Relinquished Hood

by Kendrai Meeks

  I picked up the conversation. “You also promised me you were going to do whatever it took to help me get to the bottom of WWL’s involvement with wolves. Don’t tell me you’re going to help build a house then expect me to bring all the tools on my own.”

  “Your analogies are lacking. You might want to– “

  Both Igor and I fell silent as the front windshield of his car fissured into a hundred pieces.

  Red fur and heaving chest, the twenty-stone wolf lorded over the car, denting the hood. Closer to the size of a black bear than the purebred animal, the sight of him both thrilled and terrified me. With gleaming teeth bared and the rumble in his chest droning, I knew that what Tobias had said earlier in the evening had been right; if he had wanted to kill me, the task would be all too easy.

  The vampire was less impressed with my associate’s display.

  “Are you insane?” The door nearly fell off its hinges, Igor threw it open so hard. “Do you have any idea how expensive this car is!”

  Tobias turned to me, yelping out a few canine phrases. I couldn’t understand wolf word for word, but Igor didn’t know that.

  “He says if you don’t agree to help us, he’s going to rip off the rearview mirrors,” I said, making up a translation on the spot that captured a threat rendered in mannerisms and yaps.

  Igor, however, called my bluff. “You have no idea that’s what he said, and even if he was saying that, it won’t change my mind. I’m already doing everything I can. Don’t ask any more of me.”

  “I appreciate all that you’re doing. But since I’m stuck in the mailroom, I’m going to have to stick my nose into places an intern shouldn’t be. Me coming up against a v-staffer isn’t an if, it’s a when. I’m not saying make me be able to fight like a slayer. I’m just saying that a few pointers would be nice.”

  “You want a pointer?”

  The hard ground rose up to meet me as I lost my footing. At first, I thought that Igor had pushed me. Only a moment later did I realized I’d been thrown off balance by mere air, a veritable sound wave that took me down as he sped past. When I looked up, it was to find the normally mild professor, teeth long and gruesome, eyes black as coal, holding Tobias by the scruff off the roof of his car. The wolf whined, not being injured, but understanding that he was at the vampire’s mercy.

  “Take your rites,” Igor said. “That’s the best thing you could do to help everyone. You have the potential to be among the strongest of the hoods, and you abstain out of pride. Use every weapon you have, starting with yourself – that’s my pointer.”

  “Release the wolf.”

  My hand arched over my shoulder, tightening on the handle of the silver blade woven into my hair. Whipping it back in front of me, the metallic blade went flying, embedding in Igor’s thigh. Silver wouldn’t kill him, but that didn’t mean a dagger into his ancient muscles hurt any less.

  Tobias’s body flattened against the earth, a sickening crack of bones that turned my stomach. The vampire cursed in a language I didn’t recognize as thin, white hands wrapped around the blade of my grandmother’s dagger, unplugging a wound oozing thick, black blood.

  I threw myself in front of Tobias, shielding his body with my own. “Set a finger on this wolf again, and next time I’ll nest my blade in your brain.”

  My threat failed to have much of an effect as he studied my weapon.

  “So fast,” he mumbled. He looked down on my defensive position, all anger erased from his face. “Are you certain you haven’t undergone your rites? I’ve never seen a nascent who can move with such speed.”

  An ache formed in the pit of my stomach. “My mother wouldn’t be constantly riding my cape if I had.”

  “No, I suppose she wouldn’t.” The vampire tossed my blade on the ground about a foot in front of me. When I looked from it to him again, he’d moved to the ground so swiftly, I wondered how he was unable to dodge my volley a moment ago.

  “Fine, we train,” he declared. “But not tonight. I have to ride back into the city and drop my car for repairs, now that you’ve ruined the glass. It’s a good thing you’re not working under me at WWL, Geri, or I’d dock what it will take to make this right from your pay.”

  Behind me, Tobias shifted back to human form, and though naked werewolves had no effect on me, it clearly disturbed Igor. His eyes became bobbers, floating on a plane of reality that didn’t dip below Tobias’s chin.

  “Something tells me you can handle the cost just fine.” Tobias braced me from behind, his palms sliding under my elbows and guiding me to my feet. “But first I want to know what you meant when you said you made a vow to never confront a hood again.”

  Igor’s shoulders slumped. “I have the blood of too many on my hands.”

  “Hoods?” Tobias’s hold on my elbows tightened.

  Igor shook his head. “Hoods, slayers, wolves. Even my own kind. You’d think after so many years, I’d learn to outlive the shame. Some regrets refuse to dull. They are a blade that sharpens, cutting less frequently, but deeper each time it swings.”

  “Fine, I’ll bite. What made you so guilty then?” I asked.

  The vampire turned his eyes to the skies. “Once, I longed for power, control. I wanted to be a king among my kind, a prince of darkness. I built a family that supported that vision. I chose children foolishly. My legacy is the destruction they have wrought. So many dead. Whole slayer lines abolished, hoods and wolves pushed from their lands. One day, I had an epiphany, and realized what the true legacy of my actions were. I made a vow that I would never again intentionally harm another supernatural creature.”

  The wheels of my mind began to whirl. “When did you make this vow?”

  A darkness crept into Igor’s eyes, a panic of a man whose secret had become known. “Fifty-three years ago.”

  I swallowed my nerves. “After they were all dead.”

  He didn’t try to deny it. “I thought, if I could just destroy their food source, maybe I could defeat them. I swear, Gerwalta, I’m not that man anymore.”

  “What man?” Tobias asked confusedly.

  I pulled my keys from my pocket, took my dagger from the ground, and without taking eyes from Igor, backed to the truck.

  “He’s the reason the slayers are gone,” I said. “He killed them.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The only upside of discovering that the one vampire I’d grown certain I could trust had let me down was that Tobias gave me a day to mope. Or as he put it, “regroup and reevaluate our options.” Hope waned. My chances against a vamp were paltry at best. Without proper training? Smaller than a fly bite on a moose’s butt. I needed guidance. I needed strength. But how could I possibly trust a man who had admitted to killing off the last of the slayers, even if the purpose of his work now was to resurrect them?

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go to work today.”

  I sighed as I pulled a bagged lunch from the fridge. “We need the money.”

  He flinched, and it only took me a moment to figure out why. Over the last two days, and more so, in just the three weeks since Tobias had shown up on my doorstep, the frequency of “us” and “we” trickled in to our discussions. Somehow, we’d become a team, one made of traditional foes whose instincts still pushed them to hate each other.

  “I can walk more dogs,” he insisted as I turned for the door. “It’s not a lot of money, but every little bit helps, right?”

  “Fine, get more clients. But until you do, rent is due next week. I have to go, I’m going to be late.”

  “Are you sure you’re going to be safe?”

  I paused at the door, the wolf at my back. “Tobias, I know Cody sent you here to protect me, but we both know there’s only so much you can do. Everyone – Huey, wolf, or hood – takes a chance with each step. I’m at least going to make sure my steps count for something.”

  At the office, I drifted through my duties efficiently, but detached. At lunch, I sat with the Huey interns, all of them assigned to office positions
on the floors above ground, and wondered if I was wasting my time keeping my head down and my eyes open. Had I been assigned to Igor’s lab as expected, I’d have access to records, experimental spaces, research notes. Now all I had access to was the supply closet. Nothing suspicious in there except three dozen cases of correction fluid and a hobgoblin’s boatload of rubber bands. I checked email on my phone, surprised to find one from an address I didn’t recognize.

  It’s not what you think.

  For some reason, I felt the same for Igor that I’d felt two months before with Jess when I found out he’d been using me to get to Tobias. Only this time, there was a tinge of regret. Feeling anything but repulsion for Igor, knowing what he’d done, didn’t make sense in my head. But something niggled at me, a low-level hum that I owed him a chance to explain.

  On Wednesday afternoon, after loading my cart with deliveries, sorting from lowest floor to highest, I was surprised to find another package destined for the twenty-seventh floor. This one, however, required a signature, meaning I’d have to see Mr. Perfect-in-just-a-towel again. Even if I was trapped working at WWL, at least it came with benefits.

  This time when he answered the door, he qualified as clothed, even if “clothed” meant only an undershirt and boxers. Did this man not own any street clothing? Moreover, did he not go into the offices below at all? The time on my phone made it perfectly clear that it was still Huey working hours.

  Rubbing sleep from his eyes, his mouth curled into a sly grin when he saw me at his door. “If it isn’t Geri. Geri Kline.”

  Despite the doldrums in which I’d anchored myself, I couldn’t help the blush in my cheeks as I extended my clipboard. “I have another package for you, Caleb.”

  “I know. I mailed it to myself.”

  “You... Why would you do that?”

  “Why do you think?” He winked, sending the butterflies in my stomach into a coordinated flight routine. “Even paid extra for certified delivery so you’d have to see me for a signature.”

  “There are easier ways to talk to me. You must know I work in the mailroom. I’m there all morning. Come by any time.”

  “Thanks for the invitation.” He took the clipboard from me to fill out the receiving slip. “Not much of a morning person though.”

  “A night owl, are you?” I asked as he handed me back the clipboard. “Me too until... Wait, is this... Is this your actual name?”

  “You knew my name, Geri. It’s Caleb.”

  I turned around the clipboard and shoved it into his chest. “Is this some sort of cruel joke?”

  “I used to ask my mother the same question. As a kid, all the other boys at school called me Kale-Club.”

  “No, not your first name.” Huffing, pointed at his scrawl. “You signed Caleb V. Helsing.”

  His hand rose tentatively to brush the back of his ear. “Yeah, so?”

  There were three possibilities. One: Helsing was a more common name than I had realized, and it was mere coincidence. Two: it wasn’t coincidence, but the name had come down through the subsequent generations, even if the legacy had not. Or three, the man standing in front of me was actually a born and bred member of the most infamous slayer line ever.

  I decided to take a chance. Leaning in, I whispered, “Helsings tend to be night people, from what I hear.”

  Caleb gawked at me. “Sorry?”

  In an awkward gesture, I threw the clipboard on the cart behind me. “If you’re going to slay vampires, you’d have to be.”

  A moment of confusion, and then, before I could rationalize the movement, Caleb pulled me into his apartment and slammed the door behind us.

  “Who sent you?”

  The air in my lungs came whooshing out as he threw me against the wall. Gone was the coquettish, irrepressible flirt, replaced with narrow eyes and a hunter’s glare. In a moment, I’d gone from butterflies, to scorpions. My instincts reared outside of my control, calling on what strength I had. I knew my eyes were glowing blue, because suddenly, Caleb’s hand dropped as he stepped back.

  “You’re a... You’re a hood.”

  Not a question, a statement.

  “House of Red,” I confirmed, peeling myself off the wall and trying not to gasp too loudly. “And you claim to be a Helsing. Big words, but do you have any proof?”

  Caleb lifted his right arm, bringing his hand to shoulder level. With a twitch of his fingers, a small orb appeared, a baseball-sized globe that threatened to blind me.

  “Proof enough for you?”

  I couldn’t really be seeing this. It had to be a trick. I needed proof. My fingers danced through the air, reaching for the fireball dancing over his palm. Just before I touched it, Caleb slapped my attempt down with his free hand and closed the other, forcing the sphere out of existence.

  “Are you crazy? That’s solar energy! You want third degree burns?”

  “Yes, if it will prove this isn’t a dream.”

  Caleb ran a hand through his hair, huffing. “It isn’t a dream. But no one’s supposed to know. Shit, I... I need coffee. You want some coffee? I’m going to make some coffee.”

  My father once told me that mysteries were like a rash. Sating the itch of one dangerous question only caused more to arise.

  “You’re a slayer? You guys are supposed to be extinct. Are there others? And why are you here, of all places, hulled up at WWL?”

  He muffled a laugh as I followed him into the kitchen. “Coffee first. Questions after.”

  Now that I was no longer pressed against a wall and wondering if I was about to be locked in a fight to the death, I took time to examine my surroundings. Caleb’s apartment looked like a high-end hotel room crossed with an interior decorating magazine. Following him into the kitchen, I found a landscape of shiny black appliances with chrome highlights and ebony marble counters. He worked the controls of a coffee machine that looked like it had been lifted from a Rome coffee bar. He prepped twin cups of espresso with a single pushed button, then put one in front of me. The kitchen didn’t have a proper dining table. Instead, two tall stools sat on opposite sides of a cocktail table.

  “Questions one at a time, please, allowing for one swig of joe between.”

  I brokered a smile. “Not an evening owl?”

  “What can I say, Geri? I like spending as much time in bed as possible.”

  I ignored the innuendo and pressed on. “I’ve been told my whole life that the slayers went extinct. Obviously, that’s not the case.”

  “There’s no question in that statement.”

  “Fine then,” I said. “How are you alive?”

  “Because my parents loved each other very much, and it led them to do things that resulted in my being born.”

  “Seriously, Caleb! Do you have a clan?”

  A slow sip of coffee, slurped with relish. “Slayers don’t live in clans. Or clutches or packs, if that’s your next question. We’re more of the traditional nuclear family model, with a shorter coming-of-age period. I left my home and New York City ten years ago, when I was fifteen.”

  “Fifteen?” I was certainly capable of surviving in the wild by that age, but not on being a functioning adult in the Huey sense of the word, legally or practically. “Why so young?”

  “Since my parents were murdered, it seemed the right thing to do at the time.”

  My humanity fought my hood nature. My mother would tell me, “Don’t get emotionally involved. Keep a clear head so you can stay an impartial party and mediate with logic, not feelings.” My hand froze midair over the table, unable to cross to give the simple comfort of a touch. Caleb observed my spontaneous attempt at miming with no shortage of amusement.

  “And here I was told all hoods were stoic, detached wolf-killing-bots.”

  My hand dropped to the table. “We don’t just go around killing wolves.” There was a bit more annoyance in my voice than I would openly admit to. “We’re supposed to help keep the peace. We’re more like security guards.”

  “Who
have some kind of magic ability to form silver into any weapon you want and can fly,” Caleb countered. His eyes grew wide with excitement. “I’ve always wanted to see what that looks like. If I got out some silver, could you change it into a bell or a statue of Angelina Jolie or something?”

  “No, I’m only a... Wait, we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you, and how a slayer is living in a building owned and operated by vampires.”

  My memories of Igor’s admission rebounded on me. Security in the building was tight, and even though I could crawl all about it delivering packages all day long, I knew even then that I was constantly subject to surveillance. An open door didn’t mean unfettered ability to move about.

  My mouth went dry. “Are you being held prisoner here?”

  “Prisoner?” He laughed, his tanned cheeks taking on a beautiful reddish glow. “Is that what you think? No, Geri, I can come and go as I wish.”

  “Then you... work for WWL?” It seemed the only other logical conclusion.

  “No, not really.” His features relaxed and Caleb grew somber. “I guess if you had to put a label on it, you’d say I’m a refugee.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Refugee. A small part of me wanted to scoff at the term. I equated it with heartbreaking images of scrawny children dressed in rags, running through mazes of tents or old women carrying sacks on their backs as they trooped through mountain passes to avoid border crossings. The image of a handsome young man who could summon sunlight in his hand and lived with a killer view of the Lake Michigan shoreline didn’t square. Then again, I so far had no evidence that his clothing expanded beyond towels and cotton blend undergarments.

  “Refugee? What are you refuging from?”

  “From vampires.”

  Awkwardness made a fist and aimed for my gut. “I’m sorry if you were unaware of this, Caleb, but WWL is run by vampires.”

  The man across the table from me exhaled and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You honestly think I don’t know that?”