Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

ALEXANDER'S RIDE

CONCLUSION

“We never found who killed him.”

“I know that,” Sunny said, taking the seat that was not offered him.

“How much do you know?”

“I know that he had no blood in him. I know that his throat was crushed.”

“You know there were others?”

“That’s what I heard. Other guys around the campus. College students. All crushed windpipes. All… bloodless.”

“People were calling them the vampire killings.”

“Oh, shit,” Sunny murmured. That his friend had died was bad enough, that his friend had been killed in a weird, sensational way, a way that had a name to it, was too fucking much.

“And,” David began, and then he stopped.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

“Then you should be telling me.”

Sunny looked at him. David wasn’t going to let some kid from California make him blink. No, but he was a soldier. They had both seen things.

David said, “Shut the door.”

Sunny nodded, stood up, closed the door and returned to his chair on the other side of the desk.

“There’s more,” David said. “When they were found, all of them your friend Blake two, they had puncture marks on their throat, as if they’d been bitten.”

“So did someone use a snake? I mean…” And then Sunny stopped because that didn’t seem very possible at all.

Despite the sun outside, the light seemed to have been snatched from the room, and David said, “I wish they hadn’t sent you down here.”

“I wish my friend hadn’t been killed.”

“That’s fair,” David said, realizing he had sounded insulting to Sunny and he said, “There’s one thing… There’s one thing…”

He almost said “There’s one thing” again, but stopped himself.

Sunny was waiting.

“The reason I wish they hadn’t sent you down here is because I was feeling sane again, you see. And there is one reason that these things would be called the Vampire Killings, one reason we hadn’t considered I mean.”

“Okay?”

“Because a vampire did them.”

“Are you fucking on acid?” Sunny demanded.

“I’m risking a lot telling you what I’m going to tell you,” David said. “I’m risking my good name, my sanity, so do you want to hear it or not?”

“I do,” Sunny said.

“I… I believe that a vampire did this shit because—fuck, I can’t believe I’m saying this. And this is the reason that bitch Sommers sent you to me. She fucking saw it too.”

“What?” Sunny demanded.

“The last of those folks killed before I… before I left Lassador, was a high school friend of mine. He was killed differently, Not a college student. He was killed in a hotel room. There was blood. He wasn’t bloodless. But there were the wounds, the throat wounds, the throat crushed. He was…. He was dead as fuck, morgue dead, put in a body bag dead and before the autopsy he disappeared.”

“Someone stole the body?”

“No!” David hissed. “You’re not listening.”

“I’m listening,” Sunny insisted. “I’m listening. I promise. Please… Tell me.”

“He disappeared. No one could find him. And then, one day, Sommers went out to a club and saw him, saw him fucking singing in a band.”

“Then…” Sunny began. “Then he…”

“What? Wasn’t dead? But I told you he was. We all knew. This isn’t like the eighteen hundreds when you’re wrong about shit like this and people get up and walk away. He was dead, with a broken neck. And then he fucking wasn’t.”

“You’re not fucking with me,” Sunny said, looking into David’s eyes.

David shook his head.

“You’re… not nuts.”

David shook his head still.

“Fuck,” Sunny Kominsky said, sitting back down.

“Fuck.”

 

 

There had been a space of a few minutes when Alexander Jacob Kominsky had sat in a chair in Detective David Lawry’s office, dumbfounded over the strange information he had just been given before he said, “Well… what now?”

What now, indeed? He had crossed a large section of the country and now sat in a police station in a pleasant but unremarkable town in what he thought was a remarkably unpleasant state, looking for news about what had happened to his slain friend only to hear from the mouth of what seemed a sane human being, someone who was not joking with him at all, that his friend had been killed by a vampire.

“What now?” David echoed.

“Well, what do we do now?”

David looked utterly amazed.

“Look…”

“Sunny.”

“Sunny. You know what I did? I lost my mind is what I did, and what I’ve done since is get my mind back and settle into a new job, and I suggest you do the same.”

“But did you ever… see him face to face? Go to the club he was at?”

“No!”

“Then how do you know?”

“What do you mean how do I know?”

Sunny shook his head.

“I’d have to see him face to face. I’d have to have this guy so close to me, nose to nose. I’d have to.”

“Maybe that’s a California thing.”

“Maybe,” Sunny shrugged.

“Look,” he said, “I gave up everything. I left home and crossed the country just so I could find out what happened to Blake, and if meeting some vampire or wanna be vampire or zombie or whatever can tell me, then I’m up for it. I’m gonna do it.”

“Okay,” David said after thinking. “Well, how are you going to do it?”

“What’s the name of the club? Do you remember?”

“The Grey Note. In Rawlston.”

“Do you know the name of his band?”

“I don’t.”

“Why don’t you do this—?”

“Am I the detective or are you?”

“You are, sir,” Sunny said in such a way that David wasn’t sure if he was being mocked, “but might I suggest that you just type in Dan Rawlinson, and maybe: The Grey Note? And it will tell you?”

It was so easy, but David hadn’t wanted it to be easy. He hadn’t wanted to know. But there Dan Rawlinson was, as if they had never found his dead body. He was hiding in plain sight, but hiding didn’t really define what had happened, for Daniel Rawlinson wasn’t hiding at all. He was very much living in Rawlston, doing what he had always done, lead singer of a rock and folk band, and they played twice a week at the Grey Note, once at the Lampier, and went on tour.

“Vampires going on tour,” David murmured.

“That’s what hearses are for,” Sunny said.

“I’m going up there,” Sunny said, standing up as if he were headed to Rawlston immediately.

“No,” David said.

Then he said when Sunny looked at him. “Let’s go together.”

“Alright,” Sunny said. “When?”

“When is good for you? “ David asked, hoping Sunny Kominsky wouldn’t give the answer he knew he would.

“Tonight.”

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And while Sunny and David are about to have an adventure in their tonight, the rest of us will have to wait a few days to see what happens.