Ichor : Blood & Secrets

Chapter 45

When I got back to the apartment, I was immediately aware that something was wrong. Did something happen to London?

I ran to her room, threw the door open, and a horrific sight welcomed me.

“Bloody hell!” I exclaimed.

A man, a human, hovered over London. Splattered blood stained the bedclothes and the carpet. London had slashes on her throat and the guy was wiping the blood off his lips with the back of his hand and then licking it off.

“Piss off!” he shouted.

I pulled my phone out of my bag and yelled, “I’m calling the police.”

The guy looked genuinely spooked and made for the window, but I got a good look at him before he tripped down the fire escape. He was blond with unshaven stubble on his chin and light-colored eyes. Like her last boyfriend, I couldn’t see the attraction. He looked creepy, with dark purple lines under his eyes, but then again, what was there to see except someone who wanted to drink blood?

Funny though, I didn’t see that when I looked at London.

My sister lay motionless on the bed with a glassy look in her eyes. Actually, she hadn’t looked sharp since before she became a vamp, but this expression was more vacant than usual. Her dark hair curled around her white face and she stared off into space like she hardly noticed my arrival.

I closed the window, locked it, and drew the curtains. Then I went into the bathroom attached to her room and got a bandage to stop her bleeding. Vampire blood didn’t clot at all compared to human blood. After all, a vampire was only two steps from being a corpse. It would take ages for her cuts to close. As I wrapped her wounds, she yanked the blanket out from under her and pulled it over her chest. If she was cold, he must have drunk quite a bit.

I shuddered. What had London done to her body and for what? It would take her over a year to close up, even after she stitched herself shut. Sometimes I thought vampires were more like Frankenstein’s monster than Dracula. Nevertheless, vampire biology fascinated me. For one thing, their digestive system didn’t work. Since London’s body wasn’t taking in any new nutrients she was surviving on what she got from Schroder, eight years ago. There was no new material to rebuild the broken cells. However, even though her heart ceased to beat, her nervous system still worked beautifully. In fact, it vastly surpassed a human’s. The tiny electric current flowing through her allowed her five senses to keep working. It allowed her to feel pain, to feel tired, and to activate killer reflexes—if she had any. Right now, it looked like she was allowing herself to be drained again. Some vampire she was turning out to be.

If she was cold, her electric functions were slowing down, which meant she hadn’t drunk enough of his blood to maintain the status quo.

I whispered quietly, “How much has he drunk? A cup? A liter?” Silence.

“Two liters?”

She averted her eyes.

I didn’t ask anything after that. She wasn’t going to tell me how close she had come to changing him into a vampire. Instead, I got her suitcase down from her closet.

She gazed at me wearily from the bed. “What are you doing?”

My look could have killed, but she was already dead, so my scowl had no effect on her. “I started working for a private investigator today and when I was going through his files, I found a file on you. There’s a vampire looking for you and Schroder. I don’t want him to find you, so you have to go home until the P.I. closes the case.” “I can’t go anywhere,” she whispered.

“Why not?”

“Because Garth is here and I have to be with him.”

I was so angry I could spit. I stomped around the room cramming her belongings into the case until it was overflowing. “You’ll die,” I informed her like it was news. “Even if my P.I.’s client doesn’t get you... when this guy Garth becomes a vampire, he’ll kill you.”

“He’s not going to kill me. He has some friends that will protect me.”

I wasn’t surprised by what London said. Nothing she could say would have surprised me at that point. Vampires and humans who are in the love phase will say and do just about anything. It was after the high passed that the dangerous time came, but London was too blind to see it and my hands were tied because the moron she was dating was still a human. Until the recently exiting Garth became a vampire I couldn’t do anything to him. It would be better for everyone if the loser stayed human and left her alone.

Well, at least there was one silver lining on that dark cloud day. London said she had to stay here so she could be with Garth. That made it sound like he wouldn’t be able to follow her out to our parents’ place.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and said, “Listen to me, London. Haven’t I protected you all these years? Can’t you do just one thing for me and go out to Mum and Dad’s without an argument? The private investigator I’m working for—Marshall—is supposed to report your whereabouts to a vampire. What do you think will happen when he does that? Someone will come after you and end your legacy. Please. Put your romance with this guy, Garth, on hold for two minutes. I’ll find a way to get Marshall to drop the case. You might be able to come back to the city within a week.” I didn’t actually believe what I said for a second, but I put my heart into my speech anyway.

London looked tired but otherwise unreadable. It was always like this. I was never sure what she was thinking.

After what felt like an age, she said, “I had actually been thinking of moving out soon anyway, but if you want me to hide out in the country for a few days, I guess I can do that for you.

Afterward, I want to move in with Garth.”

I frowned… deeply. I didn’t want London to move in with her sleazy boyfriend who would inevitably kill her if Marshall’s crew didn’t, but I couldn’t decide if I should argue the point now.

This was all happening too fast.

I’d have to cross that bridge when I came to it. The most important thing at that moment was to get London out of the city—away from Marshall. She’d be safer.

I got up off the bed and called to arrange for a truck to come to pick up her things that very night. Then I braced myself for the work of moving her things when she was as helpful as a corpse. It was going to be a long night.

Chapter Three

Dinner with the Enemy

The next day at work, my muscles screamed and my mouth yawned in turns. I didn’t get to bed until four in the morning and I got up at seven to make it to the office on time. Marshall didn’t have anything interesting for me to do and I couldn’t tell if he was impressed that I hadn’t run away with my tail between my legs when I saw the file yesterday. I still didn’t know what he knew about me and London. He was a hard nut to c***k.

The night before, after an hour of lying my can off to my parents and six hours of manual labor getting London packed up, I got two and a half hours of sleep—plus fifteen minutes standing in the shower, where I could have fallen and cracked my head open. My workday began with forty-five minutes in transit, followed by eight hours sitting in front of a glowing computer screen and the odd lunch hour where I ate cookies and drank bitter cola to keep myself from passing out. After all that, I still had to make dinner for Dudley.

As I came out of the office, he was there waiting for me.

Making polite conversation on the way was unnecessary because we took the train, so we couldn’t have heard each other anyway. I just had to focus on staying conscious and believe me—that was hard enough.

At my place, I made a salad out of the vegetables I always kept in my fridge, so it wasn’t the freshest thing ever, but tough luck for him. All I hoped was that he wouldn’t call me on the somewhat flat lettuce after I lied the night before about having an empty fridge. I made paninis because they were easy and fast. I wasn’t sure about Dudley, but I was hungry, and eating now wasn’t soon enough.

While I cooked, he wandered around the living room. I didn’t care. After four in the morning, there was nothing incriminating to be found. London, and all evidence of her existence, was gone by two. I spent another two hours redecorating, so the place would look respectable for Dudley.

When I finished preparations, I called him to the table. To impress him, I laid the table with my best chartreuse dinnerware.

“It looks good,” he says kindly. If you saw what I put on the chartreuse dinnerware, you’d know exactly how kind he was being.

“Thanks,” I replied, but as we ate, neither of us spoke except to ask for the salad dressing.

Toward the end of the meal, I was holding my head with one hand and the corner of my panini with the other. I couldn’t possibly finish it and as I looked at Dudley across the table, I knew the evening had been a bomb… from a date perspective. From the hiding London perspective—I thought I aced it.

As long as he didn’t have a good time, he’d probably be out the door in five, four, three, two…

“Mind if I turn on the news?” he suddenly asked.

“Go ahead,” I said in my least encouraging voice, hoping he would catch my drift.

Then he, dead-serious, went into the living room, plunked down on the couch, and turned on the evening news. I poured myself another glass of water and joined him, leaving a good-sized cushion between us on the sofa. After all, he was the enemy. I mean, a man whose idea of changing for the evening is to undo the top button of his shirt without taking off his tie could only be an enemy.

Soon, my water was drunk and we were watching some insipid story about how many dogs need to be adopted at the humane society. Bored, I flopped my chin onto my open palm.

Suddenly, Dudley said, “I remembered where I know you from.”

My blood turned cold. “Oh?” I said, trying not to sound like it mattered to me.

“I think I knew you when I was a kid.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” I said, pretending to be very interested in the last drops of water in the bottom of my cup. “I’m twenty-three and you look like you’re at least—” “Twenty-six,” he supplied.

Oh, he was younger than I thought.

“I was older than you,” he went on. “I lived next door.”

Turning toward him, I couldn’t stop gawking. I did remember a boy who lived next door. That was right. He was eighteen, and in the same graduating class as London. He was quiet and my memory of him was precious because I thought he was nice. What was his name? It was with the most monumental effort of my mind that I was able to formulate a name—Tate Crosswood.

However, I couldn’t for the life of me remember what he looked like. Could he be the same guy?

The first names were the same.

“I was called Crosswood then,” he explained stiffly before I had the chance to speak. “That was the last name of the husband my mum had at the time. When I left home I changed it back to

the name I was born with—Dudley. Do you remember me now?”

I blinked. I had no idea how to respond. I couldn’t decide if he was who he said he was or if he was pretending in order to get me to talk about London. “H-how have you been?” I finally managed to stutter.

“Well, after that night, things have been… different. My mum was so terrified of my being caught that she moved me straight to the city. I didn’t even get to go to graduation.”

What was he talking about? He spoke as if I should know, but I had no clue. What night?

“I’ve felt like a hunted man ever since. I wanted to see how you grew up. You’re so different from what I remember. The Sweeper I remember was a pale little teenager with stiff expressions and dark eyes that only followed her sister. You seem much less tense now. I guess that’s a relief because it means you weren’t damaged by our escapade. Even though you’ve changed, there’s still something about you. There was never anything remotely special about London. In my opinion, she was far below average. I’ve always wondered why that vampire chose her.”

“What?” I said. What I meant to say was, ‘What did you just say about my sister?’ Heat filled my head.

Dudley didn’t seem to notice he had offended me. Instead, he seemed lost in thought as he continued. “I finally decided. I think he chose London because he knew she wouldn’t be strong enough to murder him when the time came. While working as a private investigator, I’ve seen a few documents on him. He was a crafty bloodsucker. London was his seventh lover. He was used

to the routine. He just didn’t expect you to interfere. Me either, for that matter.”

Dudley looked at my face and he finally seemed to realize that something was wrong with me. I was a mass of confusion. I could only follow a little of what he said. Some of it made sense to me and some of it didn’t. Why would his mother ship him off? I had no memory of that. Not to mention that I was ticked off by the way he had insulted London. Forget whether or not his accusations were justified. It wasn’t his place to say those things about my sister—whether I had thought them myself or not.

“Sorry, I probably shouldn’t be talking about London so casually. Thinking about her probably hurts you.”

Now he was apologizing?

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for,” I say nonchalantly. “It doesn’t hurt me to think about her.”

Now it was his turn to look confused. “Sorry,” he said again. “I just thought you loved her so much that you’d be crushed when she died.” He took one look at my face and revised his comment. “She’s not dead,” he said, realizing his mistake. “Sorry. I’m an idiot.” “Why did you think she was dead?” I asked briskly.

“I thought she was the weak type. It’s hard to imagine she’s survived all these years. I wonder how she’s made it.”

Now we were on a train of thought I could understand. Whether he knew London and me in the past didn’t matter if he was chasing her for Marshall and trying to pump me for information. He wanted me to brag about how I had been the one to keep her alive. I couldn’t do that. I had to be slick.

“Well, it’s been a while since I’ve seen her. I’m not really sure how she’s making out.”

Dudley’s next expression surprised me. It was like he thought if I hadn’t heard from her recently she was dead for sure. He thought I was being naïve.

Well, I was not volunteering any more information. I was about to suggest to him that he head for the door when suddenly our attention was drawn back to the TV. The news was over and instead of their regular programming, they were showing a movie. Dudley looked interested in it and put the remote on the armrest. Unfortunately, I was not brash enough to throw him out, even though I was dead tired. It would leave a bad impression after he said how we knew each other when we were teenagers.

I did okay keeping my eyes open for the first half-hour of the film. After that, I started to fade. I didn’t want to fall asleep, but the day and the night and the day of hard work were catching up with me and I couldn’t stay awake anymore.

I slept.

In my dream, time turned back years and years. I was beside a fire and I was dead tired—a lot like now. There were slivers of wood in my palms and I tried to pull them out as I lay back, my head resting on someone’s thigh.

Gentle hands took mine, one by one, and the worst of the splinters were removed quickly and painlessly with the tweezers on a Swiss pocket knife.

I looked back at the fire and saw the feet of the vampire we were burning.

Suddenly I woke with a start, my tired mind trying to sort out my dream of the past. Those weren’t London’s hands touching mine. She didn’t help me burn the body. Who else was there?

In the here and now, I sat in my own apartment with my head resting on Dudley’s shoulder. His arm was around me and his cheek rested on the top of my head. “I have never been sorry for helping you,” he said gently.

Memories Blooding In

Then memories flooded in.

The room was black except for the TV’s blinking screen. I’d been reading in my room and came out for a drink of water. London and Schroder were making out on the couch. The acid in my stomach turned sour and disgust bubbled up in my throat. I crept into the kitchen, needing that glass of water more than ever. I turned the tap on, scarcely more than a drip.

The truth was her boyfriend terrified me. London said he was a vampire. That wasn’t difficult to believe. He scared me. London said he had made her into a vampire. Whatever. I didn’t know what to believe. She seemed the same to me.

As I carefully stopped the water, I heard London’s sharp intake of breath. I stood there for a second, trying to imagine what that sound meant. I drank my water and as I swallowed, I remembered the last time that sound had come out of my mouth. It was the last time I had needed a vaccine. I put my cup on the counter and snuck through the dining room to approach the living room from another direction. Sinking onto the floor in horror, I watched a streak of red run in a single stream down her neck and pool in the crevice of her collarbone. He licked it out. I put my hand over my mouth to stop them from hearing my gasp. He was drinking her blood.

I didn’t go for the knife right away. I sat there, stunned. Why was he doing this? Wasn’t she already a vampire? Didn’t she already give up her life to be with him? I got the phone and called 9-1-1.

“9-1-1. State your emergency.”

“There’s a vampire in my house. He’s drinking my sister’s blood,” I whispered.

There was laughing on the other end of the line. Vampires weren’t as common in those days. “Listen, kid, you can be fined for making prank calls to 9-1-1. Don’t let it happen again!” “I’m telling the…”

They had already hung up.

I went back to my hiding place. I started watching the clock. He had been sucking her blood for five minutes. Then ten minutes. Then fifteen minutes. I couldn’t stand this. He was literally draining her. I crept back to the kitchen and got the knife. It was the biggest, sharpest one in my mother’s butcher block. Then I hid behind the armchair and tried to get up the courage to step forward and stop what was happening.

London moaned. It sounded like she was dying. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I got up.

“Schroder, stop it,” I bawled, practically crying as I shifted my weight between my feet. I hid the knife behind my back, clenching the handle in my fist.

He continued drinking, not even acknowledging my presence.

“Schroder!” I yelled, gathering up my nerve. “Get off her!”

He let go. She fell limp on the couch. The rip he had cut into her throat was alarmingly large. I could see tendons completely exposed and her gore splattered across her white shirt. I thought he had killed her and I pulled my knife out so he could see it.

“What are you going to do with that?” he asked condescendingly.

I lunged.

He jumped out of the way. “She’s a vampire. This is nothing to us.”

“Nothing? She’s dead!” I scraped the blade across his chest, and a trail of blood flowed.

Schroder’s expression changed. “She’s not dead!”

I hesitated.

He continued, his eyes were like death lanterns floating in the river—inhuman. “But I’m going to kill her over and over again until I get it right.” He spat at me and his spittle splattered across my cheek. I touched my cheek with my free hand. It was London’s blood he’d spat at me. In slow motion, I stared at the red liquid and felt its slippery quality between my fingers as Schroder moved toward her.

I sprang forward and grabbed his shoulder. He responded easily to my touch and swung around to face me. I plunged the blade into his chest. He tried to grab my knife-wielding hand, but I wouldn’t let him get it.

He lost blood in torrents as I scraped and stabbed. His hands moved like lightning to fend off my advance, but I fought like I was possessed and he couldn’t stop me. My final stroke hit home, right into his heart, and just as I wrenched the knife free he took hold of my wrist. He squeezed it so tightly I dropped the knife. He gripped my other wrist in his free hand, pushing me against the wall.

I’m dead, I thought.

I cringed and closed my eyes. I didn’t dare look at his expression. I thought I heard him lick his lips.

Then Tate broke through the backdoor. “Sweeper!” I heard him call. I opened my eyes and saw his lank figure enter the room. He picked up a lamp and slammed the stainless steel bottom into the back of Schroder’s head.

“Tate!” I screamed.

In hardly a moment, the gawky teenager jumped on Schroder from behind, and together, he and I brought the vampire down on the hardwood floor.

“Sit on him!” Tate yowled as he forced Schroder’s arms down.

I sat down on his chest, and as I did, the blood overflowed from his wounds and soaked my thighs and between my legs. Under me, I could see his cuts gape, showing the whiteness of his bare ribs. I turned my head and choked down the bile.

“He’s a vampire. We have to kill him!” Tate said as he snatched up the knife.

“Just do it,” I moaned.

Schroder was screaming and clawing like a maniac, but I managed to crush him under my weight, forcing his wounds open. Tate took the knife and cut, cut, cut, thwack! It was gruesome. The spinal column severed and the head fell loose away from the body. I fell off the dead vampire and puked.

That was the truth.

Dudley was the one who helped me prepare the pyre in the backyard. I remembered the way he looked with his thin arms and large hands carrying load after load of hardwood until he had covered Schroder’s body in the bottom of the fire pit. I sat still drenched in blood; desperately fatigued and so traumatized I couldn’t stop shaking. I thought his strength must be at its limit, but he kept working. He kept trying until he finally lit the pyre. Then he sat and held me in front of the fire all night.

In the morning, there was nothing left of Schroder, but ashes. He was gone.

My parents were out of town, so they didn’t find us, but Tate’s mother did. She helped us clean up my living room and afterward, she sent Tate away. She didn’t want him caught up in my mess.

I blocked every shred of memory—taking all the responsibility upon myself when we had done it together.

He helped me, putting his whole life on the line, because back then… he loved me. My heart nearly bled at the realization of it.

“I remember now,” I heard myself say, though the words seemed inadequate to describe my feelings. Dudley looked at me with an intensity I could scarcely return, so I looked away and kept talking. “I’m really sorry I didn’t remember you on sight. I should have. It’s just that I was kind of disturbed by what we did and I...”

He shook his head. “It’s okay. After my mother sent me away I felt like I needed to be in therapy, except that I couldn’t tell anyone what I’d done. I wanted to contact you a million times just to settle myself, but my mother made me promise not to. She didn’t want me connected to any of it. I think she wanted you and London to be blamed for the whole thing if it were discovered. I’m glad it wasn’t. And I got over my mental problems by killing vampires until I couldn’t feel anything anymore.”

When he said that last bit, a knot grew in my throat. “You aren’t thinking of hunting London, are you?”

“No,” he said, his expression was appalled. “What makes you think I would want to?”

“Marshall is chasing her,” I admitted, and yeah, my tongue was a little looser than usual, but Marshall’s case involved Dudley as much as it did me. Besides, he’d saved my life and my sister’s life once, why not help us again? I might as well lay my cards on the table to see what he could make of them.

“Really?”

“I saw the file.”

“Does he know she’s your sister?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t had the chance to figure him out. I know that a vampire asked him to find London and Schroder. The file was mixed in with some old cases. From the history in the file, it looked like Marshall wasn’t having any luck. The case was closed for years until he saw London in a nightclub and took a picture of her.” I bit my lip and continued, “I’m in the picture.

I’m in the background and I’m a little out of focus, but I’m definitely there. Everything points to

London and me being together. He’s looking for that vamp’s murderers—London and me—” “And me,” Dudley interrupted.

I smiled wanly and continued as if he hadn’t said anything. “I just don’t know if Marshall has made the connection between me and London yet. I guess he hasn’t talked to you about the case?”

“Not one word, but you know it’s unlikely that he thinks someone other than London killed Schroder. Marshall would probably end her legacy just to close the file. It’s possible that’s what the vamp hired him to do in the first place. Where’s London right now?”

I rolled my eyes. “I moved her back to my parents’ place for the time being. I didn’t want her bar-hopping and lately, there’s been this guy.”

Dudley’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Is he her first lover since...”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“I’m sorry, but I meant what I said earlier about London being dead. I am shocked she’s managed to stay alive all these years. She was always such a trembling little rabbit of a girl. I can’t imagine becoming a vampire changed that.”

I put my fingers between my eyes and squeezed my nose bridge. “I know. If I don’t do something, either Marshall, or the monster who hired him, will probably kill her.”

“It’s not the fact he’ll kill her that worries me.”

I pulled my hand away from my face. “What are you talking about?”

Dudley’s face was pale and his dark eyes looked hesitant.