by Rob Cornell
The coffin popped open an inch or so, then Odi pushed it the rest of the way open and sat up. He jerked when he saw me sitting there, clearly not expecting a visitor at coffin-side, let alone his missing mentor. He blinked away some of his sleepiness and a huge grin spread across his face.
“Dude!”
I smiled. “Dude.”
He climbed out of the coffin and wrapped his arms around me, forgetting his vampire strength and nearly cracking a rib.
“Ouch.”
He let go and backed off. “Sorry.” He looked around. “Is Toft with you? I’ve been going nuts wondering what happened. Sly’s smoked so much weed he’s gone through like fifty bags of Cheetos. Where the fuck have you been?”
I stood from the folding chair and held my hands out. “Slow down, kid. Let’s ease into this.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You…you smell funny. Extra sweaty.”
I kept from sniffing my armpit. I knew it was his keen senses picking up on my nerves. I wouldn’t get a chance to ease into this.
“I’m just gonna come out with it,” I said.
Odi stared at me.
“Just gonna say it.”
“Then say it.”
I put a hand on Odi’s arm. “Toft is gone.”
He knocked my hand away and staggered backward. He nearly tripped on his coffin. He gathered his balance, then wandered over to the couch. He dropped down onto it and picked up Sly’s glass bong. He turned it from side to side, examining the abstract carvings in the pipe’s base.
“They killed him?”
I so wanted to lie. I mean, hadn’t it been their fault? If they hadn’t forced Toft into enthralling half of Detroit, he would still be here. But there was that little detail about my zeal, throwing the cloak into hell before I’d said word one to Toft. If I had just waited a second, first…
I clenched my fists and bounced them gently against my thighs.
Odi twisted on the couch and looked over its back at me. “Sebastian?”
“They got him to do it,” I said. “Tortured him. He didn’t stand a chance resisting.”
I licked my lips.
“When I found him, he was a wreck, but I didn’t know he’d already completed the ritual, had all those people enthralled and ready to let the vamps eat them.”
Odi shot to his feet. His face shifted, skin going gray and shriveled, eyes glowing red. He bared his fangs. And the weight of his power crowded the room. “What happened to Toft?”
“I threw the cloak into hell,” I said quickly. “Before I knew it was too late. So the only way to clear Toft’s thrall…”
Odi’s glamour rippled back into place. He looked like an average, pained teen again. “Was to kill him.”
“Yes.”
He sank back onto the couch. He bowed his head and raked his hands through his hair. “So that’s it, then. You’re free of me. That worked out great for you, huh?”
“I didn’t want to do it, Odi.”
“Don’t treat me like a two-year-old, you son of a bitch. Don’t make it any worse than it is. I’m on my own again.” He covered his face with his hands. “Thanks for orphaning me again.”
I came around the couch and sat next to him.
He shied away, scooting to the other end. “Just give me a sec to process, then I’ll take off.”
“No,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
He slowly raised his head and looked at me. “You’re going to kill me, too?”
“No. No way. Just shut up and let me talk, okay?”
He crossed his arms and frowned. “Whatev.”
“I promised Toft I would take care of you.”
He snorted. “Blood oaths expire after death, duh. I’m not an idiot.”
“This isn’t a blood fucking oath, Odi. It’s a promise. One I intend to keep if you would just close your damn mouth and let me finish.”
He gaped at me, mouth open.
Good. Had his attention.
“Toft is gone,” I said. “And I can’t replace him. I’m no vampire. I don’t know all the things you need to know. But I’m willing to figure it out if you’re willing to stick with me.”
He gaped for a full ten seconds before finally saying something. “Are you for real?”
“I promised,” I said. “But not even that matters. I won’t abandon you, Odi. You…you’re not just my apprentice. You’re my friend.”
He released a long exhale then he slid over to me and hugged me again. This time a couple vertebrae popped, but it kinda felt good.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Two weeks later, Mom and I moved into our new home.
The Ministry had offered to rebuild our old house just as it had stood before the vamps burned it down, but Mom and I both felt it was time for a change. Especially since no one in that neighborhood would look at us the same—Mrs. Snoopis most of all.
We ended up with a small house in a district of Detroit called Corktown. I liked the idea of leaving the suburbs for the city itself: my city, the city I hadn’t let Markus Hope and his crew steal from the folks who really belonged here.
The other nice thing about the house was the neighbors. We had a super cute druid woman on one side and a white witch about Mom’s age on the other. The houses belonged to an initiative to create more support and cooperation between those of us in the paranormal community, which started with bringing that community closer together. All of this was started by the interim Detroit Ministry leadership from the GMF, who had taken over until they could elect a new Detroit prefect. I tried to convince Mom to run for the position. She answered with some vulgar language in plain old English that I didn’t know she knew. Wow.
We settled in nicely. Mom shared food recipes with the witch, Gladys, in exchange for the opportunity to pour through Gladys’s massive collection of spell books from around the globe. You couldn’t take the scholar out of my Mom, no siree.
Me?
I laid low. The Ministry ended up way overpaying me for my services rendered, then promptly fired me. I didn’t really feel like demon hunting. I was more interested in getting a date with the druid next door. Of course, I would have to actually ask her out. Every time I got up the nerve, I thought about Fiona, and chickened out. I guess I still wasn’t over her. Who knew how long it would take me? I found it very hard to trust. And I’d earned that. I wouldn’t trust anyone outside of Mom, Sly, and Odi until I was damn well ready.
Speaking of Odi, he lived in the basement now. I’d decided continue his training. I didn’t know any other way to keep him out of trouble. I also discovered we could keep him fed with a fraction of my Unturned blood compared to that of an average mortal, so we worked with that until we could figure out something better. There were ways tame vampires could get their needs met without killing. I would just have to make sure he came by it honestly, not through any kind of thrall.
So, yeah. I was training Odi. Pining over my neighbor. And spending a lot of time reading and playing video games.
I didn’t know what would come next.
And I was totally good with that.
ENRAGED
Unturned: Book Four
Chapter One
Three months after Sly’s Smoke Shop got trashed by a group of rioting vampires, the Detroit Ministry finally approved Sly’s claim for compensation due to a paranormal event. Believe it or not, three months was pretty good, especially since there had been a number of similar claims logged around the same time. Sly’s place wasn’t the only one the vampires wrecked.
Then there were those places owned by average citizens who didn’t have access to Ministry services because they didn’t even know the Ministry existed. The gas station across the street from the shop had blown up thanks to a good soaking by their primary merchandise. Also the vampires’ doing.
So, while the gas station remained a crumbled mess, Sly’s place was finally getting the facelift it needed, and I had the pleasure of taking part.
I stood on
the top step of an aluminum ladder that wobbled a bit too much for my comfort. But I needed to reach high enough to touch up the paint on the wall where it met the ceiling. Sly had opted for a shade of sky blue that gave the room a bright and airy feel. Despite the light flurry outside, a clear stream of sunlight poured through the newly replaced plate-glass window that stretched the length of the shop.
I wasn’t a big fan of winter, but January had turned out to be pretty mild by Michigan standards. We’d only had more than a couple inches of snow fall in a single day once so far, and that had melted into the city’s gutters and drains after an almost spring-like week mid-month. More sunlight than usual, less snow, and not too many days below freezing. I could deal with that.
Of course, February was a week away, and that month could rain down winter hell. As the last month before spring, February seemed to like giving you a good blizzardy kick in the ass on its way out.
I finished my touch-up for as far as I could reach and started down the ladder, paint can in one hand, brush in the other. The ladder leaned a little too far to the left, and I could feel gravity about to dump my ass.
With a quick draw on my magical energy, I commanded the air to push the ladder right. There’d been a time when conjuring a breeze like that would throw me in the opposite direction, maybe even send me across the room. I had started working hard at using a little more finesse in my magic. So this time, the ladder tipped just far enough to keep it steady while I scurried the rest of the way down.
I turned toward Sly, who was installing rubber molding along the floor. He was crouched on his knees and bent forward. A glue gun lay on one side of him, a stack of molding strips on the other.
“This ladder sucks, you know.”
He didn’t respond. I realized he wasn’t working either. Just bent over and still, as if he’d fallen asleep with his face on the hard, bare floor—we hadn’t laid down any carpet yet.
“Sly?”
Nothing.
I set my paint can and brush on the floor, wiped my sweaty hands on my paint spattered jeans, and hurried over to him. I crouched at his side and peered down to find his cheek against the floor and his eyes closed. His gray ponytail hung down along his neck like a short, loose scarf. When he exhaled, the ends of his hair fluttered, and each breath sounded gravelly and congested.
But at least he was still breathing.
I rested a hand on his arched back. When he released a breath, I could feel the faint vibrations of fluid in his lungs.
This was so weird. He hadn’t shown any signs of being sick when we had started work that morning. Here it was noon, and it was like he’d been hit by a bad case of avian flu in the span of a few hours.
I gently nudged him. “Sly,” I said softly. Then, more loudly, “Sly? Wake up, man.”
His eyes opened but were clouded with sleepiness. He blinked a few times, then looked up at me. “I feel like shit, brother.”
“You look it.” And he did. Face washed out, skin almost gray enough to camouflage the gray stubble of his goatee. I noticed his breath smelled funny, too. Like over ripe peaches. “No offense.”
“A ton taken.”
He looked horrible, but his sense of humor remained intact. A good sign.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
Sly planted his hands against the floor and pushed himself up to a kneeling position. He swooned for a second. I grabbed his arm to help steady him. He worked his mouth as if he had a bad taste on his tongue. “Breakfast feels like it might come back up.”
“That’s an over-share.”
He rubbed one temple. “Sorry. I’m all achy and woozy. I don’t know what the hell is going on.”
“It looks like you caught a bad bug. You want me to drive you home?”
He looked down at his unfinished work. He’d only started installing the molding forty minutes ago, so he only had half of one wall done. He groaned. “I’m never going to get this place back open.”
“Tell you what. I’ll drop you home, then swing back and finish this up for you.”
“I can’t ask…” He scrunched up his face and hissed between his clenched teeth. “Forget it. Get me the hell home.”
“Can do.”
Chapter Two
Sly’s house sat in a row of similar looking suburban ranches that lined one edge of the Red Run Golf Club in Royal Oak. He had a view of a sand trap not far beyond his family room’s picture window. It was like beach front property, only without the ocean, and an occasional golf ball through the window.
I half-dragged him inside, and we stumbled like a couple of drunks down the hall into his bedroom. He flopped onto his mattress and curled up into a ball. A couple seconds later he was snoring.
I laughed to myself and wandered out to his kitchen. Today’s strange smell (his kitchen always smelled weird because he did some alchemical experimentation there) had a hint of red pepper with a dash of bubble gum. I had smelled a lot worse in there.
Before I drove back to the shop to install some rubber molding (woo-hoo, lucky me), I gave my mom a call. She was going through one of her funks, and I wanted to check up on her. The funks came and went, which said something of her strength. She had learned she killed her husband a few months ago. Didn’t matter that she had had a good reason, or that she was meant to fly off this mortal coil with him. You don’t bounce back from that kind of thing very easily. But Mom had plenty of good days mixed among the bad, especially with her new neighbor and best friend, Gladys, a white witch with a massive collection of old spell books Mom loved to pore over. I think, without Gladys, Mom’s funks would have been more permanent.
She answered the phone with fake cheer. It sounded convincing, but I knew better.
“Just seeing how you’re doing,” I said.
“I’m fine.” The cheer in her voice dropped in an instant, leaving her tone flat and annoyed.
“Have you eaten anything today?”
“You had breakfast with me, Sebastian.”
“I had breakfast. You stirred your Cheerios until they turned to mush.”
“I had a bite.”
“Even if that were true, you need more than that.”
She sighed with a little growl to it. “I had a piece of cheese and a couple slices of ham. Satisfied?”
I looked up at Sly’s cuckoo clock – which did not cuckoo. He had removed the bird and noise mechanism from because it annoyed him. I don’t know why he didn’t just get a new clock.
It was after one in the afternoon. My stomach was growling, and a bit of cheese and lunch meat wouldn’t cut it. It wouldn’t cut it for her either. “That’s all you’ve had today?”
“Please stop pestering me.”
I heard a ragged, ugly coughing come from Sly’s room. I cringed at the sound. “I’d take you out to lunch, but Sly’s got some kind of flu, and I think I should stick with him. Will you please make yourself an actual sandwich, or heat up one of those pot pies in the freezer?”
She grunted, which might have been a yes.
Sly’s coughs grew louder, more frequent, and had a bark to them that made my own chest hurt just by hearing it. I would have to trust Mom to take care of herself. I couldn’t take care of both her and Sly at the same time.
I got an abrupt goodbye out of her, then I went down the hall back to Sly’s room.
I found him on the floor.
His eyes were closed as if he were still asleep, his knees brought up toward his chest, and he coughed and coughed and coughed again, each time spritzing the light green carpeting with blood.
“Aw, shit.”
I stood there, frozen a moment with indecision. What to do? How to help? Should I call an ambulance? Or maybe a magical healer? I knew Sly had a healer he used on occasion. She had helped me once, after I got myself messed up fighting one of Detroit’s best demon hunters at the abandoned Pontiac Silverdome of all places.
I couldn’t remember the healer’s name, though. I might have never heard it, at le
ast not while conscious. So even if Sly had her number in his phone, unless he labeled it Magical Healer Woman, I wouldn’t know which number to call. Mom probably knew someone. But, unlike hospitals, healers didn’t have emergency vehicles with sirens that parted traffic for them. I didn’t have time to find a healer and get them to Sly’s.
So, that made my decision for me.
I dialed 911, gave the operator a quick rundown of the situation. He asked if Sly had lost consciousness with a certain tone that suggested he wouldn’t send anyone otherwise. Could you cough your lungs out while unconscious?
“Sure,” I told the guy. Why not? When the paramedics show up and it turned out Sly was conscious, were they going to bitch about it? Let them.
He had me stay on the line until the ambulance arrived. It only took them a decade.
During the wait, I knelt beside him, rubbing his back, watching him cough blood, and feeling utterly helpless the whole time. I tried to think of some way to use my magic to at least ease the coughing. I could fling fire, control air, manipulate water, and occasionally do small spells to find things or see through another’s eyes. I could even make a small pile of rocks get up and dance. None of that would help.
I had to leave things to the paramedics when they finally showed up. They asked Sly questions he couldn’t answer because he couldn’t stop coughing. What’s your name? Did you ingest anything recently? Have you taken any drugs?
Part of their routine, I guess. It sounded so stupid to me. A waste of time. But they never stopped moving. While it took a decade for them to arrive, it took seconds for them to get Sly on a gurney, roll him out of the house, and tuck him away in the back of the ambulance.
I rode with him, holding his hand. He had coughed up so much blood, it was smeared across his lips.
I couldn’t help but think of vampires.
Chapter Three
Hospital waiting rooms. Didn’t matter how nice they were, they sucked and always would until the end of time. But Royal Oak General Hospital had a fairly cozy one, all things considered, including a chair that could convert to a small cot if you kicked up the foot rest and leaned the back down. I hoped I wouldn’t be staying long enough to test its comfort.