Dave Carver (Book 1): Thicker Than Blood (20 page)

“Good luck,” I said to the empty room.

Look on the bright side,
I thought as the sweet scent of May’s shampoo drifted away, as the taste of strawberries faded from my tongue.
You may be alone, but between the two of you, you can win this war.

You know. I hoped.

Chapter 28

I hadn’t felt alone since I was seventeen. Loneliness is a crushing weight on your chest. It settles on your spirit like an anchor and makes it impossible to breathe normally. It’s the smooth, black walls of a tunnel, closing in until you’re sure you’ll never see daylight again. It’s a whispery voice, deep in the recesses of your mind, telling you that no one can help you. That no cares enough to even try.

After May left for
Guinevere
, I sat in the office and felt alone.

We’re social creatures, human beings. Never underestimate the importance of connections to friends and neighbors. It’s why so many hermits and loners wind up killing themselves. Without those connections, it can start to feel like living is pointless.

My childhood had been…average, I guess. Single mother, but that was far from unusual, especially in my neighborhood, and a deadbeat dad. Mom did her best, working various part-time jobs to supplement her income as a public school teacher in the Bronx. We hadn’t been rich and it hadn’t been glamorous, but it had been home.

And then I returned to our apartment to find my mother with her throat torn out. The apartment was in disarray. Furniture was overturned and walls were dented. The bedroom was soaked with blood. My mom’s face was pale. Her eyes were open. She was on her back in a pool of her own life’s blood.

I was sixteen.

In the rubble immediately following the earthquake that was my mom’s murder, I met a man named Nate Labat. He explained to me what it was that had killed her. A vampire.

Nate was only a few years older than me, but he was the leader of a “family” of vampire hunters. All of them—mostly kids my age—had lost their biological kin to the vampire epidemic that was sweeping the South Bronx. Like me, rather than rotting in the state’s adoption system, they’d decided to do something about it. We were a group of angry, lonely teenagers who knew firsthand that monsters were real. So we did the logical thing: We learned how to hunt and kill vampires.

That was where I learned how to fight—how to really fight, not the awkward swinging of schoolyard brawls. I learned how to stalk a vampire without being spotted. I learned how to fight things that were bigger, faster, and stronger than me. I learned how to kill.

My weapon of choice in those days? An old ax that a member of the Family had “liberated” from a firehouse. It was heavy and even though I was new, I was one of the strongest members of the family. Not that I minded ax duty. I liked the way tremors ran up my arms when the blade struck home. I got good. We all did.

Over the next few months, vampire attacks and mysterious disappearances in the Bronx decreased. Not a lot, not dramatically, but enough that we thought we were making a difference. We were unstoppable. We were like gods.

I never found the vamp that killed my mom. We searched and made contacts in the fringes of the supernatural community, but it was to no avail. The monster never showed himself.

I have a tattoo high on my left bicep that I got during this time. A vampire skull, fanged and snarling, with an ax blade buried between the black eyeholes. Every member of the Family had their own tattoo inked somewhere on their bodies. Like all gang tattoos, they bound us together in a physical, visible way.

My first bout with loneliness was long forgotten at this point. I was almost happy. I know it sounds strange, considering the squalor in which we lived, but there’s something about not being alone that makes it impossible to be less than happy. Sure, we had more impromptu funerals than most people our age, but we all agreed: better a short life with the Family than a long one on our own. I was no longer a tiny, insignificant speck of dust in the universe of New York.

I wasn’t so cynical then. I was actually surprised when it ended.

A few weeks shy of my first anniversary with the Family, we hit a vampire nest on East 165th Street. Somehow, though, they followed us and found our hideout on the abandoned subway platform. They attacked at sundown.

I’d never seen so many vampires at once. Everyone died. Everyone but me.

I ran away. I was seventeen, and despite my adolescent bravado, I was afraid to die. So I ran and let the Family die underground.

Just a kid and, for the second time, truly alone. Loneliness swirled with the shame of cowardice, and I decided to avenge the Family. Every fiber in my body pulsed with a burning desire for revenge. I didn’t mean it before, not really, but I did now: I didn’t care if I lived or died as long as I took those undead sons of bitches with me.

I found the vampires in a house on 165th Street, near the site of the last vampire nest. The exterior was dark brick. The windows were boarded up and the place was surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. It loomed over the neighborhood like the castle of a feudal lord.

I stood on the sidewalk for a long time, shivering under a shabby flannel jacket. My ax was in my hand. Nate Labat’s silver switchblade was in my pocket. It was go time. I knew it was likely to be a one-way trip, but I didn’t care. I needed revenge. I needed to not be alone.

As I took my first step towards my vengeful doom, a strong hand closed on my shoulder. I spun around to see a huge man with a shaved head and a wooly beard. I didn’t know it, but his name was Bill Foster, and he had a story to tell me.

I was amazed to hear about the secret, globe-spanning society of monster hunters, but I was floored when he told me who my father was. Dad, Bill told, hadn’t been a deadbeat. He’d just been dead. My father was a knight of the Round Table, Bill’s best friend, and—you guessed it—killed by a vampire. My mother had told me that my dad had abandoned me, fearing that if I knew the truth I’d throw my life away in some stupid quest for revenge. Life’s funny.

Bill had been looking for me since he heard about my mom’s death. He told me that there was another option. I didn’t have to choose between death and loneliness. He told me there was more to life than revenge.

“You wanna die right now, and I get that, but that...that’s the coward’s way out, boy. You know things, Dave, things that would make the hardest bootleggers wet their bunks. When you know stuff like you know, you basically got three choices. And you know what ain’t one of ‘em? Dyin’ for no reason.

“One: you can forget about it, put it out of your mind and go ‘bout your business. I reckon that ain’t an option for you right now. Two: you can spend the rest of your life cryin’ yourself to sleep at night like a baby scared of shadows. And three: you can get off your ass and do somethin’ ‘bout it. You can help make sure that nothin’ like what happened to you happens to other kids.”

That was the day I joined the Round Table.

Ever since then I’d never felt that crushing weight of loneliness. Even in the darkest days during the time in Guyana I never felt alone, because I knew I had friends and that I was doing the right thing. If I died, my death would have meaning.

That was the biggest loss, I realized, as I sat alone in the office—the sense that I had a purpose. As far as I could see, everything that I had done had been washed away. All of the good Bill had done was erased. And since he had introduced me to this life, so was all of the good I had done.

A short life, full of meaning, was better than one that dragged on and one and meant nothing. I still believed that. That wasn’t changed by any betrayal. Neither was this: I wasn’t the type of person who would lie down and let the world end around him. I was going to fight.

Chapter 29

I don’t remember falling asleep, but I must have, because I remember waking up. There was a titanic roar from the basement and the building rocked on its foundation. My ears rang from the force of the blast and I leaped to my feet. Earl stood staring at the closed basement door, holding his sword.

“What was that?” I shouted. My ears were buzzing.

“I don’t know, sir.” Earl looked at me for a moment to face the source of the danger—the basement door. “Krissy’s down there.”

I slammed my palm on the nearest desk and drew my sword. I ran towards the door. I was too late. I knew that I was too late, but I ran anyway. A second before I would have grabbed the knob, the door flew—literally
flew
—off its hinges. It smashed the front window of the office and landed on the sidewalk in a sparkling shower of glass.

Bill stood on the top of the stairs, free of the pyramid trap. He looked at me for a moment and said, “Hey, Dave.”

Oh, god. Oh, god.

My mentor raised his right hand. Metal red straps, wide as the ribbon on a wrapped present, were strapped around his forearm. Goblin lettering glowed gold against the blood-colored steel. The Gauntlet of Greckhite didn’t
look
all that impressive—its edges were faded and worn and it was covered with scratches and scrapes—but there was something magnetic about the way it encircled Bill’s arm. It was impossible to tear my eyes away from that awful power.

“Like the new jewelry, kid? Your little girlfriend gave it to me.”

Krissy squeezed past the big man, shaking her head. Her eyes were exactly as expressionless as they’d been when she walked into my safe house and pointed the gun in my face. She looked at me and licked her lips. Then she turned back to Bill and said, in a decidedly un-Krissy voice, “This is not the time for games, human. As much fun as it would be to play with the little knight, we have important work to do.”

Bill nodded and grinned. “I never was one to argue wit’ a lady. Get outta our way, Dave.”

I drew my knife. “You know I’m not gonna do that.”

“I said move.”

“Not gonna happen.”

Bill rolled his eyes. Then he raised his hand again. The symbols on the Gauntlet glowed brighter. I felt the heat rising from them, strong enough to give me the feeling of sunburn. The knife flew from my hand and embedded itself all the way across the room to the hilt in the front door.

“Move,” Bill said.

“No.”

Bill took a deep breath, like a bull preparing to charge. He made a fist and whipped his hand down. The floorboards creaked, moaned, and finally gave. Wood splintered, and I was falling through empty air.

I landed, totally un-catlike, on my back. There was a desk teetering on the edge of the jagged hole in the floor above. I rolled away, a second before I’d have been clonked in the head. Bill and Krissy hopped over the hole without so much as looking down.

Earl moaned. A fallen desk pinned his arm to the floor. I pushed it away, grunting with the effort. His arm hung at an obscene angle.

“What happened, sir?” he asked.

“Bill’s a bad guy,” I said. “You okay?”

He lifted the arm experimentally. He winced. “I think it’s broken.”

“I need to know what happened here,” I said. “Did Krissy say anything when she came in?”

“No, sir. Just walked in and went straight for the basement.”

The basement. Where we were now. I looked around. Broken office furniture littered the place. The gate to the pyramid trap was open. It looked intact, save for some scorching around the gate. A pink JanSport backpack lay near the sandstone.

Krissy—no, not Krissy, because she was clearly enthralled again—the thing that was using Krissy’s body had somehow found the Gauntlet. she’d brought it down here, given it to Bill, and the rest was obvious and history.

I crouched next to Earl. “Listen, you need to get yourself to the hospital.”

He tried to push himself to his feet with his bad arm and let out a gasp of air. “You’re going to need help, sir.”

“This is gonna be a tough one, Lieutenant. If you’re not a hundred percent, I can’t use you.”

He winced, but didn’t argue.

“Get to Queens Hospital,” I said. “Stay with Rob and Madison. That’s an order, soldier.”

“Marine.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m a marine, sir. Not a soldier.”

I shook my head and gripped his good shoulder. “No, you’re a knight.”

He smiled weakly. “Thank you, sir. Now go save the world.”

Bill’s sword was gone. No surprise there. I found my own sword in the rubble, pulled the knife from the front door, and left the office.

I had to find Bill. And I had no idea how to start.

It’s not easy to find someone when you have no idea where to look, especially in a city the size of New York. Bill could have been anywhere in the city by now, with the power now at his disposal.

I needed to think. So I did what I always do when I need to get the ol’ brainpower taps flowing: I started walking.

I didn’t get far before I realized I needed to get off the street. I was dirty, bloody, and covered with a thin layer of a gray-white dust. Definitely attention-grabbing. I looked suspicious, a prime candidate for stop-and-frisk. As far as I knew, it wasn’t actually illegal to carry an arming sword in New York City, but it would lead to some interesting questions. Questions I didn’t have time to answer.

So I got a cab. The driver eyed me suspiciously, but he didn’t comment as I settled in. There wasn’t much in my wallet until my first captain’s paycheck came in, but it would be enough for a cab ride or two, as long as I could keep them reasonably short.

“Where to?” the driver said, his voice heavily accented.

I didn’t know. I had no idea where Bill was. One thing I was sure of, though: This was going to be a one-way trip. On my best day, at the top of my game, I figured my odds of taking Bill in a sword fight were fifty-fifty. I wasn’t at the top of my game. Once you added the Gauntlet into the mix, it was starting to look like I was heading to a slaughter. I couldn’t beat him, but I didn’t have to. I only had to stop him.

I was the only active, uninjured knight for a hundred miles. And that was fine with me. A larger-than-I’d-like-to-admit part of my brain howled in approval at the idea of killing Bill. I realized with a sudden sick sense of dread that I
wanted
to cut off his head.

I opened my mouth, to answer the driver’s question and to make myself forget the line of dark thoughts that were sprinkling my brain, and suddenly I knew. Not in an Isaac Newton,
Eureka!
moment of inspiration, but more like some old god had opened my brain and dropped the information in. It was creepy, but I had an image of a building. An old, dark-bricked house that towered like the castle of a feudal lord.

I recognized the building. I knew where it was.

It had been on the sidewalk outside of that building that I had first met Bill.