God Touched - 01

by John Conroe

  “I don’t know what you people do during the daytime, whether you go to sleep or lie in coffins or whatever, but you two,” I pointed at Nika and Lydia,” might want to hang close to her. It can probably protect all three of you. You can leave Arkady out by the door as bait,” I suggested, putting my knife in my pants pocket. A hiss sounded from where the big male vamp was spraying the blood covered wall and floor with some chemical cleaner. With nothing else to do I wrestled myself into the white Plasma long-sleeve tee shirt that Lydia had provided. It was a tight fit, but I immediately felt a little warmer.

  “Officer Gordon, you are remarkably blasé about this situation. Most of your kind are scared witless by our presence, if in fact they live through the introduction. How is it that you aren’t?” Galina asked.

  I snorted. “ You mean the vampire part? Most humans haven’t been hunting Hellbourne since they were twelve either. Actually I don’t think any other humans do what I do. Compared to demons, you all aren’t that scary. Plus I’m too damn tired at this point to give a crap.”

  They all went spooky still and blank faced. Ooops, wrong thing to say. I held my hands out in a placating gesture.

  “Oh, you’re scary enough alright. Top predators and all. I’m sure that Lydia there could twist my head off before I got done blinking, but really what’s the worst you can do? Kill me? Torture me, then kill me? Big whup! Hellbourne can trap or foul my soul, haul me to Hell. ”

  Their faces reflected disbelief. Nika spoke first.

  “You really aren’t afraid of dying, are you?”

  It was more of a statement.

  “You tell me mighty Kreskin,” I replied. “Hell, I’ve outlived my death by about fifteen years. Actually, I was on borrowed time from the moment of birth, twenty-three years ago. Well twenty-three in seven more days. If I get there.”

  Vadim did the math first. “Halloween? You were born on Halloween?”

  “Yeah, spooky isn’t it?”

  They all looked at each other, except Tanya, who was giving me the cat stare again.

  “Do you know the time of your birth?” Galina asked. What the hell did that have to do with anything?

  They were all interested, kinda of like wolves circled up for the kill.

  “Well, I’m told it was midnight. But I don’t really remember, being pretty young and all.” I answered. They were all silent, processing that piece of info, or maybe deciding if my wiseass mouth was pissing them off.

  Arkady spoke suddenly from across the room: “Killing is not the worst. We could Turn you.”

  “How is that worse? Let’s see, if the legends are true, I would be stronger, faster, tougher, and live a lot longer. The downside would be what, exactly? Liquid diet?”

  “Soul is lost when Turned,” was his answer.

  I stared at them dumbfounded. “My soul…lost? Why would my soul be lost? Yours aren’t!”

  Silence. No one made a sound for at least fifteen seconds. It was the mind reader who spoke first.

  “He believes we all still have souls,” she said.

  “Yeah, because you do. I can see them.” I started putting the rest of my stuff away.

  “You can see souls?” Tanya asked.

  “Yes. Yours all look white to me. Humans usually are some shade of blue.”

  “Let me get this right, you think you can see souls and you think you can see ours?” Galina asked.

  “Yup. I see all kinds of shit, some of which you apparently don’t. How else can I see Hellbourne? They can only occupy and use bodies that are soul free. Meat shells.”

  “What does the white mean?” Lydia interjected.

  “I don’t know. Probably that you are a different species or something. You’re each slightly different. Tanya’s is wicked bright.”

  I swigged down the last of my Gatorade.

  Tanya looked troubled. “White means evil!”

  “What? Since when did white mean evil? Why would you think that? Black means evil. Oily, greasy, stomach turning black. I don’t think you’re necessarily evil, any more than wolves, bears or tigers are evil. I’m not gonna lie, though. You’re all pretty damn eerie though.”

  Her expression was suddenly angry.

  “You lie! You are a liar! You know we are evil!” she said.

  To say I was taken aback was an understatement. Up until this moment I had assumed some sort of bond or connection to her. Which, when you think about it, was really stupid. Mind numbing stupid. The whole save, defend, heal thing. The rest of them I had no illusions about. But I had fooled myself into thinking that somehow we were friends. Idiot! Suddenly, I was just as angry; at her, at myself, at all the stupid vampires in the room. My life sucked on a regular basis, now I was a liar? Fuck that!

  “Righhht.” I set the empty bottle down. “Well, thanks for the clothes and Gatorade and shit. Unless you’re gonna eat me, I’m leaving.” I shouldered past Vadim and staggered through the ruined door, none of them moving to stop me. The club was jumping as I entered the main floor, the deep bass of the music pushing on my ribs. I had to grab the doorframe to steady myself for a moment. I looked for Pella and Henderson, but when I got to our table it was occupied by some black garbed, chain strewn Goths. My coat was still on the back of one of the chairs and I grabbed it with a quick “Excuse me, just getting my coat.” One said, “Dude, no prob.” They all looked at me oddly and one of the girls asked, “Do you work here?”

  I could hear the disbelief in her voice and I realized that I was wearing the same tee shirt that the staff wore, big blood red Plasma spelled out diagonally across the torso. I was dressed the part, but my tan skin and lack of grace didn’t fit.

  “Oh hell no! Just wearing the colors.”

  I turned away before she could answer and put on the jacket to avoid any more questions. “Your friends left with the girls they were hitting on.” Lydia was suddenly standing by the stairs.

  “ Lucky them. Did they pay the tab?” I asked. She shook her head.

  “Bastards! How much?”

  She shrugged it off, but I persisted. “How much?”

  “One ten, but it’s on the house.”

  Screw that! I wasn’t going to owe them anything. I handed her three fifties from my money clip and left.

  Chapter 2

  I fumed the whole cab ride home. It was a little past eleven-thirty when I climbed the stairs to my second-floor apartment; still berating myself for thinking this time might have been different. Fifteen years of keeping myself distant from anyone but Gramps and I get all giddy over the first gorgeous female vampire I happen to save. Moron. Asshole.

  When I got inside, I only paused long enough to drop three raw eggs into a glass of orange juice and swig it down Rocky style. I needed the iron and protein, but I had no energy left to cook. Couldn’t be any worse than a mouth full of vampire blood. After that , I crashed into bed, not even bothering to undress.

  Something was making a banging sound. Banging by the door. Banging on the door. I staggered over and peered through the peephole. My two neighbors from across the hall, Paige and Kathy, were standing there. “Ah, hi Chris,” Paige greeted me when I got the locks undone and the door open. I knew them enough to say hi in the hallway, but that was it.

  “Hi, what’s up?” I didn’t know them very well but they had been very nice whenever I bumped into them. They didn’t speak for a moment, both taking in my attire, which I realized was the Plasma shirt and leather pants I had fallen asleep in.

  “Do you work at Plasma?” asked Kathy, who was the taller of the two brunettes by about two inches. That made her about five nine or an inch shorter than me.

  “No, these are borrowed. They ruined my clothes last night and they gave me these to get home in,” I explained.

  “ Too bad! You oughta keep ‘em,” she said, her roommate nodding in agreement.

  “No, I can’t stand the place. I’ll be sending them back.” I stated.

  “You didn’t like it? I heard it is the best club
in the city. Maybe we could all go sometime,” Paige gushed. She was really cute, with short brown hair and brown eyes. She possessed a slim runner’s build; that looked great in the jeans and tees she seemed to favor. Kathy, was rail thin and pleasant looking, in a mousy kind of way, with curly brown hair and hazel eyes. They smelled like peaches and kiwi. Must be their shampoo. I shuddered to think of these two alone in the vampire den.

  “I don’t think it’s a real safe place. But what’s up?” I brought the conversation back on point.

  “Oh, we’re heading over to Chico’s for breakfast and thought you might like to come along?” Paige supplied.

  My initial reflex was to decline, but now that I was up, my stomach was demanding immediate attention. In fact it growled right on cue.

  We all laughed and after noting that it was only eight AM, I said, “Okay let me change real quick.”

  “Oh you should leave the Plasma shirt on…” Paige said, but I had it off before she could complete the sentence. “Or not.”

  “I’ll just be a sec,” I said, backing from the doorway with my shirt off. I headed to the dresser, as the two followed me in.

  “If you went like that, Chico might give us breakfast.” Paige commented. Chico was known to prefer shirtless men to a shirtless women.

  I grabbed some jeans and a tee shirt and my North Face Jacket, ducking into the bathroom to change and brush my teeth. I threw on my favorite hat, a Springfield Armory black ball cap emblazoned with the words ‘Fear No Evil’. Of course it means something different to me than to most people.

  When I came out, the girls were looking curiously around my tiny studio pad. It’s small, but bright, with a high ceiling, hardwood floors and a clawfoot tub in the bathroom. That tub had soaked many a bruised and sore muscle during my short residence. Two big windows look out to the Northeast, and I get a great view if I step out on the fire escape. My place is uncluttered, as I have a minimalist approach to possessions. Just one leather chair, a futon that doubles as my bed, flatscreen, compact stereo, dresser, small bookshelf, and several lamps. A small table just outside the tiny galley kitchen doubles as a desk, and I had two chairs that went with it. One of my walls was hung with a Native American rug, in deep reds with the silhouette of a standing bear. Another bear, this one a large soapstone fetish from New Mexico, stood guard over the apartment from the bookshelf. I have no Native American heritage, but I had decided as a child that my spirit guide animal would be a bear. We were both loners and fighters, at least that’s how I looked at it. I don’t know how the Great Bear felt about it, as I never gave him the option to say no.

  The girls looked up as I came out, their curious expressions changing quickly to smiles, and we headed out.

  If you had told me that an Adirondack north -country kid could be reasonably happy in the Big Apple, I would have laughed in your face. But my neighborhood of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn is really pretty nice. It’s mostly single- family homes with a five-or six-story apartment building sprinkled here and there. Lots of small trees line the street and there are tons of restaurants, bars, gyms and small shops. Brooklyn is the most populated borough in New York City, with a population of right around two and a half million people. Our building, on the corner of Bay Ridge Boulevard and Eighty-third Street, is a prewar elevator building, and the owners keep it up to date and very clean. Still, I miss my forests.

  Chico’s is a small corner restaurant run by a flamboyant bundle of energy who looks Hispanic, but sounds Italian. The owner was behind the counter, wearing a hot pink tee with his own name across the front, and he greeted the girls by name and me with a nod. Chico’s is a seat yourself kind of place, so we found a booth and settled in. Rich coffee and bacon smells were driving me crazy. I made sure that I got the seat that faced the door, not leaving enough room for either of them to slide next to me. The waitress swung by and brought us coffee. During the walk over, we had all decided on omelets, so we ordered immediately. I ordered two three-egg spinach and cheddar omelets, toast with peanut butter, and a large orange juice.

  “Hungry much?” Kathy teased, her eyes mock wide at my order.

  “Starving!”

  “Sounds like you’re craving iron too. Spinach? Six eggs? You do look a little pale today, you’re not anemic are you?” Kathy asked. I remembered that she was a nutritionist at Sisters of Mercy Hospital. Paige worked for a television production company.

  “Er.. not that I know of. But I haven’t been eating right, with the job and all. Too many donuts.”

  They laughed and the topic changed to plans for the day. “We thought we’d go to Owl’s Head Park today. Wanna come.. along?” Paige asked.

  This was the part I hated. The rebuff. When I took up Hellbourne hunting, I pretty much gave up on friends, and particularly girlfriends.

  I had had exactly one date in my life. The end of eighth grade, I finally got up enough courage to ask Mary Chauffey to go out. Shy, smart and pretty, Mary was universally liked, but for one reason or another hadn’t dated many of the class boys. I had crushed on her all year and when I asked her to pizza and the movies, she had said yes. The date had been great. She had the same sense of humor that I did, but we were both too shy in school to display it. On top of that, she was very intelligent, conversant in a lot of the science subjects that I liked. I learned later, she had studied those topics just because I liked them. The real problem came three days later when I was banishing a minor house demon in Ogdensburg. Just before I tore the vile thing from its roots and threw it to Kirby, the Collector, it whispered her name to me. Then it was gone, plucked from the air by Kirby’s shadowy claws, hauled back to Hell. I sat in the dark house for thirty minutes, horror struck. It knew her name. The implications were immediate and horrific.

  I went to school the next day and broke up with her. It was truly awful. She had really liked me and I trashed it. But the alternative was unthinkable. Her older brother and his friend jumped me several days later. The fight lasted twenty minutes and the cops, called by a housewife who was witness to the whole thing, broke it up. We were all pretty beat up, but the brother had a cracked rib, his friend lost a few teeth. My face and body were black and blue for a month. Because the witness had seen them jump me, I didn’t go to jail, but if I had been on the social fringe before, I was a true outcast from then on.

  So I had to turn Paige and Kathy down easy.

  “Aw, I’ve something I have to do today. It’s gonna take me most of the day.” I wasn’t lying. I would be lucky if my project didn’t go into nighttime.

  “Really, all day? Isn’t this your first day off in like forever?” Kathy asked. Paige didn’t say anything but I saw a flicker of disappointment cross her face.

  “Yeah I know. But it’s a commitment I can’t break. Believe me, I would rather not do it.”

  “You know Chris, you work way too much. You’re like, never home.” Kathy was still carrying the conversation, but her tone was crisp.

  The waitress brought our food and I tucked in. The girls started a two-way conversation that excluded me, punishment for not accepting their invite. I understood. I was being a jerk and they knew it. Hell, I had been rebuffed myself, just last night.

  We finished breakfast and I excused myself, receiving a cold goodbye from each of them. Better that way.

  Back at the apartment, I got set for the day. Changing into running clothes, and equipping my runner’s chest pack, I paused to consider the events of the previous night.

  Vampires were real. Not that big of a shocker to someone in my line of work. But there were a thousand mysteries around Plasma’s resident coven.

  First, Tatiana was obviously Galina’s daughter, but how did that happen? Was Galina turned after Tatiana was born? Did she turn Tatiana?

  The other vampires treated Tatiana very deferentially. At the same time, the hulking Arkady had been genuinely afraid of the tiny girl vampire, when she had protected me. Which was also a puzzle, why had she interceded? But the number one question had
to be the mystery of the Hellbourne’s interest in Tatiana. Galina and Vadim hadn’t contradicted my theory that it had wanted the young vampire’s blood. Why would it want her blood? Why did Galina have our clothes burned to destroy her blood? It all revolved around the quiet raven haired vampire. Truth be told, she hadn’t been far from my thoughts since I woke up.

  I shrugged into the Civilian Labs chest pack, which was packed with my badge, wallet, cash, cell phone and issue Glock 9mm and one spare magazine of ammo. Helbourne are tough, but a hollowpoint bullet in the brain will ruin their day. Tying up my Asics, I headed out at a jog.

  My plan was to patrol the area around Plasma for the day, evening and night if necessary. The Hellbourne would be back, all I could hope was that it happened within the next twenty-four hours. I was a little concerned about my ability to fight. By best estimation, based on the dizziness, cold shakes and lack of mental focus last night, Tatiana had drained me of something like fifteen percent of my blood supply. Oddly, I wasn’t appalled by that. She had needed it to survive. I should have been terrified by it. Despite her sudden anger at me the previous night I hoped she was all right. Her beautiful face hung in my mind’s eye, her expression vulnerable and innocent. Idiot! I shook my head to clear and focus. My arm was completely healed and I felt good, really good in fact. My vision, hearing and sense of smell all seemed extra crisp. And as I started to jog, my legs felt great and my breathing was steady and even. It made me wonder about the small amount of blood she had made me ingest.