Caleb and Cassandra were just getting their baby tucked into her crib for the night when the call came in.
Caleb felt his phone buzz in his pocket; it was always on vibrate these days to avoid waking up Lucy when she was asleep but a call this late at night was unusual. Normally it was Elodie calling him about the restaurant but Sapore Di Casa had closed for the day hours ago. Something in his gut told him something wasn’t right.
“Here, Cass, can you take her for a minute? My phone’s buzzing,” Caleb told his wife and gently transferred the sleeping Lucy to her mother’s arms.
“This late at night?” Cassandra asked him with a small frown. “Who is it?”
Caleb reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone to look at the caller ID. His stomach dropped to his feet. MARIAH VILLAREAL displayed in capital letters on the screen. But why was his step-daughter calling him at this hour and not her mother?
“It’s Mariah,” he breathed, hardly daring to believe it. They never got calls from her. Ever. Only vague, distant texts every couple of months and even those had stopped lately. All the colour drained out of Cassandra’s face. She knew something was very wrong with her baby. A mother always knows.
“Answer it, Caleb,” she told her husband in a shaking voice but she didn’t have to tell him. Caleb already hit Answer and had the phone to his ear.
“… Pops?” a tiny thread of a shaking voice came through on the line broken up by terrified sobs. Tears of relief immediately sprang to Caleb’s eyes. He used to complain about her calling him that because it made him feel old. Watcher, he’d give anything to hear that stupid nickname again as long as it meant his step-daughter was safe.
“I’m here, Mariah,” he said, swallowing a lump in his throat. “Are you okay? Are you safe?”
“… I’m in trouble, Pops,” came her fearful reply. She didn’t have to say anything else.
“I’m coming to get you. Where are you?”
“I… I don’t know. I took something bad and I don’t know what’s real or–” she was suddenly cut off by a lot of angry shouting in the background. A man’s deep voice Caleb didn’t recognise but he could hazard a guess at who she was with. Hugo had told Alexander he suspected Mariah was hanging out with her Uncle Max, and Elodie had told him a similar story she got from a suspect at work about Max and a girl who fit Mariah’s description.
“Mariah?! Mariah, is that Max with you? Mariah?!” Caleb tried to get her back on the line but all he heard was more shouting and Mariah’s terrified scream before the line went dead. “Dammit…” he sighed to himself as he hastily shoved his phone back into his pocket.
Cassandra had hastily put Lucy in her crib during the phone call and was clinging to her husband’s arm for dear life with tears in her eyes. “Caleb, what happened?! Where is she? Is she safe?” He wanted so badly to hold her and assure her everything was fine but he couldn’t lie to her for the sake of easing her worries. He’d learned that early on in their marriage. She had to know the truth about what was going on with her daughter.
He shook his head with a pained look and gently pulled her against him, pressing his forehead to hers. “She’s in trouble, Cass, but I don’t want you to worry. I promised you I’d bring her home and I will. Tonight. Call my sister to stay with you so you’re not out of your mind with panic all alone while I’m gone, okay?”
“She’s my baby, Caleb. I need to go get her. I need to be there.”
“Cass, whatever she’s gotten herself into, it’s dangerous. I don’t want you anywhere near whatever is going on. I’m a vampire. I can handle myself but you’re human. And you have another baby here at home who needs you,” Caleb gently reasoned with her.
“Caleb, please–” she tried to beg but he wouldn’t have it. He gingerly cupped her face in both palms and gave her forehead a kiss.
“Cass. I will find her. Tonight,” he swore.
Mariah hadn’t been able to give him a location but Elodie had told him her suspect said they were in the Spice District of San Myshuno a lot so he focused his search there. He’d been around long enough and searching for Mariah long enough to know where all the seediest parts of the Spice District were. In the lonely alleys between low-income apartment buildings and dark parking lots behind plazas full of liquor stores and corner shops was where all the worst kinds of people congregated when it got dark.
All the worst kinds of people like Max Villareal. If he found Max here, he’d find Mariah, too.
As a human, Caleb might not have heard the shouting from so far away. But as a vampire and as a bat with an acute sense of hearing, he pinpointed a man’s irate screaming coming from a dark alley as Caleb flew over the city. His gut told him he was on the right track so he swooped down towards the noise and transformed back into his regular form in a silent cloud of mist as he landed at the edge of the alley.
He’d seen pictures of Max from Cassie’s old family albums, back when she was still married to Hugo. Max had been just a kid then but Caleb still recognised him. His features hadn’t changed much over the years. He was just older and meaner.
And he was currently kicking the crap out of a lifeless figure on an old dirty mattress next to a dumpster.
“GET UP!” Max screamed. “GET UP YOU STUPID BITCH! I’M GONNA BE THE ONE IN SHIT IF YOU DIE! GET THE FUCK UP!!!” He kicked the lifeless figure so hard that Caleb heard bones crunch and the body rolled off the mattress face-down onto the filthy, litter-strewn asphalt.
And that’s when Caleb saw that the lifeless figure Max was beating was Mariah.
Max didn’t have a split second to do anything else because Caleb was there faster than anyone could have blinked. He had his hands wrapped around Max’s neck before Max even knew what was happening and Caleb could feel a sensation he hadn’t felt in over a century. He was changing. Into something dark and terrifying. Something he’d fought against for so long until he’d thought it had left him for good… but a vampire’s dark form never truly goes away. It just sits dormant, waiting for its moment to take over when the vampire can’t control themselves anymore.
“What… the… f-fuck, man!” Max struggled to gasp out.
“Get. Your. Fucking. Hands. Off. My. Daughter,” Caleb’s voice didn’t sound like a man. It was the low, guttural growl of a monster.
“P-Please…” Max’s terrified gasp struggled to be heard. “I c-can’t… f-fuckin’… breathe…”
Caleb squeezed tighter until Max’s eyes rolled back into his head. “Good,” he growled and threw him with superhuman strength against the wall behind him.
Max hit the wall with enough force to crack the crumbling brick behind him. Bones shattered on impact. His skull bounced back off the brick like a bobblehead. He was unconscious before he hit the ground with a sickening thud and crumpled in on himself.
As the initial surge of adrenaline left him, the reality of what he’d just done settled over Caleb like a noose around his neck. He may have just committed murder. The sobering thought drained the last of the monster out of him. When he fell to his knees beside his step-daughter, he was Caleb again.
“Mariah? Mariah, can you hear me, sweetie? Can you talk to me?” Caleb turned her over onto her back and felt sick to his stomach seeing just how wasted away she was. She had both fresh wounds and scars from previous beatings. “What did you take, honey? Do you remember? Can you tell me?”
No response. When her step-father lifted an eyelid, her eyes were glassy and unfocused. She had a pulse but she wasn’t really there. She’d told him on the phone she’d taken something bad and couldn’t distinguish hallucinations from reality. Caleb knew she’d overdosed on something but he didn’t know what. She needed to get to a hospital. Now.
But so did Max and Caleb couldn’t carry them both. Between his step-daughter and her piece of shit uncle, it was a no-brainer; he’d get Mariah to a hospital faster than any ambulance could and call for help for Max.
He pulled out his phone and dialed 911.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“There’s a man in an alley in the Spice District of San Myshuno. He’s hurt bad. You need to send an ambulance for him. Between the two apartment complexes on the corner of Adelaide and Parks. And tell the hospital to prepare for a woman coming in suffering from a drug overdose and multiple injuries.”
He knew the 911 operator would tell him to stay on the line and keep giving her as much information as possible until an ambulance arrived but Mariah didn’t have that kind of time. He hung up immediately after rattling off the necessary info and hoisted his step-daughter into his arms.
“It’s okay, Mariah. Pops is here now,” he murmured in her ear as he took off with her into the night. They were just a blur in the darkness before the sirens came.
Snarky Sims 