Chapter 19

Chapter 19

David felt empty, hollowed out. There was a dull ache in his chest, and if he weren’t a young man in good health he might have worried he was having a heart attack. He had been in love and experienced heartbreak before. This was different, for a myriad of reasons. The speed of his romance with Joseph, the completeness of their love for each other, and the suddenness of the breakup. But mostly, it was the fact that he knew they both loved each other. They were being torn apart by circumstances beyond their control.

The night after he drove away from Joseph’s house for the last time, David didn’t sleep well. He tossed and turned, and when he did drift off, he had fitful dreams of being strapped in a chair while vampires drained him from all parts of his body, but he never seemed to die from blood loss.

David woke up a final time well before sunrise, sweating, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He could still feel the bites on his skin from the dream and was compelled to check himself for wounds. Content that he was uninjured, he got out of bed and washed his face with cool water. He pulled on a pair of gym shorts and slipped out the front door to the outdoor walkway connecting the apartments to the elevator and stairwell. His apartment was on the third floor of a building that was three sides of a square. His view was of a courtyard area that featured a swimming pool and served as a mingling point for the gays in the building. Next to the courtyard, a recessed driveway gave access to parking under the building, and across from that an identical building to his, but in a mirrored design, complete with its own pool, made up the complex .

The air was almost cold, and the sheen of sweat on David’s body chilled him. He looked down at the calm water of the heated pool and thought for perhaps the fiftieth time since he moved into the building about what it’d be like to jump into the pool from the third floor. He’d never tried it and never would. It was actually in his lease that it was not allowed, which made him wonder, also not for the first time, how badly the person who tried it had gotten hurt.

David suddenly had the feeling he was being watched. He scrutinized the other apartment doors on his floor and in the building opposite the courtyards but saw no one else out at this hour. His rational mind knew he was imagining it, but his primal lizard brain was screaming at him nonetheless. It was like when he was younger and would swim in a dark pool and suddenly get the feeling he was going to get eaten by a shark. It was a fear he had learned to dismiss, because obviously sharks weren’t abundant in swimming pools. This time, though, it was harder to ignore. He now knew for a fact that vampires were real and fed on human beings.

At this clear thought, David’s logical brain began problem-solving and he stood straight and returned to the apartment, taking special care to lock the deadbolt and the doorknob behind him. He turned to the small dining area and regarded the table and chairs. They were a mismatched set. The table had been a gift from a friend when he had moved into the apartment with his ex-boyfriend. They had found a complete set of kitchen chairs in decent shape with soft padded seats that showed no stains or tears while walking around the neighborhood a few blocks east. They hadn’t thought anything about it at the time. The neighborhood was heavily populated by Russians who had fled during the fall of the USSR, and it was customary in that culture to put something out on the curb when you didn’t want it, free for anyone to take.

David tipped one of the chairs on its back and placed a foot on the leg that lay along the floor. Crouching down, he grasped the opposite leg firmly with both hands and pulled. He didn’t know how well the chair was assembled. It wasn’t as cheap as a piece of IKEA furniture, and it had never wobbled, but in his current state he didn’t want to take time to carefully disassemble the chair with tools. He pulled up, straining with his legs, back, and shoulders, until the chair split apart at the joints. David stood, holding one of the legs, the end split and jagged. He tested out his new weapon with a thrust into the air. Yeah, this would do.

He spent the hours until sunrise whittling the legs of the chair into stakes. They turned out to be single pieces of a sturdy wood, not the particle board/fiberboard combination found in certain Swedish furniture pieces, and with a little sanding work became perfect instruments of bloodsucker destruction, at least by David’s estimation. Stake through the heart wasn’t one of the myths he and Joseph had discussed, but he suspected that pretty much everything died if you put a stake through its heart. They also hadn’t discussed the element of mythology that said vampires needed express permission to enter a home, but David’s furtive glances at the front door drove home the fact that he didn’t believe there was any reason that myth should be true. His time with Joseph had made vampires a very real thing, which meant they were less likely to be restricted by arbitrary rules that had no basis in biology and science.

David managed to fashion six good stakes and a handful of smaller ones from the one chair, and for the first time since the attack on Friday so long ago, felt his anxiety and fear subside somewhat. He was taking control of his safety, and that helped. He didn’t bother tearing apart any of the other three chairs, knowing that if he couldn’t defend himself against two vampires with six full-size stakes, the problem was definitely not a shortage of stakes.

Sitting on the living room couch with the sharpened stakes arrayed before him on the coffee table, David glanced again at the front door and saw that the sky outside had gone from dark obscurity to the clear blue of a Southern California morning. His stomach rumbled, and he realized it had been almost a full day since he had eaten. He slipped one of the stakes into the waistband of his pants and wandered into the kitchen, texting Dana on the way to say he was so sorry, but he was going to be staying home again today. There was just no way he was going to be able to work with his mind trying to fly in a dozen different directions at once while also suffering from lack of sleep. He couldn’t seem to focus on one particular thing, until he had poured a bowl of cereal and stood frozen, staring down into it. One urgent problem that needed solving.

Joseph needed food.

Several pieces of a puzzle came together in David’s mind. The plastic bags on the floor of Joseph’s kitchen and the blood oozing out of the refrigerator (don’t think about what else was in the kitchen) which he’d seen Joseph take his meals out of and stick them in the microwave for warming. Alexander and the woman had destroyed his supply, David realized. Which sparked another realization. The building that blew up had been a blood bank and research center. And it was Joseph’s company. The vampire couple destroyed that, too, to take away the source of his food supply!

How long could Joseph go without eating? Not long, David guessed. He’d seen him consume at least one bag of blood per day when they were together at his house and on the trip to Paris.

What was the reason for destroying his supply of donated blood? To weaken him in preparation for a confrontation? To force him to feed on humans? Joseph would never—

The thought stopped in the middle of making its way across David’s mind. Of course, Joseph would feed on a human. He already had. And the look on his face had said that it was tearing him apart.

So a fight, then. They wanted to make him weak. Surely Joseph would eat animals before hunting humans, wouldn’t he? Yet hunting in the concrete jungle of Los Angeles would be much more difficult than the last time Joseph had tried it, what, a hundred years ago?

And they’d killed Rafaél, Joseph’s son and closest confidant. If there was anyone Joseph would have gone to for help in this situation, it would have been him. Joseph had no one left, as far as David knew.

Okay, then. This was a problem David could help solve. It was one thing to walk away from known danger, but it was quite another to let the man you loved face it alone when you could do something to help. He finished pouring milk over his crunch flakes with almonds and heated up a cup of cold brewed coffee. Usually, he cut it half-and-half with water, but today he drank it full-strength. He’d need the caffeine.

He took his breakfast to the computer and started brainstorming. After some overly complicated fits and starts, David stumbled upon an obvious solution, and opened up the maps app to search for grocery stores. Then after a moment looking at the list, searched for butchers instead. He reviewed the list, noting that most of the shops didn’t open for another few hours, exceptions being the several that overlapped with his grocery store results. When he’d drained the last of his milk from his bowl, David started to make calls.

First, he researched foods that used blood, so he could have a story to tell when he made his unusual requests. The second web search led to an article titled “Dine Like a Vampire With These Blood-Based Culinary Delights,” so he decided to mix a bit of truth into his lie. He prepared himself with a simple request to get blood for a specialty food event and, if pressed, would say it was for a gathering of people who pretended to be vampires. It didn’t get that far, though. It only took three calls to learn that butchers weren’t a source for animal blood. The third provided him with the source for their raw meat, a halal slaughterhouse within driving distance of LA.

David had to wait until 9:00 AM to call them, so he set his phone timer for an hour and leaned back on the couch, hugging one of his newly carved weapons to his chest. He didn’t expect to be able to nap, but as soon as his head relaxed against the couch cushion, the alarm went off. He jerked up, forgetting that he was holding the stake, and sent it clattering to the floor, startling himself even more.

David polished off the last of his extra-strong coffee, which had grown cold, and called the abattoir. His heart was beating hard in his chest, a combination of having just woken up from a deep nap, plus the pressure of this mission and the nervous energy of preparing to tell his lie to complete it. As it turned out, the receptionist who answered the phone didn’t need to know why he needed the blood, just how much he needed. David hadn’t actually thought about that. A part of him had assumed he would have to work so hard to obtain each cup and pint that he’d eventually reach a point where he had to stop. He asked if a couple of gallons was okay, and the receptionist told him the minimum size was five-gallon buckets. David asked to buy one and was told it would be ready to pick up that afternoon.

He hung up the phone and barked out a laugh. When the idea came to him, David initially thought he’d have to find some friend of a friend who worked at the Red Cross and bribe him somehow to steal donated blood. He had even began formulating a plan to do that, by offering Joseph’s wealth by way of a huge donation to the Red Cross, plus maybe a little extra on the side for the person stealing the blood. He had images of an Ocean’s Eleven–style heist in his head, and in the end, he was able to get five gallons of blood and all he had to do was drive to San Bernardino in the inland empire, just an hour and a half away with traffic.

The drive would get him there several hours early, but David started feeling antsy sitting on the couch trying to watch YouTube videos on the living room television, so he stuffed the stakes into an empty backpack, prepared an insulated mug with more coffee, and left the safety of the apartment, taking the stairs down to the underground garage.

Waze took David on his normal commuting route over the Barham pass to the 134 freeway. He drove east past Glendale and Pasadena, where the 134 transitioned into the 210 freeway, and David felt his anxiety ease somewhat. He felt safer in his car, driving away from the scene in Joseph’s kitchen, the location of his recent attack, and of the perpetrators of that assault. He felt certain that vampires couldn’t move as fast as a car and, however strong their hunting senses were, couldn’t follow him when he was surrounded by his steel and glass tanklet.

He planned on getting to San Bernardino and puttering around until his order was ready for pickup, but about halfway there, his vision started to blur and he struggled to stay awake. He pulled off at the exit for Duarte, a place he’d been several times as a younger man, attending swanky summer holiday parties at a home on the side of the Angeles Mountains, and found a parking spot in the shade of a Costco. He cracked his car windows and set his phone alarm for two hours before reclining his seat. A leather jacket lay in a pile in the passenger seat, left when the weather became too warm for it. David used the light-proof material to cover his face, creating a cocoon of darkness in which he quickly descended into a deep sleep.

His dreams were vivid. He was laying in Joseph’s arms, being cradled and loved. His whole body was hot and cold at the same time, tingling with what his dream-brain assumed was a post-sex glow, though the dream didn’t include any actual sex, unfortunately. David saw through the eyes of his dream-self, Joseph’s face looking down at him with so much love in his eyes it was overwhelming him with emotion. David felt at ease, as he had since the first time they slept together. He had always felt comfortable with Joseph, even after learning of his true nature. Even when he was looking on the gore and blood in Joseph’s kitchen, he hadn’t been afraid for his safety, at least as far as his immortal lover was concerned. Here in the dream, he felt that same security, even more than the sexual desire.

David’s dream awareness moved outside of his body then, in that way dreams have of disassociating one’s self, and he saw his own body. He was covered in blood, and Joseph was baring his fangs…

The small Honda rocked as David awoke with a start. His head had slipped into the sleeve of the leather jacket, and the darkness was complete. At first, he forgot where he was and panicked when he couldn’t see. He clawed at the material covering his head and face, pulling the coat off. Even parked in the shade, the California sun was shockingly bright, and David had to press his palms against his eyes while his brain caught up. Keeping his eyelids pressed closed, he reached down next to the driver’s seat and lifted the lever that brought the seat back into an upright position. Then he was able to relax and breathe deeply a few times, focusing on slowing his exhalations.

He opened his eyes and looked around, getting his bearings. The Costco loomed large in front of his car, and there were cars parked on both sides of him, but the larger parking spots meant they weren’t too close for comfort. On the passenger seat sat the open backpack with the rudimentary impaling implements poking out. The stake he’d been holding had fallen next to the seat. He fished it out and decided it was probably a good idea to run in and pee before driving the second half of the trip.

An hour later he was back on the road, bladder empty, with a venti Americano from Starbucks and munching on a Crunchwrap Supreme from Taco Bell. David felt more normal than he had in what seemed like a very long time. As long as he didn’t think about the fact that he was driving to a slaughterhouse to get blood for his vampire boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend? his brain asked, but he pushed the thought away. It didn’t matter. They loved each other, whether they could be together or not, and David would be there for Joseph in any way he could be.

He was still early when he arrived at the small, family-run operation, but the receptionist told him to wait while she went through a swinging door to the main abattoir and returned minutes later with a sealed five-gallon pail on a cart. David paid for the blood on his credit card and was allowed to use the cart to get the pail to his car. It must’ve weighed fifty pounds as he hoisted it up into his trunk, pushing aside several pieces of accumulated junk to make it fit.

The drive home took nearly twice as long, nap not included, as rush-hour traffic reached its peak. The sun was just beginning to dip towards the horizon when David turned onto the last winding road that led to Joseph’s castle-like home. He got stuck behind an old pickup truck that was laden with lumber and tools, with rigging built into the sides to hold it all. There wasn’t room to pass on the narrow, winding roads of the Hollywood Hills, but David took a breath and took himself into a Zen place, rather than get frustrated that he couldn’t get to his destination a few minutes sooner.

He ended up following the truck all the way to Joseph’s house, where it turned off the road into Joseph’s driveway. As it did, David saw the name of the company on the side, Door and Peace, and he realized why they were there. He didn’t want anyone else around when he spoke to Joseph (if he spoke to Joseph), so he kept driving. He had Siri find him the closest Starbucks locations and had the AI voice give him directions to the one on Beverly Glen and Mulholland. It wasn’t the closest one, but he didn’t feel like driving down the hill and back up again. Plus, the views of the LA basin and the Valley would be worth the extra time. The sunset spread glorious oranges and reds across the Valley as it sunk into the horizon, and the endless blanket of lights twinkled on across the caldera of what had once been an ancient volcano.

David sat for a couple of hours on the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop, nursing a grande almond milk latte and picking at a blueberry scone. He absently watched the rich people walk to and from the restaurants he’d never been able to afford to go to and the boutiques at which he wouldn’t even bother to window shop. He made sure to text Dana to let her know he was okay and he’d tell her everything that was happening soon, but otherwise, David’s mind drifted while he intermittently browsed Facebook on his phone.

When he estimated enough time had passed for the big old door at Joseph’s to be fixed or replaced, David walked across the small lot back to his car, now laughably parked next to a Lamborghini. He drove back to Joseph’s, and the driveway was empty. Getting out of the car, he tucked a stake into the back of his belt and covered the end with his shirt. He walked up to the door, which was locked, but visibly not completely repaired, and knocked.

David took two steps away from the door. He didn’t know why, exactly. Maybe it was just polite to not be right there when the owner answered. Or maybe he wanted to let Joseph know he wasn’t here to pressure him for anything. Just drop off the blood and go. But he still inhaled sharply when Joseph answered.

The pallor had left the vampire’s face. He wasn’t gaunt, but there were dark shadows under his eyes. Upon seeing David standing there, Joseph exhaled, like he had been holding a breath, as someone does who is pretending not to be sick when they are.

“David…” Joseph said, like he was disappointed to see him.

“I know, I know, but…” David started to defend his presence, but Joseph’s exhausted face stopped his excuses. “Have you eaten?” he said instead.

Joseph looked confused at the question. Then he lowered his eyes as he did some mental calculations. “It’s been a couple days,” he said, shaking his head.

“Okay, well, I got some for you,” David said, gesturing towards the car.

“Some…?” Joseph asked, not completely sure what David was talking about.

David lowered his voice as if there were people around and he didn’t want to be overheard. “Blood. I drove out to a place in San Bernardino and got some. I figured… I didn’t say it before, but I’m so, so sorry about Rafaél. And about your building. I really am.” David desperately wanted to step forward and hug Joseph, to help him, but stood still.

Joseph was still confused. He had been very clear that David was to leave and never come back. “Why are you here, David?”

David shook his head a little to focus himself and communicate that Joseph needn’t worry. “I just realized that you didn’t have any food, and that—” he slowed down and chose his words carefully, not wanting to hurt Joseph with a sensitive topic “—Rafaél would have probably been the one you went to for this particular problem.” Joseph still looked confused, so David decided to be simple and blunt. “I have five gallons of fresh cow blood in a bucket in the car.”

Joseph’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh! Okay, thank you.” But he didn’t move.

David got a bit annoyed. “It’s in the trunk. Should I get it?”

Joseph looked past David to the car, and then around the front of the house, like he was searching for trespassers. Which, David realized, he might have been. “Yes, please,” Joseph said.

David went back to the car and heaved the pail out of the hatchback. He struggled to walk in anything resembling a dignified manner while he brought it back to the house, and was getting a little miffed that Joseph with all his super strength didn’t bother to help. No, he just stood there in the doorway, watching David while also scanning the nighttime surroundings. If he saw the stake poking out of David’s belt, he didn’t say anything about it.

David began to move it inside, but Joseph stopped him. “It’s okay, I’ve got it. Thank you.”

David set the bucket down at Joseph’s feet. “Yeah, no problem,” he said automatically, shaking out the cramp that had formed in his hand, biting into his palm. They stood for a moment while David waited for Joseph to say something more, and Joseph waited for David to leave.

Joseph bent down to pick up the bucket, and despite his fatigue and relative weakness, it appeared to weigh no more than a gallon of ice cream. He pulled it inside, and David felt his throat tighten like a small ball of iron was forming just behind his chin. But it didn’t fall to his chest with the rest of his despair as Joseph retreated into his house wearing an expression of broken guilt. Instead, the iron ball turned momentarily white-hot and shot straight up into David’s head.

“Is that it? Thank you?” he lashed out at Joseph, who stopped moving, but did not make eye contact. “I come in here yesterday and see … what I saw. And still I worry for you and put in, I mean, a lot of effort to track down something for you to eat so you don’t starve, or worse—” David leaned to emphasize his unspoken words “—and all you can say is ‘Thank you’?” He tossed his arms up in the air, at a loss for words.

Joseph still refused to look at him.

David took a couple of breaths, then stepped closer to the door. “I… I know you’ve lost a lot, and that you’re still in the middle of it all. But you don’t need to push me away, Joseph. You can depend on me. I can help.” He gestured at the bucket swaying from Joseph’s hand. “I can help.”

Joseph shifted the bucket from one hand to the other, and the thick liquid sloshed inside. His shoulders hung low, and his head wouldn’t rise to meet his former lover’s eyes. “Please go, David,” he said simply.

Joseph turned into the house, and David thought he saw tears fall from his eyes before the heavy door closed behind him.

David stood impotently for a few moments, wrestling with the urge to pound dramatically on the door until Joseph relented, opening it and wrapping him in his arms, after which they would retreat into the house and make love and, and, and…

But David knew it wouldn’t do any good. He turned his back on Joseph’s fancy door and walked back to his car. His legs and arms operated as if by remote, like he was a marionette and someone else was pulling his strings. He was so angry and sad and pissed and dejected but still knew Joseph was doing what he thought was best for David.

Sitting in his car, looking out past the house and out over the Los Angeles basin, David cried softly. He was so powerless to change what was going on. He had had something so amazing, and even worked through seemingly giant problems, like, say, his boyfriend being a vampire, and now it was torn away from him and there was nothing he could do about it. He felt completely and utterly exhausted, mentally and physically, from head to toe. He barely felt the warm tears trickling down his cheeks.

Finally, he closed his eyes and focused on his breath. David wasn’t a habitual practitioner of meditation, but he believed in the power of mindfulness and would sometimes take a moment in a stressful time at work to pause and breathe. After a couple of minutes, he felt a bit more clearheaded. He didn’t know what he was going to do, exactly, but was ready to take one step at a time. The first was to go home and get some sleep. Tomorrow, go to work. Get back into a routine. After the last week of complete disarray, routine sounded absolutely divine.

David started the car and pulled out of the driveway, forcing himself to not look back at the house. He wound down the narrow mountain road and turned east on Mulholland Drive. The night was still and rush hour had passed, so there weren’t many other cars on the high road. David felt relief seeping into his body the more distance he put between him and Joseph, though he felt the logical and emotional halves of his brain wrestling for control.

His logical brain tried to be optimistic, and he thought, I will love again, I don’t believe there’s only one person in the world for everyone, but then the emotional part of his brain focused on how much he loved Joseph and how he wouldn’t have that love again, and he began to cry, much harder this time.

In moments, the tears were coming hard and hot from his eyes, and his nose was running from the effort to hold back the waterworks. David leaned over to open the glove box for some napkins he kept there for emergencies, taking his foot off the gas pedal but keeping one eye on the road as he rounded a curve. Still, he didn’t see the figure standing directly in his path until it was too late to slow down.

David shot back up in his seat and yanked the wheel, attempting to swerve out of the way. The car’s path managed to shift to the right, missing the person standing in the middle of the road. Is it two people? his brain screamed as time seemed to slow to a crawl. Why would you go for a walk in the middle of the road? The swerve brought him dangerously close to the edge of the embankment, where there was not even a guard rail between him and the steep drop down the side of the mountain.

As his car lost traction, David registered two things. The first, he’d seen the same terrifying face from the alleyway, glaring at him from outside the window, mouth twisted in a snarl of hate and malevolence, fangs bared. The second, he’d narrowly missed hitting Alexander with the car, but the vampire had parried in order to push David’s little Honda further into its skid.

Then David was flying over the edge.

Gravity took a vacation inside the car. David’s backpack, spare pens, and his supply of laundry quarters lifted from their places and seemed to float around the cabin. David’s seatbelt kept him strapped to the driver’s seat, but he saw the world outside the windshield turning over and over while the car tumbled down the steep embankment. It rolled four times, each impact dangerously crushing in the roof. David heard screaming but wasn’t aware that he was making any sound himself.

The world just kept spinning and spinning and spinning.