“Naomi, he deserves to see this through,” Renny’s voice said over the comms.
She knew that he had heard it and it obviously pissed her off as she bit the side of her cheek and glanced away. He knew that she was wishing she’d yanked the earpiece out before starting this conversation, it would only embolden his rebellion further. “I think he’s got all that he deserves already, he gets to live. Seems like payment enough.”
“You want information out of her? Who knows her better than me?” he asked, unable to understand why he was pushing so hard to continue on with this nightmare. In his heart of hearts, he knew that he could do nothing else; this was what came next. What else was he supposed to do? Go back to his life like nothing had ever happened? Maybe that worked in fiction, but it didn’t translate so well in real life. You couldn’t unsee the unimaginable. Unless you had a flashy-thing set off before your eyes by a man in a black suit, that was.
“You said it yourself, you don’t know that thing that she has become. That is not your wife. That’s a fanger, nothing more,” she stated firmly.
“Naomi. Please,” he replied simply.
Her snarl faltered slightly, and their eyes met briefly. “Fine, but those two are your responsibility. We can’t leave them here and its dangerous to bring them along; you best figure it out. I can’t believe I’m doing this shit. ¿Por qué diablos estoy haciendo esto? Debo estar loco,” she growled as she walked away.
“Come on girls, let’s go for a ride,” he said, as he bent down and scooped them up. His back protested, but they leaned forward and embraced his neck, relieving some of the pressure so he could walk. He followed after the cursing Latina and wondered if this was truly what he wanted, whether he was making a horrible mistake in insisting that he stay involved, but he knew in his heart he had no choice; this was not over yet.
Chapter 6
I
Naomi was on the sidewalk in front of the aquarium staring into the night, appearing to be lost in thought; he did not want to disturb her. He had a gut feeling that no one gave a tongue lashing like she did. With all the emotional turmoil he’d been put through this night, he didn’t need that as well.
He didn’t know why he wanted to go with them, why he hadn’t taken her up on her offer to let him walk away. Wasn’t that what he wanted? Death had a way of stalking anyone that dared to get close to him, and these people seemed to walk hand and hand with him. To continue on this path of darkness was just plain madness, but he seemed to want the insanity this brought more than the one waiting for him at home.
Just go home and forget about it? About his wife being a vampire? About her best friend and husband getting killed by her hand? Of these two girls who were now going to have to rely on their aunt to support them, who, like him, had their family ripped away from them before their time?
Speaking of which. Pulling out his phone, he scrolled through his contacts until he found the name Rose, then hit the call button. After six rings it went to voicemail, so he ended the call and redialed.
“Derek?” a sluggish voice asked. “Why the hell are you calling me? This had better not be a fucking butt dial. Do you have any idea what time it is?”
Rose was Hailey’s younger sister and was currently attending the University of Houston on a basketball scholarship. She had a place off-campus and didn’t have a roommate, or boyfriend that he knew of. So luckily, she was the only one he was waking up or it might have gotten even uglier. “There’s been an accident. I’ve got the girls. Can I meet you somewhere to drop them off with you?” He got a dirty look from Naomi, but he ignored it. What else did she expect, to take them back to that plantation house, to be within striking distance of the monster that had just butchered their parents?
I think not.
“Oh my God, are they okay? What happened?”
He didn’t know what to say. There was no way he could tell her the truth, but he had to tell her something. The girls surely would once the shock wore off and the last thing he needed was for Rose to start calling the police and starting something over nothing. After all, they had her sister’s killer in custody, so to speak.
Naomi came over and snatched his phone away, putting it to her ear with a loud grunt. “Hello, this is Officer Garcia. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but I’m afraid that your sister and brother-in-law have been in a car accident. No, the girls are fine, they were with a babysitter. We have them with us now, as the babysitter had to go home and couldn’t wait for us to reach you. I’m afraid if no next of kin are able to take them in, I’ll have to make a phone call to social services and have them placed into foster care. Well, no, I don’t want that either. They have suffered a life-changing event and are in shock. They could use the arms of a loved one around them rather than—okay, I understand. If you would give me your address, we can drop them off on our way back to the precinct. No, Mr. Crawford was not involved, he just happened to be the first person to pick up in your sister’s emergency contact list and while he offered to take the girls home with him, the law won’t let us just hand—I will. An officer will be contacting you in the morning to follow up, right now our only concern is these two grief-stricken children. Okay, thank you.”
She handed the phone back. Rose had hung up.
“I’m sorry. Just didn’t think it was—.”
“Do me a favor, don’t do anymore thinking. I didn’t want you to come along, but the others seem to feel otherwise, and I allowed it despite my better judgment. Now we have to make a house call, when you could have just taken them home and dropped them off with her in the morning. You’re giving me a headache, and I don’t suffer fools that do so on a frequent basis. Which, after just half a night of knowing you, I think you’ll be a constant source of irritation and an unending well of bullshit I just don’t have the patience to deal with,” Naomi snarked. “Let us do the thinking from now on, okay?”
“You must be a joy to bring home to the folks,” he growled under his breath.
The look she gave froze his blood.
“I apologize for whatever problems my fucked-up existence has thrust upon you, I really do, but I will never find closure if I don’t see this through. I still don’t truly comprehend what happened to Amanda, who did it to her or why, and if I just go home, it’ll eat at me constantly until either I go crazy or I eat a bullet. Neither of those sound-like desirable outcomes from my point of view. Do you not get where I am coming from?” he asked, trying to use honesty instead of sarcasm, hoping it might somehow change the woman’s demeanor towards him.
He didn’t have a chance to find out.
As she was about to answer, a black Ram truck pulled into the parking lot and came to a stop before them, the large man that had pulled him free of his wife behind the wheel. Had to be Scalps. Which, judging by his skin tone and tomahawks, was a nickname due to his heritage. The window was down, and the man gave him and the girls a look of surprise, then glanced at the already moving woman heading around the front of the truck with passive resignation. No matter what the man’s inner thoughts on the subject were, it was clear he wouldn’t dare bring them up to Naomi, but whether from fear or respect, he couldn’t determine.
“If you’re coming along, best hop in or regardless of any promises made, we will leave your ass,” she said, pulling the passenger door open and hopping inside.
He had hoped to ride back with Ezio and Renny, anyone but her; seemed like he had no other choice if he wanted to see this through. “Come on girls,” he said, leading them around to the passenger side and opening the rear door. They were giving him a wary look, but he smiled at them confidently, trying to make them feel safe as he lifted them one at a time onto the backseat. Then he put his hand on the doorframe and pulled himself up after them. Shutting the door, he helped the girls buckle their belts as the truck eased its way forward, nearly missing two white panel vans veering into the parking lot with their headlights off.
They had to be the cleaners.
N
aomi turned in her seat and looked at the two children sitting next to him. Apprehension filled his soul; they would not be able to handle her abrasive attitude well and they’d already been put through enough. “Hey, you two want a soda? I think I got some Grape in here.”
They looked up at her with suspicion, then at him, for his thoughts on the subject. He nodded that it was okay, so the girls said, “yes please,” in unison, their eyes were still puffy but the tears had finally dwindled to a stop.
Surprisingly, she opened the console between the two front seats and brought out two cans of Grape Crush. He could hear her pop them open and seconds later she was handing them over, the girl’s tiny hands seizing the cans and slowly bringing it to their mouths. After a few gulps, Naomi got a satisfied look upon her face and turned away. “Takes care of that much at least.”
“Takes care of what?” he asked, suddenly concerned. Were they drinking something other than soda? Their faces looked pleased with what they were drinking, but that didn’t mean they’d notice if something was off.
No answer from the front seat.
“Naomi,” he pushed, thinking maybe he should take the sodas away and throw them out the open window. Why save them at all just to kill them afterwards? What the fuck was she playing at? I thought she was one of the good guys.
She finally turned and looked him in the eyes. “I’m doing them a favor. You may choose to consider this option as well. I wouldn’t blame you if you did. Not many can look into the abyss and walk away with their wits about them.”
“What option?” he asked slowly, his anger starting to rise. He was seconds away from tearing those cans away, she had to have put something in them.
Why did I trust her? She’s the kind of person that’s never nice without a hidden agenda.
“Rohypnol,” Naomi answered, then her face morphed from the stern all-business fixture it’d been in all night to a soft and gentle kindness as her eyes fell on the girls. “I’m not the heartless bitch you take me for. It’s been refined and enhanced by some of the best doctors in our labs. It’ll erase the last twelve hours or so of their memories. They don’t need to remember what happened to their parents, the tortures they were put through, the alligators they were thrown in with, nor the werewolf that had to fight those creatures off to save them. It’ll also keep them from getting locked in white padded rooms when they start telling the truth and no one believes them, and I doubt their aunt can afford the psychiatrist bills she’d be saddled with trying to help them move on with their lives. Trust me, I’m only trying to help. You could have some too. We can drop you off at your apartment and you can go back to your life secured in your ignorance of a world free of supernatural influences. This line of work isn’t for everybody. There will come a point where there is no going back, and this may be your last chance at a normal life.”
“I believe you, but I also believe that’s only part of it. By wiping their memories of Amanda, you are also getting rid of any of you or any of the rest of us, protecting your secret should they try to open up about what happened. You’re saving your own ass as much as theirs. And normal life? That pretty much disappeared the instant my dead wife jumped me and tried to kill me. Say what you want about drugs and erased memories, but something fundamental inside who I am has changed and I believe that there will be no masking that no matter how many ways I try to forget. Drugs or no drugs, it may already be too late for me to turn back,” he responded, knowing as he said it that he actually meant every word.
Sure, he could take the drug as well in hopes that it might erase this night from memory, but somewhere deep inside he’d still know the truth, and he didn’t want to think of his wife with anything but the deep affection he’d nurtured since the first time they’d met. Regardless of what may come, he wanted to protect the memories of what was rather than what is.
“I was ready to die last night,” he confessed. “Not just when I walked into that aquarium, but before she even showed up. I have no one else. No real friends, no family, no one that will miss me if I disappear. You offer me a chance at returning to my life, but I say, what life? I didn’t expect to feel this way, but somehow, facing death and walking away from it has filled me with a renewed purpose; I’m not sure I ever do want to go back. Drop me off or take me with, either way, I’m done with what I was and want to do something more meaningful than designing ads and murals no one will ever even appreciate.”
Naomi’s face disappeared, her choice of silence odd but somewhat comforting at the same time. She also hadn’t made fun of him for what he’d said; that had to count for something.
“You don’t know what you speak. You don’t want this life. It is hard, full of the dead and dying, and you usher the chances of joining your ancestors with every breath you take,” the man in the driver seat stated, not taking his eyes from the road.
“Does anyone truly choose it, or is it thrust upon them?” he asked, thinking about Renny’s past. He hadn’t chosen this life, it had chosen him; their circumstances weren’t all that different. “I don’t want to run away to the life I led, I want to find the bastard that did this and make him pay for what he’s taken from me. Not just my wife, but my innocence as well.”
Still, Naomi was silent.
“We’re here,” Scalps announced as they rolled to a stop in front of an apartment complex near the university.
“Okay girls let’s go find your Aunt Rose,” he told them, surprised at the large smiles on their faces and the purple stained teeth, their swollen faces healing as their tears dried up. They obviously didn’t remember a thing.
Must be nice.
II
The ride back to the plantation house was one of contemplation and silence. Scalps wasn’t much of a talker, seemed more of a quiet broody type and Naomi had been uncharacteristically quiet as well. Maybe she was considering the best way to slip him a rufi and dump him on the side of the road. He thought of making a note on his phone, something like Amanda is a vampire, but if he did lose his memories of what transpired this night, he would believe he had lost his mind and discard it as some nightmarish fantasy noted while he was sleeping.
Was this indeed the path he was destined to walk? He couldn’t know that for sure, but it felt right. When he had seen Mykala and Jasmine safe within the arms of a werewolf, the world had shifted, his doubts shredded, and his known reality forever changed. How could he walk away knowing that these monsters were out there hurting people, none of them even aware that they were in danger. Maybe it was the fact that his wife had killed innocent people, maybe it was his conscience, but he felt somewhat responsible for what happened tonight and didn’t think it could so easily be washed away by taking a pill.
He had been saved not once, but twice, that had to mean something.
Opening up Facebook on his phone, he considered deactivating his account, going completely off the grid; would anyone even notice he was gone?
He had a message request from someone named Dommik with no picture.
Probably spam.
He clicked on it, expecting some badly worded request for an invitation to view their porn site and nearly choked in surprise. “I think we have a problem.”
“It’s we already, huh?” Naomi snarked, not bothering to turn around.
“Where is your wife Mr. Crawford?” he read out loud, stunned at the timing of the message; it had to be connected, right?
“What are you—did someone send that to you?” she asked, her eyes landing on his phone.
“It’s on Messenger of all things,” he remarked, shocked. Vampires used social media to communicate? Really? And did they expect him to actually answer it? The idea of a vampire hunched over a tablet playing Farmville was too disturbing to contemplate.
It has to be a prank.
“Hey Speedy, I need you to run a trace on an account,” Naomi said, snapping her fingers and motioning for the phone. “Message request from a Dommik Hepshire. Yep, okay, thanks. Wait, what are you talking abou
t? You can’t take off. I don’t care if you can do this on the road or not, you can’t just hop on a—we’ll discuss it when we get there.”
“Problem?” Scalps asked as she handed the phone back.
“Do not answer that,” she commanded, as if he were just dying to do just that.
Maybe I need to change how I say things. Dying to do just that? It’s just a little too on the nose. He held up his hand in a defensive gesture and glanced at the message again, his curiosity getting the best of him. He clicked the contact photo and watched as it shifted to a stranger’s profile page. The screen digitized for a second, as if the Matrix had a glitch, the profile page morphing from the standard layout to something far darker.
Fuck, what did I just do?
A video began to play.
“Hello Mr. Crawford. We haven’t met, but I am a new acquaintance of your wife,” a deep voice said, and Naomi was instantly shooting daggers at him from the front seat. “I know you two had a rendezvous tonight. I expected her to check in afterwards, but she has yet to contact me. I’m starting to worry. I apologize if my introduction into your life has created any waves within your marriage, but I do find her to be irresistible. Should you decide to keep her to yourself and forbid communication between us, I will be forced to visit a few of your friends in order to better plead my case.”
“Speedy, are you tracking this shit?” Naomi whispered into her phone.
The video shifted, and he saw the exterior of a house which looked oddly familiar. There was a pink swan on the lawn and the only one he knew that had one of those things was his high school classmate Mario Fuentes. They’d lost touch not long after high school, but he could remember giving the man shit over that swan, a gift from the man’s mother or not; the thing was hideous. The two of them hadn’t spoken in years. Mario hadn’t even come to Amanda’s funeral. So how the hell did this guy find him and why did he think it doing so would force him to give up his wife?
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