Almost Roadkill Who: Derek & Brian What: A Chance Encounter and Some Deep Conversation When: Night, Present Day Where: Las Vegas Ratings: Language
Derek had intended for the night to be more fruitful. He rose shortly after sunset, as usual. Began his routine as usual. He didn’t even feel that bad, and the long sleep had seemed beneficial. The vampire took to the streets of Las Vegas in search of anything that might lead him to Veronica.
An hour later, and his energy had started to nosedive. The veins in his arms weren’t as noticeable as before, but they still retained their odd, almost black hue if one looked closely. Dark eyes stared ahead listlessly as he walked. At least the sutures in his abdomen had stopped hurting.
The vampire’s thoughts were dragged back to the night in question, mentally reliving the dagger breaking through skin and muscle. The image was so vivid, he didn’t realize his legs were still propelling him forward into the crosswalk against a red light.
“Alright, man, later.” Brian clapped his friend on the back and wandered off the stoop of a record shop on Fremont Street. He stopped on the sidewalk, pulled a phone from his pocket, and checked it for messages. The street was alive with traffic, the proximity and speed of cars rumpling his hair and t-shirt when they went by. He picked his head up briefly when a group of pedestrians came up on his left and he happened to look across the street.
There was a man heading for the intersection in the middle of a green-light cycle. ‘Oh shit,’ he thought. Then, ‘That’s Derek’. Brian looked at the crosswalk signal: Don’t Walk. “Hey,” he said, not loud enough to be heard. “Hey!” He shouldered past the group of twenty-somethings and started moving for the street. The vampire wasn’t stopping. His foot was on the curb.
For the barest of seconds, a split second, Brian caught himself wondering what would happen to a vampire who got hit by a car. Like, what that would look like. Then, frowning, he thought, ‘That’s messed up,’ and sprung into action. “Derek!” He sprinted into the street.
The sound of his own name sank somewhere into his subconscious at first, before the small part of his brain still aware of self-preservation kicked in. He looked up to see oncoming headlights and jumped back onto the curb, the whoosh of a speeding car sending a breeze through his hair.
Derek looked up and spotted Brian. At a loss for what to do next, he raised a hand in an inappropriately casual wave.
Brian reeled back from the car. He stood on the painted line in the center of the road, hands on his hips, trying to catch his breath from the shock of both of them almost getting hit by the same car. He held up a finger. ‘I got it.’ When it was safe to finish crossing, he jogged across the lane and joined Derek on the sidewalk.
“You scared the shit out of me,” he said and looked down at his jeans. “Good thing I just went to the bathroom or I might have pissed myself.” Brian frowned at the guy he knew from Lucky’s. He looked a little rough, like he’d gotten a bad batch. “You alright?”
He watched Brian jog toward him, registering everything on a weird delay that felt uncomfortable. Derek had no idea how much time had actually passed between Brian’s question and his own answer. “I don’t know.” At least it was truthful.
The vampire flashed back to the last time he’d seen the other man. “I pushed you out of the way of a blood fountain, and you stopped me from getting hit by a car,” he pointed out slowly. “Full circle.”
“More or less,” Brian said. The more he looked at Derek, the more it confirmed that something was off. The faraway look wasn’t foreign to him. Maybe he fed off somebody who was fucked up. That was a weird concept to entertain but he figured it happened. Brian looked up and down the sidewalk to see if anybody was hanging nearby, a friend of Derek’s waiting for an entry into the conversation to claim him. It didn’t look like it. “Hey… you want to go somewhere? Sit down?” He thumbed towards the block behind him.
The werewolf had no clue what to do with a vampire, but if Nesryn found out he let the guy walk off looking like that, she might… scold him.
Derek looked blankly toward the direction Brian was pointing in. “I was looking for someone,” he said, then shrugged. “But I guess I can sit for a while.” He started walking that way, one hand rubbing his forearm idly. It didn’t occur to him that meeting Veronica in the state he was in now would surely lead to disaster. It was as if he could only focus on one thing, his thoughts tunneling toward one conclusion. Either she died, or he did.
“What are you doing in Vegas?” the vampire asked, turning back to Brian.
Brian put his hands in his pockets and started walking. “I know the guy who runs the record shop back there,” he said. He was quiet for a minute, watching the sidewalk as it passed underfoot and listening to the cars. “To tell you to the truth, I get kinda bored in Searchlight.” He lifted his shoulders. “I know a lot of people up here from playing shows, and they don’t know anything about… y’know. It’s kinda nice. You can talk about an album that came out or who’s on tour. It’s like a time machine.”
Something registered for Derek and he looked at Brian curiously. “They don’t know anything about what?” A group of people were walking in their direction, taking up the entire sidewalk. The vampire veered to the side to avoid them. A wave of nausea overtook him and their collective pulses seemed to pound in unison in his head. He pressed his palms over his ears in an attempt to block them out.
“Not being human…” Brian trailed off and looked at the vampire more closely. He stopped them walking, put a hand on Derek’s shoulder and steered him off the main drag into an access road between two businesses. They didn’t go far but it was enough to give them some privacy. “Look I know this is a loaded question but have you fed lately? You look like shit.”
Derek allowed himself to be led off the sidewalk. Once they were off the beaten path, things calmed down inside his head. He shook his head, feeling behind him for a wall and leaning against it. “No, I don’t do that anymore. I mean, I know how to not kill a person but why give into the temptation?”
The vampire ran his fingers through his hair with slightly shaking hands. “I think I might just be crazy?”
“Really?” Brian returned his hand to his pocket and gave Derek some breathing room, figure of speech. “Is this--?” He stopped himself and tried to figure out how to bring up what might be a sensitive topic. Maybe he shouldn’t bring it up. Or actually, maybe he should bring it up, because damn, were his veins gray? The werewolf’s eyebrows raised as he checked out the arm by Derek’s ear. “Does it have anything to do with your wife getting possessed? I know it’s none of my business, I shouldn’t even know about that, but I heard about it. Actually a lot of people heard about it…” He winced.
He stared at Brian for a brief but tense moment. Derek wasn’t a stranger to feeling utterly confused, but it didn’t mean he enjoyed it. “Who is ‘a lot of people’?” he asked. The vampire confided in a smallish circle of people, and it was true that about half of them resided in Searchlight. But he didn’t think they were the type of people to go about announcing things like exorcisms.
“Okay, level with me. Ballpark figure, how many people know about me, and that whole...situation?” Derek raised his eyebrows.
“Uh…” Brian scratched the back of his head. “Ten?” He was low-balling. “To be fair, they don’t all know who you are, just that a vampire named Derek…’s wife,” that was confusing, “Had an exorcism... Because of some chick named Freda?” He looked off to the side. That didn’t sound right. “The conversation wasn’t really about that, it was about crazy shit to look out for. I checked out when James brought up things crawling out of the mines.”
“Elfleda,” Derek corrected automatically. “And she’s not a chick. She’s like the walking embodiment of darkness and killing puppies and everything evil. That’s coming from a vampire, by the way, so no grain of salt required.” That was a lot of words at once, and it had exhausted him. He sank into a crouch, ripped jeans stretching over his knees as he let his head dip.
“Part of me wondered if I’d feel better if I just gave in,” Derek admitted. “Say fuck it and open a vein. But then I think of why I made that promise, and I can’t.”
When Brian suggested they go someplace and sit down, a bunch of asphalt between two buildings wasn’t what he had in mind, but if the vampire was comfortable with it, okay. He took a seat a foot or two away and leaned back against the building. He could feel his hair sticking to the rough texture of the brick.The werewolf draped his arms over his knees and stared at the ground between his vans. “Did it not work? The exorcism? I noticed the veins.” He gestured at Derek’s forearms. “Nice wolf by the way. That’s kinda confusing.”
Derek lifted an arm in the air, looking at both the tattoo and the veins before letting it drop limply. “The exorcism worked. I think it really pissed Elfleda off, though.” He needed something if he was going to get through the rest of this night intact. The vampire reached into his pocket and pulled out a metal Altoids tin and a lighter. He opened the container and pulled out a rolled joint, letting the lighter’s flame burn over the tip before bringing it to his mouth and inhaling. Derek held it out to Brian.
“I got stabbed the other night, and I’m pretty sure it was Elfleda who supplied the weapon.”
Brian took the joint and inhaled. He held his breath for a beat and handed it back. “Stabbed by who?” Between the exorcism and the stabbing, it struck him that Derek had a stressful existence. That reminded him of living in fight-or-flight mode back on the east coast. Just the thought of waking up like that every day put a heavy feeling in his stomach. “That’s not the most efficient way of taking you out, right?” He rubbed his palms on the knees of his jeans. “It’d be like pumping me full of lead bullets. I might not die but that drowning-in-my-blood feeling’s going to suck.”
“I don’t think the intention was to take me out, though,” Derek replied through an exhaled cloud of smoke. “The one wielding the dagger would be the person who made me what I am today,” he continued with a bitter smile. He grew tired of crouching and stood back up slowly.
“She’s the kind of vampire that likes to draw things out,” he elaborated. “It’s more fun for her that way.”
“Oh, shit.” Brian stared at the building across from him. It was tagged in spray paint. He rubbed his eyelid and tried to get into that type of mindset, the kind where hurting somebody was fun and turning a human was a source of long-lasting entertainment instead of companionship. “Is that why she bit you?” He looked over at Derek and gave him a head-to-toe. “So she could kill you in slow motion? God that’d be messed up. Please tell me that’s not it, man.”
Derek followed Brian’s gaze, landing on the graffiti. He squinted his eyes even though he could see perfectly, trying to decipher what it said, then gave up. “No, I think that’s pretty much it. You nailed it.” A beat, and then, “You know, I always knew it was fucked up, but I don’t think I’ve heard someone else point it out to me before. I feel like it’s been shrugged off as wacky vampire shenanigans.”
Brian laughed.
Then he noticed Derek wasn’t laughing. “Wait, you’re serious?”
He felt bad staring, so Brian looked back at his shoes, but the expression was still on his face. How had Derek gotten this far without anybody cluing him in that this was abnormal? He brought his legs up closer to his body and combed through his hair. “Just in case it needs to be said, I think that’s probably bad, even by vampire standards. No offense. I mean, I know I’m not a vampire? But I have known a few. I’ve heard of turning people out of boredom or revenge, or messed up stalker shit. But not so they could do an extended cut of a torture scene.”
The vampire flicked at some ash, watching it fall to the ground and scatter. There was something about the way Brian spoke that was -- maybe refreshing wasn’t the right word, but it was close. “Thanks. Is it weird that it feels good hearing that? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve told Penny everything, and she hates what happened, too. But she doesn’t know what it was like to have been human before. And to have it taken away.”
Brian went still for a second. “Trust me, I get it.” He picked up his t-shirt hem and lifted it to show Derek the pinkish-white teeth marks on his side. He settled it back down. “Ness knows it’s rough, but she was born a wolf. And I’m not even-- I’m not trying to put that on her.” He got up off the asphalt and brushed off his hands. “The girl who bit me, Kacey? She did not want me around. I think she’d have killed me within a week if she had the chance, but our Alpha wouldn’t let her. The only way I got out from under her is by outmaneuvering her.”
That was interesting. His eyes lingered on the scar until the material of his shirt covered it, then mentally kicked himself for being weird. “Why did she bite you, if she didn’t want you around?” Derek asked. The same question worked for Veronica, but he was certain that answer had been well established.
“And how did you outmaneuver her? I might need tips.”
“Uhh, long story short,” he rubbed his arm, “I may have shot at the Alpha, who she was definitely hooking up with,” he admitted. “I mean, it wasn’t silver or anything, I was camping, just a freak accident. Actually it wasn’t a freak accident, they didn’t have any business near a campsite, but she went ape shit. Anyway, he came and got me, and it wasn’t good between me and Kacey for a long time. It didn’t get better until I earned her respect. But I’m low-key petty, so after I had it, I made sure nobody else respected her.”
“Oh. I don’t know if that would work with Veronica,” Derek spoke quietly, half to himself. “You guys were a pack, right? Vampires don’t really do that. Unless...they totally do, and I was never invited into one.” There was a moment of hesitation where the vampire opened his mouth to speak again, but closed it immediately after.
After another drag, the vampire seemed to find his voice again. “Would you give it back, if you could? Or have you, like, embraced it?”
Now Brian was confused. “You mean vampires around here don’t do nests, for safety? You know, sires and their... what do they call them, children? Progeny? No, maybe I got that word from True Blood.” He was getting off track. He shrugged. For all he knew, it was kind-of a low-rent thing to do.
The werewolf covered an old cigarette butt with his shoe. He didn’t know what it was about Derek, but he found himself wanting to go somewhere with the conversation that he never went.
“I tell Ness I wouldn’t give it back. I think...” He angled his head up at Derek. “I think I wouldn’t give it back, but I’d change it. I didn’t fit in with them. I dunno if you picked up on this, but I’m not ‘super aggro’ unless I have to be.” He fiddled with his ear. “But what’s true of dogs and what’s true of little kids is also true about werewolves. If you beat and kick us long enough, some of us eventually become aggressive, and then it escalates and you can’t control us anymore. It’s just survival instinct. That’s what happened to me. Is it like that with vampires, too?”
Derek shrugged. He talked to other vampires, of course, but he wouldn’t call them close relationships. “They might,” he told Brian. “But like I said, I never got an invite.” He pictured his apartment with Penny littered with other vampires like an undead flop house. How did that work, exactly? Would they share beds? Bunk beds?
His thoughts turned serious as Brian kept speaking. There was BV and AV. Before Veronica, and after. Before, he had experienced random flashes of anger that felt like they could mushroom out of control, but Derek had always turned them inward. He could make the kind of bad, impulsive decision that he could pretend was an accident, but didn’t hurt anyone else, at least not physically. Then there was After, when Veronica had pulled that feeling out of him, like she had turned him inside out.
“I think it can be like that,” the vampire answered finally. “It depends on how lucky you are, I guess. I thought being a vampire would be easier. I thought it meant not feeling anything about what you did. But you can feel everything, and not care enough to stop. It’s like…” Derek frowned, trying to think through the heavy mental haze. “Having one foot in two different worlds, and the split keeps getting deeper.”
A corner of Brian’s mouth lifted. “That sounds pretty human to me.”
He looked up at the sky, or where the sky was supposed to be, if he could see past the light pollution. “You wanna know the truth? I don’t think most of us changed that much. Maybe it’s different for you, needing blood.” He swallowed and thought about it. “I was talking to somebody about that recently, I can’t remember who, but about how wolves aren’t actually that aggressive. People say it, but it’s not true. But we have this reputation, right? Which means when me and my kind are out acting like assholes, it’s our human halves pulling the strings. Think about it, what’s a worse predator than a person? All the teeth, claws, and… fangs?” He raised his shoulders. “It’s just a means to an end.”
Man, that was deeper than he meant to get. Brian rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m probably freaking you out. This is what happens when I stop pretending I’m just the beer guy.”
“You’re not freaking me out,” Derek told him honestly. “It’s just that, if the human side of me is the cause of all this trouble, that means I was a bigger asshole than I thought. And I don’t know if I’m ready to face that about myself yet.”
Derek put a hand out against the brick wall, the texture brushing roughly against his palm as he leaned into it. “We were going to find a place to chill, weren’t we? I completely forgot. Or...it’s possible I should go home.”
“Well,” Brian reconsidered. “It’s probably not all the human side, or else holy water wouldn’t work.”
He looked at the street. Traffic moved steadily in both directions. People were talking, smoking, carrying on like a regular night. He thought about Derek almost getting flattened at the intersection. “You sure you’re okay to walk? I can call you an Uber.” He took out his phone and cued up the app just in case. “And hey, if I see you around, you know, with Nesryn, I promise not to bring any of this up.”
No matter how many people showed concern for him, it was still strange when someone did so. Or maybe it was just accepting help that was uncomfortable. Nevertheless, he could see the wisdom in Brian’s offer. “Yeah, thanks. That would probably be for the best.”
Brian nodded. He found a driver a couple of streets away. “Alright, it says two minutes.” He pointed towards the street and began walking in that direction. “Get excited. Jared drives a Ford Fusion.” When they reached the sidewalk, he stuffed his phone in his back pocket. “Hey. You know where to find me if you ever want a beer or something. We can talk about something stupid.”