The Favor

Sage hopped off the train at the Brown Line station. The cool fall air caressed her skin, and she avoided breathing, her senses too sharp to ignore the stench of exhaust. She made her way to the darkened end of the platform, and sat down on a bench to wait.

She didn't have to wait long before she heard the faint sound of Ross's footsteps on the stairs. The small, nervous looking man handed her a brown leather briefcase and spoke hastily. ""All you have to do is stick the briefcase in your closet and don't let anyone know you have it. You can forget about it. I'll pick it up Monday night, first thing. Just don't open it. Oh, and if you think you're hearing voices from it, just ignore them."

He looked as though he was about to bolt when she inhaled enough to ask "Voices? What's in this thing?" He stopped, and shook his head, unkempt brown hair falling down from the sides of his short ponytail. "I don't know and you don't either. But the historian who asked me to keep it safe for him has answers to some questions that have been pretty pressing. Like, how this happened to us."

Sage paused. None of the Bevy knew how they had become vampires. There had been no biting, no transfer of blood. There was just a failure to wake up one morning and that night, finally, consciousness and darkness and a desperate thirst that left no doubt in the mind what you now were. None of the other vampires seemed to have any idea either, it was just something that happened. If you were lucky, no one found you and you became one of the thousands of people around the world who disappeared each day, not trusting yourself to live with the family or friends you might have had before. If you weren't so lucky, you woke up in a drawer in the morgue and escaped when you could.

"You're sure there's nothing dangerous about it?" she asked him.

"No, nothing it all. It's just... I'm having company for the weekend. I can't have it around while she's there." He looked down at his feet and muttered, "She's not very much fun when she's scared."

She sighed and picked up the briefcase, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder, feeling his slight tremble subside as she did. "Okay. I'll see you Monday night, then." He nodded, and wondered what had happened to the collected individual who had taken her under his wing when she was new. Whatever the briefcase did, it must be terrifying – Sage was suddenly not looking forward to her weekend.

When she returned to her basement apartment, she dug through the pile of shoes at the back of her closet and slid the briefcase behind them all. Then she sat down at her computer and checked her email for any pressing business. She was checking an error log for a client's website when she heard the first noise.

It wasn't a voice, exactly, it was more of a high pitched murr. She stared at the closet suspiciously, but the noise was coming from someplace else. She listened closely, and tracked the sound to her front door. She peered through the peephole and saw nothing, so she opened it cautiously and looked out. Suddenly, there was a warm brush against her ankles and a louder, more insistent purr.

She bent down, "Whose kitty are you?" Usually animals only liked her when she used her vampric abilities to summon them to her. This one was rubbing against her and begging for... food and water, she would guess. She went to the kitchen and set out a bowl of water for the fearless tabby, but she didn't really keep food around the house. After a moment's pause, she checked the rat traps she sometimes used for backups in the rest of the basement. One just happened to be full. Quickly, Sage snatched up the squirming, disgusting creature and put it to the tooth, draining the hot blood and the life from it... it was not a very sustaining snack, but it was something. Then she gave the rat to the cat, who began to dissect it daintily.

"I guess you're staying with me, kitty," she said. The cat butted its head against her in reply.

-

She did not hear the voices until she was lying, frozen and aware beneath her heavy comforter, after the rise of the sun. Spending the daylight hours awake was not usually Sage's practice; she could usually force her mind to something like sleep. But the first whisper that crossed her ears scattered all semblance of sleep.

It was a harsh voice, like a knife across a whetting stone, that called her name. Then it spoke to her in a language she did not recognize. It was followed by another voice, this one a little higher, that cut across her senses like a razor blade. Inwardly, she shuddered. The voices continued to taunt her through the day, letting her get no rest, no escape. By the time the sun set, she was terrified and angry.

She grabbed the phone. When Ross's voice answered she nearly screamed at him. "Get this thing the fuck out of my house," except that she quickly realized she was only talking to his answering machine. She stood with the phone in her hand, trembling, and considered her options. The tabby cat brushed against her ankles.

Finally she scooped that cat up in her arms and took her to an animal hospital with evening hours for a checkup, and her shots, more to escape the apartment than out of worry that the cat might be sick. She took her time in the pet section of a 24-hour superstore while the cat waited in the car, buying the supplies she'd need to keep the animal. All the while, she tried to call Ross, but there was no answer. Eventually, she returned home with the cat, and the two of them sat close together, in the furthest point in her apartment from the closet. She turned on the television and tried to ignore the little whispers... to no avail.

Finally, Ross returned her phone call. "I'm sorry, Sage, but there's a problem." She waited, silent and fearful. "The historian was killed by a hunter in Gary. There's no one to take the briefcase back." Sage listened in disbelief. "What am I going to do with this thing? It's making me crazy!" Ross was quiet for a moment and said, "I don't know."

She hung up on him in frustration and crossed over to the closet, where the voices were the loudest. She moved her clothes and shoes out of the way and seized the briefcase. Setting it on the floor, she snapped the locks off, and opened it up.

There were two items inside, the first was a legal pad full of notes, the historian's, she assumed. The other was a small stone sculpture. At first, she couldn't quite make out what it was supposed to be, but after a few moments of peering at the ancient and weathered piece, she decided that it was a vampire entangled with a human as its prey. The human held the vampire as a lover might, the vampire held the human with a violent possessiveness.

The voices were not appeased at all by her opening of the case. She turned to look at the legal pad, but the notes were in another language... she guessed French, which she knew Ross could read, but that didn't solve her immediate problem. Taking the pad to the computer and ignore the continued sibilant whisper of the statue, which she placed on the desk next to her, she began to attempt to translate.

After a half an hour of searching, she had not managed to translate even the first sentence. It seemed the historian's French was too archaic for bablefish. She started at the statue in anger, and wondered if she should break it. As she raised her hand to smash it, the cat jumped up on to the desk, brushing against the statue. The voices fell silent.

She stopped in surprise. The cat's paw had quieted it. One of the words she had managed to translate on the notepad was living... another was touch. She leaned back and considered her options. If the cat could touch the statue and quiet it, then she didn't really need to destroy the maddening thing, losing whatever secrets it might hold. Instead she could keep it, and take the time to find someone who spoke ancient French, unlocking its mystery. She just needed to put it somewhere the cat would frequently brush against it.

Suddenly, she smiled to herself. She knew the perfect place. She rose from the desk and set the statue down next to the covered opening of the litterbox. The cat came over and brushed it again. "Good kitty," Sage smiled and scratched the cat's ears. "Maybe I'll call you.... Quiet."