Misty Rose: Nature
Chapter 40
Nothing else really happened until a couple days before Halloween. I went hunting of course, which helped make Kaitlyn less distracting again. Did some deliveries, usual stuff. Kaitlyn had found out about another party, and she wanted to go. I wasn’t too into the idea because… well, there’s this thing in our city. A bunch of other cities, too, actually. People would like to go around and steal stuff and break stuff. And set fires. A whole shitload of fires. Most people called it Devil’s Night, and older people said it used to be a lot worse, but bad shit still happened the day before Halloween. Which was the day after the party. Um… Devil’s Night was the day after the party. So I was kind of… thinking maybe there might be some kind of problems, but Kaitlyn wasn’t worried.
We were just starting to get ready, like a couple hours after sunset, when my phone rang. Ferret’s ringtone. I thought maybe he was wanting to come along. I wouldn’t mind, but he’d have to figure out how to blend in because it wasn’t officially a costume party. I picked up my phone and answered the call.
“Hey, what’s up?” I asked.
“Hey, Misty,” Ferret said. “You busy?”
“Sorta,” I said. “Kaitlyn and I were goin’ to this party.”
“Oh,” Ferret said. “Well, shit.”
“Somethin’ wrong?”
“We… kind of need you tonight. I’m sorry.”
“Why? Is there…” I paused. “Oh. It’s the drivin’ thing.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I can do it. Just let me tell Kaitlyn.” She was in the bathroom, last I knew.
“Great,” Ferret said. “ I’ll be there in ten minutes.” He sounded… well, Ferret usually sounded like he had some kind of joke in mind. Happy, you know? But he’d sounded serious over the phone. So whatever was happening was probably serious, too. And I didn’t want to have to cancel on Kaitlyn. I mean, I didn’t really want to go to the party, but I was still going to go. And now, I couldn’t.
“Kaitlyn?” I said, then turned around. As it turns out, she was out of the bathroom and standing behind me. Not, like, trying to scare me behind me, though.
“I heard,” Kaitlyn said. “The driving thing?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Kaitlyn said. She started moving around the apartment, picking things up. Then she walked back over to me and handed me the bundle of things. Hoodie, loose jeans, my pair of… work boots, I guess, not fashion boots. My Dad gave them to me when I moved out. And, as it turned out, her pistol. I hadn’t seen the thing for a while, so I didn’t know if she’d gotten rid of it or what. But she hadn’t, and she was giving it to me. Which was fine because it saved me asking if I could borrow it. Something about how Ferret was on the phone made me think this wasn’t going to be a minor thing and… I felt like maybe I should be ready. She’d also given me her pepper spray.
“Um…” I said, looking at the gun and spray. “If you’re sure…”
“Take ‘em,” Kaitlyn said. “I’m going to stay home tonight, so I don’t need them.”
“Okay. So, um, how…” I looked at the gun. Sort of helplessly, I guess.
“Get dressed first,” Kaitlyn said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve got a holster, too.”
I nodded and went into the bathroom to put on what Kaitlyn had given me. Which was actually kind of smart. I know that sounds like I don’t trust Kaitlyn to use her head, but… sports bra and shorts instead of normal underwear because she probably thought I’d need to run or something. The boots weren’t great for running but they’d be better to protect my feet than sneakers. And of course the gun. That was probably the big clue, yeah? I’d left that on my bed, so I’d have to remember to get it. I also pulled back my hair into a ponytail like usual because probably the last thing I needed was hair in my face. I was already a natural blond, so I didn’t need my hair blinding me as well as messing with my brain. When I went back out to the main room, Kaitlyn was waiting for me. She’d put her gun in a holster. She looked me over, then got one of her belts out and threaded it through the loops of my jeans, also running it through a loop on the holster. Of course, Kaitlyn had picked the studded leather belt I thought of as her punk belt, but I wasn’t going to complain.
“Keep the holster back here,” Kaitlyn said. She’d lifted up my hoodie to put on the belt, and for just a sec I felt a little embarrassed that my whole midriff was exposed. Which was dumb, but it happened. Kaitlyn slid the holster so it was at the small of my back. Then she grabbed my right hand and pulled it around to put it on the grip of the gun. “There’s a tab here. Flick it with your thumb before you try pulling the gun out.”
“Okay…” I said, feeling for the tab with my thumb.
“Let’s see you pull the gun out,” Kaitlyn said. She sounded serious, so I did my best. Took a couple tries, but I got the thing out. Then I tried to put it back, which Kaitlyn helped with. “Good enough for now,” she said. “We can work on putting it back later.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked over my shoulder.
“Mike taught me when he gave me the gun,” Kaitlyn said. Which made sense.
“Okay. It’s not… loaded, is it?” I didn’t want to set the gun off by accident.
“Nope,” Kaitlyn said. “Bullets in the clip, none in the chamber. You’ll have to pull the slide back if you’re needing to fire it. You know how to do that?”
“Like in the movies?”
“Yep.”
“I can manage that.”
“Good,” Kaitlyn said, pulling my hoodie back down and over the holster. She stood for a moment, I guess seeing if the holster was obvious, then she turned me around and hugged me. Tightly. So maybe she was more worried than she seemed. I hugged her back, and we stood there for a moment, until my phone got a text. Ferret. His ringtone, anyway.
“You be careful, okay?” Kaitlyn said, pulling back enough to look at my face.
“I will,” I said. “Promise.”
Kaitlyn nodded. Just for a second, it looked like she wanted to… say something, or maybe do something, but she changed her mind. Then she let go of the hug and slapped my butt. “Go kick ass, vampire chick,” she said, grinning at me. She looked… proud? Which was weird.
I grinned back as best I could, then picked up my phone. Yep, Ferret. I texted him that I’d be right out, then made sure I had my keys. I also sort of hesitated over my wallet. It had my driver’s license in it, and I was going to be driving but… would it be worse if we got caught if I had ID on me, or if I didn’t? Yeah, I actually worried about that. Me, a vampire, carrying a hidden gun that probably wasn’t legal and wasn’t even mine, going to do something with other vampires that probably wasn’t legal either, and I was worried about getting caught driving without a license. That’s how my brain worked. Right about then, though, the doorbell rang, so I decided to just leave my wallet at home. I went and opened the door, and it was Ferret, who had to be nervous or something because he actually rang the damn doorbell instead of just letting himself in.
“Hey,” Ferret said. He was wearing his black leather trench coat and sunglasses. Lots of black in what he was wearing, actually, and he looked pretty serious. “You ready?”
I glanced back at Kaitlyn, who smiled at me. “Yeah,” I said. I tried to not show that Ferret being all serious was making me even more worried, but I probably failed. Oh, well. “Let’s go.”
Ferret’s repair van… or one of them, I guess, because this one was a different company… was parked right outside our door. I started heading towards the passenger side, but Ferret put his hand on my shoulder and gently pointed me towards the driver’s door, so I walked there instead. Guess I was going to be driving right away. Which was fine. Really. No pressure. I opened the door and stuck my head in, expecting the van to be empty, or maybe just Pops, but… no. Pops and Victoria and Father Riggs and the army guy who’d grunted at me were all there, sitting on the benches in the back. I smiled at Father Riggs, and he sort of smiled back, but he also looked sad. Pops looked grim, which was worrying because he normally looks like he was thinking about a joke or something. Victoria looked cold. As usual. And the army guy glared at me. They were all wearing black Except the army guy, who was wearing this kind of gray camo. And they had weapons.
Actually, that’s not the best way to put it. They looked like they were going to a war. Father Riggs didn’t have anything I could see. Same with Ferret, but his coat could have hidden something. The army guy had a rifle, don’t know what they’re called, but the kind you always see military people with, and a couple of big old pistols. Victoria had… well, I know what a tommy gun looks like. I’ve seen some of those movies. What she had was shaped like a tommy gun, but… I don’t know, more modern? It had fancy tech stuff on the barrel, and a knife bolted on underneath, and all the stuff that I remembered being wood looked like some kind of black plastic, but it still had the big circle thing in front and the grips and everything else. It was on a strap over her shoulder, but it was definitely a fucking tommy gun. She was wearing a dark pinstripe pants suit, which seemed kind of weird for going to a fight, but for all I knew, that was normal for Victoria and she was just weird in general. And Pops had a sword across his lap, in a metal… whatever sword holders are called. Curved blade, it looked like, and a hand guard thing made of some kind of shiny yellow metal. Brass? Couldn’t tell. Didn’t really care, though, because my brain was trying to get used to the idea of Pops with a sword. Then I remembered what he’s said about fighting Confederates, which helped.
I guess I’d been staring for too long because the army guy glared at me. “Are we going to sit here all night? I can just walk if I need to.”
Pops shook his head. “Hi, Misty,” he said to me. “These are my friends.”
“I, um… figured,” I said. Then I remembered why I was there and pulled myself into the driver’s seat. Ferret got in as well and handed me the keys. I fumbled a little, but managed to get the van started. Score one for me, right? Doing a great job as the driver. I felt like the army guy and maybe Victoria were glaring holes in the back of my head, but I tried to ignore it. As I pulled the van out of the lot, I saw Kaitlyn was still standing in the open door, leaning against the door frame, watching me drive away. Maybe she forgot I had vampire night vision, because now she looked worried, but there wasn’t much I could do about that right then.
Once we were on the road, army guy had more to say. “Speed limit,” he told me. “We don’t need to attract attention. I’ll tell you when to turn.” Then it sounded like he’d turned back to the others. “I don’t know why we need to involve a civilian,” he told the others.
“She’s trustworthy,” Pops said calmly. “And it means none of us need to stay with the van.”
“She’s a liability,” I heard Victoria say, cold as usual. “She might run away.”
Well, gee, thanks, I was thinking. Nice to know I’m not universally loved.
“She’ll be fine,” Ferret said, smiling at me from the passenger seat. “Won’t you?”
“Um, sure,” I said. Wished I sounded more confident, but the army guy just grunted. Then the four in the back started… talking tactics or something. I think. Couldn’t really tell because even with my vampire senses I couldn’t quite hear them. Or maybe someone was hiding them from me, don’t know.
“Turn right here,” the army guy commanded after a bit. I turned right. Then I glanced back at him in the rear view mirror and blinked a couple times.
“Holy shit!” I said. “Are those grenades?” Whatever they were, army guy had at least six of them, all stuck to a strap across his chest, and for some reason that made me even more worried. I mean, okay, guns are one thing. That’s serious. But fucking grenades, that’s… if someone’s throwing grenades around, someone’s going to die, and it’s going to be messy. Or that’s what I was thinking anyway. Probably got the idea from some movie or something, I don’t know. I just knew that even the street gangs didn’t have actual military grenades.
“Shut up and watch the road,” was army guy’s reply. He did not sound happy.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Shutting up, sir.” And I did. We drove on for a bit longer, with army guy sometimes telling me to turn. Got to be fair, he didn’t do that annoying thing people sometimes do where they tell you to turn too late to actually turn, he was pretty good about directions, but he still didn’t seem happy to have to be telling me. Or that I was even there. Or in my choice of gear.
“Hey, civilian,” the army guy said at one point. “Are you even armed?”
“Um… yeah,” I said, keeping my eyes on the road. “Pistol.”
I heard the army guy snort. “Typical,” he said. “What kind?”
“Glock.”
“Nine millimeter? You’d do more if you threw it at them. Stay in the van.”
Army guy was starting to get on my nerves, but I wasn’t going to say so. I just kept driving. Eventually we ended up in the old industrial district, down by where there were a lot of abandoned factories and stuff. Not a good part of town, not safe. I’d been there a couple times looking for thugs to drink because a lot of criminals did drug deals and shit in the area, and the cops almost never went there. But if some kind of shady vampire shit was going to happen, that part of town was probably perfect. The army guy directed me to drive past this one part where there were some warehouses, all abandoned and stuff but still mostly standing, then drive down the street and park just around the corner. Facing back the way we came, for some reason. He also told me to keep the engine on but turn all the lights off. Oh, and he told me to shut up again. Someone opened the back door of the van and everyone got out. Ferret patted me on the shoulder and smiled, and then he was gone and it was just me. All alone in the dark in a van in a bad part of town.
I wasn’t afraid. Not, like, girl all alone in a bad part of town afraid. I’d gotten over that once I’d been hunting a few times because being a vampire makes some shit not scary any more. I was more… this seemed like some of the movies my Dad liked, where people went into some place and shot everyone and blew things up and that kind of thing. And there was me, the driver. So I was nervous, yeah, and afraid like am I going to get blown up afraid, which is a whole different kind of afraid. Trust me. Not that I really wanted to be able to know the difference, because it meant I’d actually have to be around something that could blow me up. Like army guy’s grenades.
But they’d gone around the corner, so I couldn’t see anything, and I couldn’t hear anything, so somehow I wound up getting bored, too. Yeah. Bored and afraid at the same time. I’ve never even heard of someone being bored and afraid at the same time, but I was, because I was afraid of what might happen, and what was happening was a whole lot of nothing. I checked over the lights and stuff on the dashboard to see if everything looked right, which I guess it did. I drummed my fingers on the wheel a bit, which was about as fun as it sounds. I looked around the van, but yeah, side street in the old industrial zone, not much to see unless you like short roads that end in rusty old loading areas. All that fun stuff lasted me maybe five minutes, so I pulled out my phone and decided to text Kaitlyn.
I’m… just going to put in our conversation normally, not in texting words.
“Hey,” I texted her.
“Oh my god, are you okay?” Kaitlyn texted back.
“Yeah,” I said. I decided Kaitlyn didn’t need to know about the being afraid part, at least not yet. “Bored. Nothin’ happenin’. How’re you?”
“Worried about you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re doing whatever you’re doing and it sounded serious.”
“I’m just sittin’ in the van. They’re the ones doin’ the serious stuff.”
“They?”
“Yeah. Ferret and Father Riggs and Pops and Victoria and the army guy.”
“The army guy is there?”
“Yep. He called me a civilian. Thinks your gun is wussy. He brought grenades.”
“Jesus, Misty! Why’re you not afraid?”
Well, I guess I couldn’t pretend for long after all. “I am,” I texted her. “But I’m not where anythin’ is happenin’. Can’t even see where they went. And nothin’ is goin’ on.”
“Good. Hope it stays that way.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Of course, it didn’t stay that way. Me and Kaitlyn only got to send a couple more texts each, and then something exploded. It was around the corner, so I didn’t see anything except a flash of light, but I sure as hell heard it, and it was loud. And scary. Especially since that was when the gunfire started, too. Lots of it, in little bursts and single shots. And the screaming. Pissed off screaming to start, then they’d turn to screaming in pain. Then more gunfire, then another explosion, then… well, you get the idea. Don’t know how long that went on because I didn’t think to look, but it felt like hours. I finally remembered I had a phone in my hand when I got what turned out to be the third text where Kaitlyn was asking if I was okay because I’d stopped responding.
“I’m fine,” I texted back. “Stuff started happenin’.”
“Oh my god, are you okay?”
“Yeah. But I’m scared. It’s like a war over there!”
“Scarf?”
That didn’t make any sense until I saw my phone autocorrected scared to scarf because I left out the E. “Scared. Fuckin’ autocorrect,” I texted back. Yeah, seems like a stupid fucking thing to deal with during a war or whatever was happening but my brain works like that. Think about anything except what’s making me nervous or scared or whatever. And still the shooting and screaming went on, though it did kind of seem like it was winding down now. When it finally stopped, there was red light on the buildings across the street like a fire started. Because of course there’d be a fire. Then there was one last explosion and the light got brighter. Then nothing for a few moments.
Then something happened that somehow scared me even more. I thought the alley across the street was empty, but a couple of headlights switched on and flashed a couple times, then went off again. I didn’t know what to do. Obviously someone else was here, someone who knew what was going on. Should I ignore them? Should I try to… keep them from messing anything up? Army guy told me to stay in the van, and I felt like Pops and Ferret only wanted me to worry about driving but… I wasn’t going to just watch them get fucked over by someone new, even if it meant I’d have to fight.
Turned out, though, it wasn’t anything I had to deal with. Before I could make up my mind what to do, I saw Pops and Ferret and the others cross the street to the other alley. I couldn’t really see into the alley, but I sure as hell could see who came out. Baron Whatshisname and the sword guy. Which I figured meant either they were in on this whole thing, or we were all royally fucked. But no one was shooting. They were just talking. And ignoring me, which was fine.
“Oh my god, the Baron is here!” I texted Kaitlyn. “And Swedish guy!” Of course, I saw that after I sent it. “SWORD guy. Fucking autocorrect again!”
“I liked Swedish better,” Kaitlyn texted back.
I ignored that. “Means we’re fucked, or he’s in on this,” I texted her.
“And if he is?”
“Fuck. I dunno. They didn’t tell me anythin’.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” I texted, then looked up. Sword guy was helping the Baron get back into his car, and the others were walking towards me. “Oh my god, got to go, bye,” I texted Kaitlyn, then put away my phone. Nobody looked hurt, which was good, but… vampires, you know? And I still didn’t have a fucking clue what’d happened in there, or why. But I could ask later. Ferret gave me a grin as he got into the passenger side, and the others all came in through the back. They smelled like smoke, and… that smell when someone’s been shooting guns a lot. And blood. More blood than I’d expect. So maybe things hadn’t gone all that well? Not like I had a lot of experience being the driver for this sort of thing.
“Drive,” the army guy told me when everyone was sitting down. “Go slow for now.” And that was it. No one else was talking. Not that I had anything to say myself.
I put the van in gear and pulled out and… the building that was definitely on fire. I mean, I wouldn’t expect an abandoned factory or warehouse or whatever the hell it used to be to burn, but that’s what it was doing so there must have been something in there that could still burn. The flames were even big enough that they made me nervous… and Ferret and them had been inside the fucking building so… god knows what they were feeling.
I got to be honest, I sort of blame the vampire for what happened next. It wasn’t happy with the fire, so I was kind of on edge. For some reason, I ended up turning so I drove past the warehouse instead of away from it. I don’t know why, maybe because I was looking that direction and not thinking. Don’t people tend to turn their cars the direction they’re looking? Anyway, that’s what happened.
“Wrong way, civilian,” the army guy said behind me. Which didn’t help.
The fire was bugging me, and army guy was bugging me, and I wasn’t paying attention, so when the burnt guy ran out the front of the building and in front of the van, I was kind of surprised. So I slammed both feet down on the pedal. Only… yeah. Not the brake. I did the same shit I did when Ferret was teaching me to drive the van and slammed on the gas, not the brakes. This made the van jump forward and… I hit the guy. Hard. He went down, below where I could see him.
“Ohshitohshitohshit,” I said. But my brain managed to catch up to my eyes. The guy had been really burnt. Like, a human probably wouldn’t have survived it. Sure as hell wouldn’t be walking around. And I could tell he wasn’t human. He was wrong, like some vampires were wrong, but… a hell of a lot worse. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was like he was somehow rotten. Inside. Nothing like I’d seen before. And he was probably why the others were there, you know?
Guess I was right, because I heard the army guy say, “Looks like you missed one.”
“I was busy,” Ferret said over his shoulder. “Can’t be everywhere.”
“Looks like you’ve got a new project, then,” the army guy said. “You want to handle this, or should I do it?” Handle that I hit some rotten guy?
Ferret made a face, then reached into his coat. When his hand came out, he was holding a really big knife. Only it was weird because it sort of looked like it bent the wrong way. Forward, not back. Or something like that. Big weird looking knife, which he handed back to the army guy. “You go ahead,” Ferret said. “I need to get started on learning how to teleport. It’s a big project, you know.”
Army guy just grunted and took the knife. I heard the back door open, then he came around to the front of the van. He was lit up all nice by the van’s headlights, but I still couldn’t see the guy I hit. But I did see the army guy bend over, then his hand come up with the weird knife. Then back down again. And back up and down again two more times. I kept my hands on the steering wheel because… well, I got to be honest, I felt sick. I was pretty sure I just watched army guy cutting off some guy’s head and… well, yeah, the guy was probably pretty nasty, but still. And he just… stood up, looked down for a moment, then walked back around the van, all calm and shit. Like he hadn’t just cut off someone’s head. If I’d still be human, I’d probably have thrown up right then. But I wasn’t, so I didn’t. I also… well, I didn’t realize I was holding so hard onto the wheel until it sort of… creaked a little. So I was using vampire strength on it, I guess. It actually looked slightly bent now. I forced myself to relax at least enough to not break the wheel as I heard the back door open again. Army guy got in and handed the knife back to Ferret and sat down.
“That thing needs to be sharpened,” he told Ferret.
“Evil redneck vampires are hard on blades,” Ferret said. “I thought stopping in the middle of everything to touch up the edge wouldn’t be the best idea.”
Army guy grunted again, then tapped me on the shoulder. I jumped, of course. “Hey, civilian. We going to sit here until the cops arrive?”
It took me a moment before I could talk. “Um… what about the guy?”
“What about him?” the army guy asked me.
“You… want me to just… drive over his body?” Even the idea was making me more sick.
“It’s gone already,” army guy said.
“Ashed right away?” said Victoria.
“Almost right away,” army guy said.
“So he was old,” Father Riggs said. “Would explain how he escaped the fire.”
“We can talk about this later,” Victoria said. “Civilian. Drive.”
“Don’t you start that, too,” Ferret said over his shoulder.
I took my foot off the brakes and started the van forward, expecting it to thump over something and… well, maybe then I really would have thrown up. But it didn’t. Victoria said that vampires would turn to ash or dust or whatever when they really died for good, but I thought it’d take longer than a few seconds. Guess the old ones went really fast or something. Which I was glad for right then. One less thing to freak me out, you know? I kept the van steady, heading down the street and getting it up to the speed limit. Figured the army guy still didn’t want me to attract attention by speeding.
“Cut north a block,” army guy said.
“Which way is north?” I asked.
“Left,” army guy said. “Then turn right and keep going.”
I did what army guy said, and a block later I heard sirens and shit going by the other direction on the street we’d just turned off of. Guess the cops will even turn up in a neighborhood like that if there’s a big enough fire. But they didn’t see our van, which was a good thing. I just kept driving. I managed to calm down, at least a little, but that mostly just seemed to put a lot of questions in my head. Like, who was in the warehouse? Why’d it catch on fire? Were we the good guys? Why’d they need me to drive? That kind of stuff. But I wasn’t going to ask. Maybe later. Maybe not at all. But I wasn’t going to do this again until I had a better idea what the hell was going on. Pops and Ferret were friends, and Father Riggs was a good guy, but… far as I knew, I’d just been the driver on a trip where they just murdered some people and set a warehouse on fire. Wasn’t going to do that again, vampire or not.
Army guy was telling me where to turn instead of where we were going, and I was kind of distracted, so I didn’t realize right away that we were going back to my place. But I wasn’t complaining about it. I’d had more than enough for one night, and wanted to crawl into bed and sleep. I pulled the van into my apartment’s parking lot and shut off the engine. Then I just… leaned forward and rested my forehead on the wheel. Figured that if they didn’t need me, they’d tell me. Or army guy would order me out of the van. Either way worked.
“Why are we here?” Victoria asked.
“The Baron wants to talk to us again,” Pops told her. “Figured we should let Misty go home first. She just drove the van, so she’s not really involved. Also thought I should give her at least a little information on what just happened. She’s not used to this sort of thing.”
“Fine,” Victoria said. “Just don’t take too long.”
“You probably have some questions?” Pops asked from behind me.
“Me?” I said, not raising my head. “Yeah.”
“I can’t tell you everything right now,” Pops told me. “But I can at least tell you a little.”
“Okay,” I said. I had a shitload of questions, which I maybe didn’t really want the answers to, but there was one that was bugging me more than the others. I felt like shit asking it, though, because Ferret and Pops and Father Riggs. But I needed to know. “Um… are we the good guys?”
“I thought you might ask that,” Pops said.
“You want to handle this, or should I?” Ferret asked Pops.
But it was Victoria that spoke up first. “The person you hit with the van and everyone in that warehouse were vampires. Very evil vampires. I mentioned them when we spoke about factions of vampires and the world we live in. They were one of the nastiest groups of vampires, perhaps the worst. Think of them as Satanic vampires, if that helps.”
“We didn’t start the fire,” Ferret said. “No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.”
“Not the time, Ferret,” army guy said. So I guess it was a joke? I didn’t get it.
“They had been stockpiling incendiaries in that warehouse for almost a year,” Victoria went on as if the others hadn’t said anything. “Their intent was to use them as part of Devil’s Night. They had a list of over a dozen buildings they were going to set fire to. Hospitals, orphanages, apartment buildings, those sorts of places.”
“Really?” I asked, raising my head off the wheel.
“Those guys aren’t very clever,” Father Riggs said. “If they weren’t so dangerous, I’d almost expect them to twirl black mustaches and complain about moose and squirrel.” He sounded like he was smiling, though, so that was probably another joke I didn’t get.
“The fire started because of your fondness for grenades,” Victoria said. I figured she was probably talking to army guy, who just grunted. “That wasn’t part of the plan.”
“Happy accident,” Ferret said. “Anyway… does that help? I can explain more later, but right now we’re kind of on a schedule, so we need to get going.”
“Um…” I turned around in my seat so I could look at everyone. They… didn’t look like they were lying to make me feel better. But Kaitlyn says I’m as shitty at knowing when someone is lying as I am at actually lying myself, so I guess I’d have to just trust that Pops and Ferret and Father Riggs wouldn’t be the bad guys. Or at least wouldn’t get me involved. “Um… yeah. Some. For now.”
“Good,” Ferret said. “I’ll walk you to your door.” Then he opened his own door and got out. My door was all of ten feet away, so I figured it was more because he wanted to talk, and he was probably being kind of rushed because they really did have something else to do.
“Alright, um…” I looked at everyone else again. Pops and Father Riggs smiled at me. Army guy glared, and Victoria just looked cold. Guess that’d have to do. “See you all later, then.” I got out of my side and left the keys in the ignition. Then I walked over to where Ferret was waiting. He didn’t say anything, though. Just gave me a hug. I hugged back. Still had a lot of shit to deal with, but the hug did help me feel better. Sort of. The hug meant I could feel where he’d put that knife of his, and I think a gun or something too. I actually found myself almost making that joke about him having something in his pocket or being happy to see me, so I figured I was probably still messed up in the head and didn’t say it. See? I actually do have a filter between my mouth and what brains I have.
“I’ll come by and explain everything later,” Ferret said, still hugging me. “I promise.”
“Okay,” I said. “No knives, though.”
“Of course,” Ferret said. He squeezed me and let go. “See you around.”
“Yeah,” I said. Ferret got into the driver’s seat and pulled the van away. I watched them drive off down the street, just kind of standing and hugging myself for a bit. I was going to have to explain all this to Kaitlyn, which was going to be hard because I still didn’t know everything but… at least I was home, right? Meant I could finally start dealing with everything that happened. Or trying to, anyway. I got out my own keys and let myself back inside. Like I said, being a vampire is boring, until it isn’t, and when it isn’t boring it sucks. Satanic vampires and warehouse fires were just part of the world I lived in now.
