Evan signaled for Lucy to follow him around back. Rear entrances were generally the best to access since most proprietors expended their energy safeguarding the front door. The light above the rear door was out which suited Lucy just fine. Evan held up his cellphone for illumination, revealing a padlock on the back door that could be bought at any hardware store for a few bucks.
Lucy pulled out the Oral-B toothbrush and fitted the lockpick attached to the end into the padlock and depressed the push-button. The device whirred to life, Lucy gently moving it up and down until the padlock popped open.
“Does your mom have serious skills or what?” she asked.
“I’ll remember to ask Child Protective Services the next time they’re around.”
“Oh, hush.”
Evan pocketed his cellphone and Lucy turned the doorknob, pulled the door slightly open to scan the frame for wires and/or pressure-plates.
“Nothing,” she said, “no security at all.”
“That’s a first.”
She shouldered open the door and the two moved through a back storage room. The air was heavy with the smell of animals and chemicals, the floors still damp from the evening’s mopping.
In Evan’s experience vet clinics were often cleaner than the inner-city hospitals and facilities that Familiars often scoped for human plasma. This was one of the primary reasons they lifted blood from them. That, along with the fact that Gideon was often paranoid about the stuff that came from human banks which were always more secure, in better neighborhoods, and difficult to tap anyway.
They breezed into a short hallway and Lucy caught sight of a door tagged with a bloodborne pathogen insignia. She continued toward that door while Evan stared down another corridor where a food dish was visible on the ground.
A damned large food dish.
A chill drove through him. He heard the faraway whop whop of his internal drums. The hair on the back of his neck ridged like porcupine quills. The drums quickly faded and he followed after Lucy who’d opened the door to reveal a region of pure blackness, a space with a single window that was as dark as the bottom of a well.
The room was divided by metal shelves that stretched floor-to-ceiling, but was so gloomy they couldn’t discern what was on either side. Paranoid about flipping on a light (or using a cellphone), they paused as the murkiness partially ebbed, allowing them to see a series of refrigeration units on the left side of the shelves.
They crept over and opened the units to reveal bags full of animal blood. Evan had done research and discovered this location stored blood for other clinics in the area. Peering down, he realized there was enough plasma to hopefully satisfy Gideon for several weeks.
When he was younger and first became aware of what his parents did, Evan was terrified at the thought of living with something that subsisted on blood. But as he got older, Lucy told him about “The Change,” the schism that developed between the families of old in the 1970s.
Spooked by the savagery that seemed to be engulfing the country toward the end of the ‘60s, the more progressive families (of which Gideon’s family was one), proffered the idea of rejecting violence and the drinking of what they called “Hemo,” human blood (specifically from the still living).
The more conservative families, those with lineages going back hundreds or thousands of years, refused to be anything other than what they were. They wouldn’t abandon the old ways or deny the thirst, and so the bloodlines bifurcated under a truce arranged by the council of elders, “The Gentry,” who still oversaw everything like some kind of long-distance guild.
Gideon and others like him, agreed to fight their urges and subsist on animal blood, and usually everything worked out. Emphasis would have to be placed on the word “usually” since Gideon had, in his mom’s words, screwed the pooch at least twelve times that Evan could remember.
“Score,” Lucy whispered as Evan roused from his daze. He opened the duffel bag and they quickly deposited the blood bags into it. That’s when he heard what he thought was a whimper. His back stiffened.
“What?” Lucy whispered, reading Evan’s look.
Evan didn’t respond, putting a finger to his lips, turning, squinting. Something moved in the shadows. He took a step toward the metal shelves and more things moved. Evan could see rows of metal cages with animals inside. Mostly cats and dogs presumably left for boarding.
Evan heard Lucy curse and then the first cat meowed. Lucy picked up the long knife, intent on silencing the feline when Evan grabbed her hand.
“Don’t,” Evan said to his mother, “don’t touch a hair on its head.”
She didn’t and this set off a chain reaction as a dog barked, then another, and finally a whole chorus of shrieks and whines ripped the air.
“Happy now?” Lucy growled.
A moment of confusion and then Lucy and Evan stumbled toward the hallway as a note echoed from somewhere up ahead.
Deeper.
Harsher.
The kind made by a large creature.
Dread gripped Evan as he realized the place actually did have security.
They sprinted down the hallway and Evan caught sight of an animal sharking through the pitch.
A colossal black dog.
The owner of that titanic food dish.
Coming from the other corridor.
Evan was unable to discern the breed, but the dog was thickly muscled and howled like an animal at a branding as it charged forward.
“MOVE IT!” Evan screamed as Lucy hit the back door, fumbling with the knob. The duffel bag dropped and she picked it up and Evan slipped and slammed into her.
They crumpled in a heap as the dog accelerated. Evan held his cellphone up. He could see ropes of saliva dangling from the beast’s mouth as it lowered its snout and went airborne.
Chapter Six
Time seemed to slow for Evan as the dog rocketed toward him. His hands shot up defensively and at the last second, hands grabbed and pulled back through the door as WHUMP! the dog smashed against the other side of the door with a whine. Evan fell on his ass, then looked up to see Lucy peering down at him.
She grabbed Evan’s wrist and muscled him up, the pair scrambling back to the car.
The Audi smoked off down the highway seconds later, Evan swerving through traffic. After a few miles, Lucy put a hand on Evan’s knee.
“Slow, slow her down, kiddo.”
Evan eased up on the gas.
“That was nuts wasn’t it?” Lucy said with a nervous laugh. “Perfect story for this year’s Gathering.”
Evan’s ears pricked up at the mention of the “Gathering,” which once had a much more elaborate name that was all but forgotten. The event was a once-a-year soiree for Familiars and the old-time vamp families and had, in the past, been held in secret on the tops of mountains or in little grottos carved into the middle of black forests. Generally speaking, it was off limits to anyone under the age of twenty-one.
“Mind explaining what happened back there?” she said after a few seconds of silence.
He didn’t respond.
“Ev? What was that whole thing with the cat?”
He looked over at her.
“It’s just… there’s been too much killing already hasn’t there?” he replied.
She didn’t have a response for this and turned to her window. She was worried about Evan in a way that differed from how a mother generally feels about their child. She was worried that he’d gone soft. The word “liability” crept into her head as it had several times in the past when the visits occurred.
Some of the Gentry (or their representatives) had dropped by several times over the years, both when Evan’s father was alive and shortly thereafter. The visits were always brief and cordial, ostensibly social, but Lucy believed the visitors had ulterior motives. She thought they really wanted to see if she could handle the job (sexism being one of the numerous things vampires were not immune to), and whether Evan would be up to taking over for her if and whe
n she died or retired.
Whereas they focused on the physical attributes of some of the other Familiars’ children (breathlessly detailing 40 yard dash times or abilities to lift X times bodyweight), the best that could be said of Evan was that he was an exceedingly bright and thoughtful young man.
Bright and thoughtful.
Not the characteristics one associated with such a physically demanding job. Lucy responded by emphasizing that reasoning and strategy were increasingly replacing brute force. Wasn’t she a prime example of this? Weren’t her fluid movements and forward thinking the things that had saved her life back in Texas and countless other times? No, she’d repeatedly say to them, Evan wasn’t a liability at all. He was, how had Gideon described him? Differently circumstanced.
Lucy wished away the memories and bad thoughts as the lights of the city sparkled and danced across the windshield.
Fifteen minutes later, the pair were staring at the façade of their Sandtown rowhouse from inside the still idling Audi.
“We’re going to need to get rid of this car,” Lucy said.
Evan caught the glare from a streetlamp’s yolky halo of light and squinted.
“Somebody might have seen us,” Lucy continued, “and it’s probably been reported and God knows what else-”
“What will you do when I’m gone?”
Evan’s words hung for a moment.
“Excuse me?”
“Was the question not clear?”
Lucy bit her lip. She saw so much of herself in Evan at that moment. The nose that was crooked ever so slightly, looking like a piling on an old bridge. The way he held his head and looked her dead in the eye. The way he asked pointed questions that were difficult to answer and refused to give any ground.
“Do we have to discuss this right now?”
“I’d sure like to.”
“Because right now I’m thinking back on the time when you were hellbent on attending that summer camp for future business leaders when we lived in Sarasota.”
“I liked numbers.”
“Remember how I drove you down to sign up? Remember how I waited in the hall and then you walked out and said you’d changed your mind because the other kids were too pedestrian - your words, not mine.”
“I was nine.”
“You were no less mature than you are now.”
“What does my maturity level at that age say about you?”
“That I raised a well-adjusted kid.”
“Think my future psychiatrists will share that sentiment?”
Lucy’s hands went to her ears. She thought back on a time when Evan had gone to a public school in fourth grade. Assigned to write an essay on what his parents did for a living, Evan detailed the sometimes sordid life of a Familiar. Lucy had been contacted by the school nurse and given the name of several great mental health practitioners. She’d made the mistake of sharing this with Evan who’d never let her live down the fact that she’d chosen a lifestyle that forever would make him an outcast.
He asked the question again, emphasizing the various ways in which their situation had caused him psychic trauma. Lucy looked like she might scream and then her hands stuck out as if she was trying to regain her balance. What an ungrateful little brat, she thought. Whining for the umpteenth time about everything she’d taken from him.
What about her? What about all that she’d sacrificed? Her family wasn’t a part of this, she’d married into it after falling for Evan’s father. Hell, they’d been going out for six months before he dropped the bomb and told her what he did for a living. She didn’t believe him at first, who would have? But even she would have to admit that it was exciting in the beginning. Learning the truth, discovering the secret world of the shadow dwellers.
Then the reality of it set in. The repetition. The inability to form and sustain real friendships. The shitty backwaters where they were forced to hide with their meager stipends, facing down death every day as they acted as overwatch for the sometimes bumbling and occasionally sociopathic scion of a family whose members she’d rarely even met.
She could’ve bolted when the marriage ran cold, but she’d stuck around for Evan. He was the first and last thing she thought about every day. She just wished he’d be a little more appreciative for all she’d done for him over the years.
Lucy took a deep breath and when she spoke her voice sounded unnatural, forced.
“Do you want to dispose of the vehicle or should I, son?”
“No, I’ll ditch it,” he replied.
She nodded, grabbed the duffel bag full of animal blood and opened her door. Then she leaned down and flung a final look at Evan.
“You worry me sometimes, Evan. I feel like … you want to unravel everything we have.”
He stared down at his hands, cracking his knuckles. There were a few seconds of silent introspection and then he looked up.
“God, mom,” he whispered, “when was it ever raveled?”
Chapter Seven
Evan removed the plates from the Audi and ditched it behind a half-vacant strip mall a quarter mile away from the rowhouse. Just as he’d done so many times before, he doused every inch of the interior with bleach and rubbed it down in order to obviate the need for a torching (only in exceptional circumstances did they still burn the cars).
When he was satisfied that every print had been snuffed out he removed the screwdriver from the steering column and headed back to the rowhouse. Along the way he got bashed with a few nasty looks from passersby, but the sight of a young white kid, screwdriver in hand, prowling the mean streets of Baltimore at midnight unnerved most of the locals. Most, but not all.
He was probably a hundred yards from the rowhouse when the hairs on his arms stood at attention. The drums started thrumming and his fear meter slowly ticked up. He felt eyes on him. A few more steps and then he did what Lucy had taught him to do when he suspected being tailed. He slid to a sudden stop. Whatever was following him, didn’t anticipate this and stutter-stepped. Evan heard the footfalls. Someone was definitely close by. He didn’t look back, choosing instead to walk briskly.
The footfalls matched him step for step Evan began to run. The drums in his head were pulsing, threatening to rupture his eardrums. He could see the streetlamps near the rowhouses shining like salvation in the distance.
The patter of feet echoed behind him.
Growing closer.
Louder.
Evan’s heart hammered his chest and his arms chopped the air. Terror leavening his steps, he wondered whether it was somebody who’d been following them or tracking Gideon.
A father, a brother, a heartbroken lover?
Coming to pay the bloodsucker back for some sin he’d committed in the past. He wondered whether his father heard the same thing when they’d come for him? Evan leaned into a dead sprint as the sound of heavy breathing grew louder.
He juked over a curb and hooked a right toward the edge of the first rowhouse. Invisible fingers danced off his neck as he turned the corner and a light blinded him.
“STAY WHERE YOU ARE!”
Evan skidded to a stop, hands up in a defensive gesture.
He blinked, eyes blinded by what he could see was a flashlight. A flashlight held in the hand of a powerful-looking black man sitting in a wheelchair. The black man held the flashlight in one hand, and a small baseball bat in the other.
“Take two steps forward,” the man with the bat said.
Evan did and heard footsteps behind him.
“Not you two fools,” the black man said, waving the flashlight at somebody behind Evan. “You, Caspar,” he said, aiming the flashlight at Evan’s face.
Evan moved ahead and looked back over his shoulder to see two young black teens in white T-shirts. They were smiling at Evan.
“We wasn’t gonna do nothing to him, Dez,” one of the teens said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Just welcoming him to the ‘hood.”
“You know what the problem with youth i
s?” the black man in the wheelchair asked one of the teens. The kid thought about it and then shook his head.
“It’s wasted on the young.”
The teens smirked.
“Do some laps, the both of you,” the black man said as the two teens took off, vanishing into the night.
Evan heard the hum of tiny motors as the black man swiveled a small joystick, piloting his wheelchair in an arc. He was five or six years older than Evan, legs as spindly as waffle-ball bats, his upper body ballooned with muscles. He waved the flashlight in the general direction of where the teens ran off.
“I used to run with the brothers of those two for a minute back in the day. One that was on the right of you is named Demarcus. He was dropped on his head as a child, though that don’t excuse nothing. The other one goes by T-Ball and he just drop outta his mama a dumb ass.”
Evan remained silent.
“Can you speak?”
“Yes, sir,” Evan muttered.
“Don’t you know bad things happen when the sun goes down?”
“You’re telling me.”
The black man’s head canted. He couldn’t tell if Evan was serious or making a joke at his expense.
“You get yourself lost or something? Real talk time: you’re a little light skinned for these parts, bro.”
Evan looked down at his own arms, white as sugar under the streetlamps.
“Pikesville and Roland Park are north and west of here by the way,” the black man said, stabbing the air with his flashlight.
“I don’t know what those are.”
“Natural habitat for people like you.”
A moment of silence and then the black man directed a half-smile in Evan’s direction.
“I’m just messin’ with you, man. I seen you and your old lady pull up earlier today.”
Recognition flashed in Evan’s face.
“You were the one behind the curtains?”
Familiars Page 3