Where's that Vampire Too? ✔️

Chapter 4 - Breathe.

Alexa assessed the big rickety, cobweb-filled, slightly mouldy wooden barn they used for a garage. D's car was in its proper place next to her little black moped, but she sniffed, from the remaining exhaust fumes in the air it hadn't been off for long. The atmosphere also held a faint metallic smell, similar to, but thankfully not human blood (more Lithium?). Inside there was a fresh faintly blue, like pen ink, spillage over the back of the passenger seat... He could clean his own car when she found him alive.

She decided she would follow where his trail led. She was pretty sure adopting her was his midlife crisis, so while she breathed he wasn't allowed to have another one, their lives were too dangerous. She couldn't stop looking for him, even if he turned up with a Tesla and arm candy.

Uncle Ali's was closed, an event only seen on New Year's Day. And she could smell blood! Hot red panic surged through her! Breathe she told herself.

"Okay..." She muttered. Nothing bad would happen under Ali's roof, he'd scared even the local kids so much that they wouldn't dare pickpocket even a 1p sweet. And the CCTV. But D, and their luck... Breathe. There was a faint smell of the same metallic liquid that was in D's car at Uncle Ali's. But, the blood of the sales assistant Joe and ambulance supplies were overpowering it. "Breathe Alexa," she could smell no other human blood. The building holds his sent but he had taken a trip there almost every day for the last three years. D could handle himself and he was amazing at first aid. Alexa concluded D would have patched Joe up on-site if he had been in the vicinity.

She ventured into the pub, a "Ginger beer gurl?" The ever-present stares of all the regular patrons greeted her. As she surveyed them back she struggled to keep the burning panic down, no-one looked worried or scared, most held their own with her like a staring contest. Innocent but grumpy with her for some reason. "A ginger beer would be... nice," she said politely back to the barkeep. "Know anything about what happened at Ali's?"

"What's it to you girl? Looks to me like a badger got in, vicious things."

"Oh, how so?"

"Lots of blood and nothing was taken."

"Blood loss?"

"You're a very weird gurl."

"Pretzel for an answer?"

"How are you a better baker than all of the women in the parish? Deal. Boys, Joe lost too much blood?"

"There be a lot on that floor."

"Nah, it was the claw marks and head they were worried abou'."

"Badger attack.  Nasty way to go."

"Thank you, gentlemen." Alexa squeaked, paid for her drink, and fished out a large salt-encrusted Bavarian-style pretzel she had wrapped in one of D's special freshness wraps, and stepped out with the last of her composure dripping away. D hadn't been in there. And she knew too well when she wasn't welcome, alcohol just wasn't her thing.

The community hall was empty. Same as the post office, grocer, and butcher which she expected at that time of day. A small village was the worst place to find someone. If no one had seen anything, then nothing had happened. A mystic void of information, a perfect home for her and D but full of dead ends. She had looked in every human-sized space, the phone boxes, mailboxes, in a, she'd half dredged the duck pond by the time she realised the best clues were probably at the house!

His presence lingered all around their dark village main road. He'd not really disappeared? He doesn't get hurt? He couldn't be dead, could he? She had to have time to save him, right? Maybe he did deserve a holiday but without her? She was a good and dutiful daughter, never a burden. So, why leave her alone? Could he have left her here because it was almost exam season...? He could have so many reasons for wanting to be on his own that she didn't want to actually think about, she was too much. What had she done to drive him away? But... He doesn't get hurt? He couldn't be dead? She sniffed.

What if the vampire in her house had taken him, or done worse? She had to keep reminding herself of his well, un-vampiric non-death, in her world vampires once staked, stayed still forevermore. She jumped back on her moped and immediately pressed the accelerator flat, begging the thing not to explode, then to a universe. 'What do I do?' She expected the worst, a macabre picture of the vampire covered in D and Diana's blood welcoming her to a house of death.