He should go back, but his feet kept moving forward as if they had a mind of their own. He couldn’t go back and face those…things. Shawn was dead. Lucas knew for a fact Shawn’s heart had stopped beating. Lucas wasn’t sure if the ball of light had saved him like it had his mother’s plants. Oh God, what if he had left his friend behind. What kind of person did that make him?
He saw a cab and stopped running long enough to flag it down. The cab stopped and he wrenched open the door, throwing himself inside as fast as humanly possible. He closed the door just as one of the creatures started around the corner. He gave the cab driver his address, still breathing hard from running.
He shut his eyes wanting the calmness of relief to settle his nerves, but nothing changed.
“Can I borrow your cell phone?” Lucas asked the driver once he was able to get his breath back.
“I don’t loan it out,” the cab driver said without taking his eyes off the road. The man was older. The dark hair had flecks of gray through it and he had more wrinkles than not on the parts of his face Lucas could see.
“Please, sir. There were men attacking us. I think my friend is hurt really badly. I think they killed him.” Maybe. He didn’t know. Shit.
“There are some bad elements in this city. Don’t know how many times I gave rides to you people.” The man’s hands came up and held out a cell phone.
“What to do you mean byyou people?” Lucas took the phone. “Thanks.”
“You non-humans or whatever the fuck you are.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Okay, he sort of did know, but he wasn’t about to admit he might be like those things that had killed Shawn. He dialed emergency services and waited. When they answered he told them what happened and where they could find Shawn. They asked where they could find Lucas and he told them he was in a cab, and that one of the men chased him.
“We’ll send an officer to your location.”
He gave her his parents’ address.
He shut off the phone when the conversation ended and handed it back to the cab driver.
The driver took it back. “I used to be a hunter. I’m too old for all that bloodshed and violence now. Plus, I learned things aren’t always black and white with paranormals.”
“‘Paranormals’?”
“It’s what you call yourselves, right? Or has that changed over the years? Hell, I’ve been out of the loop for so long you could call yourselves just about anything by now, what with all the political correctness going on in this country.”
Lucas couldn’t really focus on what the old man said. “I don’t really know what you’re talking about.” He looked out of the window, watching the houses on the street as they drove by. He thought about the men with the teeth, like vampires in a movie, but they were real. Hopefully, he was having a psychotic breakdown and he’d come to consciousness in a hospital bed with his arms strapped down. Thatwas much better than what he was experiencing at the moment. “You know about…paranormals?”
“Hunted them for thirty years. Course that was a long time ago. When we didn’t know as much as we thought we did and were scared off by it. I was a bigoted fool before I met my Cassie. She changed my mind, but it was a rough start we had. I finally came around.”
“Those things that hurt my friend…” Lucas rubbed his hands on his pants and then clenched his fists to keep from shaking. “They had long fangs and red eyes. One of them stuck his teeth into him and drained his blood.”
“Yep, vampires can be a nasty sort sometimes. The coven around here didn’t used to be too bad, but in the last few years they’ve been killing more humans. Probably got a new coven leader that’s not as good as the last one. Politics suck no matter what you are.” The cab driver said it in such a matter of fact tone, Lucas could tell he believed in such creatures.
“How do you know they’re killing people?” Lucas couldn’t keep his voice from shaking.
“Police scanner. Sorry about your friend, kid.” The cab driver parked the car in his parents’ driveway and then turned around.
Lucas handed him a twenty-dollar bill for the ride and the cab driver waved him away. “It’s on me, kid. You’re probably going to need it more than me.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ve never come across a vampire, have you?”
Lucas shook his head no. “Never in my entire life did I know those things existed.”
“You want some advice, kid.”
“Yeah.” He would take all he couldget.
“Don’t trust anybody around here, including the cops. With as many vamps are in this damn city, there’s bound to be one on the force.”
“What should I do? I think they want me for some reason,” Lucas shook even harder. His fear kicked up and he could feel the light start to leave his body. He closed his eyes and breathed in, trying to calm down enough so that stupid ball of light wouldn’t hurt the nice man in the front seat. He had no way of knowing exactly what it would do. He didn’t even know if it had helped Shawn. He thought it had, but who the fuck really knew for sure.
