Chapter 6 #2
Mal sat for what felt like a very long time, but in fact was not a very long time.
He’d caught up to his breath and his world had come back into focus.
The large man was sat next to him, keeping an eye on him.
He had a kind face, long black hair, and a thick accent Mal couldn’t place.
While the manor was elaborate and decorative, the large man was dressed modestly, in light colors.
For some reason Mal had expected him to be dressed in all black.
Mal watched as people bustled around the place.
He presumed they were all vampires, but none fit the part he had for them in his head.
They wore simple clothes but moved with an urgent haste. Mal felt as though he’d missed a memo.
“She might not thank you for this, you know,” the large man said.
“Well, at least she’ll be alive to be mad at me,” Mal said. “Is it that bad? Being a, y’know …”
“Are you kidding? It’s great,” the large man said with a hefty smile. “It’s dealing with other people that makes it a nightmare. They hunt you, or try to arrest you, it’s awful. You probably think we crave blood and kill innocents, ey?”
“You don’t crave blood?” Mal said.
“No more than you crave sugar. Yeah, blood’s nice and all, it gives us a little boost, but we’re not gonna go around killing people for it. How many people would you kill for a chocolate bar?”
Mal sat, shocked and confused. Was there anything he actually knew about vampires?
“Speaking of blood, get out your arm, your friend will need some to heal.” Before Mal had agreed, the large man produced a blood bag and got the needle into position.
Mal rolled up his sleeve and stretched out his arm.
He winced as the needle went in, and watched as the tube connecting his arm to the bag filled with red.
“What’s all the fuss about?” Mal said, trying to distract himself.
“Well, some kid brought a dead girl to our front door screaming about a group that was hunting us, so we thought it best to move our commune along.” Mal thought back to the tilled fields out front.
A vampire commune. Not what he had pictured.
“She took a proper blast, your girl. Scared the life out of us.”
“You saw what happened?” Mal said. Someone had witnessed the ordeal, an actual witness.
“Yeah. We saw when you got here. We thought you were just a regular pervert, but then your friend showed up and made it a bit of a show. Then an old guy warped in out of nowhere, he took a shot at you, then he blinked away.”
“What did he look like?”
“Just an old guy with a long beard. He looked angry.”
“You saw when I got here?” Mal said.
“Yes. Your sneaking, it was, what’s the term, piles of shit?”
“Yeap, that’s the term. I’m guessing you wouldn’t be willing to tell the police any of this?” Mal watched as the man shook his head disapprovingly.
“So what happens to Des now?” Mal said.
“Your friend? She’ll need some place to stay for a few days.
Keep her out of the sun for the first day and away from people who might, you know, hunt her.
Normally, we’d keep her here, show her how everything works, but clearly, it’s not safe.
” He eyed Mal, but a smile broached his lips.
“You are really bad at whatever you were doing. If I were you, I’d avoid doing it again.
Not all of us are this understanding. Some have …
leaned into being a vampire.” A young woman walked up to the large man and said something in a language Mal didn’t understand.
She handed him a USB, and Mal could have sworn he heard her use the name Vlad.
“Thank you, I’ll try and avoid it.”
“Make sure you do. Take this.” The large man, Mal now assumed called Vlad, handed him the USB.
“You must help her when she wakes. Read this, make her read this, it will explain everything.” Mal took the USB and scanned the data, saving the files to his own hard drive just in case he lost it. “Do you know where you will take her?”
Mal did know, but he desperately hoped he could think of an alternative.
The Order would be ideal, if it weren’t for the people there being fundamentally opposed to the existence of vampires.
He could take her back to his dorms, but explaining why an injured, unconscious police officer was recovering in his room would be quite difficult.
This would also be true of any hotel or hostel.
Which left him one option: his parents’ house.
Or his home, as they called it. Mal had kept his undead parents a secret from the world for over a decade and in all that time he had never brought anyone back to his house.
He wasn’t sure what he was more afraid of: his parents meeting Des, or Des meeting his parents.
“I have a place, I think.”
“That is good. Your friend will want to find us. Do you have her number?”
It suddenly dawned on Mal how Des had found him. He reached into his pocket and produced her card. To the ends of the earth, he thought. He handed the card to Vlad and told him to keep it.
“She will be a few more hours,” Vlad said. “Someone will get you when she’s ready to move. I’m needed.”
He turned to leave when Mal found himself saying, “Can I help?”