911 Vampire, page 26
“Please don’t.”
“Why?” And as the word left my mouth, other questions queued.
“Don’t do this. Please.”
“How long did you wait, Annie?” I asked.
“No.” She started to sob, and I wondered if she’d hang up on me.
“How long?”
Silence.
And I had my answer—long enough to ensure that he was dead… for good. “Why, Annie?”
“I’m going to have a baby.” The words choked over the line.
“But you loved him.”
“I did.”
And I envisioned what her life would be with a baby and a drug-addicted husband. “You couldn’t see him as a father.”
“Oh God… what have I done?”
Like a dentist with a cavity, or a surgeon inside a cancerous patient’s abdomen, I realized there was more rot than just a delayed 911 call and the omission of medication that might have saved his life. I knew this story. “Where did he get those drugs, Annie?” Because I knew from Ricky that James’s woman, Annie, had been a customer. I also knew she did not use. So A plus B equals…. “How did he get those drugs?”
“You don’t understand.”
“I do. You bought them… or more likely had them saved for this. You did what? Left them out where he could see them? Couldn’t resist them?”
“Oh God.”
“I don’t think it’s actually murder… but it kind of is.” And with two I’ve committed in the past forty-eight hours, who am I to judge? And what was it James told me about a trust fund? His grandparents. And like the tumblers on a safe, the last bits clicked home. “And now that he’s dead, whatever is in his trust fund is yours.”
She gasped. “How could you know?”
“He told me.”
“He would have spent it all on drugs. He got lump sums when he was twenty-one and twenty-five, and that’s what he did. He couldn’t stop. He’d go through all of it.”
“Probably.”
“What kind of life is that for a child? I could not bring a child into that kind of life, wondering when… if, her father would come home. When he’d finally kill himself. I couldn’t.”
I held the phone and mulled the information. This was murder, this was deliberate, and who am I to judge? What she’d done, not far from how I’d dispatched poor pedophilic sadistic Rod.
“What will you do?” Her voice was breathless with fear.
“Nothing.” I told her where to go to get COVID tested, and I hung up. She killed the love of her life. I tried to process that. I don’t think it was about the money, though that factored into the equation. And every time she’d look at her daughter, she’d see traces of blue-eyed James—the man she loved, the man she killed. “What the fuck?”
I patted the names and stared out at the street. I needed steroids and a few other things from the pharmacy. I could have asked his parents to stay. I did not. I thought to lock the church door. I did not.
So many things I could have done. But did not. I was at the mall for less than a minute, maybe longer. Hard to tell. I bought steroids and lemon cough drops and vapor rub. It could not have been more than five minutes… ten tops.
When I got back, Trevor was gone.
Not a little gone. Not like “I’ve gone for a walk.” Gone. I searched the church repeatedly, then I phoned his parents. “Is Trevor there?”
It was not a conversation I wanted. It did not go how I imagined.
“I’ll be right there,” his father said.
“Thank you.” And I meant it. I hung up and methodically searched the church again. I should hear his breath. When his dad showed up, he’d figure things out… sort of. But where could he be? My mind was not ready to entertain the unimaginable. No one would take him. Why would they?
Clearly, he got up and….
I looked out the window and let my eyes wander as far as they could in either direction, hoping to see his pajama-clad body.
Nothing.
No one.
I stared at the bed and searched for clues. But nothing. No one. Just a tight knot in my stomach.
I’ve been here before.
The End
Keep reading for an excerpt from Dark Blood
Chapter 1
Wednesday, July 4, 1998
MILES’S SIX-YEAR-OLD legs churned as he chased Amos, his golden retriever puppy. The boy and the dog flew down the sandy lawn of Grandma Anna’s house, its borders hedged by tangles of beach plum and wild rose. Overhead, the sun shone through clouds of spun sugar. Grandma Anna was inside the white clapboard house with Mother and little Maya. Father had to work the holiday in Boston but had promised there’d be a long weekend where they’d drive to Provincetown, go out on a whale watch, and handpick a box of saltwater taffy at Cabot’s.
Amos turned, stopped, and dropped the drool-covered red rubber ball. He pawed the ground and nudged the toy with his nose. He barked. It was a game, and Miles knew if he approached too fast, Amos would grab the ball in his mouth and race off.
He inched forward. “I’m not going to take the ball. Nope, not me. Not interested. Who’d want that stinky thing?” He skimmed his red sneakers forward like the ninjas he’d watch on TV with Grandma Anna. His eyes and the dog’s locked. The space between them narrowed from ten feet, to nine, to eight. The animal’s lustrous red-gold fur sparked in the sun. Muscles in his back twitched as he tracked Miles’s stealthy approach.
“I don’t want the ball. It’s slimy. Who’d want a ball like that?” Ninja sneakers slid forward, seven feet, six feet. Boy and dog focused on each other and the game. Five feet, four feet. “I don’t want it.” Three feet, two feet. “Uh-uh, not me.”
As though each could read the other’s thoughts, Miles and Amos lunged for the ball. The pup was closer and faster. He gripped the prize between his teeth and raced down the hill with Miles in pursuit.
Caught in the moment and the ecstasy of flight and pursuit, neither Amos nor Miles saw the heavily laden burgundy Dodge Caravan as it turned off Highway 6A.
Likewise, the driver was distracted by his oldest daughter punching her little brother in the arm. It had been a miserable six-hour drive with no AC, three children, including the new baby, and his largely unresponsive wife, who suffered an emotional meltdown after giving birth three months earlier. He did not see the dog or the boy. What would become seared into his memory was the sequence that started with his daughter’s scream—“Daddy!”—followed by a dull thud and single surprised yelp as the two-ton vehicle going thirty-five miles an hour made impact with the dog. The animal flew for what seemed an impossible distance.
His pulse jumped as he slammed on the brakes. He saw the dark-haired child racing toward them as he broke through a beach plum hedge, and for a split second he feared there’d be a second impact. Tires squealed as they burned rubber and ground fine white sand into the asphalt. He spotted the red dog in the rearview mirror, not moving save for blood that pulsed from an open wound onto the hot tar. From the angle the dog lay, it was clear his neck was broken.
“Don’t look!” he barked to his family, who stared in horror at the unfolding tragedy. “Shit,” he muttered.
His wife turned, her lip trembled, her mouth opened into a scream: “No!” He saw condemnation in her eyes.
I didn’t see him. This wasn’t my fault. One more sin that would be laid at his doorstep. He opened the door, not certain what he was supposed to do. “Kids, stay in the car! Don’t look.”
His feet touched the pavement, his attention riveted on the dying animal. He wanted to warn the little boy away from his pet. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m so sorry.”
Up on the hill, two women emerged onto the porch of the two-story white house, a few hundred feet from the accident. The younger held a toddler’s hand while the older, dressed in black, her silver hair in a bun, started to jog toward them. She screamed at the little boy who crouched in the middle of the road, touching the dog’s unmoving head, “Miles, no! Don’t!”
What happened next the man would never understand and would never forget. As he stood frozen, the little boy lay next to the fatally wounded animal. He knew he should intervene to pull the kid away, but there was something so tender in how he wrapped his little body around the puppy.
The woman’s screams grew as she ran on arthritic knees.
“Miles, don’t! Stop! No! Please, God, stop it. Now!”
All the man could see was the child, his body fused to the dog’s, moving his lips as though singing. His hands fluttered across the dog’s fur; they blurred like hummingbird wings. There’s something wrong with this kid. This isn’t normal. The boy was drawing designs across the dog’s body. He trilled his fingers impossibly fast, first this way and then that.
And then it happened. The animal convulsed. His hind legs, which at first glance the driver thought were broken, kicked back. They were synchronous and straight. He found purchase on the pavement with his front legs. The boy rolled back on the asphalt. He stopped the freakish movement of his hands, and for a moment the man wondered if he’d been hit as well. The kid’s face was flushed and smeared with blood, his striped shirt was drenched in it. His green, green eyes stared, unmoving.
The dog stood up, shook his head, and then his entire body, starting from his tail and ending with his fuzzy golden nose. Blood whipped off the animal in all directions; the droplets sparkled like garnets.
The dog turned to the boy. His broad pink tongue licked the kid’s face from chin to forehead.
The man held his breath. He stared at the blood on the boy’s chest. Don’t be dead. Please God, don’t be dead.
“Amos.” The boy recoiled from the dog’s tongue bath and threw his arms around the animal’s shoulders.
“Miles!” The woman had made it through the hedge to the road’s edge. She looked from the boy and dog to the man standing ten feet from the minivan.
Her eyes were a vivid green like a cat’s, like the boy’s. She glared at the driver. He felt her rage and fought back a childhood memory of a fairy-tale witch. “Get out! Get in your car and get out!”
He wanted to argue, to say he was sorry, to give her his insurance information, to….
“Leave!”
He looked at the boy and the dog. He saw the steaming pool of blood on hot asphalt. Too much of it for the boy and dog to be unhurt, for the dog to be alive… but he is.
“Leave now!”
He could almost feel the words of a curse about to be hurled in his direction. Of course that was a ridiculous thought, and he pictured the boy’s hummingbird hands. The kid stared wide-eyed at the woman. Maybe it was a trick of the summer sun, but his eyes glowed as though lit from inside his skull.
“I’m sorry,” the man finally said.
“Get out,” she said as she walked to the child.
“Okay.”
He turned back to his van. The hood had crumpled under the impact; an inch higher and the windshield would have shattered. He got into the vehicle. His family, for the first time since they left Norwood, was silent. His wife’s teary gaze was fixed on the ruined hood. He put the Caravan in gear and looked in the rearview mirror. The old woman in black pulled back her right hand and struck the child across the cheek. It looked far harder than any well-deserved spank he or his wife had ever administered.
He thought of getting out, but then he thought of witches and curses and of the two-thousand-dollar-a-week cabin he’d rented to bring some fun to his family. He’d have to get the hood fixed…. You’ll say you hit a deer. You should call the cops… and say what? The dog’s okay. He looked from the mangled hood into the mirror as the old woman, gripping the child’s shoulder with her long fingers, disappeared through the hedge, the barking dog trailing behind. He shouldn’t be okay. He wasn’t moving. Too much blood. How can he be okay? But he is. Get out of here. And he drove away.
More from Caleb James
The Haffling: Book One
All sixteen-year-old Alex Nevus wants is to be two years older and become his sister Alice’s legal guardian. That, and he’d like his first kiss, preferably with Jerod Haynes, the straight boy with the beautiful girlfriend and the perfect life. Sadly, wanting something and getting it are very different. Strapped with a mentally ill mother, Alex fears for his own sanity. Having a fairy on his shoulder only he can see doesn’t help, and his mom’s schizophrenia places him and Alice in constant jeopardy of being carted back into foster care.
When Alex’s mother goes missing, everything falls apart. Frantic, he tracks her to a remote corner of Manhattan and is transported to another dimension—the land of the Unsee, the realm of the Fey. There he finds his mother held captive by the power-mad Queen May and learns he is half-human and half-fey—a Haffling.
As Alex’s human world is being destroyed, the Unsee is being devoured by a ravenous mist. Fey are vanishing, and May needs to cross into the human world. She needs something only Alex can provide, and she will stop at nothing to possess it… to possess him.
The Haffling: Book Two
Liam Summer, with the face of an angel and the body of an underwear model, has done bad things. Raised as the whore and cat’s paw of a murderous fairy queen, he has ruined many with his beauty. When Queen May’s plot to unite and rule the fairy and human realms fails, Liam wakes naked and alone in a Manhattan building on fire. Unaware the blaze is arson, and he’s its intended victim, he prepares to die.
Enter ax-wielding FDNY firefighter Charlie Fitzgerald, who Liam mistakes for an ogre assassin. As Charlie rescues Liam, he realizes the handsome blond has nowhere to go. So he does what he and his family have always done—he helps.
As for Queen May, trapped in the body of a flame-throwing salamander, she may be down, but she’s not out. Yes, she failed the last time, but Liam—and others—will pay. She knows what must be done: possess a haffling, cross into the human world engorged with magic, and become queen and Goddess over all.
As Liam realizes the danger they all face, he discovers unexpected truths. That even the most wicked are not beyond redemption, and that love—true love—is a gift even he can receive.
The Haffling: Book Three
The human and fey worlds plummet toward an ancient war. Enter two unlikely lovers, a myth, and a mad queen hell-bent on conquest and revenge. Fire Marshal Finn Hulain, tormented by the death of his best friend and an unrequited love, is tossed from the world he knows into the upside-down realm of the fey. Dr. Redmond Fall, psychiatrist to the deadliest criminals in the Unsee, awakes to find the brutal Queen May deposited within the walls of his hospital for a bit of therapy. While May would like to get over her daddy issues, it’s sometimes easier to bite off heads.
Hound, the epic finale to the Haffling trilogy, delves into the darkest reaches of the addictions we all carry. To save the worlds and themselves, Finn, Redmond, and even May must confront the ghosts of their past and the demons of their present. The clock is ticking. There are no second chances. Everything is on the line.
Dark Blood Saga: Book One
Handsome, brilliant, and surrounded by good friends, twenty-three-year-old medical student Miles Fox has a secret—and it’s not that he’s gay. Though he harbors a crush on his straight best friend, Luke. Miles, like his grandmother, Anna, possesses the healing gift, an ability she’s made him swear never to use or divulge, lest horrible things befall those he loves. It happened to her when Nazis butchered her family.
But it all goes to hell when Miles heals a terminally ill man on a New Orleans cancer ward and wakes locked in the psych unit. Worse, news of the healing miracle spreads. For millennia, its carriers have been hunted by those who would steal it. Dr. Gerald Stangl and his teenage son, Calvin, know what Miles possesses. They, like their predecessors, will stop at nothing to take it, including kidnapping, torture, and murder. As the Stangls’ noose tightens, Miles and Luke are trapped in a death match with stakes higher than they could ever imagine.
Readers love Caleb James
Exile
“Caleb James has arrived—and his work is more polished, fascinating and truly top notch.”
—Joyfully Jay
“Mr. James … weaves an incredible tale of fantasy in the modern world that, for me, makes it all work wonderfully.”
—OJ He Say!
Hound
“It’s so intricate, so well crafted and full of all those small details that you don’t realise are important until it all begins to make sense. I’m going to miss this series, but I’m eager to read more of this author, who has managed to capture the world of the Fey in such a unique way.”
—Divine Magazine
Dark Blood
“Dark Blood is gruesome, fast paced, and has a lot of tension-filled moments, with some very intriguing twists and turns.”
—The Novel Approach
“Read this amazing supernatural mystery for the thrills, the chills, the diabolical bad guys, or even the science. For whatever reason you read it, you’ll love it.”
—Queer Sci Fi
CALEB JAMES is an author, member of the Yale volunteer faculty, practicing psychiatrist, and clinical trainer. He writes both fiction and nonfiction and has published books in multiple genres and under different names. Writing as Charles Atkins, he has been a Lambda Literary finalist. He lives in Connecticut with his partner and three cats.
Website: charlesatkins.com
Blog:calebjamesblog.wordpress.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Caleb-James-536765356387453
By Caleb James
911 Vampire
Dark Blood
