C.O.T.V.H. (Book 2): Judgment

by Palmer, Dustin J.

  “I’m not running again, Pam,” John said coldly. “I tried that once. It didn’t work.”

  “I know that, John,” Pam argued. “But Julia wouldn’t want this for her son. You know she wouldn’t.”

  “Pam. Enough. This is our life. You chose to stay out of it, we didn’t.”

  Pam sighed. “There is just no arguing with you people!” she said angrily. “You’re just as stubborn as Billy. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  “Look. I don’t need this crap. I’m coming off an eighteen-hour shift at the ER . . . I went home to get a couple of hours of sleep and had just dozed off when who should call me? Why my old friends the Bishops! That’s who! The ones that only call when someone is either dead or needs to be patched up!”

  “Pam I’m sorry . . .” John started to say.

  “Oh and guess what else?” She interrupted. “I’ve got to be back at work in two hours! Two hours! So I’ll tell you what, next time one of you gets hurt, don’t bother calling me.” She picked up her bag pulled out two bottles of antibiotics and tossed them at John then headed for the door. “If Jake gets any worse take him to the ER.”

  She stopped right outside the door. “You two . . .” she poked her finger at John, then at Cort. “Get your wounds stitched up and get on those antibiotics before you both get sick and die. You know how poisonous those scratches are. What am I saying? Of course, you know! You’ve both been scratched at least a hundred times by those monsters!” She stormed out still ranting.

  “Well . . . that was awkward.” John said reaching down to help Jake to his feet.

  “You’re telling me,” Cort said peeking around the corner of the broken steel door. “What the hell did she mean by you people?”

  “Pop . . .” John shook his head laughing. “Go pack a bag. We’re going to a hotel.”

  “Hotel? I’m not paying to stay at some damn hotel.”

  “I’m paying Pop.”

  “Yeah? Hell then, let’s get going,” he said, rushing down the hallway to his room.

  Chapter 1

  Jake

  10 miles South of San Angelo, TX.

  Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1998

  5:29pm

  Jake tucked his head tightly to his chest and thrust his shivering hands deeper into his coat pockets as he watched John scrape the accumulated ice off the windshield of their ‘86 Ford F-250. They had been on the road for over six hours and the icy hell storm was only getting worse. The truck’s heater/defrost had gone out only twenty miles outside of Lubbock making matters a hundred times worse. This had been their fourth deicing stop in the past hour.

  “Burrr!” John exclaimed climbing back into the driver’s seat. He tossed the red ice scraper back into the glove box, snapped it closed, then blew into his hands trying to get some feeling back into his frozen digits. “Damn it’s cold!” He brushed the snow from his coat then pulled back his hood.

  “It’s not much better in here,” Jake said through chattering teeth. “Tell me, why we couldn’t just take Grandpa’s Bronco again? It’s just been sitting in the driveway since you bought him that brand new Chevy Silverado.”

  “Pop doesn’t let anyone drive the Bronco but him,” John said, slowly pulling the truck back onto the icy highway. “Might have something to do with me driving his ’57 Chevy into Buffalo Springs Lake when I was about . . . fourteen, I think it was.” John laughed heartily at the memory. “Man he loved that car! Only one he ever bought that wasn’t used. And boy let me tell you, he tanned my hide good for that one!”

  Jake pulled the zipper up tighter to his chin. “Gee, thanks, Dad. Now I get to freeze to death because you wanted to take a joy ride, what? Fifty years ago?”

  “Hey I’m not that old! Besides, it wasn’t my fault. Well, not entirely. Wes Turner bet me twenty dollars I didn’t have the guts to take it out without Pop’s permission. True, using it as a submarine wasn’t part of the bet,” he chuckled. “Still, I won twenty bucks out of the deal.”

  “Terrific,” Jake pulled down on both sides of his far too small wool cap, trying in vain to get it to cover his ears. “Thanks for that, Dad. Now my children and grandchildren will know the pride of their grandfather winning a bet with Bloody Wes Turner! That is if I survive this trip to have any children.”

  “Hey now,” John said, his voice going deadly serious. “Don’t ever call him that. If Wes heard, you say that, he’d be furious. He hates that nickname.”

  If the shoe fits . . . Jake thought. “Yeah, I forgot.” He turned his head looking out the window so John wouldn’t see him roll his eyes.

  Jake had never met Wes Turner. In fact, he had only heard secondhand stories about him from his grandpa Cort. From that alone, he could tell that Turner was more than a few cards shy of a full deck. Which was saying a lot in an environment full of people that hunted vampires for a living.

  “I only called him that because that’s what Grandpa calls him.”

  “Yeah well, when you get to be as old and mean as he is, you can call people whatever you want too. Till then, show some respect to your elders? Okay kid?”

  “You know what else Grandpa says?” Jake said, voicing his thoughts.

  John picked up his red handkerchief and wiped at the already fogged up windshield. The frozen windshield wipers scraped noisily against the glass. “Pop says a lot of things. He’s a very opinionated guy. That doesn’t mean everything he says is true.”

  “He was right about Riker,” Jake said thinking back to his other grandfather that had kidnapped him when he was only eleven years old. “He said he was a real mean son of a bitch, and boy was he right. I’d been there barely two days when he decided to trade me to vampires for a chance at immortality.”

  “Boy,” John said sternly. “Stop cussing. You’ve been spending too much time around your Grandpa.”

  “Maybe I have,” Jake admitted. “But he was right about Riker, so maybe he’s right about Bloody Wes . . . I mean Mr. Turner.”

  John gave him a hard look mumbling something under his breath about ‘teenagers’ then turned to wipe the windshield again. “What exactly did he say about Wes?”

  “He said he did a lot worse than kill vampires. That he tortured them. Butchered them while they were still alive. That he ran with a bunch of murdering, raping, lunatics that no other real Hunter would associate with. That some people say he even killed civilians that got in his way. Is it true?”

  John remained completely quiet. The only sound in the truck was the constant violent scratching of the frozen wipers, which suddenly became stuck in the middle of the windshield. “Damn it to hell!” John exclaimed pulling the truck to the shoulder. He grabbed the ice scraper from the glove compartment then climbed out leaving Jake’s question unanswered.

  Not this time, Dad. Jake thought. I love you, but it’s time you finally answered a few questions about the year you were away.

  “Well?” Jake declared when John had climbed back into the cab.

  “Well what?” John said exasperatedly. This time he didn’t even bother putting the scraper back in the glove compartment but tossed it onto the dash.

  “Tell me Grandpa is wrong. About Mr. Turner. Tell me he didn’t earn his nickname by slaughtering vampires in ways that would make Jeffrey Dahmer sick to his stomach. Tell me I’m wrong and I’ll never call him ‘Bloody’ again. Please Dad, just tell me the truth.”

  “You want to know the truth, Jake?” he turned in his seat so that they were now facing each other. “Do you really want to know?”

  Jake was completely taken aback by his father’s sudden intense look. He nodded dumbly that he did.

  “The truth is that I’ve earned that nickname just as much as he has,” John answered coldly. “I was trying to find your mother. So I did whatever it took to get the information I needed.” John looked back to the highway and carefully pulled back onto the icy road.

  “We’re in a violent business, Jake,” he said when the truck was back at its top speed of forty miles
per hour. “You know that just as well as I do. You’ve seen what those monsters can do. Do you think they would think twice about torturing you if given the chance?”

  “But killing civilians?”

  “Pah!” John said angrily. “That’s some bullshit rumor some idiot Wes beat in poker started spreading! Not a bit of truth to it.”

  After a few minutes of silence Jake finally asked the question he’d wanted to ask for three years, “What happened out there, Dad? Like . . . how did you get that . . . wicked looking scar on your face? You were gone a year and you’ve never once talked about any of it.”

  John cleared his throat then absentmindedly rubbed at the long scar running from his eye to the corner of his mouth. “If you ask me to tell you, Jake, I will. We made a deal after my secrets led to your mother . . . after . . .” he cleared his throat again. “I’ll tell you everything if that’s what you want. But if I do . . . you will never look at me the same way again.” Jake started to speak but John held up his hand stopping him. “Please, kid. I’m begging you, as a favor to me. Don’t make me tell you. I did things that no man should ever have to do. Things that no son should know about his father.”

  “Okay, Dad,” Jake said quietly. “I won’t ask. Though someday you may need to tell me. When that day comes, I want you to know that no matter what you did, you will always be my dad. Nothing can ever change that.”

  The truck fishtailed violently on the ice. John gripped the wheel tightly, barely managing to regain control before they ended up in the ditch. “Maybe it is time I make it up to your Grandpa,” John joked, lightening the mood. “His four wheel drive would sure come in handy right now.”

  “I would have thought a new truck would have settled that debt,” Jake smiled pulling the seatbelt a little tighter over his coat. “Then again, it is Grandpa we’re talking about.”

  John laughed, “Man ain’t that the truth. He tends to hold a grudge.”

  “So how far are we now?” Jake asked leaning forward and taking a turn at wiping the windshield with the handkerchief.

  “Not too much further. Ten maybe fifteen miles away.”

  A full thirty minutes later, after much more slipping and sliding and yet another deicing stop, John pulled into the frozen dirt driveway of the Williams Ranch house located on five hundred and fifty two acres of land just twenty-five miles south of San Angelo, Texas. The main house had a thin stream of smoke pouring from its overly large red-bricked chimney. Five, much smaller, outlying log cabins flanked it on three sides.

  Jake sat shaking in the passenger seat, his breath coming out in misty puffs. “Seriously Dad, this is ridiculous,” he shivered. “How much money did you make hunting? Three hundred thousand right?”

  “Yeah. What of it?” John said, putting the truck in park.

  “I’m just saying. Why do you keep this old hunk of junk? We could easily afford something new. Heck you bought Grandpa a new truck!”

  “I love this hunk of junk!” John said, feigning being hurt. “I wouldn’t part with it for all the money in the world. Besides, you know all that money went into fixing up Pop’s house and starting the Coalition. We’ve got safe houses to set up, gear to buy, bribes to pay. It doesn’t all pay for itself you know.”

  Jake had heard this speech a hundred times before. For the past three years, John, with his friends Billy Williams and Ben Morris had been doing their best to organize as many hunter groups as they could into a solid cohesive organization that shared resources, finances, even profits. They called it the Hunters Coalition. John had invested nearly every dime he had into it.

  Jake didn’t complain. He knew that as long as John kept busy with Coalition work he wasn’t out hunting. However, the planning/organization phase was over. The Coalition was now operating with thirteen Hunter groups at its core, sixty-seven Hunters strong, with Billy Williams at its head.

  Last year an offer had been made by the U.S. Government to help train future hunters; the government’s own team having been grounded for the time being due to political reasons.

  A vote had been taken among the seven Coalition council members and it was unanimously passed to begin training anyone fifteen and older that was willing to spend up to three years of their lives working with the U.S. military.

  Shortly after the attack on their house, Jake signed up to be in the second group, the first having dissolved after only six months of training.

  “I know it’s your dream Dad, and I know that in your eyes this truck is a chariot fit for Zeus himself, but could you at least give it a tune up before we make any more long distant travel plans?” Jake chided him playfully.

  “Okay, okay!” John laughed. “Well, anyway we made it in one piece.” John grinned from ear to ear. “And from the look of the cars in the driveway we’re the last to arrive. You ready?”

  “Yeah I guess so.” Jake sighed nervously, digging his hands even deeper into his coat pockets.

  “Nervous?” John asked, killing the big diesel engine.

  Jake was more than nervous, he was downright terrified. He had heard nothing but tales of heroism about the men he was about to meet. Billy, Ben, Talon, even Bloody Wes Turner were legends. He had heard countless tales of their heroism.

  Like the time his Grandpa Cort along with Billy, cleaned out a den of eleven grunts, seven of them after their guns had run dry of ammunition. Or how Talon Parker once tracked a Maker across three states after his father, Bear Claw Parker, had been killed in an ambush. He’d killed the vampire with his father’s own lance and if the legends were true, still wore his charred fangs in a leather pouch around his neck.

  It was all more than a little intimidating to Jake, as these people would be the standard by which he was judged for years to come.

  “Nervous? Who me? Nah,” he lied. John gave him a look letting him know he saw right through him. “Alright, maybe just a little.

  “Everything will be fine, Jake. You’re a tough kid. Besides, you get to make lots of new friends. Just think of it as Vampire Hunter Camp.”

  Jake snorted, “Yeah but most camps don’t start in the middle of winter, or for that matter the day after Thanksgiving!”

  “I know it sucks, but it’s all part of toughening you kids up. You think on days like today vampires are just sitting around a warm toasty fire, eating turkey and dressing, and watching football?’’

  Oh, you're funny, Jake thought to himself. But you’re not the one that’s got to train in this nightmarish winter wonderland. “I bet vampires don’t even get cold! And yes I bet they are watching the game, they’re probably all Cowboy fans.”

  John gave him a quizzical look. “Why would they all be Dallas fans?”

  “Because look at who their owner is! You’re going to tell me that guy isn’t one of the undead?”

  John threw his head back in laughter. “Jake, come on son. Tell me what’s really bothering you.”

  “It’s just . . . what if I’m not good enough? What if all the other guys are better than me? I don’t want to let you and Grandpa down. I don’t want to let Mom down.” Jake chewed on his bottom lip.

  “Jacob, look at me,” John said, his voice softening. Jake lifted his head and hesitantly looked him in the eye. “You could never let her down.” He gently placed one of his cold calloused hands on Jake’s shoulder. “She loved you more than anything in this world and the same goes for me. I’ll always be proud of you. No matter what you choose to do.”

  “Thanks Dad,” he smiled weakly. “Really, it’s just . . . do you think I’ve got what it takes? I mean, do you think I could really be a hunter one day?”

  “I think you can do damn near anything you put your mind to,” he answered truthfully. “Now let’s get inside before we both freeze to death on Billy’s driveway.”

  “That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day,” Jake said, reaching down for the freezing cold door handle. Both men climbed out of the truck and into the heavy blizzard.

  Jake stretched and grunted.
His legs were numb from so many hours on the road. "So when is Grandpa coming down?" Jake asked as they walked, their heavy footsteps crunching in the snow.

  "He should be here late tonight or maybe tomorrow. He's been giving Holloway and his crew a hand with a den down by Del Rio. They still haven’t agreed to join the Coalition. Hopefully Pop can talk some sense into them.”

  They reached the front door and John reached out his hand to knock.

  "Dad?" Jake asked, suddenly stopping him.

  "Yeah son?" he said, pulling his hand away from the door.

  "Are you sure you want to do this? Getting back into hunting, I mean. There are other things we can do to help the cause." Jake’s biggest fear was that the obsession John had felt after his wife’s death would take root again. His quest for revenge had nearly destroyed him not only physically but spiritually as well.

  John sighed, emitting a deep cloud of fog from between his chapped lips. "I just can't sit on the sidelines any more. They need my help. I gave up hunting before to protect you and your mom. Look what good that did."

  "I know Dad. I just don't want you dying out there, or becoming fixated like before. I understand better than anyone how you feel. I want to kill every one of those monsters as much as you do. I just don't want to lose you. You’re all I’ve got left."

  "I'm in the prime of my life, Jake. Training you has put me in better shape than I’ve been in years and spending time with you again, after the things I saw, the things I did . . . it rejuvenated my very soul. I don’t exactly feel whole again. I don’t think I ever will, but I feel more . . . human. But it's time I do my part. Not trying to sound cocky,” he smiled out of the corner of his mouth, “but I’m good at what I do, and what I do best is kill vampires.

  “Besides, it’s high time we got our own place again. The money we can make hunting can definitely make that happen."

  Jake laughed loudly. "What?" he said, sarcastically. "And leave Grandpa's hospitality?"

  John laughed with him. "If I have to see him in nothing but his boxers, a pair of army boots, with a .357 magnum tucked into the waistband threatening to pull the whole getup down one more time . . ." John closed his eyes shaking his head, trying to erase the mental image.