2,49 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: ID Johnson
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
His lies keep the evil away....
Before he became a Guardian, charged with protecting Vampire Hunters from the creatures that lurk in the shadows, Elliott Sanderson used his mystical powers of persuasion to survive an abusive parent, bullies at school, and to become the best used car salesman in all of Oklahoma. Oblivious to the bloodsuckers stalking him, biding his time, Elliott struggles to find his place through countless tragedies until he can no longer deny who he really is and that it is his calling to join forces with LIGHTS and work to rid the world of vampires once and for all.
Elliott: A Vampire Hunter's Tale Book 3 gives us the backstory for one of the most loved characters from The Clandestine Saga series. It isn't necessary to read the books in A Vampire Hunter's Tale series in order, but you may enjoy this book more if you've already read The Clandestine Saga series.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
Ähnliche
Elliott
A Vampire Hunter’s Tale Book 3
ID Johnson
Copyright © 2018 by ID Johnson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Newsletter
Get several of my books for free when you sign up for my newsletter here:
https://books.bookfunnel.com/idjohnsonnewslettersignup
To Danielle
Thanks for all of your support!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1944
The tinkling of glass fragments against the linoleum floor mingled with the incessant wailing coming from the bassinet, and even though one cracked eye proclaimed it was not yet dawn, Elliott Sanderson pulled himself from a troubled sleep to investigate. Tripping over a Tonka truck with three wheels he’d left on the floor next to the bed, he shuffled his feet in an attempt to reclaim the big toe on his left foot that insisted on poking out through the hole in his sock as if it might arrive at the problem first and offer a solution so that the rest of his five-year-old body could go back to sleep.
Most of the commotion was coming from the kitchen, which wasn’t too surprising. He couldn’t tell time, but the black hands on the clock over the cigarette burn covered couch weren’t pointing anywhere near the numbers they usually did whenever his mom yanked him out of bed in the morning, so he thought it must still be nighttime. Also, the only light in the living room came from the bare bulb on the chipped lamp next to said couch, the shade having met its demise the last time his mother threw something at Bob—maybe not the last time if the sound of glass shattering was any indicator, maybe the time before this.
There was a fine line between investigating and being “nosy,” and Elliott did not want to be accused of the latter, so he stepped lightly, which was hard for him as he was a hefty boy. His mom called him "chunky” but he preferred to think of himself as a logger, a lumberjack, who needed to be big and strong like the trees he chopped down. His mom said there was a difference between being big and strong and being fat and lazy, and the sooner he learned he was the second choice, the quicker he’d accept he wasn’t ever going to amount to anything either. Just like his father. Whoever that was.
“God dammit, Arlene,” Bob’s angry voice shouted from the kitchen. “I don’t know how you live like this. You’re a goddamn drunk!” The slur in his voice let Elliott know he was either a hypocrite or had taken too many of the Army issued pills he’d been prescribed to fight the pain in his leg, the one the Germans had nearly taken off, the one that had sent him home before the war had ended. When he wasn’t around, Mom often said he had shot himself because he was a lazy coward, just like every man she’d ever met. Elliott had asked if that included him, and she’d assured him it did. He had wondered how she knew so much about the type of man he would be when he wasn’t even in kindergarten yet.
The sound of his mother’s angry voice shouting back caused his brain to ache. She was definitely drunk again. There was another screech of glass and then the sound of Bob’s uneven footsteps as his cane clunked against the black and white linoleum tiles, and then his mother started to make that half-scream, half-crying sound she always made when Bob was hurting her.
Torn between going to make that man stop hitting his mom, even though he knew he’d catch the raw end of the deal when his mom realized he was sticking his snotty nose where it didn’t belong, and going to see what was wrong with his baby brother, Jimmy, Elliott stood in his indecisive state for long enough that another clatter came from the kitchen and the thumping of someone hitting the floor broke his irresolute state. Bob had pushed her again. The sounds of her shouting at him, throwing dishes or whatever she could get her hands on, rang through the air as Bob’s step-thump, step-thump drew closer to the living room.
He rounded the corner and spotted Elliott standing there, halfway into the room but still in the shadow from the unlit hallway near the two bedrooms. The anger rolled off of Bob as his narrow eyes searched the room. He grabbed at his hat off of the bureau and then stared directly into Elliott’s green eyes. The boy took a step back. “You hear that baby crying?” he snarled.
Elliott’s head bobbed up and down, his dark, curly hair flipping around like a mop in its unkempt state.
“You take care of my son, boy,” Bob demanded as he settled his hat on top of his thinning blond hair. “God knows your ma won’t.”
Once again, Elliott nodded, his hands folded in front of himself, as he tried to stay as small as possible. Unlike Mom’s last boyfriend, Gill, and the three or four before that, Bob Baker had never hurt Elliott, but there was a first time for everything. The first time Gill had punched him in the face for asking for another piece of chicken at dinner, he hadn’t seen that coming either. He learned. He learned real quick.
Bob took another look around the living room. “What a shithole,” he muttered. Elliott’s eyes followed Bob’s over the discarded newspapers, broken furniture, and worn orange carpet covered in enough trash-confetti one of those tinker day parades may have just passed through. He’d never noticed before, but Bob may have had a point.
Lumbering off toward the door, Bob didn’t look back as Elliott’s mom staggered into the room, tripping over her own feet and grabbing at the bureau, shouting for him to come back and that she was sorry. A picture of Elliott’s grandparents slipped from atop the desk and shattered on the floor, causing his mom to say that really bad word she had slapped him in the face for saying last week, demanding to know where he got such a filthy mouth. She wasn’t cursing the broken picture, though. She was clutching at her foot, more swears coming out of her mouth than Elliott had heard in as long as he could remember. The couch was in the way, so he couldn’t see what the problem was, but he imagined she had cut herself on the broken glass.
“Do you need any help, Mommy?” Elliott asked, taking a few steps toward her, though he was leery of cutting himself as well. That big toe wasn’t well protected out on its scouting mission.
“No, I don’t want any goddamn help, not from you anyway, Chunk!” she muttered, releasing her foot and stumbling into the sofa, another curse filling the air. “Will you shut that goddamn baby up!”
The sound of Jimmy crying had become such a part of Elliott’s existence the last six months, he hardly even noticed it anymore. When he woke up in the morning, Jimmy was crying. When he ate his breakfast, lunch if he was lucky, and maybe some dinner (or tore through the cupboards and found whatever was edible once his mom and Bob were passed out) Jimmy was crying. When he crawled under his thin, moth-eaten blanket at night, Jimmy was crying. The noise had become the background music of his life, much like the old records he’d once heard his grandfather play on the Victrola when they’d visited his big house in Tulsa three Christmases ago.
But now, he realized Jimmy’s crying probably wasn’t supposed to sound so shrill or be so constant. He wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to reach over the top of the crib, but he scurried into the bedroom Mom shared with Bob—well, had shared with him anyhow—to check on his baby brother.
A big black bug with long antennas climbed the side of a bottle on the dresser, the same one Elliott had seen his mom put there last Tuesday. Jimmy’s screeching was even louder in here. The dim nightlight across the room illuminated the crib, and he could see Jimmy had shit himself something awful. It covered his pajamas and stained the clown sheets on his mattress. The baby blanket the lady from the donation place had brought for him was kicked down to the end of the bed, but it looked like it had not escaped the shit storm.
“Jesus, Jimmy,” Elliott muttered, gagging from the smell. “What happened?”
Jimmy’s only answer was to continue to shriek.
“Mommy, he pooped! A lot!” Elliott shouted.
“Then change his goddamn diaper!” came her slurred response.
Elliott had never changed a diaper before, and something told him he’d have to do more than just change Jimmy’s diaper under the circumstances, but his mother wasn’t going to be any help. Muttering under his breath about how gross this situation was, Elliott reached into the bed and found his fingertips couldn’t quite reach the wiggling, red-faced baby. He said that word he’d gotten in trouble for saying before, quietly enough he knew his mom couldn’t hear, and looked around for a solution.
His mom’s stool, the one she sat on to put her makeup on every day, whether she was going out or not, seemed like a viable option, so he dragged it across the room and climbed on top of it. Carefully, he reached into the bed and plucked the baby up, holding him at arm’s length. Jimmy’s head flopped backward slightly, but then he began to scream again, and his body became so rigid, it came back forward.
“Why you gotta scream all the time?” Elliott asked, taking his baby brother over to his mom’s unmade bed and laying him down on the sheets, shit and all. Once his hands were empty, he inspected them, grossed out that some of the poop had gotten on his thumb. He looked around and saw one of the cloths his mom used to wipe the baby whenever she did this herself and scraped the offensive goo off on it. Then, he grabbed a clean diaper and some pins from where his mom kept them and set about changing the baby’s diaper.
It took him several minutes just to get the old nappy off, to clean his brother up the best he could without leaving to get water, and to get a new diaper on him. Several pokes in his thumb had taught him how not to use the pins. Elliott had been hopeful that changing the diaper would’ve gotten the child to stop screaming, but that was not the case. Putting him in new clothes hadn’t helped either.
By the time Jimmy was cleaned and dressed, Elliott was about out of ideas. He looked around the room and spied the bottle. The bug was long gone, so he thought maybe that might make Jimmy feel better. Elliott went to pick it up, but it stuck slightly to the dresser, and he had to pull it off.
Remembering what his grandpa had told him about spoiled milk, he took a whiff of it and nearly threw up. This bottle wasn’t going to work. “I’ll be right back, Jimmy,” Elliott said, looking at the squirmy baby on the bed. Realizing he was managing to work his way close to the edge, he went over and scooted the baby back to the middle of the bed and then took the stinky bottle into the kitchen.
His mom was still sitting on the floor next to the broken picture, which she was clutching to her chest and sobbing. He knew she’d been really sad when his grandma had died a few years ago, and now that grandpa couldn’t really remember his daughter’s name anymore, they didn’t go and visit. Elliott’s mom looked less scary and more like a broken porcelain doll as blood dripped from her foot onto the orange carpet. She was twisting the ring on her finger, the special one her mother had given her. It was gold with a pink flower on it, and she wore it all the time.
Careful of the glass, Elliott dropped to his knees next to her for a minute, the worn knees of his flannel pajama protecting him against any tiny bits he may not have seen. “Mommy?” he asked quietly, “is there anything I can do?”
Arlene Harold didn’t say anything, only continued to cry.
After a moment, Elliott patted her lovingly on the arm, took the stinky bottle into the kitchen, and tried to remember how to make a new one. Even though the lights were on when he walked in, there was a scurry of those same black and brown bugs across the counters when he entered the room, and Elliott shouted at them to, “Get!”
He’d seen his mom make bottles lots of times, but he wasn’t sure how much water to put in and how much of Jimmy’s special milk. He wished he knew how to read so he could look at the can, but since he couldn’t, the words on the label didn’t help. He did his best to mix it so it looked the same as he remembered it. Turning on the stove to heat it wasn’t easy because the gas in the burner didn’t always catch. His mom cursed the burner almost as much as she cursed her children. It finally caught, though, and he poured the liquid in. He remembered you had to stir it the whole time. The one time Bob had made a bottle, his mom had screamed, “God dammit, Bob, you have to stir it, or it’ll burn!” So Elliott stirred the whole time until the milk seemed warm.
Then, he had to find a clean bottle. The sink was full of bottles, but none of them were clean. He checked the cupboards but couldn’t find any there. With a sigh, he turned the water on in the sink, and holding his breath, he dumped the lumpy contents of the bottle he’d carried in with him into the sink. It smelled rancid, and the scent made him gag again, but he didn’t throw up, and for once he felt lucky there was nothing in his stomach. He used some soap and the bottle brush to clean out the bottle the best he could, but like the shit, there was only so much he could do. Once it was clean-ish, he carried it back over to the stove and poured the warm milk in.
He’d watched his mom burn her arm lots of times checking to see if the milk was too hot. He really didn’t want to do that since it seemed to hurt, but he also didn’t want Jimmy to burn his mouth. Hopefully, cleaning the bottle had given it enough time to cool down. Scrunching up his face and peering at his wrist with one eye open, he shook a little bit of milk onto his arm. It was warm, but it didn’t hurt. Satisfied with his work, he double checked he’d turned the burner off and headed to the bedroom.
How anyone could scream as much as his baby brother without losing their voice was beyond Elliott, but Jimmy was still screeching when he entered the room. He had worked his way back over to the edge of the bed, and one of his scrawny legs had kicked over the side. “Just in time, Jimbo,” the little boy muttered. Careful to avoid the shit spot on the sheets, Elliott, skootched the baby back toward the middle of the bed, which was big enough for two full grown people, even though the springs poked through in a few places, and popped the bottle into Jimmy’s mouth.
The baby began to suck furiously on the nipple, as if he hadn’t eaten in years. “Good grief, Brother!” Elliott muttered. “You’re skinny now, but you keep eating like that, you’ll be a little piggy soon. Mommy will be calling you chunky, too.”
Jimmy’s only answer was to suck down more of the milk. With one hand on the bottle, Elliott tucked his other arm under his head and let out a loud yawn. He couldn’t hear the sounds of his mom crying from the living room anymore and thought she might’ve passed out again. Elliott didn’t know what he would do when Jimmy needed another bottle or a clean diaper, but he thought he would probably be the one to figure it out. His head was full of worry as his eyelashes flickered down over his weary eyes a few times, and he finally nodded off, still grasping the bottle for his baby brother.
Chapter 2
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1947
“Jimmy, do your best to keep your Cheerios in the bowl,” Elliott scolded, picking up a wayward piece of cereal that had been flung across the table and tossing it back in.
“Don’t matter anyway,” Jimmy protested. “This place is a mess anyhow.”
Elliott resisted the urge to argue. It was futile. Besides, there was a chance Jimmy was right. As much as he tried to keep the place straightened up, there was only so much he could do. He wolfed down the last few bites of his own cereal, ignoring the fact that the milk was spoiled—as it had been yesterday and the day before—and took his bowl over to the sink, rinsing it before setting it inside. He’d have to wait until school was over before he could wash them. The bus would be here any minute.
“You gotta hole in your knee,” Jimmy’s three-year-old voice sang out with a giggle.
Elliott looked down. Of course, he knew these jeans had a hole in the knee. Both of his pairs of jeans had a hole in the knee and had had holes in the knee when the lady from the thrift store had brought them over. They were also too tight in the waist. But… he made due. “I’ll be back in a few hours,” he said grabbing his books off of the counter and shoving an apple in his jacket pocket. It had a bruise on it, but it would be better than nothing. Hopefully, it would tide him over until he got home, and then he could figure out what to make him and Jimmy for dinner. If there was anything. He’d worry about that later.
“When’s Mommy getting up?”
“Hell if I know,” Elliott replied.
“You’re not supposed to say that word!”
“Hell, hell, hell!” Elliott shrieked as he headed out of the room. As much as he did for his little brother, the least the boy could do was show a little bit of respect. He didn’t, though, not most of the time.
“I’m telling Mommy!” Jimmy shouted at Elliott’s back. He crossed the living room and pushed open the screen door, slamming it behind him. It was hot outside, and it would do just as well for the front door to stay open.
“Like she’d care,” he muttered under his breath. He could hear the school bus heading up the road and made his way to the bus stop where a couple of other kids were already standing. The snickering started well before he joined them.
One of the boys shouted, “Well, if it isn’t old Slimy Sanderson come to join us. Look at that hair! When’s the last time you washed it?” He laughed and poked another boy in the ribs with his elbow.
“His hair? Look at the hole in his pants,” a girl dressed in a nice pink dress that reached her knobby knees insisted. “He looks like he just rolled out of a garbage can!” The rest of the kids found her observation to be hilarious.
Elliott ignored them. When he’d first started school a few weeks ago, he’d attempted to think of something witty to say back to their comments, but that usually just made them laugh louder. He’d have to think of something even more clever if he was going to sway this crowd, but for now, he couldn’t help but think they were mostly right. He was by far the tallest first grader, since he should’ve started school the year before, but his mom had “forgotten” to take him until some lady who said she was from “the state” insisted he begin to attend. He also weighed more than two of these other kids put together and figured he could do some real damage if he decided to punch one of them in the face, but he’d had enough violence and was hopeful school was a place where he could go to be safe, even if he was judged by every single child at his school.
The bus pulled to a stop in front of them, and Elliott let the other kids climb aboard first, thinking it was safer that way. He knew he’d be tripped at least a half a dozen times by the older kids as he made his way down the aisle toward the back of the bus—not the way back where the cool kids and bullies sat, but past the middle—and sure enough, if he hadn’t been holding onto the seat backs with his free hand, he probably would’ve fallen. He found an empty seat, glad that the bus wasn’t nearly full yet by the time it reached his bus stop, and scooted all the way over to the window, content to look out at all the same small, shotgun style houses in his neighborhood that looked similar to his, though most of these were nicely painted, and their small concrete porches didn’t have half a railing missing on the left side like his did. Their yards were nicely mowed, without the same three or four foot tall weeds as his, and many of them had a car parked out front or in the drive whereas his mother didn’t even own a bicycle.
At the next stop, several more kids got on so that the bus was beginning to fill up, and by the stop after that, the seat next to him was about the only option without squeezing three to a seat. He tried to avert his eyes so that whoever was unlucky enough to have to take it wouldn’t be embarrassed to have to sit with him--Slimy Sanderson.
“Is this seat taken?”
He looked up to see a pretty, tiny girl with golden curls wearing a light green dress peering at him through her eyelashes. She held her books in one hand and a lunch pail in the other.
“Nah,” he managed, trying not to stare at her. She looked really nice, like the kind of girl who might rescue kittens from a drainage ditch or bring flowers for the teacher just because. Elliott had never seen her before. He scooted closer to the window.
She sat down, and the bus proceeded. At first, she said nothing, and the noise from the rest of the kids yelling was enough to drown out the silence. But then, he heard the rustle of her dress as she turned to look at him. “My name is Carla.”
The sound of her voice caused him to turn his head slightly before he caught himself. There was no sense in acknowledging her. She didn’t seem to know that she’d be outcast just for talking to him. So he said nothing.
“What’s your name?”
Again, he didn’t respond.
Elliott felt a sharp tapping on his arm. “Hey, I said, ‘What’s your name?’” she insisted.
He turned to look at her now. “Uh, Elliott,” he replied, trying not to make eye contact.
“Elliott?” she repeated. “I like that. That’s a nice name.”
Turning back to stare out the window, he muttered, “Thanks.”
She was quiet again for a long time before he felt another poke. “Hey, where’s your lunchbox?”
“Oh, I, uh, forgot it. At home.” He looked into her blue eyes momentarily and saw her head bob up and down. She’d bought the lie.
“You’re going to be hungry by the end of the day.”
“I’ll manage.”
“You can have some of mine. My mom always makes me way too much. I can’t eat a whole sandwich all by myself.”
“No, that’s okay,” Elliott insisted, but she already had her lunchbox open. She wasn’t kidding about her mother over packing. Besides the sandwich, there was a large orange, a few cookies wrapped in a cloth, and some carrot sticks.
“Here you go.” She handed him half of a sandwich, which she wrapped in a napkin.
“I really… I don’t even have any place to put it.” As good as the sandwich looked, appearing to have both bologna and cheese on it, as well as a healthy helping of mayonnaise seeping out the side, he couldn’t just put it in his pocket.
“That’s true.” She seemed to consider a solution. “Are you in second grade?” she asked.
“Why did you ask that?” He felt offended that she’d just assume he was a second grader, even though, technically he should’ve been.
“I’m sorry. It’s just… I’m in first grade, and I’ve never seen you on the playground at lunchtime before.”
“I’m in first grade,” he assured her. He didn’t mention that he chose to sit around the corner of the building beneath a tree to eat his apple or whatever other meager scraps of food he’d manage to scrape together, away from the taunting of the other kids.
“Oh. Well, if you’re in first grade, I can just give it to you at lunch. You can sit with me and my friends if you’d like.”
“I, uh, have my own friends to sit with.” He looked her in the eye again, and she nodded once more. For some reason, whenever he looked her in the eye and told a lie, she seemed to believe it.
“Okay. Well, then, just find me at recess, and I’ll share my sandwich with you, okay, Elliott?” Carla asked, smiling sweetly. She slipped the sandwich back into her plain metal lunchbox and latched the lid.
“Okay,” Elliott agreed, though he wasn’t sure he’d do it. As tempting as it might be to have a sandwich for lunch, that would mean venturing out of his hidey hole to face the world, and since the last time he’d tried to play with the other kids at recess, they’d laughed at him and called him a giant, he thought maybe that wasn’t the best plan after all.
The school was up ahead on the right, and Elliott was relieved to be getting away from Carla. She was nice, but talking to her made him feel all nervous inside, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. Although, he thought maybe he liked her. She was the first kid at school to be nice to him at all. Maybe it was because she hadn’t seen the hole in his pants. Or maybe it was because he’d done his best to keep his hair clean lately, but she seemed to think he was okay—not Slimy Sanderson, not Chunky.
There was only one other person who was nice to him at school, and he couldn’t wait to see her either. He took his time getting off of the bus, though, because he didn’t want to get tripped again. Once the other kids were all off, including Carla who’d told him goodbye and slipped into the aisle when the other kids next to them had gotten up, he made his way off of the bus.
“Have a good day,” the bus driver said, and Elliott turned to look at him for the first time.
He was an older man with his hat pulled down over his eyes. Elliott cocked his head to the side and really stared. While he’d never taken the time to study the bus driver before, there seemed to be something odd about him, and he wasn’t even sure if this was the same man who’d driven him to school for the last few weeks. “You, too,” he mumbled as his stomach did flip-flops. The man’s skin was pale, and his eyes were an odd color. Maybe it was just the way the cap cast a shadow over his eyes, but they looked almost gray. Red rimmed the bottom of them, and his cheeks looked hollow somehow, even though the man’s paunch was even bigger than Elliott’s.
Trying not to trip down the steps, Elliott backed off of the bus, watching as a sly smile spread across the driver’s face. Once his feet connected with the ground, Elliott rushed off toward the school building, letting thoughts of the spooky looking bus driver slip away as he remembered the other person he was happy to see—Miss Hays.
On the first day of school, Miss Barbie Hays had announced that this was her first year as a schoolteacher. She was only twenty-two years old, she’d said, but she had always wanted to be a teacher and had just finished college in May. She had a kitten named Blossom and lived at home with her mom, dad, and younger sister, Margaret. Everything about Miss Hays was beautiful, from the long blonde hair she always wore up in a bun to the tip of her toes, always hidden behind her comfortable, flat shoes. Her dresses were always clean and wrinkle-free, and she smelled like flowers. She was the exact opposite of Arlene Harold, and from the moment Elliott had laid eyes on her, he was certain he was going to marry her.
Most importantly of all, Miss Hays was kind. She seemed to think Elliott was smart. She never called him any of the awful things he was used to hearing, and she even let him have special jobs, like cleaning the erasers. She said it took a strong young man to get all of the chalk out of them, and he concurred. He always pounded them extra hard when she said things like that, just to show her there was muscle in his arms, too. It wasn’t all flab, as his mom said.
When he got to class, Miss Hays greeted him with a smile, and he made his way to his seat, making sure the apple was still safe in his pocket, and sliding his books inside his desk. He sat next to a mean kid named Richard who liked to shove him in the arm whenever Miss Hays wasn’t looking, and another boy named Teddy whose dad had died in the war. Teddy still cried almost every day, and Miss Hays gave him lots of hugs. Sometimes, Elliott thought about telling her that his dad had also died in the war, but since he had no idea who his dad was, it was kind of hard to make up stories about him. At least his brother Jimmy would be able to say his dad got shot in the war and had to walk with a cane for the rest of his life because of it. Maybe if Jimmy had Miss Hays as his teacher, she would give him lots of hugs.
Elliott thought about how Carla had believed everything he’d said when he was staring her in the eye and thought maybe that might work on Miss Hays, too. Maybe he could think of something sad to tell her, something believable, something that would earn him a hug.
