Revenant (5 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Would he be able to control me?”

She pauses. “Technically, no.”

“So I’d be okay then?”

“Until you open your eyes.”

“But I don’t have to.”

“Don’t do it, Scout. It’s too dangerous.”

“Sorry. Curiosity’s just too enticing.”

“Scout no!” I hear as I end the call with Dodger. I rest my hand on the doorknob and collect myself. I tell myself Alex won’t be able to hurt me. He won’t be able to come inside and as long as my eyes are closed, he won’t be able to make me do anything against my will.

I let my eyes close. I don’t force them shut. I just allow my eyelids to close comfortably and proceed to open the door.

“Well hello, Scout.” I can’t quite tell if Alex is actually speaking now or if it’s telepathy again.

“Hello.”

“You came back for me. Oh, but won’t you open your eyes?”

“I’m not an idiot, Alex. I want you to tell me something and I want you to tell the truth.”

“A human making demands of a vampire? I’m afraid you really may be an idiot.”

“Shut up. I know I was with you yesterday. What happened to me? What did you do to me?”

“You’re so funny, Scout. What makes you think I’ll just tell you that so easily?”

“Because... because I’m a slayer. And if I think you’re lying, I swear to god I will kill you.”

Alex cackles at this. “God. You mean creator? Because I know who created me. And she’s not god. And she’s certainly not on the side of the angels.”

“Who would she be?”

“You mean Elizabeth hasn’t told you yet?”

“Elizabe...” it takes a second before I remember Elizabeth is Dodger’s real name. “Only in passing.”

“Her name is Meg. She saved me, Scout. She is my god. I wanted to die at first, when I first became who I am. I hated who I was. And then Meg made me love it. And now she has sent me here with a message.”

A shiver rolls through my spine. My teeth start chattering and I have to force myself to speak slowly. Deliberate. “What is the message?”

“You tell Dodger Meg has come to collect her debt.”

“And why are you coming to me, and not Dodger?”

“Dodger’s rather fond of her old expressions, isn’t she? She should know not to kill the messenger. But, truth be told, something tells me she wouldn't've obeyed that adage this time. Besides, seeing you shiver and tremble makes this job a whole lot more fun. I’m not here to kill you, Scout. At least, not yet.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“You have a week. Don’t run. We’ll find you.”

“A week for what?

Twenty seconds pass without an answer. “A week for what?” I repeat. When there’s still no answer, I realize Alex had run off. I fumble for the door and make sure it’s shut before opening my eyes.

I check my phone and see Dodger had called me three times. I call her back.

“Scout?” She sounds both petrified and furious.

“Yeah. Sorry ‘bout hanging up.”

“What the hell? I was freaking out over here. What happened?”

“Well... I talked with Alex. Kept my eyes closed the whole time.”

“And?”

“And... we’ve got company.”

I hear my uncle call from the other room. “Scout! What are you doing?”

I tell Dodger not to worry, that I would tell her everything once I get back to Portland, but that I have to go practice.

*****

I return home late the next day, sore from the hand-to-hand practice. It wasn’t exactly what I had expected, but it was about twice as hard. Uncle Hunter and my father introduced me to the basics to a number of different martial arts before moving me on to something they called circlewalking. They had me imagine a circle about ten feet wide on the floor and tiptoe around it. They had me crouch low to the ground, with my back straightened and knees bent while I circled around. It didn’t seem like there was much of a point to it.

When I protested, my father challenged me to spar with Hunter. He told me to go as hard as I could, and that Hunter would not strike back. I accepted, and went after him using the basic punches and kicks they had shown me earlier. Nothing landed. It wasn’t like I expected to knock him out or anything, but I had expected to land
something.
Instead, he dodged and juked and spun away from me and at one point got himself right behind me. As much as I tried to, I couldn’t face him again. He just kept tracking my every move, staying directly behind me. Eventually I got frustrated and tried awkwardly kicking my foot back at him. He caught it with ease and flipped me on my back. That was bruise one.

Now, sitting on my living room couch, my hand runs over bruise number two. It runs along my forearm, a result of improper blocking form. “Improper”  was used a lot during the session, come to think of it. Improper kick technique, improper stature, improper balance, the list goes on. They had held nothing back during that session, and now my body is complaining rather loudly.

I didn’t tell my dad or Hunter about Alex. I’m terrified if I do, it would lead to him discovering Dodger’s secret. It would pit my family against her. I’d have to pick a side, and neither side feels like the right choice. I need to keep this to myself, yet I know it’s the wrong thing to do. Deep down, I know I need to tell them about all this. Another phrase from a mostly forgotten lecture pops into my mind:
Cognitive dissonance
. The act of entertaining two conflicting opinions at the same time.

I’m tired. Almost too tired to ask to be driven to Dodger’s. Almost.

“To Dodger’s?” replies my father. “You still look pretty tired. You got a workout this weekend.”

“I know. It’s important though.”

“Eh, I guess. Can you drive her?” he says, referring to my mother. She accepts.

The two of us climb into her old red sedan. It’s at least as old as I am. The fabric on the seats is starting to tear and over the years of stains and dirt they’ve gone from white to a sort of light brown. There’s a strip of blue at the top of the windshield. I have no idea what, if anything, it does. All I know is as a kid it was the symbol of “cool” in cars. Now it’s a symbol of age.

The car coughs to life and my mom starts pulling out of the driveway.

“Hey Scout, mind if I step inside her house for a bit this time? I’ve never met her parents. It’d be nice to finally get to meet them.”

“Um...”

“What? Would I be embarrassing you? Is it not hip for a fifteen year old girl’s mother to know the parents of her friends?”

“No one says hip anymore, Mom.” My mind dwells on Dodger’s tendency to use archaic slang for a moment. I try to remember if she’s ever used “hip” before. I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure that’s more of a seventies thing.

“So you’re totally against me ever meeting her parents, eh?”

I chuckle “It’s just
so
uncool, you know? Maybe one day I guess...”

“All right, all right. One day, then.”

Up ahead the light turns yellow, and she slows the car a little faster than I was expecting. Inertia moves me forward slightly, and I wince at a pain in my back.

“You sure you’ll be okay, hun?” she asks.

“Yeah. Just sore. Not dead.”

“Just call if it gets worse. Dad and Uncle really gave you a workout didn’t they?”

“Yeah. It was tough.”

“Well, better safe than sorry.”

The rest of the car ride is spent mostly in silence. We may have exchanged a couple of other sentences. I can’t quite remember for sure. She drops me off and I wave goodbye to her. As the car pulls away, I notice one of the hubcaps is missing. I try to remember if that’s new or not, and it’s while I’m pondering this when Dodger opens the door.

“Good. You made it,” she says. “Come in.”

I enter and hug Dodger as Bruce runs up to me. He gives me a few sniffs, as if he’s trying to figure out if it’s really me. I start to scratch him behind his ear, and he wags his tail and licks my wrist as if to say
okay, I believe you, Scout. It’s you.

Dodger sits me down on her couch and retrieves her cigarette wand. “Okay, let the cat out of the bag. What did you mean on the phone yesterday?”

“Well, uh...” I suddenly feel like my stomach has turned inside out. “Before Alex left the cabin yesterday, he told me to pass a message on to you. He said to tell you...” the next words come out feeling like rocks in my throat. “He said Meg has come to collect her debt.”

Dodger’s face carries the most intense hatred I’ve ever seen in someone. Her lips curl in a horrible snarl, revealing teeth clenched tightly together. Her eyes burn with anger. I can see her trembling and her hands clench so tightly her nails draw blood from her palm. Her words are dark and sinister. “Where. Is. She.”

“I don’t know. What does he mean?”

She says nothing but a growl.

“Dodger you’re scaring me. Who’s Meg?”

“She...
it
... turned me all those years ago. She made me into what I am. And she’s  coming to kill you.”

“Why?”

“Because I got away. Because I saw her for the monster she is and tried to leave her little ‘family.’ You see, you can’t do that. Not to Meg. Not without a... replacement.”

“Another human, you mean.”

“Yes. Some fresh blood to turn into a vampire in my place. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that. So I left on my own accord. Didn’t think she’d even care after eighty years... grudges don’t die easy. And now she’s coming to put an end to it.”

“But why
me?
”

“I don’t know. Probably because she knows you’re the only human I give a damn about. Which would mean she found me a while ago... and she just now chose to come for you.”  

My world is no more. Now I feel as though everything I see in the corner of my eye is plotting against me. I feel like every stranger I pass on the street is waiting for me to let my guard down. For me to wander off where no one can lay witness to my murder. Portland has become a cage.

“So what do we do?” I ask. “How do we get out of this?”

Dodger says nothing. She takes a contemplative puff of smoke and looks at me with remorse.

“You’re going to say ‘we don’t’ aren’t you?” I say.

“I wasn’t about to say anything.”

“Come on, Dodger what do we have to do? Run? Hide?”

I know what Alex said about running. Dodger’s words echo his and make them all the more dangerous. “No. They’d find you.”

“So we’ll fight then. Two vampires against a vampire and a slayer. Fair fight if you ask me.” I realize as the words leave my mouth that I still hadn’t told Dodger about my family history. I see a look of terror in her eyes I’ve never seen before.

“You’re a... what?”

Good going Scout. Sure, drop the S-bomb and make this whole thing even more uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry. I meant to tell you earlier. I just didn’t know how to bring it up. My dad told me the day of the bus accident. I’m a slayer. Everyone on my dad’s side is. But Dodger trust me they don’t know a thing about you and I’d never
ever
-”

She cuts me off. “No need to make a speech about it. I trust you. Just one... well two things. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“
I wasn’t sure how you’d react.” I shrug.

“Well, under normal circumstances, I’d be a little anxious, but today... today it’s a stroke of pure luck. We can do this after all, Scout. Second thing, how much training have you had?”

“A little. They say I’m a natural at archery. But my hand to hand needs work. What about you? I really wouldn’t know where an average vampire would be in fighting ability.”

“Meg has a century on me. I can’t beat her.”

“Fine. Leave her to me, then. You take care of Alex.”

“No!”

Dodger’s standing now. Her fists clench and her eyes flash a deep red color. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to yell. But there’s this... this loophole, if you will, about vampires.”

“Yeah?”

“If you kill the vampire that turned you within one hundred years of turning, you will revert to being human. That’s why I can’t have you killing Meg.”

I think about what Dodger told me about her pain. Feeling the pain of death linger for close to a century without relief... I only felt it for a few minutes. I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to endure it for as long as Dodger, and I think I’d just find myself driven mad after a week. I look in her eyes, as blue as her hair, and I see fleeting, flickering fires of hope.

“But you can’t beat her you said.”

“Not on my own.” Dodger pauses and looks away for a second. Two seconds. Three. “Which is why I’m going to need your help. A slayer’s help.”

“What do you need me to do?” I ask, but I already know the answer.

I need to kill Alex Fowler.

Act Four: The Laws of Thermodynamics/How to Burn Away Completely

I’m at Dodger’s house after school. It’s been a few days since that encounter at the cabin. I haven’t seen Alex since. There’s still a few days left in Alex’s ultimatum. But with the end of each day comes a fear. A fear that Alex is the impatient sort, and that his idea of a week is shorter than mine. We have to make our move soon, but we need a plan first. Dodger wants me to tell my parents and have them help. I can’t bring myself to. I know, logically, it would be a good idea, but I can’t imagine letting them know who Dodger is would end up well. It’s a balancing act. On one side of the scale: Dodger’s secret. The other: our own safety.

She’s been giving me her own version of the Crash Course in Slaying for Beginners. The thought hits me that I may be the first ever slayer to learn how to kill vampires from a vampire herself. She lets me know just where to strike, (“Eyes are a good place if you can’t hit the heart. Eyes don’t heal, even for us. Only bone, muscle, and skin.”) wheat to avoid, (“don’t ever turn your back on one of us. I’m sure your dad’s already taught you that, but it’s crucial”) all while sparring with me. She darts around me, trying to get behind me. I use my circlewalking to keep her in front, punching and kicking at full strength. She blocks or dodges almost every time.

“I assume your dad taught you to shoot an arrow,” Dodger says during a break. We’re both drenched with sweat, sitting on her couch and drinking Gatorade. I speak between breaths. Dodger sounds like she did no more than walk up a flight of stairs.

“Wouldn’t have thought vampires could sweat.”

“We do a lot of stuff. So anyway, arrow?”

“Yeah. Arrows. And not to brag but...” gotta catch my breath. “I’m not bad at it.”

A blue mustache appears on Dodger’s upper lip for a moment. She wipes it off with the back of her hand. “I should probably warn you about that.”

“Huh?”

Dodger rises and disappears into her kitchen for a moment. Something that seems a bit unnecessary for a vampire, but then again she
is
drinking Gatorade with me. I let it go. The vampire digestive system isn’t what I should be concerned about right now. When Dodger returns, she’s carrying a steak knife crafted from silver.

“I thought you said werewolves weren’t real?”

“Eh, can never be too careful,” Dodger grins and hands the grip end of the knife to me. So, I don’t exactly have a bow and arrow lying around, and I’m not expecting you to go back to your place and smuggle yours back here, but this will do just fine.”

“What for?”

Dodger steps a few paces back and holds her hands out to the side, like she were a religious idol. “Throw it at me. Right for the heart.”

“Uh...”

“Seriously. Do it.”

“Why?”

“We vamps have a... what’s the word? Impulse? Instinct. An instinct when it comes to pointy things coming at our hearts. It’s something that grows sharper with time. By the time you’re my age, it’s pretty much impossible to get said pointy thing to stake me unless I’m already wounded or distracted. It’s weird. Like my body isn’t mine to control. Throw the knife, Scout.”

I can’t. I trust her, but I just can’t bring myself to chuck a knife at my best friend. Just feels wrong.

“Scout... seriously. Throw it. I’m gonna catch it. It’s gotta be right at my heart though.”

Not helpful. Now the thought of being off just a tiny bit and wounding her holds me back with an iron grip. I look at her, and realize she completely trusts me. She trusts me more than
I
trust me.

The knife starts to shake in my hand.

“Scout?”

“I... I’m sorry. I can’t. I believe you, though.”

“Ugh, fine,” says Dodger. “Let’s go spar. Just keep that advice in mind.”

I beckon Alex over. We’re at school, in between periods. Students pass by us oblivious to this hidden world of the supernatural and macabre. I overhear one girl crying over a failed test. Another stresses over a cute boy in her next class. It’s all problems I used to have, but dissolved into the ether after that bus ride. My life is still structured by problems as are the lives of all fifteen year olds. Those problems are just entirely different now.

I lean up against my locker as Alex approaches. I try to appear calm and aloof. My racing heart calms with the knowledge that Dodger is hiding nearby.

“Yes, Scout?” Alex asks. However, the voice inside my head says “has my message been passed on to Dodger?”

“Yes. And you can tell Meg I’ll turn myself over. I’ll turn.”

“Well that certainly is interesting...”

“You know the old bus graveyard outside of town? You tell Meg I’ll be there tonight at midnight. You got that?”

“I’ll tell her. She’s going to
love
having you in her little family. One last thing, though.”

He grabs my arm tight at the elbow and looks at me straight in the eye. It looks for a moment like he’s about to hypnotize me, but instead I hear that voice in my head. “If you don’t show tonight, rest assured Meg and I will kill you
and
Dodger.”

“You have my word, Alex,” I say. He lets go of me just as the warning bell sounds. The halls are mostly empty now. The few students remaining hustle to their classes or stand idly by their classroom doors. Alex tells me to go to class and stalks off.

Dodger, who had been hiding behind a trash can throughout the conversation, waits until he’s out of sight to appear.

“How’d I do?” I ask her.

“Excellent. Would’ve believed you myself.”

“Good. Now did he... hypnotize me at all?”

“No. Guess he didn’t feel a need to.”

“All right. Well, I’ll see you at midnight Dodg-” I don’t quite finish saying her name. She wraps me up in the biggest hug she’s ever given me. No words are needed. I just hold on to her for so long I get the sensation of the feel of her hair and jacket imprinted into my memory. I have no way of confirming it, but I’m sure that Dodger is doing the same thing. When we finally part ways for class, it’s like we’ve just said goodbye for the last time.

This class, the last of the day, is physics. We’ve moved on from inertia and momentum to the laws of thermodynamics. Despite the teacher’s dry monotone delivery, I find myself paying attention to his lecture. I take notes and imagine burning Meg and Alex as I jot them down.

“As we know,” he says, “thermodynamics is the study of energy. Energy being, more or less, the ability of something to change or do work. Now, energy can come in two forms. There is potential energy, which is, well, energy that is not being used, but could potentially be used. So imagine a boulder sitting atop a cliff.”

I imagine Meg instead, an ugly hag with fangs serving as the stand-in figure for someone I haven’t met.

“If that boulder were to be pushed off, and it would generate energy due to it being in motion. This kind of energy derived from motion is called kinetic energy. Scout, what’s so funny?”

I can’t help it. The thought of Meg falling off a cliff is quite consoling. But I smile and say “nothing.” The long explanation would probably require at least a novella’s worth of words to retell.

“Anyway,” continues the teacher, “Our first law of thermodynamics states simply that energy can shift from one form to the other. So it can go from potential to kinetic and back again, but it can be neither created nor destroyed. The total amount of energy will always remain the same...” I lose the vampire correlations at this point, and my mind drifts off for a while. When I snap back to attention, he’s wrapping up his description of the second law.

“...and so it is that in all cases, unless energy from an outside source is somehow added to the equation, over time the potential energy of a system will vanish completely. A car will run out of gas unless refilled. A human will die unless he breathes. Call this entropy. Remember that, write it down, it’s a test question. Also know that as energy is transferred, entropy increases.”

I think of it as a parallel for life. Perhaps I’m just waxing philosophic, but it seems to me that life grows in disorder the longer it goes on. As much as people, adults especially, love order, the laws of life don’t allow it to happen that way. The longer you live, the more chaos builds up. I start to worry about growing up. At fifteen there’s so much around me already. I feel a sudden pain at the thought of having to deal with things like this while juggling children and bills and other grownup things.

Class continues and I wax and wane in periods of lucidity. About ten minutes after the entropy discussion, we start to touch upon heat and fire. The teacher reaches beneath his desk and produces a frying pan. He gathers the class around a laboratory sink where he fills the pan up with water, then turns on a secondary faucet which fills the water in the pan with bubbles.

“This faucet releases methane gas,” he explains.

Once the methane bubbles pile up high enough, he takes a match and brings it to the water. The whole pan lights up in fire for a moment. The methane combusts and the flames flicker for a few seconds before dying out. My teacher explains it with words something like “an exothermic process by which energy is released.” He does this two or three times before class ends, and for once, I’m disappointed the class has to end. I’ve always thought that there’s something beautifully menacing about fire. However, the lecture gives me an idea for tonight.

As soon as I get home, I ask my father two things. First, if my arrows will burn, second, if he could help me practice my circlewalking again. He tells me yes, that if I light an arrow, it would burn, and that I would have about ten seconds to fire it before the arrow burned completely. Second, that he would be glad to help me practice after dinner.

“That reminds me, we’re low on food so I should go to the store.” It’s my mother joining on the conversation. “Are you in the mood for anything in particular, Scout?”

“I am, actually. Can you make that special family secret linguine? I don’t know why. Just craving it.”

“Of course. It might take a while though, hun. You two sure you want to wait to spar until after dinner?”

“Ehh. I guess we can do it now,” says my father. “Come on Scout. Grab your gi and let’s get to the basement.”

We spend the next hour going over basic form, dodges, counters, punches and kicks. I do my best to block out all other thoughts from my mind. I feel myself learning the motions, though it’s not coming nearly as fast as it did for archery. We go over other points in addition to the circlewalking- basic self-defense principles such as how to break free of grips and where the weak points are on bodies, only with a supernatural twist. Instead of practicing eye gouges, he gives me a flashlight and I practice turning it on and off as fast as I can like a cowboy’s quickdraw.

“Are you afraid, Scout?”

I don’t know if I’m afraid or just apprehensive. I can’t shake the feeling that everything he’s teaching me today is a way to kill Dodger. So I guess I
am
afraid, just not in the way he suspects. I’m afraid that one day I’m going to regret ever learning these things. I’m afraid that I’ll learn too well. Or worse, not well enough.

“It’s okay to be afraid, you know,” he says. “When you’re afraid, that’s when your body lets you run faster and fight harder. It’s like a secret weapon for slayers.”

Damn. Never really thought about fear that way before. He sees my face lighten up and gives my hair a tousle. “All right, kid, let’s get started. Aim for the eyes, Scout.” he says. “Sunlight isn’t lethal, not even dawn or dusk, and a flashlight is weaker than sunlight, so you need to make it count.” He runs upstairs for a moment and returns with a pair of sunglasses so I can practice the draw on him.

I stand about ten paces away from him with the flashlight hooked onto a belt loop in my jeans. My father crouches down and puts on a stereotypical Russian accent. “Now Scout, I am a vampire. A creature of the night. I shall count to three, and then you will try the draw, clear?”

I can’t take him seriously in that voice. I start giggling the sort of giggles that are very hard to stop.

“What? You laugh! I shall bite your neck for this!”

I take the cue and try to shine the light in his eyes, but my fingers fumble around the switch and before I can react he’s picking me up and holding me over his head; still in that Russian accent. “Aha! I got you, silly human!”

“Dad! You’re so weird!”

He lets me down and scruffs up my hair like I’m a child again. “Good. Weird isn’t boring. Boring is the worst thing anyone can be.”

I stick my tongue out at him, but the line stays with me. It runs through my mind over and over through the rest of practice and during the linguine dinner. Other thoughts congregate in my head along with the quote. Most striking, the thought that this might be the last dinner I ever have. I want to do something mushy. Something straight from the movies like tell my mom and dad that I love them both out of the blue. Or apologize for my faults and tell them how much I appreciate them for taking care of me. Something cliche like that. There’s a couple of moments where I open my mouth to say it, but something stops me. I was never good at saying “I love you,” or really expressing affection at all.  I tell myself that this is
not
my last dinner. That I will survive this night and return without them ever catching on, and continue eating wordlessly.