Dave Carver (Book 1): Thicker Than Blood

by Dudek, Andrew

  There was a knock at the door, interrupting my thoughts. Expecting May to be back at my door, I opened it. There was a woman standing at the door, but it wasn’t May.

  She was about twenty, a good five years younger than May. A brunette with big, blue eyes, she stared at me with a strange intensity. Her lips were pushed together so tight they almost disappeared. Despite the cold, she wore only a lime green tank top and cut-off jean shorts, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Uh, hi,” I said.

  “Can I come in?” Her voice was slow and distracted, as if she had to really think over each word.

  “Uh, sure.” I stepped back to allow her to squeeze past me. “Are you okay?” I asked as I closed the door. “What’s your name?” I turned to look at her—

  And found myself face-to-face with the cold, pitiless barrel of a revolver.

  Chapter 3

  The gun’s barrel was like a tunnel: dark and cold. The girl’s eyes were equally dark and equally cold. I understood, then, that this girl, whom I’d never before seen in my life, intended to kill me.

  I put my hands over my head, moving slowly. “Whoa. You don’t need that.”

  “Yes,” she said, “yes, I do.”

  Her finger was on the trigger. It kept twitching slightly. The revolver was aimed directly at the center of my forehead. If she twitched a little harder, the inside of my door was going to get a gory new paint job. Slowly, carefully, I took a few steps away until the doorknob dug into my back.

  “Stop moving.” Something about this girl’s voice seemed off, somehow, filtered like it was taking too long for the words to get from her brain to her mouth.

  “You got it, sweetheart.” I kept my hands above my head, palms pointing towards the girl. I obviously couldn’t afford to push this girl. The sight of a gun three feet from your face will make just about anybody reasonable and compliant. I did what any intelligent human being would do: I froze.

  Of course, I realized, the “standing-still” strategy had a limited shelf life. Like ten seconds, max. And that was if I was lucky. Any longer than that, and the girl would do what she’d come here to do. She was standing close enough that I probably could have grabbed the gun, but her finger was still on the trigger. Any attempt to snatch the weapon would result in nothing but an expensive cleanup bill for the building’s super. This was a tight spot, so I did the only thing that made sense: I started talking.

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said in the same slow drone. “He told me I have to. I have to listen.”

  I frowned. “Who? Who told you that?”

  The girl’s head rocked back. A stray lock of pale brown hair fell to her shoulder. “I...I don’t know his name.”

  “Okay. What did he look like?”

  The finger tightened on the trigger and I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the boom. “I can’t tell you,” the girl said, and I opened my eyes.

  I tried, unsuccessfully to break my body down into a million tiny particles so I could phase through the door. “Hey, it’s alright,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  She stared for a long time like she couldn’t decide if she trusted me enough to answer that question. Finally, she said, “Krissy. Krissy Thomas.”

  “My name’s Dave Carver.” I gave her my best reassuring smile. “Now, can you tell me who wants me dead?”

  Krissy tilted her head to one side and scrunched up her face like she was puzzling over an obscure trivia question. She lowered the gun so it was pointing at my foot instead of my face. I took my first breath in what felt like ten minutes.

  There was a scary focus in her eyes. They reminded me of...well, of me, before I’d leave for a mission. I could see that she’d kill me if it came to that. The hand with the gun was similarly steady, but the rest of her body seemed wired and fidgety. Muscles twitched in her neck, and her free hand ran up and down the denim on her left leg.

  Something about that disconnect, that gulf between parts of her body was familiar. It reminded me of some drug addicts I’d known growing up. It reminded me of...

  Suddenly I had a pretty good idea of what was going on.

  “Krissy,” I said in my talking-to-maniacs-with-guns voice, “can you remember what he looked like? The man that asked you to kill me?”

  She opened her mouth, then shut it almost immediately. “No. I don’t remember.”

  “Okay. What about his eyes? Can you describe his eyes?”

  “Black,” Krissy said at once. “They were all black. They looked empty. Like a dry well.”

  Black and empty like a dry well: That was as perfect a description of a vampire’s eyes as I’d ever heard. I’d been right: Krissy had been enthralled by a vampire.

  I didn’t blame her—after all, she probably didn’t know vamps existed—but that was rule number one of monster hunting: Never look a vampire in the eye. If eyes are the windows to the soul, then if you make eye contact, even for a second, a vampire can use them as a door. He can then use your body as an extension of his. It’s called enthrallment.

  The question was: Why? As far as the vampire elders knew I was out of the game. As far as my friends knew I was out of the game. I was out of the game. Retired, my jersey number hung in the rafters. There was no reason for a vamp to come gunning for me.

  Krissy shook and the disparity was gone. Once more her whole body was focused on her task. Energy coiled under the skin like a cobra just before a strike. There was conflict plastered on her face, though. Interesting. Knights of the Round Table receive training in how to shake off an enthrallment. I’d never had any firsthand experience in it, but they say it’s hard as hell. This girl, who presumably had never had any such training, was struggling against the vampire’s reins.

  “What’s happening to me?” Krissy asked.

  “You’re being remote-controlled by a vampire.” I figured we were at the point in our relationship that required honesty. “Apparently he wants me dead.”

  “Why?”

  “Tell you the truth, I’m not sure. But I really hope you’re not gonna do it.”

  Krissy’s eyes dropped to the gun, and she stared gape-mouthed at it like she was seeing it for the first time. Her finger came off the trigger. It was just for a moment, but that was all I needed.

  I crossed the small amount of floor in less than a second. My hand closed on her wrist. I ripped the gun from her grasp and flung it across the room.

  She kicked me, more, I think, out of instinct than any attempt to hurt me. It was a good kick—hard, in the shin. I grunted, absorbing the pain. Lunging forward, I wrapped one arm around her waist and picked her up. We both went down into my coffee table. The furniture burst apart with a satisfying smash. Bits of wood and screws flew everywhere. Krissy lay on her back among the debris, her wide, uncomprehending eyes staring up at me.

  I was straddling her, holding her in place with the strength in my legs. Her eyes were darting around the wreckage of the coffee table. It took me a moment to realize what she was looking for, and it was pure luck that I spotted it first: the gun. I picked it up, an instant before her hand could have closed around the grip.

  “Sorry about this,” I said.

  And I smashed the gun into her forehead.

  Thralls don’t get any cool vampire powers. They’re not any stronger, faster, or tougher than other people. The pistol-whip drew a bloody gash across Krissy’s forehead, just at the hairline. She slumped down, unconscious.

  After waiting a few moments to be sure she wasn’t faking, I got off of her. I checked her pulse to be sure she was only knocked out. Her heartbeat was steady and strong. A little too strong, really, but it was slowing down, approaching normal.

  I fireman-carried Krissy into my bedroom and lay her down on my unmade bed. Then I opened my tiny closet. There wasn’t much in there: a few pairs of jeans, boots, and T-shirts. Under an old blanket on the floor, though, I found my old footlocker. I began tossing its contents on the floor. Woo
den stakes, vials of holy water, and old books began piling up behind me. I slid a couple of throwing knives into my pocket. Ah-hah! There they were: the handcuffs. I didn’t have much use for them, but if this wasn’t the time, when was?

  I cuffed the unconscious Krissy to the bed, and went back to my gear. I found what I was looking for under a bag that had once contained about five thousand dollars: my switchblade. I popped the little knife open and ran my finger along the edge of the blade. The silver was slightly tarnished, but that was okay. For my purposes tarnished silver would work just as well as polished silver.

  I took Krissy’s free hand and cut a line across her palm. I waited a moment, studying her unconscious face. Nothing happened. I breathed a sigh of relief and closed the switchblade.

  Silver disrupts magic. An enthrallment couldn’t be maintained after it had been exposed to pure, one hundred percent silver. Krissy was free. This wasn’t the first time I’d used the switchblade to get out of a jam like this. It had been a gift from an old friend, now long dead. I tucked the switchblade under my coat, just in case, and whispered, “Thanks Nate.”

  Krissy was still out cold, and would be for a while. I uncuffed her and arranged her arms in a more comfortable position.

  Then I left the bedroom and made a phone call.

  May answered on the first ring.

  “Listen,” I said, unable to keep my voice from shaking with excitement. “I changed my mind. I want to come back. I’ll take the job.”

  Chapter 4

  I carried a bucket of cold water from my sink into the bedroom. “Sorry about this, too,” I said. And I dumped the bucket on Krissy’s sleeping face.

  She came to with a shriek, sputtering and sending droplets of water flying across the room.

  “Morning,” I said.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Her voice was shrill, somehow more alive than it had been the night before. “For that matter, who the hell are you? Where am I? Why am in this bed?...” Her eyes widened. “What did you do to me?”

  Memory loss can be a side effect of enthrallment. Usually people don’t remember being enthralled, or anything they did while under the spell.

  I held my hands up in a pacifying gesture. “I didn’t do anything to you. Though, you did try to kill me, so you know—kinda justified.”

  “What?” The girl’s eyes bulged in their sockets. She sat up and glared at me. I’d put a bathrobe on her while she slept, and she squirmed out of it. The water had seeped through the old cloth of the robe, though, and soaked her tank top. It clung to her torso in an interesting way, and she glared and put the shapeless robe back on. “I’ve never met you before. Why would I try to kill you?”

  “Well,” I said, “I guess you didn’t. The vampire that enthralled you did. You were just the weapon.”

  She blinked. “You’re insane. That’s what this is. You’re some crazy person and you, I don’t know, kidnapped me so you could live out your sick delusions.”

  “Krissy.” I kept my voice gentle and even, as un-crazy as I could. “Think for a minute. Try and remember everything that happened in the last hour or so. It’ll probably seem like a dream or a bad trip, but I promise you: it’s true.”

  For a moment she remained angry and indignant. Then her mouth dropped open and her eyes widened in astonishment. I tried hard not to laugh. I really did.

  “What’s so funny?” Krissy demanded. “I tried to kill you. With, like, a gun. Why’d I do that? Where’d I get a gun?”

  It took a force of will, but I got serious. “Do you remember what we talked about? The vampire?”

  She rubbed absently at the cut on her head. “But that can’t be real, can it?”

  “Why else would you try to kill me? Like you said, I never did anything to you.”

  “Like, a real vampire? Immortal blood-drinker with a cape?”

  It never ceased to amaze me how little people knew about the world. They thought, arrogantly, that science was the path to understanding the universe. And maybe it is, I don’t know, but there’s more to the world than scientists are willing or able to comprehend. For centuries people never mentioned vampires—they knew they were out there, but they were afraid of drawing their attention. With the advent of science, though, we’d decided that vampires and other supernatural predators were fictional, collective faery tales, and so they couldn’t hurt us.

  These days people pretty much just know vampires from Hollywood: sexy, romantic symbols of everlasting love and eternal life. They don’t see the reality: that vampires are ruthless, dangerous predators whose resemblance to humanity is purely superficial.

  “Why would a vampire need to use me to kill you?” Krissy asked. “Couldn’t he, just, suck your blood?”

  “I’m...not sure,” I said. I pointed at a pile of clothes on my dresser. “Get out of those wet things and come out. I think we need to have a talk.”

  I brewed a pot of coffee. I was already tired, and I figured it was gonna be a while before I got any sleep. My new job was going to be nightshift-heavy, so I decided I’d better get used to long, dark hours. The milk in the fridge was sour, so I drank the coffee black. Stronger that way anyway.

  It took Krissy longer than I’d expected to get changed. I was starting to get nervous as the caffeine jackhammered its way through my system. May would be here soon, and Krissy had a decision to make before she got here. I wanted to make sure she had as much information as I could give her.

  When Krissy emerged she was wearing an old flannel shirt that had once belonged to Bill Foster. It was huge on her, as were my old pair of jeans I’d loaned to her, but she’d cinched it tight with a belt. Her wet hair was pushed behind her ears, making her look very, very young.

  She took the steaming cup of coffee and sat down in my only kitchen chair. I leaned on the back of the couch (after brushing off the debris of the coffee table), and faced her.

  “So, like, who are you?”

  I smiled. “Dave Carver, monster hunter. You know all of those horror movies? Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, zombies? Well, they’re all real, and it is—was—no, is—my job to protect people from them.”

  “And that’s why a, god, vampire wanted you dead?”

  “That’s my guess. With the war on, they’re gonna want to take every sword out of the Table’s armory that they can.”

  “Wait—sorry, what war?”

  I shook my head, realizing just how little Krissy knew. “The Knights of the Round Table—my organization—is fighting a war with the vampires right now.”

  “When you say ‘Round Table...”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Same table.”

  “Wow.” Krissy’s eyes sparkled, and for the first time I realized she was a really pretty girl. “So are you, like, Sir Lancelot or something?”

  I laughed. “Not exactly. But I am a knight of the Round Table.”

  She studied my face for a moment. I noticed her eyes linger on the necklace of scars that rose above the collar of my T-shirt, but she didn’t comment. I figured she recognized the significance without needing an explanation.

  “There’s another knight on the way here,” I said. “She’s gonna take us someplace safe.” I didn’t mention that this place was supposed to be safe. No point in scaring the kid more than necessary.

  “Okay.”

  “That’s it: Okay?”

  She shrugged. “I’m pretty sure I’m going crazy. Might as well go all the way, right?”

  This time I laughed for real. “You’re not the first person to think they’re losing it when they get a peek at the dark side of the Force. But wait till you hear this: I want you to come with me.”

  Krissy gaped at me. “Now you’re crazy.”

  I shook my head. “I’m giving you the chance to help the Knights of the Round Table fight these things.”

  “I don’t know anything about fighting.”

  “Neither did I, at first,” I said. “I learned.”

  She hesitated
, her face scrunched up like a rabbit. “I don’t know...”

  “No one’s gonna force you into this, Krissy,” I said. “If you don’t want to do it, no problem, you can go your merry way. But I think you’re special. With no training at all, you managed to shake off a vampire enthrallment. You had the gun at my head and you hesitated. I don’t know if you understand how amazing that is. I think you were meant to join this fight.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “We’re at war,” I said. “And if the Table loses, that’ll be it for humanity as anything other than a particularly intelligent species of livestock. The vampires will turn cities into farms, places to raise human children for slaughter. I’m gonna do everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen, and I think you can help.”

  “I’m not ready to fight a war.” Krissy was staring into her coffee, watching the steam rise from the black liquid.

  “No one ever is,” I said. “So you train. You get ready. Let me tell you something that my old teacher once told me: When you come face to face with a nightmare, you have three choices. Most people ignore it, pretend it doesn’t exist. That’s really the only path to a normal life after something like this: blissful ignorance. Other people can’t quite forget it, so they spend the rest of their lives afraid to peek around corners or look under beds, because they know that there are monsters out there. Or, you can do what every Knight of the Round Table has done. You can choose to fight. That’s what I did—twice, now.” I looked at her seriously. “It’s a big decision, I know, but you need to make it now. What do you want to do?”

  I was surprised, but there was no hesitation this time. Krissy looked up and said, “I want to fight.”

  Chapter 5

  I threw all of my belongings into a bag. It took less time than you’d expect—I didn’t have much: a few nineties rock band T-shirts, some jeans, a bunch of underwear and socks, and a whole lot of knives.

  Have you ever felt the urge to click your heels and vomit at the same time? That was what I felt like. May would be here soon, and I’d be going back to the Table. I was excited, but it was a nervous excitement, and my stomach churned like it was on a ship out at sea. The Table had nearly gotten me killed already, and I was giving it another crack at the piñata.