6 January 2008
Chapter 6: Protection
They ran at top speed, stopping only at the occasional intersection where they couldn’t get cars to stop on a green light. It was one of the advantages of living in Seattle; drivers might not know how to drive, but they sure knew how to stop for pedestrians, even when they weren’t supposed to. Pretty soon, they arrived at the comfortably worn facade of Infusion, one of the hundreds of small coffeehouses that dotted the Seattle landscape. Large chains had their place for a morning fix of java and chai, definitely, but there was no beating the beat-up decor and “anything goes” atmosphere of a true local.
The Sunday crowd—out-of-work musicians, dot-commers, Saturday night partiers still trying to wake up—were curious when the two arrived in the front doorway, flushed and out of breath. The patrons looked up from their newspapers and their laptops and their Sudoku, expecting some report of an accident, or a terrorist attack, or something else to add some drama to their Sunday afternoons.
“Hey, uh…” Matt said, seeing Cat behind the counter, a look of concern on her face. After the story they told her the previous night, it was no wonder she correctly took their abrupt arrival as a bad sign. Matt smiled and tried to act nonchalant. “Uh, hi. Hi there.”
The eyes of the patrons then expectantly turned to Cat and to the other barista behind the counter of the small shop. Cat’s look of concern turned to annoyance.
“I don’t need any of your creepy horror stories or your speaking in tongues or whatever it is you do,” Cat said to Jake, authoratatively. “Not while I’m working.”
The other barista, a pale, younger girl whose auburn hair was piled on her head in a complicated series of braids, buns and curls, shrugged her shoulders as if to say that she wouldn’t mind a creepy horror story.
“We just wanted coffee,” Jake responded in a helpful tone. “You were out.”
“Right.” If there was one thing Cat knew at any given time, it’s how much coffee she had stocked in her kitchen. Without asking what they wanted, she started the espresso machine; two dark shots were soon spilling into their white ceramic cups as the machine purred.
“Americano okay?” Cat half-asked, half-informed them. She took their silence as assent and turned away again to get some mugs. The patrons of the shop returned to their activities as well, disappointed that there would be no show this afternoon.
Jake looked over at Matt. Back in the abandoned house, after the creature had been destroyed, both Matt and Jake had the same worry; if these things could find them, what would stop them from finding the people they knew? People who didn’t have the skills to defend themselves? They had sprinted to Cat, first, since she was closest.
But as they ran, their wave of dread about demonic creatures infesting the city had faded. Either the things had managed to hide themselves better—which was hardly comforting—or they had actually disappeared somewhere, which wasn’t too much better. If they at least knew where they were, they could have some advance warning, or they could go and hunt them down first.
“He’ll be coming back from the gym,” Jake said, picking up the thread from their unspoken conversation. Cat listened, over her shoulder. “Just a few blocks away. I can get him and bring him here.”
“On your own? are you sure?” Matt asked. Despite the fact that the immediate danger seemed to have passed, he didn’t like the idea of the two of them being apart. He recalled his “safety in numbers” comment from the previous night, and it still seemed as relevant.
“If he needs to go do something, let him,” Cat said in a neutral voice, turning around with their coffees in hand. She’d already added cream to one of them. “You can stay here and keep me company.”
“Two minutes,” Jake replied, with a nod to Cat. “Three, tops. Wait here.”
Cat set down the mugs as Jake quickly headed out the front door. Matt took the tan cup and placed it in front of himself with a smile. Cat rolled her eyes at the continuation of his inexplicable change of coffee habits.
“So… how’s work?” Matt asked, fake casual, before taking a sip. Cat sighed at him and tossed down her bar towel as she headed for the rickety wooden bookcase that housed the coffeehouse’s eclectic lending library. She ignored the many beat-up paperbacks, magazines and comic books and reached for an oversized paperback on a high shelf, and brought it back to the counter.
“Actually,” Cat said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “I found something a very interesting when I came into work. I think you need to see this and think very hard about whether you want to keep running all over town with your new friend.”
A few minutes later, Jake walked in with Claude, who was “dressed down” to work out. This meant that he was wearing an embroidered light tee shirt and baggy shorts, shoes that might have seen a scuff or two in their lives (before being quickly buffed back to near-perfection) and a lighter cologne. He carried a huge, fruity protein drink in plastic cup in one hand and a gym bag in the other, and surveyed the coffehouse crowd with a measure of disdain. This was not, apparently, his usual after-workout hangout.
Matt was sitting at the table closest to the cash register with an open book in front of him. He had already finished his own coffee, and was about to pour some cream into Jake’s and drink it as well, but Jake snatched it away quickly. He took a sip to see if it was still warm enough to drink.
“So…?” Claude began expectantly, not looking around for a seat and in no hurry to put down his gym bag. Jake gestured to the empty chair next to Matt’s, and Claude recognized the blond immediately. His mood changed, a knowing smile spreading across his face.
“You fucking prick,” Claude laughed at Jake, giving him a friendly nudge. “You game-playing, hard-to-get, devious little horndog. I think I underestimated you. Well done.”
“It’s not what you think,” Jake responded, wearily. “It’s much more complicated than that.”
Claude took a seat, tossing his gym bag onto a empty chair next to him and planting the giant protein drink solidly on the counter: a challenge to the coffeehouse status quo. The auburn-haired girl shot him a dirty look and turned away to busy herself with stacking some mugs.
“What, don’t tell me you’re in love already?” Claude teased Jake. “Even with you, I would expect at least a solid week of courtship first.”
“This is important,” Jake said, cutting him off with a stern, authoratative tone in his voice that Claude hadn’t heard before. In spite of himself, Claude settled into his chair and paid attention. Matt closed his book and looked to Jake as well.
“Matt and I have had some rather… strange encounters over the past 24 hours,” Jake continued, choosing his words carefully. “We’ve been seeing things that are very hard to explain. And the reason we came to you both today is that we were concerned about your safety.”
Matt shifted uncomfortably in his seat, tapping a nervous finger on the paperback that Cat had handed him.
“Cora, I’m really sorry about this,” Cat apologized to her co-worker, who had perked up at hearing Jake’s explanation and looked like she wanted to hear more. “I need to take them out back for just a minute. Can you hold the fort?”
“You’re right, we probably should go somewhere where we can talk about all of this with a bit more privacy,” Jake agreed, with a nod to Cat.
“Whatever,” Cora shrugged again, resigning herself to missing out on whatever the hell was going on.
Cat led Jake, Claude and Matt, still holding the paperback book, through a dim hallway which opened onto a small, three-space parking lot behind the shop. The lot was hemmed in close by the backs of a few other stores, and it looked like it would be difficult to get more than a compact car in and out through the small blacktop alleyway. Not surprisingly, the only vehicles parked there were a few chained-up bicycles.
Once they were all outside, Claude went to set his bag down on the pavement, but changed his mind after seeing the half-full dumpster next to the door and the old food and drink stains from countless broken bags and missed trash tosses. He set the bag on a small concrete parking stop a few yards away, instead, after making sure it was reasonably clean.
Cat leaned back against the weathered siding and crossed her arms.
“I think Matt ought to do a little dramatic reading,” Cat said, looking to Matt. “Go on. Dazzle us with a little coincidentally appropriate fairy tale, why don’t you?”
Jake took a closer look at the cover of the book Matt was holding: “Romanian Myth and Legend.” The cover depicted a not-very-scary vampire sneaking up on a little girl in a peasant dress. Jake questioned Matt with his eyes.
“Cat,” Matt said, confusion in his voice, “I appreciate that you’re concerned, and I know you want to protect me. I still don’t understand what’s going on, myself, but just because there’s some stuff in this book doesn’t mean—”
“Oh come on,” Cat shot back, then glared at Jake. “It’s a complete coincidence that this guy finds you when you’re all drug-addled and jumping at your shadow, and then gets you believing in some crazy story about monsters and magic? And ‘Strigoi?’” Cat grabbed the book from Matt and waved it in Jake’s face. “Page 56, if you’re interested.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Claude interjected, pushing Cat’s book-wielding arm away from Jake. “Let’s keep it civil, okay?” He turned to Jake. “I am completely lost, here.”
“You’re playing Mister Innocent,” Cat continued to Jake, “like you’re just as much in the dark about all this bullshit as Matt is. Meanwhile, all of this is pretty much your syllabus at Seattle Community College, am I right?”
“Now hold on,” Jake retorted, anger creeping into his voice. “I teach Eastern European history. History, not myths and fairy tales. I was telling the truth when I said I didn’t know anything about this—”
Cat opened the book and quickly turned the pages until she found a suitable place to start reading.
“They would leave their tombs after their deaths,” Cat read, “restless, evil souls that transformed themselves into animals or more horrific shapes to torment the living: the Strigoi. These vampiric creatures would often take for their servants other demonic creatures, creatures with no past human life and no shred of humanity in them.”
“These creatures of the underworld took many shapes,” Cat continued, “but many were inhuman-looking beasts, with octopus-like tentacles, slimy gray skin, razor sharp teeth, wailing voices which would freeze menu in their tracks, and other sinister attributes…”
Matt looked over at Jake, and identified with a strange look on his face. He understood at once that Jake must be feeling the same feeling that he was: intense deja vu. It wasn’t just that Cat was describing one of the things they’d tangled with the night before, but they both had the feeling that she was telling them something they already knew, but had forgotten.
“Who the fuck is this girl?” Claude asked Jake and Matt with an incredulous look. “And I’ll ask again: could someone give me just the tiniest hint of what this shit is all about? Inhuman beasts? Vampires?”
Matt thought for a moment about how best to encapsulate the events of the last 24 hours, but ended up simply shaking his head in reply.
“Cat, pleased to meet you,” Cat said to Claude, not extending her hand for a shake. “The long and short of it is that your friend is pulling some kind of history teacher trick and seriously fucking with my friend’s head.” She was annoyed that her reading wasn’t eliciting the guilty confession from Jake that she’d hoped for, and flipped through the book for another passage. “I don’t know exactly why he’s doing this…”
“That might be the first question to ask yourself, sweetie,” Claude responded condescendingly. “The only history teacher trick around here is Jake himself, if I’m understanding what went down last night. Unless I’m missing all the cameras, nobody’s capturing this for some ‘gotcha’ TV show, and as cute as he is, I doubt bleach boy here has some fortune that Jake’s after.” He sucked at the straw of his protein drink.
“Jesus, you sure know how to pick ‘em,” Claude said to Jake, shaking his head. “And to think I was hoping to get a piece of that, myself. I expect a complete blow-by-blow of how this fiasco came to be.”
“Werewolves, zombies…” Cat said, trying to ignore Claude and return to the book. She scanned the chapter headings as she flipped through, looking for something. “Mystic charms… Lucia Neculce and…”
“Read that one,” Matt chimed in suddenly. Cat looked to him and saw the expression on his face: this was a name he’d definitely heard before. Paydirt?
“Amidst all the supernatural threats and horrors,” Cat started, “there is a tale of at least one force that rose to defend humanity against them. A gypsy family in the area had long studied the magical arts, and used their supernatural gifts to protect themselves and others from those unearthly forces that would do them harm.”
“Unfortunately, word of the gypsies’ activities got around to the noble family that owned much of the land in the region and took responsibility for protecting its people. Several of the gypsies were accused of witchcraft, and of being the source of the region’s supernatural afflictions. Many were hanged or exiled… Is any of this stuff that he’s been saying?” Cat stopped reading and asked Matt.
“Keep going,” Matt answered, anxiously. Jake seemed on edge, too, and was paying close attention. Claude was less invested in the story, but the enthusiasm of the other two men was rubbing off on him.
“Despite his family’s persecution,” Cat continued, “a young gypsy boy named Costin came to know a noble girl named Lucia. Without their families’ knowledge, they became friends, and their friendship developed into love over their many secret meetings in the wood between the gypsy camp and the nobles’ castle.”
“Eventually, Costin showed Lucia the conjuring and exorcism skills that his family posessed, and explained that they had been trying to rid the land of the foul Strigoi and their minions. Lucia vowed to learn the dark arts and…blah blah blah.”
“Okay, I think I’ve made my point,” Cat said, stopping her recitation. “All the stuff he’s been feeding you is just stuff out of folk tales. And if it sounds familiar, maybe you just read it before, or heard them when you were a kid, I don’t know.” Cat tossed the book to Matt, who caught it and immediately searched for the page she had been on.
“I don’t know why he’s doing this, but it’s creepy and he’d better stop it right now,” Cat concluded.
“I still don’t understand what he needs to stop,” Claude responded. “You’re the one who’s talking about monsters and magic and shit, not him. Right, Jake? Hello?”
But Jake did not answer. He was looking over Matt’s shoulder as Matt continued reading the story of Lucia and Costin aloud. Both of them were completely engrossed.
“Lucia vowed to learn the dark arts,” Matt read, “and to work with her love to banish the evil from their lands permanently. They would destroy the Strigoi. They would send the supernatural horrors back to the underworld from whence they’d been summoned and prevent them from ever returning. And they would, finally, bring Costin’s family back from exile so that they could openly proclaim their love and be married.”
“Their plans were ambitious and their resolve was true. But unfortunately for the young lovers, they found the resistance from the forces of darkness was greater than they’d ever imagined…”
I really like your monsters! They are unconventional and atypical of most vampire stories.