best.”
“Yeah Cristobal. You are behaving like a little child. Our friend is dead, it is not your fault.” Lucio said.
“Lucio shut up.” Cristobal yelled back at them. “Please leave, I do not want to do something I will regret later.”
“Do not be an idiot. You know what is your problem? You cannot hear the truth? Let me tell …” Lucio was saying, but Tom signalled him to stop talking.
Cristobal turned toward Lucio filled with anger, his face was completely red and was breathing heavily. Guillem had never seen his friend so mad. Cristobal started walking toward him and Lucio got up from the bench with a challenging stance while the others just kept quiet waiting to see what was going to happen.
“Get out of here Lucio before I take your head off.” Cristobal roared standing in front of Lucio, his eyes being a head above Lucio's, but Lucio kept staring at him unafraid.
“You do not intimidate me. Hit me, that will not change the fact that you have to let him go and you have to learn to listen to your friends.”
Cristobal punched with all his strength the concrete column next to Lucio, just a few centimetres next to his head, leaving a large crack in the concrete where his fist hit it.
All of the present people went pale including Lucio and Cristobal, there was a very tense silence for a few minutes. Guillem himself could not believe what he just saw Cristobal do.
“Are you ok Cristobal?” Asked Tom. “You cracked the column! How is your hand?”
“Yes I am fine.” He said looking at his fist. “I am not hurt or anything.”
“We better go, let's not talk about what happened here any more. Do you want to go see Guillem's family? They are all reunited.”
“Yes let's go.”
They went out of the park and Guillem followed them all the way to Guillem's family house. Tom, Edward and Lucio were walking very slowly and complaining of the pain they were suffering while Cristobal was just following them in silence.
The lights in his family's house where turned on. After his friends went into it, he approached the kitchen's window and looked inside. From outside the window he managed to see his parents, friends and other neighbours, most of them were crying or engaged in conversation. On the kitchen's table he saw a few pictures of him and many flowers arrangements. He managed to see all of his other friends except Roberto, they had some visible bandages and seemed in pain as well.
Guillem did not want to see his family sad and he new he should be crying, but he was still unable to do it, his feelings were almost non existent. After a couple of minutes looking through the window he walked away from the house and sat down in a close parking lot to think about everything that had happened in the past couple of nights. He began feeling a lot of hunger after his short race from Sebastian's house to his family's, should he attack someone else now? What if he lost control again and killed that person? Maybe he could attack someone bad, or sick, maybe he could track down one of the gang members from last night and free the Great Colombia from a cold blooded killer. After thinking about it he did not want to hurt anyone, even if they deserved it. He kept trying to force his body to cry until finally he saw as his skin gained a life like colour, felt his blood running through his veins one more time and finally tears piled up in his eyes just as if he was alive. He was finally able to cry as he wanted and so he did for a while.
He kept thinking about what was best to do about himself and his family. To say something to them would probably destroy them, their religious beliefs would never allow them to understand his existence and even if they did, to know about the existence of vampires and who know what other creatures would make them live in constant fear. The same happened with his friends, what sort of life could they have knowing monsters walked around drinking people's blood. And that him, their friend and spiritual guide, was one of them.
Time kept passing and Guillem was sitting in the same place when he heard as his family's house main door opened and people came out.
“Are you sure you have to go? It is late and I do not think it is secure. You could stay sleeping here tonight.” He heard his mother telling someone.
“Yes, do not worry, I better go now. I do not want to cause any problems to you in a moment like this.“
“Thank you for coming, you are a sweet girl. Even in a moment like this, the things you told us about our son were wonderful to hear. He grew up to be a great man.“
“I will never forget him. What he did in the CUGC saved my life.” The girl said as she walked away from the house. “Will come back soon to check on you!.”
The girl went to the parking lot where Guillem was hiding, as she approached Guillem tried to hide better in the shadows, but did not do it well enough to avoid being seen.
“Who is there?”
Guillem covered his head with the hood and kept still, hoping the woman would just leave, but she came directly toward him. He recognised her, she was Lissette, the lady prisoner he spoke to in the CUGC.
“Guillem?” She said very agitated and with tears in her eyes. “Is it you? I know it is you. I knew you were not dead.”
Guillem ran away at all the speed his legs could provide him leaving Lissette standing in the parking lot confused and then hid in the shadows next to the park. From there he saw how Lissette kept searching her surroundings for him and mumbling something, but finally decided to go away toward the highway. In order to get to the highway people from Santa Ines had to take a very long and narrow stair which was surrounded on both sides with very tall bushes, the bushes were usually cut down whenever somebody got robbed there, but other than at those opportunities, nobody cared to maintain it properly. All the other roads toward the highway lacked pedestrian footpaths so only cars could use them. She was probably heading that way to see if she could find a bus or at least a cab.
It had just passed a few minutes after she started going downstairs, when he heard her scream. Guillem approached the stairs quickly and saw two very skinny teenagers with deteriorated clothes and a flashlight trying to subdue Lissette. Without thinking it twice Guillem went running down stairs as he took out his pistol and screamed “Leave her alone!”.
One of the thugs pointed the flashlight directly at Guillem's face which was still partially covered by the hood. The other one was still wrestling with Lissette.
As soon as Guillem saw the flashlight pointing to his face he fired his pistol at the thug grazing him just under his right shoulder. Both of them threw themselves to the floor as soon as he fired and started yelling “Please forgive us, we will not do it again! Do not kill us!”.
The view and smell of the blood coming out from the thug's wound caused a really strong desire in Guillem. It extremely intensified his hunger, he could smell its sweetness filling him with the need to run toward the thug, to bite and tear all the meat out of his bones and drink his blood until there was not one drop left in him. After struggling for a few seconds with his thoughts he finally managed to control himself and pushed those dark desires away.
“Go away! And I do NOT want to see you around her ever again!” Guillem said.
The thugs ran down stairs, but when Guillem was about to talk to Lissette he heard more people approaching from upstairs.
“Lissette, are you ok?” He heard his mother yelling from upstairs.
“Yes Ms. Pinero, we are coming up…” Guillem interrupted her.
“You cannot tell anyone that I am here, nobody! Please.”
“What? Why?”
“I cannot explain.” Guillem said as he jumped out of the stairs and hid between the bushes surrounding it.
“I will not tell them, but only if I can see you later tonight. What do you say if we meet in one hour in Las Mercedes? In the Cachapa de Oro restaurant?”
“Ok, see you there.”
Guillem waited a few minutes as Lissette went up again. When everything was quiet he went downstairs and walked toward Las Mercedes. On the way he saw many working crews trying to remove all th
e rubbish accumulated from last night's revolt which included the odd burned car and a lot of burned tires. In Las Mercedes he saw many destroyed nightclubs, but all the others were open and working normally, in fact they were full of people drinking as if nothing ever happened in the city. He saw a lot of pickup trucks loaded with people wearing red shirts and red flags going around the place screaming slogans in favour of Cabrera.
He arrived to the Cachapa de Oro just a few minutes before Lissette. Sat down in the most far away table he could find and ordered a cachapa with hand cheese and a rock melon juice. Lissette arrived a few minutes late, approached the table and sat down.
“Guillem! I cannot believe it. What happened? Why everyone thinks you are dead?”
“Because I am dead. It is hard to explain. The Guaire river dragged me for a long time and I remember as I drowned and the rubbish dragged by the river hit me many times until I finally lost consciousness. I remember as I drowned and the taste of that disgusting water. The rubbish invading my body every time I tried to breathe, but it not only happened once it happened many times, as if you were repeating a movie over and over again. But then I opened my eyes and I was in a little room. My body felt different. It still feels different, it feels numb. There I met the guy that rescued me and explained all that happened. Now I am some sort of vampire or something like that and I have done some horrible things. I
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