Page 19 of Nocturne

18

CALLAHAN

W e find ourselves at a payphone in Mar Vista, having walked an untold number of blocks. Lena calls a number and we spend the next thirty minutes loitering around in the shadows, shrinking back further every time a car with sirens comes screaming down the street.

I killed those men in self-defense. That much I know is true. But right now, the last thing I need is for the police to be looking at me. If they look at me any harder than tonight, they’ll find a lot more than they’ve bargained for.

They’ll find a monster.

“There might still be witnesses,” I say to Lena. She’s standing beside me, her face completely clear. No sign of the acid that was thrown on her face. I keep wanting to reach out and take her hand but something stops me. It’s not what she is. It’s what I am.

There’s so much I don’t know.

A nightmare I can’t seem to wake from.

She doesn’t say anything. I press on. “Maybe I won’t be identified. But you will be. Lena Reid has a memorable face. They’ll remember you were there, that you had acid thrown on you. What happens when you go to sing at The Emerald Room and your face is as unblemished as ever?”

Her eyes slide to mine, her gaze tired. “There is no more singing at the Emerald Room, Callahan. Not for me. Cohen sent those goons to send a message and that message was that my career is done.”

“You can always explain it away,” I tell her, my heart breaking at the thought of her losing her dreams over this. Over me. “You can say it didn’t get you or you got some miracle cream. No one saw you heal, Lena, no one who is still alive.” At least, I don’t think.

“Maybe,” she says with a sigh. “Hard to find a club that Cohen doesn’t have his fingers in.”

“Then we take care of Cohen.”

Her look is razor-sharp. “No one takes care of Mickey Cohen. You know this.”

She’s right. The man has more lives than a cat and nothing yet has put him away permanently. Helps that most of this whole town is in his pocket. Nothing sticks with him.

“Maybe humans can’t…” I begin. “But vampires?”

Her mouth sets into a hard line and she shakes her head. “This is not how you ease into it, Callahan.”

I shrug. “Seems about right with me. Out of the fire, into the pan.”

But however glib I sound, it disappears when a black Super Deluxe convertible pulls in front of us, the top up. The engine remains running, but no one gets out.

“Come on, that’s our ride,” Lena says, looking back and forth down the street before she opens the back door. She shuffles inside and slides along and I follow, making sure that we’re not being watched.

I close the door, the smell of sage filling my nose. A pair of golden eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. The man is as tall as a tree, with a mop of slightly curly black hair.

“Adonis, this Victor Callahan,” Lena says.

Adonis gives me a curt nod and then his eyes widen when he looks at Lena. “What happened to you?”

She frowns then looks down at her dress, the top part of it in tatters where the acid had burned away the fabric. “It’s a long story.”

“We have a long drive,” he says as he pulls away from the curve.

“Just make sure we’re not being followed,” she tells him.

“And if we are followed?” I ask her. “A high-speed chase will only draw more attention to ourselves.”

“Relax,” Adonis says, his expression serious though his eyes dance in the mirror. “There will be none of that.”

“He can compel people,” Lena says, leaning in. “More than most vampires can.”

“Compel? Like hypnotize?”

She nods. “Something like that. But more powerful. More…” she searches for the right word, “absolute.”

I try to wrap my head around this, another power I apparently possess but don’t understand. “And that works on anyone?”

“Most humans,” Adonis says, his accent a curious blend of Mediterranean influences. “Though some are naturally resistant. You were, I’m told.”

I glance at Lena, who avoids my eyes. She’d been trying to influence me from the beginning, I realize. At Musso & Franks. In her dressing room. Keeping me from asking too many questions.

“Didn’t work very well,” I mutter.

“No,” she admits quietly, giving me a wan smile. “You weren’t easy to control.”

“Is that why you were interested in me? Because I resisted? You like it when men play hard to get?”

Her head snaps toward me, eyes flashing with genuine hurt. “You think that’s why I?—”

“We have company,” Adonis interrupts, his gaze fixed on the rearview mirror.

I turn to see a black sedan approximately two car lengths behind us, keeping pace.

“Cohen’s men?” I ask, reaching for my gun, surprised at how prepared I am to loose it again.

“Most likely,” Lena says, her body tensing. “Adonis?—”

“I see them,” he says calmly. He pulls over to the curb with a smooth, unhurried motion.

“What are you doing?” I hiss.

He ignores me, rolling down his window as the sedan pulls up alongside us. I catch a glimpse of the man behind the wheel, his expression murderous. I recognize him as the man who ratted us out to Marco at Musso & Franks.

“Stay in the vehicle,” Adonis says to the man, his voice taking on a strange, resonant quality that seems to reverberate in my skull.

To my amazement, the man’s eyes go blank. His companion, another of Cohen’s men I don’t recognize, wears the same vacant expression.

“You never saw us,” Adonis continues, his golden eyes glowing faintly in the darkness. “You’re tracking a different car. A blue Packard heading east toward Topanga. You’ll pursue it until you run out of gas, then return to Cohen with nothing to report.”

They both nod mechanically, and the driver puts the car in gear. The sedan pulls away and does a U-turn before accelerating eastward.

“Hot damn,” I whisper, watching them disappear into the night.

“Told you,” Lena says, a faint smile touching her lips. “More powerful than most.”

Adonis pulls back into traffic, seemingly unperturbed by the entire exchange. “Humans are simple to influence. Their minds want to be led. It explains a lot about society, doesn’t it? How people can be herded into doing the most vile things, following the most backwards ideology.”

There’s a lot to unpack there. I can’t help but think about the war. “Is that how you see us? Humans, I mean.”

“You were never fully human, Callahan,” Adonis says, his eyes meeting mine in the mirror again. “You were always one of us, just…sleeping.”

The words chill me, partly because they resonate with something deep inside. A recognition. A truth I’ve been running from.

“I don’t know what I am anymore,” I admit.

Lena’s hand finds mine in the darkness of the backseat, giving it a squeeze. Reassuring.

“You’ll figure it out,” she says softly. “We’ll help you.”

I don’t pull away, grateful for the contact, the anchoring presence of her touch. “Where are we going, exactly?”

“Malibu,” Adonis answers. “To Dr. Van Helsing’s colony.”

I stare at him. “Van Helsing? As in Abraham Van Helsing? Like in Dracula ?”

Lena laughs, the sound musical in the confined space. “It’s the other way around, actually. Bram Stoker based his character on Abe. They had a mutual acquaintance.”

My mind reels at the implications. “The novel was based on real vampires?”

“Very loosely,” she says. “Stoker took creative liberties, as most authors do. Made us into monsters.”

“Aren’t you?” The question slips out before I can stop it.

Her hand withdraws from mine, and I immediately regret the words.

“Do I seem like a monster to you, Callahan?” There’s no anger in her voice, only a quiet sadness.

I think of Marco’s mutilated body, the blood on my hands that I can’t remember spilling. “No,” I say honestly. “But I might be.”

Her eyes soften. “You’re not a monster. You’re just new. Untrained. Imagine waking up one day with superhuman strength, enhanced senses, and hunger you don’t understand, with no one to guide you. Of course you’d make mistakes.”

“Mistakes,” I repeat hollowly. “Is that what we’re calling murder now?”

“Marco wasn’t innocent,” she reminds me. “And neither were the men you shot tonight. They were going to kill me. Kill us both.”

“And what about the victim in Elysian Park?” I ask.

Lena exchanges a look with Adonis. “What victim? When?”

“Three nights ago. I woke up in the park with blood in my mouth.” My voice drops to a whisper. “I think I killed someone.”

Silence fills the car.

“You need to feed,” Adonis says finally, his tone clinical. “When the transition begins, the hunger becomes overwhelming. Without guidance, without understanding what’s happening, you’d naturally seek blood.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“No,” Lena agrees. “It doesn’t. But it does make it understandable. And something we can prevent from happening again.”

I stare out the window at the dark landscape sliding past, city giving way to coastline as we head north. The ocean stretches beside us, a vast expanse of black glass under the moonlight. I wonder how many others like me are out there—predators walking among prey, hiding their true natures behind human masks.

“This place we’re going,” I say after a long pause. “This colony. What is it?”

“A sanctuary,” Lena explains. “A place where vampires can live without pretending. Where we can be ourselves.”

“And this Dr. Van Helsing?—”

“Abraham,” she corrects. “Abe to his friends. He’s been looking out for our kind for centuries. He’ll have answers for you. About what you are. About how you came to be. If anyone can figure it out, Abe can.”

We fall silent as the car winds along the coastal highway, fog rolling in from the ocean to shroud the road in ghostly white. The mist seems fitting, feeling as clouded as my brain.

“Do you ever miss it?” I ask Lena suddenly.

“Miss what?”

“Being human.”

She considers the question, her face thoughtful in the dim passing lights. “I was never human, Callahan. None of us were. We’re born this way, even if our abilities don’t fully manifest until maturity. But I do miss the simplicity sometimes. When you’re young, you get used to the idea that life begins at a set point and ends at a set point. Mortality forces you to live in the moment. And there was a luxury of ignorance about what moves in the darkness, though I suppose that can be said for all children. You don’t know what devils the world holds until you grow older and your eyes open.”

“Well, I was more than happy in my ignorance.”

“Were you?” She studies me, those dark eyes seeming to peer directly into my soul. “You’ve been searching for something your entire life. You became a detective because you needed answers, needed to make sense of the world around you. But you were a stranger to yourself the whole time, living half a life.”

Her words strike with unexpected force, resonating with a truth I’ve always known but never acknowledged. The constant feeling of being an outsider, of not belonging—even in my marriage to Catherine, even in the ordered world of law and justice I’d built for myself.

I remember being ten years old, standing frozen in the schoolyard while the other boys played baseball, overwhelmed by sounds no one else seemed to hear—the whispered conversation between teachers a hundred yards away, the scuttle of insects beneath the grass, the bright sun that agitated me. My father had found me there, eyes pinched shut, hands pressed against my ears, and assumed it was just sensitivity, the way that some kids have sensory issues. “You feel things deeper than most, Victor,” he’d said. “You’ll grow out of it.”

But I never did.

Then there was that night in France during the war, when our unit was ambushed in pitch darkness. While the other men stumbled blindly, I’d navigated with perfect clarity, somehow leading twelve soldiers to safety. They’d called it a miracle, credited my boxer’s instincts. Now I understood it was something else entirely—vampire senses that had always been there, dormant but present, waiting for the right moment to emerge.

All these years thinking I was broken in some fundamental way, when really, I was simply different by design. I can’t help but stare at Lena, my heart pressing against my ribs. And when she stepped into my life with her secrets and wanton smile, it’s as if finally belonged somewhere.

With her.

“Here we are,” Adonis announces as we turn off the highway onto a private drive that leads to a modernist structure perched on the cliffside between the highway and the beach. The house emerges from the mist like a fortress of glass and concrete, dramatic against the night sky.

As we approach, I can make out three figures standing on the front steps, waiting. One is tall and thin with red hair, another shorter with dark stubble, and the third dressed all in black, his dark gaze seeming to know all.

“Victor Callahan,” Lena says, gesturing to me, then them. “May I introduce you to Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, Ezra, and Valtu Aminoff, otherwise known as Dracula.”

I stare at her, wide-eyed. “Dracula?”

She gives me a small, sympathetic smile. “Welcome to your new reality, Callahan. Things are about to get a lot stranger.”