“Maybe our ethereal forms have some kind of signature scent for him.”
“This sleeper business was altogether wonderful and magical before tonight. Now it’s altogether horrible.”
“Well, we could decide not to travel at night, but you’re not capable of controlling your abilities like I can,” she said.
“Melody, I feel it coming on. I feel the vibration in my chest from when I get . . .” Owen was pulled back to himself.
The next day, instead of walking, Owen drove the car to work for the first time in recent memory. Once he got there, he hid out in his office and showed himself only when he had to check books out for the patrons, which, thankfully, were few. Even the dozen or so he helped, he eyed suspiciously, although he’d known most of them since they were born. He was put off by the younger Kelsey boy’s incisors and Mrs. Morton’s selection of Interview with the Vampire. Throughout the day, he was undecided about visiting Kiara. He had to tell her about Feit and desperately wanted to know what she knew. His other consideration was whether to buy a gun or see if he could borrow Mrs. Hultz’s husband’s.
In the afternoon, he researched news stories of missing persons last seen in or who lived in Westwend. As best as he could ascertain, there had been zero going back at least two decades. But then he was sorry he looked, because in searching for “missing persons” in the county, the hits started accruing from nearby towns. The phenomenon was fairly frequent, but consciously, carefully dispersed in a sixty-mile radius, going back to the 1960s. People did sometimes leave town, though. Because no one knew where they went didn’t necessarily mean they’d been abducted, killed, and drained by a vampire.
Owen counted twenty-five, and those were the ones local police knew about. Granted, they were spread out over eight towns and four times as many years. The police departments in those towns by the barrens were understaffed, and the crime rate for drug-related offenses had risen in the 1990s, taking a good portion of those departments’ resources and time. Old Crenshaw was a crafty individual. He killed like a rabid dog but had the acumen of a tactician. If he killed a person every so often, he could drain them into his tub and save the blood somehow—if he could prevent it from clotting—to ingest over time.
At the end of the workday, Owen closed the library and drove to the apartment building located across a field next to the grade school. The building held only six apartments, split evenly between two floors. He remembered that Kiara’s rooms were on the second floor. Parking in front of the place, he sat for a few minutes, weighing his decision to contact her. Revealing that he had secret information on Feit that could only have been gathered through spying might not sit well with the gang. Also, she might not believe him as to what happened and blame Owen for her friend’s death. “How many people would believe me?” he wondered. Still, he turned the car off, opened the door, and got out. He wasn’t sure if it was the sight of the blood or the primal sound the creature made in its attack, but he felt unsafe and didn’t like being out in the open.
He found her name on the mailbox downstairs—K. BOLDEN, APT #6. There was no security, so he had no problem simply walking up to the second floor, heading down the hallway to its end, and finding her door. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and knocked, lightly at first before realizing no one would hear him. He considered running away and then knocked louder. A few moments passed without response, although he eventually noticed there was music playing inside. He was about to knock again when a female voice answered. “Who is it?”
“Owen Hapstead,” he said, and then nervously added, “I’m the town librarian,” which he immediately regretted.
“We don’t have any books out and don’t use the library.”
“Yes, ma’am, I know. I have information for you about Aaron Feit.” This statement was met with silence. “He’s an acquaintance of yours, is he not?” He stood waiting for a half minute before there finally came a response.
“Hold on,” said the voice. A little more time passed and then he could hear the chain lock sliding off. The deadbolt clicked, and the door swung back. “Come in,” she said, but he couldn’t see where she was. He took a tentative step through the threshold, and the instant he was inside, the door slammed shut behind him, a forearm came up and wedged into his throat. There was something hard and pointed jabbed into his back. He saw in front of him, the baby, William, sitting in a high chair near a table in the kitchenette across the apartment.
“Who sent you?” she said.
“Nobody; I’ve come to tell you something tragic has befallen your colleague.”
“Colleague?”
“The tattoo you all share.”
“What about Aaron?”
“I hate to tell you this, but he was attacked and killed.”
“By who?”
“I’m not trying to be obtuse, but the question is more by what than who.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you believe in vampires?” he asked.
She didn’t answer but he felt the gun withdraw from his back and her forearm drop away, leaving him able to breathe properly again.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re not a cop?”
“I told you, I’m the librarian.”
She gave him a shove toward the kitchenette. “Sit down.”
Owen took a seat and held his hands up as if to calm her. “I know how strange this is,” he said.
She sat across from him next to the high chair but kept the gun trained on him. With her free hand she lifted a small bowl of dry Cheerios off the table and dumped a little pile of them onto William’s tray. The toddler saw them, smiled, and blew a few bubbles. He pressed his index finger into the hole on one of the bits of cereal and it stuck. Then he lifted it to his mouth.
“Start talking,” said Kiara.
“First, a question,” said Owen.
She cocked the pistol, and he automatically brought his hands up in front of his face. “No, I need to know this so I can tell you the right thing.”
“Go ahead,” she said, carefully released the hammer, and laid the gun on the table in front of her.
“Was Feit at the old man’s house to rob him or to assassinate him?”
“To kill him before he could kill anyone else.”
“You know he’s a vampire or something like that?”
Kiara nodded. “He killed my husband.”
“Wait, the man who held up the Busy Bee?”
“Crenshaw bit him and put him under some kind of mind control. He was directed to hold up the store. He knew Duane was part of our organization and that we were closing in on him. It was a warning to put us off and to put the police on our trail. He’s powerful.”
“You all have the solar cross tattoo,” he said. “I looked it up.”
“Right.”
“Why that?”
“These creatures, we call them Ambrogio, from an ancient tale, don’t operate well in the sun. They don’t burn up like in the movies, but sunlight stuns them and makes them much more vulnerable. Daylight short-circuits their nervous systems. Now . . . Aaron.”
“My friend and I saw Aaron get attacked by Crenshaw. It was horrible. His throat was torn out. Your partner got a shot off but that was it. The old man moved too quickly.”