“I’m telling you: I’ve fought sharks, and I’ve fought seagulls, and fifty gulls could tear a shark to shreds!”
The two were sitting at the bar of the only pub in town they had yet to leave amid a brawl, arguing over hypothetical fights and drinking their fill.
“Even still,” Derrek said, “I have to side with the shark, assuming it can breathe air, of course.”
Discord snapped his fingers angrily. “Dammit, I forgot he could breathe air. Gotta give it to the shark.”
Derrek raised his mug in victory and watched as Discord chugged his. After finishing it, he gasped for air and coughed for several seconds.
“How is it?” Derrek coyly asked.
“You’d think it’d be better in pilsner form, but a Brewski is still a Brewski.”
The two shared a laugh as the bartender came and refilled Discord’s mug with, at his behest, a shot of each liquor they had in stock. After the several minutes it took to make said drink, the bartender walked away to handle the only other person in the pub.
“That looks disgusting,” Derrek said. “I can smell it from here.”
“Well, why should I just get one drink after another when I can get, like, twenty drinks’ worth in a cup? It’s an efficiency thing more than anything else.”
“Still, I don’t think tequila was meant to go with absinthe.”
“And pickles weren’t meant to go with peanut butter, but people still eat it.”
“That sounds gross too.”
“It’s honestly not that bad.”
“I refuse to believe that.”
“Suit yourself,” Discord said. He took a long sip from his highly alcoholic concoction. After finishing nearly half his mug, he set it down and looked at the other patron in the reflection of the mirror behind the liquor shelves. He could tell it was a man from his large frame, but he was facing away from the bar and wore a hood and a hat, presumably to hide his appearance. He noticed the man glancing at them several times since they arrived and already had a feeling of who it was.
He threw back the rest of his drink, got up from his stool, and walked over to the table the man occupied, gesturing for Derrek to follow. The man had yet to notice them until Discord grabbed him by the shoulder, prompting the man to jump and grab him by the wrist, attempting to flip him over his shoulder, but to no avail. Discord hadn’t moved or reacted to it in any way.
“You wanna tell me why you’re spying on us?” he calmly asked.
“Spying? Are you sure about that? He looks like a normal customer to me.”
The man coughed several times, then said in a gruff voice, which he was clearly trying to mask, and an indeterminate accent, “No idea what you’re talking about. I’m just enjoying a meal before I get back on the road!”
“Yeah, and I’m Lady Godiva,” Discord replied, not convinced. “Now lose the getup, Jeffy. You aren’t fooling anyone.”
“Jeffy?” Derrek asked, very confused.
The man sighed and slowly stood up, then removed his hat and hood, revealing his bald head and bushy beard.
“Jeffrey?” Derrek asked, even more confused.
“Yeah,” Jeffrey said, avoiding eye contact and rubbing the back of his head. “How’re you doing, Derrek?”
“How am I doing? Why are you here?”
“Because,” Discord interjected, “he’s worried I’m gonna kill you or make you a monster or something like that.”
“What?”
Jeffrey looked up from the ground and met Derrek’s eyes. “I was worried. What can I say?”
Derrek dropped the confused expression he wore and replaced it with one of anger. “There’s a hell of a lot you should say right about now. Maybe a ‘sorry’ for starters. Then I’d like to know just how long you’ve been following us.”
Jeffrey sighed again. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I never left town. I’ve been staying at the motel across the street.”
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Derrek was about to ask another question, but Discord interrupted him. “Let’s all sit down and discuss this. Bartender! Three pilsners!” He took a seat at the table, sitting next to where Jeffrey was set up. Derrek hesitated but decided to sit across from Jeffrey, staring daggers at him all the while. The bartender swiftly brought them three mugs, then quickly disappeared behind the bar, which the men thought was strange, considering they were the only customers present.
Several seconds passed, filled only with Derrek staring at Jeffrey, Jeffrey nervously sipping his beer and Discord looking back and forth between the two.
“All right,” Discord said, clapping and drawing the other men’s eyes to him. “Let’s clear the air.” He turned and gestured toward Jeffrey. “First off, Jeffy here knows, at least partly, about the weird shit that’s floating around. A couple of weeks back, he and I had a little chat, and he agreed to leave it be. But on the other end”—he then turned to Derrek—“Havok isn’t human, not anymore, at least. It wasn’t his choice, it wasn’t his want, but he ended up the way he is anyway. And out of fairness”—he pointed to himself with his thumbs—“every time I go to see a movie, my pockets are absolutely stuffed with snacks I bought at a gas station. There, now everyone’s dirty laundry is up to dry. Thoughts?”
The men looked at him, dumbfounded until Derrek turned to look at Jeffrey.
“You knew?” he calmly asked.
“Seriously?” Jeffrey responded. “When I came back you were acting crazy different and had pitch white hair, how could I not know something was up? And how are you not human? How is that something you can just stop being?”
“It’s pretty complicated,” Discord said as he sipped his beer. “And we don’t have a hundred years to explain it. Basically, he got the human punched out of him by a giant skeleton named Boyd.”
Jeffrey looked at him like he was stupid, but after seeing Derrek slowly nod, he believed it to be the truth. After coming to that realization, he started chugging his beer and breathed deeply once his mug was empty.
“All right,” he said. “Anything else I should know about?”
“The Schadenfreude is run by vampires,” Discord responded, met with Jeffrey calling for another beer and Derrek staring at him with a shocked expression.
“Should he know about that?” Derrek leaned over and asked.
“He’s a good guy with a gun, and we need as many of those as we can get.”
Jeffrey wasn’t paying attention to them as the bartender arrived with another mug, which he went straight to chugging. Once he was finished, he took a moment to catch his breath. Then, in a panic that quickly washed over him, he asked, “Did they drink my blood?”
Discord and Derrek looked at each other, then burst into laughter as Jeffrey maintained the look of panic on his face. Once the laughter died down, Discord wiped a tear from his eye. “Nah, they don’t drink blood. They’re harmless.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, they’re good people.”
“People? You just said they were vampires.”
“Vamps are people too. Get woke.”
“They’re very accepting,” Derrek said. “They want to live in peace, just like everyone else, and right now, they’re in danger.”
“Danger?” Jeffrey asked. “What could be dangerous to vampires?”
“They prefer the term fangs, for the record. And there’s a lot of people who want to see them dead just for being who they are. We call them poachers, and we think they’re going to storm the Schadenfreude, and if they do, they’ll kill everyone.”
“Jesus,” Jeffrey said. “And they don’t hurt anyone? At all?”
“Aside from self-defense,” Discord said, “they’re total pacifists. But if they need to, they can fight like crazy. And they might need to pretty soon.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Jeffrey asked.
Discord smirked. “Hell yeah, we need all the hands we can get on deck, especially Maj. Jeffrey Motherloving Reynolds! Are you packing?”
“I’ve got my sidearm and a few dozen rounds, not enough to fight an army, but I can try to get more.”
“Don’t worry about ammo. They’re stocked like a doomsday prepper. What we could really use right now is intel, and you’ve been spying on us, gathering exactly that. I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything suspicious around town, have you?”
Jeffrey thought for a second, then rolled up his pant leg and opened his leg, out of which he pulled a small notebook. He started flipping through the pages.
“There’s some crazy political corruption for such a small village. The mayor is getting a lot of money that isn’t accounted for on the budget, or his tax returns, for that matter. I think there’s some kind of meth lab behind the funeral home. Not sure, though. Oh, and like eight nondescript black SUVs came through in a hurry a couple of days back. Until now, I figured it was some kind of diplomat’s motorcade. Do you think it’s related?”
“How long ago was that?” Discord asked.
“Hold on,” Jeffrey said, looking through his notes and doing the math to figure out the date. “Looks like it was four days ago. Why?”
He looked up to see Discord, eyes wide, completely motionless.
“We need to get back,” he said, getting up from his chair, pulling several loose bills from his coat and throwing them on the table. “Now.”
He was already out the door when Jeffrey and Derrek realized they should follow, but as soon as they did, they scrambled out of their seats and practically ran for the door, meeting Discord in the parking lot, draping his coat over his and Derrek’s motorcycles, causing them to disappear before their eyes.
“What the …” Jeffrey said, completely dumbfounded.
“No time,” Discord said. “We’re taking your truck. Where’d you park?”
“Oh, the motel across the street. I walked here.”
“Then come on!” he yelled as he jogged across the road followed by the other men, heading toward Jeffrey’s truck, the only vehicle in the parking lot. Discord vaulted his way into the bed and repeatedly slapped the roof loudly until Derrek and Jeffrey loaded up in the cabin, started the truck, and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving skid marks and smoke as they belted down the road, speeding toward the hotel.