Head Full of Ghosts

Chapter 14 - We Believe What We Believe

Four pairs of eyes stared at Eli in utter shock.

"Who on Earth is this?" the preacher asked, turning to Joe.

"Uh, Cass, this is Eli. We found him out by the cave system where all those zombies had gathered."

"The caves?" Cassius echoed, facing Eli again. He almost looked impressed. "What were you doing out there?"

"You know what I was doing out there," Eli replied. "I was fighting your vampires!"

"Vampires?" Cassius repeated, looking genuinely confused.

"Yeah, he, uh, he's been going on about vampires since we found him. Apparently he was being attacked by one and Frank and Jacob saved him. Swears Frank got a headshot on the creature and it just walked away."

"And that makes it a vampire?"

"Oh, that's right," Eli interrupted. "You guys don't call them vampires. You call 'em demons."

Cassius rotated his head toward Eli at a frighteningly slow pace. When his eyes finally locked on the smaller man they seemed to pierce into him like knives, pinning him in place. "What did you just say?" he asked, his voice slow and quiet, like a cat preparing to pounce.

Eli nodded his head. "Yeah, I thought so. I thought you had to be one of them. And you are, aren't you? You kill the demons so the rest of the world doesn't have to know they exist. Something like that, right? Which means you've known. All along, you've known all about the vampires. And you didn't tell these people. They look up to you like some kind of savior but you didn't even tell them the most important thing. That vampires do exist. Or demons. Or whatever you want to call them."

In a flash Cassius was on Eli, holding him up by his shirt collar. "Who did you hear this from?"

Claire stepped forward, wrapping both her hands around just one of Cassius' arms. "Stop that!" she demanded. "He's injured."

Cassius ignored her and shook Eli hard. "Who have you been talking to?"

"A guy named Gabriel," Eli answered. "Ring any bells?"

The preacher's eyes and mouth went wide with surprise, and for a long moment he just stood there, frozen.

"Wait, Cass, isn't that...?" Joe started to ask.

"You know Gabriel?" Cassius asked instead of answering Joe. "Where is he?"

"Gone," replied Eli. "Taken by the vampires."

Cassius let go of Eli and his shoulders slumped. "Then he's probably already dead."

"Wait, Cassius, is this true?" Joe stared at the preacher with a look that was somewhere halfway between horror and betrayal. "Have you really known about the vampires this entire time?"

Cassius turned away from Eli, but kept turning past Joe. He stared primarily at the ground, facing more or less back out the gate he had just entered through. "The kid's right, we never called them vampires. Just demons."

"Wait, wait, wait," said Danny, who hadn't been part of any of the previous discussions on the topic. "Are you guys telling me there's vampires now?"

"There were always vampires," explained Eli. "At least, they were here well before the zombies. The zombies are actually a sort of mutation of the... of the disease, I guess, that makes vampires... vampires."

Joe narrowed his eyes as he looked at Eli with a confused expression. "How do you know that?"

Eli's face fell as he realized he'd given away more information than he'd intended to. He swallowed hard and decided that now the floodgates were open, so there was no point fighting it anymore. "Because," he started, then paused to take a deep breath, "Because I met the person who created the zombies."