BLOOD CALLING
Joshua Grover-David Patterson
Copyright © Joshua Grover-David Patterson 2012
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, my first thanks must go to my wife and daughter, who give me the time to write. And then edit. And then my wife steps in and makes sure my books go out typo-free. She's the best wife a novelist could ask for.
Also as always, a shout-out must go to my friends at The Retreat, who not only encourage and talk shop with me, but help me let the world know when my books come out. They're all good people.
Along those same lines, I need to thank my family and friends and readers for saying, "Hey, there's this author you should look into."
And that includes you, as well. If you enjoyed the book and want to let me know, feel free to follow me via Twitter at twitter.com/GroverDavid, like me on Facebook at facebook.com/JoshuaGroverDavid, or follow my blogging at groverdavid.blogspot.com. And don't forget, reviews on Amazon or elsewhere are always appreciated.
Finally, I have to give a shout-out to the band Cobra Starship. Their first three records, "While the City Sleeps," "We Rule the Streets," "¡Viva La Cobra!" and "Hot Mess," were in many ways the fuel that fired this book. I wanted to write a book that would make the reader feel as energized as I did when I listened to their CDs and hopefully I've accomplished that.
CHAPTER 1
You want a story? Let me tell you a story.
Last August, five things happened to me:
1. I turned eighteen. That will be important later.
2. I started my senior year of high school as a social pariah.
3. My parents got divorced, my mom kicked my dad out of the house, and her personal trainer, Chuck, moved in.
4. My grandpa died.
5. He left me a vampire-slaying kit.
Well. Kind of. That got all jumbled up but I’ll break it down in a minute.
Let’s start with me turning eighteen.
If you were born in August, before you could enter school in most places you took a test—were you smart enough to enter when you were a year younger than everyone else, or were you dumb enough that you ended up a year older than everyone else?
Ultimately, I fell into the dumb category, although the test I failed had more to do with me being clumsy than anything else. When I cried and told my mother I didn’t get to go to school because I was stupid, she told me the only reason I hadn’t gotten in was my lack of coordination.
I was sure she chose to dumb that statement down to something I could understand.
In essence, I didn’t get into school because I couldn’t stand on one foot. That was what held me back.
I know, right? The girl who couldn’t stand on one foot got a vampire-slaying kit. I’m pretty sure they’re not going to make a TV show out of my life.
As far as the divorce went, that had its own complications. My mom was a lawyer, so she talked to a couple guys in her firm and got all her papers in a row. Bam, my dad was out the door, living in an apartment, and trying to find a job.
It sucked for him because he let my mom work high-powered lawyer hours while he did the stay-at-home thing. Man had a college education and no work experience, unless he wanted to open a daddy day care.
Then there was my grandpa dying. People always ask if you were close when someone dies. What do you say to that? “Nah? Didn’t like him very much? Glad he’s gone?”
The real answer was, I was close with my grandpa before he started to get old. I mean, actually got old. From walking to wheelchair, deaf, can’t remember anything, muscles all loose so he couldn’t talk old.
I loved my grandpa. I did. But that was hard to watch and I wasn’t ready for it. You know how people always say it was a blessing when someone like that dies?
I think it was for him. Whatever was next after this life, wherever he went, it had to have been better than being trapped in that body while it fell apart on him.
I said he gave me a vampire slaying kit but that wasn’t true. Or rather, it was and it wasn’t.
He was my mom’s dad and she didn’t need the house or anything in it. She went in, took some pictures and a few things from when she was a girl. Told me I could go in there and take whatever I wanted.
One day last summer, I went through the whole house. All of it.
Took the candy dish. He always kept jellybeans in there. I wasn’t much of a fan of jellybeans but I always had a few when I visited.
It was like candy corn at Halloween. No one really liked the stuff but you have to have a piece or two to make the season feel right, you know?
Mom already had the pictures so I figured that was pretty much it for stuff I needed. And then I got to the coat closet.
That was one place I always loved in grandpa’s house. I don’t know why, maybe an old leather coat, maybe a set of boots, but I loved the way that closet smelled. I used to go in there when I was little and close the door and just sit.
That was what I did. Just for a minute or two. That was the plan. What happened was I was tired and needed a nap so I took one. When I woke up, all the light from outside was gone and there I was, sitting in my dead grandpa’s dark, dark, dark closet.
I fumbled around but couldn’t find the doorknob. Didn’t know how that happened. I reached for the light’s pull chain and it came on. I realized the reason I couldn’t find the doorknob was I was all turned around, facing the back of the closet.
And what did you know? There was a little wooden panel back there. Never saw it as a kid.
I pulled at it and there was this glossy black box inside.
I picked up the box and stepped out of the closet. The thing looked like something you’d stick jewelry into, only it was a little bit too big and way too heavy.
I figured I’d found the family jewels or something so I cracked it open. Didn’t even notice the big silver cross on the top of the box at first.
What was inside? Stakes. Wooden stakes. Five of the things, all sharp and pointed; a bunch of little crosses on necklaces; and some vials of water. Holy water, I guessed.
And this little pistol thing. With two hammers, some powder, and a leather bag with these little balls I found out later were pure silver. Worth a few bucks. More than a few.
Now I asked—what did you do with something like that? Sell it? Keep it? Hide it back in the closet to freak out the people who bought the house?
I knew what you didn’t do. You didn’t tell your mom, or your dad, or anyone. Especially if you took it out of the house and stuck it in your trunk.
I would recommend going back into the closet to see if there was anything else in that cubbyhole, though. I thought maybe there would be more stuff, or a letter explaining that we were part of a long line of vampire slayers, or maybe a letter from Joss Whedon, that guy who created “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
But no.
There was a note but all it said was:
THEY’RE REAL. FIGHT THEM.
CHAPTER 2
That was the start of August. Then came the end of August and the accident.
A whole lot of stuff went into that. Let me try to get all the details in order.
Okay, so, parents get divorced. Grandpa is dead. I have a vampire slaying kit.
Chuck’s car is broken down.
Chuck was my mom’s boy-toy. I suppose it was mean to call him that given everything that happened, but I didn’t ask him to be part of my life and he didn’t pretend he was part of mine. My mom started working out a couple of years ago to “help her deal with some stress.” She said it was cheaper than riding the leather couch.
> Yeah, I know how that sounds.
At any rate, Chuck was a personal trainer, which I guess means he had a lot of free time. He’d go into the gym where he worked a few hours a week and do training stuff. I guess. Like I said, I didn’t want to know anything about him.
One day I was sitting at home doing nothing because my best friend was out of the country. I’m what you called “shy” under the age of five, and “someone who suffers social phobias” when over the age of five.
Chuck was there. His car was in the shop and he needed a ride to pick it up. The conversation went like this:
Him: “I’ll give you twenty bucks to take me.”
Me: “We don’t talk.”
Him: “Fine.”
I drove him over in my used-but-not-too-used car, which was one of the perks of being the daughter of a high-powered lawyer.
That was where we ran into Lindsey.
How to describe Lindsey? Imagine you had a best friend when you were in grade school. You had brown hair, she had red. You were both kind of cute.
Then you hit the fifth grade and suddenly she was cute, and you were, you know, Lucy. And then in middle school, she was hot, and you were, you know, Lucy.
Then high school…you got the idea.
That was the long way of saying we grew apart and started running in different social circles.
At any rate, we weren’t friends and we didn’t hang. And didn’t try. I was sitting around waiting to find out if Chuck could take his car home or what, and Lindsey said, “What are you doing Friday?”
I looked up at her. There wasn’t anyone else there; I knew she was talking to me but it wasn’t the kind of thing that happened. I totally forgot that Friday was my birthday and I figured I’d be getting together with my dad when I said, “Nothing.”
“My parents are out of town, so it’s party central at my house. You should come,” said Lindsey.
I tried not to look incredulous. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“Bring your friend,” said Lindsey, and she looked over at Chuck. Everything snapped into place. She hadn’t invited me, she invited my hot boyfriend by proxy.
Which, in retrospect, seemed really awful. But it was high school. People did that. I wasn’t really going to go anyway, so what did it matter?
I sort of nodded my head but the person who changed Lindsey’s oil came out with a bill and a little oil on his face, and probably six-pack abs, so I didn’t exist to Lindsey anymore. Which was fine.
Until Friday, when it wasn’t fine anymore. My mom left a note on the table that she and Chuck were going out, and to get myself pizza or Chinese.
My dad didn’t call to take me out on my birthday. I finally called him at like eight at night and we talked, but he didn’t remember what day it was. I didn’t want to have to tell him his only child turned into a legal adult because that seemed like something a kid would do.
So I got in my car around ten and went to Lindsey’s place.
When I rang the doorbell, the party was in full swing. I bumped into Lindsey almost immediately. When she asked about “the new boyfriend,” I told her Chuck was actually mom’s new boyfriend.
Then I headed to the kitchen and grabbed a cup of what I thought was punch.
At first, the drink I was holding was just something to do with my hands as I walked from room to room.
As the night wore on, it was more like a lifeline.
The more I felt out of place, the more I drank. The more I drank, the more I felt out of place.
Finally, around one, I realized I hated being with people who were basically strangers even more than I hated being alone, and decided to head home. And since no one knew I was there—outside of Lindsey, who was walking around playing hostess—no one thought to see whether or not I needed a ride.
I got into my car feeling a little dizzy. I started driving and I realized after three or four blocks I had already taken a wrong turn, there was something in the punch from the booze family, I was drunk, and I was lost, despite having been at the party five minutes ago.
Most vampire stories start here—with the helpful stranger, or the dangerous creepy guy in the shadows.
This isn’t that kind of story.
I opened a window and sucked in some of the night air to clear my head. I thought about what I was doing and because I was kind of drunk and also mad and a little stupid, I decided I was fine and I would be okay.
Then there was a blank spot, where I crashed my car into a telephone pole.
Lucky for me, no one was hurt. I got a couple of days in the hospital while they watched and waited to see if something was wrong. I got a court date and permission to go home.
Then school started again.
When I got up for the first day, I didn’t go right to school. I had this internship at a local printing press where I did basic print jobs at less than minimum wage in order to prepare for my eventual career in graphic arts.
Did I mention my car was totaled and had to get up super-early to take a bus?
In the afternoon, I headed back to school where I had two art classes, one English course, and a computer programming class I took because someone in administration filed it under math. I needed to raise my math GPA or suffer the perils of community college.
That kind of thing was important to me. I wanted to get away from my life and an out-of-state college seemed like the best way.
I never was the chatty type at school, generally opting to speak only when spoken to. Which might’ve explained why I only had one good friend.
It took me a while to realize no one spoke to me, and that no one was going to speak to me for a long time.
My misadventure in the car had been tracked back to the party, still fully in motion at 3:00 AM. Cops showed up en masse and nearly everyone there was taken into custody.
A lot of parents got a phone call that night and punishments were handed down harshly, as though from an angry Greek god.
I had, with one drunken driving episode, turned almost every member of the senior class against me.
Did I care? Sure, then. But now? Let me have those problems again, please.
CHAPTER 3
I needed to stop acting like none of what happened to me then affected me. It did but in a weird way. There was one thing I thought was going to kill me. Losing my best friend.
I guess I should talk about that.
There wasn’t a strong criminal element at my former high school.
Some places had gangs, or bullies, or whatever, that made some classmates vanish for days or weeks or months or semesters at a time, but my school didn’t have any of that.
What we did have was a lot of people who, like me, lived well above the poverty line. If eighteen years of spinning around on a big blue ball taught me anything, it was this: Kids who didn’t need to lie, cheat, or steal to get what they want still lied, cheated and stole to get what they want.
When you were a kid whose parents had money, you didn’t usually end up in jail. Or juvenile detention.
You got community service.
What always bugged me about kids who got community service was the fact that they would whine just as much as I imagined kids who went to jail did. Instead of spending a few months locked up, they had to spend a few nights and weekends helping people and more often than not, the kid in question acted like they forced to do hard time.
I had the option of community service or going to jail. Trust me, I’d much, much, much rather do something good for people than sit in a cell where people watched me use the toilet.
Driving drunk in my state was a big deal, especially underage. Usually, your license was gone until you turned twenty-one. If you were lucky. If you were real lucky.
The judge bought my totally true story about not knowing the punch was spiked. Even though I was sure he got that one all the time.
At any rate, my punishment was handed out thusly: I lost my license for a year and assigned four months of community service.
/> All of that happened incredibly quick. My mom might not have been great at maintaining relationships but she knew a lot of excellent lawyers.
But a driver’s license? That was nothing. That wasn’t as bad as what came next.
My best friend Becca received special dispensation from the school district to start the school year late because she was off with her family in Italy on what they called an “Educational Journey.” The first week of school was actually the first two days of school—a Thursday and Friday—and Becca, a valedictorian-to-be, had no problem missing the first couple of days and starting on Monday.
You would’ve thought getting into a drunken driving accident would’ve been the sort of thing to upset my parents but mostly they blamed each other.
Kinda.
My dad thought the divorce had taken a toll on me and suggested family counseling and my mother, who decided she wasn’t interested in counseling during the divorce period, said I had been given too much freedom.
So she took away my phone privileges and called it a day.
That meant I couldn’t call Becca in Italy. And I couldn’t call her Sunday night when she got home.
It also meant that by the time I saw her on Monday afternoon, she was already not speaking to me.
At first I didn’t realize I was being ignored. Thanks to the city bus dragging me from internship to school at limping speed, I was late to class and Becca was in place and taking notes when I walked in.
I thought maybe she didn’t see me when she walked out the door the moment the bell rang. Then I noticed I couldn’t catch up to her in the hallway because she was walking too fast. Then I noticed that even when I called her name, she wasn’t acknowledging me.
And then I finally caught up to her walking away from school at breakneck speed after the final bell. I called to her, and when she didn’t hear me, I ran until I was in step with her.
“How was your trip?”
No answer.
“What all did you see? Did you go on those boats in that one city, or—”
Becca turned to me. “I am not speaking to you. I was hoping you would realize that but you don’t. So I’m telling you not to talk to me.”
Blood Calling (The Blood Calling Series, Book 1) Page 1
