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4

THE HELLO

N ick stood in the kitchen of the beachside house he shared with Jem, gazing out a picture window at sun-kissed ocean, with high sand dunes breaking up most of his view of the beach. It seemed like only a few minutes had passed since he’d watched the colors change as the sun rose in the east behind him.

It had been a long night.

Definitely a longer night than he’d thought it would be.

He’d been home for hours now, but he hadn’t finished thinking about what he’d learned, or what he would do with that information now, particularly in terms of who he would tell. The last thing he wanted was to create a new wave of vampire paranoia and hysteria.

That was particularly true given the P.T.S.D.-like crap Black had been going through since he’d transitioned back to an ordinary seer. Black was in the shit again with his trauma issues around Brick and what Brick had done to him in that prison in Louisiana.

No one had told Nick that, of course, but he had eyes. He’d been in the military long enough to know the signs, and he knew Black hadn’t been sleeping well.

The reality was, Quentin might not be able to deal with bad vampire news right now.

Nick also knew he might be using Black at least partly as an excuse.

He didn’t really want to deal with it either, frankly.

He didn’t really even want to think about last night’s encounter on the wharf, where he’d been forced into a face-to-face conversation with the very last person he’d wanted to see.

A soft whine interrupted his thoughts.

Nick smiled, looking down at the white, woolly-coated creature gazing up at him from below the level of the cabinets. Nick rubbed the curls of the dog’s dirty white head, cooing to it.

“Hey, pretty girl… I haven’t forgotten you.”

He turned back to what he’d been doing before his eyes and mind pulled him into yet another staring contest with the ocean.

He rummaged through the cabinets, looking for the dog food they kept on hand for when they took care of Panther for Miri and Black. Nick found a bag of dry with maybe a third of its contents left, and two cans of wet food under the sink in the back. He found the bowls down there, too, and grabbed a can-opener out of a kitchen drawer.

A minute or so later, he dumped the contents of a wet can into a metal bowl––also Panther’s––sprinkled in some dry, and placed it on the ground for his and Jem’s new houseguest.

While the dog wolfed down the food, Nick filled a second bowl with clean water from the tap and placed it beside the first one. He stroked the dog a few more times, then went back to leaning on the counter, watching the female dog chew and swallow.

He still had no idea what breed it was.

It looked like a sheepdog of some kind, but it was leaner and not quite as shaggy as most sheepdogs. Also, its hair was softer. Given where Nick found it, it was probably a mutt, but it was a beautiful dog, in any case, and would be even more beautiful after a bath and a look-over by a vet and probably some de-worming medicine.

The whole thing last night started with the dog, really.

Nick had never been able to turn away a stray dog.

Even in Afghanistan and in some other countries where he’d been stationed, where stray dogs were an epidemic and a daily occurrence, he’d always done his best to feed as many as he could, and get them to shelters where it was remotely feasible. He’d been teased a lot for that, but no one ever screwed with him when it came to dogs, not even when he was human.

It was mind-blowing to him that anyone just let their dogs go like that, but here in San Francisco, dumping a dog was fucking unforgivable. With the hairy white creature by his feet, it could’ve been an accident, but if it had been, they hadn’t tried very hard to get her back. She’d obviously been living on the streets for weeks, just based on how hungry and lean she was, and the state of her coat and paws.

“Poor baby,” he crooned.

She wagged her tail without lifting her muzzle from the bowl.

She’d walked right up to him while he’d been listening to sea lions from the end of the pier. She’d nuzzled his hand and whined, like she knew, somehow, that he was someone who would finally help her. Nick had crouched down to look her over, and stroked and rubbed her face and chest while he felt her over for injuries.

“Hey sweetheart,” he’d crooned. “Why’re you out here all alone? You shouldn’t be alone. You definitely shouldn’t be wandering up to strange vampires in the middle of the night…”

The dog whined softly, licking Nick’s ice-cold vampire hand and face.

“You are a weird one, aren’t you? You and Panthers should be friends…” he murmured to her, looking for a collar and growling softly when he didn’t find one. “…he’s dumb enough to pal around with vampires, too.”

A light clearing of the throat had Nick back on his feet in an instant.

He turned sharply, putting himself instinctively between the dog and the person standing there. Nick’s fangs extended before he’d identified the interloper. He already knew what the other man was. Only one creature could have snuck up on him to that extent.

Nick’s aggression and bared fangs didn’t bother the other vampire in the slightest.

“You and your odd fetish for pathetic creatures,” Brick mused. He tilted his head, looking Nick over with open affection. “I have always found it utterly charming… if unfortunately so very grubby in its execution.”

The older vampire shuddered.

“What are you doing here?” Nick didn’t bother with pleasantries. He didn’t feel like offering them to his sire in any case, for a lot of reasons. “You were supposed to stay away. You told Black… you promised all of us… that you’d stay away.”

Brick seemed equally unconcerned with this.

His red-tinted eyes remained focused on the white dog at Nick’s feet.

The dog returned his stare, growling low in her throat.

Nick rested his fingers lightly on her white, seal-like head, and she fell silent.

A smile teased Brick’s lips, right before he glanced up.

“Charming, as I said. They adore you as much as you do them.”

“What do you want, Brick?” Nick repeated coldly.

It occurred to him after he said it that he sounded a lot like the dog.

“Please, do not distress yourself, offspring.” Brick’s voice remained unconcerned, even bored. He tugged at the ends of his leather gloves, adjusting them on his hands, his silver-topped Anubis cane resting in the crook of his legs. “I am not here to cause you… or any of your pets … trouble.”

He smirked, then made his voice matter-of-fact.

“I have business in town,” he clipped. “You certainly don’t begrudge me so much that you resent me taking a few moments from my own pursuits to say hello?”

Nick snorted in derision.

“I don’t know,” he replied drily. “I’m feeling pretty begrudge-y. You could have passed through on your ‘business’ and I never would have known.”

“That would be terribly rude of me, wouldn’t it?” Brick asked, a smile tugging his lips.

“We had an agreement––”

“Yes, yes.” Brick waved him off, his voice shifting from playful to annoyed. “I am so sorry I interrupted you wallowing in the filth with a creature that licks its own anus. I only wished to let you know that I will be here, in town, so don’t go scurrying off to your employer in hysterics if you happen to see more of your brethren around for a few days.”

Nick felt his fangs lengthen more.

“If I see them anywhere near me or mine––”

“Yes, yes,” Brick broke in a second time, now sounding even more irritated. “All of these threats around that middle-aged psychic you so love to bugger are really quite tiresome, you know. I told you I had relinquished my claim to vengeance upon him. Even if he did kill my most effective lieutenant––”

“Your most effective psychopath, you mean,” Nick muttered.

“Potato, potato… as they say.” Brick sniffed. He leaned both hands on his cane. His eyes surveyed Nick from head to foot. “You are well, child? You look well.”

“I’m fine.”

“They are treating you well, these… psychics?” He said the word with an odd touch of disdain mixed with humor. “They haven’t grown tired of their ugly duckling in the nest with them, taking attention away from their illustrious leader?”

Nick rolled his eyes.

He couldn’t help but notice the twinge of unease that goosed his spine.

“Why are you here, Brick?” he asked, for what felt like the twentieth time. “What possible business could you have in San Francisco?”

Brick had already raised a finger, and wagged it at Nick in rhythmic ticks.

“No, no, my friend,” he scolded mildly. “You don’t get to ask me that. Not anymore. Our business was concluded when we made that little ‘agreement’ of ours.”

“An agreement you’re currently breaking.”

“By saying hello?” Brick sniffed, back to leaning on the cane. “How is that some dreaded form of interference in your life? How is that obstruction of your will? Those were the terms of our agreement, were they not? I was not to do anything to insert myself in your life with the psychics? I was not to interfere with any of Quentin’s work that did not impinge on mine, nor the work of his employees, nor with the lives or free will of his people?”

Brick sniffed again.

“…Nor with you? My own offspring?”

Nick just stared at him, unswayed by his sire’s theatrics.

“You’ve said hello,” he observed.

Brick hesitated. He stood there, unmoving for a few seconds longer, his eyes back to roving over every inch of Nick where he stood.

Nick couldn’t help but notice the covetousness of that stare.

It was there and gone… then the auburn-haired vampire smiled.

“I suppose I have,” he conceded cheerily.

His smile widened.

Then Brick let out a quiet and thoughtful “hmph,” and turned around, so that his back was entirely to Nick and the dog. He walked away from the end of the pier, flourishing the silver-topped cane as he returned to the street and then crossed over to a where a string of tourist-trap businesses ran along the main road.

His dark red hair glowed strangely in the dark to Nick’s vampire eyes.

Within a few seconds, Brick had disappeared into shadow entirely.

Nick continued to stand there, his fingers still grazing the top of the dog’s head. He didn’t move for a number of minutes after the vampire had gone. He stood there longer than he could really explain, as if some part of him waited to see if his sire would return.

Brick did not return.

Even so, Nick’s unease didn’t lessen.