Chapter Ten – Jack
Chapter Ten
Jack
The trailer only had one other room, so it wasn’t like Rabbit could hide from me. I caught up with him as he was centering himself on a dingy bed, his back pressed up against the wall, curled up with his knees under his chin.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. She was supposed to meet us here.”
“Why isn’t she here then?”
Because the bad guys got to her, presumably. “I’m not sure, Rabbit.”
“Well—we have to go find her! We need to help her!”
“I don’t know where she is.” I held up empty hands.
“Ask that stupid magician for help!”
“I don’t happen to have his number,” I explained, trying to keep him calm. “We’re outside of phone service besides, and we have no car.”
“If she’s in trouble, then we have to do something!”
“Your mom’s tough. She can handle herself.” I sat down on the bed, far away from him. “Our job is to keep you safe.”
“Like from that thing?” he asked, pointing a dramatic hand down to where we’d been.
“Yeah, actually. How the heck did you wind up inside that cage?”
He made a face, wrinkling his nose. “Buster wanted to smell it.”
“Well, not all of Buster’s ideas are good ones.” I assumed werewolves aged at the same time as their human hosts, because I doubted Buster was a dog-year’s forty-nine. “Lesson learned.”
Rabbit sighed and slumped forward, picking at lint on the sheet in front of him with one hand, while he threaded the other’s fingers through his toes. “How come now?”
I inhaled. I thought I knew what he was asking, and dearly wished Angela were here to answer him instead. “I don’t know, really. But you’ve been a werewolf your whole life. So’s your momma.”
His eyes flashed up at me. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“But—then—why didn’t she ever tell me?”
I winced. “I think she thought she was protecting you.”
“From?”
“From chasing after stinky things? I don’t really know, Rabbit.”
“From the bad guys,” Rabbit said with a knowing sigh. “My daddy’s alive—and he’s a bad man.” He watched me carefully to see what effect his words would have.
“I know—and he is, Rabbit. I’m sorry. You deserve a good dad.”
There was a long silence, during which I could almost hear him think. “Are you a magician?”
“No. I’m a vampire.” No point in lying now.
“Huh,” he said, not entirely surprised. “S’prolly why you smell a little dead, then.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah—that other lady too.”
I made a show of sniffing under my armpits. “I don’t know….” I caught him thinking about smiling, before he rolled his eyes.
“It’s not bad. Just a little sweet. I don’t know why I could never smell it till now.” It didn’t seem wise to tell him it was probably because his mother had fed him silver. “Do you have fangs?”
“Like a snake’s.”
“Can I see them?”
I leaned forward slowly, mouth open, like I was going to show him, and then pulled back, snapping my teeth together. “No. They’re not toys. Sorry.”
“Aww!” he complained.
“It’s time for you to get to sleep.” I started tugging the sheets out from underneath him.
“I can’t sleep—there’s monsters!”
“We’re monsters too,” I said, gently unfolding him into a prone shape.
“But what about Mom?”
I paused. What about her? We hadn’t really discussed what to do if I was on my own. I wasn’t cut out for this. “I’m worried about her too, Rabbit. But let’s give her the rest of the night.”
“If she’s not here by morning, can we go after her?”
“I’ll be asleep then, sorry. But if she’s not here by tomorrow night—we’ll figure out something, monster to monster, you and me.”
A whole day was much too long, I could see it on his face—and what was worse, I agreed. But we were too far away from civilization to do anything tonight.
“I’m not tired,” he said, as I stood.
“Pretend to sleep until it works then. I’ll be right outside the door.”
“Swear?”
“Swear.” I smiled at him as warmly as I could, and then closed the door behind me.
“Missed your calling, eh?” Maya asked when I returned to the living room. She was sitting on the couch, with a beer in one hand, and her heels on the coffee table.
I took a seat on the couch’s far edge. “I doubt it.”
“Me too,” she said. “Tamo’s on his way by now.”
“Great,” I said, my voice flat.
“What’s the beef with you two, anyways?” she asked, while scooting closer on the couch, like it was Netflix night and we were more than friends.
“If he never told you, I’m sure as hell not.” I stood, found no room in the place to pace, and so circled around, to sit down on the couch’s opposite end, as she laughed.
“You don’t have to be so prickly all the time, Jack.
Not everything has to be so black and white.
” She stroked the wide end of her beer from her knee down to her hip.
“I mean, come on. Look at me. Any red-blooded man in the world would be interested in this. And I think you’ve got a little red-blood inside you still, don’t you?
” She leaned forward and set her beer down on the table.
“Come on, Jack, aren’t you the least bit hungry? ”
I leaned toward her slowly, with intent—and then reached over her to take her beer.
“Nope,” I answered with a swig. “I don’t really like you and I definitely don’t trust you, Maya.
So, no—what I feel around you is the opposite of hunger.
Unless a perpetual urge to break your neck is sort of the same thing. ”
She leaned forward fearlessly, her expression betraying no emotion. “You’re just jealous I got to fuck your boss before you did.”
My hand tightened on the beer bottle as I made a strangled sound.
Somehow, among everything else that’d happened, I’d completely forgotten.
“Yeah. About that,” I began—then the sound of an arriving truck cut me off.
The engine stopped, boots stomped up, and the door swung open, revealing Tamo, in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.
Guess he was off the clock. And over one of his shoulders, he was carrying something—someone—wrapped in plastic tarp.
The wind outside changed, and wafted in the scent of fresh blood, just as I noticed some dripping from the tarp.
“Did I interrupt something?” Tamo asked, looking between us like he was the inopportune-timing-man on a shitty sitcom.
“Absolutely not,” I said, rocking back. I kept hold of the beer bottle, it was the closest thing I had to a weapon.
“Take the top off, baby,” Tamo said—and Maya leaned forward to do just that, unscrewing the coffee table’s top again.
“Who’s it for?” she asked, flipping the lid to one side, giving Tamo her best wide-eyed innocent girl look.
“For whoever wants some. Can’t go into this thing hungry. Plus, he’s juicy,” Tamo said, hopping into the well. Maya hopped right in after him.
I could feel my fangs begging to bud—if I hadn’t drank from Zach earlier tonight, they would’ve. As it was, the scent—there were openings in the mine below, there had to be, fans or vents—the scent of fresh blood washed back over me in an intoxicating wave.
The scent of blood was so fresh it was clear its owner was alive.
I knew he—or she—wouldn’t be when they left here.
Normally I’d do something about that, but Rabbit’s safety depended on my silence.
So instead, I leaned over the tunnel’s edge, trying to ignore the primal way my hunger stirred and the isolating feeling of being left out.
Maya returned before Tamo did, looking up at me with a blood-induced swagger, and I would’ve sworn that her color was slightly more pink.
“Make way,” she said. I did, and she sprang out—no need to catch the side and pull herself up now.
“That,” she said, rolling her head around her neck, “was tasty.”
Her eyes flickered over to me, where I must’ve been looking at her like a dog watches from under the table. “Oh, go. Just because you’re awful doesn’t mean I’m going to slaughter a child.”
“Swear it,” I said, using my whammy on her.
“I’m here for the money, not for the blood,” she said.
“And you’ll protect him from Tamo?”
“Goddammit, Jack—yes.”
I knew she was compelled to tell the truth. Before I could second-guess myself I jumped in.
The warren of tunnels below now had irregularly shaped spatters of blood every few feet. I followed these like clues until I found Tamo, lounging against a wall, wiping blood out of the corners of his lips with thumb and forefinger. “Jack,” he said warmly.
“Tamo.”
“I left you some.” He tilted his head into the darkness behind him.
“Barely.” The life I sensed behind him was on the wane.
“Well, you are last. Besides—I thought that wasn’t how you rolled?”
“It’s not.”
“So you’re just down here compromising your morals for….”
“Curiosity.”
Tamo laughed. “Good thing you’re not a cat, Jack.”
“Where’d you get him? Or, her?” I had a sudden irrational fear that it was Angela in the next room—but Maya would’ve said something, and I definitely would’ve smelled her—
“From just outside. Snooping around. Probably one of Sangre Rojo’s crew.”
Red blood? “You mean there’s more than one vampire gang in town?”
“There’s a lot more going on here than you realize—then you’ll ever realize, given the glacial rate at which you choose to realize things.” He kicked himself off of the wall. “Have fun with the dregs—I’ll be heading upstairs.”
I didn’t like him being up there with Rabbit without me, but I did believe Maya, so I took a tentative step toward darkness and death.
“I can hear you,” whispered a dying man in the dark.
So they’d left him his throat. “Hey,” I said, like I was meeting him at a coffee shop. “Sorry about all this.”
“Fuck you,” he said, and snorted softly.
Here he was, all ready to die, and I was interrupting him. All the same, I felt the need to absolve myself.
“Look, I can’t save you. I’m sorry. There’s extenuating circumstances going on above. I’m watching a friend of mine’s kid. I can’t put him in danger for you, and that’s all there is to it,” I said as I walked in. “Is there someone you want me to let know that you died, once you’ve gone?”