Familiars

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  Lucy had been hesitant about using traps when Evan was younger, but her husband was still alive then and he’d made sure to keep him out of harm’s way. It wasn’t until Evan turned fourteen that Lucy began letting him near the hard stuff. There were obvious premises liability issues with setting traps in a home, but the Gentry had teams of ex-cops, lawyers, and other professionals standing by to handle messy situations.

  The sensors and traps were the last line of defense of course, so Evan did his best to keep an eye on them. Even as he did this, however, a still, small voice in him wondered (as it always had) why they needed traps to protect someone like Gideon. Wasn’t he a badass? Some kind of shit-kicking immortal?

  “Jesus, Evan, he’s trying to keep a low profile,” Lucy had said to him, “we need the traps because he’s only at ten percent strength when he’s not on the good stuff.”

  When his work with the sensors was done, Evan turned to the same job his father once had: reconning the house. He swept the structure from top to bottom, searching for anything that might cause harm to him, his mother, or Gideon. Much of the old vampire legends were nonsense, the stories about crosses and running water being effective at warding them off, for instance.

  Other tales were true, including the inability to cast a reflection in a mirror. Some of the Gentry had commissioned a scientist at Duke University to research the reasons for this, but no good answers had ever been found. There was talk of being able to create a pane of mirrored glass with hi-tech meta-materials that might reflect a manufactured image, but such things were still in the planning stages. For the time being, it was considered in poor taste to have mirrors indoors and so any reflective glass that Evan found was broken, bundled up in heavy-duty garbage bags, and disposed of in the backyard.

  Once the mirrors were taken care of, Evan and Lucy practiced infiltrating the rowhouse. Lucy lurked inside and Evan tried to find a way in and then they reversed roles and did the same before finishing things off with a little hand-to-hand combat.

  When all of this was done, Lucy stayed inside to rest while Evan pocketed a wad of cash (money from the Gentry), in order to procure a new car.

  Evan bounded outside and felt the sun’s warm embrace. His mind strayed to the thought of how long an exposed Gideon would last on a day like this. Would he fry like an egg or curl up and die in a puddle of his own fluids like a slug? Evan reached in his pocket and pulled out a pair of medium-weight drumsticks hand-made by a guy named Vic Firth that his father had given him on his eighth birthday.

  He sat down on the steps leading to the house and began pounding out a beat. His old man was a drumming aficionado and told him it wasn’t how hard you hit, but the angle of the strike. Evan took great pains to pound the right spot on the bricks. He started with a few Buddy Rich beats and then moved on to those by Ginger Baker mixed with a few grooves from Bonham and the drummer whose name he couldn’t remember from the band Rush.

  “That’s pretty tight,” somebody said and Evan looked up to see Dez wheeling toward him.

  Evan beat out his version of a shimmying samba shuffle as Dez clapped his hands.

  “I always had a soft spot in my heart for the drummers. I feel like they never get the proper credit, y’know? They’re all up in the background, but if you listen close, they’re the ones holding the whole thing together, laying it down beat by beat. They’re like gods stitching up the firmament and whatnot.”

  Evan smiled.

  “You want to be one when you were younger, Dez?”

  “What? Me? A drummer? Nah, man, I was more into sports. Football ‘specially. I always wanted to be a wide receiver and I was one for a hot minute. A damn fine one I might add.”

  “What happened?”

  “I crewed with the wrong folks and some unrighteous stuff went down and I ended up with these two bad boys,” Dez said, pointing to his legs.

  “You mind if I ask how?”

  “It’s pretty simple. I was all-city, fast as gossip, but even yours truly couldn’t outrun the 124 grains that lodged itself near my spine.”

  “When?”

  “Been manning these wheels right here for goin’ on five years.”

  “Had a friend who lost an arm,” Evan said. “He told me he could still feel it after the accident happened.”

  “For the first year or two, yeah,” Dez replied, “but not so much lately.”

  “You miss them?”

  “Only every day of my miserable little life.”

  Dez took the drumsticks from Evan and rocked out his own little beat. Evan smiled again, impressed.

  “What would you give to walk again?”

  Dez stopped drumming.

  “Shit, you actually going there?”

  “I’m segueing.”

  “Cause that’s kinda a damn personal question.”

  “Hey, I spilled my guts to you. I told you what me and my mom were really up to.”

  “The vampire bodyguards thing, right?”

  “‘Familiars,’ Dez. It has a much nicer ring.”

  Dez smirked.

  “Well, to answer your question, it would probably depend on how much it’d cost, Evan.”

  “Who says it would?”

  Dez smiled again, but there wasn’t a hint of levity in his face.

  “There ain’t nothin’ worth anything that don’t come with a price, man. Everyone knows that.”

  Dez tossed the sticks to Evan and wheeled around as Evan followed. The pair tooled down through the neighborhood for the next twenty minutes. Dez ran the conversation for most of the time, talking about a new drug that had hit the streets called “Black Sunshine” and about how his father had bailed years ago, his mother confined at a hospital up north for having an “unquiet mind.” He told Evan how he made ends meet, living primarily on disability and a small settlement payment he received as a result of being exposed to lead paint as a child.

  Dez also showed Evan places to steer clear of, the location where he was shot, and the addresses of a handful of neighborhood lifers who could be counted on if trouble arose.

  After grabbing a bite at a take-out joint that specialized in fried lake trout, Dez took Evan to a friend name Chauncey Jacobs who operated a used car lot situated between a liquor store and a church.

  Evan bought a 1992 Toyota Cressida from Chauncey for three thousand in cash, then paid another thousand for plates and paperwork, and a sweet detail job. The car had almost two-hundred thousand miles on it, but the interior was mint, with leather seats, and the engine was a robust six-banger that got respectable mileage. Best of all, the exterior was a dull gray, not the kind of finish that warranted attention.

  Dez headed back to his rowhouse and Evan broke the car in, driving down to Fells Point and then over to Baltimore’s touristy Inner Harbor.

  Evan figured he had an hour or so before Lucy was looking for him, so he parked the Cressida in a garage on Commerce Street and strolled, drumsticks in hand, several block down to the water. It was the weekend and the place was jammed with families heading over to the Power Plant Live and the city’s aquarium.

  Evan ambled through the Harborplace, a market that was at the heart of the inner harbor. As he walked through the harried masses, he noticed a few women who appeared to be sizing him up.

  Their faces were distorted: ghostly white, mouths smeared a shockingly vibrant red, necks and wrists torn open to the bone so that little streamers of flesh flapped in the wind. They were the accusatory faces of those Evan had helped dispose of in the past. He looked to the ground, longing to be free of them, but there they were, just as they’d always be. His stomach churned and he summoned up the strength to stare right back at them. They lingered for a moment and then melted from sight, whispering things that he was not privy to.

  Evan window-shopped and stopped to buy a shrimp-salad sandwich at a deli named after a Jewish man. He finished the sandwich on a bench on the backside of the market that fronted the harbor. There was an old wooden ship docked in fro
nt of him and Evan watched packs of incredibly normal looking people board the ship.

  Everyone laughed and smiled as they took in the scenery. Lucy called people like this “civilians,” because they were soft and unfamiliar with how the world really worked. She said they had nothing in common with them and Evan thought, on certain occasions, that she had a point. After all, how would these people react if Evan told them what he and his mother did for a living? What would they say? Who the hell would believe that something like a Familiar existed in the Twenty-First Century?

  He brooded on this and feelings of anger at both his mother and situation filled his head. What kind of life was he living? What kind of parent would sacrifice a normal childhood for their kids simply to keep a job? His face flushed and he had the strong desire to run back to the house and plant a stake in the middle of Gideon’s goddamn heart.

  If he left now, he might be able to do it. He had a length of sharpened ash hidden in his bedroom. He calculated the odds that he’d be able to sneak in through the back door while the sun was still high and pray that Lucy was napping. Gideon would probably be snoozing downstairs and if he was quiet, if he was very quiet, he could sneak up on him and end the charade once and for all.

  He paused for a moment of introspection and then drummed feverishly on the bench, pounding out a beat. His mind fogged and out of the blankness arose a series of images: the towns and dives he and his mother had lived in, the primer-splotched shitboxes he’d driven or copped. His mother literally cleaning up Gideon’s messes: mopping up blood and disposing of plasma-like fluids and bits of tissue and torn clothing and personal belongings. Fleeing the cops in California and the axe-wielding mobs organized by grieving family members in Texas and Florida and Indiana.

  When he looked up there was a girl staring at him. About his age, tsunami of long, sandy-colored hair covering most of her face which was crooked in a pleasant smile.

  Hers was a familiar face.

  Where had he seen it before?

  He didn’t stop drumming even as he plumbed his memory, terrified for a moment that this girl might be the specter another one of Gideon’s victims.

  Evan closed his eyes and when he opened them, the girl was still there. Smiling. Oh, God, what a terrific smile she had. One that seemed to leap from her face. Flustered, he stopped drumming and set the sticks down.

  “Wow,” she said, “you absolutely, positively must take a bow after that performance.”

  Evan smiled sheepishly, dipped his head, and she clapped.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “My own thing, but I kinda borrowed the vibe from this guy who died a long time ago.”

  “Really famous guy?”

  Evan nodded.

  “Let me guess. The drummer from Zeppelin?”

  He shook his head.

  “There was another one, a guy who basically wrote the book on drumming in the eighties and nineties-”

  “Oh, yeah, what’s his - the guy from Toto!”

  Evan stared at her, dumbfounded.

  “T-that’s right. Jeff Porcaro. How did you-”

  “My dad used to love dino-rock. He basically worshipped at the altar of Steely Dan.”

  Evan twirled the drumsticks.

  “I heard that Porcaro guy died because he got too near some bug spray or something,” she said.

  “That’s an old myth.”

  “What’s the truth?”

  “Drugs. Pretty sure it was cocaine.”

  “Wow. A rock star dying of drugs,” she said.

  “Shocking, huh?”

  She smiled.

  “You in a band?”

  “Not yet. You?”

  “Nope, but I like to follow them around.”

  “Groupie or stalker?”

  “I’m simply a fan, sir, thank you very much,” she said with a sly smile.

  “So who are you liking these days?”

  “There’s this three-piece out of Philly that calls itself ‘Shelter in Place.’”

  “Like the name.”

  “Love it. There’s a club, “The Red Headed Stepchild” in Fells Point where the band’s playing Sunday night. If you dig that kind of thing, the establishment is highly recommended.”

  “Do you frequent it?”

  “On occasion.”

  She smiled and Evan was delighted; such off-the-cuff repartee was generally not in his wheelhouse. Sure there’d been other girls before, friends mostly, but never had he engaged in such delightful banter with a member of the opposite sex.

  “If I go, might you be there?”

  “You never know,” she said with a wink.

  “Sounds pretty cool-”

  “Harmony,” she said, reading Evan’s searching look. “My name’s Harmony by the way.”

  “Great name for a musician.”

  “It was destiny,” she laughed, twirling before extending a hand to Evan.

  “I’m Evan.”

  She took his hand and saw that it was welted and bruised. The aftermath of several undercover operations with his mother.

  “Got that from the drumming,” Evan said, embarrassed, pulling his hand away.

  “Didn’t realize your calling was so rough and tumble,” she replied.

  “Only when you’re a full-contract drummer like me.”

  This made absolutely no sense, but it sounded cool and they shared a final smile before she waved and ducked into the crowd. Evan rose and looked after her. For an instant he thought he saw her shadowed by two slightly older guys, but she melted into a horde of tourists so quickly it was impossible to tell.

  It was dusk by the time he arrived home. He parked the car and entered the rowhouse where Lucy greeted him.

  “Where the hell were you?”

  “I’m seventeen and eleven months.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not responsive,” she said, approaching him. Evan tried to brush past his mother, but she grabbed his arm.

  “Please stop bracing me, mother.”

  “Answer the question, Evan.”

  “I was out getting us a car, okay?”

  She softened.

  “Where?”

  “From this guy Dez knows. He totally hooked us up. It’s a Toyota and it only cost a few thou.”

  Lucy stepped to a window and peered outside. Evan pointed at the Cressida, then handed over the remaining money she’d given him to purchase the car.

  “Happy now, warden?”

  “Takes four hours to buy a car?”

  “I had to test drive it.”

  “Where?”

  Evan tapped a shoe on the floor.

  “What does it matter?”

  “You know the rules.”

  “Sure, I know ‘em. Back by sunset, eyes everywhere, trust no one and keep all potential friends at a safe distance aside from the freaks I meet online as ‘Jon Harker,’ which no one ever gets by the way, because none of them can possibly ever know what I and my saintly mother do for a living.”

  “You’ve got a real lip on you.”

  “Can’t be much of one ‘cause apparently you haven’t heard me before, but in nineteen days I’m out of here. Some real hashtag Audi Five type stuff, mother.”

  “I literally did not understand a word you just said.”

  “It means I’m gonna be vacating the premises. Oh, and I’m not following your rules anymore.”

  Evan trotted up the stairs and into his room. He locked the door and turned out the light. Then he hit the mattress and the unfairness of the whole situation suckerpunched him. He was almost eighteen, a young man coming into his own and what did the future hold? He was graduating from high school, but then what? Familiars didn’t go to college. They didn’t get to enjoy stimulating discussions in lecture halls or football games in stadiums or fraternity parties or any of the other things he associated with higher education. They waited and served and hid in the shadows, always mindful of their position on the food-chain.

  An image of Ha
rmony came to him and he thought about how she was unlike any girl he’d ever met. Not that there’d been very many before her. Only a few might even theoretically qualified as girlfriends, the rest mostly acquaintances and friends of friends who were left behind as he and Lucy moved from place-to-place like nomads.

  His eyes drifted. He saw the faces of the women from earlier in the day on the walls and ceilings. They called to him and smiled, black tongues slithering over impossibly large teeth. Evan thought this was what it must be like for soldiers returning from combat. The sights and sounds and faces never really left you. His eyes closed and he drifted off to sleep for some indeterminate period of time.

  At some juncture he was transported in a dreamy daze back to the darkened home he’d loved so much in Santa Monica. The one that was just a few blocks from the beach and kissed every morning by a lovely ocean breeze. In the dream he was up at the top of the stairs late at night, peering down, listening to his mother and Gideon argue.

  How many times had Gideon pleaded with Lucy? Told her that there wouldn’t be another “episode,” that he was sick and could only get better if she and Evan stayed to comfort and watch over him.

  Gideon’s voice faded and then a ghostly image of his father appeared. A flashback from that gutwrenching night in Texas. He was just a boy when they came for him. He could hear the shrieks as three men battered down the door. Someone shouted in Spanish and then the guns went off. Evan’s dad took two of attackers down before he caught a rifle blast full in the chest. Evan could smell the gunpowder, could hear his father’s final breaths rattle around in his chest. He knelt by his father whose life was seeping away. His father had whispered something about not ending up like him as Lucy appeared and loosed a primal shriek while planting a knife in the neck of the wounded man who’d killed her husband.

  Evan stared down at his hands and for an instant they were smeared with his father’s blood. It sluiced between his fingers, hot and sticky like warm syrup.