Owen

Owen’s relationship with Gram had always been difficult. Even though Gram was one of the few male role models in his life outside school, by the time he was twelve, Owen had known Gram wasn’t much of a model for anything. A speed-freaking, chain-smoking, grenade toting, ex-special forces soldier who smelled worse than his Filipino cigarettes.

But he did kill vampires. Which was why Owen’s moms put up with him. And why Owen was in Gram’s filthy van, his shoes not quite touching the old Hardees cups and composting tacos on the floor, as Gram drove south just under the speed limit toward Hartford.

Rather than answer Gram, Owen opened his phone, and reread the news article that had sent them to Connecticut in the first place.

Tragic Death in Roxbury: Lillian Devine, a Tony-nominated actress, died early this morning in a tragic accident in her Litchfield County home. Devine, who was suffering from emphysema, apparently fell asleep while smoking near an open oxygen tank in her bedroom. Her granddaughter Lily, also an actress, and star of the soon-to-released independent film, “The Queen of Rockaway Beach,” was in the house at the time of the accident, but sustained only minor injuries. Lillian Devine is best remembered for her role as Myrtle Clove in the successful 1973 comedy, “Spiked Punchbowls,” for which she was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy category for her deadpan performance. She also received favorable reviews in “The Gunners,” “Nine Nights on a Park Bench,” and the 1983 revival of “Ah, Wilderness!” Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

It wasn’t every day a vampire died in a place as high-end as Litchfield County. Especially not one his moms said had disappeared thirty years ago. Mother Celeste would have heard the news eventually through one of her other many contacts, but Gram monitored that sort of thing 24-7.

He’d shown up at the Davison-McCrae house in the early afternoon. Maggie Mom had scowled, not wanting to let him inside unless it was absolutely necessary, but Mother Celeste showed up a few minutes later to persuade her it was. Gram had already called her at the college to say he was on his way. With Mother Celeste there, Maggie Mom allowed Owen in only as far as the kitchen, then set herself sturdily in the dining room doorway to make sure he didn’t get any farther.

“Seen this?” he asked, showing Mother Celeste the article Owen had just reread on his phone.

“No.” Mother Celeste scanned the article quickly. “I haven’t heard about that one in years.”

“I’m going down there to take care of it now. House fires don’t kill vampires.”

“It sounds like it was badly burned.” Gram toyed with the cigarette tucked behind his ear. “Bad enough the M.E. was able to examine it without getting bitten.”

Mother Celeste nodded. Though she’d never hidden what she did from Owen, she didn’t talk to him much about the undead either.

Mother Celeste drummed her fingers on the table. “That’s about two hours away.”

Gram cleared his throat, then spotted Maggie Mom glaring at him at the last minute, and uncomfortably swallowed whatever he’d been about to spit out. “I don’t want to get down there till eleven or so. Late enough for there to be no one around, but still less than forty-eight hours since the fire. If the vamp is burned bad enough to sleep through a coroner’s examination, it should still be out.”

“I’ll be fine.” Gram rolled his shoulders confidently, revealing the small hand crossbows holstered under his arms. “I only came by to make sure you knew. By the time anyone else can get there, the vamp’ll be gone. I’ve faced a lot worse than Lillian Devine.”

Maggie Mom gave him a sharp look, and abandoned her post at the door. “No you won’t.”

He glanced at his other mother. He’d learned to play them off one another a long time ago. “Aw, c’mon, Mom. I’m not a kid anymore, you know. This doesn’t sound that dangerous. What are we going to do?” He looked back at Gram. “Break into the funeral home, cut her head off, and come home?”

Owen turned back to Maggie Mom. “Better I go with Gram now, than try it on my own sometime. Because you know that’s what I’m going to do.”

Maggie Mom put her hands on her hips and glared. “Don’t you dare threaten me, Owen,” she warned.

“I’m not threatening, Mom. I’m just saying. You know it’s going to happen someday. Don’t you think it’s better for me to tag along with Gram than try it alone?”

Mother Celeste sighed, and Owen knew she’d already given in. Now all he had to do was convince Maggie Mom.

“He’s not wrong, Maggie,” his other mother said. “We made this decision a long time ago, when we told him what happened to his birth mother. Better he learn how to kill vampires from someone who knows what they’re doing, than make it up later on the fly. Do you want him to go through what you did?”

Maggie Mom’s mouth pursed in the dimpling frown Owen knew meant she was just being stubborn. Eventually she’d give in, whether it took another fifteen minutes of further begging or a day.

They left after dinner. Gram was talkative on the drive, smoking the cigarettes he hadn’t been allowed to light at Owen’s house, even out on the porch, while Owen tried desperately not to asphyxiate.

“Happens all the time,” the vet explained, their headlights gleaming across the dark vein of the Connecticut River. “Vampire gets its head blown open with a .45, or burns up in a house fire, coroner declares it dead. They bury it in some pauper’s grave somewhere, and a couple days later they think it’s vandals digging up graves. Only way to kill a vampire is to burn it till there’s nothing left to examine. Or cut off its head.”

Gram grinned. It was a lopsided grin, as if the muscles worked better on one side of his face than the other. Though it might just have been the effort of keeping the filthy cigarette in his mouth while he talked.

“Rumor is there were a couple of vamps in Hiroshima no one ever heard of again. Waste of a perfectly good bomb, though, when a katana works just as well.”

He glanced up at the large crossbow taped to the roof of the cab. He’d also shown Owen the smaller one under the dashboard, and the one under Owen’s seat, when Owen got in the car. Owen knew perfectly well crossbows didn’t kill vamps, but they stopped them quicker than anything else, and then you could take them out with your sword.

Two hours later, when they reached New Milford, Owen knew more about vamps than he’d picked up in the twenty years with his moms. Though it might be a good idea to ask them about the parts he was pretty sure were Gram’s self-aggrandizing exaggeration.

Luckily, there was no memorial in progress when they arrived at the funeral home. The first floor was completely dark, and only a single window was lit on the second floor. The building was set into the side of a hill, with entrances in both the front and the lower section in back. Not wanting to chance anyone noticing them from the road even this late at night, Gram parked in the back behind the two hearses they found there.

Owen nodded, flinching against the sudden cold as Gram opened the door. Gram’s van might be filthy, but the heater worked.

Grabbing a toolbelt from behind the seat, the old hunter took a circuitous route to the back door, following the shadows along the edge of the parking lot and the back of the building. It was a dark night, overcast and without a moon, so even though the trees at the edge of the lot were bare as bones Owen couldn’t see into them at all. Wasn’t Gram afraid the vampire might be lurking in the woods?

He fingered the crossbow under the dashboard nervously till Gram reached the circle of light outside the basement door. The hunter had experience in this sort of thing, but for Owen it was all new. He had stakes and a crossbow, but he knew he’d only been allowed along on this trip because neither his moms nor Gram thought he’d have to use them.

Thirty seconds was all Gram needed to jimmy the door open. Leaving it ajar, he retraced his circular route back to the car.

“Why’d you come back?” Owen asked as Gram settled comfortably into the driver’s seat beside him.

“Forget it, kid. You’re too young. Vampires don’t use alarms, so I don’t know jack about them.”

He lit a cigarette. Owen started to roll down his window to let out the smoke, but Gram shook his head and tapped the tip of his nose. Owen guessed that meant he was worried about the smell giving them away. Rubbing his own nose to keep from sneezing, he settled in to watch the back door. When no one had shown up by the time Gram finished his smoke, he got out of the car, flicked the butt into the woods, and beckoned for Owen to follow.

He held a finger to his lips outside the open door. Owen nodded. Using his phone as a flashlight, the hunter checked out the hall beyond. A door on the right, another on the left, and at the far end a broad stairway leading to the public rooms upstairs.

With a pick from his tool belt, Gram opened the locked door on the right first. The embalming room. A body lay on a gurney, an old man in a dark suit. The first dead body Owen had ever seen. With its face made up like an actor’s, he thought it looked more like something out of a wax museum than a real human.

The other door led to a room full of empty caskets. Gram made Owen open a few to make sure they were empty, while he covered him with a pair of hand crossbows.

They found a third door they hadn’t noticed tucked under the back of the stairs. It led to a narrow hallway between the embalming room and the casket closet. The two doors at the end of the hall were clearly marked, the morgue on the right, and the crematorium on the other side.

Owen gripped his stake as Gram picked the lock on the morgue, but nothing jumped out at them. When he turned on the light, they found a simple wooden coffin lying on top of another gurney. Three metal doors formed a line in the jumbo refrigerator built into the far wall, each door about two feet square. The room looked just like a morgue on a TV show, only smaller.

Owen wondered how they’d get out of there if anyone came downstairs. The only way out was the way they’d come in.

While Gram covered him with the crossbows, Owen opened the coffin. What he saw inside made him swallow hard. Unlike the body in the embalming room, this one looked real. Horribly real. The entire left side of the woman’s face was burned black as a charred marshmallow, only with red showing instead of white through the split skin. It hurt just looking at her. He could only imagine how horrible her pain had been.

If vampires felt pain, that is. For his birth mother’s sake, he hoped they did.

She looked his own age, not the hundred and fifty that Gram had said. Her eyes were closed like she was sleeping. Most of her hair had burned off, even on the side of her face that wasn’t seared. A white sheet covered everything below her chin, which made it impossible to tell if the rest of her was burned as well.

He’d seen pictures of Lillian Devine. He was sure he’d seen her somewhere before, too, but his moms said it had probably just been in some movie or on tv. She’d been an incredibly beautiful woman, even for an actress. Now she looked like something out of a horror film.

Gram took a syringe from one of the many pockets sewn on the inside of his vest. As he lifted the vampire’s left arm out from under the sheet, pieces of charred nightgown fell to the bottom of the casket. Her shoulder down to her bicep was burned as badly as her face. Owen swallowed again.

“Blood sample. Your mother’s got a data base of every vamp I’ve ever killed, and a lot of others, too. You should ask her about it sometime. I never have.”

Straightening the arm out along the side of the body, Gram held it just above the elbow with his left hand. He was moving the syringe into position with his right, when he suddenly jumped back.

Owen raised his stake and rushed forward. Then he realized the impossibility of what Gram had said. If she had a pulse, she wasn’t dead.

No, there it was. He’d felt it, light as a feather. And her body wasn’t as cold as it should have been, either. It was warmer than the room.

“I suppose not.” Gram thought for a moment. “Though it does make me wonder what’s going on. M.E.’s don’t make mistakes like that outside of bad movies. She had to be dead when he examined her. And she looks just like the vamp.”

Owen held up one hand to block off the burned half of the woman’s face. She did sort of look like Lillian Devine, if you allowed for the lack of hair.

Gram cocked his head and walked around to the other side of the drawer. “That obit mentioned a granddaughter, right?”

Gram’s answer raised a lot of questions, but only one jumped up in front of Owen and waved its arms.

Gram nodded again. “The hardest part about living longer than you’re supposed to is not letting anyone figure it out.”

“So, what do we do now?” Owen asked, unable to take his eyes off the burned woman. “Call the police?”

“And say what? Hello, officer. My friend and I broke into Kripps and Sons Funeral Home to finish off the vampire they have in cold storage in the morgue. Only she’s not a vampire. Yeah, that’d help.”

“Maybe,” Owen insisted, thinking the idea through. “They’d show up and arrest us, sure, but all we’d get is a breaking and entering charge—we’d be out on bail tomorrow. But she’d be in the hospital,” he pointed at the young woman. What had the obit said her name was? Lily? “And not in the crematorium across the hall.”

Owen had no idea what Gram had done that would make the cops want to hold onto him, but he wasn’t surprised they would. Gram’s past was probably as skeezy as he was. Besides, you couldn’t kill as many vampires as he was supposed to have over the years without being wanted for murder somewhere. Not in a world where most people didn’t know vampires were real.

“This whole setup stinks,” Gram said. “There’s something going on here I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know.” Owen went to scratch the back of his head, realized he was still holding the stake, and put it in his pocket. “What if the vamp wanted to go back into acting? Didn’t the obituary say the granddaughter was an actress too? This way she can have a whole new career. They look just like each other. And she doesn’t have to pretend to be seventy anymore, either.”

Gram looked at Owen with sudden respect. “That’s not a bad idea, kid. All the more reason not to call the police, though.”

“How long do you think a vampire’s going to let the person whose life she’s stolen stay alive?”

Before Owen could answer, they heard the sound they’d both been listening for the moment they entered the morgue. Footsteps on the staircase above their heads.

Gram flipped off the light. The room went dark as a crypt. Owen reached for the coffin, its touch reassuring him that he hadn’t been suddenly transported straight into it.

“Hide in one of the drawers. There’s no time for anything else. I’ll take the one on the left.”

“What about her? What’s going to happen if they open the casket and find her alive?”

“Then they can call the police instead of us, and we’ll sneak out again when they’re gone. Now shut up and hide.”

Owen heard Gram open one of the drawers and climb in. He assumed they’d be like the ones you saw in movies and tv, drawers in a big file cabinet. Fumbling for the back of the room, he found a handle and pulled the drawer behind it open. He sat down on the edge, swung his feet up—

He heard the door open under the stairs. Trying the handle on the middle drawer, he found a body there as well. And Gram was in the third.

Shit. There was no other choice. Grimacing, he climbed on top of the dead body in the middle drawer, grabbed the top edge, and pulled himself inside. The drawer closed faster than he thought, and slammed hard against his fingers when he tried to keep it from banging against the frame.

The pain in his fingers kept him from thinking too much about the stiff beneath him. That, and the sound of the door opening from the hall.

“If you don’t mind,” said a woman’s voice. “I’d like to be left alone with my grandmother for a moment.”

Even though they were muffled by the door, Owen heard both voices clearly. The vampire’s was low and rough. And exciting, too. The sound of it sent shivers up and down his back. How many cigarettes could you smoke in a hundred and fifty years anyway? He also knew the funeral attendant she was talking to wouldn’t be able to resist a single thing she asked him. Even inside his frigid drawer, Owen felt her power tugging at him. Her voice alone was a million times more frightening than the corpse in the drawer. The vampire could move. And bite. He clutched his stake close to his chest and prayed Lillian Devine knew her granddaughter was in the casket.

Footsteps receded down the hall. Owen heard nothing more, no breathing, no scuffing feet. No soft tap of fingers reaching for his drawer. For all he knew, the vampire was clinging to the ceiling with her fingers and toes. But that wouldn’t make any difference. She’d probably already discovered what Owen and Gram had learned a few minutes earlier. The woman in the casket was still alive. Mother Celeste had told him once that a vampire could hear a mouse’s heartbeat at fifty feet, so a human heart at arm’s length was no big deal, no matter how faint. He hoped she couldn’t hear his heart too. It hammered in his chest hard enough to wake the dead.

Shit. Why did he have to think that? His shoulders twitched as he imagined the corpse beneath his back throttling him with its cold fingers. He’d managed to squish himself onto one side of the drawer so he wasn’t lying completely on the body, but it was still so close he could smell the cold meat of it. The fact that he couldn’t move made it even worse, but the slightest sound was sure to draw the vampire’s attention. If his hammering heart hadn’t already done so. For all he knew the vampire was standing in front of his drawer right now, her head cocked, her fangs bared. All she had to do was pull the drawer out twelve inches and his throat would be as exposed as roast beef in a buffet. Cold sweat, sharp as icy pins, broke out under his arms despite the freezing drawer. And he couldn’t even shiver. The slightest movement might shake the drawer enough to attract the vampire’s attention.

For a second Owen was convinced she was talking to him. He was reaching for the front of the drawer when he heard the voice of the man the vampire had sent away.

“I confirmed the timetable,” he said. “The cremation is set for midnight. That’s about fifteen minutes from now.”

“Mr. Kripps is on his way. I spoke to him in the car. You can call him if you like. He’s taking care of the cremation himself. Such a delicate matter. The media have been calling all day. We understand why you want to do this as quickly and quietly as possible.”

“I’m sure Mr. Kripps will be as good as his word. And I’m sure you’ll be here to help him, won’t you.”

“And make sure no one else enters this room,” the vampire said. “I’ve paid my last respects, and don’t want my grandmother disturbed.”

Feet shuffled on the floor again. The light switched off. The door closed. Owen waited half a minute, then couldn’t wait any longer. Even though it hadn’t been as bad as he thought, he didn’t want to spend any more time lying on top of a dead body than he had to.

That was when he found out he couldn’t open the drawer from the inside. With the old saw about never closing a wardrobe door all the way ringing in his head, he scrabbled frantically for some kind of catch.

The drawer whooshed open. Owen blinked at the sudden light, and took great gulps of fresh air. Gram grinned at the sight of him shaking in the drawer.

Jumping off the drawer, Owen saw he’d been sharing it with a woman who looked like she’d died at about a hundred and two.

“Very funny.” Turning to the casket, he asked, “Do you think the vampire killed her?”

Owen raised the lid of the coffin. The woman looked the same as she had before, but his heart was in his throat as he felt her neck again for a trace of pulse.

“She noticed. She just probably thought it would be more fun to burn her alive. Fucking vamp.”

“Now we really have to get her out of here.” Owen pulled out his phone. 11:47. “Even if we call the cops, they’ll never get here in time.”

They laid her on the drawer Gram had hidden in. Owen wondered if Gram had somehow known which of the three drawers was empty. Nah, it had to be luck.

“Won’t they be able to tell if the casket’s empty when they pick it up?” he asked.

The old woman was much lighter than Lily Devine, and would mind being cremated a lot less. She was already laid out for her funeral: dark dress, dark shoes, thick stockings. Unlike Lily, she didn’t sag when they picked her up—no wonder they called them stiffs. But, as long as the coffin felt filled, Owen doubted anyone would notice it wasn’t as heavy, especially if it was locked. When they found out the old woman was missing, all hell would break loose, but there was no reason for them to connect the missing corpse to the cremated one. If the old lady’s family were hoping for an open casket, they were going to be disappointed.

For answer, Owen bent down and lifted Lily over his shoulder. She was a tall woman and not light, but he was a big guy and could manage easily as far as the car.

“She’s going to need more than this sheet,” he said, as he blew a loose corner away from his face. “She’ll freeze to death if we don’t find something else for her.”

“If she can survive an exploding oxygen tank, she can survive thirty seconds of winter, too. There’re blankets in the van.”

He followed Gram out to the rear entrance. The basement was still empty. Out the back and into the parking lot, with the woman only starting to get heavy on his shoulder at the very end.

A car pulled into the driveway as they were wrapping her in a blanket in the back seat. Owen didn’t like how dirty the blankets were, but there was nothing else. He did his best to make her comfortable, but knew that what she really needed were skin grafts and doctors.

Headlights flashed across the hearses in front of the van as the car made its way to the rear entrance. Owen froze. A man he guessed was Mr. Kripps got out, but hurried inside without noticing anything. The moment the back door swung closed, Gram vaulted into the front seat and started the engine.

Gram’s van looked like a wreck, but the engine purred as perfectly as a Mercedes’. Headlights off, he pulled the vehicle out of the parking lot and up to the road. The street was empty. Easing out into the lane, Gram only turned on the lights when they were past the funeral home.

Owen tested the young woman’s pulse one more time to make sure she was still alive. Their escape had been too close for comfort. Another minute, and he and Gram would have been explaining everything to the police. Which might not have been such a bad idea, given how badly hurt she was.

“We take her to a hospital and we’ll never be able to answer their questions. They’ll think we’re responsible. Besides, as soon as she tells them who she is, the vamp’ll be back to finish the job. Can’t have your granddaughter hanging around if you’re trying to take her place.”

“She’s been through worse. The fact she’s alive at all is the weirdest thing about this whole situation. Let Celeste decide what to do.”

“Thank goodness you’re all right,” she burst out before Owen could even say hello.

“There wasn’t, Mom. The vampire wasn’t the one in the funeral home. Can Mother Celeste pick up the phone so I don’t have to explain it all twice?”

Despite Maggie Mom’s constant interruptions, Owen still managed to describe what they’d found at the funeral home quickly enough. Then again, there wasn’t much to tell. The vampire was still alive, and was passing herself off as the woman who was supposed to be her granddaughter.

“We have the granddaughter in the van right now,” he told them. “She’s still alive, but she’s really badly burned.”

Though he couldn’t hear it in her voice, Owen pictured Mother Celeste’s eyebrows rising in the look of mild surprise that was her version of astonishment.

“Normally, you’d have been right. But this doesn’t appear to be a normal situation. What does Gram think?”

“If Gram thinks the situation is odd,” Mother Celeste said, “then definitely get a blood sample. Gram knows the undead better than anyone else in the field.”

“Do you want to just get the sample when we bring her home?” Owen asked, not relishing the idea of doing it himself in the car. What if the poor woman woke up?

“Can’t you take care of her, Mom? Or how about the Foundation? Gram doesn’t want to take her to a hospital because he thinks the vampire will find out about it, and if she finds out about it, she’ll try to kill her again.”

“She has to go to the hospital, Celeste,” Maggie Mom argued. “I can’t do anything for her here. Burn victims need special care. BMC has a burn unit—that’s where she should go. Even if she’s in no danger of dying, she needs immediate medical attention to have any hope of a decent recovery.”

“It’ll probably take the hospital a couple of days to figure out who the burn victim is. Are you sure the vampire thinks she’s dead?”

“She thinks the funeral home cremated her fifteen minutes ago,” Owen answered.

“Then take her to the hospital,” Celeste said. “We’ll figure something out before the vampire does. At the very least, the Foundation will be interested in her.”

After hanging up the phone, Owen took off his scarf and folded it into a small square to pillow the granddaughter’s head. He was sorry for hoping she’d felt a lot of pain when he first saw her, but he’d thought she was a vampire at the time.

He made Gram pull over at a gas station just before the highway. While Gram pumped gas, Owen got the blood sample. He’d much rather have switched jobs, but Gram was his usual filthy self, and Owen figured the last thing Lily Devine needed was one more chance to pick up an infection. As carefully as he could, he inserted the needle into a vein in her arm. The right arm, the one that wasn’t burned, where he could actually see the vein. It was a pretty arm, long and slender, without a single freckle.

She still hadn’t woken by the time they reached Springfield. Owen checked her pulse and breathing regularly. The last thing he wanted was for her to die for real in the car.

At the hospital, Gram still didn’t want to be seen bringing the injured woman into the ER, so he circled the neighborhood a couple of times till he found what he wanted. They ended up leaving her on the far edge of a park about five blocks away, wrapped in blankets against the cold.

After calling the police on Gram’s burner phone, they threw the phone into the Connecticut River and drove away.