Blood Isn't Always Thicker Than Water

Monty was getting very comfortable. I looked him over again and figured that he probably was a Border Collie. I had seen a couple of these before. If Monty started behaving like he had ADHD, then yes, he was a Border Collie.

Balto I wasn’t so sure about. First of all, his part-wolf-ness might be blocking some crucial domestic dog trait. So I wasn’t going to bother.

“Hey Monty,” I whispered.

He twitched an ear at me, the black fringe flopping around.

“I’ve gotta get up.” I could easily roll him off or pick him up or something, but I didn’t want to lose his trust. “C’mon, boy.” I tightened my leg muscled then let them loose over and over again to make him less comfortable. He finally picked his head up. “Good boy.” I grabbed my bag and made my way over to the right side of the divider. Pushing aside a soft fleecy blanket, I made my way into my bedroom, making a point to ignore the multiple moth-made holes in the moth-attracting materials.

I sighed and smiled as I looked over the familiar interior. I had the widest window in the house. I loved it. My bed was extremely old but in great condition. Sadly, I couldn’t say the same for the mattress. Anyway, the bed was carved out of some dark wood. The headboard was gargantuan and had an intricate design of vines, birds, rabbits, snakes, and even these two deer with a fawn. A waterfall flowed tortuously through it all. The sheer talent and time it must have taken to make it had caused me to stare mesmerized at it every once and a while. Including now. Since I had seen the crudeness of the rest of the world, this was quite the sight for sore eyes. The footboard also had an assortment of wildlife, but no deer, nor a waterfall. The feet of the bed had wide girths and grass carved in at the base of “tree trunks”. There were no gigantic poles sticking up at the four corners, but there were weird crystal-ball-like spheres with swirly things engraved in. All in all, the bed was a work of art.

My dresser was painted white and stuck out ferociously. It was yellowing and chipping, though, so that helped it blend in a little. I walked over and started emptying the meager contents of my bag into the dresser. Then I placed my laptop and iPod on top. Once that was all over and done with, I turned and made my way back downstairs, right into the biggest room in the entire house.

“Monty, I’m glad you’re here,” I told the dog as I searched hopelessly for the light switch. “Silence in huge, dark, open spaces can be freaky when you’re convinced terrorists have followed you right out of one state and into another. Why they’d follow me, I have no idea. But I have a weird suspicion they have.”

A throaty laugh reached my ear.

My heart died on the spot, then spurted cautiously back to life. “M-M-M-Monty?” I asked in a tiny, squeaky voice. I can be such a girl sometimes.

“No,” a voice said.

I frowned. It sounded sorta…familiar. “Balto? You really are a werewolf?”

“Oh my goodness… No. I’m not Monty or…Balto. Or whatever you said.”

“Jesus?!” I cried, grabbing a couple locks of hair in distress. “I swear I tried to live a good life! I just could never quite understand what the heck the Bible said! Have mercy!”

The voice laughed again. “I’m not Jesus either, Cas. Come on, you know me.” Then I hear him—yes, it was a guy; I’m not dumb enough to think Jesus was a woman—mutter, “This is pathetic.”

“Just… Just… Please don’t mug me!” I pleaded. “Or rape me. I’m proud of my innocence.”

“Good God!” the voice exclaimed, sounding exasperated. “Say my name! You know who I am!”

“Well, yeah, I recognize your voice…I just can’t place it…” Then a thought hit me with the suddenness of Superman swinging a two-by-four. “Fallen?! I knew ghosts existed!”

“NO! Caspian Ross, you are hopeless. Do I sound like that excessively swearing ‘vampire’?” The lights flicked on and I cowered as I laid eyes on the person standing at the switch.

Then, “Jeremy!”

He rolled his eyes. “No, I’m God.”

“Aw, man, I’m so glad you came.” Then I remembered why I left. “Dude, you can’t be near me—”

“And, what, the dogs can?” He gestured to where Monty and Balto were standing in the doorway.

I furrowed my eyebrows. “How did you know they were there? And that they’re dogs?”

He tapped his head. “There’s more in here than you know.”

Thanks for the straight answer.

I gave Jeremy Logan’s room. And I told him that he was not allowed in the attic unless there were dire circumstances and I was asleep.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get some firewood.”

“You do that,” Jeremy said sleepily, getting comfortable on the bed. “Wait, why do you need firewood?”

“Let me worry about that,” I said, as nonchalant as possible.

“Caspian…” I was halfway out the door.

“No, really, don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.”

“Well, I better be too when you’re done.” He gave me one last suspicious look, then I closed the door behind me. Oh, I loved scaring him like that.

I blinked. Balto was galloping up the corridor. “Hey, boy…” He stopped in front of Jeremy’s door and started scratching it. “Um, okay…” I said, opening the door again. “Jeremy, you’ve got a visitor.” Then I left the door open a crack and sped outside. Monty snuffled around my heels as I ferried armful after armful of sticks and logs and all manner of wood into the manor’s dining room. After two hours—Monty had flopped down, exhausted, after half an hour—I figured that I had enough wood for three days. Hopefully more. “Alright, Monty. Now I need some matches. Lots, probably.”

He looked at me with tired and bored eyes.

“Don’t worry. I’ve tried dog meat. I don’t like it. Too tough,” I let him know.

“You do know they can’t understand what you say.” Jeremy appeared, sitting on top of the table. It was one of those special tables that was really thin, and really long. Maybe two very skinny people could fit at one of the ends together. Then twenty-five grown men could sit shoulder-to-shoulder with elbow room along the sides. But there were only four chairs…

“How do you do that?” I asked him.

“What? He pushed himself off the table and started waking lithely toward me.

“Show up…randomly,” I said with difficulty, for I was gesticulating wildly.

He laughed. “You mean how I am so quiet? Sneaky?”

I took a second to process, then nodded.

He shrugged. “I move like that naturally.” He crouched down next to me in front of the ridiculously large fireplace that I had my firewood piled in and around. “It’s part of the way I’m made up. And I’ve practiced sneaking a lot.” He yanked a match out from, like, nowhere, and lit it by scraping it over Monty’s nose. The dog just lay contentedly on the floor and Balto soon joined him. Meanwhile, Jeremy was lighting another match after tossing the first one into the fireplace. The second was thrown in soon after, and before I thought it possible, a great, huge fire was blazing. Jeremy stared at it, looking mesmerized as I took a few steps back. The blonde “vampire” stuck out a hand and let a few of the harmless orange tongues of flame lick his fingers. The dogs still looked perfectly at ease.

“Cas, I need to tell you something.”

I frowned and sat cross-legged next to my best friend. “Spill.”

He took his hand out of the flames, and lowered his eyes down to the stone he was crouching on. “I’ve never told you the whole truth of what I am. I’m not just…a ‘vampire’. In sunlight, I can see…what other humans and ‘vampires’ can’t. I can smell that you’re confused right now.”

I shivered, though I was feet away from a hot fire. “Go on.”

“So…yeah. I can smell emotions. I can see people’s souls and their…cleanliness, I guess you would call it. Cas, yours is amazingly clear. Every time you swear it gets a bit darker, and when you kissed Samantha it was monumental—”

I choked on my own spit and my eyes bugged out. “You—you were—watching?”

He smiled, looking right at me. He really was seeing through me, right to my soul. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

I rolled my eyes. “So much for me being hopeless.”

“And animals love me!” Jeremy proclaimed, shrugging as he smiled. "But I can see anything that’s alive or has been—sort of. I sense its presence. Like the table and chairs over there.”

“So… You never actually ran into a wall?”

He nodded. “But the escalator and that trash can were real.”

I laughed. “Wow. Just wow.”

He shrugged again. “And there’s one last thing.”

“Do tell.”

“Actually, two. First, I don’t sleep. It’s impossible. Second…I…Cas, I’ve been working for the King.”