Blood Heavy: Ascension

by S. L. J. Shortt

  She had been the olive branch in this whole thing. The one that had stepped into connect Joe and and Jerry to the Supernatural. She'd been the one with control and patients and wisdom. She'd been the one they'd trusted first. Before Sophinia, the Salem witches and before Cass had made a real effort to join the club, Claire had been the one that they'd relied and believed in. She'd been there for them.

  None of them, Joe especially, could ignore the courage and steadfast dedication like she'd shown. In her own right, she was a soldier too. She knew exactly what it meant to give up your life for a cause, something that gave her closure because she was a part of something much bigger and more important than she could ever truly understand.

  Very slowly, she moved her head away from his shoulder and towards his face. A moment later, their eyes were closed and their lips were together. When the clash of her cold lips and the warmth of his didn't break the kiss, she knew her hopes had turned to reality.

  She had been waiting months for this.

  Harvey – North Dakota

  “Where’s the nearest motel?” Jerry asked flicking the wyverns eyeball from his fingers. He pulled his wallet from his inside pocket and quickly checked to make sure that his credit card hadn’t been deep fried like his phone had. “Screw the weird looks, we’ll just tell them that there was an explosion at the slaughterhouse we work at.”

  Goose wasn’t listening. He was staring very intently at the window of his Volvo. “Dude, use the glass, on our six, see the car?”

  Jerry looked into the same window and the refection pointed out a black SUV parked about fifty yards away. It hadn’t been there when they’d entered the warehouse and had blacked out windows.

  “Those are Arizona plates,” Goose said in a hushed voice.

  “Dimitri, son of a bitch!” Jerry growled. “How’d they find us?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Sending his boys to watch us during the day is pretty risky. We could just go over there and blow out those anti-UV windows of theirs. They’ll fry in a under a minute,” Jerry suggested.

  “We can’t just attack another purebloods employees. We’ll start a war,” Goose warned.

  “Alright. Let’s skip the motel and head straight back to Sophie’s,” Jerry said.

  “Yeah, just watch the mirrors, keep em in your sights,” he said unlocking the car. “This is gonna ruin my car’s interior,” he moaned.

  “They’ll ruin your body’s interior if they get the chance,” Jerry reminded and they both got in.

  It only took about ten minutes before the warmth from the inside of the car started to waft the smell of dead wyvern all over the place. Soon they were driving with all the windows down and Jerry was chain smoking in the hopes that it would cover the stink.

  It was quite a long way back to Sioux Falls. Maybe three hundred miles in fact. They actually ended up passing through Jamestown but couldn’t risk stopping to check in on Eddie because that black SUV was on them constantly. They didn’t make any attempt to catch up to them or stop them; they just followed as if they were the secret service watching the President or something.

  The sun started to go down outside and they were still about thirty minutes from Sioux Falls. Even though this was their element, the vampires in the car behind them didn’t make a move. They were being careful and it was making the boys very unsettled.

  A little while later, they entered the city limits.

  “Whoa, wait a sec,” Jerry said looking in the rear view mirror. “They’re breaking off.”

  Goose checked the mirror and sure enough, the SUV was in the process of making a U-turn. They weren’t going to risk coming near Sophinia’s base of operations.

  “They’re definitely leaving,” he confirmed.

  “The mansions only about ten minutes away, they ain’t that stupid,” Goose nodded.

  They both breathed a sigh of relief and Jerry decided to turn on the stereo. Feelin’ Blue by Creedence Clearwater Revival came on and ironically made him feel a little better about being covered in the innards of a supernatural creature.

  Finally they reached the safety of the mansion and after parking the filthy car immediately entered though the front door.

  “I claim the big shower,” Goose said.

  “What?”

  “My car has wyvern giblets on the inside and fairy douche on the outside. I deserve the big shower!” he whined. “Use the one in the bedroom!”

  Jerry moaned to himself as he trudged past the big beautiful shower room and down the hall. He really hoped he was stepping little nasty bits of giant bat into the carpets as he walked. He went straight up to one of the master bedrooms that had an en suite and opened the door but froze the moment he did.

  His eyes went wide and his jaw practically hit the floor. Lying in the bed, naked and wrapped up in sweaty sheets were Joe and Claire, arms around each other, right in the middle of intercourse. His uncle was having sex with a vampire!

  “Jerry! I–what’s all that stuff over you?!” Joe yelped as Claire tried to bury her face below the covers in embarrassment.

  His uncle was having sex with a vampire!

  Jerry was so shocked that when he tried to say “Son of a bitch,” it came out sounding like he had a mouth full of peanut butter.

  His uncle was having sex with a vampire!

  CHAPTER 9 – LOVERS IN LEAGUE

  Sioux Falls – South Dakota

  His uncle was having sex with a vampire!

  A vampire that he looked at like a sister! Real uncle and unofficial sister together! That was enough to make him gulp down a second glass of Johnny Walker Blue Label before pouring himself a third.

  Jerry had, in a very sissy way, bolted from the bedroom and run for the comfort of expensive and sweet burning whiskey in the kitchen. Joe and Claire? Together?! It didn’t seem possible. More like some horrible surreal dream brought on by drunkenness or a head wound.

  “Jerry,” Joe said looking flustered. He entered the kitchen still pulling on a t-shirt. “Look, I know you’re upset but -”

  “You know, one of the tiny little perks that comes from having no parents is that you never have to worry about walking in on them...you just took that away from me!” Jerry blurted sounding a little deranged.

  “Jerry, look, let me explain and-oh dear God, you smell like a manure dump!” Joe cringed suddenly getting a whiff of the dead wyvern all over him.

  “Explain?! I was almost face raped by a giant bat earlier and you were here banging Morticia!”

  “Don’t call her that,” he warned.

  Claire appeared in the doorway behind Joe, wearing his blue checked shirt which only made things worse.

  “Jerry, I know this is a little...difficult but -”

  “Difficult?! It’s impossible!” Jerry cut her off. “After all the crap you gave me about sleeping with your sister, you go and do this?!”

  “Jerry, I don’t have your blood and Claire has been controlling herself for the better part of a century. She’d never hurt me,” Joe defended.

  Jerry immediately turned to Claire and spoke without mercy. “Claire, I love you and I trust you with my life but not his! Bottom line, you’re a vampire! Humans and vampires, together, you know as well as I do, nine times out of ten, one of them ends up dead!”

  “Boy, you are outta line!” Joe yelled.

  “I’m outta line?! You’re screwing a vampire!”

  “You hypocritical little bastard!”

  “Yeah, you’re a hypocripical-hypocri-hyp-hyp-hyp, I HATE THAT WORD!”

  “Claire doesn’t harm humans anymore! You know that!”

  “She’s a vampire! Everyone knows vampires like to suck while they fu -”

  “You’re gonna shut your hole right now or I’m gonna make you!” Joe growled getting in his nephews face.

  Usually he would back down in a second from that kind of threat but after the day he’d had and now this, his anger had taken over the wheel.

  “Enough,
both of you!”

  They all spun around to see Sophinia standing there looking annoyed.

  “Did you know about this?” Jerry asked her straight away.

  “Of course, everybody knew that these two are head over heels for each other. In fact, you’re the only person that didn’t seem to catch on,” she stated causing Jerry to look even more surprised, if that was even possible. “I’m just glad they finally stopped beating around the bush and actually got together,” Sophinia suddenly cringed as the scent of dead wyvern hit her nostrils. “Oh, God Daniel, you smell terrible!”

  “Son of a bitch!” he yelled. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?!”

  “Because it’s none of your business!” Joe barked.

  “Because we knew used react like this,” Soph said holding her nose. “Now, we can talk about this when you don’t smell like you just crawled out of a sewer. You need to go shower, now, as in this second.”

  “Fine!” Jerry snapped. He downed his third glass before storming out of the kitchen.

  “Apologize to her,” Joe demanded.

  “No!”

  “Hey!” Joe yelled but Sophinia stopped him.

  “Joe, stop.”

  “No, he’s got no right talking to her like that!”

  Claire stood silent and awkward. She didn’t like being the cause of drama.

  “Of course he does,” she said, still a little unsettled by the smell, “he’s a lonely teenage boy. You can’t blame him for being jealous.”

  That actually made Joe’s anger stall and he looked very surprised.

  “Jealous? Are you saying he likes Claire?”

  Claire’s eyebrows shot up but Sophinia just shook her head.

  “No, of course he doesn’t think of her like that. But...he can’t be close to anyone,” she sighed.

  “What are you talking about, of course he can be -”

  “No, Joe, he can’t. He knows that the moment he gets close to anyone, he puts them in danger and he won’t allow that. He can’t have a relationship because whoever he gets with will become a target. He can never have what you and Claire do and he’s accepted that, but it doesn’t mean he has to like it,” she explained.

  Joe’s anger faded and was replaced by guilt. He had never thought about this before. This is the toll that living in the supernatural world takes. The sacrifices that Jerry had to make in order to keep people safe were more than he’d ever thought. He could never risk falling in love, not because it could potentially mean a broken heart but because it could potentially mean a heart getting ripped out.

  “Look, he’s not a child anymore. But to him, it’s like you’re waving in his face what he can never have,” Sophinia said sympathetically. “You’re already in this and he can’t change that but try to understand, he needs you two to be there for him.”

  A thought suddenly popped into Joe’s head that made him smile.

  “Actually, I think I know exactly what he needs,” he grinned.

  Jerry couldn’t have a relationship, but Joe could get him the next best thing.

  CHAPTER 10 – MEET THE NEW BOSS SAME AS THE OLD ONE

  Sioux Falls – South Dakota

  “It’s this thing,” Jerry said, “It’s scaring the crap out of all these monsters.”

  He was wrapped in a robe and still drying his hair with a towel while speaking his theory to Goose, Sophinia and Rachel about an hour later. The thought had occurred to him while he was in the shower and it had thankfully been enough to take his mind off seeing Joe and Claire in the throes of unnerving passion. That’s probably why Rachel hadn’t already told the others when she had no doubt read it in his mind.

  “Look,” he continued. “This thing shows up in St. Cloud and kills off half of Black Forest. Then, for whatever reason, it takes a little tour of the states, going to Florida and Arizona and wherever it stops off; creatures in the area freak and run as fast as they can in the other direction. Bat boy and Slugo end up here but then mystery monster returns and they book again. Well, the slug did but it says in the lore that wyverns gorge themselves right before a long haul flight, which explains the cattle. That thing was probably planning on going overseas or something.”

  The three of them nodded. His theory was sound.

  “That would also explain the chupacabra that Eddie’s tracking,” Goose agreed.

  “Yeah, what can’t figure out is why this thing would ditch St. Cloud and go to Florida and Arizona and maybe somewhere along the Mexican border. I mean, what do those places have in common?”

  “Vacation?” Goose shrugged. “A little R&R after all that killing?”

  “This is starting to worry me. If this thing can so easily intimidate creatures that usually fear nothing then it is obviously not to be underestimated,” Sophinia said grimly.

  “Wyverns and wendle slugs are primal things. Like wild dogs, they go on instinct,” Rachel nodded. “Yelling threats at them won’t do a thing but having enough power to make them back-off will.”

  “Alright,” Sophinia said standing up. “You two are grounded.”

  “What?!” Jerry and Goose shrieked.

  “Just until we can sort all this out. Between the mystery monster and Dimitri, we need to be certain before I let you out on your own again,” Sophinia said quickly, trying to relay the logic of it.

  “Soph, come on, we -”

  “A week Daniel. One week to make sure you aren’t being shadowed and to search for this creature. After we make sure you can be hidden from Dimitri, I promise, I’ll give you two more work,” she negotiated.

  Jerry and Goose sighed but they couldn’t really argue against her. She had a good point. If they were out hunting some evil thing, the last thing they’d need would be nasty vampires or a pain in the ass pureblood showing up.

  “Fine, camping out here for a week might not be so bad.”

  “Not here,” she said. “According to your uncle, the worst thing you can do is make it obvious that you know you’re being watched. You have to pretend that you don’t suspect which means you have to go home.”

  “No, no, no, no,” Jerry moaned, “seriously Soph, I can’t be trapped in that house for a week with those two making kissy faces every two freakin' seconds!”

  “Then be trapped in a box six feet under instead; your choice.”

  “You just want me to go to school and sit at home doing nothing?”

  “I’m not sure about school. The wolves knew where to find you there. Maybe it’s time you took a few sick days,” Sophinia said.

  “Dimitri knows I can’t get sick.”

  “Then maybe you injured your foot or your back or something, I don’t care. You’re an easy target out in the open, staying at your home means they’ll have to come to you. Anyone that repeatedly pokes their heads around your house will be a suspect.”

  “And as Eddie told you, there isn’t much work out there anyway. Mystery monster has scared off all the game in town,” Rachel agreed.

  “One piece of good news is that I finally tracked down someone that can protect you during the day.”

  “Great,” he mumbled.

  “You’ll like him, he’s a very nice guy and drinks even more than you do,” Soph said casually.

  “Really? What is he Irish?”

  “As a matter of fact, he is. He’s also a six hundred year old mage.”

  “Mage?” Goose said perking up. “That’s pretty exotic, where’d you find him?”

  “He’s an old friend. He should be here in a few days but until he arrives, you’re staying at home.”

  “Fine!” Jerry finally growled.

  St. Cloud – Minnesota

  The next day Jerry was back home and reading through a few lore books looking for anything that might have some kind of high heat slicing ability. Joe had called the school and told them that Jerry had suffered a back injury after falling down the stairs. Of course, they didn’t know that Jerry’s house didn’t actually have stairs.

  It had been just ove
r twenty-four hours since leaving Soph’s but already awkward tension was ripe in the air. Every time he walked past Joe’s bedroom, he got a sickly chill wondering how many times Claire had shared his uncles bed. But there was absolutely no way he was actually going to ask him that.

  For the most part there were cold shoulders and silence between the two. As soon as Joe came back from the body shop, Jerry would take his books into his bedroom. Trying to figure out what mystery monster actually was was the only distraction Jerry had at that moment. Even when he wasn’t finding any answers whatsoever, it still meant he didn’t have to think about his uncles interactions with a vampire.