Page 30 of Burn Falls

“Ellwood. Shut up.”

“Martin.”

“Martin.” I grinned. I had to admit that this guy had some balls. I hadn’t had a human friend since 1928 because I didn’t want to have to experience the loss, but the way I heard his heart beating steadily in his chest, I knew he was telling the truth and wanted me to help him.

“How do you want my help exactly?”

He sat at the small dining room table, placing his gun in front of him on the wood top. “I haven’t thought this out completely, so I’m not sure.”

“You do know I can’t go in the daylight, right?” I asked, moving to sit across from him.

“Right.”

“And I live on blood?”

“Right.”

“And I’m moving in ten years?”

“What? Why?”

“How old do I look?”

He stared at me for a few moments. “Early twenties.”

“See the problem?”

“You won’t ever age,” Martin stated.

I nodded.

“So you move every ten years?”

“That’s the plan. It’s hard for me to stay in one place for a long time because people start noticing they’re getting wrinkles and I’m not.”

“Okay.” He nodded. “So help me for ten years.”

“If you don’t think you can handle being a cop, then maybe you shouldn’t be one.”

“That’s not an option.”

“Why?”

He took a deep breath. “When I was six, two men broke into my home while my mom was reading me a bedtime story. Cops said it was probably supposed to be just a robbery, but when my mother tried to protect us, she was killed in front of my eyes while I hid in the closet. The men ran before they looked for anyone else in the house. To this day they’ve never made an arrest or had any leads. I’ve vowed to not let that ever happen again—to anyone.”

“How do you think I can help you then?”

Martin thought for a moment. “Don’t you have super smelling and shit?”

I threw my head back and laughed. “You want to use me as a sniffer dog?”

He grinned. “Something like that.”

2006 – Still in Seattle

For the past three years, I’d been helping Martin move up in the ranks. He worked as a patrol cop for only a year before he was promoted to a detective. It was fast, but when you had a trick up your sleeve, people assumed you were this amazing cop, and he was, but he was better because of me.

Martin and his wife, Marcy, had a baby girl a few months after we met. In 2005, Marcy was reading a popular book about vampires, and told me she pictured me as the main vampire. I didn’t know if that was good or not, but I heard he sparkled in the sunlight. I assured her that I didn’t, and when she’d ask me to prove it, I couldn’t. Finally, one night, I told her the truth. She said it was cool, and that she was glad vampires really didn’t sparkle in the sun like diamonds because that would be weird—like it wasn’t weird I was a vampire in the first place.