by Ian Hall
I waved the plate away. “Can’t I get something a little more…satisfying?”
Jackson got all bitchy again. “Oh, sure, wait here while I go nab the Carter’s two-year-old.”
“I don’t mean a person…more like a dog or something…”
“If you can’t abide by our rules then you’ll have to find somewhere else to stay.”
I looked over to find Mona Cole standing in the doorway. Okay. Even though I’d totally done what she wanted me to do - kill Hannah and Barton - she still seemed really pissed at me. She never tried to hide it – her verdict lay written all over her face.
“She’ll be all right, Mona,” Jackson told his foster mom. “Mandy will learn to make due on our diet; right now she’s just weak from the injury…not thinking clearly.”
It seemed weird that he’d gotten all protective of me, seeing how he all hated me and everything. But, I wasn’t interested in his pity, and I had no intention of calling the Cole’s house my home.
“No, Jackson,” I said, trying to force some attitude into my dry, husky voice. “I am thinking clearly and I’ll be out of your guys’ hair tonight.”
Mona just lifted her bushy brows at me and turned on her heel. “The sooner, the better. Good riddance to bad trash.”
Once we were alone again, Jackson got all flustered.
“Are you nuts? You’re nowhere near strong enough to leave yet. Besides, where are you planning on going?”
My mouth said the words before my brain had thought it. “South. Mexico. This is one vampire that loves the sun.”
“Mandy…seriously…I know Mona’s being a tight ass, but she’ll get over it; you just have to prove to her that you can live the way we live - without taking human life or disrupting it in any way. That includes feeding on their pets…”
“It’s not your mom, Jackson. I just don’t want to be here anymore. Alan effed up my whole life…now I need to start a new one. And I can’t do that here.”
“You also can’t do that alone. Solitary vampires don’t last long; or they turn screwy and start doing all sorts of crazy shit. You don’t want to end up some mass murderer of Jack-the-Ripper proportions, do you?”
“That’s not going to happen. I’m not gonna like go off on a wild feeding frenzy; I just gotta get away from Everton.”
Jackson shrugged. I couldn’t tell if he was mad, relieved, or bored. Either way, he pushed the nasty feast back under my nose.
“If you’re traveling tonight, you’re going to need to eat.”
I grabbed one by the tail; it still clung onto life and squirmed around a little as it dangled. Gross, totally gross.
“Fine,”
So I knew I had changed. From pure geekdom under Alan, I had found a new assertive part of me that I’d never known existed. Mary-Christine and I had a huge schedule; we did school, Karate, gym and gun club. From an in-his-room nerd, I had turned into quite the ‘never-at-home.’ Mary-Christine and I also set into a bit of a schedule of our own. Our petting sessions now included a bit of fumbling, and if anyone had asked me at the time, I would have already said I was in love.
Yup, the geeky Lyman George Bracks had fallen in love. And it felt great.
The next day at school, my life changed.
I walked between classes, when suddenly, Jim Creary grabs me by the lapels and pushes me up against the wall.
“I don’t know what you did, Red, but I know you had something to do with Dorothy leaving.”
I got hit off the wall a couple of times as he raged.
“What are you raving about?”
His knuckles got right under my chin and pushed me higher. “You did something!”
Spittle flew at me. Over his shoulder, I noticed the other kids between classes were beginning to gather round.
“You’re fucking crazy, Jim!” I shot back, my new confidence bursting to the fore. “She probably left because you’re a nut-job!”
To my surprise, he threw a fist at me. I’d had contact every night at Karate, and some were fast, but Jim fist came at me like real lightning. But my training kicked in, by instinct I flipped my head to one side, and his knuckles went right past my nose, grazing my cheek.
I’d learned my defensive move weeks before, it was pure reaction. I just raised both arms, and with all of my strength, slammed the heels of my palms into his temples. Bam! For a second he looked shocked, then his eyes kind of wandered a bit, then he just fell into a crumpled heap on the linoleum floor.
I don’t know who was more shocked, me or the two seniors that rushed to his side; Jeff Fielding and Billy Tankard. Both were in ‘the six,’ and both growled at me like the wildest animals. I stepped forward, bringing my fist back, and to my shock, they shied away, doubt crossing both their faces.
“Lyman Bracks!” A low roar echoed down the crowded hall. “Stop this instant!”
I stepped back and let the two seniors pick a very groggy Jim Creary from the floor. By the time the Mr. Belcher had fought through the crowd to reach us, they were leading him away.
“What’s the meaning of this, Lyman?” Belcher asked me.
“We just collided, sir. Busy corridor. I guess I overreacted.”
He gave me a good looking over. “You report to the office after lunch.”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned to walk back to his class. “Nothing to see here! Get on to your next class!”
To my surprise, many of the students were still standing around, big smiles on faces.
I turned and headed for the science department. As I walked, I think my stride lengthened, and I’d developed a little swagger, too.
So we were doing a chemistry experiment, and Andrew Butler came up to me. He’d hardly spoken to me in years. “I heard you decked Creary.”
“He did hit the ground kinda hard.” I allowed the smallest of grins to flash across my face.
Andrew just walked away, grinning and muttering, “fuckin-A, fuckin-A,” under his breath.
I grinned again.
At lunch, I got a lot more stares than normal, and a few nudges and smiles; all quite intoxicating. Mary-Christine arrived and sat beside me, but instead of being left alone to chat, others joined the table. It was so bizarre. The conversation proved to be just small-talk, but I didn’t care.
Inwardly, I kept a watch over the far table. The table of ‘the six.’
If six vampires were going to be out for vengeance, I needed to be on my toes.
After smooching with Mary-Christine after lunch, I walked to the school office.
“Mr. Belcher told me to report myself,” I said to the secretary at the desk. “Lyman Bracks.”
She looked through some forms. “Ah, yes. Fighting in the corridor.”
“Hardly a fight, ma’am.”
“Tell that to the Assistant Dean. Step inside.” She pointed to the glass door on her left.
I sat on the chair for a few minutes, then my name got called.
Assistant Dean Frobisher could never have been considered a nice man. Story goes, he was an ex-policeman who couldn’t cut it, then turned to teaching. He now neared his sixties, and vented his bitterness at the world.
“Fighting in the corridor,” he said, not even bothering to look up at me.
“No, sir.” The words were out of my mouth before I knew it.
Now he looked up. “What do you mean, ‘no’? If Mr. Belcher said you were fighting, you were fighting!”
Having already put my foot in it, I tried not to back-pedal. “Beg your pardon, Assistant Dean Frobisher. But if I’m being accused of fighting, where’s the other guy? It takes two to fight.”
“Now listen here, young man.” He sat back on his chair for effect, but it didn’t faze me at all. “You have been reported by a teacher for fighting. That’s enough for me.”
I have no idea where I got the balls, but I decided to stand my ground. I’d seen far too many episodes of Boston Legal and Ally McBeal to let go now. “Sir, I say again. If I’d been
fighting, where’s the other guy? It takes two to tango. You’re either punishing me without cause, without proof, or you’re taking sides against me, letting the other guy go scot-free!”
He looked up at me, and for a second I felt sorry for him. Waves of weariness washed over his face.
“Detention. Two nights, starting tomorrow. Dismissed.”
My second of sorrow ended in a heartbeat. “Yes, sir,”
Now I had a more hectic schedule; school, detention, then gun club.
I did try to leave that one night. My legs literally buckled underneath me when as I walked down the stairs. Steve, Jackson’s foster dad, caught me and handed me off to Jackson, who brought me back to bed. As I got carted off, I heard Steve telling Mona off; saying how God wouldn’t approve of them turning me out before I could handle myself.
That bought me five more days of recovery time. And just to piss Mona Cole off, I took complete advantage of it. I lay around, had mice brought to me on a silver freaking platter and watched lots of daytime TV. It worked. Mona was ticked!
I still wasn’t sure what went on inside Jackson’s head. He went from totally dogging me and wanting nothing to do with me, to being a mother freaking hen. For days while I mended, in addition to waiting on me, he kept cramming Vampire 101 down my throat.
For instance - I totally thought I’d killed Hannah with the fire poker; but iron rods aren’t the same as wooden stakes. He drove that freaking point home until I grew sick of hearing about it. Geez! This wasn’t information I planned on needing ever again…
Okay - it felt nice to have someone around that actually gave a darn…but, it was also kind of annoying since I knew I had to be moving on.
Before I got up the nerve to really do it, school had already started. Jackson was busy with his little masquerade for most of the day. Personally, I had no freaking intention of putting on that show. Let Everton wonder what became of Mandy Cross and her parents; it’d give the big mouths something interesting to gossip about for a long time to come.
Of course, Everton had enough to talk about without me. First and foremost was the “missing” Cami Richter. Jackson had kept his nose glued to the TV news, but to date, her headless corpse hadn’t been discovered. Kind of odd considering I’d left it right out in the open.
There were two theories floating around the Cole house: Alan returned to the pier after I’d left it and disposed of Cami’s body. Or, Alan returned to the pier after fishing Cami’s head out of the river and put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Somehow.
I didn’t know if separating a vampire’s head from their body doesn’t get them quite dead enough. And of course, Jackson had no expertise in the ‘killing humans’ department.
However, around the Cole house, my opinion counted for zippo- zilch. Not even Jackson would pay the simple courtesy of pretending to be interested in what I had to say on the matter.
Whatever had happened after I’d left the pier, I knew the crap had to catch up with me. I mean, school had started and I hadn’t made a single class. People were going to be talking.
Anyway - while Jackson attended school, Mr. and Mrs. Cole both had jobs. This left me all alone during the day. It felt cool to have the place to myself at first; but even that got stale. Have you ever had that feeling that it was just time to make your move? There I stood; this anxious feeling in my stomach and everything. I had to leave Everton.
On Wednesday - first week of September - I finally got up the nerve to do it.
I slung my backpack over my shoulders then walked out the door. Anyone seeing me would have thought me just another kid, late for school. Walking along the sidewalk with the sun on my face, hearing birds up in the trees…it all felt so normal. It totally hit me then how long it’d been since “normal” had been normal for me.
I guess I got too wrapped up in the moment, because I never noticed them creep up on me.
Vampire’s Revenge
It was after nine that night when we finished gun club, and we did the usual cleaning at the end. Instead of taking our guns and putting them in our lockers, we put them in a secured box, and placed them in the trunk of my car. We had to get them to the gun shop at the weekend and get them valued, insured, and the serial numbers registered. There was no special need to do so, but since the guns were technically the property of Mary-Christine’s dad, I planned to do everything by the book.
We stopped by Sonic on the way home, and had our obligatory coffee and ice cream. A couple of juniors from school worked there, we got the best deals, and Mary-Christine always tipped well.
We were just leaving the drive thru when something slammed into the car with a dull thud. I looked around in panic, but could see nothing untoward. “What the heck was that?” I asked Mary-Christine.
“Sounded like a dog or something.”
Making sure there were no cars behind me, I turned off the ignition and got out. I looked around the tires. Nothing. As soon as I got inside, the back door flew open, and suddenly, right behind Mary-Christine sat Jim Creary.
“Don’t move, you freak,” he spat at me. He held a huge silver blade at Mary-Christine’s neck. “I don’t care how fast you think you are, Red. You’re not going to stop me from cutting her in half.”
“What the fuck do you want, Jim?” I hissed at him.
“Drive,” he said, motioning left. “Get out of town on the north road.”
I shook my head. I had to think of something, but I also had to give myself some time. I turned the car left, across the main road, and we headed for the north of town.
“I’ve not been driving for long, so just be careful with that knife.”
Mary-Christine looked terrified, tears filling her eyes.
“Oh, don’t you worry about your little girl; she’s doing just fine, Red. Just fine.”
I racked my brain to think of a way to get an edge, but nothing came. Before I knew it, we were out of town, heading north on the quietest road I’d ever driven on. Pretty soon, we’d hit the mountains, but Jim stopped us long before that.
“Right. Along here.” A farm track led off into the distance, but no farmhouse looked anywhere close. No buildings anywhere.
Pretty soon, I came to my destination. I could see it.
Up ahead, on the tailgate of a silver pick-up truck, sat Jeff Fielding and Billy Tankard. They both had beers in their hands.
“So you got the band together, huh?” I grinned, unlocking my seatbelt. I let it go loose.
“Park here,” Jim said, ignoring me.
“Figured.” I slid the car in behind, but took it close so that they both got a fright and threw themselves back onto the truck’s bed. I screeched to a halt, sending dirt and dust into their faces.
In one move I turned and punched Jim on side of the throat, and with my other hand pushed the blade away. Jim fell back onto the back door. I hit him again, determined that if I was getting a beating, or worse, then Jim would taste his own blood.
I scrambled between the front seats, hitting Jim again. I didn’t give him a chance to recover. Bam, one more, right on his nose.
“Son of a bitch!” he squealed. He managed to open the door and fall out onto the dry scrub grass. To his dismay, I scrambled over the seat in pursuit. I hit him twice more before his friends even tried to get out the truck.
Jeff appeared right in front of me, out of thin air.
But he didn’t move quickly enough; dumber than a bag of hammers.
So I hit him, too, right on the nose, sending him sprawling over Jim.
Billy wasn’t so easy. I felt a huge blow on the back of the head, then suddenly I they overpowered me. Two big guys, one on each arm, and their grip seemed pretty firm.
Thankfully, Mary-Christine was nowhere to be seen.
Jim slowly got to his feet. “Put him up against the truck.”
This put us right in my own headlights.
With my back against the silver truck door, I watched Jim approach. I grinned at his already bloody face,
his left eye swollen and closing fast.
When he came close, I tried to kick him, but he sidestepped and hit me square on the nose.
Oh, that felt fucking painful. I hadn’t expected it to hurt so much.
Then he started on me.
Punch to the head, grin, then a bit of a laugh; savoring it.
Punch to the face. Grin.
Punch to the stomach, then another. He readied himself for another round.
The next one surprised us all, especially Jim.
Bam! Jim’s head jerked away to the left, and he fell.
I had a vision of half his face disappearing in front of me. Nasty.
Bam! Jeff took one in the shoulder, and I dropped to the ground, partly because I couldn’t stand up anymore, but partly so Mary-Christine could get a shot off at Billy on my other side. I knew the sound of her 9mm anywhere.
Bam! Billy spun away, cursing, holding his arm. “I didn’t come here to fucking die!” Then he disappeared.
Well, looks like Jeff had about as much balls as his friend, and disappeared, too.
Blink. Right into midair.
Jim, on the other hand lay very still, not doing much moving at all. Most of his face lay in parts over the grass.
Mary-Christine came running up to me, cradling my face, crying at my wounds.
“Give me the gun,” I said, although my words weren’t that articulate.
She handed me the colt, I cocked it, and leveled it at Jim’s heart.
“You won’t kill him.” Mary-Christine’s face furrowed with worry.
“I know.” My grin must have looked hellish, because I felt as far removed from reality as I’d ever done. “But I’ll sure as hell keep him down for a bit.”
I put two in that bastard. “One for hitting me,” I pulled the trigger for the first time. “And one for holding a knife at Buffy.”
“Hey!” she poked me, and it hurt.
“Call your dad,” I said. “Find out what we have to do.”
“But what about you? We need an ambulance.”
“Screw the ambulance,” I said, getting up very slowly. “We’ve gone halfway to killing this prick, and I’m not stopping ‘til he’s staked and dissolving.”