It was Ruben. And he was very dead.
His face was a bloody mess, like he’d been hit a couple of times. He had gashes across his body oozing blood, and his clothes were a red stained mess. His eyes were open, staring with a glazed gaze at his office. His throat was gone, worse than Zelda’s. I closed my eyes and turned my head away. The blinds all around the office were closed. The light bulbs here were broken too.
I pulled the door open, shoving against the dead body I didn’t want to touch so I could get out again. When I stood in Sonya’s office, I shivered, my fingers trembling. Carl was sitting on the edge of a tipped cabinet, looking small despite his bulk of muscle.
“Told you,” he said, but the joking tone in his voice was missing and he looked about as haunted as I felt.
“Well,” was all I could say. Carl nodded.
“Do you know what’s going on here?” he asked me after a moment of silence. I nodded and walked to the cabinet, sitting down next to him. It was strange sharing personal space with someone. I was aware of the warmth that came from him, the smell of his cologne that filtered through the sour smell of death and fear, the metallic smell of blood.
“He took on the wrong clients,” I said. “They’re vampires, after someone for a big deal. They came to him and he took the job for the money. But it ended up costing a lot more than that.”
Carl chuckled without feeling. “I’m assuming you got the job?”
I nodded. I wish I’d never taken it. “You think it’s just another kill, and before you know it everyone around you is dying.” I stopped talking because a lump had suddenly risen in my throat and I didn’t want to cry in front of Carl.
“You know, I took this job because I wanted to prove myself to my father. Because he said I didn’t have it in me, I was too soft, I’d never be a real man.”
I looked at him. Underneath his charming I-don’t-care façade and bulky muscles he was just a boy. He looked vulnerable now, with the events of the morning peeling away his mucho veneer.
“This doesn’t make me a man, though. You know? It just makes me a murderer.”
“They’re vampires, Carl,” I said, trying to sound like they didn’t matter. But somewhere along the line I’d started to feel like they did matter. Connor mattered. And mom mattered. I sighed. “I hate it too.”
“Why are you still doing it?” Carl asked.
I shrugged. “I guess when you give so much of yourself away to do it in the first place, you can’t stop. There won’t be anything left. This has started to define me, I guess. Why do you still do it?”
Carl shrugged, too. “Well, I think it’s safe to take this as an opportunity to change jobs. The cross-over shouldn’t be too hard now. No month of notice, you know?”
His attempt at a joke fell on the floor in front of us. Neither of us thought it was funny.
“So these vampires that killed him, are they after you too?” he asked.
“Yes, but not to kill me. They want me to take out the mark. They’re willing to kill to make sure that happens.”
“Why don’t they do it themselves?”
“Because he’s slippery and they lost control of their own mess. Now they’re just making a mess for everyone else.”
Carl nodded slowly, turning it over in his mind. “Hey, at least your life isn’t in danger,” he said.
“My sister’s is. And my technician. If they’re still alive I have to finish the job to save them. If they’re already dead, well, then they’ve successfully killed me too.”
Carl whistled through his teeth. “I can help you find him,” he said. “I’m sure when we put two heads together we can do more than each of us alone can manage.”
I shook my head. “It’s not that easy. The mark… Connor… he’s not really the kind of vampire I want to kill. He’s…”
I took a deep breath, nothing finishing my sentence. Carl narrowed his eyes at me.
“I’m guessing there’s a lot more to this story. Let me see what I have so far. You don’t want to kill the mark because, and I’m just guessing, you have feelings for him.”
“I do not,” I said meekly, which was an answer in itself.
“Right. Sure. Your sister and technician are being held hostage—“
“Maybe.”
“—and you need to put an end to all of this. What am I missing?”
I sighed. What did I have to lose at this point, telling him?
“My sister’s care taker has been killed, my driver is missing, they have a pet cat-woman that’s out to torture me within an inch of my life, and I don’t know where to find Connor even if I don’t want to kill him, because I shot him.”
Carl raised his eyebrows.
“I missed,” I answered his unasked question.
“You?”
I snorted. “Hard to believe. I know.”
“These vampires… they’re the ones that killed Ruben?” he swallowed hard, like the words in his mouth made him sick.
I nodded.
“And they’re the ones that hired you.”
“To kill him, yes. His girlfriend hired me to find him for her. At least, that’s what I what I thought. Now I don’t really know what to think. It’s complicated.”
“I can see that.”
I sighed, and Carl lapsed into silence next to me.
A banging suddenly started and the cabinet under us rattled and shook. Carl and I both jumped up and backed away. The banging continued, and the muffled sounds of a woman’s voice travelled through the metal.
“Someone’s in there,” I said.
“I know,” Carl said, but neither of us made a move.
“We have to get her out,” I said. Carl nodded, and finally we moved toward the cabinet. We tipped it on its side with some effort, and the voice inside groaned.
I fiddled with the door, trying to get it open, but a voice called from inside.
“No! Don’t open it! I’ll fry, it’s Sonya.”
“The sunlight,” I said. “She’ll burn to a crisp if we open it.”
“What are we going to do?”
I thought for two seconds.
“The janitor’s closet,” I said. “It has no windows.”
“That’s downstairs,” Carl said. I nodded. He sighed and braced himself at the one end of the cabinet.
I was at the other end, and we heaved and lifted it up with Sonya inside. She made small whimpering sounds as we moved her. Twice Carl dropped his end and she screamed and cursed from inside.
“Sorry,” Carl muttered. He didn’t have my strength.
Finally, after a lot of sweating and heaving and swearing, we finally had the cabinet in the closet between the buckets and mops and ladders. I clicked on the single light bulb that hung from the ceiling, and Carl wrestled with the now-dented door to get it open.
When he yanked it free, Sonya tumbled out. Her brown hair was disheveled and she had bruises on her face. Her hands were raw, dried blood caked around her nails, and she glared at us.
“You couldn’t be a bit more careful?” she asked. Carl shrugged.
“It was either that or fried Sonya,” I answered flatly. “What happened?”
Sony took a shuddering breath. “They scheduled a meeting in the middle of the night. Ruben assumed it was to talk about everything. He asked me to unlock, he’d be here literally last minute. They didn’t want to talk. The moment they arrived they started trashing the place, knocking me down.”
“How many were there?” I asked.
“Just the same two as last time,” she said and I nodded. Carl looked at me questioningly but I would answer him later.
“Why didn’t you get out of here?” I asked.
“Ruben arrived, saw them bullying me. He got them away from me into the office. One followed, the master, but the other one stuffed me in this cabinet so I couldn’t go anywhere.”
“It’s metal,” I confirmed. She hadn’t been able to dematerialize.
I don’t know what happened. I
couldn’t hear all too well through the metal and I know Ruben closed the door. The next thing there was a lot of banging around me and then the cabinet fell over.”
I sat down on an upturned bucket. The closet was extremely small for the three of us and the cabinet, and I felt claustrophobic.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Sonya asked with a thin voice. I nodded. No use denying it. She covered her face with her hands and cried. Her shoulders shook and her body shrunk in on itself, crushed under the weight of her misery. Carl put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched when he did but she didn’t pull away from him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I didn’t just mean for the fact that Ruben was dead. I was sorry for everything, for this happening at all, for her being involved in it, for the mess it had become.
“We have to go,” Carl said. He wanted to talk, I could see it. If he was clever he would run and never look back. He would lose too much – he didn’t want to be involved in this. But I knew that Carl wasn’t particularly clever when it came to risking his own life. He wouldn’t run. He would stay to fight. The idea should have made me feel better, that there was someone who would have my back. But it just made me feel sick to my stomach. If he died, and the chances were pretty good, his blood would be on my hands too. It would be another body to add to my growing list of losses.
“We can’t open the door,” I said. I looked at Sonya. She’d stopped sobbing but her cheeks were wet and her eyes were now bright and brilliant. “You’ll have to get back in that thing so we can leave. You’ll be able to get out again once we’re gone. And then you’ll have to wait it out in here until the sun goes down and you can get back home.”
She didn’t look happy with me but she didn’t argue, either. There wasn’t anything else to do about it.
She stood up and stepped back into the cabinet. Carl made sure she could push the door open from the inside before we left, so she wouldn’t be stuck again, and when she was inside her little metal cabinet he opened the door and we stepped out of the closet.
“I don’t know what to do with this one,” Carl admitted. “We’re going to have to call the police because of his death, and then they’re going to go through all the paperwork. We have to get in there and remove our stuff before it comes out.”
I suddenly felt like my body was made of lead. I felt heavy and sore, like I’d been the one that had been beaten up. It felt like everything that kept me going drained out of me, and I was just a shell left in the wake of destruction.
“Just call them, Carl. I’m going to go home.”
“But we can’t just leave—“
“It’s over, Carl. Let them come. I can’t do this anymore.”
I turned and walked away, exiting the building. I looked up at it, and a wave of nausea and sorrow hit me. I turned my back, and drove away.
Chapter 16
The day of the attack came back to me. I’d gone to the store for my mom to buy milk. We’d been arguing about it, I’d wanted to bake sugar cookies. She’d said it wasn’t necessary, there were store bought cookies in the tin and it was getting dark, too late to run out to the store for a sixteen year old. Aspen had been fourteen, stretching out her one leg on the counter and balancing on the other. She’d wanted to be a dancer. It was never too late to get fit and flexible, she’d used to say. I’d been jealous that she’d been taller than me. After that she’d never be taller than me again.
I’ve fought with her about my age, telling her that I was practically a grown up. Cocooned in a shell of innocence, I knew nothing. This I’d found out afterwards.
The last words I’d ever spoken to my mother was that I’d wanted her to leave me to make my own mistakes, that I didn’t need her to baby me for the rest of my life.
I’d give anything to take those words back now, to tell her just one more time that I loved her, that she had made me everything I was. Well, no. Everything I used to be.
The queue at the store had been too long. Instead of turning back home I’d gone to the next one, a bit further. I’d gotten my milk but the walk home had been longer, and by the time I’d finally stepped onto the porch at the front door it had been dark. There had been no moon that night, and the world had been drenched in the inky black of night. Even the stars had looked like they’d been dimmer. I remembered it like I had photos of it, the images engraved in my mind.
I’d climbed the porch steps, and the outside light had been off. My mom usually switched it on. If I’d taken it as a sign of danger maybe things would have been different. But then again, maybe they wouldn’t have. I remembered being irritated that she couldn’t have left the light on for me. She’d known I’d gone out.
When I’d pushed against the front door and it swung open into a dark lounge, the smell in the air had been the first thing that caught my attention. It had smelled like fear, sour, or bitter. Something that didn’t feel right. And there had been violence too. It had been my first taste of it, and it still raised like bile in my throat whenever I felt it.
I’d called out into the house, but no one had answered. I’d walked through the lounge and into the dining room.
The table had been overturned. Chairs lay scattered across the floor, some splintered. The vase that had been in the center of the table had been shattered and lay in shards on the ground. The water had made a wet patch around the shattered glass and flowers that lay in a chaotic heap, like whatever had happened at caused it to wet its pants.
I’d reached for the light switch automatically, even though a voice in my head had kept screaming that I should have turned and run. But my hand had reached out and flipped the switch. The white light had been blinding at first. And then it had shown me the ugly truth.
There had been blood on the carpets. The metallic smell of it pinched my nose, and I gagged, covering my nose with my hand. The milk I’d been carrying fell to the ground, the contained split open and the white liquid spread in a point across the carpet.
I’d followed the trail of the stain, and under the table, that I had only noticed then was broken, was a body. My mother’s body. Her short blond hair had been tousled and fanned out around her head like a halo. Her arm had been bent at an impossible angle, and when I took two steps closer I’d seen what I’d already known. Her face had been covered in blood, the soft hazel color of her eyes had stared vacantly at the chaos around her. Her throat had been ripped on the side, bloody.
I’d covered my mouth and screamed into my hand. My whole body had started trembling and I’d felt like the life had been draining out of me.
A crash in the next room had pulled me out of my state of shock, and I’d whirled around. Aspen and my dad, if whoever had done this were still there I had to stop them before I lost more people I loved.
I’d run to Aspen’s bedroom where the crash had come from. I’d kicked the door open and it had bounced back, nearly hitting me in the face, but what I’d seen had been enough to shoulder the blow. Aspen had laid the floor, her body twisted and bent just above the hips, where it hadn’t been supposed to do that. Her eyes had been closed and for two seconds I’d feared the worst, but then she’d whimpered, the tiniest sign, but a shred of hope I’d been able to cling on to.
“Where are they?” I asked her in a loud whisper, hoping she’d respond, but she’d only whimpered again, her head lolling to the side. Her light skin had been an ash-grey and there’d been blood on her clothes. I’d ripped the material aside and noticed the blood hadn’t been hers.
A sound behind me had made me spin around, and my dad had stood there, his fangs bare. He’d had blood smeared across his face and chest, and he’d hissed at me.
“Dad?” I’d asked in a small voice, and then I’d noticed the fire poker he’d held in his hands. It had blood on it, the tip dripping red. My mom’s image had flashed in front of my eyes again, and I’d lost it.
I was only half-vampire, but in a situation of life and death the animal in me came out just like with any pure pred. I’d hissed back
at my dad even though I had no sharp needle teeth to show. He’d swung that poker at me and struck me in the neck. It had burned, and I could feel the blood pouring out of the gash, hot liquid oozing down my neck and staining my shirt.
I hadn’t wasted time. I’d jumped on him, ducking underneath the poker he’d lifted to swing against, and tackled him through the open door and against the opposite passage wall. The knock had winded us both, but I’d been beyond the point of no return. In my rage I’d seen a white light, my dead mother, and my broken sister. And in front of me had been the man responsible.
Anger made anyone stronger. I was a testimony to that. The police had finally pulled me off my dad, who’s face had been purple, flowering with bruises and blood where I’d hit him way past unconsciousness with my bare hands.
My mother had been pronounced dead on the scene. My sister had been taken to a hospital. I’d been booked into therapy.
Years of therapy did nothing. All the therapist did for me was remind me of that awful day over and over again. And I’d hated every minute of it, until I had been eighteen and old enough to tell my foster parents I wasn’t going anymore. Aspen had been in a wheelchair after being hospitalized for a month, and no amount of therapy would have been able to erase what had happened to her.
I’d stayed out of the way of vampires since then. I’d avoided the dark, slept with a nightlight like a child, and I’d be in before sunset every evening. One night it had rained so hard I’d been stranded at the gym in college. Howling winds had ripped through the trees and no one dared go out. By the time the storm had subsided it had been dark and I’d been terrified.
I’d walked the quiet streets home, keeping my ears open, suppressing the fear of the dark that I’d been kindling for over two years. A vampire had appeared next to me, a man that had a nasty cut across his face which reminded me too much of the scar that had formed in my neck. He’d grinned at me and his vampire teeth, although yellow, had brought back the flash of my bloodstained father, attacking me.
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