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  Staring at the car in the dirt driveway, Gabriel longed to show off what he could do. Not just roaring down a highway behind the man-made classic, but here, in this vacation spot. He could let go, just a bit more, and he could feed his gifts.

  Back home, he’d travelled over the border into Canada on bi-weekly jaunts and had given in to the monster within, feeding upon the blood of man. And it was delightful. Father had always preached to take only what you need, stay in the shadows, away from human eyes, but the taste proved too much for him. The immediate rush, the strength and its effect on their gifts was glorious. If his father truly had resisted, had been able to hold back and restrain himself from partaking in the ritual on a regular basis, he had the most powerful will and constitution of any being, man or monster, that Gabriel had ever known. The problem for him now was wondering what he felt more for his father – respect or hatred. To suffocate what you were, and to raise a brood to do the same. Was that not an insult to their kind? Was it not suppressing their spirit? Why muddle through life as a commoner when you could live it like a king?

  And unlike the humans and their fantastical stories of vampires and their eternal lives, it simply was not true. They died just the same. They had a limited time on this Earth to discover and live and love and feed….

  Maybe if it were the case, if he had an eternity, he could afford the luxury of time and patience and restraint. But that was not the road laid out before him. He could not control what Mother and November chose to do, but he’d be damned, and maybe he was already, if he was going to waste his life never giving his full potential the chance to dine and dance under the moonlight.

  No, he’d been tapdancing on the line his father had drawn for them. He knew that soon the time would come for him to step over and discover what he was truly capable of.

  * * *

  “Mother wants to go for a walk,” November said, stepping up beside him. “She wants to know if you’ll join us?”

  His beautiful sister was becoming a woman. He’d seen the way she looked at boys. Could see the shape she’d taken on and the way men were now gazing upon her. It wouldn’t be long at all before someone tried to defile her. He made it his duty to protect them, but especially her. She was a teenager. Her head full of impossible ideas. She needed watching.

  “As tempting as it is, I must decline, sweet little sister.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She lingered.

  “When do I get to drive Father’s car?”

  “Ha,” he cackled. “You?”

  “What’s so funny? I’m nearly old enough. He taught you when you were fifteen.”

  He couldn’t argue with her. But he didn’t want her behind the wheel just yet either. More attention was not what she needed.

  “That is true,” he said. “How about I think about it, and maybe when we get back home, I’ll take you out.”

  “You mean it?”

  “We’ll see,” he said. “Driving takes concentration. An ability to pay attention, which comes with maturity.”

  “So, you’ll think about it.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yes, I’ll think about it. Now, go fetch Mother and take her out before she comes out and hears this preposterous dream of yours.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t until two weeks later when he caught his sister kissing a boy outside the cabin that something wicked soured his vacation.

  He’d come back from Portland having just finished feeding off the drunk little college girl, when he found his sister, at three in the morning no less, in the clutches of the boy.

  She didn’t even try to stop it. Not even when the Pontiac came growling up the dirt path and pulled into the driveway.

  He was out of the vehicle and at their side in seconds, the boy in his grasp, November hitting him, demanding he let the long-haired scoundrel go.

  “Gabriel, stop it, he’s my friend.”

  The boy, at first filled with piss and vinegar spoiling for a fight, quickly wilted in Gabriel’s presence. Gabriel held him off the ground, the boy’s hands clutching at his wrists. The weakling gasped for air, his eyes pleading, until Gabriel tossed him to the back lawn. He hit the ground with a loud oomph, held his sore throat and whimpered.

  “If I ever see you around here again, I will kill you,” Gabriel spat.

  “Gabriel, leave him alone,” November said, trying to shove him back.

  After pulling his gaze from the cretin, he turned upon her.

  “And you, I shall expect more of you henceforth.”

  “You’re an asshole,” she said.

  Before he could stop, he lashed out, backhanding her to the ground. The look of pure hurt that crossed her features weakened his knees.

  The boy scrambled to his feet and for a second, looked as though he contemplated defending November’s honour. But his tail quickly went between his legs as he ran off through the trees.

  “I’m…I….” Gabriel tried to find the words, but his rage cut him off short of apologising.

  His sister scurried inside.

  The collision of rage, shame, and hurt made him ill. And a vampire ill is not a pretty sight. Clutched over, he vomited blood until he was too weak to rise.

  He awoke the next morning in his casket.

  Whether it was Mother or November that put him there, he could not recall.

  All was quiet and tense in the house over the next few days.

  Mother told him to give his sister space, to trust her.

  And he heeded her words.

  It was a mistake.

  He caught the two lovebirds at it again, this time just outside the boy’s camp, necking and groping. Rather than risk the wrath and possible all-out fight with his sister, Gabriel waited. He watched, allowing his hatred and disgust to roil up within as they kissed for what seemed like an eternity. His only solace came when his sister thwarted the blood bag’s attempt to disrobe her.

  When she finally gave him one last kiss before walking off along the path, presumably heading home, Gabriel made his move.

  He appeared along the path behind the boy.

  “You know what she is?” he asked.

  The boy halted and looked back.

  His hands flew up in defence.

  “She asked me to meet her,” the boy said. “I was going to leave her alone.”

  Gabriel stepped forward, no longer hiding his vampiric features. His ears and fangs extended, his forehead enlarged, the vein throbbed over his blood-tinted right eye.

  “Oh my gah…oh, oh no…” the boy wheezed and whined, stumbling in retreat.

  “Leaving her alone would have been a good move for you,” Gabriel said.

  As soon as the boy’s back was to him, Gabriel had his lengthened nails deep in the boy’s neck. Airborne, Gabriel and the boy disappeared over the trees until they were on the other side of the lake.

  “Puh, puh, please, don’t kill me, don’t kill me. I-I’ll leave her alone, please….”

  “Shhh,” he said, holding the boy with one arm and placing a nail against his lips to shut him up.

  “You see me, yes?”

  The boy nodded, tears streaming over his cheeks.

  “She is exactly the same. Is this your ideal picture of love?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Do you know what we are?”

  He turned white as a ghost.

  “Say it.”

  The boy’s mouth bobbed like a fish desperate for air.

  “Vah…vehm….v-v-v….”

  He gripped the boy’s neck enough to make him cry out.

  “Say it!” he shouted.

  “Vampires…” the boy cried, turning into an absolute blubbering mess.

  “Was that so hard?”

  He was too distraught to reply.

 
Gabriel began to descend when something jammed through his flesh, causing him to drop the boy into the lake below.

  A Swiss Army knife protruded from his ribs.

  The boy was swimming for the shore as Gabriel extracted the blade and let it fall.

  Overcome with a sense of malice unlike anything he’d ever known, Gabriel swooped down and clutched the boy’s head in his hands. In one thrilling motion, Gabriel wrenched the young man’s head from his body. A bloodlust coursed through him.

  After collecting the rest of the boy from the lake, Gabriel descended upon the campsite, extracted the young man’s mother and father from their RV, and drained them.

  He disposed of the bodies, packed up their site and got rid of the camper in a dense part of the forest miles away.

  By dawn, he lay in his casket, a wicked smile upon his sleeping face.

  If his sister suspected him, she kept it to herself.

  For the rest of their vacation, she walked alone and kept a distance from others. Being amongst them, but not with them.

  For better or worse, his actions had proved efficient.

  Only he knew what he had done.

  Or so he thought….

  Chapter Fourteen

  1986

  “Hey, wake up, sleepyhead.”

  Rocky opened his eyes and wondered what part of summer vacation his mother didn’t understand. She even had the audacity to pull his shades open, letting the horrible bright yellow ball of gas cast its devilish light spell upon him.

  It burns, it burns! his mind screamed.

  He nearly chuckled at that one and would have had he not felt like he’d been up all night and woken up far too soon.

  “What are you doing?” he grumbled, covering his face with his pillow.

  She pulled it away from him and sat down next to him.

  “I just wanted to remind you that you told Uncle Arthur you’d help him with that porch today.”

  “Oh, man, that’s right. What time is it?”

  “It’s almost noon. I just woke your sister up, too. She’s in the shower.”

  He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

  “Hey, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” she said.

  Stretching, he said, “What is it?”

  She looked serious. Like, scary serious. Her mouth was tight, her brow scrunched.

  “Mom, what is it?”

  “There’s been some concern this morning. On the TV, they said Andy Rice, well, he hasn’t come back from delivering newspapers this morning.”

  He knew Andy. They’d traded tapes a few months ago. Some kids traded baseball cards; he and his small group of fellow headbangers swapped cassettes. He’d just got the first W.A.S.P album in exchange for two Kiss tapes—Unmasked and Rock and Roll Over. Two for one was always hard, but you had to give extra for what you really wanted.

  “What do you mean he hasn’t come back?”

  “They don’t know yet. They think something might have happened to him on his route this morning. His mom and dad are asking around and I guess they’ve taken off work to do their own search around town.”

  “Maybe I could help look. I mean, I don’t know where he might go, not really, but maybe if I rode around—”

  “No, that’s the other thing. I want you with Uncle Arthur today.”

  “Mom, I can ride—”

  “No.” Her serious face went up a level. Clarise Zukas had put her foot down. There was no one, Dad included, who crossed that line.

  “There’s another girl being reported as missing. A young teenager from Virginia—”

  “Vanesa something, right?”

  “Yes, Winslow, I believe. How did you know?” Mom asked, giving him the queer eye, her left eyebrow cocking up.

  “I saw a man putting up posters last night on my way back home.”

  “Well, one missing child is sad and unfortunate. Two in a week is frightening.”

  He had to agree. Seeing Vanessa’s poster had been bad enough for him but hearing about Andy…it made it feel too real.

  “I have to work until seven tonight. Your dad will be home at five thirty. I don’t want you out on your own for a few days. You get Uncle Arthur or your dad to give you a ride home.”

  He was about to ask how he was going to get there when Julie appeared in the doorway.

  “Get up already. If I’m driving you, the train is leaving in ten minutes.”

  “Hey,” their mother said to her. “This goes for you, as well. Work and home. No stopping anywhere else.”

  “Well, can Derek at least come here?”

  “Sure, but you will behave. I don’t need your father coming home to find you two…necking or whatever and giving him a heart attack. Dr. Sewall has him on an Anacin regimen.”

  “Mom,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Don’t Mom me, Julie. A mother knows.”

  She leaned over and gave Rocky a kiss on his cheek.

  “Love you,” she said.

  “Love you, too.”

  “Please?” their mom said, stepping up to Julie.

  “Yeah, we’ll be good.”

  Mom gave her a hug and a kiss.

  “Love you,” she said.

  “Love you, too,” Julie said.

  After Mom was down the hall, Julie tossed a pair of mustard-coloured gloves at him. “Dad left those for you. Get dressed already.”

  * * *

  Julie drove him over to their uncle’s and left him at the curb.

  He saw the Portland Press Herald paper box next to his uncle’s mailbox and thought of Andy. He hoped his friend was all right, but he didn’t feel good about his chances. A voice in the back of his mind, where the monsters under the bed conversed, where the bad thing in the closet and the creature in the woods played head games, where the nightmare producers in his sleep placed Little House on the Prairie under a heavy fog and infested the family show with zombies, this great communicator told him something bad was happening right here in his summertime town.

  * * *

  “Squirt,” Uncle Arthur said.

  He’d called Rocky Squirt ever since he could remember. He’d once told him that he’d squirted him with breast milk when Rocky was a baby.

  “Hey, Uncle Arthur.”

  “Oh, wow, I see you got some serious work gloves with you. You really come prepared, huh?”

  Rocky slapped the gloves against his palm. “Yeah, Dad left them for me.”

  “Well, Squirt, let’s get to work.”

  As Rocky followed him around the one-storey house, the backyard came into view.

  His uncle walked to the lawn chair under the shade of a maple tree and took a seat. Bruce Springsteen sang about Atlantic City from a grey Sony boombox. Uncle Arthur reached into the yellow cooler next to him.

  “You want one?” he asked, offering a silver can of beer.

  “Ah….”

  “No worries, you just got here and it’s better to pull shit apart and watch out for nails and shit when you ain’t tying one on.” He opened the can and took a swig before setting it on his knee. “Offer stands, though. Your mom and dad ain’t here, and us working men – old and young alike – are allowed a man’s refreshment. You just say when.”

  “Ah, yeah, cool,” Rocky said. He’d never had a beer, but honestly, it was on his list of things to try, right next to smoking a joint and getting laid. “Later,” he said, pulling on the gloves.

  “You got it, Squirt. I’ll make sure to leave you a couple.”

  “So, where do we start?” he asked, resting his hands on his hips and looking over at the roofless structure.

  “Well, Squirt, you see that there sledge?”

  Rocky saw it leaning against the wall.

  “Yeah.”

>   “Give that baby a heft and start whackin’.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m gonna finish this beer, have another. By the time that’s done, I bet you’ll need a rest and I’ll take my turn busting shit.”

  “And I’m still getting paid for this, right?”

  “Squirt, you ain’t gotta worry about that. Now, get swingin’.”

  * * *

  Rocky’s arms felt like rubber by two in the afternoon, but they’d managed to get the walls down and all the debris in the giant metal dumpster his uncle had rented.

  Rocky managed to force down a beer; he worried the nasty taste would stick on his tongue all day. He was checking his watch when his uncle pulled up a second lawn chair and handed him a plate with two hot dogs on it.

  “You got a hot date or something?” Uncle Arthur asked.

  “What? No, I was just checking.”

  “Yeah, well, I noticed you checkin’ pretty much since you got here.”

  Rocky bit into the first dog. His uncle leaned into the cooler, popped the top on two more cans, and handed one to him. He took it, even though he was feeling the effects of the first one. He felt fuzzy, and fuzzy felt pretty good. His hot dog tasted fantastic.

  After he swallowed his food and took a sip of the beer to wash it down, he said, “Well, there’s this girl—”

  “Ah, shit. There’s always a girl. What’s her name?”

  “November.”

  “Hmm. That’s different, but I like it. And she’s cute, right?”

  Rocky nodded.

  They ate the rest of lunch to the sounds of WBLM; they were playing Bob Seger’s ‘Old Time Rock and Roll’.

  “So, you supposed to see her today?” his uncle asked.

  “Well, we didn’t set anything up.” Rocky gazed off, his eyelids feeling a little heavy. “My mom doesn’t really want me out today.”

  “Hmm. Because of that paperboy kid this morning?”

  Rocky nodded and took a bigger sip from his Coors Light. The taste wasn’t so bad now.

  “We got a few choices, right now,” Uncle Arthur said. “We can get you home, maybe you can meet up with this girl somewhere. We can head inside, watch one of my laser discs. Or we can see if we can get this job done before the night falls down on top of us. Totally up to you, Squirt.”