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“And your girl is on her way back home?” Quil smiled, not looking away from the moving waters of the river.
Charlie grinned happily, leaning forward to pull the latest postcard Ella had sent him out of his jacket’s pocket. His daughter, her mother Renée and her new partner were road tripping up the west coast before dropping Ella off in Olympic Bay – they were somewhere in California now, only one more state away.
“She’ll arrive in about a month.” Twenty-three days to be exact, he added in his thoughts.
They weren’t driving several miles a day, only a few hours each time, sleeping inside Paige’s camper car, otherwise they would already have arrived.
“Didn’t they go on road last month already?” chuckled Quil, returning the card back to Charlie after inspecting it.
“They spent all of June in Mexico.”
He was excited to hear all about their travels and look at the photos Ella had taken of the places she had seen and the people she had met. More than that, he was ecstatic for her to live with him for more than a month at a time. He was lucky to have stayed in the city he grew up in, for Olympic Bay had one of the best colleges of the country. Even though he has had reasons to leave.
Ella had even gotten a full scholarship. Hearing about that had him overflowing with joy and pride. It was all he talked about for weeks after getting the news from her.
It was an exciting time for him and his friends – most of them had children in the same age his Ella was and everyone saw them graduate from High School, before moving on to greater things.
It pained him to know he had seen more of his friend’s children grow up, than his own daughter. But at least they had kept talking to each other on the phone once a week. Ella had also been sending him letters once a month, in which she wrote him about her “last month”. Every mailing her writing skills had improved and brought him a new photograph. He had kept every letter and photograph he had gotten from her.
“Let’s hope, Ella won’t miss traveling too much, once she lives with you” Quil teased, his hand on Charlie’s shoulder, pulling him out of his thoughts.
It got a laugh out of him, but the comment also made him nervous. Between working, going fishing and watching baseball there wasn’t a lot going on in his life.
“Well, I do plan on going to the market with her on Saturdays, meal prepping on Sundays …” he paused, was there really not that much more?
“I guess, she will have to learn most other days, and she will get new friends, maybe even look for a job ...” he mumbled into his beard.
“That’s more than what I get to do with Quil.” It seemed like a realization.
“You could start cooking together too? Maybe even share your secret recipes with him?” Charlie offered an idea.
“And in a year or so he’ll teach me how to cook” laughed Quil again, “I worry this might kill all the fun in cooking for me. Once he knows how to do it better, he might ban me from the kitchen.” His son would take culinary classes once college starts.
Charlie laughed with him.
“Would you be willing to share your recipes with me?”, asked Charlie after they had calmed down.
Quil didn’t look directly at him, only at the corner of his eye.
“They wouldn’t be secret anymore” his tone was sad, yet the corner of his mouth twitched up.
Charlie rolled his eyes. Quil and Harry – they would never share their recipes with him, no matter what. Even if Harry only had his one, famous fish fry.
“Since we are talking about food – what about a snack? I brought sandwiches”, offered Charlie, he needed to get up from his fishing chair even just to take a few steps to his car and back, and his dog Cap looked like he needed to move too.
“Sounds good to me, maybe a fish will finally take the bait when you’re gone”, laughed Quil, while Charlie was standing up.
Charlie smiled, nodding along.
“Come on, Cap”, he said, clapping his right hand against his leg to give his companion the sign to come with him.
The former police dog stood up, following Charlie from the fishing dock away, through a small forest line, to the car.
Charlie had just grabbed the two homemade sandwiches from the backseat of his car, when a scream reached his ears. Without taking even one second to think about it he took his baseball bat, which was still there from the friendly game with his colleagues last week, from the backseat as well. Cap barked several times, Charlie signed him to run in the direction of the scream and threw the door of his car closed, before running back towards Quil.
He wasn’t sure, what he had thought had happened during the about four minutes he was gone, but he sure as hell hadn’t expected to see a young woman holding onto his best friend’s body, her mouth on his neck, blood he could only assume to be Quil’s, running down where she was probably biting into him.
Charlie let the sandwiches fall, held up his bat like he was waiting for a baseball to be thrown. The woman stared into his eyes, her lips still on Quils neck, but Charlie felt unable to move, her gaze was captivating. Cap growled at her, Charlie held on to his baseball bat, his knuckles white from his grip.
The woman closed her impossibly green eyes for a second, before she let go of Quil, who fell over into the river. Charlie gasped, his blood running cold. His hands were starting to shake, but he just held on tighter to the bat.
She, however, seemed unbothered, threw her long, auburn locks behind her shoulder and wiped blood from her lips using her thumb. Coming closer to Charlie, her gaze meeting his once more.
“Everything is alright with me, you can put your bat down good sir” she said, her voice soft like velvet, her pupils shrank and dilated again – was she trying to hypnotize him?
For a split-second Charlie looked to Cap, gave him a small wave with his hand. In an instant the dog jumped forward at the woman. Before he could bite her, she kicked de dog away from her, using her bare foot. Cap winced in pain.
Charlie swung his bat, but she stopped it mid-swing, taking the weapon away from him in a quick and smooth motion, breaking it in two halves on her leg. Her gaze fixated on his eyes again.
“You can leave, everything is alright” she assured him and her eyes did it again.
He shook his head in disbelieve, looking at the river behind her, where his friend’s dead body was slowly washed away. His gut dropped – was this going to be his end too?
Cap was a few steps behind him, barking at the lady, but not attacking again. Charlie on the other hand didn’t have any words for her. But he had to come up with something to survive her. He tried to not think about it too much, instead he ducked down to pick up one half of his bat.
It seemed like she was able to move faster than humans and she obviously wasn’t one. Charlie was just trying to not assign her any creature, for trying to figure that out could make him hesitate, if he would even be able to ... end her. He just had to keep it together. At least for now.
When he had half of the wooden bat in his hand, her leg was to his right and she could have kicked him like she had done it to Cap before. In a quick motion Charlie turned around himself before finally picking back up half of his weapon.
With his left hand he grabbed for her left wrist while getting close to her back. Using the speed he had gained from the move he swung his other arm around her, pushing the broken end of his bat in where he suspected her heart to be.
In an even quicker motion, she bent her left arm down, being able to overbend Charlie's left wrist. She also tried to reach for his other arm with her free hand, to stop him from getting the broken end of the bat too close to her. But it seemed like Charlie had caught her off guard with the way he defended himself.
He pushed the bat deep into her chest and her body became heavier in his arms. All strength left him, he let go of her wrist, the bat and her body sunk to the ground.
Charlie’s hands were shaking, his breathing erratic. He didn’t look at the woman again, instead turning around, running towards the river. Cap ran after him, still barking.
While he stood on the fishing dock to look how far the flowing waters hat taken Quil away, his dog was already running towards the body. Charlie ran towards Cap and waded into the water, trying to reach for his friend, ignoring his clothes getting wet.
Grabbing a hold onto Quil’s wrists he was finally able to pull his friend out. When the water only reached his calves he fell back, losing his grip on Quil.
“Charlie?” he heard a familiar voice from behind the tree line – could only be one of his colleagues.
“Help me pull him out” he shouted, without turning back to check who it was.
Only two seconds later his colleague had his hands under Quils arms to pull his body successfully out of the water.
Once Charlie had finally managed to get on his feet again, he saw the young man behind him, with his ear on Quil’s chest.
“What are you doing?” he asked panicked and stumbled towards them, “try to reanimate him!”
But his colleague, Emmett Hale, just shook his head.
“I fear it’s too late … there is not enough blood left in his body.”
Charlie fell on his knees; his hands were still shaking and he was slowly realizing what had happened.
He stared at his friend. Quil was pale and the light had left his eyes.
Emmett used his hand to close Quil’s eyes shut.
Charlie was still out of breath, getting more confused with each second, how Emmett could stay so calm. In a frantic motion he looked back in the direction where he had … where the woman’s body was still laying.
In a fearful realization he turned back to Emmett, his eyes wide open.
“What are you?”, he asked, standing back up and stretching his arms out in front of him, to be ready to defend himself again.
“I won’t hurt you”, Emmett said in a low voice, not moving an inch.
“Don’t you dare try and make me forget about …” Charlie gestured around, panicked “… all of that!”
“I won’t do that either”, Emmett assured him, “but I can help you, take care of it … call the police or anything you need me to do.”
Charlie nodded slowly, still processing.
They called the police and Charlie watched how Emmett burned the remains of the … woman. Her body burned away like tinder, only leaving ashes and a weirdly sweet smell behind. They decided to build a small bonfire, which would cover that scent and the remains.
That only left Quil’s death for them to explain once the police arrived.
· • ·
The day after Quils funeral, one week after the … incident, Charlie was ready to talk with Emmett, hear the young man’s explanation about the woman and himself.
Both men had been sent on leave for a month. They were proven innocent, yet their head ranger had decided they shouldn’t work until some time had passed.
Emmett had come to visit Charlie, they sat down at his kitchen table and Charlie just listened. The whole time Cap kept watching Emmett, ready to help out his owner, should their visitor be dangerous.
Emmett confirmed Charlie’s fear – he and his wife were both vampires, cold ones, as they were called in the town’s legends Charlie had heard when he was growing up.
But it wasn’t just these two who’d come to Olympic Bay. It was also the new doctor in town, who posed as Rosalie’s brother. He had put a cast on Charlie’s arm on the evening after Quil’s death.
His wife, their two “children” and their “adopted daughter” were vampires as well.
Charlie felt himself go pale – that must have been the reason his other friend, Billy, didn’t think highly of that family. From the moment they moved into town he had warned Charlie about them, to not get too close. But he wasn’t giving him a good reason why and Chalie had gotten along very well with Emmett since the day the young man had become his colleague. Which is why he and Billy were still not on speaking terms. He decided to give his friend a call, as soon as Emmett would have left.
Emmett promised to Charlie that his … Clan, wouldn’t hurt anyone of the city. He said they only drank animal blood and they wanted to live their lives as normal as possible, which was why they had gotten jobs, to blend in. The three younger ones would even go to college.
Charlie choked on his coffee – not to college, not where his Ella would go to as well. That was too close, wether they hurt humans or not didn’t matter.
…