My Old Man Would Be Proud... I'm About to Throw.

Nick

My dad was a real piece of work. He was also a legend, gave me a clear in to the upper ranks of this life – torching troublesome businesses and providing ‘protection’ for the church’s proper, tithing citizens. Dying on the job seems to have made him into even more of a hero in the eyes of my crew. They’re always gushing stories of the glory days, talking about the stunts he pulled, how brave he was and shit. The da I remember, the one we got at home? Sure, he towered – like an overgrown child, throwing temper tantrums over nothing with a gut full of beer and his glory days long behind him. I didn’t cry at his funeral, not because I was putting on a brave face. It’s cause I didn’t feel nothing but relief. Any guilt I had… It was for how hard ma was crying, acting like she weren’t at all relieved to be rid of him. Still, I ain’t sorry for what I did, not in that case, but the guys got no clue about that.

They’re lounging low in their usual booth, shoved right in the corner of Cicero’s charming dive of a speak-easy, and Jimmy’s daring bring up ‘The Cadi incident’ where my old man, at fourteen years old, volunteered for a payback job, just to torch the wrong vehicle. This story ain’t charming. It just shows what an idiot he was. I got no patience to be hearing it again, not tonight, as I stride into this bar with hand still on my gun, soaking wet and shaken. Those burning red eyes won’t leave my mind, neither will the feel of those hands on my neck, that pelvis pressing up against my backside… or the salacious, daring words rolling off of that tongue…

“Double bourbon. Now,” I snap at the bar tender, and he leaves his other customer in an instant, cracking open the top shelf stuff smuggled in straight from Kentucky and pouring me two fingers.

“That’s the idea, kid! Get some fire in that belly. I’m guessing it weren’t a great walk?” Mikey calls out laughingly, as he and the guys finally spot me, hanging over the bar like a wet towel freshly wrung out by some damn, strong hands. Those hands… Those eyes…

I down the bourbon in one shot, savoring the burn of it in my throat. “Keep ’em coming, Jay.”

“You got it, Nick.”

He pours me another, and I slap a fiver on the counter in response. He arches an eyebrow. We don’t usually pay, but this particular wad of bills, fished out of a target’s wallet… I got no interest in hanging on to it. Plus… business ain’t been great for Jay, not recently. He’s had a hard time making his payments with the animals behind me never paying off their tab. “I’ll tell Louie to start tipping proper too,” I mutter. “You’re a damn good bartender, Jay.”

“And you’re a damn good kid,” he whispers, pocketing it gratefully.

“Nick, get over here already!” Jimmy shouts. “I was trying to remember… What was that thing your old man used to say about--?”

“Shit, Jimmy, I know you idolized the bastard, but he’s rolling in his grave tonight, hearing the way you fuck up stories you weren’t even there for.”

“He’s right,” Louie chuckles, the oldest of our little crew of inner-circle street thugs. He’s the only one with gray at the temples, the unfortunate babysitter of this batch of rowdy twenty-somethings eager to prove their metal. “I was there when that car went up, Jim. There weren’t no explosion, just a hell of a lot of smoke, but the look on the owner’s face when he came storming out of his building to confront that fireball…” He gives a low whistle. “I booked it the hell out of there--”

“Chicken,” Jimmy clucks, and Louie cuffs him in the head.

“I booked it, because I got brains inside this fine head of hair, even way back at twelve. But Tony, with all his fourteen years of wisdom, he gets right up in this beefy sucker’s face and demands, ‘Who the fuck are you?’”

“And the rich boy tried to drag him to the cops, and Tony beat the shit out of him!” Jimmy chimes in once again. “He really did, right?”

“Yeah, he really did,” Louie chuckles, rubbing at his face. “And he was shouting the whole time how this idiot caused him trouble by having the same car as the cheater the boss actually wanted to teach a lesson to!”

“Then he got hauled into jail and Father Sicillio had to spring him,” I finally chime in, voice cold and flat but still carrying across the room of clearly uncomfortable other patrons around us. “Caused everyone nothing but trouble, so how exactly is this a funny story?” I can’t keep the bitter edge off, not tonight.

Louie’s smile slips, and he leaves his seat, striding right up to me. “Someone shit in your drink? I thought the walk froze you solid is all, but hey,” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Something happen?”

I should really tell him. I planned to tell them. We got a real-life vampire not three blocks from here. It is a dangerous demon, and we need to get the silver stakes and holy water out of the Cadi trunk and pin that fucker down, bring him to Father Sicillio to be fully exorcised, just like we do the Strigas and the low-level demons who crawl up from the gutter and start messing with our citizens.

“What is it, kid?”

“I gotta… get home, is all,” I excuse, chucking back a third, straight double and feeling the ground start to tilt. “And the walk was great,” I mutter. “Really… cleared my head.”

“Cleared your head? You’re blotto, kid, plastered already,” Louie counters. “At least put some bread in that belly to dampen it some. Come on.” He steers me on over to the booth. “You did good tonight,” he more quietly praises, referring to the job before that encounter with Christian-- Not Christian. I can’t think of it by name. It’s just a vamp, and it is dangerous. Christian has got to be a fake name anyway, nothing but a taunt. No one dares name their kid that. It’d be bad luck, a blasphemy, at least these days.

I guess there’s no telling how old he is, if he really is a vampire. He could be ancient. He could be older than the church.

“Most can’t crack a skull like that, right on the first hit. Most pussy’s need a gun, but that ain’t our way.” He gives my shoulder another squeeze, bringing up shit from the past hour that I really cannot afford to think about, not without losing my stomach. “Now those rats got the message. Your old man would be proud. You got his talent for this work, kid. Best I ever trained. Ain’t that right, boys?” he more loudly calls out to the others. “How long you fuckers been at this? But you let Nick here show you up? Right on his first.” My first execution he means. I’ve trapped demons before. I’ve broken bones on ordinary people, stupid fuckers who can’t pay back their loans and need a kneecap or two busted. Fuckers who mess with my cousin’s sisters and need their teeth knocked out. I had never killed an actual human being before. It was my full initiation into this life, and I did not even hesitate. I checked out, and I did what Louie and the others expected me to, taking a bat to that man’s face…

Shit. I’m gonna throw.

I chuck down another few bourbons instead, while the others all laugh and toast. I don’t wind up sharing shit about Christian. I keep thinking of what I did right before that instead, because Louie will not stop smugly, cryptically referencing it. I’m a ‘real man’ now, but by the time I do vomit, right into the bread basket, they don’t see my guilty revulsion. They think it’s just because I’m wasted. Hell, Jimmy pukes that same minute, and they laugh all the harder.

Father Sicillio says I am absolved of all evil. My service to the church absolves me of all sin, even murder. The cops are corrupt and not to be trusted. They would hurt the Family. They would hurt the church, if they heard the truth of what happened tonight, what the Father is most often the one commanding us to do…

I feel guilty regardless, but I don’t feel like I need to go running back to that church and repent. I feel I need to do something good to even out the scales.

I need to kill something truly evil.

The second I get home, I load my revolver with cross-carved bullets cased in silver. My ma is passed out, as expected. My brother’s sound asleep, locked inside his bedroom. They don’t notice me getting in, and they won’t notice me leaving.

I get the shining stake out of my chest, and I gear up like true enforcers of St. Christian’s do on All Hallows’ Eve and any other haunted night when the veil is thin and evil stirs. I’m still drunk as fuck, but I feel coordinated enough that I don’t feel the need to wait and sober up. I don’t feel the need for back-up. I have all I need in this little syringe I jab down into my vein amidst a nest of other needle-marks, pushing down the plunger until the full dose of thick, black liquid starts circling through my veins, sharpening my vision and steadying my muscles.

I remember the exact street I was crossing when I found him. I know the quickest route there, even on foot. I have walked that beat hundreds of times, and I find my way back to that alley just as the sun starts to crest the horizon.

That steel-plated door is not even locked. It opens soundlessly, at the lightest pull. I keep my gun raised and pull the stake out from under my trench coat. I don’t need a light, not with the Father’s blessed substance thrumming through me. I can make out every step inthis pitch-black stairwell. My gun-hand is steady, my senses alert, and had I been prepared like this before, that vampire would never have come even close to overpowering me. I just thought it was two regular guys, easily put in line the second they saw a gun. I never even considered he might be a demon. I’m not used to the monsters looking so… human.

He looks so very human, stretched out on that double wide bed in the room at the base of that stairwell, tucked under the sheets with bare chest and long lashes lowered in peaceful repose. The high cheekbones and sharp angles of that clean-shaven face… Delicate but strong. He’s… breathtaking, even in the pitch black of a cellar. He doesn’t hear me open that door and enter the room. There is no ripple in that peaceful expression. He has no idea there’s a gun trained on him already, loaded with consecrated bullets fully capable of ripping the undead life right out of that beautiful body.