Page 35 of Surface Scratch
Caleb nodded, relaxing back into the couch as the feeling of ease washed over him. His ear had stopped ringing as well. “That’s a neat trick.” Caleb laughed, leaning his head back. “You should try that on Ophelia one of these days.”
“Hell no. I tried it once on her when she was thirteen. Someone at her school was giving her shit about something and she was fuming, so I gave her a pat on the back and told her to chill out, but it backfired spectacularly. She keyed my car. Well, maybe not keyed. She carved the word ‘chill’ into my car hundreds of times. Even the windshield,” Tariq said, his smile not fading.
“Note to self: do not tell Ophelia to chill. Got it.” Caleb laughed. He touched his fingers to his lips, the sensation startling him. It felt kind of like his lips were tingling, but it wasn’t the same kind of unpleasant tingle he felt when he was anxious. This kind felt nice. “This feels strange.”
Tariq stroked his beard. “Yeah, I had an ex of mine say that being around me was like being high twenty-four seven,” he said. “Don’t worry, it’ll wear off quickly.”
Caleb grabbed a pillow and hugged it to his chest, welcoming the soft warmth of it against his bare skin. He had never done drugs, so he could only imagine what he was feeling would barely scratch the surface of the real thing. “How old are you?” he asked.
“Sixty-eight, but if you’re asking what I look like, I was turned at twenty-eight,” Tariq said.
“I wonder how old Marcus is?” Caleb mused.
Tariq whistled. “Old as balls compared to me,” he said. “You haven’t asked?”
Caleb lazily shook his head. “I wanted to, but I dunno… I’m nervous. I don’t want to offend him,” he said. His eyelids were heavy, like he wanted to close them, but he wasn’t tired enough to sleep. His mind swam with all the information he had absorbed over the past day and a half. Vampires were real. Vampire hunters were real. Some asshole in sunglasses who took an ’80s song too literally had tried to kill him and Marcus and might be coming back to finish the job.
The thought nagged at him, like it was scratching the inside of his skull. He didn’t want to die, and more importantly, he didn’t want Marcus to die. Or Tariq. What about Ophelia? How would hunters treat the human child of a vampire who seemed to have no qualms about what he was? Tariq called them zealots. How far did that zealotry go? Maybe it was just Tariq’s effect on him, but he felt like he could see the issue in front of him more clearly than he had seen any issue in a long time.
He needed to make sure they left him and Marcus alone.
He pulled himself upright. “Tariq, remember that night you walked me home?”
“Yeah, horribly rainy night,” Tariq said. “Why do you ask?”
“That guy with the sunglasses, the one from the alley, I think he was the same guy who followed us,” Caleb said. “I saw him in the club earlier that night. Is it possible to check the IDs that were scanned at the door from that date? We could figure out if they’re from town or if they were just passing through.”
Tariq jumped to his feet. “That’s a fucking brilliant idea!” He rushed over to the door, grabbing his abandoned coat and ski mask from where they still lay on the floor. “What should we do when we figured out who they are? I mean, I know what I would do, but what do you want to do?”
Caleb stroked the smooth suede pillow still clutched to his chest, taking note of the tingling in his lips beginning to wane. What could he do? Maybe it wasn’t so much about what he would do. He just wanted to know who they were. Maybe he could talk to them? That seemed like a dumb idea.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Tariq paused, ski mask in hand. “Should I tell Marcus? He’ll probably want to know,” he said, glancing around as though Marcus were hiding somewhere in the room.
“Can it wait a little? I want to think about what to do first,” Caleb said. What on earth was he going to do with the information when he got it? He wasn’t very strong, so it wasn’t like he could threaten them into giving up their crusade. How did one even reason with people like that?
Would it even be possible?
“I’m sorry, man, but I gotta tell him. Those dickheads are a threat to all of us, and as soon as the others in town find out about the attack, they’re going to want to take them out. For good.” Tariq pulled the ski mask over his head and snapped the dark goggles into place. “The last time we had a group of hunters in town was nasty. A lot of blood spilled on both sides. I’d rather not deal with that again.”
Caleb stood up. “What do you mean? Are they all dead?”
Tariq nodded. “Nine years ago. They called themselves the Daylight Society. They tried to kill all of us in one go,” he said. His usual jovial tone was gone. “A few of us had human partners, even families. The leader of the Society lured all of us into a trap by holding the human partners hostage, and those of us that were single pitched in to try and get them back. We even offered to leave town for good, but it wasn’t what they wanted. By the time we figured out where they were holed up, they had killed everyone. Men, women, children, even a toddler.
“They never even waited for us to respond. They killed most of them right away. ‘Saving their souls’ was what they called it. The ones that didn’t get a bullet in the head at the beginning were tortured for information on how we operated, then burned alive. We… tore them apart. It was bad. Really, really bad.”
Caleb stared in horror at Tariq, now completely covered in his protective outfit. “Why?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“Because, to people like them, the only thing worse than a vampire is someone who willingly shares a bed with one,” he said, his voice muffled behind his ski mask. “Look, we’re going to find out who this new group is, okay? We’re not going to make the same mistakes we did last time. I’ll let you know what I find, and we’ll come up with something, but if we’re lucky, they’ve already run off to another town to continue their little crusade elsewhere.”
Caleb chewed at the inside of his mouth, still feeling oddly floaty, but bogged down with the weight of what Tariq had told him. He wasn’t sure if it was the effect of Tariq’s ability influencing him or not, but the news that a group of vampires had torn a group of humans to shreds wasn’t disturbing to him at all. It sounded almost justified.
“Just keep me updated,” Caleb said firmly.
“Will do, Pinky,” Tariq said, sounding like he was trying to change the mood of the conversation. “Rest up. I’ll distract Andrew tonight. That boy is miserable running for both bars.”
Caleb moved back over to the couch after saying goodbye to Tariq, the pleasant cool feeling fading fast after he left the apartment. The fact that there was a group of people out there who wanted vampires and their associates dead was unnerving. Terrifying. But more than that, why had they been following him for days before the attack? Had they known he was involved with Marcus already? Or did they suspect him of being a vampire? He knew he wasn’t the most social person on earth, but he did still go out during the day. And it wasn’t like he knew anything, so even if he had been their target, it didn’t make sense to him for them to focus on him.
