Dizziness threatened to throw me to the ground again.

My throat dried up. I didn’t remember it being sore at all during the fight with the vampire. I cleared my throat but that did nothing. I thrummed my throat harder. It felt like something was stuck deep down trying to get out. I grunted harder until I threw myself into a coughing fit, on the verge of hacking my own guts up. I lurched forward and Charice cried out.

“Easy, easy,” said Nehemiah.

Charice rubbed my arm to comfort me. “He needs help. What do we do?”

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” said the wizard.

“I’m…alright.” But the world spun around me. And I couldn’t walk in a straight line to save my life. My vision grew blurry and then clear. Too clear. Like 4K clear. I tried to focus on what happened in the fight with the Dobhar-chu, no wait what had we just fought? Dwarves? A ninja? Donnie Yen? No that wasn’t right.

My thoughts were not making sense, but that was about the only clear thought I could have. Just as worry tackled me into submission I saw a lone figure standing off in the distance, someone who looked quite familiar.

I raised a shaky pointy finger at the figure and asked Charice, “Who do you look like to him? Wait…”

I couldn’t even get the question out right. Closing my eyes tight, I tried to get rid of the dizziness but nothing helped. Again I attempted to speak. “Who does he look like to me? Doh—”

Charice patted me on the back and rubbed my shoulders. “It’s gonna be okay Sean. Don’t talk. We’ll figure this out together.”

My finger wobbled as I pointed again. “Don’t you see that familiar person?”

Rob’s muppet head bobbed side to side. “What person?”

“He’s right there.”

“Describe him,” said the hob.

I squinted to get a better look. “He’s about my height, red-orange hair, white, freckles, jeans, T-shirt, leather jacket. I swear he looks a lot like my da—”

The word caught in my throat. “It can’t be,” I hissed.

“What’s wrong Sean?” Charice spoke in a low voice with a slight quiver.

In an instant my fatigue and dizziness left me, a sudden clarity rushing over me. The guy standing some hundred feet away looked an awful lot like my father. I broke free of Charice and Nehemiah’s grasp and bolted towards him.

“Sean!” yelled Nehemiah.

But I didn’t have time to answer. The figure who looked like my dad stood still. Then in a flash spun on his heels and bolted behind the movie theater. I followed him running along the desolate walkway behind the movie theater. I lost sight of the guy as a door swung open and more moviegoers exited the theater.

I yelled as I burst through the crowd like a football lineman. “Excuse me. Sorry. Watch out.”

I didn’t consider that I hurt any people, and I didn’t even think of the confusion my friends were in. My only goal: catch up to the guy.

Dad could not be alive, could he? He died. Or had he? Technically we never found the body. Mom had Dad declared legally dead after a while.

Was there a chance my father was still alive out there somewhere? Was there a reason he couldn’t come back to us? Gavin had known Dad was in the Shepherd’s Guild. And it was something I still hadn’t been able to ask Nehemiah about. I was working my way up to it, but I honestly didn’t want to know. If Nehemiah had reasons for keeping it from me, they were probably good reasons. Part of me just wasn’t ready for the truth yet.

Gavin hadn’t been involved with that part of Dad’s life for too long before he died. So Gavin really didn’t know any more than I did. And now some guy showed up on a random night after we got attacked by vampires looking like my father.

Maybe if Gavin hadn’t planted the seed of doubt about Nehemiah in my mind a couple weeks ago I wouldn’t have batted my eyes at this redhead guy running from me. But after finding out that the Kelpie had murdered my sister, that basically my whole family aside from Mom and my kid brother were involved in the supernatural, anything was possible now.

I chased the guy to the end of the Century Theater but lost sight of him. I looked left and right and then spotted him running towards a now empty store building that used to be a Toys R Us.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Bolting across the parking lot, I scrambled over parked cars and jumped over bushes in attempts to cut a straight line towards the guy.

He made for the back of the store and I turned the corner. I should not have been able to keep up. He ran crazy fast. But my Good Luck coursed through me and I pushed my body to the limit. I saw him run around a large garbage dump into the building. As I made the corner around the garbage dump I ran headlong into a piece of plywood that acted as a barrier.

The back door of the store had been boarded up.

What the heck? Where had he gone?

Without thinking how or why, I unleashed Jade and hacked my way into the store. I stumbled into complete darkness somewhere in the back end of the old Toys R Us. Of course it was empty, devoid even of a pallet jack. Up ahead I saw thick plastic flaps, a fluid doorway between the back of the store and the actual store. The flaps moved as if someone had recently gone through them. I burst through the flaps into complete silence. Raising my sword, my eyes scanned from left to right. Light poured in from the frosted windows upfront acting as the only source of illumination. The moon light from outside mingled with the parking lot light poles beaming into the desolate aisles, casting long shadows in perfect symmetrical rows across the linoleum floor.

Though I wanted to believe that this man was my dad, I kept Jade out just in case. I mean we just fought a freakin’ vampire for crying out loud. And something about the way the guy stared at me creeped me out.

I picked an aisle at random and eased my way down it. The only sounds were my own breathing and the arteries in my neck pumping blood. My throat hurt again and I resisted the urge to clear it. I listened intently but picked up no other sounds. The only thing moving in the air was the dust I kicked up. The dust went up my nostrils causing me to sneeze. I tried to stifle it but my sneeze cut through the silence like a blaring alarm clock.

No sooner had I recovered from the sneezing fit, I heard footsteps moving away from me at the end of the aisle adjacent to me. I halted at a junction of aisles. The guy’s shadow rounded the corner down another aisle just out of reach. So I wasn’t seeing things. There really was a guy in here. Especially if he gave off a shadow.

Good Luck doubled my pace as I dashed down the next aisle. I turned the corner and moved to cut off the aisle that the guy was running down. I half expected him to collide into me, so I brought my sword back out of the way just in case I accidentally stabbed him.

But as I looked down the aisle, there was no one there.

“Huh?”

My eyes widened. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Or rather, what I didn’t see. I had been dashing so fast that at the very least I should’ve smacked right into the guy. But even if he decided to turn around and run the other direction, I still should’ve seen him running back down the aisle.

Before I could get too freaked out a wave of nausea hit me. That itch in my throat came back, this time tenfold. I cleared my throat and for some reason it engaged my gag reflex. I felt my Luck leveling up in me and I screamed involuntarily as Celtic knots poured from my mouth spilling out onto the vacant Toys R Us store. The scream assaulted my own ears, making them ring. All around me the empty metal racking of shelves crumbled, shriveling up like pieces of paper too close to open flame.

Who screamed?

In a moment’s glance I realized that all of the metal turned away from me on both sides of the aisle, as if I was the one that screamed. Before I could contemplate the implications another wave of dizziness hit me and I lurched forward stumbling down the aisle trying to catch my balance. I collided into some shelving, fell, and rolled over, banging my head on the shelf.

Lights flashed in my eyes. I planted my hand on a wall just to get to my feet. I blinked over and over trying to clear my vision. Finally when everything seemed clear I waited and listened, but heard nothing.

I waited for what seemed like an eternity for the sound of footsteps or the glimpse of a shadow to indicate if the guy was still in the store with me, but there was nothing but me and the shadows. Whoever that man was, he was long gone now.

Instead of bursting through the front window, I decided to exit the way that I had come in. I parted the thick plastic flaps and a thought struck me. Were the flaps moving again before I pushed through them? I shook my head. No, I reassured myself.

I stepped through the plywood that I’d splintered on the way in and looked down at Jade. My knuckles paled under my iron grip and I eased off the katana and re-sheathed it.

Dad? Alive, and running away from me? What in the heck had I been thinking? Even if I wasn’t turning into a vampire, whatever the bite did, it messed with my head. Clarity rushed back to me and I pondered why I had even chased this guy. The poor guy was probably just another redhead. Some sort of magic stomach flu must have gotten to me.

I tried to put myself in the guy’s shoes. He had probably seen us attack the human looking vampire, and in the chaos of the situation tried to decide if he should call the cops or not. I know I would’ve been thinking the same thing if I were in his shoes. As he was deciding I locked eyes with him, spooked him, and he bolted. Smart move. From his point of view I’d just sliced a Japanese guy open with a katana.

I looked at the store one last time and gasped.

The guy stepped towards me, still hidden in the shadow of the store.

I jumped and unsheathed Jade again, spinning on my heels and falling into a defensive stance.

For a moment he didn’t move. Then he entered the moonlight.

My breath caught in my throat. I nearly choked. I didn’t even have time to gasp. The person standing in front of me wasn’t my dad or Gavin.

He was more related to me than either of them.

The person standing just a few feet away from me in the desolate empty Toys R Us store, was me.

Jade clattered to the ground. The ringing of the blade shattered the silence between us. I only took my eyes off of him for a moment, but as soon as I retrieved the blade with my sweat drenched hands the guy standing in front of me, the other Sean, simply blew away like a vapor of steam.

Dumbstruck, I worried for my sanity.