by Ian Hall
Time for the two of us to step up into the big league.
That night, Mary-Christine and I were summoned to the basement.
Turns out the Muscats had a false wall and a secret door; a hidden room. Everything inside lay a wealth of stuff. Three walls had shelving, blankets, clothes, equipment, guns, and two walls of food and water. On the free wall was a huge felt pegboard, like the cops used. Covered with the pictures of three people, two adults and Dorothy Squires.
“We have been given a target family, passed down by the higher-ups,” Dave began.
“We have superiors?” I asked, still transfixed by Dorothy’s photo.
The idea that Helsings had a secret hierarchy seemed, in one way, off-putting and strange; in another, kind of exciting.
Dave looked surprised at my outburst, then went back to the board. “You probably recognize the younger one.”
“Yup, it’s Dorothy,” I said under my breath. “We’ve got to kill Dorothy?” I gasped, suddenly appalled. It didn’t matter how far I’d gone, I wanted to leave, run outside, and throw up.
It had immediately become very personal.
David ignored me again. “They’re vampires from the seventies as far as we can tell, we’ve got a history on them going back that far at least.” He turned and gave Mary-Christine and I a serious look. “There’s no doubt here, and since they’ve been vampires for over forty years, they’ve probably got a few hundred murders under their belts. They’re not her real mother and father, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less important.”
“How about Dorothy?” I asked. “How old is she?” I hoped for a small number, knowing I’d fantasized about her tits.
“Gregor Academy is her third high school placement,” Dave said. “That means she was turned at least ten years ago, maybe twelve.”
Crap. Vampire Dorothy was almost thirty, and I had imagined doing it with her. I was in over my head, and there was nothing I could do about it. I listened to Dave instructing us what to do, but I could only see Dorothy’s face.
My baby, Mary-Christine, stood captivated by the whole talk. Her profile with her mouth slightly open looked heavenly, but chilling at the same time. She watched her father intensely.
“So with our friends, the organization will take care of her mom and dad; that’s the difficult part. But we want to hit all three vampires simultaneously, and we’re hoping we have the plan to see it through. With your knowledge of the area, and your personal connection, Dorothy becomes your problem.” Dave looked at me. “Feel up to it?”
Oh crap. I even had to kill her. I looked at Mary-Christine, and she had her hands over her mouth, stifling her excitement. How could I say no?
“But we have a hands-free plan for your first takedown, Lyman. We wouldn’t ask you to actually get your hands dirty. You will have a specially-rigged car; the backseat will have a bunch of boxes in it. You guys will offer her a lift. Mary-Christine, when she accepts, you will climb in the back, with the excuse that you’re smaller. When she sits on the front seat, and buckles her seatbelt, she’ll get a hundred sharp steel rods propelled into her heart.”
“So, not my car then?”
“Oh, no! We have a special one. Specially tinted windows will keep you from any cameras. We’ve used it before. It’s one of our special weapons.”
It seemed to be time for a reality check. I stood sitting in the Muscat’s basement, rapidly becoming an anti-vampire ninja, talking blasé about ‘secret weapons’ and now it seemed I had my first assignment. I felt like a mix of James Bond and that ‘dark-haired version of Brad Pitt’ guy in the Helsing movie whose name I couldn’t remember.
We had to lure Dorothy into the car, then fire splinters of steel through her body. It just didn’t seem right. I mean, Dorothy had tits, even if they were thirty year old ones, and here was I going to waste them.
But, of course, if Dorothy had been ten years as a vampire, she’d definitely killed before; probably killed many times before. I had to keep that fact upper in my thoughts.
Not that I had much time to think about it.
“When do we do this?” I asked.
“The operation is set for tomorrow,” Dave said. “Dorothy is usually picked up from school by her parents at lunchtime. Tomorrow, her parents are going to be ‘delayed,’ and you and Mary-Christine are to be her pickup.”
I walked back home that night in a bit of a daze. Strangely, although I had a lot on my mind when I went to bed, I fell asleep instantly. When I woke up the next morning, my sleep had been free of dreams. I ate my corn flakes, drank my orange juice, and went to school as normal. At lunchtime, we skipped the cafeteria, and I left school with Mary-Christine. Following our instructions to the letter, we drove to an old warehouse where we exchanged my car for a small Chevrolet with tinted windows. Cool car with a killer front seat.
But no matter how nice it was, I could not shake the idea that this would be the car that Dorothy would die in. I also hoped that the mechanism wouldn’t set itself off accidentally, killing Mary-Christine, but my girl had to sit in the front seat; we had to allay suspicion, we had to prove to Dorothy that the front seat was safe.
I expected the jitters. I expected the sweats. It turned out I was harder than I thought; nothing. I sat in complete control.
With Mary-Christine in the front seat, I drove back to school. True to the timetable, there on the curb stood Dorothy Squires, looking from left to right, appearing a little agitated.
I lowered the passenger window and pulled up right beside her. Mary-Christine called out. “Dorothy? Do you need a ride?”
Our stopping didn’t seem to calm her any; if anything, she seemed more jumpy. I leant over Mary-Christine, and shouted out the window. “Dorothy? It’s Lyman!”
On recognizing me, she reluctantly walked over to the car and crouched down. “Mom should be here by now. She’s late, and she’s not answering her cell.”
“Hey, we can give you a ride,” I said. “We’ve got time.” Dorothy looked past Mary-Christine to the mess in the back.
“I don’t think so, Lyman.” Dorothy took a step back to the curb.
“Don’t worry, I can sit back there,” Mary-Christine said. “I’m smaller than you.” She pulled her baseball cap low, opened the door and got out, leaving the door wide open. Mary-Christine walked around the car to the rear driver’s side and got in. When she got in the backseat, Dorothy was left with the front door open.
She looked nervously from side to side, then again at the open door.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, leaning over the seat, looking up at her.
I entertained the possibility that the plan could go totally wrong, then Dorothy looked at her phone one last time and reluctantly climbed in the front seat.
“Where to?” I asked. Dorothy closed the door. I began to sweat. I heard the click of Mary-Christine’s seatbelt in the back. That primed the mechanism behind Dorothy’s seat.
“My mom’s,” Dorothy said. “Mayfair Drive. Thanks.” She looked flushed; then, when I didn’t drive off right away, she looked at me, jumpy again.
“Seatbelt!” I grinned.
She sighed and visibly relaxed. With a resigned grimace, she slipped the belt over her body, and clipped it into place. The strap fell right between her breasts. I couldn’t help one last look.
I checked my rearview mirror, and saw Mary-Christine’s eager expression. With a quick spin of the steering wheel, I took off into traffic, and started off towards her mom’s.
Even I got a shock at the noise of the device.
BANG!
Dorothy shot bolt upright in the seat, then stayed there, her face immobile, her expression of frozen shock. Then very slowly, her head fell forward, and she gave a small gasp. A small trickle of blood oozed from her lips, dropping onto her white blouse.
“Phone your dad.” I powered the tinted window closed. “We’re done.”
It was official; I was a homeless, friendless vampire. I didn’t know where
to go. Hannah and Barton were occupying my house. It’s not like I could just run back to the Cole’s after what I’d said to Jackson; not that I wanted to anyway.
For some reason I ended up under the bleachers around the football field at Everton High. Weird place to go; some kids hung out there a lot in the summer, drinking and doing whatever. Last summer I was one of those kids. This summer, I was some undead freak just looking for a place to hide.
Crushed beer cans were like, all over the place along with a discarded, used condom. Gross. Not a place to lie down and collect your thoughts. The sky was already getting lighter, going from black and star-studded to that hazy purple.
Right then - for me - the sky was this huge hourglass overhead all the sudden. I felt like I had to make a decision before the first peek of orange came over the horizon.
“C’mon, Mandy,” I said to myself, out loud like a total lunatic, “what’re you gonna do now?”
I wondered if I could find some other vampire family to take me in the way the Cole’s had done; kinda adopt me permanently. But, I didn’t know how vampires found each other. Far as I knew there weren’t any clubs or anything like that. Not like I could post a want ad on Craigslist.
By the time the sun came up, I’d made my decision. There was apparently a whole gang of those “Blanche” vampires close by and the man I loved belonged to that group.
Anything was better than living all alone under the school bleachers.
Then, the next morning, Jackson stood at my door, all sullen and sour-faced. “I have to tell you a story.”
He came inside, and we hung out in my room while he wrestled with the demons that so obviously filled him.
“I got turned by a vampire called Valerie.” He wringed his hands together like two opposing octopuses. “She was very old in vampire years, but she was also very special. See, she’d been born as a vampire.”
“How the heck does that happen? I mouthed at him.
“Torn from her mother’s womb as her mother was herself turning.”
“Oh, that sounds kinda icky.”
Well, Valerie told me one thing her mother had said to her when they met years later; vampires don’t cry.”
“What kind of bullshit is that?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never really found any comfort from the words, but they came up into my head this morning, and I thought I’d just come over and tell you.”
Now, you might think at this stage I’d have an epiphany, but I didn’t. We chewed around for the rest of the morning, and he left.
Jackson Cole was a strange creature.
Driving around town with a dead vampire embedded in the front seat is one of two things; it’s either the most terrifying experience of your life, or the funniest.
We found out it was a bit of both.
One second we’d be stuck at a red traffic light, terrified in case someone looked in, or I’d brake, and be scared she’d fall forward off the spikes and revive and kill us. The next, her head would loll one way, as if she was looking at something, and we’d burst out laughing, and the laughs wouldn’t stop ‘til the tears were rolling down our faces and our sides hurt.
The steel spikes hadn’t quite come through her school uniform, but there must have been some breaking of the skin, as a dark red color began to spread across her white blouse.
Gregor Academy burgundy.
Go Hawks!
I drove carefully though; no erratic moves, no breaking speed limits.
That said, it still took seven minutes of hell before we got to the industrial area. A guy opened the wide-chained gate to let us drive in.
Dave met us at the warehouse door, with a questioning thumb in the air. I replied with the same, putting my thumb right at the windshield. He barked a command into a walkie-talkie, and the door behind him began to roll up.
I drove in, parked where indicated, and we both got out.
“You guys ok?” Dave gave me a cursory glance, then concentrated on Mary-Christine.
“I’m fine, Dad.”
“Ok, get yourselves outside, into Lyman’s car and back to school.” He bustled us away, craftily slipping me forty bucks. “Nothing happened. You guys went for a burger, nothing more. Back to school, and have a normal afternoon.”
I kind of shrugged that vibe off, I thought that the afternoon would be anything but normal, but I was wrong.
I even saw two of ‘the seven’ in school, and I breezed past like nothing had happened. At home-time, I met Mary-Christine and we drove away, just like all the other kids.
“I’m really hungry,” she said as soon as we’d cleared the school grounds. The words were out her mouth less than a second, and my stomach growled in sympathy. We both laughed.
“Where to?”
“Nothing on this side of town,” she said. “I don’t want to see schoolmates right now.”
I drove to the west, with no particular plan in mind then, without inspiration, found myself on the road to Everton.
It took another ten minutes before the town began to manifest, and the first thing we saw was a Mexican restaurant, Los Charros. “Will a Tex-mex be okay?”
“Yeah.” Mary-Christine nodded without enthusiasm.
Wanting just to get out of the car, I turned into their parking lot.
The restaurant was almost deserted, so we got great service. Say what you like about Mexican food; it comes to your table fast and hot.
We didn’t talk much, but the fajitas were good, and we cleaned the dish pretty quickly.
We settled back in the booth with our Diet Cokes, and for the first time in twenty-four hours, I relaxed.
“Did we really do that?” I said at length. “You know, seatbelt, etcetera.”
Mary-Christine looked into space for a second, then nodded her head. “Yeah, we did.”
I leant over the table. “We did our first one.” I couldn’t believe I actually felt a bit excited about it. “We did it, Mary-Christine.”
I could see that she struggled some, so I ramped my enthusiasm down.
After a moment of silence, Mary-Christine began to pick herself up slightly. “I’m okay, Lyman. Honest. I’m just taking my own time.”
We sat in the restaurant for another half hour, chatting about anything other than our vampire kill. The whole afternoon had slowed down, and we leisurely retraced our steps to the car. I pulled her to me, and we had our first kiss of the day.
Slowly she came to me, leaning over to the driver’s seat, and slowly the tension in her shoulders melted and we were in full making-out mode. I got distracted when a white car pulled in beside mine, slightly embarrassed on being ‘discovered.’ I did have my hand under her blouse, but I was just rubbing her tummy. Honest.
A girl got out of the passenger side, and although I didn’t get a good look at her, something seemed familiar. She was with an older guy, but as they turned to lock the car with their remote control, I saw her plainly.
And I froze.
They turned to the door and went inside.
Surfacing from our suddenly curtailed make-out session, Mary-Christine followed my gaze, but they had gone inside.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
I swallowed. “That’s Mandy Cross.”
“What?” her eyes darted from me to the door and back. “Are you sure?”
“Fucking absolutely.” My voice held little emotion. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know.” She picked up her phone. “Dad? No, nothing’s wrong. Look, Lyman reckons he’s seen Mandy Cross. Yeah, the girl who killed Alan. (Pause) We’re at Los Charros, west side of Everton. (Pause) Okay. We’ll do that. Okay. Bye, Dad. Love you, too.”
She put the phone in her lap. “Dad says to wait here, we’ll be contacted in less than thirty minutes.”
“And if she leaves before that?”
“Then we’re to follow her. Carefully.”
“What about just calling the police?” Right now, dialing 9-1-1, and running away seemed t
he right thing to do.
“We don’t follow the police anymore,” she said. “We’re Helsings.”
She said it with conviction and pride.
Criminals return to the scene of the crime, right? So, that night, after spending the whole freaking day hiding under the nasty bleachers, I went back to Broker Street, looking for Alan. My unbeating heart was in my throat; I wasn’t for sure he’d even take me back after I’d left him - bones all broken, body mangled - and taken off with the guy who made him that way.
I only hoped Alan would give me a chance to explain that I didn’t want to go with Jackson in the first place. I wanted no part of the stupid Cole family and I really, truly wanted to be a part of his. A Blanche vampire.
Broker Street didn’t look so great. The humans had done pretty good at cleaning up the branches but there were still cracks in the asphalt and banged-up cars along the curb. Anybody who didn’t know the town might think they’d run into the ghetto if they turned down this block.
Two voices were talking softly a few houses up; one of them was definitely Cami. The other was some guy; figured it had to have been Craig but the voice didn’t really fit. Weird that I didn’t recognize it.
I hung back by a big tree, letting the shadows wrap me up like a robe. And I listened.
“It was just so freaky,” she said. “After that weird dream, I wake up and the street is tearing itself up!”
The boy’s voice answered her. “That’s fucking creepy! Maybe you’re psychic, y’know, ESP or whatnot?”
Cami sounded all engrossed; I knew her - she’d be so stoked if she could tell people she had some special powers or something.
“What do you mean? Like my dream was an omen?”
“Exactly! A premonition that something weird was about to happen. You’re special, Cami.”
“Ooh,” she totally cooed. “I just got chills.”
The boy’s voice got all seductive. “I know how you feel.”