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As the seconds ticked by, I found myself anxious to hear his answer.
Finally, his eyes closed on a long blink, but when he opened them again, sadness was replaced with resolve. “It is my time.”
Whether due to grim acceptance or foolish pride, the man had made his decision.
After a moment, I slipped my hand through the bag’s handle and gave Franco a curt nod. “Go peacefully into the endless night, my friend.” With that, I turned my back on him, shoulders heavy with the profound knowledge that this would be the final time.
When I returned, it would not be Franco awaiting my arrival, but his son, Jack.
As the little bell chimed to announce my exit, and the door closed behind me, I disappeared into the shadows. Though the world had become a place where creatures of the night were no longer myths and bedtime stories but existed alongside humans, it was still unsafe for many of my kind. Especially one like me, who existed solely on the blood of animals. My diet weakened me, made me an easy target for both vampire hunters and the vicious predators who rose to power once the treaty was signed.
I maintained a low profile, though it would be a lie to say I enjoyed this existence.
I was tired. Lonesome.
And, worst of all, bored out of my fucking mind.
Chapter Two
Jack
Anyone who had been inside a hospital or watched someone die of incurable disease could tell you that death has a smell. And it isn’t that ‘roadkill on the side of the highway’ stench, but something more subtle. Pervasive. Apparent in the chemical scent of cleaning supplies, the pungency of bleached laundry. The disinfectant used to clean every touchable surface.
Death is heavy, palpable. An entity all on its own.
And it had taken up residence in my childhood home.
As I left the brisk chill of mid-December outside, I was assaulted by its presence. So overwhelmed that I found myself stuck in the threshold, one foot in and one out, unable to move forward.
After a brief deliberation, I braced myself and stepped all the way inside, then closed the door behind me and drew a stuttering breath.
Stepping into the apartment above Fiorino’s Meats didn’t hold the same allure as it did just a few weeks ago. When I visited for Thanksgiving, the sheer joy of coming home was overwhelming. Like a grandmother’s open arms or a warm blanket paired with a cup of steaming hot cocoa, this place embraced me with that uncanny sense of home.
Now, however, returning here felt like a curse. A shackle slapped around my ankle.
A tether.
The loud clink of a lock slipping into place.
Final.
That familiar scent of aged meat and Dad’s favorite lasagna heating up in the oven was gone. His cigar smoke still lingered, but it was stale; he gave them up the day he found out, which seemed futile now, all things considered. He should have held onto that habit, continued to find joy in that one little act of rebellion.
He hadn’t died, not yet, but the cancer metastasized throughout his body had feasted on him from the inside out until, I’d been told, little of the man I love remained.
As I stood in the entryway, gnawing at the remnants of the Poppy Parade red nail polish still dotting my fingernails from an attempt to bond with one of Gio’s girls over Thanksgiving weekend, my thoughts returned to that day when he sat us all down at the table we grew up gathered around. The table we kicked each other beneath or threw food across when he had his back turned. With scratches still carved into the wood from one of Leo’s rebellious moments, and that stain from the time Gio spilled mulled wine and it stained through the varnish…
Around that table full of countless memories, our father sat us down to break the news.
On that brisk Thanksgiving Day, surrounded by my brothers and their significant others, with plates full of the feast Dad spent the entire day preparing, he told us about the disease—and that he’d already decided to succumb. The cancer is too far gone, he’d said. Chemo won’t work.
Well, not if he didn’t try, but my father was nothing if not stubborn, and he’d already decided.
That was three weeks ago.
I’d had three weeks to process the news.
Three whole weeks to accept his decision to die instead of fight.
