Free First Kill: A Dave Carver Novella by Andrew Dudek Page A

vampire is dead. There are too
many of them and too few of us—we’ll probably all end up in holes
like this one soon enough. I’ll say this, though: We’ll do our best
to make sure you didn’t die in vain. We’ll keep killing fangs until
one of them sends us to join you.”
    After a beat in which the only sounds
were the angry cries of the gulls and the distant sound of trucks
speeding by, Luisa said, “Amen.”
    Squirrel looked ill.
    “Seriously,” Luisa said.
“That was a good speech. You should’a been a politician or an
officer or something.”
    “Shut up,” I
said.
    Luisa laughed. “Come on, Captain
Carver. Let’s bury this poor son of a bitch and go home. I need a
bath.”
     
    Squirrel stopped the truck
at the curb next to the entrance to the subway station. Luisa
hopped out of the passenger seat without so much as a word to the
big man. I slid across the bench seating, eager to get out of the
pickup truck and away from Squirrel as soon as possible. I felt
guilty about the way I’d intimidated him, and there was something
strange about the way he’d let me intimidate him. Squirrel seemed to fear me in
a way that he didn’t fear any of the others, and it made me
uncomfortable. I had my palm on the door handle when Squirrel
gently grabbed my shoulder.
    “Nate trusts you, Dave,”
he said. “You may be the only person who can say that right
now.”
    I shook my head, but he cut me off
before I could protest. “I’ve known that boy since he was a baby—he
ever tell you that?”
    “No.”
    “I’m sure he’s told you
about his mom, though. She was a witch, one of the most powerful in
New Orleans for decades. I was her apprentice for a little while,
but I didn’t have the talent to really make it, even as a hedge
magician. My only skill is my art. The colors in my tattoos don’t
ever fade and, sometimes when I really put an effort into it, I can
make them move.” He rolled his shoulders and smiled. “Anyway. I was
saying that Nate trusts you. You’re his second-in-command, am I
wrong?”
    “It’s not like that,” I
said. “We’re all equals. Nate is just…”
    “First among equals?”
Squirrel rubbed a hand over his hairy chin. “But if there’s a
first, don’t that mean there could be a second among equals?” I
frowned, but Squirrel continued. “I’m not asking you to spy on
him—I know how loyal you kids are to each other—but I think he’ll
listen to you.”
    He pulled from a pocket a business
card. “Have him talk to this guy. He’s an old friend of mine. If
Nate insists on carrying on with this war, he’ll need help, and
this guy can help.”
    “Felix Guinness,” I read.
There was no phone number, only an address in Harlem. “Who the hell
is this?”
    “Like I said, he’s an old
friend of mine. Another former apprentice of Helena Labat. A
sorcerer, a registered member of the Magic Council.”
    “A sorcerer,” I said.
“Really?”
    Squirrel laughed. “Son, you’ve spent,
what, six months fighting vampires. Is it really so hard to believe
that there’s other crazy shit out there?”
    I frowned and tugged at
the end of a strand of my hair. The truth was, I’d never considered
the possibility that there were other… things …in the world. I mean, I knew
that Nate could do things that looked an awful lot like magic, but
I’d always assumed they were tricks, illusions. But if Squirrel was
right, and magic was real—and I guessed I had to at least consider
that possibility—I wondered what else could be out there.
    A car drove past, the first we’d seen
since getting back to the Bronx. It was speeding. The driver was in
a hurry to get home, I guessed. I couldn’t blame him. Nobody much
liked to spend time out of doors once darkness hit these days. And
with no cops around to harass him, why not get out of the
neighborhood as fast as you could?
    “Guess not,” I
said.
    “Give the card to Nate,”
Squirrel said. “I don’t know, maybe Guinness can teach you