Pale light poured through the east facing windows of the Mayhew’s kitchen, the aroma of coffee and bacon permeating within. Peter stood at the stove wearing an apron with Snoop Dog and Martha Stewart’s faces on it, no shirt beneath, flipping the bacon when Renea reentered the room.
“The insurance company buy it?” he asked nervously over one shoulder.
“I think so,” she said, setting her phone on the counter and taking a seat at the table. “They were pretty surprised to hear that I hit an elk here in the city, but the damage is going to be covered.”
Peter laughed. “I’ll clean up the back seat before I take it in for repairs. You can take my car to work today.”
Renea sighed dramatically, shoulders drooping as she stared into the blackness of her coffee. “Work. How am I supposed to think about work right now? We literally killed Kinsey Fox last night, Peter. Blah! But I can’t not go, either. It’s Tuesday.”
On Tuesdays, Renea’s calendar was filled from 8:00AM all the way through 7:00PM with back to back meetings; not a single open slot when she could even take care of necessities like peeing or eating. How she made it through 11 hours of meetings, Peter had no idea. He would literally die, surely.
The toast popped from the toaster at exactly the moment that Peter decided the bacon was ready. He cracked a half-dozen eggs into the hot bacon grease, jumping back and squealing a bit as his bare chest was scorched by the grease. A few minutes later, Peter Mayhew dished up three plates of breakfast and sat to eat.
Greg was still unconscious, Peter’s best guess was from excessive blood loss, and may or may not be up in time for breakfast. They’d made it back to the Mayhew residence the night before and had to drag the man across the front yard and into the house on a tarp Peter pulled from their garage. Peter and Renea did their best to clean the wound, which had miraculously stopped bleeding all on its own, and then rubbed some antibiotic ointment on it, and finally wrapped the shoulder in medical gauze. Peter also placed the core, or what he figured must be the core, on the side table of the guest room they dragged Greg into. He also set the agreed upon payment for dispatching the werewolf, a healthy sum of cash, on the side table. When Peter checked on the man in the morning, Greg Van Helsing was snoring loudly and appeared to simply be enjoying a good night’s sleep. No new blood had soaked the gauze, there was no sign of infection, and Greg was not sporting a fever of any kind. Perplexed, the Mayhews just left Greg to sleep it off.
Renea left for work with a second cup of coffee in hand, briefcase over her shoulder and Peter sat contemplatively at the kitchen table. Between his feet, Flapjack stole the occasional longing glance at the untouched third plate piled high with bacon, eggs, and toast. Peter felt restless, and briefly considered finishing the chess game he’d started with himself the day before. After spending the day with Greg, meeting Roma and puzzling over her violent artifact, and then finally taking part in a legitimate monster slaying, none of his recent hobbies or obsessions sounded even remotely interesting. He thought about that ancient puzzle box, moving pieces in his mind, the urge to hold it again growing as he did. The possibility of being the first person to solve a 3,000 year old puzzle was more than simply exciting to Peter, it was infatuating. He pulled out his notes and sketches, studying them on the kitchen table until Greg finally wandered in around 9:00AM looking like hell.
“Morning, sunshine,” Peter greeted him. “Food’s on the table, coffee’s in the pot. How’d ya sleep?”
“Like the dead,” Greg said, his already grizzly voice sounding even more raspy than normal. He looked Peter up and down, one brow raised. “Nice undies.”
Peter looked down at Martha and Snoop, confused. He realized then that he was, once again, not wearing any pants. Beneath the apron, Peter wore only a bright pink pair of skin tight briefs with little yellow smiley faces all over them. He shrugged. At least he’d worn underpants this morning.
“You weren’t kidding when you said you heal fast,” Peter commented. He sipped his coffee and continued shuffling his notes around on the table. “By the time we got you back here it wasn’t even bleeding anymore.”
“Thanks for cleaning me up. And for the cash. And for, well, what was that kick thing you did?”
“Instinct,” Peter explained with a shrug, lips scrunched up. “I don’t even know. I panicked, then that happened.”
“I’ve seen some crazy shit fighting monsters,” Greg said. He sat opposite Peter at the kitchen table and continued, a piece of bacon held between two fingers. “But I’ve never seen a kick quite like that. It worked, so nice job, but if you’d been fighting a monster that I wasn’t currently grappling with, that landing would’ve done you in.”
Peter laughed. “Yeah, that was bad. But I don’t really see fighting monsters being a frequent occurrence for me, so we’ll just call it a win.”
“Well you saved my ass, Peter Mayhew. I think I’d broken a few of its ribs by the time you catapulted onto the scene, and probably would have managed to kill it, but I lost too much blood. Would have probably woken up in a hospital somewhere this morning instead of your lovely home.”
Peter lowered his face to his notes in an attempt to hide his blush. As a stay-at-home-husband, compliments regarding the cleanliness, organization, and decor of his home meant a lot to him.
“It was nothing…” he said, modestly. Not looking up from the sketched character on the page torn from his notebook. He turned it 90 degrees to the right, then back, then 90 degrees to the left. “Hey Greg, I understand if you just need to chill and recover today, but if there’s any chance we could go back to that trailer park, that would be amazing. I can’t stop thinking about that dang puzzle. I’d go without you, but…”
Greg laughed, bits of egg escaping his mouth in the process. Flapjack, Peter’s diligent cleaning helper, quickly scarfed down the dropped eggs and then licked the floor clean of any remnants. The dog looked up at Greg hopefully, but the big man ignored him.
“But you don’t want to be alone with Roma,” Greg finished for him. “I don’t blame you, mate. Yeah, we can head over there after breakfast if you want. Any chance I could borrow a clean t-shirt?”
Greg was wearing the same black v-neck he’d had beneath his leather jacket the day before. It was now caked in dried blood and sporting a handful of holes in the shoulder, the medical gauze visible beneath.
“I mean, I’ve got clean shirts,” Peter said, eying the big man’s broad shoulders. “But they might be a little snug on you.”
Greg finished his breakfast while Peter took Flapjack out to the backyard to do his morning business. When Greg came out of the bathroom wearing the shirt Peter lent him, he was legitimately pouting - a hilarious expression on such a grizzled, laconic face.
“You have anything in black?” he asked sourly.
The shirt tightly clinging to every square inch of Greg’s heavily muscled torso was a pale purple and displayed a cartoon depiction of the Care Bears complete with a rainbow and sparkles.
“That’s my biggest shirt,” Peter explained, not answering the question. Seeing Greg Van Helsing, the man who he had seen fist fight a werewolf only hours before, in his Care Bears t-shirt was too amusing to give up just yet.
Greg grunted. “Thanks, then. I guess.”
While Peter cleaned up Renea’s car and took it in for repairs, Greg went shopping for a new t-shirt. They met back up, returning to the Mayhew’s home, Greg on his motorcycle and Peter in a loaner car - a black sports car that made Peter feel like he might want to try a midlife crisis one of these days. It was a European two-door that could probably go really fast, but Peter wasn’t a car guy. He didn’t really care what loaner car he was issued.
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“Nice ride,” Greg said, eyeing the coupe appreciatively.
“It goes zero to sixty,” Peter reported sagely.
Greg waited, head cocking to one side as the silence hung between them, and then he roared with booming laughter. “Oh, it does do that?”
“Every single time,” Peter replied, patting the hood proudly. He waggled an eyebrow at Greg suggestively. “Wanna see?”
Peter insisted on driving, claiming that he’d signed a form stating he would be the only person driving this vehicle while it was in his possession. Greg, sadly, agreed and rode in the passenger seat. His enormous form looked squished in the little two-seater. 37 minutes later, they parked the coupe in the trailer park just outside of Old lady Romanov’s creepy abode.
“You’re never driving us anywhere ever again,” Greg complained. He shut the door with more force than absolutely necessary, grumbling to himself angrily.
“What are you talking about?” Peter demanded, following in the big man’s wake. “I’m a great driver.”
“You drove in the right lane the whole way. I don’t even think you hit the speed limit once. You drive like my grandmother.”
“Well your grandmother sounds like a responsible driver, and I respect her for it.”
Greg stopped and turned around. It was almost as if, with his expression alone, he gave Peter a pitying ‘oh, honey…’
“My grandmother drove a horse drawn carriage.”
Greg knocked on Roma’s door. Now it was Peter’s turn to grumble angrily to himself.
“Roma, it’s Greg. I brought Peter to play with your puzzle,” he shouted.
They waited for long minutes with no response from within. Greg knocked again and repeated his greeting, louder this time. Still nothing.
“I mean,” Peter reasoned aloud as they waited, “don’t vampires sleep in coffins all day? Maybe we should try back later.”
“Vampires are usually less active during the day, but they don’t actually sleep at all.” Greg knocked again, so hard that the skull-shaped ornament fell off, shattering when it hit the concrete. “My bet is she’s finishing a meal. I don’t usually come by this early.”
Peter paled. “A meal? Like… a person?”
“Yeah,” Greg said flippantly, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
As Peter thought about it, he guessed it kind of was the most obvious thing in the world. That gave him pause, though.
“Wait, Greg, aren’t you supposed to kill vampires? How is it that you two are friends?”
“Roma’s a good sort,” Greg explained, still pounding on the door with increasing intensity as Peter began collecting the pieces of the door piece he’d broken. “She eats sickos. Pedophiles, rapists, murderers, that kind of thing. I even bring them to her if I bump into one. It’s her way of holding on to some part of the humanity she lost when she was turned.”
“Oh,” Peter said, happily surprised by the explanation. “Well, good for her, then.”
Finally, the lock clicked open, followed by the chain and deadbolt. “Give me a second, Greg,” came Roma’s sultry voice from within.
Peter and Greg waited a few moments, and then entered. Again, Peter was struck nearly blind in the dim domicile and was forced to squint just so he didn’t bump into anything.
“Blood!” Peter exclaimed. “That’s what the smell was I couldn’t place yesterday. It was blood, which makes so much sense now.”
Old lady Romanov stood in the hallway across the living room from the door, her pale skin and black hair making her look like an apparition in the dark to Peter’s senses, and remained there until Greg shut the door behind them. Today, the youthful looking vampire was wearing pants, which Peter appreciated, and a black silk blouse that hung very low on her chest.
“Sorry,” Roma said, making her way to the couch. “Had to clean up.”
“All good, Roma.”
Peter offered the broken remains of what had been Roma’s door piece, but she just jutted her chin toward a garbage can next to the door. Peter dumped his load, and then eagerly sat on the love seat across the coffee table from where Roma sat on the couch. He took out his notes, laid them out on the coffee table in front of him, and then picked up the puzzle box reverently. He began studying the mechanisms he’d deemed most likely to be the next correct step while studying his notes that morning.
“Peter, I’m hurt,” Roma pouted teasingly. “You’re not even going to say hello? I thought maybe you’d just come to see me again. But, no, you’re only interested in my artifacts.”
“Oh goodness,” Peter said, quickly placing the puzzle box back down on the coffee table, face reddening. “That was rude of me. Please accept my apologies, lady Roma. I was just so excited, you know? I’ve been thinking about this thing constantly since we left yesterday. Hi. How are, you know, things?”
“Things?” she asked, placing her elbows on the coffee table and leaning toward him.
Peter averted his eyes from her very-revealed cleavage, instead focusing on the materials she had used to black out the windows. It just looked like a thick black fabric held in place with electric tape.
“Yeah,” he said awkwardly. “How was… or maybe who was for breakfast? Heh.”
Roma laughed, then licked her lips. “Dirty politician.”
“Oh, nice. Greg told me about your dietary choices, actually. I gotta say, I really respect your decision to only kill the bad apples. How’d you know he, or she, or they, whatever, was a dirty politician?”
“He was in office,” she explained simply.
Peter looked at her in confusion for a moment and then laughed. “Fair.”
“Play with your toy,” she pouted, leaning back on the couch and folding her arms. “You don’t have to make small talk with poor little old lady Romanov just to be nice.”
“Hey Roma,” Greg interjected. “Why don’t we head down to the basement and let Peter work in silence? He’ll get your box open faster without your feminine wiles to distract him.”
“Yeah. Alright,” she said, sounding almost disappointed. “My wiles don’t seem to be much of a distraction to this one, though.”
“Happily married,” Peter reminded her with a smile.
“Your wife doesn’t happen to be in politics, does she?”
“Come on, Roma,” Greg said, helping the woman up from the couch with an outstretched hand. “I’m pretty sure Peter’s wife could kick your ass even if she did fit into your meal plan. That woman’s small, but she gives me serious danger vibes. You should have seen her come at me when she thought I’d done that to Peter’s fingers. No kidding, I thought I was about to have the fight of my life until Peter stepped in to explain.”
Peter laughed again as the two of them, once again, left him alone in the living room of white-trash-batman’s trailer home. He took a deep, pleased breath as he picked up the puzzle box and began turning it over in his hands, looking for the right position to begin. His fingertips throbbed with exaggerated phantom pain, though there was still a lingering stingy-ness anytime he touched something. When he’d left it yesterday, Peter had unlocked the first handful of moving levers and gears at the expense of his fingertips. Today, he knew right where to start and pulled out a fresh new notebook to notate his process.
Nodding affirmatively to himself, he pulled and turned a tiny metallic bar 90 degrees to the right before pushing it back in with a click. A wooden gear was released, its teeth turning slightly due to the angle at which it sat on the coffee table. Peter noted the result in his notebook, and then cautiously turned the gear oh-so-slowly to the right - all the while wincing with the anticipation of further violence from the puzzle box.
He continued the process, moving a piece and then noting his results in a trancelike state. Time faded into an abstract concept as he worked, his focus completely locked in. He didn’t know it, but Peter had been working on the puzzle for five and a half hours straight when Greg and Roma returned from the basement - the sound of the door opening shocking him back into reality. Looking up, he saw Greg, his hair disheveled, tightening his belt. Roma’s hair, too, looked rather rumpled and Peter couldn’t help wondering what they’d been up to down there.
Ohhh, he thought to himself when the obvious dawned on him.
“Any progress?” Roma asked, resuming her seat across from him on the couch.
“A lot,” Peter replied automatically, mind still struggling to come out of his trancelike focus on the task he’d given it. He absently brushed his lower lip with his pen as he elaborated. “I could be wrong, but I’m almost sure there are only a few more steps before I solve it. In fact, if I had to guess right now…”
Something within his mind clicked. He had it. Greg and Roma and even time itself were all once again forced to the periphery of his consciousness as Peter picked up the puzzle box and moved one, another, and then one more piece into place. Then something unexpected happened.
What he’d been expecting to happen was for the box to open, or to reveal a final piece that would open the box, or perhaps even to hear the click of some hidden locking mechanism go off. Or maybe even to skewer his entire hand with a concealed knife. What did happen, he would not have come up in his first one-hundred guesses. The ancient artifact pulled itself free of his grasp, emanating a soft white luminescence as it hovered before him. It began to spin slowly, picking up speed as its glow intensified. Roma shielded her eyes when it reached a fever pitch, humming with energy while it continued to hover in front of Peter. Finally, with all three of the trailer’s occupants staring transfixed, the glow vanished and the puzzle box fell to clatter atop the coffee table. Instead of the complicated conglomeration of mechanical contraptions, what sat motionless in front of Peter now was a simple box composed of white, polished bone.
Peter Mayhew, Greg Van Helsing, and Old lady Romanov all held their breath as the lid eased open without further prompting to reveal a… something. Peter had never seen, heard of, or even conceptualized anything quite like the small, diamond shaped item hovering inside of the box. It was emanating a soft dark red glow, which was really only noticeable in the dim light of Roma’s home, and rotating slowly on its vertical axis. Roma reached out to grab it, but her hand stopped cold against an invisible barrier where the lid had once been. Puzzled, she tried again, this time pushing against what looked like empty air above the item.
“I think I might have to be the one to take it out of the box,” Peter said, a few hints that he’d picked up while solving its puzzle clicking in his mind. “That red glow, I think… I don’t know why I know this, or if I’m even right, but something’s telling me it’s from the blood it took from stabbing my fingers a hundred times yesterday. It knows I am the one who solved it somehow, I can feel it.”
Greg and Roma looked at him curiously.
“Reach in and grab it then,” Greg suggested. “If anything terrible happens, you’ve got two leading experts in the supernatural field right here in the room with you. No safer place.”
“Remember, Peter, whatever that is belongs to me even if you are the one to take it from the box.”
Peter nodded, rubbed his hands together nervously, and then reached in. His hand passed through the barrier without resistance, though a slight tickle passed through each part of his hand as it entered. Before he even wrapped his fingers around the, whatever, he felt it approach his hand and nestle into his grasping palm. And then the pain began.