Authors: Jonah Hewitt
Schuyler sighed.
“Look!” Miles said a bit too emphatically. He tried to calm himself. “I know junkies, and sometin’s wrong with this guy. Addicts are creatures of habit. They have their favorite suppliers, and they just don’t change for no reason. This guy’s odd. Sometin’s wrong. I dunno, maybe he’s a cop or sometin’.”
“
OR
… maybe his pusher got pinched and he’s desperately looking for a pop before the early shift. Don’t people come to this neighborhood to buy dope all the time?”
That was true, but there was still something off about the guy.
“So what’d he do? Come out here, park his car in the middle of nowhere, git out to wait and just
hope
a pusher would come by? It doesn’t make any sense, ya blighter. Addicts don’t park the car and wait for sellers to come to
dem,
ya bloody idiot. They drive around and don’ stop ‘til they find someone! It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Dude, what doesn’t make any sense is that you are passing up an opportunity to keep Wallach from having Forzgrim turn you into his own personal doormat. He could have set up a meeting with his supplier and the guy is late, that’s all.”
“So what if his pusher shows up?” Miles was nervous.
“Big deal, so we bring
two
bloodbags back to Wallach – the
horror
,” Schuyler remarked sarcastically. Miles wasn’t buying it. It all seemed wrong.
“I’m telling you it’s just not right.”
“And I’m telling you, you think too much.” And with that, Schuyler put the lollipop prop back into his mouth and started walking casually out into the street.
“Schuyler, you bloody idiot, come back!!” Miles whispered hoarsely. Schuyler just nonchalantly turned around and kept walking backwards away from him while talking.
“REE-
lax,
will ya?” Schuyler replied, “I’ll just go over…”
“No, don’t!”
“And have a little chat with our friend here…”
“Schuyler!”
“And bring him back over here to the alley where you can jump him, ok? I’ll even help you soften him up a bit before you have to bring him back to Wallach, have a little snack to tide us over. Ok?”
“No…don’t go…Schuyler? I’m serious! Git back here!”
“Dude, you owe me for this one,
big time
. Don’t worry, you’ll thank me later.”
And with that, Schuyler strolled out into the street and called out to the man leaning against the car.
“WASSUP!! Bro…you looking for a hit? Maybe a date? ‘Cuz, if so, we can set you up proper!” The young man hadn’t noticed Schuyler before this. His gaze instantly turned their way, his body stiffened. Miles ducked back into the alley out of sight. Something was wrong, very,
very
wrong, but he couldn’t tell what. He couldn’t make out the conversation, but he could tell Schuyler was already well into one of his monologues. He peeked around the corner of the building. Schuyler hadn’t been talking to the guy for more than a minute and he already had his arm around the guy’s shoulders. A minute or two later the man was even laughing, albeit a little nervously, as Schuyler gestured widely with his lollipop as if he was telling some fantastic story. At the climax, both he and Schuyler laughed enthusiastically.
A minute later Schuyler gestured with the lollipop towards the alley. Miles winced and ducked down a little. The guy didn’t seem so certain at first and kept looking over his shoulder. Schuyler just shrugged, said goodbye and started walking away, but the guy didn’t follow. Just when Miles was certain Schuyler had blown the sale, the guy called out to Schuyler and ran to catch up with him, shook his hand and followed him across the street towards the alley. Schuyler looked Miles’ way and winked. Sure enough, Miles had to admit, Schuyler was good at this.
Schuyler entered the alley first. Miles pressed himself against the wall and tried to disappear. Schuyler didn’t even acknowledge Miles as he passed him. The hapless guy followed him in, passed Miles and didn’t even see him. Schuyler was setting this up perfectly. Miles could jump him from behind and bleed him just enough to make him pass out. Clean and easy. Maybe Schuyler knew what he was doing all along after all. Miles wasn’t so nervous anymore; Schuyler seemed to have the whole situation under control.
Miles crept forward for the kill slowly, silently closing in to strike…and slipped and stumbled on a pile of loose newspapers.
Bloody heck!!
thought Miles,
Couldn’t he do anything right?
The man instantly turned around at the sound and looked terrified. Beyond him Miles could see Schuyler’s blonde head shaking in disbelief, the palm of his hand on his forehead. The man exchanged nervous looks between him and Schuyler and for a moment it looked like he was going to bolt. Fortunately, Schuyler stepped in to save the situation.
“No, no, no!! It’s okay, that’s just my
associate
, Miles.” He said the word “associate” with particular venom. “Miles, here, is my lookout, see, so we’ll take care of business down
here
, while
Miles
keeps a lookout
down
THERE.
” Schuyler’s eyeballs frantically pointed towards the end of the alley. His look was enough to let Miles know he didn’t want his help anymore.
The victim’s face relaxed a little and Miles awkwardly nodded, turned around and walked over to watch the empty street and feel worthless. Miles folded his arms and leaned despondently on the corner of the building. As he did, he heard Schuyler behind him finish the sale.
“Right over here. We can hook you up…”
“Here it comes,” thought Miles, “Schuyler’s moment of glory where he pulls out one of his patented, corny catch phrases, gets the victim and then rubs it in my face for the next three weeks.” All that was left after that was the muffled scream, the sound of frantic thrashing cut short and the long haul back to Wallach with the comatose body.
Schuyler started up again, “Before we do business, my friend, are you hungry? Because if you are, I could always go for a quick…”
Miles groaned. Not
that
one. “
Bite
,” Miles completed in his mind. How corny. Only the awful pun never came. In fact, there was no muffled scream or thrashing either. Just silence. Miles was getting nervous again, but then remembered how Schuyler had played him twice already.
“I’m not fallin’ for it, Schuyler! If ya think ya can trick me again, ya can haul the body back to Wallach by yerself.” He it said without turning around, but there was no response. He shifted uncomfortably. Sky was sure dragging this prank out. After a while he began to wonder if it
was
a prank, so he took a quick peek over his shoulder, but what he saw didn’t look like one of Schuyler’s jokes. The victim was crouched, sheltered against the close side of the dumpster nearest Miles, his hands over his head muttering “Man, oh man, oh man, oh man,” over and over again, but Schuyler was nowhere near him.
Instead, Schuyler was suspended in mid air by…
nothing
…or at least something Miles couldn’t see, like a black cloud holding Schuyler up by his throat. Miles was flabbergasted and didn’t know what to do.
He stood there dumbstruck for a while and then, somehow, found the strength to rush to Schuyler’s aid, but he didn’t get far. Before he had taken half a step, a huge hand came down, grabbed him by the neck, lifted him a foot off the ground and held him there, his legs running on air. He twisted around to look at who had him. It was an enormous man in a grubby sweatshirt with a ski cap pulled down over his eyes, but there were no eyeholes. He tried to flail and punch and kick the man, but his blows just bounced off him like he was concrete. “Oy! Sweet Brigid!” Miles cried out. It hurt! A lot. The thing didn’t even act like it had noticed.
He wrenched back around to see how Schuyler was faring. The smoke was gone, or rather it was coalescing into a man, a tall thin man wearing blue-green scrubs and a leather jacket. Schuyler was struggling to free himself with no avail.
“SCHUYLER!!” Miles screamed. The thin man turned his attention to Miles for a moment. Schuyler saw the momentary distraction as an opportunity. He swung his body around ‘til his feet touched the alley wall. In a blindingly fast instant, he ran up the wall to build up momentum and flipped his whole body around to bring both of his feet crashing down onto the thin man’s head. It was an amazing move, the kind that would have floored any mortal and most vampires. Unfortunately, the thin man obviously wasn’t just any mortal or vampire. He bent over backward, nearly in half, avoided the feet and then slammed Schuyler to the floor of the alley so hard it made the dumpster jump. Schuyler, without hesitation, then whipped one leg around in a spinning motion in an attempt to sweep his attacker’s legs out from underneath him.
It was a
great
move, and Schuyler doubled down on it by using the momentum to spin himself up and land on his feet. However, the man just jumped the leg sweep like an expert double-dutch jump roper, bent Schuyler over and rammed his head into the alley wall hard enough to break the bricks and scatter dust everywhere. But Schuyler wasn’t done yet. He tried another move, and then another, and then another. Each full of unbelievable back-flips and incredible jackknife twists and helicopter kicks that came out of nowhere – each move more impressive than the last. Miles had no idea Schuyler was so good at this. He had always thought of him as a lover and not a fighter.
Of course, the other guy was still
much
better. He never let Schuyler land a blow and deftly stepped out of the way of each attack, only to redirect Schuyler’s momentum against him and slam him into another hard surface in the alley. On any other day, with any other opponent, Schuyler’s moves would have been as devastating as a wrecking ball, but today it didn’t look so much like some awesome fight scene in a kung-fu movie as an annoyed man holding an angry and snappy puppy safely away at arm’s length.
Schuyler’s last move was an incredible back flip over the top of his opponent’s head, only to be dropped to the alley floor face first with the other guy’s foot planted firmly between his shoulder blades. Schuyler lay there panting for a moment before Miles said anything.
“Ya finished, Schuyler?” Miles said from his suspended position, feet still dangling.
Between breaths Schuyler forced out, “Yeah…I think…I think I’m done now.”
“Ya ok?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Good,” said Miles. “Because if we ever get out of this bloody mess, I’M GONNA KILL YA, YA BLOODY IDIOT!!!!”
“Look, how was I supposed to know the guy was a Renfield!! HUH?!!”
A “Renfield,” in vampire speak, was a human toady, a vampire groupie sent out to do tasks for them that they couldn’t do for themselves, usually during daylight business hours. They were a lot more common in the days before ATM banking and twenty-four hour drive-thru dry cleaning, but they still had their purposes. Every clan had one or two, but they usually didn’t last long. This one had obviously just been used as bait by these two vampires to set a trap for Miles and Schuyler.
“I TRIED TO WARN YA, YA IDIOT!! I KNEW SOMETIN’ WAS UP!! WHY DIDNA YA LISTEN TO ME?!! YA
NEVER
LISTEN!!” Miles screamed and flailed at his captor, but his moves were even more ineffectual than Schuyler’s had been. The young man crouching behind the dumpster stopped muttering and stood up and walked over to the man standing on Schuyler’s back.
“Hey, don’t give me that, this…this is YOUR fault.” From underneath the foot of his victorious opponent Schuyler jabbed his plastic lollipop angrily at Miles. At least he hadn’t dropped that. The eyes of the thin man standing on top of Schuyler concentrated on Miles.
“My fault?!!! I’m the one dat told ya sometin’ was fishy with this guy!! How in the bloody heck is this MY fault?!!!”
The eyes of the thin man in scrubs and the young man turned back to Schuyler.
“It’s your
bloody
fault BECAUSE I NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!”
The eyes turned back to face Miles to see how he would reply.
“Oh, yeah?!”
The eyes turned back to face Schuyler.
“YEAH!! If you weren’t such a piss-poor vampire WE WOULDN’T BE IN THIS POSITION!!”
The eyes turned back to face Miles.
“YA STUPID GIT!! YA DUMB, ARROGANT PRICK!! I told ya not to do it, I told ya NOT to do it, if we had just done what I wanted…”
“If we had just done what
you
wanted WALLACH WOULD HAVE HAD OUR EYEBALLS FOR CUE BALLS, you stupid mick!!”
The eyes turned quickly back and forth between Miles and Schuyler as they continued to trade insults and accusations.
“Ya right VAIN, POMPOUS SUCK-UP…”
“You
worthless,
JUNKIE-SUCKING WANNABE…”
“STUPID GIT!”
“Pimple faced, spud-sucking LOSER!!”
“Manure’s got more brains than you!!”
“ALLEY LEECH!!”
Hokharty tried to take in the situation as the insults flew from one to the other. The one under his foot had given him more sport than he had expected. That was good, and the other short, dark one with the thick accent had senses of which he wasn’t yet aware. Both would make good hunters. Tim had played his part well, Hokharty thought. He had obviously underestimated the young man’s resolve.