“Oh, we’re heading over to Chico’s for breakfast and thought you might like to come along?” Paige supplied.
My initial reflex was to decline, but now that I was up, my stomach was demanding immediate attention. In fact it growled right on cue.
We all laughed and after noting that it was only eight AM, I said, “Okay let me change real quick.”
“Oh you should leave the Plasma shirt on…” Paige said, but I had it off before she could complete the sentence. “Or not.”
“I’ll just be a sec,” I said, backing from the doorway with my shirt off. I headed to the dresser, as the two followed me in.
“If you went like that, Chico might give us breakfast.” Paige commented. Chico was known to prefer shirtless men to a shirtless women.
I grabbed some jeans and a tee shirt and my North Face Jacket, ducking into the bathroom to change and brush my teeth. I threw on my favorite hat, a Springfield Armory black ball cap emblazoned with the words ‘Fear No Evil’. Of course it means something different to me than to most people.
When I came out, the girls were looking curiously around my tiny studio pad. It’s small, but bright, with a high ceiling, hardwood floors and a clawfoot tub in the bathroom. That tub had soaked many a bruised and sore muscle during my short residence. Two big windows look out to the Northeast, and I get a great view if I step out on the fire escape. My place is uncluttered, as I have a minimalist approach to possessions. Just one leather chair, a futon that doubles as my bed, flatscreen, compact stereo, dresser, small bookshelf, and several lamps. A small table just outside the tiny galley kitchen doubles as a desk, and I had two chairs that went with it. One of my walls was hung with a Native American rug, in deep reds with the silhouette of a standing bear. Another bear, this one a large soapstone fetish from New Mexico, stood guard over the apartment from the bookshelf. I have no Native American heritage, but I had decided as a child that my spirit guide animal would be a bear. We were both loners and fighters, at least that’s how I looked at it. I don’t know how the Great Bear felt about it, as I never gave him the option to say no.
The girls looked up as I came out, their curious expressions changing quickly to smiles, and we headed out.
If you had told me that an Adirondack north -country kid could be reasonably happy in the Big Apple, I would have laughed in your face. But my neighborhood of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn is really pretty nice. It’s mostly single- family homes with a five-or six-story apartment building sprinkled here and there. Lots of small trees line the street and there are tons of restaurants, bars, gyms and small shops. Brooklyn is the most populated borough in New York City, with a population of right around two and a half million people. Our building, on the corner of Bay Ridge Boulevard and Eighty-third Street, is a prewar elevator building, and the owners keep it up to date and very clean. Still, I miss my forests.
Chico’s is a small corner restaurant run by a flamboyant bundle of energy who looks Hispanic, but sounds Italian. The owner was behind the counter, wearing a hot pink tee with his own name across the front, and he greeted the girls by name and me with a nod. Chico’s is a seat yourself kind of place, so we found a booth and settled in. Rich coffee and bacon smells were driving me crazy. I made sure that I got the seat that faced the door, not leaving enough room for either of them to slide next to me. The waitress swung by and brought us coffee. During the walk over, we had all decided on omelets, so we ordered immediately. I ordered two three-egg spinach and cheddar omelets, toast with peanut butter, and a large orange juice.
“Hungry much?” Kathy teased, her eyes mock wide at my order.
“Starving!”
“Sounds like you’re craving iron too. Spinach? Six eggs? You do look a little pale today, you’re not anemic are you?” Kathy asked. I remembered that she was a nutritionist at Sisters of Mercy Hospital. Paige worked for a television production company.
“Er.. not that I know of. But I haven’t been eating right, with the job and all. Too many donuts.”
They laughed and the topic changed to plans for the day. “We thought we’d go to Owl’s Head Park today. Wanna come.. along?” Paige asked.
This was the part I hated. The rebuff. When I took up Hellbourne hunting, I pretty much gave up on friends, and particularly girlfriends.
I had had exactly one date in my life. The end of eighth grade, I finally got up enough courage to ask Mary Chauffey to go out. Shy, smart and pretty, Mary was universally liked, but for one reason or another hadn’t dated many of the class boys. I had crushed on her all year and when I asked her to pizza and the movies, she had said yes. The date had been great. She had the same sense of humor that I did, but we were both too shy in school to display it. On top of that, she was very intelligent, conversant in a lot of the science subjects that I liked. I learned later, she had studied those topics just because I liked them. The real problem came three days later when I was banishing a minor house demon in Ogdensburg. Just before I tore the vile thing from its roots and threw it to Kirby, the Collector, it whispered her name to me. Then it was gone, plucked from the air by Kirby’s shadowy claws, hauled back to Hell. I sat in the dark house for thirty minutes, horror struck. It knew her name. The implications were immediate and horrific.
I went to school the next day and broke up with her. It was truly awful. She had really liked me and I trashed it. But the alternative was unthinkable. Her older brother and his friend jumped me several days later. The fight lasted twenty minutes and the cops, called by a housewife who was witness to the whole thing, broke it up. We were all pretty beat up, but the brother had a cracked rib, his friend lost a few teeth. My face and body were black and blue for a month. Because the witness had seen them jump me, I didn’t go to jail, but if I had been on the social fringe before, I was a true outcast from then on.
So I had to turn Paige and Kathy down easy.
“Aw, I’ve something I have to do today. It’s gonna take me most of the day.” I wasn’t lying. I would be lucky if my project didn’t go into nighttime.
“Really, all day? Isn’t this your first day off in like forever?” Kathy asked. Paige didn’t say anything but I saw a flicker of disappointment cross her face.
“Yeah I know. But it’s a commitment I can’t break. Believe me, I would rather not do it.”
“You know Chris, you work way too much. You’re like, never home.” Kathy was still carrying the conversation, but her tone was crisp.
The waitress brought our food and I tucked in. The girls started a two-way conversation that excluded me, punishment for not accepting their invite. I understood. I was being a jerk and they knew it. Hell, I had been rebuffed myself, just last night.
We finished breakfast and I excused myself, receiving a cold goodbye from each of them. Better that way.
Back at the apartment, I got set for the day. Changing into running clothes, and equipping my runner’s chest pack, I paused to consider the events of the previous night.
Vampires were real. Not that big of a shocker to someone in my line of work. But there were a thousand mysteries around Plasma’s resident coven.
First, Tatiana was obviously Galina’s daughter, but how did that happen? Was Galina turned after Tatiana was born? Did she turn Tatiana?
The other vampires treated Tatiana very deferentially. At the same time, the hulking Arkady had been genuinely afraid of the tiny girl vampire, when she had protected me. Which was also a puzzle, why had she interceded? But the number one question had to be the mystery of the Hellbourne’s interest in Tatiana. Galina and Vadim hadn’t contradicted my theory that it had wanted the young vampire’s blood. Why would it want her blood? Why did Galina have our clothes burned to destroy her blood? It all revolved around the quiet raven haired vampire. Truth be told, she hadn’t been far from my thoughts since I woke up.