Donovan drummed his fingers against the bar top. The connection with Gabriel was strained, pulled tight from his childe’s refusal to drink. Hopefully, this meal would at least fix some of the damage done. He could feel that Gabriel was close and then, it was like something snapped inside him and their connection was severed. He immediately stilled, knowing what that meant, his childe had gone feral.
The vampire stood, tossing a few dollars on the bar before striding outside, looking for where he had taken his failed meal. He found the large man curled into a ball and sobbing, Gabriel's phone on the ground beside him.
“Gabe? Come on, this isn't funny. Gabe!” Lee’s voice came from the small piece of metal and plastic.
He picked up the phone, holding it to his ear, “Lee, what did you say to him?”
The pause on the other end of the line wasn’t unsurprising, “D-Donovan? What--where’s Gabe?”
“I am unsure, answer the question, what did you say to him.”
“Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. I just said something funny was going on, then I heard something cracking and it sounded like someone was crying. Is that Gabe?”
“No, I need to find him, I need to know where he would have gone.” It was difficult to stay calm when Gabriel was likely gorging himself on the nearest humans he could find. He shouldn’t have let him leave his eyesight.
“Uh, well if he isn’t coming here, maybe his apartment. There’s a storage unit we’ve got rented out, and there’s the area by the river we’ve been investigating lately. I’ll get Chuck and Louise to try to call him. Wait, you’ve got his phone. Oh god.” The man who never seemed to be without an intelligent thought was babbling now. “Maybe he went to a church?” Lee tacked on, desperation creeping into his tone.
“He would go somewhere familiar, I shall go to his apartment. He would not even go near a church, let alone in one. If you find him, keep your distance, he is not himself. You must call me immediately, I will have his phone with me.”
“Okay,” Lee agreed, “tell us if you find him, too. We’ve been worried about him.”
“Very well,” without another word, Donovan hung up on him, “Gabriel, why do you have to be so stubborn.”
He looked down at the crying man, at least he could get some sustenance out of the situation. He grabbed him by the back of his shirt and hauled him to his feet, driving his fangs into his throat and drinking deeply. There was more pain than there needed to be, more blood spilt than usual, but it was some measure of comfort to take out some of his frustration.
There wouldn’t be much time to dispose of the body properly, so the trunk of Gabriel’s car would have to do for now. No telling how soon Gabriel’s sanity would snap. If it hadn’t already.
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How did he get here? Gabriel couldn’t quite remember the details. Everything seemed to be getting fuzzy now, like he’d been up for a couple of days without sleeping and had thoroughly exhausted any chance his brain had of functioning normally. He was at his apartment door. He didn’t have his keys.
“Oh,” Gabriel said aloud, patting his pockets. “Where’d they go?” He asked himself, then reached for the doorknob, expecting it to open. It didn’t. Right, he needed his keys. He didn’t have his keys. Gabriel tried to grab his phone from his pocket, belatedly remembering he didn’t have that with him either. “Shit.”
“Gabriel? Are you alright?” It was his neighbor, Alice. She was a sweet older lady who brought him cookies whenever she baked, which was often. The ‘Leave it to Beaver Mom’ he never got to have.
He didn’t immediately register her question, too focused on willing his cellphone to be in one pocket of his jeans and the keys in the other. She had to repeat his name before he could break the spell.
“Gabriel?”
“Huh? Alice?” He looked back at her, blinking several times. If he squinted, he almost thought he could see the branches of her veins and arteries. It was almost beautiful. “When did you get here? Have you seen my keys?” Maybe she knew.
She shook her head, “no, but honey, you don't look so good, come, I'll get you some coffee.” She took his arm, leading him toward her apartment. He noticed how very blue the grays in her hair seemed to be. The sluggish beat of her pulse thrumming in his mind the moment her skin touched his. She’d tear like rice paper, he thought, becoming more and more distant in his own mind. Her kitchen smelled like baked apples. Was that what she’d taste like, too?
“Coffee is good,” Gabriel belatedly replied, though it took him far longer to even come up with that short statement than it should have. He was already sitting at her kitchen table at that point. When did he even sit down? Gabriel didn’t remember. It was like he was losing time. One moment jumped to the next without warning, and just trying to hold on to any singular thought took every ounce of concentration he could muster. Alice. Alice’s blood. Did she need all of it? Any of it?
“You don't look well, Gabriel. Have you been getting enough sleep?” She asked, pouring grounds into the filter of her coffee maker. He wrinkled his nose at the smell. It was a thousand times stronger than any other coffee he’d ever known. Why would she give him something like that?
“Alice,” Gabriel said her name, standing up from the table and approaching her slowly. It took an effort to put his feet in the right place to carry him forward. It took even more not to launch himself at her. “I’m a good person,” he said. “I’m--I mean, I am.”
She scowled, resting her hands on his shoulders, “of course you are Gabriel, you've always been a good man.”
He liked Alice. He really did. She was nice. She had a laugh that made him think of a humming radiator, deep and raspy. Her scream turned out to be just like her laugh. She didn’t get a chance to finish making the coffee. It was just as well. Gabriel didn’t remember why he’d even want it.
It was a waking nightmare worse than anything he’d ever dreamed. Worse than the memories of his parents dead in the arms of a monster. Worse than the days spent in that same monster’s basement, fighting his growing hunger when he was still alive enough to fight it. Only now Gabriel was dead. He had killed before. He had enjoyed it. Now, because he’d tried so hard not to kill again, he couldn’t control himself. Gabriel’s body moved on its own, and it didn’t even feel like he’d be able to stop if he tried. Alice’s blood tasted so incredible. When he was done, and the old woman became nothing but a ragdoll crumpled on the linoleum, he still couldn’t control himself.
He’d become a passenger, only able to feel, trapped in his head while the monster he’d been terrified of becoming took over. Gabriel tried to reach towards that mental path he’d come to know so well between himself and Donovan, but there was nothing. Only hunger. Only madness.
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“Lee, I--” Louise cut herself off, drawing a hand up to her forehead while she blindly reached for the coffee pot on the counter. “Why can’t we go to Donovan and Gabe’s place right now?” She’d asked him several times already, but the answer kept flying away. Then she didn’t even remember if he said anything at all, and she’d get this sharp pain in her head. They must have been playing this back-and-forth game for about twenty minutes, but she still had this compulsion. This need. They had to go there. She was supposed to talk to Donovan. It didn’t strike her how odd it was that she didn’t even know why she was supposed to. It was just this vague, but unshakable fact in her mind. She had to go there. She just had to.
Lee shook his head, “I told you, he's not going to be there. What's wrong with you?” he asked with a scowl, “are you feeling alright?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, just then realizing she was dangerously close to pouring her coffee into a potted cactus and not the mug she’d been trying to aim for. “So, why can’t we go there?” She paused, “sorry.”
“Come on, Louise, let's go check his apartment, I don't want to leave you on your own.”
“His apartment,” she repeated, setting the coffee pot down without even bothering to fill her mug. “You think he’ll be there? Will Donovan?” She didn’t know why she was asking. It didn’t make sense that he’d be there if he was looking for Gabe. Her brain felt like it was short-wired. Maybe she needed to get more sleep. God knew they’d all been overworked lately.
He scowled, pushing her ahead of him, “who? Gabe or Donovan? They might be, I don't know, but we need to exhaust all the possibilities.”
Louise just let him push her where she needed to go, didn’t even stop to grab her purse or phone. They had a direction, and something told her that was really important. More important than helping their friend or figuring out what was going on with him. “Maybe we can swing by Donovan’s house if he isn’t at the apartment,” she suggested as if the idea had suddenly struck her.
Lee glared at her, shoving her into the car, “yeah, sure, fine.”
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She knew he had no intention of actually going there, he had already said as much, but his false agreement seemed to quiet something in her mind, to appease it. Maybe they would find Gabe and then Lee would have to take her to see Donovan? Yes, they’d go to Gabe’s apartment and then they would find Donovan. She didn’t have a plan after that point, but it seemed like an itch she couldn’t scratch. In the back of her mind, something was hiding. A thought trying to shake itself loose. It would all become clearer once they saw Donovan.
“I don’t understand why Gabe ran away. He seemed like he was doing okay.” Louise observed, buckling her seatbelt, “you don’t think Donovan did something crazy, do you? Maybe Gabe got hurt and he just didn’t come to us because he wanted to protect us.”
“Donovan sounded worried when I spoke to him, very worried, I think something happened but I’m not sure what. I don’t think Donovan had anything to do with it.” He stated as he got behind the wheel and buckled up.
She looked at Lee for a moment, studying his face. “Why did things have to change so much? I miss the way it used to be.” She missed knowing they were the good guys. Now it just felt like they were hypocrites. Allied with Donovan, a vampire, and Gabe. She loved Gabe, but she hated knowing that he had to kill people. She hated that they had to just let it happen, too. “It was a lot easier.”
Lee closed his eyes for a moment as he turned the key, “I know, I wish everything could go back to the way it was too. Maybe, maybe when we find Gabe we can figure out how to fix things. There has to be a way, right?” He lowered his voice so she could barely hear, “if he even wants to come back.”
They hadn’t really talked about it since the night Gabe had showed up with Donovan to tell them how things were going to be. They’d just tried to focus on work. Chuck drank a little more. Danny tried even harder to learn the ropes of hunting, and even if he still hadn’t managed to go on any real hunts without freaking out--he’d been doing better. Lee and Louise hardly spent time outside of the office together anymore. Louise privately wondered if they were punishing themselves for failing Gabe. What could they honestly have done better besides locked him up where nobody could touch him?
“I want him to come back. I really do,” Louise said, rolling down her window so she could prop her elbow over the side and catch some cool air once Lee got onto the road. “If something’s wrong, I can’t hurt him. I can’t.”
He pulled out of the parking lot, heading toward Gabe’s apartment, “hopefully it won’t come to that.” She could tell that he was steeling himself for the possibility of harming their friend.
“It’s not,” Louise emphasized, pointedly changing the subject, “it’s not really Gabe’s place anymore, is it?” Louise asked, “it’s been months. He probably stopped paying rent.”
Lee rubbed the back of his neck, looking a little sheepish, “I may have covered it for the past few months, hoping that he would come back, and I was thinking he might want some of his things.”
Louise looked over at him in disbelief, “how’d you manage to get that much money?” She frowned, “you didn’t pick up a night job again, did you?”
“Well, I, you see,” he sighed, closing his eyes only briefly before looking back at the road, “yes.”
“Lee!” She slapped his knee, “we could’ve just picked his stuff up and kept it in the back office! Why didn’t you tell me you were doing that?”
“Because I didn’t want you to worry, I was doing it for Gabe too. Imagine if he came back thinking it was still his only to find out it wasn’t. With him being a vampire now I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.” Vampires were unpredictable in Lee’s opinion and who knew how they were going to react to something unexpected.
Louise closed her eyes and took a deep breath just to keep herself from raising her voice, “Lee, we are all in this together. Gabe was lost because none of us were there for him. I can’t ask or even let you make choices like that on your own. If we’d talked about it, maybe we all could have paid the rent. Nobody would have gotten hurt.”
“It’s just that no one has any money, I couldn’t ask everyone to pitch in when we can hardly make rent on the office.”
“Do you understand why I’m upset at you right now?” Louise asked, unsure why he couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell him. “You can’t solve everything alone, Lee.”
He stayed silent for a moment, sighing heavily, “of course, you’re right, I’ll try to rely on everyone more. Alright?”
“Just don’t lie,” she told him, raising a hand before he could argue, “and omission of important facts is a form of lying, so don’t tell me you weren’t lying.” The sooner they got this over with, the sooner they could go to Donovan’s. She’d save any further arguments with Lee for a day they weren’t in crisis mode (if that ever happened).
“Fine, I understand Louise, you’re completely right and I’ll try not to do it again.” He would give in, he almost always gave in, and he knew that she was right in this.
By the time they’d pulled up to the apartments, their little argument had safely cooled on the backburner, and Louise was ready to plan. “Okay, so if Gabe is up there for any reason, he’s probably in a shitty mood. If that’s the case, I don’t want to bring a stake, but I don’t think a baseball bat would be a bad idea. Just to stun him. If he’s hungry and not thinking straight.” That was the closest she’d get to believing anything worse had happened.
“Grab your stun gun then and I’ll get the taser out of the back. Hopefully that will be enough to stop him.” He turned the car off and opened the door after popping open the trunk. His taser was right where he left it, thankfully, tucked safely in the weapons compartment he had placed where the spare would usually go. There was a good chance they weren’t going up to Gabe’s apartment to have a tea party. Louise was glad she kept a baseball bat under the passenger seat just for an occasion like this, and she grabbed it before her feet even hit the pavement.
“You follow, I’ll go in first,” Louise advised, finding herself feeling almost normal now that they were out of the office. “Keep an eye out. If those guys who went after Gabe had friends, then someone may have staked the place out just in case he came back. I want to be sure we’re not walking into a trap.” Hunters didn’t tend to associate with monsters, and they didn’t like other hunters who did either.
Lee kept the taser in one hand and his pistol in the other as he followed her up the stairs to Gabe’s apartment. This sort of thing had become so routine, neither of them appreciated how crazy this whole situation was.
Louise approached the door and immediately discovered it was locked. “Lee, do you have his spare key?” She whispered, trying not to draw any attention from potential nosy neighbors.
He nodded, pulling it out and sliding it into the lock, “yeah, never leave home without it.” He was teasing her, at least they could have a little friendly banter while hunting their friend.
The lights were off. Nobody home. “I just don’t get it,” Louise exclaimed, “this is the first place he’d go, isn’t it?” She flipped on one of the lights, “what the hell? I’m not going to kill him, but--I’m going to kill Gabe when we find him!”
Lee looked around, going into the kitchen, “maybe we should check with his neighbors, see if they’ve seen anything.” He slid his gun and taser into the back of his pants, covering them with his shirt, “it’s the only way we’ll know for sure if he was here or not.”
Lowering her bat, Louise nodded, “alright, there’s an old lady next door who sent him a Christmas card last year. If anyone saw Gabe recently, she’d be the one to ask.”
“Alright,” he headed for the door, “let’s go see the Christmas card lady.” He waited for Louise to come outside before locking the door. The moment he looked toward her door he knew there was a problem, it was a slightly ajar, which was unusual to say the least. No one just left their door open, even a little bit, “Louise, be ready, there’s something wrong.” He drew his gun again, ignoring the taser, “I’ll cover you.”
“Christ, how did we miss that?” She hissed, edging towards the door and hefting up her bat as she used the very tip of her toe to nudge it open a little more. The living room light was on. “Should we call out?” She asked Lee, unsure. Breaking and entering was a distinct possibility here, but so was alerting anyone--or thing--that might be waiting for them. They’d learned a long time ago that there were way more monsters in this city than your typical petty crook.
He shook his head, “no,” he kept his voice quiet, “we don’t want to alert anyone, not with what we know.” He pointed his gun over her shoulder, “we’ll just take it slow.”
So they did. Louise slipped through the living room as quietly as she could manage, which wasn’t too hard. The carpeting muffled their steps. This place had that familiar old person stench of baby powder and coffee, clean but stale. It looked normal enough. It was only when she rounded the corner into the kitchen that Louise’s heart caught in her throat.
“Oh,” she whispered, looking about them. Blood. Everywhere. Then that poor lady crumpled by her sink, and-- “Gabe!” Louise exhaled on a silent scream, hefting up her bat. He was crouched in the corner, staring back at them with glassy eyes. The evidence of murder plain on his blood-covered face and clothing. He was everything he’d ever hated, all wrapped up in one gruesome package.
Lee moved forward and that’s when she saw the stake in his hand. He moved fast, intending to take their friend by surprise. Gabe. She had to do something, she just couldn’t let Lee kill him.
“No!” Louise shouted, moving faster, pushing Lee out of the way just as Gabe was alerted by the pair of them. The monster who’d been their friend could have easily attacked them both, and they wouldn’t have been able to do a thing. Instead, he ran. Out into the safety and danger of the night. A painful lump formed in the pit of Louise’s stomach. She bit back a sob.
“Are we--” Louise couldn’t control herself, when that creeping sense of calm from before that she’d been struggling with all day seemed to swallow her up, “--are we going to Donovan’s now?”
Lee looked at her in complete shock, as though she had completely lost her mind, “why did you stop me? Louise! He killed that woman! He's completely lost his mind!”
“We can fix this if we go to Donovan’s,” she insisted. Any other voice of reason in her mind was gone. It was almost a relief.
He slapped her, couldn't stop himself, “stop, just stop, what the fuck is wrong with you?! Maybe we should see Donovan! Maybe he knows what the hell is wrong with you!”
Louise’s face stung where he’d slapped her, but still she remained calm, distant from herself and from him. “Yes, that’s a good idea,” she agreed. “Let’s go see him.”
He grabbed her arm, pulling her out and closing the door. He would have the cops come by and take care of it, right now he needed to take care of Louise. He shoved her in the car before getting in himself and grabbing his phone, calling Gabe’s number to talk to Donovan.
“Lee, have you found him?”
“Briefly but he ran, I have another problem though, I need to meet with you, it’s urgent.”
Donovan sighed, “very well, I'll be at your office.”
Lee turned the key and threw it into gear, “you get your wish, we’re going to meet Donovan.”
Louise smiled. The effect was not a pleasant one.