Avenging Autumn: Seasons Change Book 1 of 4 (14 page)

“
Why not?” Jack answered, “Jerry
Springer does it every day. Besides, I’m providing a valuable and
necessary service to our community.”

Although Jack’s answer sounded very well
rehearsed, Benny said nothing more on the subject. Not even Jack
was able to predict his eventual fear of dead bodies.

Indianapolis had a thriving art community,
albeit a very small one, and one of Benny’s paintings had just won
a place in an art showing downtown. He and Autumn had been living
together in a small apartment on the southwest side of Indy, and
wedding bells were definitely in the near future.

Frank’s bank, on the other hand, was seeing
hard times because of the bigger banks that kept popping up around
town. Until one night when he was visited by an odd eccentric, with
a pair of associates and an intriguing request.

Frank sat back in his desk chair and listened
to the man with the cane and long, nearly white hair explain his
pro-posal.

“
That is a very tempting, though
illegal offer you have there, but why are you coming to
me?”

“
Because, Mr. Writeman, we know
that you are in desperate need for the money you stand to make off
of this deal. Furthermore, we know you are very good at keeping
secrets, you’ve done so well at keeping mine already.”

Frank didn’t have to ask what the man meant by
this. Odin Sway had been a regular at the bank for over a year now
and The Old Man had known he was a vampire almost right away. Frank
had confronted him about it, insuring Odin he would tell no one as
long as he didn’t bring any trouble into his bank.

“
I’ve always admired you for your
boldness in ap-proaching me, Frank,” Odin continued, using The Old
Man’s name for the first time. “That’s why I recommended you to my
superiors for this opportunity.”

Frank thought about the story Benny had told
him a few years ago, of the monster crouched over some lifeless
lump on a bathroom floor. He did not feel the least bit
com-fortable going into business with these murdering, mythical
creatures, but knew he liked the alternative even less.

“
Alright, Odin,” Frank finally
replied, making sure he used the vampire’s first name in return,
“count me in.”

“
Excellent!” The vampire exclaimed,
though still somehow kept his face from showing any emotion what so
ever. “All dealings with our group will be handled through me and
no one else. Because this is an illegal venture, our contract will
be strictly verbal and all account information must be handled by
you and no one else. Agreed?”

“
Agreed.” The two men shook hands
and soon, all of Franks financial woes were no longer an
issue.

As the Writemans sped down the road, Benny
re-counted his confrontation with Odin Sway.

“
I wonder why he acted so strange
when he saw Au-tumn,” Jack said, “and what was up with the
werewolves? Why did you read them as being Odin?”

“
Well I do have a theory on that,”
Autumn answered, “If he has some kind of psychic ability, he may
have been able to leave his imprint on the werewolves’
minds.”

“
Weird!” Jack returned.

Once the sun came up, the Writemans decided it
was safe to stop and get some rest at the nearest motel. Benny and
Autumn got a separate room from Frank and Jack, and the latter two
decide to get some breakfast, while the former two retired to
bed.

Jack wasn’t really even clear where they were.
He thought they might still be in Nebraska, but at that point, it
didn’t make a whole lot of difference. Autumn knows Odin Sway is
hiding out in northern Colorado (high up in the Rock-ies,
presumably) and that was where they were heading later this
afternoon.

There was a small diner across the street from
the motel, Frank and jack went in and took a seat in a booth near
the window so they could keep an eye on the car and view anything
strange that might happen outside. They were imme-diately
approached by an elderly woman sporting a bee hive hairdo, whose
mouth was busy smacking away at a piece of gum.

“
What can I get for you fellas?”
the waitress asked.

Frank had to squint his old eyes to read the
girl’s name tag. “Hi, Judith, I’d like some scrambled eggs, bacon,
toast, and some orange juice.”

“
Okay, and for you?” she said,
turning to Jack.

Jack only stared at the woman’s hair with a
dazed expression.

“
Is there a problem, honey?” she
inquired of the younger man.

Jack stammered a moment, “Um, no, I was
admiring your hair. You don’t see many women with bee hives anymore
and I, for one think it’s a style that never should have gone
away.”

Judith the waitress only stared at him for a
long while, lips still busily smacking away at her gum. Jack
won-dered if she was going to buy that line of bull and he suddenly
felt like a used car salesman pulling for some poor sucker to sign
a deal.

Finally, a smile spread across the waitress’s
face and she said, “Why thank you. You know, so few people
appre-ciate it. Now, what would you like?”

“
Pancakes and milk,
thanks.”

“
Oh, and can we get today’s paper?”
Frank added.

“
Sure.”

The waitress walked away and Frank lowered his
head and began speaking in a hushed voice. “You know, I think you
could sale a seeing eye dog to a deaf man.”

Jack only answered this with a
shrug.

“
Listen, while you were sleeping in
the car, I called James to get a little info on
werewolves.”

“
Cool,” Jack said with excitement.
The previous night of carnage had seemed to make Jack loosen up and
become more interested in the supernatural world they were now
tangled up in. “What did you find out?”

“
Well, according to his
information, which comes from an actual hunter who’s been
successfully killing these things for a few years, they don’t need
a full moon to change. As long as its night time, they can change
at will, however, a full moon does make them much more powerful.
Their also highly intelligent, far from the mindless killing
machines they’re portrayed to be in popular media.”

“
I don’t know,” Jack said with a
satisfied smile, “we sure did make them look like a bunch of stupid
pussies last night.”

A snorted laugh escaped Frank. “Yeah, we did,
didn’t we?”

The two of them laughed together, and it
dawned on Frank that he had never been as close to his sons as he
had been for the past three days.

“
You know, Jack,” the Old Man said
after the laughs had died away, “I realize this has been a real
strange trip, but I’m glad you decided to take it. This whole thing
has brought us together as a family like nothing else
before.”

“
Yeah, maybe we should write a
book,” Jack held his hands up as if seeing some imaginary marquee,
“I can see the title now, ’Killing Things: How to Fix a
Dysfunctional Fami-ly’.”

The two men were hit with fresh laughter as
the wai-tress arrived with their food and the morning paper. As
Jack began to wolf down his pancakes like a starving, wild beast
Frank scanned through the front section and was relieved to find
nothing about the Writeman family killing spree. Al-though, he
didn’t really know what he was expecting to find. Autopsies would
certainly show some strange facts about the bodies they had left
behind, but somehow he doubted any of those facts would make it to
the public.

Jack had already finished his pancakes and was
waving the waitress down to order more, acting as if he hadn’t
eaten in days. Frank took a few bites of egg and pulled out the
sports section.

“
Well, what do you know,” he said,
surprised, “the Colts are 7-0 on the season, and they beat Denver
yesterday.”

“
Aw shit, I bet that was a good
game.”

“
Maybe.”

“
Hey, this is their year, Dad; the
Colts are going to be Super Bowl champs.”

“
Aw, bullshit,” Frank stated with a
look of disgust, “no team can make it very far with a defense like
that, they’ve been lucky so far.”

“
7-0 is not luck, Dad. Besides,
three of their major defensive linemen are on the injury list and
two of them are due to be back next week. Things are only going to
get better for them.”

“
You know, I watch this team every
year, and every year it’s the same shit. They play like world
beaters all season, and then they get to the playoffs and choke in
the first or second round. I’m tired of it, and I won’t waste my
time fol-lowing them anymore.”

“
Then why do you still follow
politics.”

Frank looked confused. “What does one have to
do with the other?”

“
Think about it. No sane person is
happy with the current administration, but we keep following
politics and we keep voting in the hopes that something good will
eventually happen. Things don’t always turn out the way you want
them to, but you have to keep supporting your political party of
choice and your hometown team with the hopes that they go on to win
the whole thing.”

Frank only stared at his oldest son for a long
moment.

“
What?” Jack asked, fearing he had
said something stupid.

“
When did you become so
insightful?”

Frank was surprised to see Jack’s cheeks
flush. “It’s the weed, it fuels my philosophical side.”

The two shared another laugh as they finished
eating their breakfast and spent the next two hours talking about
football and politics, before finally turning in.

Frank actually slept for five whole
hours.

While Frank and Jack were eating breakfast,
Benny and Autumn were lying in bed face to face, staring at each
other in silence, their cloths lying in a heap on the floor.
Au-tumn had just finished cleaning Benny’s cuts, luckily none of
them where deep enough for stitches.

“
Are you sure you want to do this?”
she whispered.

“
Of course I am,” he answered,
though he wasn‘t entirely sure that was true. At that point he was
very thankful that he had refused an autopsy, otherwise she would
have a stitched up scar covering her midsection on top of
everything else that was causing his hesitation.

He placed his hand on her left breast and
nearly yanked it back when he felt how very cold her skin had
be-come. He made a conscience effort to keep any discomfort from
showing on his face.

She leaned forward and kissed him and again he
nearly flinched at her freezing touch. Her lips parted and her
tongue entered his mouth, exploring with slow intent. Some-how, her
mouth felt very warm and Benny began to feel more at ease. He
wrapped his arms around her and pulled her body closer to his. He
could feel his penis growing hard now. Yes, this body was dead, but
his wife was fully alive within it.

This was his love.

His life.

The woman he had made love to on countless
occa-sions before. Soon, he couldn’t understand how he ever could
have felt uncomfortable with her in any way.

She reached down between his legs and he felt
her cold hand close around his warm throbbing manhood and begin to
stroke it, slowly.

The passion in their kiss increased as his
hand moved to her buttocks and squeezed the left cheek.

With great effort, she broke their kiss and
said; “I brought something from home.”

While she turned to reach to the floor were
her purse was sitting, Benny took one of her nipples into his mouth
and began to suck and playfully bite at it. The low temperature of
her body seemed to make her nipples unbelievably hard.

Autumn turned back to Benny with a tube of
lubri-cant in her hand. “Like I said, my pipes don’t work so well
anymore. Besides it’s got warming sensation.”

Benny got to his knees and let Autumn apply
the lubricant to the both of them and was surprised at just how
warm the stuff was.

Autumn lay back on the bed and Benny hovered
above her for a moment, sharing another kiss before entering
her.

They made love for 30 minutes, and when they
fi-nished, they did it again.

Jack still hadn’t come down from the
excitement of the previous night and though he lay down for an
hour, he was unable to sleep. So, he decided to explore the sleepy
little town they had stumbled upon.

There wasn’t much to the place, just the
diner, the motel, a gas station, and some old houses were
immediately visible from where he stood. Further down the street he
could see a neon sign that advertised a country and western
bar.

He crossed the street back over toward the
diner and continued down the sidewalk toward a building that looked
absolutely ancient.

The building, as it turned out, had three
small shops in it, the first of which was an auto parts store. He
stopped in and picked up a couple of quarts of oil for the hearse.
He knew the old death cab had a tendency to burn through the oil
and figured it would be pretty low by now.