Keen's Turn: The Vampire's Appeal

Chapter 4: Red Rues (second half)

Jared was almost conscious by the fourth alarm. It broke his latest troubled dream—a twisted shadow puppet show of his last rerouting through Times Square, damp with sweat and blood, the vampire's voice echoing after him: "Not to worry, Red...worry, Red...RED..."—and prodded him to awareness of the oppressive warmth of the blanket, which had crept up him in the night. Dimly, he became aware of an additional noise, a rhythm out of sync with the tinny ringing—Stokes, the crank from the next apartment over, was pounding on the wall.

"I'll have you know this'll be the second fecking week in a row, Stern!"

As far as Jared could tell, Stokes worked a night shift weekends, an arrangement that did no favors for his mood. He made to roll over in bed and froze, stiffening, whether from the sting of the clumsily bandaged cut in his side, the hollow ache of the bruise in his gut, the stuffy throbbing of his head, or some combination.

Disentangling his feet from the blanket, he rose gingerly to go the rounds on the alarms, silencing the one with the hammers, tucked under the cabinet, before it could incense his neighbor further. Stokes stopped pounding, but his head didn't.

He sat back down on the bed and rubbed his hands over his face, wincing as his thumb brushed something sore. He went to look in the mirror. A bruise had crept down his cheek from the blow to his head. He looked a wreck.

I am a wreck. What the hell am I doing?

Trying to get himself killed, apparently.

At least I'm as bad at that as I am at killing vampires.

Maybe he should not be trying to kill vampires? He took another rueful look at his reflection. It certainly supported this sentiment.

It's not like I hafta go Saturday. I didn't even agree to it.

He could just not go. No one would ever know. No one aside from the vampire, left hanging at the power station.

It's not that simple. I would know.

He would know he'd screwed up, chickened out, and run away. He would know the vampire he'd failed to kill or even to do anything about still roamed the city, murdering innocents.

I gotta do something. I can't just let this go.

He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing his pounding temples.

I was close! I was so close! If I'da just...had some other weapon, or a better stake...

Maybe he could do it after all. Set up a trap? But the pounding in his head was making it impossible to think. Jared went to the bathroom, found a bottle of expired pain medication, and downed a couple of pills. Then he went to throw on some clothes, pausing to change the dressing on his side, before scrounging around for socks he could stand the smell of until at last he was forced to come to terms with the fact that he'd have to do laundry. He made breakfast instead, paging listlessly through Judy's books over eggs and toast.

He still couldn't concentrate.

The memory of the tarp was suffocating him, the failures that had led to each of his injuries replaying as the injuries themselves kept up their excoriation of him beneath the heady waves of painkiller.

This is insane. I'm not a vampire hunter! I'm an idiot! I'm a useless piece of shit who can barely hold down a job!

So let it go. Forget it ever happened.

But...can I live with that? After everything I've seen? What about the dead guy in the alley?

At this rate, he was just rushing to become another. Alone, with no one to come for him, beaten and bloody as he breathed his last in an abandoned power station from which a phantom ambulance would swallow his savaged corpse—