They walked through the scattered bits around the yard, like a graveyard for destroyed sculptures. A garden gnome with the head kicked in. Metal sheets, twisted up and cast aside; yard signs for elections, battered and scattered; a light-up reindeer from some Christmas decoration with one leg removed.
Ahead of them, the shack of a house was slightly left-leaning, shingles falling, lots of spots on the building patched up with planks of wood and sheets of metal or plastic. The coops and the greenhouse were in better shape than the actual house. As they passed, Brennan noticed the greenhouse was full of cannabis plants. The thick and musky smell of weed and incense was overpowering even from afar, and the chickensclucked in a cacophonous chorus, and Brennan didn’t know how Travis or Dom couldstandit.
Once they started moving, Rosie ran ahead, running through the fields and barking happily. An old-school doghouse was set up under a tree a ways away from the house and coops.
“Now, it’s no castle,” Travis said cheerfully, moving a tarp that acted as a front door out of the way so that the group could sidle through the narrow space. Brennan squeezed through, afraid to touch anything wrong in fear of the whole structure crashing down.
“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Dom said, voice deadpan. Travis’s Cheshire Cat grin went impossibly wider.
“You noticed the new stop sign?” Travis asked like a kid at show-and-tell, gesturing behind him to a large road sign that still had dirt clinging to the bottom of the post.
“Really brightens up the place,” Dom said.
“I thought so, too,” Travis said, oblivious to Dom’s sarcasm. He waved for them to follow and turned around.
The house was impressive, in the horrifying way a hoarder’s home would be. Every surface was covered withstuff.Magazines. Books. CDs, tapes, notebooks, newspapers, boxes full of papers and envelopes. A tremendous amount of weed. Gallon-sized ziplock bags of it, and containers full of rolled joints, and grinders and all the associated gadgets, left around each corner of the shed-sized home. There was a small kitchenette to one side, with a mini fridge, stove, and microwave.
How the hell did this place get electricity? The whole building had to be a fire hazard. Brennan wasn’t a neat freak by any means, but this left him itching to grab a couple of garbage bags. How could so muchstuffexist in such a small space?
Travis pushed a pile of books onto the floor, off a couch that had likely seen better days judging by the stains, burns, and rips across the fabric. It creaked dangerously and leaned a few degrees to the right. Travis gestured in invitation at Brennan and Dom. Dom took a seat easily while Brennan hovered near the door and decided he’d be better off not touching anything.
The dog, Rosie, followed them inside, squeezing through the narrowspace to sit directly on Brennan’s foot. Brennan patted her head. She looked up at him with adoring eyes. Brennan’s heart melted.
Travis reached to grab a pill bottle and shook out a joint, looking at Brennan with his ever-present grin.
“Talk about fun surprises. I never get visitors, but I always love meeting new turns. What brings you here?” He raised his pointer finger to the edge of the joint and it lit with a spark and a flare. Brennan tried not to look too impressed as Travis offered Dom the joint and she took it. Travis elbowed her good-naturedly. “Besides the free weed, hah!”
Brennan awkwardly leaned against the mini fridge, the only surface he was confident wouldn’t collapse. He focused his attention on the dog in front of him instead of the two vampires, threading his fingers through the fur on her neck.
“I wanted answers,” Brennan said. But he had about a thousand more questions than when he’d set out for the forest.
“Ooh, fun,fun,” Travis said. “Can’t guarantee I have ’em but I can sure try!”
Brennan wasn’t sure where to start. Dom offered him the joint and he shook his head. He wanted to keep his head clear. She shrugged and passed it back to Travis.
“How old are you?” he blurted.
“Oh,” Travis said. He feigned checking his watch, emphasizing his bare wrist. “Well, today’s Saturday, so… Um, I don’t know, a bajillion?”
Brennan tried to school away his disappointment but he was sure it was visible. What was the point of him coming if Travis wasn’t going to tell him anything valuable?
“I’m somewhere in the mid–six thousands,” Travis answered. “I lost track in the eighties.”
“Which eighties?” Brennan tried to imagine Travis in the 1980s, the 1880s, the 1780s. He was going to give himself a headache.
“Precisely.” Travis pointed at Brennan. “Good questions. Keep ’em coming, you’ve gotta be curious. If you work real hard, someday you can have all this.”
Travis gave a grand gesture around the shack and Brennan washonest-to-god unsure whether it was sarcastic or not. He hoped with sudden ferocity that he would never live to be six thousand andanything.The thought was unsettling, so he cut to the chase:
“How did I turn?” Brennan asked. “What happened that night?”
Travis took a long hit and exhaled the smoke back toward Brennan. Brennan fought the urge to sneeze.
“Well,” Travis said, “our girl Dom here hit you with her car, swerved into a tree, and stumbled out of the wreck looking for help. Luckily, I smelled the stench of a bloodbath from a mile away and found you guys.”
The word “bloodbath” sent a chill through Brennan, because it was hard to imagine being the center of a bloodbath, bleeding out on the ground,dying.
“You were in pretty rough shape, so it was either let you die or turn you, so I made an executive decision.”
