Helens-of-Troy (39 page)

He watched as the vampire entered the
washroom, leaving the door open just a crack so he could see and
hear whatever he wanted to. The vampire was in control, Ryan knew,
and although every bone in his body wanted to fight him, every
nerve ending in his brain was shutting down. He succumbed to
exhaustion for almost an hour before the sound of the door opening
brought Ryan back to semi-consciousness. He hoped upon hope that it
was Chief Cohen, or even Purdy, coming back to check up on him. But
it wasn’t. It was Ellie, just like the vampire had predicted. He
slowly sat up and turned towards her.

“Oh my God, Ryan,” Ellie gasped, seeing
him behind bars. The boy before her was almost unrecognizable. His
hair was beginning to grow back, both on his face and atop his
head, and she knew he was unlikely to see a razor anytime soon. The
corners of his mouth were turned down in anguish and dark circles
were forming under his eyes.“I am so sorry,” was all she could
say.

“Then get me out of here,” Ryan
pleaded. “Help me, Ellie.”

The tone in his voice was eerily
similar to the sounds little Brooke had made, begging for help in
the dream that started all this. “I’m trying,” Ellie said softly.
“I told the Chief about the dream. And Jacey and I went on an
artifact hunt for all kinds of crazy stuff that she thinks is going
to help. Tom was supposed to find a way to get rid of the vampire
by doing some research on the computer while we were gone, but…”
she looked at Ryan with tears in her eyes, “when we came back, Tom
was unconscious and Stan was gone.”

“I knew Tom would be the dead man
fainting. When will you chics learn to count on the brawn before
the brain? It’s the number one rule of cavemanism for a reason.
Survival of the fittest. Since you hardly know Jacey, let me fill
you in. Whatever she’s doing, it’s going to be
half-baked.”

“Don’t be so ungrateful,” Ellie
responded. “She’s trying to help you. I don’t see many other people
doing that. And as for Tom, let’s just say you don’t look so
superhuman yourself right now.”

“And you…” Ryan continued, looking away
from her, trying to hide the tears forming in the corners of his
own eyes, “…Goth, I’m spent. I don’t even know if I have the words
available to adequately express how I feel about you right
now.”

Ellie walked to within inches of the
bars separating her from Ryan. “Don’t you dare blame this whole
mess on me,” she said calmly. “You don’t scare me, Ryan Lachey. You
can say whatever you want about me. Let me fill you in. If you had
invited me, or Tom, or even Jacey along with you that night, this
whole thing probably wouldn’t have happened. At least not this way.
But you had to be the big star and do it all yourself. Happy now?
Your brother is missing, and I think the vampire has him. Don’t
pretend to not know what I’m talking about, because I know you
do.”

“Shhh,” he whispered, putting his
finger to his lips and pointing at the door.

“I don’t care if Roy’s in there,” she
said. “I told you. Roy already knows about my crazy
dream.”

“It’s not Roy,” he frantically mouthed
in silence. Chics, he thought. Even when you want them to
understand, even if their life depends on it, sometimes there’s
just no getting through to them.

The vampire emerged from the washroom
with the toilet plunger in his hand. He sped towards Ellie,
swinging his arms like a baseball bat. The rubber bottom of the
cleaning utensil hit her hard in the head. It stunned her, throwing
her body off balance.

“That’s dirty, you asshole!” Ryan
exclaimed.

The vampire smiled slyly at Ryan, then
turned and pushed the already dizzy Ellie to the concrete floor.
Her head smacked the brick wall on the way down, knocking her
out.

“Sometime can I meet a human that
actually gives me a challenge?” the vampire asked rhetorically,
squatting down next to her. He placed his thumb and forefinger
together and flicked twice at Ellie’s cheek. She didn’t respond.
“Out cold,” he acknowledged.

“Dude, you don’t hit girls,” Ryan said
angrily.

“That’s not hitting her,” he said.
“This is hitting her…” He smacked Ellie across the face. She still
didn’t stir. “I hate this bitch,” he said. He leaned towards her
neck, opened his mouth wide, exposing his overgrown
incisors.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Ryan
screamed.

The vampire stopped. He looked at Ryan.
“You’re probably right,” he admitted. “I shouldn’t kill her here.
Colin’s not around.”

“You can’t kill her,” Ryan argued.
Internally, he was digesting what the vampire had said... ‘Colin’s
not around.’ There was something going on between the two of them.
That made his predicament all the more sinister.

“Of course I can kill her,” the vampire
reminded him. “That’s what I do for a living. It’s my
job.”

“You said it was Colin’s job. It’ll
just be easier, you know, if you wait until both of the twins are
around,” he guessed.

“Why, Ryan Lachey,” the vampire
chuckled. “There is a light on in that brain of yours.” He moved
Ellie’s body away from the wall and struggled to take her in his
arms. “She’s a lot heavier than she looks,” he said to Ryan, “just
so you know.”

“Why don’t you get me out of here?”
Ryan offered. “So I can carry her for you.”

“Well, that light bulb moment of yours
ended pretty quickly, didn’t it?” he laughed. “Nice try. But we’ve
got a party to go to and you’re not invited.” He threw Ellie over
his shoulder and waved good-bye to Ryan.

“Wait!” Ryan shrieked. “What about
Stan? You said you’d let him go. Where is he? Are you going to
bring him here to me or are you taking him back to the
house?”

The vampire turned and laughed at Ryan
hysterically. “You know, as I think back, you’re right, Ryan. We
never really did have a deal. I mean, we didn’t cut our palms and
become blood brothers or anything.” He shrugged. “So
unfortunate.”

“You son-of-a-bitch,” Ryan screamed. “I
am going to get out of here, and I am going to hunt you down. I am
going to pluck every hair from your head one by one, and I am going
to enjoy doing it. Then I’m going to sit back and watch my palm
prints fade from around your neck after you’ve taken your last
breath, you fucking piece of shit.”

“Wow! That’s a couple of run-on
sentences,” the vampire laughed, kicking Ryan the TV channel
changer that had fallen on the floor. “Entertain yourself, mortal.
Maybe there’s a Supernatural all-nighter on that’ll get you
inspired.” He adjusted Ellie’s weight, spun their bodies around
like a centrifugal top, and dematerialized before Ryan’s
eyes.

“How the fuck does he do that?” Ryan
wondered, as he sat on the bed with his back to the wall “Okay,
Lachey,” he said to himself, “let’s evaluate the other team. We’ve
got a deranged psycho-sucker playing centre, and a duffus cop
guarding him on the right.” He pulled the library card out of his
pocket and took a closer look at the signature. “Shit,” he said,
reading through the scrawl. “It’s Kevin’s dad’s. And if Cody gave
Colin the book, that pretty much means the no-show brother is
guarding his twin on the left of the field. The question is, is
anyone running interference?”

Before Ryan could think this thought
through further, he felt his eyelids becoming increasingly heavy.
It was only a few minutes before his body toppled sideways on the
bed, and he began to snore.

His slumber was far from peaceful. Ryan
instinctively curled up on the bed with his back to the wall, much
like a dog would for protection. The grey blanket stamped ‘Property
of Troy Police’ was lying at the bottom of the steel framed bed,
and despite the fact that he lay there shivering, he did not have
enough awareness about himself to pull the cover over his
body.

He fell into a fragmented dream of no
particular significance. One moment he was on the football field,
hitting the ball with his six string guitar, the next he was
arguing with Betty whether Stan could drive the Toyota. Throughout
it all his shoulder throbbed and his legs became cramped, but he
refused to change position.

“Jacey’s my best friend,” he cried out
delusionally.

He broke into a cold sweat, and
eventually the dampness against his shirt woke him from his REM
stage. “Fuck,” he said, finally reaching for the blanket. “I’m
seriously going mental in here and it’s only been a few days.
There’s no way I could do this for the rest of my life.”

He sat up in the corner, draping the
wool around him. “Somebody’s going to slip up somewhere, and I’m
going to have to be ready. I just need some time to myself to think
clearly and write the playbook.” He continued the thought process
he was going through earlier, placing the vampire and the two
Dayton’s on one side of the field, and himself, Ellie, Tom and
Jacey on the other. “We’re doomed,” he acknowledged as the outside
door to the police station began to open once more.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

As soon as the Lachey’s side door
opened, Jacey threw her arms around the first person she saw. It
happened to be Helen, who didn’t like to be touched by people she
hardly knew in the first place, let alone locked in a fright
squeeze by one.

“Help us,” Jacey begged.

“I will if you let me go,” Helen
replied.

“Give her to me,” Helena said, putting
her arms around Jacey’s shoulder, pulling her away from Helen as
she did so. “What on earth happened?” she asked the frightened
girl.

As they went up the stairs, Jacey
briefly told them that she and Ellie had gone out shopping, leaving
Stan with Tom, and when they returned home, they had found Tom
lying unconscious on the floor.

“Ellie went to look for Stan,” she
explained. “I dialed directory assistance to get your number. She
thought I needed it to dial 911. Sha…like I’m an airhead or
summat.”

“Have you called an ambulance?” Helen
asked.

“Wot for? I don’t think this is an
ambulance type of thing. I don’t think paramedics take paranormal
classes even though they kind of sound the same. You know,
para-whatsits.” She paused, fingering the cross around her neck. “I
could be wrong I guess, but I don’t know…my spooky senses are
tingling. I think Tom was knocked senseless by a vampire. And I
think the vampire might have Stan.”

“Oh dear,” Helena sighed.

“Good God,” Helen said, looking at her
mother. “I want to laugh, but somehow…somehow I get the feeling
nobody is joking around here.”

Tom was sitting on the bed, rubbing his
head, when the ladies walked into Stan’s bedroom. The encounter had
left him somewhat dazed and confused. “Where am I?” he
asked.

“You’re at the Lachey’s. Let me see
that eye,” Helena demanded, grabbing Tom’s head in her hands. A
welt stretched from the side of his head to his nose. It looked
like he had run into the proverbial brick wall. “You’re going to
have a beaut of black eye,” she noted, checking the rest of his
head for contusions.

“A Shiner?” Tom winced. “I never had a
shiner before. How’s it going to look?”

“In less than a week,” Helena
predicted, “you will be up to your leading man antics. But you
might want to lay low for a while. Tell your parent you got in the
way of Stan’s baseball bat.”

“Stan,” Tom remembered. “I forgot about
Stan. Where is he?”

The ladies looked at each other
helplessly.

“Goth-Chic’s gone to find him,” Jacey
offered.

“Goth-Chic?” Helen
questioned.

“I’ll explain later,” Helena
replied.

“Seriously, they’re calling her
Goth-Chic?” Helen continued. “I was afraid something like this
would happen if I didn’t get her to the Biggie-Mart.” She looked
sternly at Jacey. “What do they call you?”

“Hot,” Jacey offered with a big smile
on her face.

“Never mind, Helen,” her mother
interrupted. “We have bigger things to worry about.”

“Oh really?” Helen agreed
sarcastically. “Those vampires have a way of slipping your mind,
don’t they?”

“Shit, I forgot about him too,” Tom
remembered. “He must have hit me harder than I thought. My brain’s
not working right.”

“You’ll be fine, Tom,” Helena assured
him.

“So let me get this straight,” Helen
said, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. “You,
Tom…you think you were kicked in the head by a vampire?”

“I know I was,” he answered.

“And you, Jacey…you believe
him?”

“Well, I’ve never actually saw him,”
she began, “but Stan talks about him all the time.”

“All the time?” Helena
asked.

Tom and Jacey nodded in
unison.

“And you, Mother…you believe what they
are saying to be true?”

“Uh-oh,” Helena grimaced. Maybe it was
too late for the Colorado blue lawn seed after all. Maybe the whole
neighborhood knew about her backyard guest. “Think, Helena, think,”
she thought to herself. “How do I get out of this one?”

“You can’t,” Helen said
aloud.