidion's Blood

by Bill Blume

  “I need to text Andrea.”

  Dad’s protest made it far enough for him to open his mouth, but his brow furrowed. He nodded. “Keep it short.”

  He did. The message let her know he was all right and asked if she was. She didn’t respond, but considering it was well after two o’clock, that wasn’t much of a shock. At least, he hoped that was the reason she wasn’t answering. He wanted to go back to that moment in the park before he’d gotten the email. He should have kissed her.

  Dad didn’t take them far, just a few blocks. The Public Safety Building where Dad worked was very close. This place was more like three buildings in one. Instead of going to the parking lot off of Parham Road where Dad usually parked to go to work, they stopped in the main lot off of Shrader Road. Very few cars were in this lot, which provided access to two parts of PSB, as it was usually called. A tall fence surrounded several dozen police cars not being used at the moment in the far end of the lot, which was pressed up against the tree line.

  Before they got out of the car, Dad reached into his jacket and pulled out his blue ID card. “Let’s go.”

  With his coffee in one hand, Gidion reached with his other hand into his jacket’s front pocket for his box cutter only to remember it wasn’t there. It was probably still on Grandpa’s floor or in an evidence locker. He didn’t have a single weapon, and somehow, he doubted Dad was carrying anything other than his coffee and ID card. Not seeing any choice, he got out and followed.

  Gidion watched for any movement. They were the only ones in the lot, though. The only decent hiding places were so far from them that anyone trying to set an ambush would be hard-pressed to reach them before they could get inside PSB.

  The nearest of the three buildings was the training center. Dad had brought him here a few times when he’d been even younger and money was a lot tighter. The training center included a weight room and a small basketball court.

  As they made it up to the doors, Dad waved his card in front of a thin, red light. It beeped and the door made an obnoxious metallic sound that resembled a pop. Dad pulled the door open and motioned for Gidion to get inside. The door clattered shut behind them with a second metallic pop as the security lock engaged.

  This building didn’t open to the public until after sunrise. He didn’t think the vampires were crazy enough to break into this building, and to Dad’s credit, that probably made this the safest place they could go at the moment.

  They went to the basketball court, which was completely dark. Dad turned on just enough lights to dispel most of the shadows. The police and sheriff’s office both used this space for a lot of training. One corner had several ropes hanging down from the ceiling, which he’d always wanted to try to climb when he was little, but Dad wouldn’t let him. The far wall had several large blue mats rolled up. The rolls were massive, coming up to just below Gidion’s waist. Dad sat on one and motioned for Gidion to join him.

  They were close to the door to the locker room. Four basketballs were clustered together on the floor near the door.

  “Been a long time since I brought you in here, hasn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Even though they hadn’t said much up until this moment, their words had been covered in a layer of everything they weren’t saying. Gidion realized that awkwardness had been there a lot longer than tonight. When Dad spoke again, the lies that had covered their lives pulled back.

  “I stopped bringing you here because I hate this place.” Dad set his coffee on the floor. “All my worst moments seem to bring me to this room. It’s where I go to retreat. Your mom and I even had one of our worst fights in here.”

  Gidion didn’t ask what the fight was about. He supposed it didn’t really matter. Dad had never talked about him and Mom having fights.

  Dad’s jawline tightened, his gaze focused on something in his thoughts. “So, how long has this been going on?”

  Gidion placed his coffee on the floor. He hadn’t sipped it yet, wondered if he was even going to have the ability to before it turned cold.

  “Last summer. I mean, that’s when I started hunting.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Spring was the first time I saw a vampire. You were out of town, and Grandpa took me downtown a few nights until we managed to find one. Didn’t even know that was why he was taking me there until I saw it. Grandpa stopped it from killing this guy. He didn’t fight it or anything, but once it knew there was a witness, it ran.”

  He caught Dad nodding. More dots connecting to Gidion. Grandpa had said he’d told Dad about training him to defend himself, lying that he’d keep Gidion in the dark about vampires. The excuse had been to make sure he could protect himself if any vampires from Dad or Grandpa’s pasts came after him for payback. Grandpa even admitted that was why Dad had gotten their dog, Page.

  “Made my first kill in August.”

  Dad sighed. “It was you.”

  Gidion wasn’t sure what he meant, but Dad’s next words explained it.

  “I know about the coven that got killed in the fire in the East End.”

  “You knew about that?”

  Dad answered with a glare, the first hint of the anger Gidion had dreaded seeing tonight.

  “Yes, I knew. I hunted more years than you’ve been alive. Do you have the vaguest clue how stupid and dangerous it was for you to eliminate that whole coven?”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Bullshit!”

  Gidion remembered more of Grandpa’s words of wisdom, telling him he couldn’t save everyone, but that was exactly what he’d tried to do.

  “They were going to kill people.”

  “People die every damn day.” He was about to say something else, but then he paused. Dad leaned back as he stared at him, and Gidion could see Dad making more connections. “Pete. Your friend was involved in that whole mess, wasn’t he?”

  Gidion didn’t have to answer. He supposed his guilt was easy enough for Dad to see.

  “You could have gotten yourself killed.” Dad reached up into the air as if to choke Pete’s ghost. “And he just killed himself anyway!”

  The rest of the conversation didn’t go much better. Gidion admitted to most everything. His job at the funeral home? Just an excuse to make sure he had a job that wouldn’t interfere with his hunting. The night he’d been pulled over by a police officer for speeding when he wasn’t supposed to be out? Dad had been working the police radio that night and instantly realized it was Gidion’s car that was stopped. He’d been furious enough back then, when he just thought Gidion was out later than he was supposed to be. Now that he realized Gidion had been transporting a decapitated vampire in the trunk at the time, he was sixteen shades of livid.

  “Your grandpa was right. You should’ve backed off after the coven.”

  “Then what would have been the point!” Gidion was done in so many ways. He was on his feet. He had his rabbit’s foot out, the one Tamara had given him. He held it in his left hand in a death grip for all the good it had done him tonight. “Backing off would have just opened the door for another coven to move in.”

  Dad leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe these vampires are just part of the natural order?”

  “How can you say that?”

  “I know these things better than you or your grandfather.”

  “Really? ‘Part of the natural order?’ Is that how you justified when you stopped hunting after Mom died?”

  Even in the limited light of the gym, Dad went pale. Gidion’s body shook. He’d wanted the answer to that question ever since he figured out the vampires must have been responsible for killing his mother. He deserved the truth, but he’d waited until the question was nothing but a cheap shot.

  “How much did your grandpa tell you?”

  “Nothing. Only that Mom dying was why you stopped hunting.”

  Dad averted his eyes. He reached down for his coffee, and his hand shook as he lifted
the cup. His eyes closed as he took a sip. Gidion got the feeling Dad wished something stronger than caffeine was in that cup.

  “I stopped hunting because of you. I didn’t want you to go through what I did when I was your age.” He shook his head as if to rid himself of whatever memories he’d dredged up from the past. “We can have that conversation later. For now, we need to focus.”

  Gidion threw the rabbit’s foot at the wall. “No!”

  “We have to figure out a way to keep you alive. I’m more concerned with that than anything else.”

  “Did you even avenge her?”

  He nodded without looking at him. “Killed every last one, for all the good it did.”

  There was a strange comfort in that. The truth didn’t change anything, didn’t make things any better. The truth simply made things a bit more just.

  Dad stood and walked over to the basketballs on the floor. He picked one up, put it under his arm, and then got another. “Come here.” He canted his head for Gidion to follow him closer to the far end of the gym.

  “I’m not really in the mood to shoot hoops, Dad.”

  “Wasn’t planning on it.” He placed one of the balls on the floor and turned to face him. “Kick it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s better than beating yourself up. Kick it, throw it, whatever it takes.” Dad screamed as he threw the other basketball at the wall, a full body motion that resembled a baseball player delivering a pitch, but without any finesse. The ball bounced off the wall, flying past both of them. “Why do you think I come here when things are bad? It sure as heck isn’t to meditate.”

  He walked after the ball, which had settled on the opposite side of the room. With another roar, Dad kicked it into the wall down there.

  Gidion looked at the ball Dad had placed on the floor for him. It was a ratty looking thing, bits of thread sticking out in places along its black rib lines, the basketball equivalent of mange. He roared as he charged at the ball and kicked it with every bit of energy he had left. The ball launched into the air, hit the wall, and came right back at him.

  “Crap!” He jumped to the right too late. The basketball nailed him on the left shoulder. Thank God he hadn’t gone left. He’d probably have ripped open his stitches otherwise.

  Dad walked up beside him. He was laughing and smiling at him. “Yeah, you gotta watch out for the rebound. Nearly hit myself in the head one time.”

  Gidion went after his ball and kicked it a few more times. He tried not to scream on the first few, but yelling helped him more than kicking the ball. Kicking it just gave him an excuse for the noise.

  By the time he finished, sweat dripped from his forehead. He hunched over with his hands on his knees for support. The posture made the cut in his shoulder burn, but he welcomed the pain. He’d never wanted to sleep so much in all his life. Everything in him wanted to shut down.

  Dad came up beside him and put a hand on his good shoulder. “Feel better?”

  “Not much.” Coupled with how late it was, brutalizing that basketball had left him dizzy and tired.

  “Well, ‘not much’ is better than not at all.”

  Dad pulled out his phone to check the time. “I need a place to rest and think,” he said. “This vampire that’s after you—after us—knows too much. We need to get Page and find a place other than our house to sleep, somewhere they won’t think to look.”

  “Crap.” There was one thing he hadn’t admitted to Dad yet, a detail he’d been careful to hide even as everything else about the past year had spilled into the open.

  “What is it?” Dad asked.

  “I know where we can go, but you’ve got to promise you won’t get mad.”

  “Son, I’m not sure I could be much more ticked at you.”

  “No, not with me.” Gidion gripped his injured shoulder as he straightened. “I mean someone else.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Dad directed more than one angry look at Gidion from his driver’s seat as they drove to Ms. Aldgate’s. Getting back across town didn’t take long, given that it was just after sunrise on a Sunday morning.

  Gidion told Dad about how Ms. Aldgate had insisted on him confessing to him about the hunting or to stop altogether. “She felt really badly about having any secrets between the two of you. I think she likes you a lot.”

  “I’m curious,” Dad said as they drove down a near-empty Midlothian Turnpike. “What did you tell her?”

  “Told her I’d quit hunting.”

  Dad grunted.

  Gidion knew he’d regret asking, but curiosity won. “What?”

  “Was just wondering which lie you’d fed her.”

  For all of two seconds of what must have been certain insanity, he considered pointing out it wasn’t a total lie. He did stop hunting, at least temporarily.

  “Turn here,” Gidion said as they reached the stoplight for Ms. Aldgate’s neighborhood off of Midlothian Turnpike.

  That earned another angry look from Dad.

  “What?” Gidion shrugged. “Oh, yeah. Sorry. Forgot you’ve been here before.”

  “I wasn’t aware you had.”

  The way Dad said that, Gidion decided not to offer details. That had been the same night he finished off the Richmond Coven.

  Only once they pulled into the driveway on Crater Street did it occur to Gidion he’d never seen Ms. Aldgate’s home in the daytime. The last time he’d been here, he’d focused on the possibility of an ambush. He remembered the small statue of an elephant by the front door and little else. Ms. Aldgate loved elephants, even had an elephant-shaped pencil holder on her desk at school.

  “So, how many times have you been here?” Gidion asked as Dad turned off the car.

  Dad tapped a finger in a slow, steady manner on the steering wheel, adding a whole extra layer of menace to Angry Look #57 of the night.

  “I’m guessing that’s none of my business.”

  “Amazing,” Dad muttered as he got out of the car. “You can be taught.”

  Before getting out of the car, Gidion silently repeated Dad’s words in an appropriately mocking imitation, but only because he knew Dad couldn’t see him at that moment.

  He cringed at the baby blue color of the vinyl siding.

  “For what it’s worth,” Gidion said as he followed Dad up to the door, “this will be the first time I’ve gone inside.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m guessing it’s probably not yours.”

  And there was Angry Look #58.

  The front door jerked open before Dad could press the doorbell or use the elephant knocker. Under the circumstances, Gidion wished Ms. Aldgate hadn’t done that. He was jumpy enough as it was. Even Dad jolted back.

  “You got here fast.” The words rushed out of her, suggesting she’d been racing to get her house ready. Under the circumstances, she didn’t look like they’d just dragged her out of bed early. She was wearing a dark green top and black pants. Her long, brown hair was pulled back into a pony tail without a hint of bed head.

  Gidion waved, not that she noticed. He couldn’t repress a smirk at the way she smiled at Dad. The cute part was how they each hesitated. Dad gestured like he was going to take her hand as she moved to hug him. They both stopped short, and then the roles reversed.

  With a nervous laugh they both looked in his direction. If his right shoulder wasn’t so tender, he’d have crossed his arms for maximum effect as he said, “You might as well kiss. Clearly, you’ve already made it past first base anyway.”

  Angry Looks #59 and #1 all at the same time. He should get extra points for managing that. Ms. Aldgate’s glare didn’t last long as she noticed Gidion’s right shoulder.

  “What happened?” She tried to look at Dad as she asked, but she couldn’t make eye contact. This was a different kind of awkward, and not the cute kind. Gidion felt guilty about that.

  “Let’s get you two in here.” She stepped out of the way and waved them into her den.

  T
he thermostat must have been cranked, because the change in temperature wrapped him up like a blanket. Gidion couldn’t say the condition of the house shocked him. Even at school, she kept her classroom in perfect order. If her home was any cleaner, doctors could perform open heart surgery on her hardwood floor. The stack of magazines on her coffee table was fanned out in a deliberate pattern that made Gidion wonder if she’d used a ruler to do it. The only thing that looked out of its usual place, presumably, was a square-shaped throw pillow on the sofa which had fallen on its face, something she promptly corrected. The house even smelled clean, and he’d never realized “clean” had a smell to it.

  “Sorry about the mess.”

  In unison, Gidion and Dad said, “You’re kidding, right?”

  She smiled at that. A familiar, mechanical snort came from the kitchen. “Do you two want some coffee?”

  Gidion shook his head. He hadn’t even been able to finish the twenty ounce cup he’d gotten from Wawa. “I think if I had any caffeine right now, I’d barf like a volcano. Been awake close to twenty-four hours.” Then it hit him again. Almost twenty-four hours ago when Grandpa had awakened him with a phone call, since he’d driven to the funeral home to see that sideways, fanged smiley face.

  The last morning he’d seen Grandpa alive.

  Dad’s hand on his shoulder brought him out of Grandpa’s house and back to Ms. Aldgate’s. “He needs sleep more than anything.”

  “I’ve got the guest bedroom ready.” She led them to it. Her house wasn’t very big. She pointed out the bathroom. Her bedroom door was closed. “That actually is a mess,” she said.

  The guest bedroom lacked anything elephant-like, as if she’d decided that would be imposing her style on a guest. She’d decorated the entire room in blue and gold. The bed maintained the motif with gold sheets and a comforter with a floral pattern of gold leaves on a blue background.

  “Give me a few minutes,” Ms. Aldgate said to Dad. “I can get my room ready, if you want to get some sleep, too.”

  “Actually, I think I’ll take you up on the coffee, if that’s all right.”