Free Vampire Rising by Larry Benjamin

197 Chicksand Street
    BARNABAS STEPPED INTO THE STREET and
hailed the oncoming taxi. The driver stopped and, leaning across
the passenger seat asked, suspiciously, “Where are you going?”
    When Barnabas gave him the address, the
man’s eyes grew wide. He quickly blessed himself, rolled up the
window, and sped away.
    Seeing no other taxis, Barnabas walked to
the bus stop, cursing his decrepit car. The elderly Achieva had
refused to start no matter how he tried to coax it to life. He
hated the car but it had been all he could afford with the money
he’d saved from his job delivering pizzas after school. Once, the
car had seemed as bright and promising as a golden chariot.
    The day he turned eighteen, which happened
to be the same day he’d graduated from high school, he’d packed
everything he owned—which, fortunately, hadn’t been much—into the
Achieva and took off in the rain, without a destination, without a
plan, knowing only that he had to get away. As the group home faded
into the distance, and the recent past, he’d thought, with regret,
only of… Gatsby .
    Barnabas shook his head and consulted the
Public Transportation app on his Wearable for the bus route he
needed. An ancient bus finally arrived, sighing as its pneumatic
doors cracked open. As he boarded the bus, he noticed an old
Mexican woman in the first seat. She was heavy and dressed in
several layers of conflicting plaids. Her brown face was as
wrinkled and pockmarked as a peach pit.
    “Where ya headed?” the bus driver asked as
Barnabas fumbled his money into the coin box.
    “Chicksand Street in Whitechapel.”
    In response, the driver angrily slapped the
lever that controlled the bus doors and attacked the gas pedal.
    As Barnabas made his way to the back of the
bus, he had to grab onto the overhead handrail to keep from falling
as the bus, spewing gravel, its engine groaning, careened down the
uneven road already dark though it was just past dusk.
    At the back of the bus, a group of
dark-skinned boys sat with their legs spread apart, and ear buds
screwed into their heads. Scowling, they gleamed with menace like
the edge of night. When, as the bus spun around a corner, Barnabas
fell into an empty plastic seat among them, one of the boys asked,
with an edge of belligerence in his voice, “Did you say Chicksand
Street?”
    “I did,” Barnabas answered.
    The boys suddenly sat up straighter, and
their knees snapped together, as their eyes shifted from
side-to-side. As Barnabas watched them, they seemed to shrink
inside themselves. And Barnabas realized that these fierce boys,
with their badass attitudes, who carried guns secreted in the
waistbands of their sagging jeans, were afraid. He wondered then
what he was doing—if he, too, should be afraid.
    “This here coming up is the stop for
Chicksand Street,” the bus driver called out.
    Barnabas stood and walked to the front of
the bus. He peered out the windshield into the dark, then looked at
the driver. “The schedule said you stopped   at   Chicksand Street,” Barnabas said.
    “Not after dark I don’t,” the driver shot
back. “This here is as far as I’m going tonight!”
    Barnabas shrugged and moved to the door. The
Mexican woman he’d noticed earlier touched his arm. As he turned to
her, she drew a silver crucifix attached to rosary beads from
around her neck and, muttering a prayer in Spanish, pressed it into
his hands. He closed his hand around the offering still warm from
her bosom and said, “Thank you.”
    The bus slowed and the driver said, “This
here road, about a mile on, becomes Chicksand Street.” He opened
the door, barely stopping long enough for Barnabas to disembark. As
soon as his feet touched the curb, the driver closed the door and
sped away as fast as the bus’ ancient diesel engine would allow. As
the bus passed him he saw the passengers with their foreheads and
palms pressed against the windows, their eyes wide, and their
mouths forming tiny “O”s of