Gidion's Hunt Read online

  Gidion felt as if he’d just had his head bit off. He’d hit a nerve without trying.

  “Pete, you okay?”

  He adjusted the upturned collar of his shirt, pulling it a little tighter. “Gid, I’m fine.” He shrugged. “I’ve just been hanging out with some other people. Seth’s got his girl, and you’ve been off doing whatever it is that isn’t drugs or dating. I lost my job at the car shop, and the past month has just been all around shitty.”

  “Wait, when did you lose your job?”

  Pete leaned on the top of the car and stared off. “Before the school year started.”

  Now Gidion felt like a real jerk. He hadn’t even noticed. “What happened? I thought you liked it.”

  “Overslept a few times.”

  “Oh, that sucks.” Gidion didn’t really know what else to say to that. Even as bad as his luck could get, Pete seemed to have a black cloud permanently stuck above him. Seth and Gidion had both taken the fall for him a few times to help out in the past. “So if you haven’t been working, what have you been doing?”

  “Jesus, Gid, don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal. I’m keeping busy, and I’m even getting a little cash on the side.” He tapped the roof of his car. “Only reason I’ve been able to keep Death rolling.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s good.”

  Pete glanced at Gidion’s car. “Speaking of cars, how’s No-Name over there doing?”

  “Been running fine.”

  While Pete wasn’t the most reliable guy for getting to work on time, he knew lots about fixing cars. He’d found Death in a scrapyard, bought it for a few hundred bucks and got it running. Pete already had oil stains under the tips of his fingernails and a permanent odor of grease before he had a driver’s license. Heck, Dad even let Pete change the oil in his car.

  “So what have you been doing?” Pete asked.

  “Mainly hanging out with Grandpa and working out.” Gidion supposed that wasn’t a total lie, and providing a somewhat honest answer made him feel less like a hypocrite for pestering Pete about what he’d been up to.

  A few minutes later, Death rattled its way out of the parking lot, leaving Gidion sitting by himself in the Little Hearse.

  “This just sucks.” He looked at the time on his dashboard’s display, not even two o’clock yet. Dad was probably still asleep, giving him a few more hours to himself.

  “Might as well work.” He picked up the manila envelope Grandpa had given him just before leaving the funeral home. He opened it and dumped the contents onto the passenger seat, all the personal items from the guy who tried to chomp on Ms. Aldgate. Didn’t look like much.

  “A wallet.” He flipped it open. The picture matched, but he was willing to bet the name didn’t, Allen Pike. Then he picked up the only other thing to fall out of the envelope, a car key with a remote fob. “This is a first. Let’s see what I can do with you.”

  He cranked up the Little Hearse and pulled it back onto Midlothian. It was time to go back downtown.

  Chapter Five

  Ask any vampire with half a brain cell to choose between a Lamborghini Gallardo and a Buick LeSabre, and he’ll choose the Buick every time.

  Why?

  Trunk space.

  Sure, the Lamborghini will score him a few ladies to snack on along the way, but even the most high performance vehicle is eventually going to break down. If that happens on the most desolate stretch of an interstate a half hour before sunrise, then he’ll need a place to hide.

  Thanks to Grandpa Murphy, Gidion knew his kill from the night before had been driving a Ford. As soon as he reached downtown, he pulled out the key fob and pressed it whenever he came near a likely candidate.

  He passed on the Fiestas, the SUVs and the pickups. After an hour of going up and down Cary and Main, he moved onto the more obscure parking locales. The clock was edging close to four by the time he checked a small lot near the Pipeline Overlook. The location provided a nice place for a vampire to bring a victim: lots of trees, limited foot traffic at night, noisy train tracks and even a view of the James River for those looking to add a little romance to dinner. Gidion spotted a light blue Crown Victoria in a space near the end of the lot, the front end partially over the grass. Grandpa called Crown Vics the car of choice for police and vampires alike. Soon as he pressed the lock button on the key fob, the car honked back at him.

  “Yes!” He’d tried to hunt for some of his previous kills’ cars, but this was the first time he’d gotten to do it with a key fob. That saved him a lot of legwork.

  He pulled the Little Hearse into a space next to the vampire’s car. This stretch of the Canal Walk had a little foot traffic this time of day, so he waited a few minutes to let enough folks cycle through so that no one would remember which car was his.

  The fob came with a button to pop open the trunk, another useful feature for a vampire using his car as a mobile home. He stepped back a few feet and hit the button. Good thing, too. The vampire hadn’t set up any booby traps, but the stench was enough to force him back a few more feet.

  The daylight revealed a sleeping bag and several pillows. As he dared to move closer, he saw a bottle of Febreze up beside the spare tire. There was a product testimonial just begging to be made. “Febreze, the choice of nomadic vampires everywhere,” he said. Behind the Febreze, there was a small duffel bag. That didn’t contain much of use, just some clothes in desperate need of a washing and a few rolls of quarters, probably for laundromats. Making sure no one was looking, he slipped the quarter rolls into his pockets. Hey, it wasn’t like the vampire needed the change anymore, and his car didn’t run on pedal power.

  He pushed the pillows aside and found something of real value.

  “Cell phone.” Guy was working with one of those touchscreen deals. Gidion had been harassing Dad to let him join the 21st century and get one of these. He was just lucky to have a cell with a keypad for texting, and he only got that because Dad had wanted one for himself, too.

  Satisfied he’d found everything he was going to in the trunk, he searched the rest of the car’s interior. Only things he found there were some very marked up road maps and two chargers for the cell phone, one for a regular outlet and another for the cigarette lighter.

  The phone’s battery had died. He closed up the Crown Vic and climbed back into his car. He plugged the phone into the cigarette lighter.

  “Let’s see who you’ve been talking to.” He went straight for the text messages. The phone contained only one message from a number listed as “unavailable.”

  The message included a picture of a woman’s face, one he knew, and the message warned that last night’s attack was anything but random.

  Lillian Aldgate. Find her. Kill her.

  Reward: admittance. –RICCVN

  The Imperial March started playing from his cell phone. Great. “Hey, Dad.” Just great.

  “Making sure you’re alive.” Dad still had that just-crawled-out-of-bed slur to his voice.

  “Yeah, figured I’d just drive around and let you get some sleep.”

  “Thanks, but Page made more noise than you ever could have.”

  Gidion didn’t doubt it. Their dog would bark if an ant farted across the street.

  “You up for some dinner?” Dad asked.

  Gidion’s stomach, bitter that he’d forgotten about lunch, answered before his mouth could. “Sounds good to me.”

  “Head on home then. I should be ready by the time you get here. We can grab a burger, maybe even see a movie.”

  Gidion resisted the urge to bang his head on the steering wheel. “Sounds awesome. I’m on the way.” Could his total lack of social status be any more confirmed than by hanging with his dad on a Saturday night?

  He hung up and looked back at the picture of Ms. Aldgate. Was the message sent to just the one vampire, or was this sent as some text blast? Dozens of these fanged assassins could be after her, and he didn’t have a way to warn her before Monday. What really had him scratching
his head was why a vampire would put a hit on a high school teacher.

  Chapter Six

  Sundays were sacred in Gidion’s home, but the only real prayer the Keeps engaged in involved their favorite football teams.

  “What the hell are the Redskins doing?” Gidion’s dad got up and went back into the kitchen, though whether to refill their salsa bowl or escape Washington’s loss-in-progress against Dallas was tough to call.

  “Looked like they were trying to run the ball on third and twelve.” Gidion petted their dog Page on the chest. She liked to sit beside him on Sundays. Dad said it was because he dropped the most food on the floor.

  “Idiots might as well have the cheerleaders on the field.” Grandpa Murphy mimicked Dad’s retreat, only going for the back porch to pull out his pipe. Dad didn’t let him smoke it in the house. “They’d have a better chance of winning.”

  They’d decided to watch Washington and Dallas only because the other game was Buffalo and New England, two teams they refused to pull for.

  Page looked up as Gidion stood. She didn’t follow him. Instead, she sniffed around the sofa for anything snack worthy. She licked up a few crumbs of tortilla chips.

  Grandpa was still filling his pipe as Gidion joined him outside. “Not even halftime, and those idiots are already losing twenty-one to nothing.”

  “At least Carolina is playing Cleveland later today.” They always pulled for the Panthers, and the Browns sucked this year. Gidion closed the back door, giving him a moment to talk to Grandpa without Dad listening. “Hey, I need an excuse to get out of here.”

  “I know the game is going bad, but—”

  “No, it’s not that. I’ve got a lead I want to run down.”

  Grandpa smiled. “How much time you need?”

  “Place isn’t far from here, so probably less than an hour.”

  He lit his pipe and took a few puffs. The smell of sour apple smoke, Grandpa’s smell, filled the porch. “I take it this is a recon trip and not a kill mission?”

  Gidion nodded. One of grandpa’s early lessons: never try to kill a vampire during the day. They wake up super-pissed.

  “All right, boy. I’ve got something that’ll work.” He cracked open the back door. “Hey, son, I’m sending Gidion to the grocery store for some steaks.”

  “You cooking them, or am I?”

  “Nah, I got this one. Anything’s better than watching Washington get skinned. Might as well get one last weekend with the grill before the seasons turn on us.” He pulled out his wallet and planted a wad of cash in Gidion’s hand. “Get some charcoal, too.”

  “You got it, Grandpa.”

  Gidion didn’t bother going back inside. He just ran to the front of the house and hopped in his car. Grandpa had taught him to leave all his gear loaded. Better not to ever get caught unprepared.

  He flipped open his cell phone and pulled up the directions he’d saved for this trip. The phone recovered from the vampire contained a lot of contacts, but all the entries were names of cities instead of people. He’d seen one for Richmond. A quick reverse lookup online had given him an address to go along with the number. As luck would have it, the house wasn’t far from here, just a few blocks away from his high school. He passed West Chester High, a group of two-story brown brick buildings connected by breezeways, and saw a few people using the tennis courts.

  A few minutes later, he turned onto Tolliver Court. Two boys who looked like they were each seven years old were having a mock sword fight with branches in the middle of the road. He got out and pulled a small, pale blue, plastic tub from the back of the car. The tub contained a couple of magazines and a bunch of subscription forms. He carried the tub up to the front door of 10014, a rancher with tan vinyl siding. The front yard looked promising enough. A pile of leaves had formed around the base of a maple. If anyone was looking after this place, they weren’t worried about yard work.

  He knocked on the door a few times, but no one answered. The front porch included a window that looked into the living room. The curtains were pulled shut, but a small crack in them let him get a peek inside. He saw a few chairs and little else. That was promising.

  Hardwood floors…another sign he’d hit pay dirt. Looked like there had been a rug. He could see the outline, but rugs weren’t good for bloodstains. Hardwood was easier to clean by comparison. Still, very little could beat old-fashioned kitchen or bathroom linoleum. He looked for signs of blood or repeated cleanups, but no such luck. The lack of light inside didn’t help.

  Grandpa had told him about places like this. Many vampire covens set up safe houses for their nomadic brothers and sisters. They didn’t want their fellow predators to know their true resting places. Safe houses also provided a somewhat neutral site to meet or a place to keep someone prisoner while they turned them. To hear Grandpa tell it, making a person into a bloodsucker wasn’t that simple, and the process usually killed more people than it turned. It was crazy to think there could be a bunch of vampires sleeping inside this place.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  If Gidion hadn’t been holding the tub of magazines, he’d have probably jumped a foot straight up. He turned to see a girl standing at the bottom of the stairs. She had jet black hair, all black clothes and a snarled mouth with lipstick dark enough to pass for dried blood. Underneath all the angst, she was pretty hot, though. She could probably make it into the top five of a Miss Teen Goth contest.

  “Name’s Gidion.” He lifted his pale blue tub. “Selling some magazines to raise money for a field trip. You interested?”

  “You miss the big ‘no soliciting’ sign at the entrance to the neighborhood, or are you just illiterate?”

  Nice.

  “It’s a fundraiser. Didn’t figure folks would mind. You live here?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, well then I’ll just knock a few more times.” He stepped right back to the door and pounded his fist on it, making sure to give “Goth Chick” a big smile.

  “She’s not home.” She said the “not” like it was a dagger meant to go between his ribs.

  “She?”

  “Ms. Eaton is out of town.”

  The reverse lookup he’d done had shown a name of Doris Eaton, so that matched.

  “And you are?”

  The way this girl crossed her arms, she must have been fighting the urge to rip his head off.

  “I’m Stephanie.”

  “Stephanie Drake?” Holy crap! He knew this girl from school. Only, she’d never looked like this. Stephanie was the small, brown-haired girl who played the violin in orchestra. Pretty cute, too, or rather, she used to be. He hadn’t seen her at school since the new year started, and now he understood why. She was still there, and he had seen her, just didn’t recognize her.

  “Gidion.” She said the name as if digging through her memory and then smiled, but not in a way that made her look any happier about him being there. “Oh, yeah. You’re the weird boy who was in my English class last year.”

  She was calling him weird? “Yeah, Mrs. Pulley’s class.” He walked down the steps to stand beside her. She was about his height. One thing he’d liked about Stephanie, she was one of the few girls who hadn’t gotten taller than him when everyone else sprouted in middle school. He was still playing catch-up. “You know when Ms. Eaton might be back home?”

  “Not anytime soon. Why do you care?”

  He answered her by holding up his tub again. “Suppose I could leave a flier.”

  “You’re wasting your time. I’ll just throw it away.” She beat him to the next question. “She asked me to keep an eye on her house while she’s away. Pick up her mail. All that fun stuff.”

  “Suppose you have a point.” After all, he was willing to bet Ms. Eaton wasn’t ever coming back. Either she was sporting a set of fangs or dead.

  The real question was where Stephanie fit into this. She wasn’t a vampire, but if this was a safe house, then she was working for them. He didn’t see any bite marks o
n her throat, though. According to Grandpa, there were lots of places for a vampire to snack on someone, places that didn’t require a lady to wear scarves to hide the telltale marks. Then again, as unlikely as it seemed to Gidion, she might not know the things she was working for were vampires.

  “You think your parents would be interested in buying some magazines?”

  She laughed. “I think my dad would call the cops.”

  “Good to know.” At least he had his excuse to just leave. He headed for his car. “See you at school, Stephanie.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  She didn’t follow, just waited at the foot of the front steps. He bet anything she was going to check the place over the second his car disappeared around the corner. He was tempted to do a U-turn just to catch her in the act, but he decided against it. Bad enough he’d been spotted scoping out the place, but far worse that the one who caught him knew him by name. Grandpa said the best defense a vampire hunter could have was anonymity, and in one weekend, he’d been recognized twice while hunting. He really needed to do something about this streak of bad luck.

  Chapter Seven

  The smell of charcoal and charred meat overpowered Grandpa’s pipe on the back porch.

  “Feeders.” Grandpa took out his pipe and spit over the railing into the grass. “Traitors to their own race. Hookers have more decency and self-respect.”

  Gidion petted Page on the head as he looked over his shoulder at the back door. He hoped Dad wouldn’t pop out with an update on the Redskins’ imminent loss to Dallas. They’d both have a hell of a lot to explain if he overheard any of this.

  “So what do I do about this girl? It’s not like I can cut her head off and bring her in for the cremator.”

  Grandpa grunted in a way that almost asked, ‘Why not?’

  “You do whatever it takes to stay alive, boy.”

  He tried to form the mental image of taking his wakizashi sword to Stephanie’s throat, and even with her whole goth look, he just couldn’t do it. It was hard to hold the image of how she was now. He kept thinking of the shy girl with the brown hair.