Roselyn stood over Noah as he worked on opening the many locks on the side of the door, trying to be patient. When she suggested that he just kick it in, he assured her that would kill the element of surprise he needed and that smart vampires tended to take measure to prevent forced entry. He only let her stay within a mile of this house when she solemnly promised that she would not enter no matter what she heard and would stab anything that tried to exit. For this, he handed her the heavy, triangular dagger he had tried to wield against her moments ago.
She watched him pick the locks with agonizing slowness given that her roommate could me lying in excruciating pain just beyond the threshold. Finally, the silent tension was just too keen not to break. "So what ever happened to you?" she asked. "You just dropped out of school one day. I didn't even know."
"Why not?" he replied, a sliver of metal not unlike a paperclip hanging from the corner of his mouth.
"Hmm?"
He removed the small tool from his mouth and inserted it into the fifth lock. "Why didn't you know that I had dropped out? Where were you?" he expanded as though he didn't much care about the question or answer.
She looked to the sky so she didn't have to see his reaction. She'd always hated the lip curl or eyebrow raise which accompanied an explanation of this. "I got hospitalized."
He removed everything from his now stern lips. "Why?"
She was ready for his lecture, his utter disapproval and disgust, but they had once been almost as close as two people could be and he deserved the truth. She could stand his condemnation and had more than enough for him. "That night when I last saw you. I had a bad seizure and the doctors saw cuts on my arms..."
He relaxed. "You cut yourself?"
"I wasn't suicidal," she insisted. "They kept me at the hospital for a few months, until they were convinced I wasn't going to do anything self-destructive."
"Like try and hunt the undead without even a weapon?" he said, going back to his work on the lock.
"Don't be a prick, okay? I was so pissed off that you never visited me in the hospital. I thought because we almost…" she stopped herself from giving voice to this and refocused. "No one knew what happened to you. You just weren't around anymore. Even your parents thought you ran away. Your dad thought I was involved."
"No, not at all. Well, yes to the running away. It's a long story." Another tumbler fell into place with a click.
"Which you are going to immediately share with me."
The door swung open as if to abridge their conversation. "Not right now, I'm not." Noah walked into the house with a curving dagger drawn.
Wick and Dryden crouched on the floor only long enough to gain confidence that there would be no further explosions. Without speaking, Dryden ran through the kitchen and to the source of the explosion to estimate the damage and reason. He left the small, metallic diner for the safety of the night, which enlivened his skin, now unmarred by the effects of the preceding day. He felt his strength returning quickly, along with his thirst.
A glen of trees surrounded the diner, though it there now stood a space in between the trees where Dryden could see the grocery store parking lot on the other side. The embers of fire still glowed and the smell of foulness hanging. He came closer to the source, a brown hole at least ten feet around where once there had grass and a sapling. He did not see any exposed pipes, relieving him of the responsibility for having neglected a slowly building gas leak in his few hours of being a waiter. This absolution relaxed him only slightly.
The trees bore scars from shrapnel. He sniffed at these, surprised that his senses allowed such a rich and revolting stimulus as flaming cow crap.
When he returned to the diner to share what little he had learned with Wick and help sweep up the glass, Jo already paced there, his face bearing some emotion Dryden could not quite make out but feared.
"What? What happened?"
Jo's blue eyes looked to Dryden. "They got her. They got The Betsy."
The pumpkin clomped back to its mistress, its rotted orange guts dragging behind it and trailing black seeds that could never find purchase in any but the most corrupt earth. Its mistresses examined it and, through a series of yes or no questions that stretched to the edge of dawn, slowly understood the state of matters. In reward for its valor, its mistress duct taped any stray pieces she could to its exterior, leaving it an orange and silver vaguely rounded object.
"Sorry, little one, pumpkins yet aren't in season. I'll get you some more pieces in a few months and some blood tonight. You have done well." She patted an open, festering hole in the pumpkin's shell. "There will have to be a meeting."
She picked the pumpkin up with all due care and placed him on a tall shelf in the bathroom, next to the tub full of vinegar.
Roselyn saw the figure coming through the doorway, heard the heavy footprints, and swung her arm out with all the force she could muster. Before the dagger could meet its mark in this creature's chest, his hand grabbed her wrist and propelled the weapon from her grip before she realized what was happening. He twisted her arm behind her back and she felt the pressure of his teeth on her neck. She girded herself for death and the evacuation of her bladder. He released her, pushing her to the ground.
Noah looked down at her, without kindness or malice. "That is all it would have taken. You could be one of them within hours, my enemy. Don't make stupid mistakes. I don't want your blood on my hands, even if you do have a death wish."
She scuttled away from Noah. "Are you kidding me? I was doing exactly what you asked me to do!"
"I told you to be alert, too. They wouldn't have let you go and…" his anger reached the high water mark and receded. "Just be careful from now on, please." He smiled at her and, his expression unchanging, thrust his hand backward and squeezed Eliot's neck as he almost silently approached, the wooden stake Roselyn gave him in hand.
"Let him go! That's Eliot! He's with me!" Roselyn screamed.
Noah released him and Eliot dropped to the ground, rubbing his necks and gasping. Noah stood over him.
"Roselyn, no offense, but this one seems even less useful than you are. Did you bring your boyfriend at bait?"
"I'm not…" Eliot gasped, but couldn't get out any further words through his bruised windpipe.
"Eliot isn't my boyfriend, Noah. He's just a friend. The vampires took his girlfriend."
Seth offered Eliot his hand. "My condolences."
Eliot pushed the hand aside and stood, dusting himself off. "Why condolences?"
"Because your girlfriend isn't here any more. No one is. They've cleaned out."
Shane fidgeted against the seatbelt. "Any chance you'll let me know where we're going? Just a hint?"
"Disneyworld," Ash said. "No, there is no chance, kiddo. You'll know when you get there."
Shane tried to pull at her wrist to dislocate as much as she could, but the pain was too great and the popping of her metacarpals came too loudly. What good was healing if it hurt so damn much? Briefly, and not for the first time, Shane missed her ex-girlfriend, the drug dealer. She would have just the right pill to erase the pain, to facilitate this escape from a moving vehicle.
"You drive very well for a vampire," Shane said, then laughed at the thought.
"What? Why is that funny?" Ash demanded. "I always kicked ass at driving. That's how I killed the bitch who made me. She was having me chauffer her around, so I drove straight into a tree. Broke every bone in her body, I bet. Drained her of whatever blood didn't soak into the upholstery, then staked her skanky ass to the ground until dawn. When I came back the next night, there was just dust."
"Why would you do that?!"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time. Less competition. …You ask too many questions. I shouldn't've let Seth talk me out of gagging you."
The car ride passed in silence for a few more minutes. Seth had blindfolded Shane before beginning this trip, but she could hear other cars whizzing by and she could feel the car slowing and accelerating. She did not think they had left Red Hook by much, just taken lots of the winding roads along the vast farms that occupied much of the rural landscape outside of the town proper. She wished she knew the landscape better, if just so she would have any advantage.
"Could you roll down my window? It's getting stuffy in here. I do still need to breathe, you know."
"You do, huh?" Shane heard the sigh, then the window cracking only half an inch. She could smell the pastures and the petrichor that signaled recent rain. The odor was familiar and safe, but told her nothing new about her surroundings.
The car stopped suddenly in a crunch of gravel and the scent of mud. "Everybody out!" Ash yelled, then giggled. She unbuckled Shane from her seat and hoisted Shane over her shoulder, further confirming in Shane that vampires were especially strong, certainly much more so than she was. Shane had a few inches on Ash and, though she was a thin girl owing to a life of tomboyishness and pathological literacy, Ash carried her with no more struggle than a knapsack full of cotton.
Shane hung over Ash's shoulder, making the job neither harder nor easier. If she struggled, Shane had no doubt that Ash would hurt her. While pain was a temporary condition for Shane, it wasn't one she cared to explore right now. She knew Ash would appreciate the opportunity to be creative in her torture methods, so she bore this as best she could. Shane would observe. She would find a weakness. She would get out of this.
Red Hook is a serialized novel being written by Xen. It didn't happen to you, your best friend, or his cousin. Why? Because it didn't happen. All persons, living, dead, undead, or unliving are purely coincidental. Any real persons are used fictiously. What you are about to read is not a news broadcast. No portion of this book may be distributed without the expressed written consent of Xen. Feel free to rope your friends into reading it, though. Do it or I start shooting PuppyOrphans.
He is syndicated throughout the internet and will write for you if you pay him.
