Gus
I usually woke up feeling pretty with it, so when I came to seriously hungover, I thought perhaps it was because I’d gone without Wilma’s blood for too long. I reached out to her, hoping we were at least near enough that she could hear me, feel me, and I would have a chance to apologize, to hold her…
Amor?
Silence.
I tried a few more times, my head pounding, but there was nothing. No response, no internal caress.
It was as if she was gone. As if our bond was broken.
I regretted sitting up in a hurry when my head smacked against something hard.
“Yeah, we tried that.”
It was so dark, even I couldn’t see with my super sight, but I knew my cousins were with me. I could smell their Aqua Velva. Like, who still wore that shit?
“What the hell happened?”
One of them shifted, and whatever we were in moved under us and I heard a sloshing sound.
“We woke up like this,” Vinny said. He grunted as he tried to move closer. “Jacob and Mac are gone. I don’t know where we are, and so far we haven’t found a way out.”
Freddy rolled over next to me and I heard the sloshing again.
“I think we’re in a boat. At least we’re on the water.” I thought hard. What did we have now that could help? If we were in metal, and it sounded like we were, our sharp nails wouldn’t help much. Our super strength…maybe.
“Have either of you figured out how to become mist?”
“Uh—”
“Well, see—”
“Fine. Let me try.”
I tried to still my body and ignore my hunger, which was pretty fierce. I knew I’d be hangry soon, so not only did we need to get out of this damn enclosure, but we needed to feed.
I imagined myself as next to nothing, no substance that could be held in, no matter that could be touched, and soon my body was weightless and spread out. I sought out an opening, a crack, a hole, whatever I could use to slip out.
“Get us out of here, primo,” I heard Vinny say. “You can do it.”
I darted around their bodies, ignoring their proximity, and concentrated on my greatest need.
Blood.
My essence knew what it needed and would take over to seek that which would sustain me.
There. A crack in the floor below Freddy, but moisture was bubbling up there. I couldn’t hope it was just his sweat since he didn’t do that anymore. What would happen if I went into the water in mist form? Would I survive? Would I just be dispersed? We didn’t cover that in our training.
I couldn’t chance it.
I poked at my cousins until they started to shift around.
“What the—”
“Hey, watch it!”
It worked. They moved around so much, the item that contained us continued to rock until it capsized, and my cousins ended up on the bottom.
“I swear on Abuela Martina that I will haunt your ass forever if you drown us, Gus!”
There! The crack. I forced all of my molecules through the opening and into the night sky.
When I looked down, I cursed.
Some pinche pendejo put us in a metal container and dumped us in the river. We were floating away from the lights of the city and probably would have been out to sea by morning, when we would have boiled in this thing.
I took form again and flew down to the container.
“Don’t move. I’m going to pick you up. I think.”
The current was moving pretty quick and even though I was strong, I didn’t know how to swim well. I said a little prayer to whoever was listening and slid my hands underneath the container. It was some sort of barrel, but large enough to fit all three of us.
It took all of my strength to yank it out of the water and heave it onto the shore. It landed with a bounce on a grassy patch and rolled into a concrete pillar. I winced when it hit with a loud clang and my cousins started shouting inside.
“Get us out of here before you kill us!”
“Or make us deaf!”
I hurried over and walked around it. It seemed to be welded shut. The only crack had been the one I’d gotten out through, and it wasn’t even big enough to get fingers into.
“Hold on. Let me look for something to pry this open.”
I rose up into the air once more and noticed we were near some sort of junkyard. I figured I might find some scrap metal I could use to free my cousins while they continued to shout and bang on the inside of the barrel. They were making such a racket, I wasn’t surprised when an old skinny Black man wandered out of a small house to see what the fuss was all about.
“I’d be good and happy if y’all damn vampires leave this here city.” He rubbed at his stubbly chin and then planted his hands on his bony hips. “What the hell you want with my scrap pile?”
“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but someone trapped my cousins in this here barrel, and I need to free them. Might you have a crowbar or something?”
He shook his head at me and shuffled away, mumbling about young hooligans and delinquents and bothering him while his shows were on, but I watched as he walked over to a workbench, threw a bunch of pieces of metal to the side, and then came back with a crowbar in his hand. He held it as if he were ready to use it, and I figured it was probably best my cousins were inside at the moment, because they’d likely say something to offend him and then all hell would break loose.
“Thank you, sir.”
He frowned and his forehead wrinkled. “Don’t thank me yet. Don’t know if this is going to do any good, but you’re welcome to try as long as you keep the racket down. I’m trying to watch my shows.”
“Thank you. I’ll bring it back as soon as we’re done.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said, but he didn’t walk away. “Go on, then.”
I hesitated. I knew we were supposed to keep our vampy nature hidden from humans, and this guy had already seen me flying. I could smell his blood, but it was faint, as though at his advanced age, he didn’t have quite as much blood within him to sustain his life force. It was a strange sensation, knowing that a person perhaps didn’t have a full life ahead of them.
“Thank you,” I finally said. “We’ll be out of your way soon.”
“Don’t be too sure of that. Y’all don’t belong out here. Local wolf pack don’t like no vampires hanging around. Old Andre done run most of them fangers out of here.”
Andre. Could he have had something to do with this? I couldn’t believe someone got the drop on Mac. He seemed so invincible.
“If you don’t mind me asking, how do you know about…you know? I didn’t think humans were allowed—”
“Maybe not wherever you’re from, but here in New Orleans, we know. All right? We know about all the things that go bump in the night. You have to in order to survive. Now, go on and do what you got to do and then get on out of here. I don’t need no bloodshed on my property. Especially mine.”
I nodded to him, took the crowbar with a quiet thank you, and then went over to the barrel.
“I’m going to try, guys, but I don’t know if this is going to work.”
“Just use some leverage—”
“Hurry up, man. I’m hungry.”
“Shut up,” Vinny said to Freddy. “Don’t talk about it because then I’ll start thinking about it.”
I rolled my eyes, stuck the corner of the crowbar into the crack and closed my eyes.
Here goes nothing…
Only, it was something. I pushed on the crowbar and the metal tore under the force of my hands like a tinfoil seal inside a medicine bottle. It just peeled right away.
“Madre de dios,” I whispered, and then my cousins fingers came through the opening and they attempted to pull at the metal.
“How did you do that?” Freddy asked. “I can’t get it to give at all!”
“Me neither, primo.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just added a little pressure.” I grabbed the rest of the metal and peeled it away with my bare hands.
They climbed out and stared at me.
“What?”
“You’re hella strong, dude. Stronger than us. How did you get so strong?”
“I don’t know. I’m like you, there’s nothing different.”
The old man wandered close and sniffed at me. “You don’t smell like no regular vampire to me, son. What you been messin’ with?”
Messing with? “Nothing. I only drink from my mate, I don’t—”
“Your mate!” Vinny snapped his fingers. “Dude, what if you’re getting like some extra mojo because you’re mated to a witch?”
Vinny, Freddy, and the old man all started chattering at each other but all I could think of was what if? What if drinking from Wilma meant that I was stronger, that I could hold my own when things got tough? Maybe then I could be the mate she needed me to be, and not just the house husband who hangs around the haunted mansion dusting the shelves as the dust repopulates right behind me.
Yeah, it does that, I found that out one day while I was trying to clean up one of the secret rooms to have a romantic date with her. Instead I ended up covered head to toe in so much dust that when she found me, all she could do was laugh at my predicament. But then she took me into the shower, and joined me, and—
“Your friends are in a heap of trouble if they came to town,” the old man said. “Andre don’t let no other Shifters roam his territory. Ever since they got that new alpha down in Terrebonne Parish, he made the rule. No Shifters in New Orleans that ain’t affiliated with him.”
“See? It’s just like you said to Bode, Gus,” Freddy said. “Some kind of stupid turf war.”
I turned to the old man. “Sir, we came here for an important reason. There are four young missing, and we came to help find them. Two hatchlings and two witches—”
“Kids? I don’t know nothing about no young, but I don’t stand for people messing with kids.” He looked me up and down and narrowed his eyes. “You mated to a witch? She a good witch or a bad witch?”
“She’s a weather witch, sir,” I said. “She came to help the folks in Terrebonne Parish because there’s a bad hurricane coming.”
“You think she can help that? We’ve had enough hurricane nonsense to last us a long time.”
“Yes, sir. She’s amazing.”
This time his face softened. “No more calling me sir. Name’s Grady Fontaine. Now you listen here. If you’re really here to help, I can take you to a powerful priestess. She don’t mess with Andre and he’s afraid of her. As he should be. Josephine Dumas is a very important member of our community.”
“That would be great,” I said. “Thank you.”
He frowned at my cousins and then at me.
“Best be getting you fed first. Can’t have you endangering our priestess.”
At this point, Grady Fontaine took us into his home, served us fresh pig’s blood—I didn’t want to know where he got it—and told us all about this fascinating woman whom their territory’s alpha was terrified of. I took everything he had to say under advisement, but I couldn’t help thinking of the fascinating woman of my own, who I missed dreadfully. I wondered if she was okay. I hated the silence between us.