First Kill: A Dave Carver Novella (12 page)

The air was heavy, dripping with
humidity. Thick, battleship-gray clouds were forming in the sky
above the Harlem rooftops. I didn’t think too much of that—it
wasn’t unusual for sudden storms to spring up in late
summer.

Even from the distance I could see
sweat pouring down the dies of Guinness’s face. His hair clung to
his cheeks, his temples, the back of his neck. He was out of
fish-bombs, and he was shooting bursts of high-pressured water from
his wand. Most of these hits missed the mark, but the ones that hit
didn’t seem to do much damage—each blow did little more than soak
shirts or mess up hair.

“What’s he doing?” I
asked. The circle of gunmen was tightening. Before long they’d have
him completely in their grasp.

“He’s distracting them,”
Nate said. His face was expressionless, the way he got before a
raid. “Remember, the crystal only works as long as nobody’s looking
for us. He’s keeping their attention on him so they don’t see us.
We gotta go, Dave.”

Nate turned and began to jog. The
refugees from Legendary Bobby’s hesitated, then followed. I looked
over my shoulder, suddenly aware of the screwdriver in my pocket.
It wasn’t much of a weapon, but maybe I could sneak up behind one
of the gunmen, jab it into his neck, and take his gun. I didn’t
know Guinness, but I couldn’t just let him die.

I couldn’t let him die for
me.

I was all set to go when the sorcerer
caught my eye. He was grinning like a madman, and he winked, then
shook his head. The shooters were on him now. It was too late. Some
of them squeezed between cars. Others simply vaulted over the
hoods. In that moment, there were four people with assault rifles
pointing at Felix Guinness. He could have reached out and touched
any of them.

The sorcerer dropped his wand, pushed
a lock of hair out of his eyes, and smiled. He put his hands above
his head in the universal gesture of surrender… and he brought his
fists down with a martial artist’s speed. A peal of thunder roared
like some ancient beast in the clouds and a bolt of lightning fell
from the sky.

The thunderbolt hit Guinness’s
outstretched hands and everything went white. When my eyes cleared
and my ears stopped ringing I could see a crater where the car-fort
had been.

I ran towards the spot and looked into
the pit. The cars themselves were reduced to the charred leftovers
of their frames. There was nothing inside but skeletons. Clothes,
skin, muscle, fat, even the weapons had been burned
away.

I felt, rather than heard Nate come up
behind me. “He must have put all of his power into that last
strike,” he said.

“Why would he do that? He
didn’t even know us.”

“I don’t know,” Nate said.
“Maybe he owed my mom a favor.”

There was nothing more to
say.

Nate continued: “We got
those people out. We saved them, kid.” When I didn’t answer, he put
a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, kid—come on,
Dave
. Let’s go home.”

Chapter 14: The End

The winter was hard.

We spent the autumn investigating the
list Felix Guinness had provided, but we found nothing. Still,
there were a lot of addresses on that list. We couldn’t expect to
check them all in a few months.

Starting in November, the rumors of
strange disappearances slowed to a trickle. By December there were
no longer reports of mysterious figures in dark cellars or attics.
Maria, now working in Squirrel’s tattoo shop, reported in three
times a week and told us there was no sign of vampire activity.
None of us understood why, but it seemed that the vampire reign of
terror was over.

Luisa ‘lifted lots of warm clothes, so
I rarely felt in danger of freezing to death, but rarely isn’t
never. There were nights when I was sure I’d drift off to sleep and
never wake up, that my body would collapse in on itself in a
desperate attempt to feel warm.

Without the threat of vampires, the
Family drifted apart. A few weeks before Christmas, Hakeem decided
he wanted nothing to do with us and left to find some relatives in
Chicago. Over the next month, as temperatures plummeted and snow
fell in steady, blanketing waves, others left the
station.

I couldn’t blame them, though—not
really. There were long, frigid nights when I considered it myself.
The one thing that kept me from leaving wasn’t that I had no place
to go. It was the fact that Felix Guinness had died to save me. If
I left, it would be the same as saying the sorcerer’s sacrifice
meant nothing, and I wasn’t ready to do that.

Life with the Family, for me at least,
had begun as a game. My first few encounters with vampires hadn’t
been fun, of course, and had shown me that this was war, but there
was still a part of me that felt good about life, even as I buried
friends and collected scars. Now, though, without the vampires,
with the cold creeping in like jackals, I was beginning to wonder
if it wasn’t all pointless.

Between New Year’s Day and the first
of February, three members froze to death. Four more, unwilling to
face frostbite and death by exposure, disappeared. I was sad,
watching my brothers and sisters leave, but that was all. No anger,
no bitterness. I’d already decided that I wouldn’t desert the
Family, but I couldn’t begrudge those that did.

March brought with it an early thaw.
The Family had been reduced to eight. Seven, really, now that Maria
didn’t live in the station. We were the hardcores, the ones who’d
silently agreed to give everything in battle with the vampires of
the Bronx.

Because we also agreed that they’d be
back. We didn’t know where they’d gone or what they were doing, but
we knew we hadn’t beaten them. Sooner or later, the vampires would
return, and we’d be ready.

On the last day of winter, we were
proven right.

Maria came down the stairs, that
bright morning (Squirrel hadn’t set foot in the station himself
since we buried Corey), her lips pursed and her eyes bright with
concentration.

“Guys,” she said, her eyes
on Nate. “It’s happening again.”

There had been a vampire attack, the
first in months. Three teenagers, who’d been hanging out and
enjoying the early-onset spring in a playground on East 165th
Street, had disappeared. One of Squirrel’s regular sources had
spotted a strange-looking man climbing into the attic window of a
house just down the block. The worst part? A family of three was
supposed to live there—a mother and two children.

It was one of the addresses on
Guinness’s list, though we hadn’t checked it out yet. When we
realized that, an electric excitement coursed through the
station.

The Family took turns staking out the
house. There was no sign of movement. Mail piled up, snow melted on
the sidewalk, and no one ever came to the door. The kids should
have been going to school, the mother to work. But no one ever
emerged and no one ever came in. For all intents and purposes, the
house on 165th Street looked abandoned.

It was probably a false alarm. Maybe
the mother was behind on the mortgage and, rather than face the
humiliation of eviction, had taken the kids and ran. As for the
missing teens…well, it was sad, but it happens all the time, even
without vampires. There was no sense in attributing everything to
the supernatural. There’s plenty of horror in the mundane
world.

I know it seems ugly, but
I was actually disappointed when it began to seem that there
wasn’t
a vampire nest in
the house. The boredom that had settled into my bones had made me
slow. Without the constant honing by vampires, I was already losing
my touch, losing what had made me special. I was losing my
purpose.

Hour after hour of staring at the
silent, unmoving house was driving me crazy. I decided to give it a
few days, then tell Nate we should call this lead bogus.

About a week into the stakeout, I saw
for myself that this rumor had substance.

Just after midnight and it was as cold
as the depths of winter. I was at a bus stop, watching the house.
The neighborhood still hadn’t recovered from the losses it had
taken during the vampires’ assault. People—the ones still alive and
in their homes—were still afraid to go out at night. The block was
silent. Nothing, no so much as a cop car disturbed the scene. From
my vantage point, I was catty-corner to the house, so I could see
both the front and back doors. There was a basement entrance, too,
and a window high up near the roof to what must have been the
attic. It was this window that opened suddenly.

I jerked up, rubbed at my eyes to make
sure I was awake, that I wasn’t dreaming. Sure enough, a hand was
opening the attic window. I waited a moment, unsure what to
do.

The hand was followed by an arm,
clothed in some dark fabric. A man pulled himself out of the window
and crouched on the sill for a moment. It was late and clouds
obscured the moon, so I couldn’t make out his features, but
streetlights glinted in his dark eyes. I let my head drop,
pretending to be asleep. When I chanced a look again, the man was
descending on a drainpipe, crawling straight down the side of the
house like some kind of gigantic spider.

He dropped into the yard, crouched so
he was hidden by some overgrown brush. I waited a few moments, but
he never reappeared. Still, that was enough for me. If the human
spider routine hadn’t convinced me, the way that his eyes had
sparkled like a cat’s had. The man was a vampire.

The Family was back in
business.

The next night the whole Family
gathered around the house. We spread out, watching as intently as
any hunters in deer blinds. It occurred to me that this was more
action than the neighborhood had probably seen in weeks. Maybe
months.

There was no sign of vampires that
night, but Nate trusted my instincts, and he gave the order. That
morning we’d go in.

It felt good holding my ax in my hand.
The smooth polished wood of the handle made me feel okay, like the
last six months hadn't happened. I felt like we hadn’t missed a
step, and that the Family was right back where we belonged. I
couldn’t help but grin as we waited for the first rays of sunlight
to reach the house, so the vampires would be trapped and we could
slaughter them like the animals they were.

As always, when Nate gave the signal,
I was the first through the door. I felt a pang of something like
shame when I splintered the back door—this wasn’t an abandoned
warehouse, it was somebody’s home—but there was nothing for it. The
door shattered. The impact sent vibrations running up my arms, from
my wrists to my shoulders and down my spine, and I
grinned.

My smile faded as I went inside. The
smell of the air wormed into my nostrils, heavy and pungent. It
seemed metallic at first, a smell I recognized with horrible
suddenness. The other scent, which followed right on the heels of
the first, was also familiar, but it took me a moment to place
it.

The first smell was blood.

The second smell was rotting
meat.

I stalked through the kitchen, Luisa
right on my heels. The refrigerator had a mirrored door, and I
coughed a glimpse of myself. My face was gaunt, my cheeks hollow.
My hair was long and greasy. The patchy fuzz on my jaw couldn’t
really be called a beard, but it was the closest I’d ever gotten. I
barely recognized myself.

I grimaced as I entered what would
have once been the living room. From the smell that hovered
ominously like a shroud I knew what I’d find, but that didn’t make
it any less horrible.

The family of the house were dead in
the living room. The mother had been opened, from navel to throat.
Her entrails had been removed and flung around so they hung like
perversions of Christmas ribbons. Her blood had soaked into the
carpet, giving it a squishy feeling as we walked.

It took a moment to decipher the two
objects hanging from the walls were, the gruesome decorations. The
children had been nailed there, over the little dining table. Their
skin had been pulled from their bodies, leaving a disgusting mess
of raw meat. They’d been licked dry, all of the blood and moisture
sucked from their bodies. Their muscles and bones showed
teethmarks, as if something had been chewing.

Flies buzzed in the room, so many of
them that the sound seemed like a solid mass.

“
Madre de Christo
,” Luisa
whispered.

Painted on the wall in dried and
streaked blood, opposite the corpse of the youngest child, a girl
of about eight years old, was an enormous capital D.

The sight of the letter made the blood
behind my eyes run free. Everything looked red. I tightened my grip
on the ax until the wood creaked. Dimly, as if in an early-morning
dream, I was aware of Nate’s voice calling me, but I didn’t
respond. I couldn’t respond.

It was a different setting—a small
house instead of a cramped apartment—and there were more bodies,
but it could have been a sequel to a different massacre scene.
Blood everywhere, with a macabre, almost mocking single-letter
message scrawled three feet high across the wall. I knew, somewhere
in the my gut, the knowledge heavy like a poison peach pit, that
this was the work of the vampire that had killed my
mother.