by Owen, Kelli
The bucket, however, with the school name stenciled across it, came home with liquid treasure inside, and now required deep cleaning before returning it to work under their noses.
He could clearly remember the taste of the boy, and would find out if the blood in his penis tasted different on another day. It was the girl’s blood, which had turned into a late night Henry could not have imagined.
It was sweeter. He was sure of it. It didn’t have the same sharp copper flavor. It was smoother. The difference was as clear as when he’d splurged on a good bottle of whiskey just to taste the difference, after his grief swallowed up all of his mother’s inherited half-empty bottles of bottom shelf labels.
There was definitely a difference. Both in whiskey and in blood.
At first he thought it was because she was a woman, different hormones hopping around her teenage body. But then, he remembered the young couple talking about her teeth.
Take them out.
Henry wondered if they had been completely fake, or if maybe they were placeholders for her new teeth to come in, a bridge or temporary denture of some sort. He cursed himself for not checking her teeth when he’d had the chance. He had no way of knowing if the blood tasted different because she was female, or lamian. And he had no idea how to target future victims until he knew this.
He grabbed a towel and wiped his hands without rinsing them—getting blood and bleach on the towel he knew he would throw away when he was done. He walked to the living room and turned the television on, then talked to his remote, “Local news.”
Several options popped up on the screen and he chose the first one. It loaded the nightly program already in progress, mid-story. He pushed the button to start it over from the beginning, turned it up, and walked back to the kitchen. Back to scrubbing and remembering the previous night, he kept his attention loosely on the voices from the other room in hopes they’d talk about the murders.
His murders.
He’d heard the emotional gossiping and panic at school. He knew they were starting to tie his murders together and there had been some news story on that morning. But no one had even blinked at him today. No adults. No kids. And he was confident they had no idea it was him, or even human. He glanced at the counter where his keys were tossed, right next to the ice pick he used to pierce his victims’ necks. It had started as wanting to be like them, to pierce the flesh like them, but it turns out, it might be good for them to think it’s a lamian rather than human killer.
He was getting hungry thinking about the victims and the blood. He dumped and rinsed the bucket. Henry stuck his head right into the center and inhaled deeply. He smiled. It smelled like bleach. He put the bucket upside down in the dish rack.
I’ll check again after it’s dry.
He walked to the living room doorway and leaned against the jam, watching the talking heads banter back and forth about the things they deemed important enough to share with the public. An accident on the highway outside Springfield. Upcoming fall festivities. Unnaturally warm weather for October.
He watched the female anchor’s mouth as she spoke. He wondered what her blood tasted like, and he knew he’d be taking another woman. He’d have to.
I have to know.
“On a national level, lawmakers are frantically trying to rationalize and regulate what they’re calling hazardous waste, while a group of lamians are anonymously fighting to make it legal to purchase the biological byproducts of abortion clinics. The group states the clinic only disposes of the unwanted pregnancies, but they would gladly pay to take them, claiming it was no different than selling said waste to laboratories for stem cell research.”
Henry blinked and looked up at the anchor’s eyes.
What?
The screen changed to a clip of some senator from Pennsylvania shouting at the group. “To what end? Would you be purchasing these with the intent of packaging the tissue as snacks for your kind to buy? That directly breaches several clauses in the Stoker Treaty, and turns a deficiency, which can be dealt with as easily as diet or medication, into cannibalism. Cannibalism under any circumstance is illegal in this country. In any civilized country.” The senator looked both furious and disgusted, and the screen switched back to the anchor desk.
The anchor looked down to her papers and Henry thought about the ramifications.
The Japanese have plenty of strange things available in vending machines, why not tissue. We sell food for humans.
As if to answer his thoughts, the anchor continued.
“Likening such morsels to beef jerky, the group claimed to be bringing light and legality to a practice which is already prevalent among the black market deep on the Dark Web. Several special-agenda committees are looking into this atrocity and we’ll have more as it develops.” She flipped over a piece of paper.
Dark Web? A hidden Internet? Secret? How do I get there? How do I find it? Is it just a website? Where do I buy the bodies?
What do they taste like?
Are they clotted and cold like my samples, or are they preserved?
Henry looked at the bouncing screensaver of his computer and considered looking it up.
“Locally, we have no further information on the murders police are now collectively investigating as one case. A small task force has been created and they have been going back over each case to reexamine the scenes, bodies, and find links to help solve these.
“What we do know is they have been happening at night and officials are suggesting everyone stay inside after dark and lock your doors and windows. Those out during those hours should be prepared to be stopped and questioned.
“We are still waiting on all the names to be released—we know three men and two teens, a boy and a girl, have been killed and drained of their blood in the last several weeks. When pushed for details, an Officer Pettijohn said the killings are getting closer together, which is a sign the killer is beginning to unravel.”
“I am not!” Henry stomped from the room, stopping in the middle of the kitchen with fists at his side, but still listening.
“While there is a pre-emptive tendency to blame lamians, the police department has confirmed at least one of the victims was lamian, and have urged the public not to believe this is any type of hate crime. Everyone is in danger, not only humans.”
“She was the lamian.” Henry spoke out loud, nodding to himself as his fists relaxed and a smile spread across his face.
The anchor’s voice faded away against his own inner monologue.
It had to be her. Had to be. There was no reason to believe it had been any of the others.
So did she taste different because she was female, or because she was lamian? He’d need to kill one or the other to find out. The idea of killing caused his stomach to grumble. He’d gotten home and gone straight to work on the bucket. A glance outside showed him a twilight sky. Dinnertime.
He glanced at the recipes on the table and went to the fridge. The blood sausage he’d attempted was horrible, but he’d really enjoyed the Finnish dish called blodplättar from the weekend. A blood pancake with orange juice. He pushed the front jar to the side, the penis inside jostling against the glass in protest of the movement, and grabbed the last full jar of blood he had.
— TWENTY —
Dillon dropped his backpack on the ground and plopped onto the bench, slouching his shoulders with a heavy sigh. He had been wandering through town since school let out, which had turned into much more of a mental taxation than a physical one, but he felt tired, weary, nonetheless. He looked at the city park in the fading light of day and debated whether he could hide and sleep among the thick trees meant to mimic a wild forest.
The park was four city blocks, with a giant X-shaped path winding through it as if paved by a drunk. The path entered the park at each corner and eventually met in the middle. Each
branch wound lazily through potted and planted floral and fauna, and various statuettes meticulously placed by the city beautification committee’s blueprint. The center of the park was not only a junction, but meant to be paused at, enjoyed, with several benches and a fountain.
The fountain structure was about fifteen feet across with a short wall above the pool littered with pennies and a large statue of umbrellas at different heights against a thick ribbon of cement in the middle. The water bubbled up in four spots, strategically placed between each branch of the path, and sprinkled back down onto the umbrellas before running off into the pool again. Dillon knew they turned the fountain spouts off at dusk, but now he wondered if the water in the pool was clean water. Drinkable water.
He had taken two bottles of water from the house, along with a bag of chips, half a jar of peanut butter, and three small boxes of raisins. He discounted the pennies lying in the water and mentally totaled the cash in his pocket and the meager savings account built on birthday cards and Christmas gifts. He sighed. He didn’t have much money, and his part-time job at Quikmart wasn’t enough to live on.
The sun dipped farther and the decorative lampposts came to life throughout the park, triggering small circles of light and shutting off the waterspouts. The water suddenly stopping made the park seem even quieter than it had been. Almost too quiet. He thought he’d take the opportunity of silence to go through his options once more, trying to think of what he’d forgotten. Instead, a barrage of mental battering he couldn’t escape sidetracked him. He considered his reality, as his internal berating refused to allow him enough of a break to focus on other things.
It wasn’t that his mother was against lamians in general. She always had been. And it wasn’t that she was a close-minded person with zero love in her for anything even romantically or incorrectly vampiric—thank you, Hollywood. Those feelings and opinions weren’t new either. It was because he had actually heard her consider various ways to kill him.
Murder him.
He heard it clear as day. As if she’d been talking out loud. He hadn’t imagined it. He hadn’t unrealistically worried she would think that way, or presumed how she’d internalize the crap she was always watching on television. He’d been about to leave for school when it happened. When she’d considered his death, at her hands.
He had stopped. Frozen in place, as he initially picked up her thoughts.
Maybe in his sleep… with a pillow.
She had thought those words. His own mother. He stayed still and stared at the back of her head, listening without meaning to, without wanting to, and heard her consider different ways to end him.
Backing up slowly, he’d retreated to his room, packed his favorite t-shirts and a change of jeans, slipped into the kitchen to raid what he could, and was out the back door while she sat there debating how to poison his food.
The teeth coming in had not been unexpected because of his father’s DNA, but he had always hoped against it. If for no other reason than his mother’s complete and unforgiving hatred of the lamians. When the gene made its existence known and his teeth came in, he’d started getting horrible headaches. He had attributed them to the stress of his mother’s disappointment. Over the summer, the headaches gave way to an almost constant and annoying buzzing in his ear, like he’d been too close to an explosion and the ringing wouldn’t go away. He’d brought it up to his mother, believing it was some condition he’d found on Google, but she’d never made the doctor’s appointment. She had already moved beyond caring for him on a motherly level. The buzzing finally ended a couple weeks into the school year. It was replaced with an occasional word, in different voices, and before long, he realized he was picking up on things around him. He laughed at first and found it useless, referring to it as WKVR, the local underground radio station that was never quite in tune.
But now he was getting complete thoughts from others. He had not read her mind, so much as listened in while she talked to herself. While she convinced herself to kill him.
But why?
He wasn’t a monster. He’d never hurt a fly. He’d never gotten in trouble for fighting or biting in preschool like other kids. Nothing. He’d done nothing to warrant her fear, and he certainly hadn’t provoked her in any way big, little, or even enough to want him dead. Finding his father gone and hearing his mother wanted him dead, Dillon felt a loneliness in his chest that actually hurt as he wandered the streets. It hadn’t lessened any by the time he revisited it all again on the park bench.
He ticked off his situation. He had a little money. Almost nothing to eat. Nowhere to sleep but the bushes behind him. Unless I find an abandoned house down by the river, or maybe an unlocked car somewhere. And he’d have to convince old man Mundy to give him more hours.
Dillon looked up at the sound of someone walking near the other side of the fountain, his view blocked by the huge umbrella statue. A young woman, girl maybe, it was hard to tell her age, rounded the fountain and came his direction.
Jesus, this kid’s a wreck.
Hey, fuck you. He snapped at her mentally and furrowed his brows in response to her comment, emotionally pulling back from the stranger. Who the hell are you to judge me.
She stopped, cocked her head at him, and smiled.
Whoa, did I say that out loud? He was suddenly ashamed of himself for speaking to a stranger with foul language, let alone a young woman.
“Nah, you didn’t say it out loud.” She sat next to him and held a hand out. “Name’s Victoria. Gimme a minute or two and I think I can help you.”
He squinted his eyes at her and considered her bizarre offer, his situation, and the very obvious fact she had read his mind as easily as he’d read hers. Lamian?
“Yup. One of the good guys, though. Promise.” She raised one eyebrow and bounced her hand in the air, as if to remind him of her extended offer.
He shook her hand. “Dillon.”
“Had a rough few days, eh?” Her expression softened and he shrugged.
“Yeah. And it was kinda rude of you to listen in on my little breakdown.” It was his turn to raise eyebrows, and he tilted his head forward to scold her actions without further words, much like a parent—like his mother—would, looking over glasses or through eyelashes.
“Sorry. I normally don’t listen in on people. It’s kind of a thing we agree not to do. But it was really loud.”
“We?”
“Polite lamians, those who respect the privacy of others, and of course, anyone in the Lamplight Foundation. It’s kind of a rule there.”
“Lamplight?” He’d never heard of this and didn’t even know if he could bother to care at the moment. He had other problems, bigger issues.
“It’s an old…” She searched for the right word and finally settled on, “…club of lamians. Think secret society, since they were in hiding for so long—”
“What, like those Temple Knights?”
“Templar, but yeah, sure. Like that. Rather than fighting for anyone, they simply kept records. Really good records. Of everything. And now that lamians have been exposed, we’re offering our knowledge and services more openly.”
Dillon liked how she corrected him in passing, rather than making him feel dumb. And he liked her demeanor. She was friendly, and she put him at ease immediately. He’d never known anyone who could do that.
“So what can you do for me?” He only half-heartedly asked the question, as he looked her over and noted the little details making up her overall appearance.
She wasn’t some thin, tight-clothed, heavy make-up, sexy, sultry being like Hollywood would have you believe all vampires are. Instead, she was almost plain. Not ugly, not at all. She had simple make-up, stylish hair, and appeared comfortable in her own skin—with soft curves that weren’t pudgy but rather healthy. He could picture her in a dress as easily as a pair of jeans, and figured she
’d look good in either.
Her blonde hair was very pale, washed out to the point of almost being white, but with enough yellow to be the color of lemonade. Her skin was a medium peach but not quite tan, like she had something other than northern Anglo in her bloodline, something quite opposite of the ancestors who gave her the pale hair. And her eyes. He stared at them while she spoke. They were almost orange.
“Well, for starters, we have bunks for visiting librarians and apprentices such as myself, so you don’t need to sleep in the bushes here in the park. We also provide meals and transportation for those who need it.” She smiled wide and exposed the tiny points of her canines, drawing his attention to them and remembering instantly she was like him, or rather, he was like her. “And they’re technically brown.”
“What?” He looked from her teeth back to her eyes in confusion.
“My eyes. They’re technically brown. Yes, if you look closely, it almost seems like there’s a ring of orange and a ring of green, right? But when you back up, they blend, and the DMV calls it brown.”
He smiled sheepishly and wondered how much of his musing about her physical appearance she’d been listening to. He swallowed over the beginning lump of embarrassment and diverted the conversation back to the secret society.
“Food and shelter? Really? And what do I have to do?”
“Nothing. We’re here to help. Honest.” She held up her hand as if swearing on the Bible in court. “Our people go through some horrific times when the teeth come in. It’s not the Dark Ages anymore, and we don’t like to see people shunned, cast out, left to wander. So we shelter them until they…” Again, she chose her words. “Well, until they get their shit together.” She smiled.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. And no, I’m not talking about you. You seem pretty together, but like most who experience what you’re going through, you’re a minor. So we offer food and shelter, as well as teach you what you should know about yourself, and provide counseling to attempt reconciliation to those families torn apart by misunderstanding or prejudices.”
