Young Blood: The Nightbreed Saga: Book 1

by Phillip Tomasso²

  Madison crawled out on the ice. “Give me your hand!”

  They locked onto each other.

  “Hold still,” she said, and pulled.

  He came up out of the water. She dragged him across. He slid easily, being soaking wet.

  She helped him to his feet once they were off the stream. “What was that?”

  “I thought I could jump across,” he said.

  It took every bit of reservation not to laugh. “We have to get you home. You’re going to freeze to death.”

  “We have a problem,” he said, shivering. He’d lost a glove. “We have to cross back to the other side.”

  That was it. Madison laughed out loud, slapped a hand on her thighs, and bent forward, unable to contain herself. She felt horrible, even to this day, because Neal never laughed with her.

  “You know what,” she said into the phone, “forget I asked.”

  “I’m coming,” he said.

  “You’re what?”

  “I’m going with you. You’d come with me,” he said.

  He was right. If he asked her to go on some crazy, dangerous journey, she’d be there with him without his ever having to ask twice. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she said.

  “Did you just ask me to go with you?”

  “I did, but I shouldn’t have,” she said.

  “You want to talk me out of it now? I have the address, you know. I’m going regardless. Either pick me up, or I’ll meet you down there.”

  She loved this guy. “I’ll pick you up.”

  “Your dad let you use his Jeep?” he said.

  Madison ended the call.

  # # #

  Madison rolled down the window and took the ticket from the person at the tollbooth before getting onto I-90, and handed it over to Neal.

  “So you left a note for your father?”

  Madison rolled up the window and started toward the westbound ramp, toward Buffalo. “On my pillow.”

  “And you basically told him you were going away for a while to deal with things in your own way,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “And then you stole his Jeep.”

  “Borrowed.”

  “But if I can play devil’s advocate for a minute, if he reports the Jeep stolen, and we get pulled over and arrested for grand theft, you will claim you had your father’s permission?”

  “That would be lying.”

  “So you stole it?”

  “He wouldn’t report it stolen.”

  “Because you left a note. On your pillow. In your room. Asking for. . .space.”

  “Now you’ve got it.”

  “We’re going to jail before this is all over, you know. Jail. Can you see me in a prison cell?”

  “You’d have a roommate. You wouldn’t be alone.”

  “It’s called a cellmate, and that’s exactly my point.” He cradled his forehead in his hand. “I think I feel sick.”

  “You have Dramamine?”

  “It’s not motion sickness. I’m just not used to breaking laws.”

  “What did you tell your mom?” she said.

  “Not that I was going to Pittsburgh. I told her you were upset. That you needed me,” he said, speaking softly.

  “And she was good with that?”

  “She loves you as if you were her own daughter. You know that. I do need you.”

  She reached over and took his hand. “It will be alright, Neal.”

  He shook his head. “You can’t know that, Madison.”

  “Look in the back seat,” she said.

  “What is that?”

  “Grab it.”

  He reached around. “You have a sword?”

  “Dagger.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “I think size.”

  “This looks like it’s bigger than a knife.” He held the ends in the palms of his hands.

  “Bigger than a knife, smaller than a sword. That might be what makes it a dagger.”

  “What are you doing with this? Where did you even get something like this?”

  “It’s from my cousins.”

  “From Ireland?”

  “New Zealand.”

  Neal removed the blade from the sheath. “Family heirloom?”

  “You could say that.”

  “This has something to do with us going to Pennsylvania, doesn’t it?”

  “You ready for a long story?”

  “Considering your dad has a stock AM radio in this thing, I guess so.”

  # # #

  On RT 79 South, they entered Pittsburgh.

  “We’re going to call the police, though, right?” Neal said.

  He’d listened intently when Madison had recounted the conversation she’d had with her cousins. He didn’t ask a lot of questions. He just listened, nodding his head up and down while she talked. When she finished, he sat silently, his hands folded in his lap, and just stared vacantly out the front windshield. This was the first thing he’d said in a while.

  “Eventually,” Madison said.

  “Because you need to track down the vampires, and get the pendant for the dagger,” he said.

  Madison didn’t reply.

  “And what about the kids?”

  “What about them?” Madison said.

  “Are they the priority, or the pendant?”

  “We’re going to save the kids,” she said.

  “Without the police.”

  “I told the police about this, about what happened to me, about what I remembered. Maybe they acted on the information, and when we get to Northway Mall, there won’t be a carnival set up because they’d all been arrested on kidnapping charges or something,” she said. “That’s what I’m hoping.”

  “Something like that. It would have been on the news,” Neal said.

  Madison shrugged. “I don’t think the investigator believed me. I think she felt sorry for me. She listened, and maybe she did some digging, but I think that’s about all. If anything, she sounded like she felt bad for my father because his daughter had lost her mind.”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy, Maddy.”

  “I think all of this is crazy. None of it makes any sense. I drink blood, Neal. I killed a man and drank his blood!”

  “You what?” He shrank away from her. “What happened to that butcher?”

  He didn’t know about Oliver.

  “Ready for one more story?”

  “What are you going to tell me? Not your mom?”

  “No,” she shook her head, “not my mom.”

  # # #

  “Have you had any more visits?” Neal said.

  “Visits?”

  “Whatever was in my mother’s minivan.”

  “The ghost?”

  “So you have?” Neal said.

  “No. Not since that night.”

  “What do you think that was? I’ve spent sleepless nights thinking about it. Aside from you being a, you know, vampire, it’s one of the weirdest things I’d ever experienced,” he said.

  “I don’t know what that was.”

  “It’s tied to this,” he said.

  “Do you think?”

  “Ever feel something like that before, like you know you’re being watched, but there’s nothing there? I’ve never had a paranormal experience. If that’s what it was. It has to be what it was. I mean, my hairs were all standing up. It got ice cold inside the minivan.”

  “And you really think it was a ghost?”

  “It was something.”

  “And you think it has something to do with me?”

  “You can’t argue that things have become just a tad peculiar the last few weeks.”

  “Where does a ghost fit in?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m afraid before all of this is over–however it ends–we’ll find out. And I think that scares me just as much as crossing state lines to hunt down vampires.”

  Chapter 18

  “The mall should be com
ing up on our right,” Madison said. They were on McKnight Road. She winced and shifted her weight around. Her muscles knotted in her lower back, and her butt had gone numb. Getting out of the Jeep and walking around would feel amazing.

  “Sun will be up soon.” Neal rolled down his window. The crisp early morning air filled the Jeep. He leaned forward against his seat belt, his hands on the dash, and groaned as he stretched out his arms and back. “We have to find, like, where they keep their coffins?”

  “Their what?”

  “Where they sleep.”

  “Where who sleeps?”

  “The carnies.”

  “You think they sleep in coffins?”

  “Well, the sun. Doesn’t it burn them alive?”

  “I knew I forgot something. I left my coffin home,” she said, snapped her fingers, and rolled her eyes.

  “The sun won’t hurt you?”

  “No more than it hurts you. Unsafe amounts of UV rays are a growing concern for people all over the planet. This isn’t some stupid movie, Neal.”

  He clucked his tongue. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m just trying to figure this out. What about crosses?”

  “Like Jesus?”

  “Oh, yeah. This is from Him,” Neal said. “I forgot.”

  “So the legend says, anyway.”

  “Holy Water, probably not, huh?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know about the cross, or the Holy Water, but I don’t think so.” She had been in the sunlight. She had not been inside a church. Her mother’s wake was without a service until the body was released for burial by police.

  “But you have the sword.”

  “Dagger,” she said.

  “What’s the plan then? We going to pull right into the parking lot, look for the eighteen wheeler, bust in, save the kids, and get out of there?”

  Madison pursed her lips. He made it sound as easy as one, two, three. If only it could be so simple.

  “You have an actual plan, right? I mean, how many kids were in that trailer? We can’t fit them in the Jeep. How are we going to get them out of there if we do find them, and save them?”

  “All very good questions, Neal.”

  He sighed and cradled his stomach between crossed arms. “You don’t have a plan, do you?”

  She stayed quiet, her answer revealed.

  “We need to call the police, Maddy. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  That was solid advice.

  “There’s the mall.” She pointed to the right, but made a left into the parking lot across the street from the location. It was large enough to hold a carnival, as well.

  “I don’t see them,” Neal said.

  Madison parked so they faced the mall entrances. Over the back of the mall the top of a few rides were visible. “Look.”

  “Okay. So we found them.”

  We found them, she thought. Now what? The sun just crested the eastern horizon. Full-blown daylight was inevitable. She wanted to cross into the mall parking lot. She would venture on foot, but wanted the dagger with her. The idea of walking through a mall lot with a giant knife on her back did not sound like a good idea.

  Local police would disarm her and have her cuffed in a heartbeat. Her claims of kidnapped children would be completely ignored.

  “What are we going to do, Maddy?”

  If they called police first, they could sit tight, and watch the raid unfold. She risked losing the pendant, though.

  “Maddy?”

  “I’m thinking,” she said.

  Madison took her phone off the cigarette charger and held it in her hands.

  “You thinking about calling nine-one-one? It’s the right thing to do.”

  She dropped an elbow on the door and plopped her chin on a fist. “If you saw those kids, Neal. They were terrified. The trailer reeked of just ungodly odors. Who knows how long they were in there? Who knows what’s happened to them.”

  “Make the call.”

  Neal’s was the voice of reason. Did she think she was just going to come down here, fight a horde of vampires with an ancient dagger, collect the missing pendant, and save the kidnapped kids?

  She did.

  It’s what she thought.

  “You stay here. In this Jeep. Don’t get out no matter what. You understand?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m calling the police,” she said, and climbed out of the Jeep, “but not until I’m positive that this is the right carnival, that the truck we’re looking for is back there. Otherwise, I am going to get myself a mental hygiene arrest.”

  “What the heck is that?”

  She knew because her father went on EMS runs all of the time. “It means I could be crazy. I don’t go to jail; I get locked up in a hospital for seventy-two hours.”

  “The rest might do you some good.” He offered up a weak smile.

  She leaned the driver seat forward and removed her backpack. “Hand me the dagger.”

  “You think you should bring that with you?” Neal said.

  “I don’t think I should leave it anywhere right now.” It needed her protection. She needed the protection it offered. The backpack was full of her things. She unzipped it, removed the dagger from the sheath, and stuck both inside with her clothing. She re-zipped up the ends of the bag so that just the hilt and rounded pommel protruded.

  “Be careful. You see anything, come back here, okay? We’ll call the police, and then just watch to see what happens.”

  “I will.”

  She slung the bag over her shoulder, shut the Jeep door, and looked both ways before running across McKnight. She kept up a steady jog until she reached the empty parking lot. Though it wasn’t completely empty. There were a few cars parked by the main entrance, a few others scattered about. There was still an overwhelming sense of vacancy to the place. She cut diagonally toward the side of the mall. Security cameras had to be picking up her every move. Running would look suspicious, draw attention. That was the last thing she needed, rent-a-cops watching her every move.

  The morning air had been crisp when it entered the Jeep’s window; it was nothing short of brutal being out in it. She breathed in what felt like shards of ice that pricked her lungs and froze hairs inside her nostrils. There was no ignoring the bite of exposed areas of skin, but she attempted to simply concentrate on reaching the back of the mall undetected.

  She would never sleep inside a coffin. It was a ridiculous thought, but it was what had entered her mind. Her thoughts spun wild in different directions all at once. She figured her dad would be up soon. She worried about how he’d react when he found the note, and the missing Jeep. She was thankful to have Neal with her, but he was in danger. If anything happened to him, it would be her fault.

  She walked as quickly as possible, staying close to the bricks along the side of the mall. When she reached the back of the mall, she stopped. The midway did not look much different than it had when it was in Rochester. The concession stands and game booths lined the main walk, with rides off to the outer sides and toward the back. The carnival did look bigger, though, as if there was more of everything. She wondered if two groups of carnies had joined together to create one massive parking lot extravaganza. According to Neal, the winter didn’t stop their moneymaking. The carnival, booked year round, concentrated efforts on malls in the south during the North’s winter months, and vice-versa.

  Straight ahead, all the way to the back, was The Devil’s Lair. There was no mistaking the evil clown face, or the jagged teeth in an open mouth that was an entrance to the bizarre and frightening funhouse. She shivered, but not from the cold, as a chill raced through her body.

  Along the far west end of the back lot sat a double line of eighteen-wheeler trailers. The sky above them was still dark, as if hanging on to the night, refusing the day the sun it deserved. Madison knew if security had only been moderately observing her trek across their lot, she’d demand their attention if she got too close to th
e carnival set-up too soon. She stayed a safe distance from the thigh high fence that outlined the midway, and continued until she reached the end of the parking lot and kept on walking.

  She hoped cameras didn’t monitor the property’s perimeter. She kept her steady pace, but veered toward the left until she was behind the rows of trailers. She counted a row of six, two deep; twelve altogether. She approached cautiously. They all looked the same. There was no way she could check them all, not before police showed up.

  That was when she saw it.

  It was also when she heard it. It was a whisper. Not the wind.

  Madison spun around. No one was around. She was alone on the outskirts of the mall.

  She felt it. She knew she was being watched. Whatever had been inside Neal’s minivan a few nights ago was back. Only this time, it was talking to her.

  The words hadn’t been clear. It had been words. She was sure of that.

  She ignored it. There would be time later. She couldn’t be distracted, not now.

  The one trailer that stood out had a sticker on the back door. I Would Rather Be Driving My Bugatti.

  It was a detail she’d forgotten until just now.

  She knew what she would find inside that trailer if she got the door open.

  The whisper came again. This time she understood the words. “Neal. Needs. You.”

  She did another three-sixty. Still alone.

  Neal needs me.

  She had what she needed. She’d found the trailer. Madison called Neal on her cell as she walked back the way she’d come. Running would be the worst thing. If cameras picked her up running from the trailers, security would think she’d been messing around with the equipment or something.

  So? Let them. It might be time for police.

  Neal. Needs. You.

  It was time for the police. “Answer, Neal. Answer the phone.”

  When it went to voicemail, she slipped her phone back into her front pocket and ran. Rounding the back of the trailers she was in a full out sprint as she crossed the back parking lot. She heard her shoes clap against blacktop and blood surge through her body as it pumped from her heart.