“What’s the matter? Are you girls okay?”
“We thought you weren’t gonna wake up,” Deanna whispered.
“I said your name and pushed your arm, but you didn’t even move,” Angela sniffed.
“Oh girls, I’m so sorry,” I said sitting up. “I must have been so tired that I just slept like a log.”
“I told her you weren’t in heaven with ma and pa,” Deanna replied pushing her sister away.
“But you said you couldn’t see her breathing Dee, it scared me,” Angela responded with fresh tears forming in her little eyes.
“Dee didn’t mean to scare you, Angel. It’s really dark down here, so maybe she couldn’t see me breathing. I’m fine. Now, you girls must be starving. What do you say we go up and get you something to eat?” I said, rubbing my hands together. Both of the girls nodded. I found the lantern, lit it, and up we went. It wasn’t ten minutes later when the others woke and joined us.
“I want grilled cheese and scrambled eggs,” Deanna proclaimed.
“Me too, me too,” Angela added.
“Yuck, that sounds awful.” Derek scrunched up his face and stuck out his tongue.
“Not with my ma’s ketchup on the eggs, it’s the best,” Deanna said, licking her lips and patting her tummy.
“I’ll just have to trust you on that one. I’m allergic to eggs,” Derek added, lifting his brows up at me.
We all chuckled under our breaths and continued with the task at hand. Ashley cooked their meal, while I gathered some of their things. I looked for a tablet to write a small letter to explain to their kinfolks, why the girls were being dropped off on their door step. Once they were finished, we were off and heading in the direction of Gordon. We were cramped in the vehicle, but no one seemed to complain. The girls played with their dolls, leaving us in silence as we drove the hour that it took to get to the town that the girl’s family lived in.
After we arrived in Gordon, Bo asked, “So where does your Nanny live?”
“You have to cross the railroad tracks, and drive all the way to the end. My Nanny lives in the only house on that side,” Deanna answered, pointing to the left.
“You heard the lady Bo, drive on good man,” Derek spouted out in a horrible English accent, making everyone in the car crack up, including Bo.
I had Bo stop the car by some trees about twenty yards from the house. I took out the letter that I had written, explaining what had happened and where to find the bodies. I also included the fact that if we hadn’t come along when we did, the girls would not be alive. I gave it to Deanna, and told her to give it to her nanny or pawpaw as soon as she saw them.
“Okay, I will, but aren’t you going to walk us to the door?”
“Please?” Angela added.
“I’ll walk you as close as I can.”
“Will we ever see y’all again?” Deanna asked.
“Are y’all going to come back and visit us?” Angela asked immediately afterward.
“We will certainly try,” I replied. I took both girls in my arms hugging them one last time.
The others took their turn, and by the time we were ready to get out of the car there wasn’t a dry face in the bunch. The time spent with these two may have been a short one, but the circumstances behind our meeting, came with a bond that will be with us all until the end of our days.
I walked the girls to the porch, kissed them and sent them on up to the door. You could hear the little dogs that they had told us about, barking up a storm. I knew they could smell me as much as I could smell them. Animals are so much more in tune than normals. I stepped back around the bushes as soon as I heard someone coming to the door.
“What on earth? Where’s your ma?” a woman said. I could hear little Angela crying. “What’s this?” the woman asked.
“It’s a note from Renee,” Deanna replied.
“Mommy’s with pa, Nanny,” Angela cried.
“What...” she must have been reading the message, because her words were cut short and her breathing became labored.
“Sweet, Jesus. Jim!” she screamed pulling the girls into the living room.
“What in tar-nation’s goin’ on in here?” he asked, stomping into the room.
“Read this, Jim,” she said. “Come here you poor things, I love you so much. Nanny’s got ya now and everything’s gonna be just fine.”
Then I heard the three crying and that was my cue to leave. I thanked all the goodness in the world as I walked back to the car, thinking to myself how my folks would have done the very same thing in taking the girls. I made it back to the car and told the others what had happened as we drove on to Corpus Christi. You could see the lights of the city, when Bo suddenly turned off on to another dirt road.
“What ya doin’ Bo?” Brandon asked.
“My old man’s house is a few miles down this road,” he replied, gripping the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles were white.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Bo? We can find another way to get the weapons we need.” I assured him.
“He has everything we need. Like I said, he’s been collecting for years and he owes me big time. This is going to be the therapy he’s always said that I needed. It’s one of the reasons I ran. He wanted to put me in a nut house after he killed my mom.”
“Are you serious? You must be pretty angry at the man,” I observed from his tone.
“Yeah, I hate the bastard, and I know why you asked. The answer is no, I’m not coming back just so I can kill him. Maybe scare the shit out of him when and if, he swings at me,” he said with a nervous laugh. “This is it,” Bo said, as he pulled right up in front of the large two story home. He killed the motor and then turned to look at us. “Will y’all come with me?”
“Do you really have to ask that, Bo?” Brandon responded.
“Yeah, we stick together like birds of a feather,” Derek added, and it was just what we needed.
We laughed as we got out of the car, but the laughter died down as soon as everyone noticed how intently Bo was staring at the house. “My ma died in her bedroom. The night before, my old man was drunk and had beaten her up real bad. I tried to stop him, but he turned on me. I don’t remember anything except the bottle coming down at my head. The next day, I woke up on the floor in the hall next to my ma’s room. I walked in to see if she was alright, but she was already blue.”
“Bo, let’s just go. Please?” Ashley pleaded. “Renee’s right, we can find what we need somewhere else.”
“Everything we need is out back in my pa’s bomb shelter.”
“Then let’s just break in there, you don’t even have to see that man again,” Ashley replied.
You could tell he was thinking about what she had said, but he shook his head and went straight towards the front door. He knocked on the door once, twice, then a third time before we heard any movement within the large home.
“Who the hell is it?” a man’s voice called out, no doubt his pa.
“It’s me, Colon,” Bo replied.
“Who?”
“Your son.”
“Ain’t got no son, he died with his ma,” the man replied.
Bo became so enraged that he kicked the door in and had the withered looking old man by the throat in a matter of seconds.
“Your right old man…I am dead,” Bo yelled showing his new form.
“No,” the old man cried in fear, as he fought desperately to free himself from the son that now looked more like a creature, than a human.
I walked up and put my hand on Bo’s shoulder. He turned his head to look at me, displaying pure hate. His eyes were glowing like I had never seen before on any creature, and his lips where pulled back like a mad dogs. “Bo, he’s an old drunk. Look at him, really, look,” I pleaded.
He looked back at the man that he held. He was white with fear, eyes bulging from the pressure that Bo had on his throat. Bo’s face finally softened.
“You’re dying, old man. There’s no need for me
to waste my time on a piece of shit like you.” Then he dropped him as fast as he had grabbed him.
Bo looked down and spit as the old man rubbed his throat where he was held seconds earlier and began to cough. Soon after, he began throwing up. Bo gave a nod as if satisfied, then walked down the hallway, kicking down another door.
“Go with him,” I told the others. I leaned down to help the old man up, even though I wanted to kill him for what he had done to make Bo so hard.
“Don’t touch me demon, you’re all demons come to haunt me,” he yelled, spraying his foul drunken breath in my face.
“We didn’t come to haunt you. You’ve done that all by yourself. Bo’s your own flesh and blood, where the hell have you been for the last two years of that boy’s life?”
“I have no son, demon. Your words mean nothing here.” He tried to yell again, but threw up instead.
I left him where he was, crumpled on the floor where I’m sure he had left his family many times in the past, and headed out back where the others had gone. I stepped out the back door to see the shelter door laying a good twenty feet from the opening. This was definitely a side of Bo that I had not yet seen. The boy was hurt and angry, with every right to be so. As I started down the steps Bo asked, “Think you can handle a twenty-two?” as he held a pistol out to me. I wanted to tell him that I could shoot just about anything that a man could, but took it giving a simple nod in return, instead. When you’re raised on a farm and you’re the oldest of six, you’re usually pretty good at these sorts of things.
He turned around and started handing out blades of different types and lengths to each one of us. I immediately bonded with the gold handled, curved blade that he gave me. “My old man said it came from India, or some shit like that,” Bo spoke with his eyes averted. The pain of just seeing his father was written all over his face, and I was more than sure that when he heard his own father say that he didn’t have a son, something else broke inside of him.
“I just don’t know what to say, Bo. No one has ever given me anything so beautiful, not ever. I love it. Thank you.”
He perked up a bit and gave me a half sort of a smile. We were both acting as if we had permission to take the weapons and he simply replied, “You’re welcome.”
Bo threw Brandon a large, green, dusty bag and told him and Derek to put as much of the ammo in it, as they could. He instructed them to grab the rope that hung on the wall and extra blades that Bo was laying on the table. Ashley and I watched Bo as he made a shoulder strap out of strips of material that he had cut with one of the many blades he now carried. It was fascinating watching him. He braided, twisted, and tided knots in the strips, until he had a perfect figure eight that he looped over his arms, leaving the large knot in the middle of his back. He then slid his longest blade through it.
“Impressive,” was all that I could muster.
Ashley turned around and looked back up the stairs. Her lips pulled back as she began to crouch down and hiss. “That old man is gonna pour gas down here, we gotta get out!” she screamed.
About that time a flood of liquid came down, followed by a wooden barrel. In a burst of speed, Bo was out of the shelter and on top of his father, who held a lit lantern with all the intentions of throwing it down after the flammable liquid.
“I’ll send you back to hell,” the old man said through clenched teeth.
“You killed my mother and now you tried to kill the only family I have left,” Bo yelled back. “I’ll see you there.”
Chapter Four
Bo grabbed his father on both sides of his face and snapped his neck. “I use to love you, why couldn’t you love me back?” he cried. He then did something that surprised us all. He sat up and rocked the corpse of his father while he wept. Afterwards, he carried his body down into the shelter. He returned and threw the lantern that was meant for us, down the stairs. We stood in silence as it burned. We watched as Bo lingered in the last moments of the world he once knew, which was now ending at his own hands. It was Bo who turned first and headed around the house; we followed without a word and got into the car.
“How about you let one of us drive to the beach house,” I suggested.
“Yeah, Bo, I can take it from here,” Brandon agreed.
“Ever since my mother’s death, I’ve thought about killing that man. But I swear, I never really meant it, not like that,” Bo explained as he laid his head on the steering wheel.
“Bo, you saved our lives back there,” Derek said.
“Yeah, but I killed my father doing it.”
“Because he was going to kill not just us, but his own son,” Ashley proclaimed.
“You’re right,” Bo nodded, wiping his tear covered face. “I just wish it had been a stranger, ya know?”
“I know. Maybe in a different way, but I know,” I replied. “Now how ’bout you let Brandon drive us the rest of the way?”
I held my arm out and he slid beside me, as Brandon climbed over the seat. I pulled Bo closer and he put his head down on my shoulder as we hit the road once more. I couldn’t help to think about what we may find after we reached the beach house. In one way, I was hoping that nothing had changed. In another, I was hoping that Rebecca and her goons would be hanging around waiting for me to show up. They killed my family, which gave me a major score to settle. I also knew there was no way my little ones were ready for the likes of those four—not yet anyway. I on the other hand, had so much anger inside that I would never stop looking for them— for her, even if it took me the rest of my days. One way or another, they would pay just like Bo’s father. Their time would come.
We reached the beach house the following night. I told Brandon, who had refused to give up the wheel, to pull right up in the garage. If they were here, we were as ready and armed as we were going to get at this point. As far as I could tell everything looked like it did when we left a few nights prior. There were no signs that could be seen by any of us, but there would be no chances taken. Before we got out of the car I told Bo and Brandon to take the back of the house and the three of us would take the front.
“I smell normals, Renee,” Derek whispered.
“Me too, I can feel one in my head,” Ashley added.
“Just one, Ash? I can smell it too. Are you sure it’s not just normals in the area,” I asked.
“Can’t be sure, the smell is really thick, but what I see in my head is pretty clear, like he’s been here at the house,” Ashley explained.
“Come on let’s check the front, just stay behind me,” I said.
“Hey, thought you people weren’t coming back until next summer?” an older man asked, as we reached the front of the house.
The older man was coming up from the steps that led up from the beach. Ashley got close to me and whispered, “He smells like one of our kind, but he’s a normal. I just don’t get it.”
“There was a change in plans, and we won’t need you around here anymore,” I told the man.
“Well that’s fine by me, didn’t mean no harm, just doing what the other woman told me,” he replied.
“No harm done sir, but we’ll be fine. This other woman, when was she here?”
“Been a few months back, but she told me to keep an eye on place,” he said walking up closer.
“You can leave now. We won’t need your help anymore.”
“Names Jones, you change yer mind, I stay over at Padre Island.”
“We will call if we need you. Good night.”
“Night, ma’am.” Then he started back down the steps.
We waited until he was out of sight before we went up to the front door. Ashley had told me that she couldn’t see into his mind like she could the other normals that we had come across. The only thing that I could think of was the marks that he carried somehow blocked her ability. I wouldn’t believe anything that the old had man said, because it was more than likely Rebecca that had marked him. The door had a new lock on it, and with me not being sure, I kicked the door in wi
th one swift kick.
“Both of you use your senses and do not leave her side, Derek,” I ordered.
“Yes ma’am, want us to check up stairs?” he asked.
Before I could answer Bo and Brandon came down the hall.
“Everything looks okay back here,” Brandon said.
“New lock on the door, but it wasn’t a problem,” Bo added.
“Same up here, Ashley and Derek are going upstairs; you two check this floor and I’ll hit the basement.”
“You sure you wanna go down there by yourself?” Ashley asked.
“Yeah, but if I give a yell, you guys come a running,” I replied.
After a short time we all met back in the main room. Nothing had been disturbed inside the house. The only difference at all, was the locks. Once everyone told what they had found, which was nothing, Ashley chimed in with, “I knew it was empty, I could feel it.”
“You could have said something before now,” Derek snorted putting his hands on his hips.
“Hey, I’m trying to figure this out as much as you are, so shut up, Derek,” she replied, her hands on her hips.
The two proceeded with their little argument, while the rest of us went out and unloaded the car. We took everything down to the basement. Bo and Brandon started laying out the ammo and other weapons from the green bag. “We don’t have much time to learn how to use these things,” I said. Then I held my blade getting a good feel of its handle.
Derek held up his 22.calibur hand gun. “Bo’s going to teach me how to use this, I’ll be just like Billy the kid,” he laughed as he tried to spin the weapon on his fingers.
“I can help with that. My pa took us shooting at least once a month,” I replied.
“I can’t wait! Pow...pow,” Derek said playing with the gun.
“That’s not a toy, Derek,” Bo snapped.
About that time the gun went off and Derek dropped it to the floor. The bullet spun past my head and into the wall, missing me by mere inches. I could see mouths moving, but it took a few moments before my hearing returned. When it did, I heard Bo calling Derek a dumb son-of-a- bitch, and Derek yelling back about how sorry he was. Brandon was at my side desperately checking my head and face.
Bloodbreeders: The Revenge Page 4
