With Friends Like These (3 page)

Breathing fast, Greg stood still as Joe prised his fingers from his neck.

“Look, you big pussy, it’s stopped already,” Joe said, smacking his shoulder to make him stumble. “You’re going to be fine. Hell, you’re going to be more than fine.”

Greg caught his balance, looking first to the gathered figures on the bridge and then to Joe in mistrust. “Who are you?” he rasped, hand falling to hide his scraped thigh.

“I’m a vampire, dumb-ass. What did you think?”

Greg stared, trying to make sense of it. There was a man in a puddle of blood on the sidewalk. He’d bitten his neck. Joe said he was a vampire. He was losing it. That was the only thing that made any sense. Desperate for an answer, he looked to the bridge and the hazy outline of watchers. He was going to die. Game over. Hit the reset.

Giving him a sideways smirk, Joe strode to the unmoving pile of blood and nudged him with his foot. “You dead?” he said loudly, as if expecting an answer, and when the body was silent, he hauled back and savagely kicked him. Again and again, he slammed his foot into the limp body, sending it rolling in soggy spurts across the grass until it fell into the river.

“I told you not to eat him,” Greg heard him say as Joe stood on the riverbank and watched the current drag Michel down and away.

Greg stumbled to stand beside him, running shoes going damp as he tried to figure this out. “Shit, man. What did you just do?”

Ignoring him, Joe took a deep breath. “I’m here now!” he shouted, his voice echoing on the flat river in the fog. “I’m here! It’s me, now!
I’m back!
”

“Joe, you just killed him,” Greg said, voice hissing as he looked at the people on the bridge, tall and short all inclining their heads in the mist. “You just killed your brother!”

Joe’s eyes caught the light from a street lamp, making him look wild and unpredictable. “No, you did, my man. My man Greg.”

“Me?” A cold feeling prickled through him. Joe’s brother had bitten him, then fell down, vomited his stomach out, and died. It wasn’t his fault. Frantic, he looked at the bridge and the witnesses, his face going cold. There was no one there. That fast, they were gone.
Had it even happened?

Fists on his hips, Joe faced the river, breathing deep. “You feel that, man? That’s a new wind blowing. Blowing my way, now.”

Greg turned away, stumbling when the soft bank made his steps wobble. He thought he was going to be sick, but the memory of Joe’s brother vomiting blood was too new, and he was scared to see what might come out of himself. “You’re freaking me out, Joe.” Head bowed, he dabbed at his neck to start a soft ache of feeling that quickly ebbed. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but it did seem like it wasn’t bleeding any more. Maybe he hadn’t been bitten as hard as he thought.

In a quick motion, Joe clapped Greg across the shoulder and pushed him back up the gentle incline as the fog began to turn into a soft mist. “I’ll never forget this, Greg. I owe you everything. Hell, I’ll give you everything.” Once on the asphalt, he drew them to a stop, and Greg turned, pliant when Joe aimed him back at the river. “You all see him?” he shouted again, though there was no one left. “You get a good look. You fuck with him, you fuck with me!”

“Dude, what are you on?” Greg said, glancing over his shoulder at the red smear on the sidewalk and the funky hat, the only evidence left. “We gotta get out of here. This is a nightmare.”

“The nightmare is over,” Joe said. “It ended tonight. I can go home, and you’re coming with me.”

“Whoa, wait up, dude.” Greg dropped back, hand raised.

“You don’t want to go back to that peehole, do you?” Joe said, then grimaced, using a finger to tilt Greg’s head so he could see his neck in the brighter light. Mist cooled Greg’s face and neck, and he pushed Joe’s hand off of him.

“Yeah, you’re almost healed up,” Joe said, leaning to scoop up the abandoned hat. “You’ve been drinking my stuff. You can’t go back there. You’re with me now.”

“The protein drink?” Greg stammered, looking at the dark smear and pushing the hat away when Joe tried to give it to him. “Is that what killed him?”

“I told my mom you were a smart bastard.” Joe looked at the hat, then wound up and whipped it into the river. “I can’t kill my own brother. You heard me tell him to leave you alone. I tried to stop him. Everyone saw it. Not my fault.”

The watchers. Vampires? “The juice?” he tried again, remembering how bad it had tasted at first, and then how it seemed to wake him up, make him alive. “It’s vampire juice?”

Joe glanced sideways at him as he started them back in motion in a fast walk, headed for the bright lights of the carnie rides glowing in the mist. He looked totally slipshod, totally Joe, but totally someone new. It was like he’d taken off a homeless man’s coat to show the three-piece suit of confidence underneath. “The juice is just juice. But I’ve been putting a little of my blood in there,” Joe said, watching for his reaction and yanking him forwards when Greg threatened to stop.

“Oh my God!”

“God had nothing to do with it,” Joe said, a hint of humour in him. “If God cared, he would have struck down my prick of a brother before he perverted the family. No, it took you to do that.”

Only vampire blood could kill a vampire. That’s what he had said. “Joe?” The sidewalk seemed to move under him on its own, and he kept moving by rote. “Joe, did you make me . . .” Shit, he couldn’t say it.

“A vampire?” Joe laughed, and Greg exhaled loudly, scared. “No, man. You gotta be born one. You’re better than me at surviving, warm-blooded and shit. You’re my bodyguard now. No one can touch you. You’re safe.”

The wailing of sirens lifted faintly over the park’s trees to them, and they both stopped. It was eerie, like they were linked somehow.

“Shit,” Joe drawled. “Someone dialed 911. God, it was easier before cell phones.” He looked at the bright lights a mile ahead of them. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, starting to run only to halt not three steps away.

Greg hadn’t moved. He wasn’t a vampire. But Joe was.

“You’re not going to freak on me, are you?” Joe said as he came back. “You’re under my protection. My dad would run his dogs for you, now. You’ll be OK. No one will touch you. If they do, they die.”

“You killed your brother.” Greg pointed to the glistening asphalt, the blood slowly washing away. He half expected Joe to be gone when he turned back, but he was still there, thin body slumped to look like he always did with a half-smile on his face and the rain beading up on his smooth, always smooth, chin.

“No,
you
killed my brother,” he said. “And stop worrying, lame-ass. I don’t have any more brothers. I was the last. Seventh son of a seventh son. It starts with me, this generation. Shit, man, we’re going to have fun.”

Greg felt his face go pale. “I’m a seventh son, too.”

Joe smacked him on the back to get him moving again. “Yeah. I know. Let’s run. I want you to meet my family. They’ll be waiting by the funnel cakes for me.” Jogging backwards, Joe started putting space between them. “Come on, man. Let’s go! We got chicks to pound.”

Not knowing why but for that it felt good, Greg started to jog after him and, in a moment, he was beside Joe, feeling like he belonged there. His blood began moving, and the aches in his legs and knees disappeared. He was Joe’s bodyguard?

They ran effortlessly from light to light, almost as if they were holding still and the earth was turning beneath them. “Joe?” he said, breathing fast, but not that bad.

“Yeah?”

He hesitated, not wanting to sound like an idiot. “Can you fly and shit?”

Joe started to laugh and, with that buoying him on, Greg ran in the rain, feeling pretty damn good.