Chapter Eight: Friends and Familiars

The sky had grown overcast as the day progressed, and with a generous coating of sunscreen, the sun didn't bother Verne's skin at all. Well... not much. There were places where there was less coating or he'd missed bits, and those parts tingled until he added another slather. He'd taken every bottle he could find in the house and stuffed them into his backpack along with some of his mom's clothes. The sun was still intolerably bright, but he only needed one pair of sunglasses. The most annoying part about hoofing it to the bus station was that his mother's jeans were too loose and, without a belt, they kept slipping down to his hips and exposing skin (which meant applying more sunscreen) and beige mom panties... which he somehow found more embarrassing than the possibility of being leered at.

And he was definitely being leered at. The Palmetto City Urban Transit - 'The Bus' - had all sorts of passengers from all walks of life. But the kind of folks who took the bus into Weeks at three o'clock on a Monday afternoon in the middle of summer weren't the most urbane and genteel clientele. A white guy in wannabe-rapper-wear mumbled lyrics as music blasted into his earbuds. He stared for a good five seconds whenever his head turned in Verne's direction, as if he couldn't remember that he'd tried the exact same maneuver thirty seconds before. An older guy was pretending to read a Watchtower pamphlet, but Verne caught him peeping over it whenever he thought Verne wasn't looking. And, despite the gloom outside, a few other guys were wearing sunglasses like he was. For a normal person, it would have been impossible to see whether they even had their eyes open, but Verne could see through the tint, could see their dilated pupils taking him in. If that's how they acted when he was wearing his mom's ill-fitting clothes, he hesitated to think how they'd behave if he wore something even slightly revealing.

He didn't have to wait long. A busty blonde woman with a crop top and very tight jean shorts sauntered onto the bus, and suddenly nobody was paying attention to Verne. As the second most attractive female on the bus, he was now relegated to relief ogling status between bouts of boob-watching. Verne did his best not to ogle, too, but she was quite attractive. It barely registered in anybody's attention when the driver called the Graves Street stop and Verne slipped off the bus.

He still didn't have a response from Hector, but this was nothing much to be concerned about – between his sporadic work schedule and his many side gigs of varying legality, it was hard to say when Hector would be paying attention to his phone at any given time – perhaps fifty-fifty during the daytime and slightly higher at night. Verne shoved a slender hand into a too-tight pocket to retrieve his keys, annoyed at the lack of pocket space, and more annoyed that non-mom-jeans... pretty much anything that looked halfway fashionable... was likely to have a lot less. But the door was already unlocked and a few inches ajar.

Verne pushed the door open and stepped inside, calling out: "Listen, Hector, I..." was as far as he got before large arms wrapped around him. Large arms with a violet tattoo at the right wrist.

It would be unfair to say that Verne didn't know how to fight, but he wasn't exactly an expert fighter. Wes had once taught an eight year-old Verne how to throw a punch, and at twelve he'd taken Kenpo for exactly two months before a fractured finger in a sledding accident had put that on permanent hiatus. He'd gotten into a few scuffles in grade school, none of them serious. That is to say, on a fighting skill scale of one to ten, Verne would have rated himself about a three, but the guys attacking him were a lot more experienced, probably seven or eight on the scale. And they were all bigger than him and had the element of surprise. It was a bit perplexing, then, when he utterly kicked their asses.

"Get her!" somebody shouted.

The strong arms clenching Verne lifted him right off the ground and squeezed, making Verne gasp as his legs swung through the air. Verne squirmed and then pulled free with a shrug, dropping into a crouch and then leaping like a feral cat before he could really think about what he was doing. He processed what he'd seen and was seeing while streaking through the air: four people, three men and a woman... four men if you counted Hector, but his friend was bungee corded into his computer chair and had blood streaked down his tee shirt. He'd been worked over by somebody's unfriendly knuckles.

The biggest guy in the group had been the one to grab Verne, but even the woman was close to Verne's old size, stern-lipped and wearing a leather jacket, the swirling intricacies of her wrist tattoo half-visible past the sleeve. The woman's eyes shifted from steely determination to abject fear as Verne leapt through the air... and somehow, as he hurled toward her, he took in every bit of action in the room. His senses and reactions were juked up way past eleven. He arced through the air right into the woman.

The momentum of Verne colliding with the woman knocked them into Hector's computer chair, rolling Hector across the room and into their little kitchenette before sending him tipping over and crashing to the ground. Hector groaned at the impact. In instant later, Verne was on top of the woman, and the larger woman's frantic attempts to buck Verne off only served to solidify his hold on her. A dreadful hiss emanated from his throat, and his small fists slammed down at the woman, knocking her out on the second punch. Then large hands grabbed the back of his sweater and yanked him off of the unconscious woman, once more lifting him bodily through the air. But he swung with the momentum, landed on his feet, and then threw the much larger man. He had to weigh twice what Verne now did, but he threw the man five feet into the wall, his back thumping against the sheetrock with a crack.

"What the fuck? She's a vampire?" one of the two men still standing cried out.

The man unholstered a pistol, but before he could aim it properly, Verne shoved him onto the couch and leapt on top of him. As the man screamed, arms thrashing, Verne could see the jugular vein pulsing in his throat. Some instinct deep within him triggered and Verne dropped down to the man's neck, sinking his too-sharp and suddenly even sharper teeth into him – the entire front row of teeth from canine to canine had just pushed down into a razor-sharp slicing edge, and a pressure within Verne's sinuses told him to release... something. He did so, and the man ceased struggling almost immediately.

Warm blood flooded into Verne's mouth… amazing, pulsing blood. On instinct, he formed a seal with his lips over the wound on the man's throat, sucking out hot blood. The sensation of the blood on his tongue, streaming down his throat, was like ambrosia, like ecstasy and opiates and adderall and weed distilled into the ultimate euphoric superdrug, a drug that energized and vitalized with its heady rush of pleasure. Something cracked twice in rapid succession, and then a third time. Something pinched at Verne's back, a spike of pain like getting stuck with a large-gauge needle just to the left of his spine, and he turned to see one of the men, his face filled with terror, drop his pistol and flee. The other man and the woman, both recovering from Verne's assault, stumbled out the door.

Verne stood and took his bearings, wiping the warm wetness from his mouth. The back of his hand was streaked with blood, of course. The man below him was semi-conscious, a beatific smile spread across his face. The inch-long gash on his throat was already clotting, a trickle of blood barely staining his collar. Hardly any blood had gone to waste. Verne's limbs trembled and his ears were ringing... there had been three gunshots. He counted three plumes of stuffing puffing out from bullet holes in the couch... one of them right in front of where he stood. He pulled up his sweater, revealing a taut, pale abdomen with a dime-sized hole trailing a small streak of ichor-black blood. He poked next it - the wound hardly hurt at all, just a vague residual soreness. It had leaked perhaps two milliliters of vampire blood into the fabric of his sweater. He touched the edge of wound and winced – it still hurt... but he didn't feel like he was dying... dying again. He'd already died the one time.

"Um... hey, crazy lady. Mind giving me a hand?" Hector called out from the kitchen.

Verne didn’t mind. He made his way in, pulled the chair upright, and set to untying Hector's bindings. He'd been worked over pretty thoroughly, beaten bloody ad bruised, but not too badly injured. His lips were swollen, he had a black eye and a few welts well on their way to forming, and blood trickled out of both nostrils. And, Verne realized, the blood from Hector's wounds no longer had its magnetic draw to him now that he was reasonably sated. Once the last of the bungee cords were undone, Hector rubbed at his wrists, prodded his swollen lip, and wobbled to his feet, standing to his full 5'11". He was much taller than Verne was used to.

"Um," he said, taking Verne in. "So... thanks for that. But who in the fuck are you and how did you just kick the shit out of those guys?"

"It's me," Verne said, clarifying: "It's me, Verne. I, um... I changed. Like, a lot."

Hector nodded. "The Juvechrome," he said. Hector wasn’t stupid, even if he acted that way most of the time. "Damn. That's what those fuckers were after... um... the guy on the couch looks like he's coming to. We should..."

"We should get out of here," Verne agreed. "Those guys might come back with backup, and they already shot me once..."

"Shit, they shot you?"

"Yeah, but it's not bad." Verne didn't mention that the 'not bad' bullet wound was a gut shot that had gone right through him. "I'm fine. I don't want to have these guys following me back to my parents' place... do you have anywhere we can go?"

"Yeah, we should be safe at Maxie's... though she might beat the shit out of me first 'cause I haven't visited in like six months."

Verne shrugged. "Someone's already beat the shit out of you. I'm sure she'll understand."

+++++

'Maxie' turned out to be Hector's aunt Maxina, who lived in one of the coastal bungalows out along the old Cleves Highway. Verne grabbed a few of his essentials, threw them into his old duffel bag and, bag and backpack in hand, headed out with Hector. By the time they were headed for the door, the Juvechrome (Verne assumed) thug had come to, dashing to the kitchen when he saw Verne coming back and grabbing a kitchen knife. Verne looked the man up and down and sighed.

"I'm not in the mood to fight. Can you please just leave?"

The man nodded uncertainly. "Really?"

"Yeah, get the fuck out."

That was enough of an invitation for him. The man carefully placed the vegetable knife back in its drawer and paced out the front door, his eyes never quite leaving Verne. Then Verne and Hector headed out themselves, walking past the unmarked Juvechrome van in the complex's parking lot, inside which the four thugs were regrouping and planning how to break the news to their bosses:

"Did they know a vampire was working with those guys?"

"Omviously nop," the woman mumbled, her voice muffled by her injuries. "Obviously not," she repeated. "Or else they wouldn't have sent us. I mean... four familiars with only knives and pistols against a fucking vampire?"

"Not a fair fight," another agreed.

"At least she didn't kill any of us. She even spared Troy - that's a lucky break."

Then Verne got into Hector's car and even his sharp ears couldn't make out the conversation inside the van. He sighed and relaxed back into the seat, glad that Hector had accepted that it was him. Verne supposed that getting turned into a female vampire wasn't much stranger than just getting turned into a vampire. As Hector pulled out onto the main road, Verne squinted against the glare of sun and gauged their situation. The two of them weren't being followed, at least not obviously. And Hector had brought his cannister of Juvechrome B, which was probably what those guys had been after.

"You know that that's what those guys were after, right?" Verne said. "That and the Juvechrome C, which I, uh… used up. That cannister is worth, like, a lot of money."

"Yeah, no shit," Hector said. "People will fucking pay for this stuff... after what we did to get it, I'm not just handing it over. I wasn't telling those guys shit. I mean... maybe I would have if they actually cut a finger off like they threatened, but obvs they didn't get around to that bit..."

"They're going to keep coming after it, Hector. Just imagine if you stole a million dollars worth of product from some mean motherfuckers. And then imagine those mean motherfuckers had a cult of tattooed followers willing to shoot people and chop off fingers to get it back."

"Well... when you put it like that..." He reached back and moved the Juvechrome cooler out of view. "I'll put it somewhere safe."

They drove in silence for a minute, the late afternoon gradually dimming, both from the sinking sun and from the clouds rolling. Presently, it started raining, and Verne could hear each and every tiny droplet hitting the car and the road around them. It would have been overwhelming, but his ability to filter out sensations was almost as good as his ability to detect them. Except, perhaps, for his sense of taste - even now, the taste of blood lay heavily on his tongue, and he could remember the horrible ashy taste of regular food. He had to admit that, as a vampire, the taste of blood was pretty much the best thing ever. But over that pleasant, gradually-ebbing taste of blood in his mouth, he tasted something vaguely sour and astringent... something he'd injected into the familiar with his bite.

"Also, I'm pretty sure it's vampire venom," Verne said. "The Juvechrome is. When I bit that one guy, he got, like, a drug high."

"I was wondering about that," Hector admitted. "That must be pretty weird for you, being a girl vampire..."

"Yeah. I haven't really had time to process it." He hefted his boobs experimentally. "It feels a lot less different than you'd think. Mostly, I'm aware of all the new things I can hear and smell. I wonder if this is what dogs feel like..."

"Speaking of which, Maxie has like four dogs. Will they be cool with a vampire?"

Verne shrugged. He honestly had no clue about the 'rules' regarding vampires and said as much. Which of the many legends about vampires had any truth to them? Were there other supernatural creatures? Werewolves and the like? No idea. He wished they had a FAQ for new vampires, but he didn't even know of any other vampires... presumably, whoever was running the Juvechrome clinic and injecting rich people with microdoses of vampire venom. Certainly, the tattooed 'familiars' knew of other vampires and presumably worked for them.

After a mile along the Cleves Highway, they pulled off onto a series of winding roads and into a little community of beachside bungalows. As they entered the neighborhood, they passed a worn, pastel-painted sign labeled 'Sandy Pines Commune est. 1967', passed a little roadside farmer's market stationed between two beat up, rust-pocked VW buses, and into a little parking patch at the side of a gravelly cul-de-sac. As they parked, a woman carrying an old terracotta-red umbrella wandered out to meet them.

"Hector, my favorite nephew!" Maxie called. "Why in the everliving fuck haven't you visited your auntie in six months? Found a new source for shrooms?"

Hector offered an awkward laugh and got out of the car, hugging his aunt. Verne got out and splashed through the rain, huddling under the umbrella and offering his hand. Aunt Maxie was about what Verne might have expected: a short-ish Latina woman in a flowing rainbow dress, her thick curls of blonde-tipped black hair held back with a patterned brown bandana, beads and rhinestones clacking all over her body. When Verne offered his hand, Maxie clasped it in both of hers and looked to Hector.

"Is this your girlfriend? She's very pretty..."

OvidLemma

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