"After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was."
Chapter 7
RAYMOND
"I need another quarter." Raymond held his arm out backward with his palm facing up, holding the broken door of the payphone open with his back, the receiver pressed between his cheek and shoulder. He moved his hand impatiently, carefully watching a car go by with its headlights off through the rain and fingerprint-streaked glass. His anxiety made every passerby in a raincoat look like a hunter, and the pay phone's broken door felt like more than an inconvenience, it felt like a sign, just one in a long line of other portents of death that he'd stupidly ignored tonight.
He felt like he had a target on his back, but he wasn't foolish enough to think that that was just because he was standing out in the open. There was no place he felt safe, only safer, and right now, that was nowhere. Still, he needed to get off the streets, because this was tempting the fates to a degree even an immortal wasn't comfortable with. Even the implied protection of the crowd wouldn't protect him, and he knew that. He wasn't holding out hope for his bodyguard, either, he thought caustically. Luther had made it clear right before he turned into toothpaste how good their strength and speed were against a man with a will and a crossbow, and Lydia wasn't Luther.
Regardless, Raymond didn't expect Lydia to take a bullet for him if it came down to that. In her defense, he wouldn't take one for her either.
Lydia stood outside the phone booth, her grayish blonde hair plastered to the sides of her face as the wind blew the rain sideways against the side of the phone booth. She handed him a quarter without taking her eyes off the building across the street. There was a second-floor window with the light on, and she hadn't looked away from it once. Raymond didn't know the range of a crossbow, but Lydia clearly wasn't taking any chances after what happened to Luther. Not a bad strategy, but unless she was planning to outrun a crossbow, her extra vigilance just felt pointless. Besides, were the Reverend sitting in that room up there with his sight fixed on them, he wouldn't have turned the light on. He may not be able to see in the dark as well as the things he hunted, but he wouldn't risk his silhouette alerting the vampires to his position. The element of surprise was all he had when going toe to toe with the undead, that and decades of rage and experience where a human soul should've been.
The phone rang only once before Simon picked up. "Raymond," he said. Raymond wondered if he'd been standing by the phone waiting for his call. If he were Simon, that's what he would have been doing.
Categorically untrue, were he in Simon's shoes he'd been in another country by now.
Raymond's ears immediately picked up the other voices in the room. They were speaking quietly, and he didn't recognize either of them, though he could distinctly hear at least two others besides Simon, though that wasn't all that surprising to him. Raymond didn't know many of Simon's friends. Though he was younger than Raymond (in a manner of speaking), Simon was still one of the oldest vampires in the PNW. There was also music playing, even more quietly than the other vampires were talking, and one of Simon's guests courteously turned it down when Simon answered the phone as if Simon couldn't hear him already. "If you're calling me, I expect it's not good news."
Raymond huffed, glancing over his shoulder at Lydia. "Always happy to say I told you so, Simon, you know me."
Simon chuckled grimly, and Raymond heard him switch the handset to his other shoulder. The room Simon was in got suddenly quiet, and Raymond realized Simon must have gestured on the other end to his guests for them to leave the room. "What happened?" He asked after a minute.
"Bad news," Raymond confirmed Simon's earlier suspicion. "not surprising news." He scratched at the peeling corner of a yellow sticker on the side of the phone absently. "Luther's dead."
Simon sighed. "Damn it." Raymond stuck his hands in his pockets, holding the phone with his cheek and waiting. "I didn't think Max's boys were that stupid."
"Oh, they are," Raymond replied. "but it wasn't them. It was Dutton."
Simon didn't say anything, but Raymond knew he heard him. "You're sure?" He asked after a long pause. Raymond heard him lick his lips, a nervous habit that carried over from being human. Vampires didn't get chapped lips, but anxiety, as it turned out, was eternal.
"Unfortunately," Raymond said. "Lydia pulled the arrows out of the pile herself."
"Was it quick?" Simon asked.
"Sure," Raymond huffed, rubbing his eyebrow absently. "Just don't ask me if it was painless." He scuffed his foot on the floor of the phone booth. "Sorry, Simon," he added, not because he cared about the dead vampire, but because he did like Simon, most of the time, anyway. "He was, uh, tall."
Simon sighed, and Raymond heard the audible protesting of the plastic on the other end of the line as Simon death gripped the phone. "I'm sorry for putting you at risk like this Raymond, I know how you feel about getting involved. And what we suspected —we should never have put this on you."
Raymond wanted to chide Simon for thinking of him as a child just because he looked like one, but he didn't. Instead, "yeah, well, no one lives forever, Simon," he said quietly. "not even us." His number came up years ago when he was human, all of theirs had, all that becoming a vampire did was delay the inevitable, and sooner or later, Death shored up that list of his.
"Is Lydia with you?"
Raymond took the handset away from his ear and knocked on the side of the phone booth with it, drawing Lydia's attention. "Simon wants to talk to you," he said, holding the phone out as far as it could reach without ripping it out. Lydia took the handset from him and wordlessly held it to her ear. Raymond closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the dirty glass, trying not to eavesdrop.
"Anxious," he heard Lydia say anyway. He felt her eyes on him and knew Simon must have asked her how he seemed.
"Impatient," he corrected, loudly enough for both vampires to hear him.
"Not illuminating," Lydia said, adding, "the human who killed Patrick, she's a half-vampire now. No, not Max, one of the others." Simon said something that Raymond could just barely make out. He asked about Max.
Raymond held his hand out for the phone and Lydia handed it back to him immediately without argument. "Alive," he reassured Simon. "he didn't show, don't worry. You know Max, he likes to stay out of the line of fire." Any head vampire worth his salt, Simon included, didn't advertise his existence if he wanted to stay healthy. Sticking one's neck out was liable to get it cut. Then again, not that much got past that hellhound of his anyway.
"What are you planning to do now, Raymond?" Simon asked. Translation: where are you running away to, so I can find you if I need to?
"We're on the next bus out of this pit." Raymond looked at Lydia and tapped his wrist.
"Twenty minutes," she replied, without looking at her watch.
"Keep my head down until sunset this time tomorrow," Raymond said. "and pray. The same thing I've been doing for the last couple of decades, Simon, what else?"
Simon sighed. "How do you like their odds?"
Raymond laughed. "Well, I wouldn't bet against the Reverend even if they weren't complete morons," Raymond said after a minute. "But they're —impulsive," he scoffed. "and sentimental, and you know how I feel about that."
"I do," Simon replied.
"Look, Simon," Raymond said carefully, rubbing his forehead with his first three fingers. "I know you've known Max a long time but...don't get involved. Mourn, if or when it comes to that, but don't get yourself killed on Max's account." His personal feelings notwithstanding, he'd hate to see Simon's long life come to an end just because Max's parental judgment sucked. "Just remember," he added. "If you die, Sadie gets your share."
Simon chuckled half-heartedly. He quieted again, before sighing. "I suppose if this all goes south and Max dies, Sadie will finally get her wish," he said.
"All the more reason to stay alive, then," Raymond said. It had occurred to Raymond, just as it must have occurred to Simon, that Sadie might be involved in Dutton's return to the west coast for the first time in over a decade, and it wouldn't surprise him at all if it turned out that she had something to do with the trail of bodies Patrick had supposedly left behind him that led the Reverend right to them either. Sadie was many things, a manipulative, sociopathic bitch chiefest among them, and Raymond wouldn't put it past her to cause all this strife just to get her way. It wouldn't be the first time she dropped a couple of bodies just to prove a point. "You don't want that witch in charge, I definitely don't."
Simon huffed quietly. "That's what I like about you, Raymond, your sense of loyalty."
"Hey, I only threw in with Sadie for my health," Raymond said wryly. "make of that what you will, but the alternative was even less appealing." Which was saying something, because he couldn't stand Sadie.
"Max isn't stupid," Simon said suddenly, bringing their conversation back to its original purpose. "he won't make himself a target."
Raymond scoffed. "You haven't met the locals," he glanced out of the side of the phone booth. More than half of the people out walking around weren't even carrying umbrellas. "These Santa Carlans aren't exactly firing on all cylinders down here."
Somehow he doubted the sound-mindedness of the vampire whose coven was a quarter comprised of people who couldn't even buy their own cigarettes.
Simon grew quiet again. Raymond waited. "This isn't the end, Raymond. I know you see it differently," Raymond snorted as Simon laughed gently into his ear. "You've always been pessimistic, for as long as I've known you."
"I prefer realistic," Raymond said in sotto voce.
"We'll survive, Raymond. We always do."
"—like cockroaches," Raymond interjected with a sigh.
"Maybe not us —but there will always be vampires, and he's still only human. Sooner or later, he'll do what all humans do."
Sure, but with luck and a little clean living, the Reverend could prove to be a thorn in their collective sides for decades more. Raymond rubbed fruitlessly at the condensation on the glass in front of him from the inside.
Simon went on without Raymond really hearing him. "There'll come a day when none of us even remembers his name, Raymond, I promise you."
"Maybe," Raymond said absently. "but no one's gonna be shedding any tears for us either." Vampires had long memories, and a tendency not to weep over other dead vampires, no matter how long they'd known them for. Maybe it was a survival instinct. Vampires were good at forgetting things, especially pain. They'd all be suicidal if they had to carry that much grief around with them for eternity.
"Maybe not, old friend," Simon said. "Maybe we'll die as normal people do."
"Dare to dream," Raymond replied, bitterly.
Simon huffed. "We're around so much longer than them it feels like forever. It's easy to forget how ephemeral we are, even us." As admittedly fond, for lack of a better word, of Simon —who was his oldest and only friend, as he was, Raymond despised sentimentality, and Simon was perhaps the most sentimental vampire he knew, which wasn't saying much, most vampires were self-serving, even Raymond. Where Sadie and Park had manipulated and killed their way in the world, Simon, while no saint, was still too good to be a vampire. Good people didn't last long as vampires, and Simon had lasted longer than most.
"Getting maudlin in your old age, Simon?" Raymond teased.
Simon chuckled. "Just thinking about the future."
"Well," Raymond said, shifting his weight to lean his shoulder against the side of the booth. "don't think too hard. We have to live that long first."
"Indeed. Safe travels, Raymond."
"I hope so. See you soon, Simon."
Raymond held onto the handset long after Simon disconnected, holding his head against the payphone and listening to the gentle rain patter on the top of the glass.
You know, he was really getting tired of being right all the time.
He glanced sidelong at Lydia, who was staring back at him. "Don't say it," he warned her. He stood up straight and returned the handset to its original place slowly. He ran his hands through his damp hair and stepped out of the phone booth and into the rain. He fought with the broken door for a few seconds but could only get it to close halfway, so he just left it. He glanced at Lydia, who was still staring at him like a cat underfoot waiting to be fed. "I know what you're going to say, and if you say it," he waved his hand dismissively. "insert threat here."
Lydia kept on staring until Raymond pushed her out of the way with his shoulder. "Move. You know, this is why people kick dogs." The rain was more of an inconvenience if anything at this point, but Raymond was in the sort of mood where even a slight irritation was a gigantic pain in his ass. Getting shot at will do that to a guy's night.
He started walking down the sidewalk, hands in his pockets and his shoulders up to keep the rain from running down the back of his shirt. For all the good it did, he was already soaked.
Lydia followed at a clipped pace and an even shorter distance. If Raymond stopped or slowed down at all, she would slam right into him. If it wasn't for his vampire reflexes, her vampire reflexes, and good timing, she'd have been stepping on the back of his shoes every other step.
Raymond didn't want to have this conversation with Lydia. To be clear, he didn't want to have any conversation with Lydia, let alone this one. He'd already considered every possible strategy here, contrary to what Lydia thought. It didn't take him that long because there was only one option that didn't result in his embarrassingly immediate death, and that was getting the hell out of town.
Preferably tonight, if Lydia would stop dragging her feet.
The almost inaudible huff from behind him told him that his not so indirect barb landed exactly where he wanted it to, but as arguably more intelligent than her boss as she was, Lydia could be just a pigheaded as him when she wanted to be, and Raymond knew enough to know he wasn't getting out of here without having this conversation.
"This is a mistake."
Raymond scoffed, "Noted", but didn't miss a step. The silence was far from comfortable, punctuated by the sound of their feet on the wet sidewalk and Lydia's occasional under her breath comment, and Raymond was content to let it go on like that for as long as she'd let him. He certainly wasn't going to be the one to break the silence. Sure, if he valued her opinion as more than the carbon dioxide it was, he might entertain her (which was a lie), but he —they, in case she'd forgotten she was a vampire too, didn't have all night. They had hours, sure, but not to accomplish all the things they needed to without cutting it close enough to be charcoal.
Getting out of Santa Carla alive was the easy part, as depressed as that made him, provided their luck held up long enough for them to catch their bus, and didn't just thinking the sentence "provided their luck held up" make him want to check over his shoulder, but there was no way they were making it back up north in one night even with the advantages of modern transportation, so sooner or later they'd have to find somewhere to put their heads down for the day, and therein lay the problem.
Traditionally, vampires had lower standards when it came to accommodations. As long as it was dark and the chances of an errant beam of sunlight falling on you were negligible, that was all most vampires could hope or ask for in the old days. Which might explain why so many of the vampires from before the age of MTV weren't around anymore, and the ones that were were as paranoid as him. Beds were a luxury most vampires couldn't afford even now. Beds meant bedrooms, which in most cases meant windows, which meant if you were unlucky, you wound up with a french-fried vampire.
The risk was too high, and as a general rule, no vampire would risk discovery and death by sleeping somewhere with easy access to humans anyway because of the smell. While an effective deterrent back in the plague days when the smell of death was enough to keep even the most curious of humans away for fear of getting sick, nowadays, even that curiosity outweighed their caution.
Hence space travel.
The point being, they couldn't exactly rent a motel room for the day and just cross their fingers.
"We could stay."
That time, Raymond did laugh. He wiped his face with both hands tiredly and kept walking. "Noted again. You know, happy as I'd be to indulge your suicidal fantasies under normal circumstances, maybe some other time when I'm not covered in blood," he opened one side of his jacket to show her his ruined shirt pointedly. "in public, would be better." Looking like he did and having to explain to the cops why he was covered in blood was the second to last thing he needed.
"Raymond," Lydia began, stepping in front of him completely.
"Enough," he cut her off. He closed his jacket a little more forcefully than was perhaps necessary and glared at her. "I don't have time for this."
But Lydia wasn't done pushing her luck. "We're ignoring our other option," she said.
Raymond pushed her out of his way with his elbow and kept walking. "We don't have any other options." He said, although he already knew what she was going to say, and was even less interested in hearing it than he was in sticking around.
"Kill him." —Raymond scoffed. "We outnumber him," Lydia insisted.
"It won't matter." Trying to explain that to Lydia was like a nail trying to reason with a hammer. He wasn't stupid, he was a hell of a lot smarter than Lydia, and he could count too. Six full vampires against one old man, those odds sounded a lot better than they were in reality. He could see why Lydia thought so too, but the Reverend had been at this for the better part of his adult life, and he wasn't stupid either, he wasn't going to come at them all head-on. Tonight was just grandstanding, that's all, just a reminder of how —how did Simon put it? How ephemeral they all were.
Which was just a nice way of saying they were completely fucking screwed.
"He's a man." He's just a man, is what she didn't say and really meant.
"With more years killing vampires under his belt than you've been alive or dead, sweetheart." Raymond pointed out, though at this point he felt like he shouldn't keep having to. "Do you really think you're the first, or the hundredth, to try? Three guesses as to how all those turned out, and the first two don't count."
"Raymond,"
"Hey," he snapped, stopping so abruptly that Lydia almost slammed into him despite herself as he turned to face her. His corpse-gray eyes stood out even in his pale face. "you wanna stay here and die for a bunch of strangers, be my guest, but I'm not dying today!" His voice rose, and the few people still out in the rain stopped where they were to look at them. He exhaled loudly through his nose, while Lydia stared at him implacably. "Maybe you didn't appreciate my full meaning before when I said we were all going to die, but I meant that." As an immortal, Raymond had what he considered to be a healthy fear of dying. "I admire your suicidal go-get'emness, I really do, but it is not. Helpful." No argument from Lydia, because he wasn't wrong. They could all sit around and jerk each other off about how they'd kill Dutton if they got the chance, but talking about it and doing it were vastly different things, one of which had been done before.
Guess which.
"All I care about right now is making it on that bus in," he grabbed Lydia's wrist and turned it so he could see her watch. "twelve minutes," he said, shoving her own arm back at her. "and getting the hell out of this sandy deathtrap before the sun comes up and we're stuck here another goddamn day. I hope you can appreciate that all I want or need from you right now is facilitating that goal" he held up one finger, then another, as he added, "and silence. In that order. Got it?"
Lydia was quiet for almost a full minute, which irritated Raymond more than her talking, before she finally replied. "Understood."
"Good." Raymond said. "Then pick up your goddamn feet and let's go."
Lydia's legs were longer than his but even she was having trouble keeping up with Raymond as the departure time of their bus grew nearer. Raymond wasn't wearing a watch, so he could only guess at how much time they had left before their bus left without them, but it felt like he had a bomb strapped to his chest with thirty seconds left on the big red timer. He nearly got clipped coming off of the curb by an old, powder blue Beetle but Lydia grabbed him by the back of his jacket and pulled him up hard back onto the sidewalk. He hung from her hand like a scruffed kitten while she waited for two more cars to pass. He didn't thank her, and yanked his jacket out of her hand with his shoulders and stepped off the curb again.
He ducked under the elbow of a man who was dressed easily ten years younger than he actually was, with his arm around the shoulders of a girl who actually was ten years younger than he was. The man shouted at Lydia to "watch her damn kid", and kept walking.
The prey instinct not to run was the only thing keeping him from breaking into a sprint now that they were so close. Running attracted attention, and he didn't need his bloody shirt to catch the eye of some boardwalk rent-a-cop with too much time on his hands. As much as he cared about preserving the big vampire secret (which wasn't a lot, admittedly), he was more concerned about his own skin, and he would decapitate a mother in front of her weeping child if they tried to stop him from leaving this shithole right now.
"Almost there," Lydia said, unhelpfully.
"Yeah, I can see that," Raymond huffed. Even though he wasn't out of breath, it was difficult to fight the very human urge to pant. "Go," he told Lydia, because she was the only one of the two of them who actually looked their age. "get the tickets." He pulled his jacket closed tighter around himself and stood out of the way, trying not to make eye contact with anyone while still keeping both of his on the crowd. Lydia nodded before walking away to retrieve the tickets they'd prepaid for earlier in the night.
The wheel well pressed against his shoulder blades hard enough to hurt if he were human, but it felt better than having his back to the crowd. He didn't allow himself to think for one minute that the Reverend wouldn't pull something here just because there were people around. He didn't care about keeping vampires a secret. For someone like the Reverend for whom the ends always justified the means, collateral damage was par for the course. All that mattered to him was wiping every last one of them off the face off the earth, bystanders be damned.
He'd left witnesses before.
But they didn't. When they'd finally come on the scene in the past to clean up the messes he left behind, they didn't leave behind anyone who might think about taking up the Reverend's cause now that they knew what they knew. Vampires as a general rule didn't leave behind people who could tell stories about vampires, that's how angry mobs formed, which made it all the more puzzling to him that Max's boys hadn't just killed their little blonde girlfriend when they had the chance.
Playing with your food was one thing, but why Max would look the other way was beyond him.
In all his years as a vampire, Raymond had never once felt the itch to make himself a companion. He'd known many vampires, more than he liked, and he knew he was unique in that respect. Even antisocial vampires got bored. Some of them did it out of curiosity, just to see if they could, but most of them did it because they were lonely.
Sadie did it because she was a megalomaniacal sadist and wanted to be worshiped. Simon because he still naively thought it was a gift.
Raymond wondered what motivated the one who made Missy. It certainly wasn't out of the kindness of his heart. He'd seen Missy's should-have-been final moments himself, at least from her perspective, and maybe it'd just been a knee-jerk reaction to the dying human he sort of knew in front of him, some lingering human sentimentality.
Or maybe it was just their way of saying thanks for putting Patrick out of all their misery.
But none of that mattered. If he had his way, he'd never see that girl again, as a vampire or a corpse. He should be so lucky, but the way his night was going, he didn't know who he was more likely to run into first, Missy, or the Reverend.
It had been a long, long time since Raymond prayed. Not since he was still human, at least. Not the selfish, empty, half-hearted promises to the big guy he never intended to keep in the first place, but real, honest to God prayer. If ever there was a time that he felt like starting up again, it was now, but somehow he doubted that He was even listening to any of them anymore, let alone a vampire.
He wondered if the Reverend felt like that now too. Dutton was certainly closer to a killer like him than he was to being human now. He was about as far from a man of God as Raymond was from being a normal twelve-year-old. He had to ask if God was looking the other way because what Dutton was doing really was just, or because He just didn't care what happened to any of them anymore. Maybe He never did. After all, God let people die every day, not just vampires.
Raymond wasn't usually so existential, or introspective for that matter, but he'd read somewhere that people on their deathbeds always felt closest to God.
On the plus side, it looked like at least the rain was letting up.
He didn't like tempting fate by looking on the bright side of things, so just to be safe, he started making his way closer to the front of the bus with the intention of being as close to the door as possible when they were allowed to start boarding again. He could see for himself through the eyes of the humans nearest to him as he did so how ridiculous he looked with his back up against the bus, slinking his way to the front. He looked to them how he looked to most people who didn't know better, like a little kid dressed too old for his age, with dark circles that made him look like he was perpetually recovering from a broken nose. His pale skin practically glowed under the neon, and if any of them were to accidentally brush up against him, they'd feel how cold he was.
He'd never been good at passing for his physical age, so most of the time, he didn't even bother with acting. Let them draw their own conclusions from his troubling unchildlike behavior, it's not like they were ever that close to the truth anyway.
Usually.
The half-vampire Missy wasn't as stupid as she looked, which was saying something. She was more perceptive than probably any of her friends gave her credit for, or knew. He knew from reading her mind that she was one of those sensitive humans that picked up on the energy they gave off better than most did, it was why she'd paid more attention to him than Lydia or Luther. Maybe she could sense that he was the oldest. He doubted she was even aware of it, she probably chalked it up to anxiety, but that wasn't the real reason her gut acted up around them. Maybe if she'd paid more attention to her gut in the beginning she wouldn't be in the boat she was now, but it was all academic at this point. There was only one way to turn a half-vampire into a full human, and Missy definitely didn't have the stomach for that. Nor did he expect the one who made her would let himself be set on fire as easily as Patrick had.
Not that it would matter for much longer regardless.
Raymond closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the bus. He could do this just as easily with his eyes open, but the "dead behind the eyes" look they got while doing so tended to draw attention, and he didn't want any more reasons for eyes to be on him tonight.
He moved from one mind to the next like a honey bee moving between flowers. He wasn't literally looking through their eyes, everything was reversed the way he saw it, like a mirror image in their head, reflected in his. Everything was half-formed and abstract, most of the time it was just colors in the dark, a vague shape that might be something they were thinking about, a sudden vivid flash of the face of the person they were talking to. There was always a few seconds delay as the thought itself was being formed. Lydia moved out of his line of sight almost faster than he could keep up with her, but he finally located her again near the entrance of the bus depot. It didn't look like her at first because the person looking at her was kind of attracted to her (to each their own), and the distortion in his head made her almost unrecognizable to Raymond at first glance.
She looked pissed, which was how he realized it was her. She met his eyes, through the eyes of the person whose mind he was reading, and her dour expression got worse if anything. It wasn't as easy to hear what she was saying, the person whose mind he was reading wasn't good at eavesdropping, but he got the impression that whatever it was, he wasn't going to want to hear.
He gave up on following Lydia when she left his line of sight again, trying to swallow the little ball of anxiety that was sitting behind where his Adam's apple would've been if he'd hit puberty. He could sense Lydia, and the cloud of bad luck that was hovering over her as she got closer to him. The tension coming off of her like a bad smell only made the ball in his throat grow bigger.
Somehow he didn't think she was coming over here to give him good news.
"I can't help noticing that you're empty-handed," he said mildly when he smelled her in front of him, without opening his eyes.
Lydia made a face he couldn't see, but could somehow hear in the tense click of her teeth as she spoke. "There's been a complication."
Oh, Raymond really didn't like the sound of that.
"A 'the bus is running a few minutes behind schedule because the driver has the shits' complication or 'Raymond kills Lydia' complication?" He asked tersely, finally opening his eyes. Lydia had slicked her hair back from her face, where it had stayed neatly, and like him, she'd closed her jacket, which he realized she hadn't been wearing earlier when Luther was killed, she must've stolen it from somewhere after they parted ways with Max's boys. He hadn't even thought to check how much of Luther's blood had gotten on her. She'd been closer to the now-dead vampire at the time than he was.
He watched a muscle in Lydia's jaw tick. "The bus has been delayed."
Leaning dangerously into dead Lydia territory. "For how long?" He snapped.
Lydia hesitated, a strange look for her. "They wouldn't say exactly."
"Why the hell not?" Raymond asked. "Did you at least threaten them? Offer them money?"
"To avoid starting a riot of people asking for refunds, that would be counter-productive, and I don't have any money on me, in that order," Lydia replied.
Neither did he, so he couldn't bite her head off over that, although it was tempting. "Why don't you have any money on you?"
Lydia held her blazer open slightly so he could see her thin, blood-covered blouse. "No pockets. Luther was carrying it all."
"Oh, for God's sake," Raymond aggressively buttoned his jacket so it wouldn't come open on its own and stormed off, shoving his way past the people lingering around the bus.
He was smaller, so he made better time than Lydia because he could go under people's arms. He rapped his hand on the box office harshly, drawing the attention of the ticket clerk, who lowered his magazine slowly, and then his eyes, when he didn't see Raymond right away. "Yeah?" He asked.
"Why's the bus delayed?" Raymond asked curtly.
The twenty-something stared at him through the glass, looking more confused now than annoyed. "Go away, kid."
Raymond slammed his hand on the glass, drawing the attention of the surrounding humans, who immediately looked away when they saw how old he was. People didn't like it when other peoples' children threw temper tantrums in public. "Just answer the question."
The clerk put his magazine face down, still open. "Look, kid, some punk stabbed a couple of the tires, okay? Can't move until they replace 'em."
You gotta be fucking kidding me.
"Okay," Raymond said tersely. "So when's the next bus?"
The clerk sucked his teeth and turned on his stool to look at the clipboard sitting on the counter nearby. "A little under an hour."
Raymond was going to put his arm through the booth and saw this kid's head off with the broken glass in about ten seconds. "Are you serious?"
"What do you want from me?" The clerk asked. "I just work here, man."
"Can we get a refund on our tickets?" Raymond asked.
"Not until my manager gets here," the clerk sighed. "I can only do exchanges if you want to take the next bus."
"This fucking town," Raymond snapped, walking away.
Lydia was exactly where he left her, she'd no doubt been eavesdropping because she hadn't bothered to get the tickets out of her stolen jacket's pocket. She most likely already knew how long they were going to be waiting.
Raymond tucked his shoulders in, jamming his hands in his pockets. "Go steal a car."
"Raymond," Lydia began, but Raymond held up a hand to stop her.
"Steal. A. Car. I'm not spending another minute in this town, you can do whatever you want after you get me a car." Not that he'd be much good at making his way out of here without Lydia. There was a good reason Lydia and Luther had come with him in the first place. There were a lot of things he couldn't do in this modern world looking the way he did. Driving a car was only presently the most irritating.
"Raymond," Lydia tried again.
"Just shut up and do it." Raymond started walking away from the bus stop. Lydia watched him for a few seconds, clearly torn between wanting to know and not actually caring where he was going. Eventually, the needing to know won out, and she called after him.
Where are you going?
He was headed toward the boardwalk, any idiot could see that, but it was also obvious that Lydia cared more about why than where. He debated briefly about whether to answer her at all, but he did, albeit probably not the one she was looking for. "Let me know when you've got a car."
The boardwalk didn't especially make Raymond feel any safer, and it was hard to focus with all the noise and lights, it would be easy for someone to sneak up on him like this, even he knew that, but he knew if he didn't at least keep moving, the waiting around for Lydia would only increase his panic, and he'd find himself flying toward the city limits instead of driving, and times had actually changed long before he was made into a vampire, you couldn't just go around flying anymore. Technology had come a long, long way, and it was easier than ever to kill a vampire, even if you didn't necessarily know what you were dealing with.
I mean, look at Missy, she was what, maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet and she nearly took Patrick out completely on her own.
Speak of the Devil.
He smelled the blonde in question before he saw her. She still smelled mostly human, but she smelled enough like vampires now from proximity that he could easily pick her out of the crowd. Beyond the smells of funnel cake and humans and rollercoaster grease, she smelled like saltwater and rain, a little bit like cigarette smoke, and a lot like fear.
It set his teeth on edge just from a whiff. He didn't blame her, he wasn't exactly the picture of calm himself right now, and she had more reason than him to be nervous, she was on the home team, he was just visiting.
The rain started to pick up again, drizzling lightly on the top of their heads.
She was staring at an empty bench when he finally saw her. He knew the second she noticed him too because he felt the little psychic tendrils she wasn't even aware of yet reach out and poke him. Her face was as pale as his when she turned around.
"You know those friends of yours don't hear so well." He said, turning his coat collar up to shield his ears and sticking his hands in his pockets.
She looked away from him, back at the bench, and Raymond looked too, unimpressed with the wet graffiti on the back of the seat. "I thought you were leaving town," she said after a while. God she sounded young. What the hell were they thinking? Granted, that was big coming from him, but it hadn't exactly been his decision to become a vampire.
"I am," he replied. Hopefully. "shortly, believe me."
The wind rolled through the boardwalk lazily, barely rustling the empty popcorn containers strewn around them. "So why are you still here? I thought you'd be halfway to Florida by now."
Raymond scoffed. Perish the thought. "I'm waiting for Lydia to bring the car around." In a manner of speaking. It wasn't the whole truth, but it was far enough from a lie that she seemed to accept it, despite the hint of suspicion he could hear in her voice as she turned to face him again.
"Why did you come to Santa Carla?" She asked. "You clearly didn't like Patrick, and if you're as scared of this reverend as you say you are, why take the risk for us? You don't even know us."
Raymond sighed hard through his nose. "I owed someone a favor. This makes us square." That was further from the truth. He owed Simon more than one favor, and Simon owed him his fair share, neither one of them was exactly keeping track anymore.
"Who? Max?" Raymond tilted his head slightly but otherwise gave nothing away. So Missy had met her grandsire. That surprised him more than anything so far. Max was incredibly old, and too smart to show his face to a half-vampire without a good reason, especially a reluctant one like her. Either Max was getting cocky in his old age, or he already knew that Missy wasn't connected to him the way the other half-vampires were. Either way, it was a stupid move revealing himself to someone with only one foot in the door.
"Max and I have some mutual acquaintances whose interests momentarily aligned with me coming here, that's all." The half-vampire chewed on her lip, clearly not placated.
"And your interests don't align anymore, is that it?"
She had kind of an attitude problem for someone a stiff breeze could take out. Maybe David liked them to fight back a little. "My interests align with not getting an arrow through the heart," he said. "If you were smart, yours would too."
Thoughts ran through Missy's mind like water through a sieve, and Raymond had trouble picking any one in particular out, but her melancholy was infectious. "I don't have anywhere else to go," she said quietly.
"Well," Raymond said, sighing. "look on the bright side."
"What's the bright side?" The half-vampire asked defensively.
Raymond shrugged. "You'll probably be dead soon anyway."
He heard her sharp intake of breath. "Do you really think he'll try to kill me even though I'm not even a full vampire yet?"
"Yes." Raymond replied instantly. If anything, that made her more of an appealing target. Half-vampires were easier to separate from the rest of the coven and certainly easier to kill. Especially for a human. "He'll probably try to kill you first, you or the other half-vampires, just because you're easier targets."
Then why, Missy's mind asked. "If it's hopeless, why bother warning us? If there's nothing we can do to save ourselves, why did you even come?"
Raymond huffed. He was asking himself that very same question a lot presently. "Because what you don't know can hurt you, and this way, at least now you know." —and because maybe they'd get lucky, maybe if they threw enough bodies at him, he'd simply get tired from killing all of them and one of them could get a lucky shot in.
"Your friend's dead," he wanted to laugh at her because it should have been obvious even to her that Luther was not his friend. He supposed she just didn't know how to qualify their relationship otherwise. "and apparently so will we be soon, but hey, at least we know, right?"
Raymond was momentarily taken aback by her caustic expression and clenched his jaw. "Look," he cleared his throat. "Let me give you a little free advice."
"I've had just about all the free advice I can take tonight," Missy snapped "and I'm not leaving." No matter what you or anyone else has to say about it, she added, internally.
Raymond huffed in amusement. "Loyalty is a rare quality these days. I'm sure your friend David holds it in very high regard," he said sarcastically. His tone abruptly turned grave. "but it'll get you killed. Probably in the next few days."
"You think having friends is a bad thing?" Missy asked.
That was a can of worms he didn't have the time to open, but the short answer was no, not technically. A bad thing? No. A pointless thing? Yeah, kinda. He'd known Simon for years, he counted him as probably his only real friend, and yet they were rarely ever in each other's lives. Simon had his own coven, his own territory, and responsibilities that accompanied it, and Raymond's hands were both full with trying not to suicide bomb both himself and Sadie. "Even if you do survive this, not all of your friends will, and you need to make peace with that."
Missy didn't comment. They both knew he was right, maybe not about everything, but definitely about that.
I have a car. He didn't need to turn to see Lydia, he could see her standing just on the edge of his peripheral vision. Her neutral expression was back. It seemed most of the fight had gone out of her now that it seemed that they really would be leaving town. "Listen," Raymond said at the same time a huge peal of thunder briefly silenced the boardwalk, so he was sure Missy didn't catch it. The rain sped up until it was hitting his upturned collar hard enough to flatten it. "That advice I was gonna give you..."
Missy stared at him through the almost gray haze of falling rain. She looked like she was hanging by a thread. "Yeah?
"Stay out of the Reverend's way," he said. "Let him kill the one who turned you, and then go home, live the human life you were supposed to live." At the half-vampire's horrified expression —"He'll stop hunting you once you're human."
"Are you joking?" Missy croaked.
Not even the slightest bit. "Do I look like I'm joking?" Raymond said mid-sigh.
"I can't do that."
Raymond wanted to roll his eyes into the stratosphere. How long had she known these guys, a month? "They'd let you die." Raymond may not know everything, but he knew vampires, and if there was one thing all vampires had in common, it was their sense of self-preservation. Always self first, it was why a lot of covens didn't get that big. Vampires were primarily solitary predators, they only tended to group together eventually because at least part of them was still human. Even fairly large covens like Simon's and Sadie's, which were actually larger than Max's by a huge margin, didn't stick together like this one did. They were all spread out over their respective territories. Max's group was only unique because for whatever reason, they chose to all live in the same place and hunt together, the latter of which most vampires simply just did not do. "Of all the heinous things a person can be in this day and age, naive is probably the most criminal."
Except maybe for sentimental.
"Maybe," Missy said. "But when I die, which will probably be soon," —Raymond snorted. "there aren't that many people who will even notice." That was probably true. Vampires were pretty good at pulling the most vulnerable people from the herd. Why else would Santa Carla have such a notorious reputation? "—the only other people who might have missed me hate me right now, but I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for David and the boys." Raymond was once again caught off-guard by how simultaneously hectic and crystal clear Missy's memories were. He could feel the dirt under him and taste her blood pooling in his mouth as it must've been when Patrick was torturing her. It was nothing short of a miracle that she'd survived long enough for David and the others to even have a chance to intervene, and also the unfortunate reason she was in the predicament she was in now. "They saved me. I killed Patrick for them. I'm not leaving them."
Raymond stared at her, even through the rain he could hear her stubborn half-human heart thumping along even as her body fought with itself, torn between alive and dead. Believe it or not, he still remembered what it felt like to be half-human. Although he hadn't stayed a half-vampire long, the hunger pangs were still painfully vivid in his memory.
Lydia was mercifully silent, but he could feel her watching him.
"If I could survive being tortured by an insane half-starved vampire as just a human then I have to be able to make it through this as a half-vampire."
"Maybe," Raymond huffed. "You know if there was gonna be someone I'd put money on it'd be the human who kicked a flaming vampire with a broken leg," he said wryly.
Missy smiled grimly. "It was a dislocated knee, but thank you."
"Who knows?" Raymond inhaled hopefully, straightening his shoulders. "I believe in miracles, and I've been wrong before." He'd been a vampire for a long time, and as appealing as the idea of finally being able to rest was, he was, at the same time, a coward. He was still afraid of dying, even though he'd been mostly dead for years now. "I hope I am now. For your sake, I really do." He listened to the half-vampire's steady heartbeat. He'd like to be wrong for once, he thought.
"Take care, kid."
"You too," she replied. He turned to go, Lydia right behind, and Missy called after them. "—w-wait! Have you seen a little boy? He's got sort of longish brown hair and he's wearing a gray coat, it looks like a civil war coat, and he has black sneakers, and he's a half-vampire like me, I probably should have led with that" the words came out all at once like cockroaches running under the fridge to get away from the light, and Raymond could just about keep up. "—his name is Laddie, have you seen him?"
Raymond exchanged a look with Lydia. He certainly hadn't, but then, he hadn't really been looking. "No, sorry," he replied.
Missy glanced hopefully at Lydia, who instead looked at him. "I haven't seen any other half-vampires tonight."
Missy's shoulders fell, and Raymond pressed his lips together sympathetically. "I hope you find him," the 'before He does', went unsaid, but not unheard. "Let's go, Lydia."
"You should've gotten something with a bigger trunk," Raymond snapped as the two-seater pony car that Lydia had acquired came into view. At the very least, they could've locked themselves in the trunk to stay out of the sun if they had to. They could still both, technically, because he was smaller than he should've been and he didn't care if Lydia was comfortable, but it would be a tight, tight squeeze.
"You didn't specify trunk dimensions and I had very little time," Lydia replied. She dangled the keys on her index finger in front of Raymond's face. "Would you like to drive?"
"Ha ha." Raymond walked around to the passenger side and let himself in. The inside of the car smelled like stale air and lipstick. Someone had left a gold-colored tube of red lipstick on the passenger floorboard and it had melted out and dried into the mat. He waited for Lydia to start the car before immediately cranking the heat and aiming all of the vents at himself. He wasn't technically cold, but the warm air would dry his clothes a lot faster than just sitting in them would. "Let's go."
Lydia drove in silence, the cab filled with the sounds of the heater rattling at full blast and the much quieter by comparison vibration of the engine.
Raymond's mind raced.
He didn't know how any of this was going to end, maybe he was wrong, God he'd love to be wrong. He didn't doubt for one second that the Reverend would be able to take out all of Max's coven if he put his mind to it. They might get lucky and he might only get half, but at least some of them were going to die. Did he think any of them had a chance going toe to toe with Dutton? He didn't know, maybe Max? He was pretty old, and according to Simon, pretty smart. But there were plenty of dead, smart, old vampires.
And if he wasn't wrong, and this all turned out the way he feared? Well, then there were going to be a bunch of dead, stupid, young vampires before too long.
Thank you for reading.