Dead Matter

13

Connor stood in silence for several minutes before he backed away. When he reached my side, he leaned over and whispered. “Jesus Christ, kid,” the color running from his face. “It’s Mini-Me.”

“Steady, Connor.” I stared at the figure in front of us. He wore a skull-and-crossbones-covered hoodie paired with skinny jeans. He looked like a poster child for Hot Topic, but looking up at his face, there was no doubt as to his identity. The teenager looked like a younger version of Connor, only with whiter skin and a darker mop of brown hair that was almost black.

“Aidan?” Connor asked, stumbling forward. His eyes were fixated and he looked like he was ready to fall over. I reached over and put my arm around Connor’s shoulder to steady him. Despite my effort, his knees gave out and he crumpled to the ancient-looking cobblestones of the trail we were standing on.

The boy in the hoodie looked perplexed.

“You know who I am?” he said to Connor.

Connor nodded in slow motion, his eyes never leaving the boy. “You don’t know me?”

The boy stared in wonder at Connor, but shook his head. “I recognize you from my nightly visits, but I don’t know you, no. Your friend called you Connor…?”

I stood there, bat still held up high on my shoulder. I had no idea if this was truly Connor’s brother, but if I went by color chart alone in identifying monsters, I was pretty sure I knew what this thing was by its pallor alone. Vampire.

“You were the one I chased the other night,” I said, gripping my bat tighter. “I saw you at Connor’s, yet you’re telling us you don’t know who he is? Then why were you there? Why have you been visiting him like that for weeks now?”

The boy raised a finger to his lips, silencing me. He walked toward us, radiating calmness.

“All in good time,” he said, placing one hand on Connor’s face and his other on mine.

His touch was like a drill of raw emotion running straight into me. It swirled in my brain and filled me with what I thought must be his confusion and wonderment. Connor must have felt it, too, but he pulled back from the boy, scrabbling back across the cobblestones. He rose up on one knee as he pulled something out of one of the sleeves of his trench coat. A wooden stake.

The boy looked on, unconcerned. “This might not be the best place for that,” he said, spreading his arms out to the surroundings.

Taking my eyes off of him was difficult, but I pulled them away only to notice the presence of several dozen other “people” standing along the edge of the shadowy forest. I looked back at Connor, but he was still watching Aidan and brandishing the business end of the stake at him. I reached over, grabbed Connor by the shoulder, and pressed his arm down to his side while helping him up.

“Aidan may have a point,” I said. I looked down at the stake. “A better one than yours…”

“This thing isn’t Aidan,” Connor said, shaking his head. His staking arm slowly started to rise. “I’m not sure what it is, but it is not Aidan.” Connor leapt like a shot at the boy before I could stop him.

“Connor, don’t!”

As Connor charged him, the boy moved in a blur of preternatural motion as if he was The Flash. Connor’s arm rose to drive the stake at him, but the boy was gone from the spot and already whirring around behind Connor. Connor’s hand flew open as the boy swiped at it with impossible speed, twisting Connor’s arm behind him and placing his own arm around Connor’s neck.

“What are you?” Connor asked, anger thick in his voice.

“I think you know, friend,” the boy whispered into his ear, “but as I said, all in good time…”

The quiet crowd around us surged forward from the shadows, all with the same preternatural speed. They were from all walks of life-different skin tones, different styles of dress-but all with the same snarling look on their faces. Then I noticed even more commonality among them-fangs.

As the crowd closed in on us, Aidan looked up and waved them away. “Enough! I have these two under control.”

“You do?” I stepped closer, swinging my bat down in a preparatory arc before me.

The boy let go of Connor’s arm, then pointed to his own hand wrapped around Connor’s throat. “What part of I’ll crush his windpipe do you not understand, pal?”

A woman who looked to be in her midtwenties rushed like the wind up to the boy. She looked Hispanic with a head full of curly brown hair that looked almost alive in a Medusa sort of way.

“Please,” she said, fixing a wide-eyed glare on me. I felt a strange sensation of passiveness wash over me, and I knew she was projecting it at me. “Let me have this one to deal with.”

“No, Beatriz,” the boy said. “They’re both here because of me and that puts them under my protection.”

The woman eyed me with dark glee. “So selfish,” she said, then ran at me anyway. The boy let go of Connor, dropping him onto the cobblestones of the path. Before this Beatriz could reach me, he had by her throat the same way he had just had Connor. Aidan lifted her from the ground until he could extend his arm no farther. She let out a hissing choke as she struggled to free herself with both hands from his grip, but it was to no avail.

“Let… me… go,” she spat out.

The boy held her aloft a few seconds more, and then tossed her a good fifty feet into the forest. The female vampire crashed into one of the thicker trees with a dull thud accompanied by what sounded like cracking bone. She slid to the grass below, unmoving.

The boy turned to the rest of the crowd, which had closed on him. “Anyone else?”

The rest of the group was seething and writhed with an excited energy, but none of them dared move forward.

“Good,” he said after a minute. He walked over to Connor and helped him back up. Connor looked dazed, but when he realized who was helping him, he pushed away from him and walked back toward me.

“You okay?” I asked.

Connor nodded. “Sure, kid. I’m shaken, a bit stirred, but I feel a little better. It’s nice to know I wasn’t crazy all those times I thought I was dreaming.”

I looked past Connor to the boy. “Just what the hell was that all about, anyway? I was right about what I said before, wasn’t I? You’re the one I chased away from Connor’s apartment, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. That was me.” The boy smiled, the tips of two fangs showing at the corners of his mouth. He laughed.

“Hold on,” a woman’s voice called out. It was the one he called Beatriz again. She was now standing at the base of the far-off tree she had been thrown against. She bent her knees and leapt, closing the fifty feet or so in a second with my eyes barely able to follow her. She landed near the boy and started walking toward him. Her arm was bent at an unnatural angle and it dangled lifelessly at her side. “Why the hell are you telling them anything? They’re human.”

She stopped in front of the boy and he ignored her words, looking instead at a bit of bone protruding from just below her elbow. “You’re hurt.”

He reached for her wounded arm, but she batted him away with her good arm.

“Never mind that,” Beatriz said. “What were you doing visiting this Connor person anyway?”

Aidan’s eyes lingered on hers. He took her arm in his hands and pulled at the lower part of it until the bone disappeared under the skin. Using his thumb to trace the spot where it had reentered, he felt around for a second before pressing on it. As I heard bone scraping bone, Beatriz’s eyes widened.

“Dammit!” she hissed, pushing him away. She clutched her arm as I watched the hole in her skin close and the flesh knit itself together over it, leaving only a small amount of blood as a reminder of what had happened. Aidan reached out with his hand, extending his finger to touch the spot, and cleaned up the blood. He raised it to his lips, his eyes rolling back into his head as he tasted it. Beatriz moved closer to him, tension in her body.

When Aidan’s eyes returned to normal, she was still glaring at him.

“Well?”

“Well,” he repeated with exasperation in his voice, “I’m not sure.”

Aidan’s uncertainty washed out over us in a wave of raw emotion. Even the crowd around us felt it and roared to life in confusion and frustration. We were outnumbered by vampires by a wide margin. The bat in my hands had never felt more useless, and I could feel the anger and excitement of the crowd rush into me, making my nerves stand on end.

Beatriz raised her hands to beat on his chest, but Aidan wrapped his arms around her, holding her too close to do anything that effective.

“Contacting humans like this,” she said, pissed. “That’s not your decision to make!”

He smiled at her. “It’s not yours, either.” He looked around at the other vampires. They were visibly upset and eyeing Connor and me like we were blood-soaked Lunchables. Aidan looked worried. He looked back down at Beatriz with a hint of tenderness in his eyes. “He’ll know what to do.”

Connor stood at my side, still dazed from the sudden shock of discovering his brother was alive. Well, alive-ish, anyway. It felt like it was up to me to get some answers.

“He who?” I asked. “Whose decision-making abilities are we talking about here?”

“Brandon,” Aidan said. “He…”

Beatriz hit him hard in the chest, stopping him. “Let’s not introduce the entire clan, shall we? God, we don’t want these blood bags to put everyone on their hit list just yet.”

At the mention of the word “blood,” the rest of the vampires went wild, barely keeping their distance.

“Take us to him,” I said.

“Are you nuts?” Connor said, finally speaking up, disgusted. “Kid, you want to go deeper into the dragon’s lair?”

I looked back over my shoulder at the distant entry doors now closed behind us. They may as well have been miles away given the speed at which these creatures moved. “Would you rather take your chances with this lot?”

“I wouldn’t advise it,” Aidan added. He lowered his voice. “I don’t think I can take all of them, and frankly, I don’t think I want to. They are family, after all.”

“Family…” Connor muttered, and gave a bitter laugh. “Don’t talk to me about family.” He held his hand up in a Vulcan salute. “Fine, then. Take us to your leader.”

As we approached the distant castle, it was difficult processing all of this. My mind knew that outside the Gibson-Case Center, the hustle and bustle of New York continued on, but in here it was another world-the thick forest all around us and now a castle that looked big enough to take up the whole city block by itself. The exterior-wall fortifications of it were made of rough-hewn stone blocks that stacked up at least forty feet tall. Aidan led us across a drawbridge over a moat and through the main portcullis into an area that opened up into a courtyard. Several smaller buildings lined the open area along with a host of people, but I didn’t have much of a chance to check any of them out. Aidan was already across the yard and heading into an ornate building that looked like it was the castle proper. Inside the building, the interior stonework was finer than the outside and the walls were lit by electric sconces, giving the place a somewhat cheaper Medieval Times feel. We ran to keep up with the vampire while Aidan led us through a dizzying array of corridors until I lost all sense of direction. If he wanted to kill us now, his odds were pretty damn good before I stood a chance of finding an exit. To comfort myself, I threw my bat up on my shoulder as we walked along. Aidan turned to me.

“You can put your bat away now,” Aidan offered.

“I’m good,” I said, keeping it out. “Thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” Aidan said after a moment of giving me a dark look. “Not a good way to enter into things, if you ask me.”

Connor had been silent the whole time, giving his undead brother wary looks as he followed along.

“Yeah,” I said, “about that. Just what are we getting into here?”

“That’s not really for me to say,” he said and fell silent. “Just be happy I got you out of there, okay? The clan’s a little peeved that I’m bringing you to the castle.”

“Why are you bringing us here?” I asked. “Wait; don’t tell me. I suppose that’s not really for you to say, either?”

Aidan smiled, showing me his fangs again. “You learn quickly,” he said. “Not bad for a mortal.”

Aidan stopped at an intersection of halls, checking in all directions. As the three of us stood there, I noticed a certain stillness in him, then realized it was his complete absence of respiration. I looked at his boyish features-Connor’s features, really.

As we walked through the castle corridors, curiosity got the better of me. “So your name is Aidan, right?”

“Yes,” Aidan said. “Although how he knew that, I have no idea.”

“He who?” I asked.

Aidan jerked his head in Connor’s direction. “Him.”

“Hold on,” I said, stopping. “You didn’t know his name before I said it earlier?”

Aidan stopped and turned to the two of us. “You said he was Connor. I’m sorry; where are my manners? Gentleman, my name is Aidan.” He gave a low bow, the hood on his sweatshirt flopping forward. He stood back up. “And you might be…?”

“I’m Simon,” I said, “and this is my bat. It doesn’t have a name yet, although I’m thinking of going with Swingy.”

“I’m Connor,” Connor said. He held out his hand. Aidan reached out and shook it. As I watched, I was a little disappointed. There was no sweep of violins or any grand moment of reunion. They simply shook hands with no sense of recognition on Aidan’s face at all. He spun around on his heels, shoved his hands deep into his sweatshirt pockets, and walked off.

I gave Connor a look, but he held his finger up to his lips. He mouthed the words, He really doesn’t know.

Before it could even sink in, Aidan called back to us. “Anytime, fellas…”

Connor took off first, looking confused but full of questions.

“So this Brandon you mentioned before, is that who you’re taking us to?” Connor asked.

“Affirmative,” Aidan said. “Think of him as king around here, not that we’re feudal or anything.”

“Let me get this straight,” Connor said. “The king of your little undead castle here is named Brandon?”

Aidan shrugged. “It’s what he calls himself now, anyway. That’s all you need to know.”

Connor laughed. “I see.”

Aidan hit the foot of a steep set of poorly lit stairs and started up them. “Watch your step… Listen, if you must know, vamps have a lot of downtime, given the whole longevity thing. Boredom sets in, but thanks to modern technology there are so many wonders to fill in the gaps. The Internet, movies, podcasts, television… especially television. We’re big on television… and movies. Anyway, Brandon takes his name from one of his favorite shows from the nineties. You ever watch Beverly Hills, 90210?”

“This is worse than I thought,” I said. “We’re dealing with the Prince of Darkness and he takes his name from Brandon Walsh? Please tell me this television thing is not a recurring theme with you people cuz if I have to parlay with Count Richie Cunningham, I may have to seek out psychological help.”

Aidan shook his head. “No, it’s not,” he said, stopping at the top of the stairs. We were on a ten-foot landing that led to a thick wooden door that ran from floor to ceiling. Aidan looked at my bat, then at me. I felt his eyes working some kind of influence over me and I fought to stop it. “You really ought to consider putting that thing away.”

“Why?” I said, doing my best to resist following his command. Even so, I felt myself lowering my arm.

“Because the man behind this door?” he said. “He’s not like the rest of those downstairs. He’s older than them all, which would more than qualify him to lead, but on top of that, he’s got the best head on his shoulders. Him, I listen to. Him, I would die for.”