“It’s more than that, isn’t it? It became your whole life. You felt different. Am I right?”
“Stop it! Go away!” Fabiana pleaded.
“I hit a little close to home, huh? You’re not different because you’re some lonely girl or because your sorry father…”
“Stop it!” she yelled, interrupting the voice. And the mere mention of her father hit her right in the gut. Fabiana was angry now. She wasn’t going to let some damnable ghost say anything bad about her father. Her good father that had raised her all alone, all by himself, and had tried his best to keep her safe.
“Because you’re a monster,” the voice told her.
“Shut up! Just shut the hell up!” she roared and her voice was intensely loud now, bouncing off the sterile, emotionless walls of her cell. Before Fabiana knew what was happening, hands were grabbing at her, holding her down.
But she was raging out at them. What did they want from her? Why were they being so mean? Why were they hurting her? And she could barely make out what they were saying to her, but somehow their voices came through. They were telling her to calm down and they were strapping her down for her own safety. And that they were sorry.
Fabiana, we’re sorry.
But she knew that they were not.
The voice of the spirit was not gone. In fact, it was even louder now inside her head.
“You’ve always been a monster. It will only feel right when you’re sucking down more blood and more evil. Monster. Fabiana, you’re just a monster.”
“Please… go away.”
And she began to sob into the rough pillow of her white bed. Her body began to feel numb and tired.
No. It was more than that.
Fabiana felt sedated.
Chapter 6
7:30 p.m., May 5
Night was just beginning to fall clean and cold in Seattle, and the wind moaned beyond the window of my truck as if a million mournful flutes played in the heavens. Gusts shook up the trash in an old, beat up garbage can next to a fading streetlight and sounded like spirits rushing past as I looked over to Kenny one more time. Not getting an answer from him, I leaned my head back on the headrest of my seat.
I needed him to talk to me. I needed him to tell what was truly going on with him. After all, that was really why I was there, not because he needed my expertise on a case. I was there to help my best friend. I was happy to assist Kenny. After all, I had really missed my partner, my friend, in these last few months away from work. No matter what my title was, to me, we would always be partners.
Kenny, who looked the unhappiest that I’d ever seen him, reached up to rub his eyes but then didn’t. He did not talk until he was looking away, and it frightened me that he would not give me his eyes. That spoke volumes to me. The fact that he would not look at me meant a few things. He was uncomfortable or knew I would have difficult questions that he was unwilling to answer.
Kenny was in trouble. He had slammed shut all the ways into himself because he did not want me to see what was there. So I did not push. He was so distant it was as if we had never been friends. And now I could feel the growing divide between us.
I was hot inside my truck but I didn’t do anything about it. If I were to take off my jacket, I would have had to drape it over my armrest or toss it into the back of the truck with my shotgun and flack vest, which I never did give back to the Seattle PD.
Now that Kenny and I were alone, I was determined to talk with him.
“You want to tell me what’s been going on with you?” I asked. “And don’t tell me you’re fine, because if anyone in the world can see into your mind and know the truth, it’s me, buddy. So just talk to me.”
Cargo pant legs ruffled as he shifted his weight in the passenger seat of my truck, and I knew he wanted to talk to me, but something was hard for him to say, to admit. That was a first for Kenny and me. We had always had an easy relationship, the two of us. We were always able to talk with one another. Kenny and I met years ago in the Army, and even then, we always made conversation easily. And when we left together and joined the police department, we were determined to work together as partners and we did for over twenty years. Until now. Now he was the cop and I was retired and alone.
“How is Merric?” Kenny started off light, trying to change the subject. Kenny had been there when Merric was born. He was her godfather and he knew more than a little about the horrible woman named Sara I used to be married to. I hated everything about that awful excuse for a mother.
But Merric was a beautiful little girl. But not so little—in April she had turned thirteen years old. I remember the day she was born. Kenny and I sat in the hospital with Sara and he held my child in his large mitt of a hand and looked at me as if he was about to cry. Kenny had just lost his child a year before and it was obvious that he loved Merric from the moment he saw her. His large form was blocking out the light from the hospital window as he looked down at her, and then a serene smile slipped over his face. I knew from that day to his last, Kenny would always love that little girl of mine.
“You’re going to have to watch this one, Tim,” Kenny had told me back then. “The boys will be clamoring all over her, just wait.”
“Yeah, we’ll be sitting on my porch with our shotguns on her first date. I can see it now,” I had said with a chuckle.
“That’s a deal, partner,” he had told me, winking.
And now I wondered if we would always be there together. I hoped so, but for the first time I wasn’t sure. We were distant from one another and I couldn’t come up with a good reason why. Walls of unsaid trouble seemed to have grown up between Kenny and me, and if I could have, I would have torn them down in a heartbeat.
My mind came back to the present and I could tell he had been looking into my thoughts and had read my memory. Something about that gave me comfort—the simple presence of him in my mind.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Kenny. I feel as if she’s slipping away from me. She’s such a smart and intelligent girl, but I’m afraid she’s going to grow distant from me and turn out just like her mother. I have this nightmare where she drops out of school because she gets pregnant. And I’m afraid it’s coming true, man. She’s growing up too fast for me to deal with.”
My ex-wife Sara was a horrible woman, and looking back, I can’t even see why I married her. She was one of those women that wanted to control people through anger and manipulation. And when she realized that I wasn’t going to allow her to just stay home and smoke pot while I worked to support our family, she became a very evil person. I could have busted her I suppose, and the only reason I never did was because I couldn’t risk the chance that Merric might hate me for doing something like that to her ‘poor, sweet’ mother.
If my ex-wife ever tried to impart anything to my child, it was how to be a victim just like her. Fortunately, I had a hand in raising Merric and was able to teach her how to be independent and sure of herself. But I could still hear the words my daughter would say to me about her mother.
Everyone’s so mean to my mom. She pulled me out of this school or that school because the teachers are so mean to her. I can’t play with the kids next door because their parents are so mean to my mother. Everyone is so mean and my mom didn’t do anything wrong.
Oh yeah, the world was always against that woman. Poor Sara. Of course, it had nothing to do with the fact that Sara was a world-class bitch and expected everyone, including the teachers at Merric’s school, to just bow down to her. And when they wouldn’t, she got mean and abusive—screaming at them in front of my kid who was only five years old at the time. And over what? Something as stupid as charging Sara a dollar for a school lunch when Merric had shown up without any food one day. For god’s sake, the school’s not going to let your child go hungry, so just pay the goddamn dollar and shut up about it.
I tried to calm down as I got worked up over these frustrating memories.
“Tim, man, you have to just love Merric and
let her make her own mistakes. That’s what being a teenager is all about, remember?”
“I remember losing my mind as a teenager—having no thoughts of consequences. And that is what scares me about Merric.”
“The teenage brain is not developed enough at that stage of life to be able to foresee the consequences of actions. That’s why the legal drinking age is 21. Because it’s not until you reach your twenties that you’re able to make those big life-changing decisions and can even really comprehend the concept of consequences. So most teenagers kind of loose control a bit and lash out at everyone around them. It’s just starting, man. Just remember that she is smart and levelheaded and she has always loved you. Even though soon she’ll probably be slamming doors and yelling about how much she hates you. Tim, Merric is a smart kid. She’s not one of those stupid street kids strung out on crack that we see downtown. Have faith in her,” Kenny told me with a smile.
“Yeah, thanks. I think.”
“Right,” he said, and tension came over us again. For a moment there we had been friends again. Kenny was a guy that would always be there for me and Merric, but now the awkward feeling of not knowing what to say had returned.
I took a deep breath.
“Kenny, can we talk about what’s wrong with you…? Something is bothering you and I can see it now. And I could feel it hours ago before I was called. Something frightened you. What was it?”
“It’s really nothing, man… I have just been having some strange nightmares, that’s all.”
His East Coast inflection was slipping out, and that was always a sign for me. Kenny’s thick accent only comes out when he’s really angry or worried. He was born in New York, then was adopted at age six and brought over here. He really has no memory of his birth mother and father—only that they were abusive. He was told very little about them. Kenny was what he called ‘a mix of soul and salsa’—African American and Hispanic blood. At least he thinks so, anyway.
“Nightmares? In the last few hours?” I began again.
Kenny’s eyes never stopped moving as he talked. I was getting increasingly restless.
“Well, not really nightmares. I guess they were more like images flashing through my mind. A strange feeling, like raw nerves firing… I’ll be fine,” he told me unconvincingly.
“Well, with all the shit we’ve seen, it’s no wonder. Especially what happened to us last winter,” I said, trying to sound reassuring.
Simply put, last winter Kenny died and became a vampire and almost killed me. He broke most of my skeleton. I was bleeding internally and if it hadn’t been for the intervention of Fabiana turning me into a vampire myself, I would have died right then and there. That is where the mental connection came between the three of us, and it never went away.
Even though we were no longer vampires we still had the ability to reach out to each other with our minds. That talent had served Kenny well in the last few months; his ability to read the minds of suspects made him invaluable in investigations. He could tell immediately if a suspect was lying to him. Of course, headquarters had no idea what Kenny was actually doing. To them, he just seemed like a very observant cop. But the fact of the matter was that he had almost killed me, and I suspected that that was one of the problems between us. If I knew Kenny, he was tormenting himself with the guilt he felt for what he had almost done to me.
“Well, we’re back together now, like in the old days. But I’ll try not to get you busted back down to street cop in the course of our investigation. Okay?” I winked.
“I would appreciate that, man,” he told me. “If it got out that I called you up to work with me on this, I could really get my ass in a sling. The Captain really doesn’t like me, and I know he’s just waiting for me to do something stupid.”
Kenny and I knew that our first piece of business would be to go to the small, obscure town of Toledo, Washington. That evidence—the random receipt found on the latest victim—was the only clue we had in the investigation. But first I needed to see Fabiana. I sensed that something was wrong with her. Her mind was calling out to me for some reason, and it was not that she just needed to see me. It was fear. I needed to make sure everything was going to be alright.
Chapter 7
7:35 p.m., May 5
Fabiana lay on the bed. She whispered things. No one could hear her. She wouldn’t talk to anyone. She wouldn’t come out of her room, and when the orderly attempted to force her, his hair unexpectedly caught fire, which sent him screaming down the hall and far from Fabiana’s room. Fabiana wouldn’t dress for bed or take anything to eat or drink. She began to sing softly to herself. People from her village would do that. They sang when they were melancholy. It’s the strangest thing. She was sure she was the last of only a few who did that. She sang herself to sleep and when she awoke later, her sadness had changed.
A solemn silence fell over the room. She knew the man was back. She knew the man had come to the door. Fabiana struggled to gain control of his mind but could not. And then he was gone. She cried softly into her bed.
Fabiana could see these words sinking down, down into her mind, through the levels of guilt and remembrance and flight from the present. Down through what she’d sensed and couldn’t deny and could only repeat. Down through all the truths she had intensely feared.
Fabiana’s fear was right behind her, and as soon as she reached that calm place, it took her again, effortlessly, and she felt it completely all over again. A garden enclosed in the terror she now wore like a blanket. Her eyes looked about the room searchingly and without enmity. Fabiana now sensed something new about the room. But not fear. It was something else. It was love. And it was love for her. She felt the presence of a man that was immense and beyond pettiness. She sensed that he claimed no domination over her, that he adored her. It was difficult for her to really accept his true feelings. Then she heard it. The sound was distant but close enough to recognize the familiar emotion it evoked.
Fabiana heard the distant roar of a truck engine.
She tried to concentrate as the truck got closer, cruising past the building toward the faculty parking lot. She thought about Tim and wondered if she was going to tell him, tell him what was happening. She should and she knew that. She would keep nothing from him at this point.
Fabiana looked up at this dark little place, at its jumble of torment building in her mind like that of a marble statue coming to form out of a block of stone. She gazed inwardly at the dust and filth everywhere in her thoughts. And at the glowing lights in the hall outside her room. How weary she felt at that moment. How seared from her own anger, how close to despair she felt. Her mind was changing channels through the different feelings of confusion, hope, despair, and remorse. Of denial. One after another filled her and then was gone just as quickly as it had come.
She could feel Tim and Kenny walking through the front doors of the hospital. The nurse was telling them it was well past visiting time, but Kenny’s police identification easily granted them access. Within moments, they were making their way to her room. Her eyes were burning and sweat was working its way through her hair. Fabiana watched the door, hearing and seeing the two men in her mind. Their footfalls grew louder and louder on the white linoleum tiles of the hallway. A long fluorescent bulb burned white above her doorway and sent their shadows scurrying underneath them. One of the men—a man she called a friend—and the other—an acquaintance and someone that didn’t particularly like her—were coming closer and closer with every step.
Fabiana’s arms were wrapped around her knees and pulled close to her chest. Her body was shaking from fear. It was an all-consuming terror. It had all been made clear to her. She had unwillingly envisioned it every night for months. She knew what was coming and now it had begun, and they were here to say goodbye.
But Fabiana didn’t want to say goodbye. Not to him. Not to Tim. He loved her and she knew it and even though she was sure she could not return his affection, she did have deep feelings for him and
didn’t want him to be gone. She had gotten used to his presence in these few, bleak months. Fabiana had come to look forward to his visits and when they had to end, she was saddened.
When the knock came upon the door it was a soft rapping, as if Tim didn’t wish to wake her. As if she couldn’t feel from him a mile away. In fact, she could always feel him. She knew where he was at every waking moment of the day and even the slumbering ones. She was linked to him, more so than even he could realize.
Fabiana knew that if Tim could even fathom how deeply she was engulfed in his mind, he would love her even more and she didn’t wish to do that to him. Not this one. He was a good man and deserved more than her crazed mind could give. He deserved the love of a woman. He deserved the love of someone would could love him for who he was, an honest and caring soul who had more integrity and truth in him than she had ever known.
A helicopter somewhere descended loudly from the moonlit night. The medical helicopter thundered over the clouds, whipping the air into the sound of rapid drumming in her mind. It was a terrible turbulence of flying blades as powerful as the gods themselves. At least that’s how it seemed to Fabiana. Then the darkness and the night were pushed back as illumination erupted around her, uncaring that it now blinded her. Fabiana raised white, thin fingers to her face and shadowed her watery eyes as Tim’s voice caught the air.
“Fabiana,” he said in a soft, friendly voice. “It’s Tim.”
From her bed, she peered out into the hallway of her open door, where Tim and Kenny stood waiting for an invitation into her room.
“Come in, Timothy. You too, Kenny,” Fabiana barely whispered.
Kenny was taken aback by her calling his friend “Timothy”. No one ever called him “Timothy” and Tim would never have allowed it before. But Fabiana was able to call him that without receiving so much as an annoyed glance against it.
The Blood Born Tales (Book 2): Blood Dream Page 4
