Chapter 13 #2
Relief flooded his face, and he nodded. “Okay. Good. I’m liking that.”
“Hello?” Allie said “Sunlight? Can we stay on topic? So you can walk in the sun, no problem?”
“You’ve seen me in the sun. On the boardwalk.
At school. And yeah, so far I don’t feel anything.
Don’t get a tan, which sucks, but I guess that’s good.
I figure that means the sun is doing something to you, and right now I don’t want it to do anything.
Like I said, I like being in the world. Heck, I even like high school. ”
“And the killing thing?” Allie asked. “We know that stakes work. What about holy water? What about sticking something through your eye like for demons?”
“Yeah, staking works. Although I have to admit, I think you’d have a hard time getting that spatula in through my skin and between my ribs to get my heart.”
I tilt my head and stare him down. “Want me to test that theory?”
“Really don’t.”
Allie does a hand roll, as if urging the conversation along. “And? Stiletto through the eye?”
“Nope. Like I said, we’re not like the demons you’re familiar with. There’s no singular demon living inside me, just a piece of that original one. I guess that’s why that telepathy thing works.”
“Telepathy? You can communicate with other vampires?”
“The old ones can. Not me. I guess it gets stronger as you get older. Like the demon inside you is maturing or something. I just get senses of when other vampires are around.”
I tapped the spatula on my palm. “Well, that’s interesting,” I said. “So how many vampires are around in San Diablo right now?”
“As far as I know, it’s just me.” He looks at Allie and shrugs. “Lone wolf.”
“You mentioned your parents before,” Allie said.
“They’re long dead,” Jared said. “I have to create fake parents for school and stuff. It’s not that hard. They exist entirely on paper.”
“Wow,” she said, with the same awe as if he were a movie star.
“So tell us all the ways to kill a bloodsucker,” Eddie said. He’d been watching Jared, his caterpillar brows pulled together as he studied the boy, man, vampire, whatever. “Trust me,” he added, “I know them all. Make sure you’re giving us full disclosure here, boy.”
Jared started s to count off on his fingers. “Staking, like I said, through the heart, not through the eye, and it’s got to be wood. Don’t know why, don’t ask. Burning works, and from what I’ve seen, it’s pretty damn unpleasant. Other than that, I don’t think there’s much of anything.”
“Drowning?” Allie asked.
“Don’t think so. Would rather not test it.”
“Holy water?”
I fought a grin. Clearly she was getting into this interrogation.
Jared shook his head. “Holy water bothers the older vampires. The older they are, the worse it is. Me, I could stick my hand in holy water and not feel much but more than a warm tingle. But it’s not going to burn away my flesh.”
“That totally sucks,” Allie says, to which Jared’s brows rise, not surprisingly.
“Excuse me?”
“No, no, not in ways to kill you. I get that it’s probably a good thing from your point of view. I’m just amazed at how badly Hollywood got it. I mean, honestly, they could really use a technical advisor.”
“I think the way they do it makes for better movies.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I saw this one movie about a week ago, that had this horde of vampires that—”
“Kids,” I said. “Can we stay on topic?”
“What is the topic?” Allie asked, which raised a very good point. I’d lost the thread of the conversation myself.
“Him,” I said, going back to the only thing I was sure of. “We’re trying to get to know our new friend, Jared.”
Jared held his hands up, as if in surrender. “I’ve told you everything you’ve asked, and I’ll tell you anything else you think of, but do you mind losing the stake? I’d just feel more comfortable chatting with you if I didn’t think I was going to be impaled any second.”
I nodded, since that seemed more than reasonable, and we ended up around the kitchen table, just like we had originally planned.
“So you don’t eat? Or you can’t eat? Because these cinnamon rolls are really good,” Allie said, pointing at the rolls that only Eddie had been enjoying.
“I can eat. I just don’t eat much. It slows me down. Makes me sluggish.” He looked between me and Allie. “So there you go. A tip for catching a vampire. Feed him a heavy meal.”
I bent my head, and smiled. Yeah, this kid was growing on me. Kid. Wasn’t that something? The guy had close to a century on me, and I still thought of him as a teenager.
“Tell us how you were turned,” I said, as Allie used a spatula to get the cinnamon rolls out of the pan and put one on each of our four plates.
“What I said before about my family was true. They were all killed by demons. But I got away. I thought I was safe, but it turns out I was dying. One of the demons had attacked me, and I’d caught my leg on a nail.
Sliced me straight down the calf, and ripped open an artery, I guess.
All I know is there was blood everywhere.
” He bends over and tugs up his jeans, revealing a long jagged scar on his calf.
“So a vampire turned you?” Allie asked. “A vampire saved your life. What do they call that? A sire?”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t have a sire. I’m a free agent.”
“Free agent?”
“In the vampire world, you’re beholden to the one who turns you, even if you don’t want to be. You go against a vampire who turns you, even if they’re doing shit you don’t agree with, and it gets bad. It’s a clique-ish world. A little bit like high school, I guess.”
“But you don’t have a sire? How’s that work?”
I picked at my cinnamon roll, proud of the way that Allie was pushing him, asking all the right questions.
“A demon staked him. I ended up killing the demon. I didn’t even know how then. It was just dumb luck. I didn’t know what I was either. I just thought I was sick from the loss of blood or something. But I passed out, and I woke up craving blood.”
“You drank blood? I thought you said—”
“I told you, I didn’t know anything. The craving is still there.
It’s there all the freaking time. So yeah, I drank.
There was somebody in my town. A guy who’d come around to steal things.
I caught him. I drank from him. I drank more than I should have, and I killed him. And I didn’t like it. I don’t like—”
“What?” I asked.
“Being out of control,” he said. “That’s what the blood does to you. It steals control.”
“Did you turn that guy? The one who stole things? Did just drinking from him turn him or has Hollywood got that part right about the whole sharing and sucking and back and forth thing?”
“No, they mostly got that right. The demon lives in the blood, so taking their blood doesn’t do it, making them drink from you, that makes it happen.”
“Can you walk on holy ground? You were at Mass this morning.”
“Yeah, sure. Right now, anyway. Like I said, things change as you get older. I met one vampire who was over a thousand years old. He’s not insane.
He’s limited how much blood he drinks, but he can’t go out in the sun and he can’t go into a church, and holy water burns the shit out of him.
But he mostly feeds on animals, and he’s not a whack job. ”
He looked between me and Allie. “There’s a lot of whack jobs out there.”
He looked down for a moment and I held up my hand before Allie could ask another question, because I was certain that he was debating whether or not to tell us something.
After a moment, he proved me right. “The vamp who turned me,” he said softly, “he was dressed like a priest. Had the clerical collar and everything, you know? I still don’t get that. I don’t get how he could have been a priest.”
“Well he must have been faking it,” Allie said.
“Yeah, maybe.” Jared shrugged. “Yeah, he must have been.”
But there’s something in his voice that made me think that he doesn’t believe that.
I met Eddie’s eyes. I knew that he’d heard the same stories that I had.
Stories of vampire priests. Those who fought the demon by becoming the demon, ultimately sacrificing themselves for the greater good, but taking out their vampiric brethren in the course.
Surely some of those, if that was true and not just a rumor, would have succumbed to the powers of the vampire, sacrificing their duty to eradicate the creatures in order to become one themselves.
The thought made me shiver. I hadn’t dealt with many vampires in my career. As Jared said, compared to the demons who infiltrate society, they’re a rare breed.
“—your strength?”
I’d lost the thread of the conversation, but caught on quickly when Jared said, “Yeah. Like I said, I don’t do the human blood thing, so I’m not as strong. But I’m also not a whack job. I consider it a win-win.”
“Why are you in high school anyway?”
“What else am I going to do? I have to grow up, at least as far as I can. I mean I can pass for twenty-two or twenty-three, but after that I have to move and start all over again.”
“Move?” Allie asked. “Where did you move from?”
“Yeah. I buy fake documents. I have a parent on paper who’s just never around.
That way I can deal with all of the banking stuff.
Most of the time I’m twenty-one. It’s just easier that way.
I’m only seventeen on paper now because I wanted to go to Coronado High.
And I moved here from Vegas. A lot of vampires in Vegas. And not all of them are whack jobs.”
“You moved last year?”
“Yeah, a few months before the end of the last school year. I came in as a sophomore.”
“Why?” That time, I asked the question.
“I got word that I might be needed. That there was work to be done. Lots of demons.”
“Got word from whom?” I asked.
He looked me dead in the eye. “I got word.”
I considered pushing the point, but decided not to. Trust takes time after all, and I understood why he might not trust me yet, just as I didn’t completely trust him. “You didn’t bother reducing the demon population while we were all in Rome.”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t want to risk getting staked. I needed to be able to keep an eye on Allie,” he added, his eyes going straight to hers.
Her brows rose. “So you’re just here to babysit me?”
He shrugged. “I want to fight demons. I want to help. You can call and ask, but I’m not one of the bad guys.”
“Call and ask? Who?” Allie looked baffled, but I already knew. Somehow, some way, he had a connection with Forza. And I’d lay odds that it wasn’t Father Corletti who was his contact, but Father Donnelly.
“Why didn’t you say something before?” Allie asked after Jared confirmed my suspicion. “Like last school year?”
He poked at his cinnamon roll, still not having taken a bite. “I don’t know. All of this maybe? I mean, your mom’s a demon hunter. You’re what? A demon hunter in training?”
“I—” Allie began.
“Her job is to kill me,” he interrupted, pointing to me. “There’s a demon inside me, after all.”
Allie looked at me, her eyes full of pain and fear. “That’s your job? That’s what it boils down to?”
“Oh, baby, no,” I said, knowing the question wasn’t about Jared at all. “That’s not what my job means at all.”