First Kill: A Dave Carver Novella (14 page)

I tried for a bravado-laden grin, but
I couldn’t manage more than a leer. The switchblade went through a
vampire’s eye, and he stumbled backwards. “We can take
‘em!”

I could hear the sad smile
in Nate’s voice. “No, we can’t. But you can get out of here. Take
the tunnels to the next station, go to the surface, and disappear.
Go to Squirrel. I’m sure he’ll let you stay there, like Maria. You
can
live
,
Dave.”

“I’m not leaving
you.”

Nate grunted with effort, exhaustion,
and pain. “You know, I was never sure if this was the right thing
to do. Now I know it wasn’t. I got everyone else killed, Dave, and
I’m sorry for that. We lost the war, but you don’t have to die. I’m
giving you one last order: Get out of here.”

Two vampires rushed me at the same
time, giving me a moment to pause the conversation. I killed them
easily enough with a pair of quick ax-strokes.

For a moment the vampires hung back,
as if they were wary of another charge. The mass of pounding,
shoving, shouting bodies reminded me of a mosh pit.

I didn’t want to leave Nate. We were a
Family, after all, and that meant we didn’t abandon each other.
Still, the truth was there wasn’t much of a Family left. What good
would it do for me to stay here and let myself get
slaughtered?

My eyes were so wide it was painful
when I looked at Nate.

There were tears in his eyes, but he
smiled. “Go,” he said.

I went.

Turning around, I began the process of
fighting my way through the relatively thin line of vampires in the
back of the circle. I killed a few of them, and the line broke,
getting out of my way. When I was clear, I broke into a run and
headed down the subway tunnel.

Chapter 15: The Beginning

I left.

The sounds of the battle faded away
into silence, until the sounds of my own heavy footfalls reminded
me that I was a coward.

Thump
. You were so wrapped up in your own grief that you didn’t
even wake up till the battle was almost over.
Thump
. They needed you, and you let
them down.
Thump
.
You don’t deserve to call yourself a member of the Family.
Thump
. You might as well
have killed them yourself.

I left Nate there to die.

Something back there howled, a sound
halfway between a dog and a cougar, and the monstrous cry echoed
down the subway tunnel. A sound of triumph. So that was it, then.
Nate was dead. He was as dead as the rest of the Family, as dead as
my mother, and I was alone.

I took the first ladder I found. Maybe
it would have been better to stay underground for a while longer so
I could get some distance before coming up, but I was feeling
claustrophobic and I knew that if I stayed underground a second
longer I’d lose my mind. I climbed the ladder and emerged across a
street from an old bodega.

Like nearly everything else in the
neighborhood, it was abandoned, boarded-up, and empty to the world.
I broke the boards in the front windows with my ax and crawled
inside, then crept to the back of the store and exited into an
alley. I ran, through back alleys and across streets, doing my best
to go through every garbage can and Dumpster I passed, covering
myself with the foul stench of trash. Vampires can track by smell,
and I wanted to hide my scent.

I’d been running for a while—I
honestly don’t remember how long or far I went—when I finally
collapsed in an alley with my back against a cracked brick wall. A
wave of self-revulsion, so powerful it was like nausea, washed over
me, breaking at chest-height like a storm surge. I put my face in
my hands and sobbed. I should have been dead, I knew, right there
with the Family. I didn’t deserve to live when the rest had
died.

I was a coward.

That was something I’d never known
about myself. I knew about fear, sure, but I didn’t realize that
there was something inside me so abhorred by the possibility of
death that I’d abandon my friends.

For the first time in years I thought
about my father. He left when I was two—I had no memories of him.
My mom took all of the pictures down and insisted that I didn’t
need to know anything about him. As I grew up, of course, I asked
questions, but Mom would never tell me. Really, she played the role
of both parents, and I’d never realized how grateful I should have
been. I’d always told myself that I’d never commit the same sins as
my father—that I’d never walk away from a responsibility or betray
the people who depended on me. But I had, hadn’t I? When the going
got tough, I got gone. Just like my father. Just like a
coward.

I’d vomited at some point, gotten it
all over my shoes, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything
except for not becoming my father.

I stood up. It was too late to help
the Family—but that didn’t relieve me of my duties. All I had to
do—all I could do—was fulfill my last obligation. I could avenge
them.

First thing: I’d need to talk to
Squirrel.

Maria stood up when I entered the
shop. She was in a little cubicle behind a half-wall. Her hair was
shorter than it had been when she lived with us, her arms were
covered with new tattoos, and she looked like she was actually
wearing makeup.

“Dave?” she said, a crack
in her voice. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head. “Where is he, Maria?
Where’s Squirrel?”

Her eyes flicked momentarily to the
front of the shop. I became abruptly aware of two things: one, I
was still holding a blood-stained ax, and two, there was a burly
biker dude sitting on a couch and holding a dogeared titty
magazine. He was gaping at me from behind a rat’s nest beard like
he’d never seen something like me before.

I ignored him. “I asked you a
question, Maria: Where is he?”

Something in my tone, I guess, shook
her, because she frowned, swallowed hard, and said, “I’ll go get
him.”

I looked at the biker. “ ‘Sup? Here to
get inked?”

He nodded. “Nice ax.”

“Thanks.”

Maria emerged from a back room,
leading Squirrel. The big man’s eyes were bleary and his hair was a
mess. He looked tired. He looked guilty.

I pointed the flat top of the ax in
his direction. “We need to talk.” I frog-marched him back the way
he’d come, into his studio. Behind me I heard Maria apologizing to
the biker and telling him they’d need to reschedule his
appointment.

Squirrel’s studio was small and
cramped. There were a couple of chairs, upholstered with old vinyl,
and a large workbench like the kind you’d see in a garage. On the
desk were Squirrel’s tattoo machines and ink caps. On one of the
chairs was a half-finished sketch of a skeleton riding a
motorcycle.

Maria followed us into the cramped
studio and slammed the door. “What the hell is this, Dave? Is
something wrong with the Family? Is everyone all right?”

“They’re all dead,” I
said, aware of how high-pitched and emotional my voice sounded.
“All of them.”

“My god.”

I looked over my shoulder. Maria had
her hand clasped to her mouth. There were tears in her
eyes.

“All of them?”

“Yeah.” I turned back to
Squirrel. “Because of a job you sent us on.”

“I never
sent
anyone anywhere,”
Squirrel said. For the first time I noticed how big he was. If he
wanted to, he could have folded me in half and used me as a
basketball. “You know I was never comfortable with it, but I knew
Nate, and I knew he was gonna do it anyway, so I tried to keep you
all alive.”

“Nice job,” I
sneered.

“Dave.” Maria’s voice was
gentle, almost motherly. I wondered how she pulled that off,
considering she was only a few years older than me. “Tell us what
happened.”

“We hit the place on 165th
Street,” I said. “There was nothing there but a ghoul. We killed
it, but Nate thinks there must have been another one, and it
followed us back to the station. They hit us just after sundown,
less than an hour ago. There were more vamps than I’ve ever seen.
Must’a been at least fifty of ‘em. Everybody’s dead. Everybody but
me.”

I looked at my feet. I could feel
their eyes staring at me, but I couldn’t lift my gaze.

“Son,” Squirrel said, “I
can’t tell you how sorry I am, but this isn’t my fault.”

“Fool me once,” I said.
“That’s what you said when Hector died.”

There was a blow to my left cheek. It
didn’t hurt, exactly, but it took me by surprise and I needed to
blink back tears. Maria’s face was set and angry. She’d slapped me
for using Hector’s memory to score a point. I guess I deserved
that.

“I got the same intel as
Squirrel,” Maria whispered. “I was the one that brought it to you
guys, remember? Do you really think that I’d sell you out? Do you
think I’d sell Nate out, after what the vampires did to
Hector?”

I rubbed my sore cheek and thought.
Maria hated vampires as much as anybody else. There was no chance
that she’d work with them. So Maria and Squirrel had been fooled…or
they’d been enthralled.

The switchblade opened in
my hand with a soft
pop
. The silver glinted under the studio’s electric lights. All
six eyes in the room were focused on it.

“Give me your hand, Maria.
Please.”

I watched her face for a moment,
looking for signs of hesitation. There was confusion, for a moment,
but no longer, and she offered me her left hand, palm
up.

I cut her with the silver.

According to Nate, vampires controlled
their thralls through a kind of magic. And, like most magic, it
could be disrupted by pure silver. Supposedly the touch of silver
to the blood would be enough to break the connection.

Maria winced as the blade tore a slash
in her skin, but that was all. There was no sign of an enchantment
breaking.

I nodded. So it was true. We hadn’t
been betrayed. The Family had died because the vampires were just
smarter than we were.

“Where are they?” I asked.
“You must have some intel. Rumors, stories, children’s books for
all I care. You have to have an idea where they’re
hiding.”

“Hang on.” Squirrel opened
a drawer in his desk and took out a large, folded up map of New
York. He stood over it for a moment, considering. “Here,” he
finally said, pointing. “Washington Avenue, it’s just off 165th.
Supposed to be a big old house, like some kind of castle. They
could be hiding there. That’s how they knew where you
were.”

I nodded. “I know where it is.”
Looking at Maria, I said, “You coming?”

She looked away. Her hair was still
long enough that it dropped to conceal her eyes. I knew how she
felt: afraid to be seen as a coward, but even more afraid to
die.

“Never mind,” I said.
“Stay here. I guess…I don’t know, I guess the city’s gonna need you
guys soon if I…if I don’t make it back.”

I picked up my ax from where I’d
propped it near the door. Looking at Squirrel and Maria for a
moment, I opened the door to the hallway. Maria refused to meet my
eyes. Squirrel looked at me with something like concern.

“Well, guys,” I said. “I
guess this it. ‘Bye.”

I ran out of the shop without looking
back. I didn’t want them to see my face, so they couldn’t see the
tears in my eyes.

God, I was so scared.

Sure enough, the house at the corner
of Washington and 165th Street towered over its neighbors like the
battlements of some medieval castle. The outer walls were shale
gray, making it look like cool, unforgiving stone. Ivy crawled up
the sides. Spray paint covered many of the visible
surfaces—competing gang tags and other typical urban graffiti. The
windows were largely boarded up, shielding, I was sure, the
interior of the place from the harsh, vampire-killing rays of the
sun.

Day was about to break. The light in
the sky was gray, and huge battleship-like clouds massed in the
sky. They were so thick that I figured vampires would be able to
walk under their cover without pain from the sun, but I knew they
wouldn’t venture outside. I’d been at my post, behind a Dumpster,
for better than three hours and I’d seen them return.

I counted forty-two.

A curtain in one of the windows on the
top floor, at least forty feet in the air, moved, and I squinted at
it. Was someone up there watching me? The house was surrounded by
an unusually large yard, and it was overgrown with weeds so thick
I’d need Sacajawea to cut through. I grimaced and shrugged. Not
like it mattered much. There was no way I’d get through it quickly,
and the vampires surely knew I’d gotten away. They’d be waiting for
me.

This was a suicide mission. I had no
illusions. I didn’t expect to survive this battle, or even to win
it. No matter what happened, some, maybe a lot, of vampires would
still be standing after I was dead. I didn’t care. As long as I
took a few undead sons of bitches with me, I’d be okay.