by Ian Hall
I waited for a week, expecting the call every night to go round up vampires and go staking them or something, but the only thing that happened was school. I did two hours every day on the school driving course, and passed my test first time. That got me my driver’s permit, and I began to subtly hint at home about a car.
It had been promised.
Friday morning came. I took a shower, got ready for school, and went around for Mary-Christine – it had already become a habit. There she stood, waiting by the gate, grinning, looking cute and waiting for me.
Me.
Man, I sat on cloud nine. Strawberry Kisses. Bus-ride to school. Wonderful.
“What are you doing this weekend?” she asked as soon as we’d gotten on board the bus.
“Duh, what I always do. Nothing.”
“Great, get on the phone now and tell your mom you’re coming to my Gran’s house for the weekend.”
“What?”
“It’s ok, it’s an excuse. We’re not really going. We’re off on an adventure, Lyman George Bracks.”
Now this seemed like fun, but I did have a vision of cooking trout over a fire by the lake. Pine trees. Sunsets. Probably not what she had in mind.
So I did what any red-haired loser would do. I phoned mom.
She asked for details, and I passed Mary-Christine the phone.
Man, she was superb; she said all the right things, I could imagine mom on the other end, gushing about her son’s new girlfriend. Grandma’s birthday. Just a couple of counties away. Family, cookies, yada yada yada.
If women could get hard-ons, mom would have had one, right then. Her red-headed son was going on a family trip with a girl.
Because of the impending excitement, Friday at school passed in a blur, and when the afternoon bell rang, we were out of there with a vengeance.
“So where are we really going?” I asked, all excited and over-brimming with adolescent eagerness. I must have looked a mess.
“Surprise. But pack something just a little bit formal. And bring your Gregor Academy ID.”
I tried every way to question her further, but she was stoic.
So, to counter every eventuality, I packed kind of three of everything into my backpack, even my swimming shorts just in case, then I heard voices from downstairs.
I got halfway down when I recognized Mary-Christine’s mom’s voice. “We’ll take good care of him. And we’ll only be in Fisher County, so not that far, really.”
Mom gushed approval when I entered the kitchen. Mary-Christine sidled up to me, but didn’t touch, and we all had a great leave-taking. I kissed mom goodbye, and walked down the path to my adventure.
However, my enthusiasm curbed slightly once we’d gotten away from my house. Mary-Christine’s mom calmed down a bit and got very quiet. Mary-Christine’s dad sat in the driver’s seat, and when we all got inside, no one spoke.
Me? I felt the tension rise hundreds of percent. It was my first time meeting her dad, and I felt as nervous as a kitten. I could hardly think of one decent, adult thing to say to the guy. I kinda nodded, muttered ‘hi.’ All I could think of was that I’d kissed his daughter, nudged her tits a few times. I’ve even had wet dreams about doing it to her one day. Maybe dad’s sensed those things. Man, I was in a cold sweat.
“You got your student ID with you, Lyman?” were the first words out of his mouth.
“Yes, sir.” Gregor Academy. Go Hawks!
“Good. Nice to meet you, by the way.” His smile didn’t go any deeper than the surface of his lips. I felt more nervous.
We drove out of the street, then almost by the school on the way out of town.
“Can we bring Lyman up to speed, dad?” Mary-Christine leant forward on her belt. “He has some catching up to do.”
Remedial Vampire-Helsing 101.
“Eh, yeah sure.” He flashed me looks through the rear-view mirror as he drove. “We know you’re a Helsing, right?”
Wow, that shot directly to the center of the target. Mary-Christine’s dad was a straight talker. What the heck did I say? Then I remembered my tact. “Mary-Christine said I am.”
“Well, we kinda have proof in one way; that girl, Dorothy, she bit you, and she complained about it burning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, that about settles it. Not absolutely conclusive, of course.” We were heading out of town, but not west, like I thought, but south, toward Phoenix. “How much of what you’ve been shown do you actually believe?”
Crap. The one question I dreaded.
“Come on, son. Just straight-talking here. Just tell the truth.”
“I’m not sure, sir. I don’t know what to believe.”
To my surprise, he nodded. “Good answer. I’m glad you didn’t swallow it verbatim just to get into Mary-Christine’s pants.”
“Dad!”
Her mom erupted into laughter in the front seat.
“Mom!” Mary-Christine screamed, punching the back of her mom’s seat, but she grinned too.
Whatever had happened, the ice had been broken. And I had entered a new phase of the conspiracy. I now talked with two adults, one of which had a position pretty high up in Unicorps, and they both believed in vampires and Helsings.
“It’s time to let you into a few secrets,” her dad said. “When a vampire is created, that’s the day he becomes immortal. His body does not alter from that day forth. It’s also the day his body dies. Only his vampirism sustains him after that.” Mary-Christine’s dad turned onto the highway and we sped off, immediately rising to eighty on the dial. “When we catch him, and properly kill him, his bones go back to that first date. So if Alan was first bitten, say in 1970, and we staked him, his bones would decay kinda slowly back to 1970s Alan. This is known as the ‘Forester Effect.’”
“Big Helsing, back in the fifties,” Mary-Christine whispered.
“There are two kinds of vampire, Lyman. The group huggers and the lone wolves. Group huggers are interested in part-culling their victims, making them vampires themselves, and being part of a vampire group; safety in numbers, you know.”
I nodded, and I watched him in the rear-view mirror as he spoke. This man believed every fucking word.
“Like the group that are living in Gregor. They try to live under the radar, but it’s difficult for them. And they don’t want the group to get too big. A group of vampires takes a lot of feeding. That means dead bodies and animals; that causes problems with the authorities. So they keep the group small, they try to keep it young, and they try to keep it beautiful. Good-looking vampires attract food easier.”
He drove for a while, and I thought he’d completed the information dump , but then he started again.
“It’s our job as vampire killers to do two things: we kill them, and if we can’t kill them, we keep them on the move. It takes a lot of money to make a new identity every few months. The poorer they are, the less they can do. If we can keep them on their toes, it makes the job of catching them much easier. Take Alan’s death. We didn’t plan it. That was their screw-up- vampire against vampire. But we profited; Alan’s family is forced to move, set up a new home, buy new property. That takes time. But we’re glad it happened, because it looked like Alan intended to set himself up as a big cheese. He recruited far too many vampire friends; it takes a real powerful vampire to command a cadre. To gather a following and keep it under control.”
I felt a little chagrined. I mean, he was talking about my best friend, saying it was good he’d died. But then I realized a horrible, horrible reality. If everything they’d told me turned out to be true, then Alan still actually lived out there, somewhere. And our friendship had been a sham from start to finish.
“Many vampires live relatively solitary lives. Some have been made immortal against their will, and don’t actually want to inflict the curse on anyone else. We call these guys lone wolves, Lupul Singuratica, but the old name is ‘Pustiu’ from the Romanian. These guys are not our friends, but at least when they t
ake human blood, they drain ‘til death, not creating another vampire.”
So Alan was a group hugger. I could see that. He always had folks around him, worshipping him.
Then I looked up from my reflections, and feeling the car veer to the right, looked outside.
Mr. Muscat took the turnoff for the airport.
Talking to Jackson made me feel a lot better. He gave me a lot of the 4-1-1 Alan had neglected to share. Like the fact that most of the vampires in our area attended Gregor Academy; that’s how it got its nickname: Vampire High. Jackson refused to go there.
Even though his family liked to keep on the good side of the other vampires - like Alan’s parents - they really just wanted to live as quietly as possible. He said they only moved back to Everton in order to “keep an eye on things” but he never explained what that meant. Eventually, they’d have to uproot and go dig in somewhere else. I guess that was the real downer about living among humans; vampires can never stay in one place too long; people start to notice things like kids that never hit puberty or old people that never die.
Although Jackson got turned at twenty; he had a baby face, so the Coles were able to pass him off as a high school kid. Generally they stayed in one place long enough for Jackson to graduate, hang out for about five or six years after, and then move on again. Since things were getting dicey around here (again - he never explained what that exactly meant), they were talking about leaving Everton a lot sooner than that.
The Coles decided to help me out a bit, though. They were all turned during the Philadelphia Crusade and just kind of found each other. Mona and Steve, a.k.a. Jackson’s foster mom and dad, both lost family members to Amos Blanche’s followers. So I think they felt sorry for me that I got mixed up with Alan. They put me up in a spare room.
All of them - Jackson especially - warned me like a zillion times to steer clear of Alan and his buds at Gregor Academy. I lasted two nights before that weird, buzzing feeling in my stomach came back and I was jonesing to see him again.
Unfortunately, I still had no clue where he lived or hung out (besides my house) and it didn’t look like Alan was exactly hot ‘n’ bothered to see me anytime soon. Even though it seemed a total long shot, I pled my case to Jackson, hoping he’d help me get in touch with Alan.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”
We were not off to a good start.
“After what that guy did to you, you’re still in to him?”
Okay. That was just freaking humiliating. I thought for sure I was gonna cry.
“So much has happened and I have to talk to him,” I whined. “I just have some questions I need answered.”
Jackson wasn’t even looking at me. As usual, he bent over his guitar, fiddling with the knobby things that adjust the strings.
“Questions? Like what?” He mocked me with this fake girly voice; he even fluffed up his hair as he spoke. “Hey, Alan…how come you totally murdered my parents and then…like, um…made me all into a vampire and stuff? Oh, and why’d you move your totally icky friends into my house and then ditch me? That was so totally like, not cool n’ stuff.”
“Stop it, Jackson! You’re being a jerk!”
That’s when he stopped messing around with his guitar and looked at me. I really wish he hadn’t ‘cause his face was just this mask of…mean. Jackson freaking hated me.
“I’m the jerk? Alan McCartney stole your fucking life, Mandy! And, in case you haven’t noticed, my family is trying to give you a chance at a new one…one that doesn’t include pillaging the fucking villagers. So, excuse the fuck out of me if that’s what you call being a jerk!”
“Seriously?” I was pissed now. “What, you think I’m not grateful enough or something? What am I supposed to do? Hump your leg to show my appreciation?”
“What you could do is stop bugging the crap out of me about your boyfriend, Mandy. Alan’s nothing but fucking trouble and I’m not going to get mixed up in your fucking drama. As far as I’m concerned - if Mona and Steve want to help you out, that’s their deal and I wash my hands of you. Fuck it - maybe it’s time I struck out on my own anyway…”
“Are you saying that if I stay here…you’ll leave?”
Jackson went back to screwing around with his guitar.
“The Coles don’t need two charity cases to look after.”
I didn’t have to hear any more. Jackson Cole didn’t think there was room enough for the both of us, so to hell with him. It wasn’t my idea that I stay there in the first place. So, I left without even saying any goodbyes, and without anywhere else to go.
I walked around for hours. Just before dawn I found myself standing on the sidewalk in front of Cami’s house. And I was real thirsty.
So off we flew, heading for Atlanta. Only the third time I’d ever flown anywhere, and the other two were dim memories anyway.
I loved it. We went first class, with everything thrown in, and got treated like fricking kings and queens. Mary-Christine and I sat behind her mom and dad, and we held hands and giggled like six year olds.
It took us three-and-a-half hours to get to Atlanta, and not one word said about vampires the whole way. These guys knew when to shut up, and I followed suit.
When we touched down, Mr. Muscat was on his phone right away, asking about times, and arranging cars. I didn’t try to overhear, but he wasn’t trying to conceal anything. A taxi took us to a hotel on the west side of the city.
The Madison House is a big hotel, and if he was trying to impress, he was doing a great job.
As we put our bags on one of those rolly things, Mr. Muscat came up to me, pulling me aside. “I just got a family suite, Lyman. Is that ok?”
“Eh, sure, Mr. Muscat.”
“Well, I didn’t want you sleeping on your own, and it’s ‘Dave,’ Ok?”
“Er, ok, Dave,” I answered kinda awkwardly.
We had dinner at a nearby Italian place. Way more upscale than I was used to, and no ‘watching the pennies’ thing that my mom and dad always had to do. We ate well and expensively.
So we got back to the hotel late, and I felt totally exhausted. It had been a heck of a long day.
I changed into my PJ’s and got into bed. The family suite was just one big room, partitioned off with furniture and fake walls. Mary-Christine slept in a bed just six feet away.
Delightful.
The next morning, we had breakfast downstairs, and I could feel the excitement beginning to get to me.
“The car’s booked for half an hour,” Mary-Christine’s dad announced as he cleared the table. “Be outside, ready.”
Mary-Christine pulled my hand, and we went outside. “Let’s explore,” she said, but in truth, she just wanted to get out of sight of her parents and explore my mouth with her tongue.
When the car came, we all got in. I caught the change in mood right away. The Muscats were not talking to each other, or us.
Thankfully, the journey only took fifteen minutes, and we pulled into a huge Unicorps car lot, and the car headed to one of the outlying buildings.
“Transperian Research,” the sign read, but I didn’t ask questions.
“A quick word,” Mr. Muscat said to us all, but probably aimed mainly at me. We were standing outside watching the car leave. “What you see in here is unbelievably top secret. The faces will be instantly forgotten, but what we’re going to see will change your lives forever.”
Then he led the way inside.
The security was unbelievable. Every door double sealed. Every door had a second door. Mr. Muscat explained that they had double doors to guard against invading vampires. “Because they are fast - very fast.”
I tried hard to keep an open mind, but it did seem way on the fantastic side of fiction.
I counted four sets of doors and two elevators. By the time we were at our destination, I didn’t know if we were up four floors or down.
Brilliant white fluorescents covered the ceiling of the laboratory. Along one wall were gathe
red ten, maybe fifteen people, who smiled as we entered, and shook hands- old friends. I got introduced as the ‘new Helsing,’ but no actual names were mentioned. I got called ‘the new guy’ and ‘the newest recruit’ and suchlike.
“Time, ladies and gentlemen,” an announcement came calmly and clearly over the intercom. “If you would all gather at the window.”
There was plenty room for all, and as I nestled before the dark glass, the light inside was switched on.
“Argh!” a dull scream from inside.
About ten feet in front of me, and on a lower level, sat a large wooden table. A man lay on the table, firmly tied by at least fifteen or more leather fasteners, about as thick as my belt. He was naked apart from a pair of shorts, and maybe thirty years old, but his struggles and angry expressions made it difficult to tell.
Two men entered the room, Dave Muscat, and one of the men I’d met earlier. They were dressed in black, and went to either side of the table. They then tilted it up on some kind of hinge so we could see better. When they had finished, the table was nearly vertical, and the man still screamed obscenities at them, then at us, spitting and yelling. Dave positioned a big blue bin at the bottom of the table.
Dave’s voice came through clear, then I noticed a small mic pinned into his black polo shirt. “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, and especially to our newest recruit. This is his first execution, please be kind.” Everyone nodded and I felt kinda embarrassed.
“This creature here used to be Avery Peterson.” He indicated the man on the table, and Avery snarled on cue. “Avery is one of the oldest vampires in the country. We are proud to have caught him. Avery is over one hundred years old.”
“Wow,” Mary-Christine said beside me. “This’ll be cool. This is the oldest I’ve seen, by far.”
I checked out her profile. When Mary-Christine concentrated, she got this wild look, her eyes wide and bulging. Man, she was the cutest thing, but right now her attention was grabbed by Mr. Avery Peterson.
“You will now see what happens to an old vampire when he dies.”
“Watch,” Mary-Christine grabbed my hand and held it tight. She looked excited. “Watch very carefully.”