by Bee Murray
“Oh! No problem, ma’am. Just realized I forgot my... bread. I’ll be right back!” I waved her off and turned around with my fingers clutched desperately around the handle of my basket. I headed toward the display in front of the double doors, snagging a pair of sunglasses and a small travel hairbrush from the rotating rack.
The woman smiled and turned back toward the TV as the news blared out the strange events surrounding the suspicious explosion of Vinnie Quake’s waterfront mansion and his suspected death in the fiery inferno.
I needed to get out of here.
I counted to ten again during the commercials and watched the employees as they clustered together and talked among themselves. The second the newscaster was back on the screen, their faces turned back to the TV and I made my move.
I strolled as calmly as I could toward the door. When I was within dashing distance, I quickened my pace. My nerves were electric as I closed the distance. I’ve done a lot of things in the name of fixing things for my clients, but shoplifting from a major grocery chain had not been on that list.
First time for everything.
For my first time stealing groceries, it was decidedly anticlimactic.
No one stopped me.
No one even looked at me.
To be honest, I’m not even sure they noticed the way I walked out the front door of the Food Mart with a full basket of groceries and three containers of blood.
As I walked back towards our SUV, I noticed an older man struggling to load several contractors bags worth of recyclable bottles into a cart.
His old, battered brown van had purple tinted windows and looked as though it had seen much better days. It was a vehicle that would be almost invisible on the streets of any city.
With that thought, a devious, brilliant idea popped into my head. Vinnie is going to hate this idea. He’s going to hate it so much. This gives me so much joy.
“Sir!” I called out, startling him. “Sir, I have a proposition for you…”
It took ten minutes of haggling, but the man finally agreed to my proposal and it took everything in me not to let out a shout of victory as I ran back to the SUV with my basket of supplies.
I steeled myself for Vinnie’s reaction to the plan.
“Took you long enough.” He complained as I opened the door, his fangs descending as soon as he smelled the blood, and his eyes widened appreciatively as he saw how much I’d gotten.
I shoved a straw into one of the styrofoam cups and handed it to him.
“Change of plans. Or rather… change of vehicles.” I announced.
The choking noise in the backseat was strangely satisfying as I slid behind the driver’s seat and pulled our brand-new luxury vehicle into the parking space next to the van with a torn yellow sticker on the dented bumper that read: “I brake for Sasquatch.”
Five minutes later we were the proud owners of one 1997 Astrovan that smelled like old burritos, pot, and regret.
If Vinnie had any issues with our change of transport, he said nothing, but I could feel the heat of his glare as he leapt from the SUV’s back seat and into the van with his blanket over his head.
I couldn’t help but feel somewhat encouraged by the exchange, and even though the van handled a little shaky, it was more than serviceable. Most importantly, no one would look at us twice in this hunk of junk. In the store I’d decided where we were headed. A cabin in the wilderness of the Olympic Peninsula. Pisces had a few on standby. They were remote. The perfect place to get our proverbial shit together while the city sorted itself out.
At least, that was the plan… But as I pulled the van onto the freeway and merged into the early morning traffic, doubt clawed at my stomach. Vinnie huddled against the back of my seat, swathed in sun-proof blankets.
I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I didn’t want to know, either.
I knew better than anyone that even the most painstakingly organized plans could backfire in spectacular ways whether or not I liked it.
13
VINNIE
If I weren’t already dead, I’d be seriously concerned about the risk of contracting some sort of virulent disease from the trash on the seats and floorboards of the charming bucket of bolts disguised as a vehicle that Tuesday has acquired for us in the FoodMart parking lot.
The aroma alone was memorable enough, but I’d never been more thankful I didn’t actually need to breathe. Tuesday complained it smelled like burritos and regret, but my senses were sharper. It smelled like something much more sinister than that.
It was a potent mix of fear and destruction covered by trash, dust, wet dog and stale laundry. Barely wiped away, dried blood—human, not pig—decorated the rear door and over the small window. I had questions.
The guy she’d got this complete and utter disaster of a vehicle from clearly had secrets. Texas Chainsaw Massacre-style secrets. I just hoped they didn’t come back to haunt us.
Rationally, I knew why Tuesday had insisted on trading my luxury, light-tight, fully climate controlled vehicle for… this, but knowledge doesn’t always equal power. This was a choice, and a risky one.
She hit another bump on the road and I gritted my teeth as my head slammed against the side of the van. Shock absorbers were apparently optional on this model.
Lovely.
The only information Tuesday had been willing to give me was that we were on our way to a cabin, and that she had everything under control.
That was Tuesday for you.
Control should have been her middle name.
With my sun-resistant blanket draped over my head, I had no choice but to think. I didn’t have a phone to distract myself (Tuesday had confiscated it), and I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t like what the news would be saying about me.
The sun was still out, so I couldn’t drive or even sit in the passenger seat. The radio didn’t work, and I can’t exactly sit up and watch the scenery go by. Instead, we rode in silence and my mind drifted to the tension between us.
I hadn’t planned to kiss her after we escaped the burning house. It just happened. But the memory was seared into my psyche forever now. After five years, kissing Tuesday felt like coming home after a long time away. There’s a familiarity and a comfort there—a shared history. But there’s also a newness. Not everything was the same as when you left it.
But that was the epicenter of our problems.
I’d left her.
Whatever we had, whatever was between us now, the tension and pain and chemistry—it all boiled down to one inescapable fact: I’d left Tuesday in the worst way possible. When she had needed me most, I’d walked away and ghosted her without a second thought.
My mind shifted to the memories of the night I’d become a vampire.
We had just finished playing a set at a little backroom bar, and it had gone better than anything we could have expected. Young and stupid, we rode that high, drinking and congratulating each other on the gigs that would follow such an epic night. We’d be on tour with Slash in no time, we were convinced of it.
So, when the beautiful woman in the red dress offered to buy me a drink, I didn’t think to say no.
We were celebrating, and it was only one drink… Until it wasn’t.
In a single evening, that strange woman bewitched me, destroyed me, and then left me for dead.
I never even knew her name.
Once I realized she had infected me, I had tried to find her, but it was as though she had disappeared off the face of the earth. She had left me to fend for myself. A newborn vampire with no clue how to feed myself, how to survive—alone with nothing but my hunger, and the image of her skintight red dress, long blonde hair, and cruel blue eyes that haunted my dreams for five long years.
The temperature changed as we turned away from the interstate and headed deeper into the forest. I dared to move my blanket to the side so that I could glance out the window.
The sky was gray and overcast and, in typical Olympic Peninsula fashion,
looked as though it might rain at any moment.
I can’t say for sure that Tuesday would have welcomed me back with open arms if I had mustered up the courage to tell her what happened that night, but I had never even given her the chance.
I slammed my fist into the back of the passenger seat. The action caused a small, foul cloud of dust to rise and sting my eyes.
Perfect. Just perfect.
Thud.
Thump.
“Dammit!” Tuesday slammed her palm against the steering wheel in disgust.
She edged the van over to the side of the road. The vehicle lurched twice and then slowly came to a stop.
I didn’t need her to tell me our situation. We clearly had a flat tire.
Tuesday didn’t say anything to me for a long moment. She leaned forward and rested her forehead on her hands and exhaled loudly.
An uneasy feeling that I couldn’t place crept over me, as though we were being watched.
“Tuesday. Stay in the van.” I whispered harshly as I emerged from my blanket nest with my fangs out.
She glanced over her shoulder at me with an exasperated look on her face.
“How am I supposed to change the tire from inside the van, Vinnie? I don’t even know if this piece of shit has a jack or a spare!”
Something snapped outside the van, and I heard footsteps. Boots on gravel.
Someone had followed us.
“Tuesday. There’s someone out there. Crawl back here with me,” I said in a low voice. I draped the blanket over my shoulders like a cape and peered out the tinted windows at the forest surrounding us.
Tuesday paused for a moment and I could hear her pulse as it sped up.
Good. She was listening.
“Are you sure?” she whispered. Her gaze darted from one side of the road to the other, scanning for threats.
The footsteps came closer and her breath caught. I nodded silently.
Tuesday unbuckled her seatbelt with a careful motion and eased her body over the center console toward me.
She was just within reach of me when something tapped against the back window of the van.
Tuesday and I both reacted to the noise differently. She fell over in surprise, tangled in my blanket with her foot wedged between the driver’s seat and the center console.
I whipped around, ready to defend my territory (and my Tuesday).
But as I focused on the back window of the van, I could see nothing through the smeared window.
Maybe I’d just imagined the tapping sound...
My head whipped from one side to the other as I strained to see through the trees, but I could see nothing.
“I—it was probably a tree branch or something. We’re overreacting.” Tuesday muttered as she struggled to free herself.
But her pulse was throbbing, and I could smell her fear.
We both knew the odds were heavily in favor of not a tree branch.
The knock came again, this time at the front of the van. Tuesday covered her mouth to keep from screaming.
“Roscoe? That you in there? Looks like you got yourself a girl in there!” A friendly voice was half-muffled by the van.
Tuesday and I looked at each other.
Roscoe?
Tuesday shrugged. The van’s former owner obviously had more of a story than I’d expected.
A gangly looking man appeared in the front window. His black beard was matted with leaves and his red flannel shirt was torn in three places with no attempts made to patch it. He’d clearly seen better days.
“You gotta flat tire there, Ross!” The man pointed vigorously toward the passenger side and Tuesday shrank back to hide herself from view.
“What do we do?” she whispered as she pressed herself against the back of the passenger seat. There was nowhere to hide.
“I don’t know? I don’t think he’s going to go away.” I whispered back. We sat in silence for a full minute and watched the unusual man pace outside our decrepit van.
“Ross, c’mon man. Open the god dang door so we can fix yer tire and get outta here! Leslie’s making a roast and my stomach’s a growlin’!”
“I think I’m gonna go talk to him,” she whispered as she struggled to her feet. She waded through the sea of Taco Bell wrappers to get to the sliding door and slapped my hand away when I tried to grab her arm.
“If he turns out to be a bad guy, you’d better save me. Sunburn or no!” She winked at me and threw the blanket over my face before she slid open the heavy side door.
I froze in place and listened to Tuesday turn on the girl-next-door charm. If I remembered correctly, it was a good act. Something she’d perfected in college to get free drinks out of Engineering students.
“Uh, hi,” she began. “We just bought this van off an older guy this morning. We don’t know any Roscoe but my name is… Suzie. Looks like we have a flat, huh?” I cringed at her overly cheerful tone. She was overselling it. Big-time.
Normally, Tuesday could sell anything, but her nerves were on edge, and if she wasn’t careful, those same nerves were going to get us captured or worse.
The man outside smelled wrong too. He smelled like… dog.
“You bought ol’ Roscoe’s van, huh?” the man replied. His tone was jovial enough, but there was something guarded about it, too. “Never thought he’d let old Vanna go! You must have offered him something real sweet to get him to part with this gal. She’s been with him longer than any of his wives.” His coarse laugh made my lip curl in anger. He was treading on thin ice and he didn’t even know it.
“And what’s a pretty little thing like you need with a beat-up piece of shit like this?”
He was way too curious for my liking.
Tuesday laughed brightly. I gritted my teeth and wished that I could see what was happening. “I just needed to get away from the city, y’know?” she laughed. “Mind my business for a while. Fly under the radar, you get my drift?”
The man didn’t answer right away and the smell of a lit match, followed by a faint whiff of cigarette smoke drifted into the van.
“You runnin’ from someone, girlie?” he asked shrewdly.
I shrank back against the seat and hoped he thought I was just part of the mess in the back. If I had to pop out there and defend Tuesday, I wanted the element of surprise on my side.
“Let’s just say, I’m highly motivated to spend some quality time on my own right now.” Tuesday replied. I knew she was smiling, I could hear it in her voice. But there was a really good chance that her mask had started to slip. This entire exchange had gone on for far too long.
Thankfully, her answer seemed to satisfy the man. Another whiff of cigarette smoke. Tuesday hated smokers, especially ones who blew it in her face. This guy seemed like the type.
“Ain’t no better place to do that then out here,” the man said. Tuesday let out a little breath of relief, and I realized she trusted him. She hadn’t lied to him—we were on the run. “Let’s get you fixed up, huh?” the man continued. “Name’s Dez. Pleased ta meet ya.”
Tuesday thanked him with more enthusiasm than she should have—well, more enthusiasm than I would have used, anyway. But it seemed to work on Dez. His boots crunched over the gravel on the side of the road as he walked back to his truck. I crawled forward to peer out the window and saw him bend over the bed of a battered old red pickup parked just behind us on the shoulder.
How had I missed that?
He pulled a worn but serviceable-looking tire from the bed and bounced it on the road. I ducked back down as he pulled out a jack rig and a tire iron and rolled the tire toward the van.
“It won’t get ya out of the country or nothin’ but it will suit for whatever else you need to do today,” he called out.
Tuesday glanced back through the door at me with a smile on her face that was half smug and half encouraging.
Dez slid the jack under the van, and the vehicle lurched to the side as Dez cranked it up. Something was seriously off about this guy,
but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The overwhelming smell of dog filled my nostrils.
Werewolf. It had to be. I’d only heard stories about their presence in Seattle. None of those stories were good.
If the mob that had attacked my house was any indication about how people felt about vampires, I knew for sure that how they felt about weres was worse.
The van shook and jumped as Dez worked the tire with seasoned hands. I didn’t know how long it took to change a tire. I collected cars but the maintenance? I paid people to do that shit for me.
Dez let out a long belch, and the van slammed back down onto the pavement.
“All set!” he called out. “Now, you promise me you’ll be careful out here, missy. These woods are perfect for findin’ yourself... But they’re also good for losin’ yourself, if you know what I mean.”
Tuesday thanked him profusely for his help, but she said nothing about his warning. Whatever he’d meant, I didn’t like it.
I peeked out of the blankets as Dez’s boots crunched over the gravel again as he walked to his truck.
“You’re the best,” Tuesday called out. I peeked out from behind my blankets and watched as she waved at him energetically. I could see the smile on her face even though her heartbeat was erratic and tense.
My Tuesday became a talented actress in the last five years… I suppose that was my fault. Was she even ‘My Tuesday’ anymore?
“I hope the roast is amazing!”
The beat-up pickup roared to life, and I huddled under the blanket as the engine revved and it roared by. Dez honked as he passed us, and I bit down on the blanket in frustration. This whole escapade had taken entirely too long for my liking.
Tuesday didn’t climb back into the van until the roar of Dez’s truck had faded well into the distance. She slid the panel door closed and climbed into the passenger seat.
She leaned back in the chair and let out a long, noisy breath.
“That was so weird.” she said in a choked voice.
“You’re telling me,” I muttered from under the blanket.
