Garlic Is For Vampires (#Wattys2016)

Chapter 6: Ideas

As soon as I walked into the prescient, the wolf sniffed me out. Brendon was walking with another guy from an office and saw me standing at the entrance searching for him. My eyes spotted him walking towards me with his colleague turning the opposite direction with a file in his hand. The sun streamed in through the windows from above and hit the middle of Brendon's badge, which was in the middle of his chest. I blinked and squinted to get a better look at him.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. I shrugged and helped up a plastic bag.

"Brought you lunch since you said you can never leave this hellhole."

"It's just hell with fluorescent lighting," he commented in a whisper. "You didn't have to bring me lunch, especially after yesterday."

"Don't worry-I don't want you to be skin and bones." I gave him a lopsided smile. He sighed and turned on his heel, making a following gesture with his hand. We walked through a maze of desks until we reached one by the office where he had come out from. The prescient was swarming with police officers and detectives. They had files and papers stacked on their desks. Most of them were cleaner compared to Brendon's. I didn't even see his computer's keyboard-it was buried under a mountain of important papers, I was guessing. He sat down in his chair and I sat down in the chair beside his desk. I surrendered the plastic bag.

"Thanks," he said a moment later as he was digging into the roast beef sandwich. "God-I needed this. I owe you one, Bree-lee."

"Hey," I said. "Don't act like you owe me one. You're just busy."

"Well, I assumed after yesterday you wouldn't want to talk to me until you cooled down." He bit into the sandwich again and I watched his eyes roll back in pleasure. "You know how that goes, right?"

"I didn't like the argument yesterday but what else could I explain about the girl? You didn't have an answer and this is your case. I'm not even a detective."

He looked around and leaned forward. "You called about important things?"

I nodded and reached into my backpack to pull out my Mac. I sat it down on his desk and pulled up the website I was looking at last night. Then I scooted in close to him and turned the computer screen so he was looking at it.

"Impossible," he said. "How-"

"That's what I said too. Vampires can't walk in daylight unless they had some sort of power or protection against the sun. It burns their dead skin. But they see through human beings who submit themselves willingly-sometimes forcefully-to the vampire in exchange for something else. Pleasure, money, and even immortality. These people are brainwashed by the thought that they have; "these vampires will give me what I want if I do this for them". So since humans can walk in daylight, I'm guessing the girl was a vampire's little puppet. The correct term is host."

I felt so informed, and I saw Brendon's astonishment as he read the paragraphs I just explained for him. I found a blogger who dug deep into cultural stories and myths about vampires and other legends people knew today; werewolves, ghosts, demons, etc. I caught up on my studying and then decided that this would be worth Brendon's time. I knew vampires weren't supposed to exist, and that this blogger was probably a nut job, but what other choice did I have but to go along with the flow?

"So the human hosts drink blood for a vampire?" Brendon asked, pointing to a longer paragraph. I bent down to read it and nodded.

"Yes. They usually only do that when their vampire is injured or weak. When they can't hunt while in a critical condition they lend some of their inhuman abilities to the human and restore their energy from there. They only do it when they have to. Otherwise they wouldn't risk sending out a human in broad daylight just to drink someone dry."

"What site is this?" Brendon asked, leaning forward to write the site title on a notepad. He leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. I closed my laptop as his coworker passed by.

"Five minutes and we're interviewing Constantine's family." The coworker walked off. Brendon groaned and dug back into his sandwich.

"Who is Constantine?" I asked.

"Our last victim, the one with the prostitutes. There's some family we need to see so we could dig something up. Something useful." He wiped the grease off his bottom lip with his thumb. "Thanks again, Bree. I don't deserve this after acting like an ass yesterday."

"I'm totally fine with it." I patted his shoulder and grabbed my bag. "I'll see you later. I'm meeting up with my friends."

"Okay."

I headed out of the prescient with a lighter heart. Brendon knew the truth now and I couldn't be any happier about that. But now what were we going to do about the vampire girl? I looked behind me in case she was following. No. It was just me being paranoid.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Tell all," Bennett said from across our table. "I see that smirk on your face." He was talking to Angie. Her grin widened and she shrugged, playing with her cup of soda.

"I guess you could say I met a guy."

"Slut," I muttered around a mouthful of teriyaki. She burst out laughing and dived into a story of last night when she rang for a pizza boy and asked him for his number so she could call later. She said he was hot. He asked for hers and he called once he was done with his work shift.

"That's hilarious," I said. "I would've sold my soul to see you and him exchanging digits-"

"Bree?"

I stopped talking and turned around to see a familiar figure standing at the entrance of the restaurant. The one and only Dylan Shaw.

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                                            -Redbird.