Heritage: Against the Grain

Chapter 8 -Tollgate

“A manned tollgate that takes pictures of every number plate,” Colt said, stunned. “He had their plates, and finding their details would be easy enough. He could have followed and watched them, and no one would ever know, guess, or suspect.”

“So all they ever did wrong was use the wrong tollgate, but how do we know which one?” Gillian asked. “Except that maybe he would have worked there since his teens. If we’re fortunate, his name might cross-check with our recent search for inmate releases.”

It sounded like such a long shot that it might actually be right.

“We might make a detective out of you yet,” Colt teased, and Gillian allowed herself a small smile.

She liked that Colt accepted her so readily. Actually, the whole team did. What would they do if they ever found out the truth? Apart from never surviving their discovery.

Gillian wasn’t who she pretended to be, and she could never be herself in this world; it bothered her during the day, when she tried to sleep. Then again, they never allowed her to be herself in her other world, either.

So what is really the difference? Except this is my choice—the lesser of two evils.

“We’ll run it and see if anything pops up,” Colt finished as she scraped her belongings together.

It was time to go home, except Gillian didn’t feel like it—she was still too amped.

I have to at least keep up appearances. She left the station and caught a cab.

“Where to?” The driver asked, his voice telling her the night was getting long for him. With first light crowning the ether, she wasn’t focused on him.

“Is there a gym or something near here?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, just two blocks over. They’ve got a great wall climb, pool, and everything. I have a regular that goes there. A bit on the expensive side, though.”

Gillian’s eyes focused on him for the first time, as she tuned the rest of the world out.

He was of indeterminable background. Dark hair, heavyset, ordinary face, tired eyes, but just the tiniest spark of interest remained in them.

All the things he must have seen in his life, she marveled, yet pitied him.

“That would be okay.”

He nodded again and drove on just as the sun crested the buildings with glorious brilliance.

Gillian reached for her shades.

Today, she was just too vampire to find the sun comfortable. She was sensitive to light; some of her kind were more than others.

The myths always entertained her as a child. She read all things vampire as voraciously as any other young adult—the human versions, anyway.

Her kind spent millennia making humans believe that sunlight killed a vampire, that they couldn’t eat human food, and had to sleep in coffins, but the darker myths came from humanity.

Anything different had to be wicked, and evil things would die when holy water touched their skin, or if you showed such a creature a cross.

She smirked.

The city was beautiful this early in the morning, almost mystical, and she stared out the window again.

For the first time in days, the tension flowed from her frame.

No one knew when their kind first evolved into being, nor did they know how or why.

They were not the only errant branches on the human tree, far from it, but they were among the species that survived better.

Perhaps because we look and act so human. For instance, this man has no idea what I am. To him, I am just another cop he picked up at the station.

Like all the other “freaks,” they found it better to hide until humanity forgot about them, and somehow the legends and stories gained a life of their own.

They were headed toward the less elegant side of town, but closer to the divide between.

Despite the romantic view humans seemed to have cultivated around stories like Dracula and Twilight, supernaturals had not forgotten eons of being hunted, hated, and pursued.

They remembered the depth of darkness hiding in the human heart and how far these creatures would go to protect themselves.

They stopped at a red light, and the driver tapped on the steering wheel. Impatient to get home. Then they rolled into motion again.

The real vampire history was just as rife with exaggerations and outright lies as the human world, except the consequences of those lies were not amusing.

“This is it,” the driver said.

“Thank you,” she said, giving him a generous tip.

At least I will be able to work through my frustrations for the next couple of hours, even if I have to control myself. But I won’t be alone with my thoughts.

The houses mirrored every other one on the block. Quiet neighborhood, lower-middle class, clapboard, starting to look just a little shabby around the edges. Trimmed lawn, no flowers, no trees, no fence, neat driveway, closed garage, and nobody home.

People who live here work during the day and earn a living in nearby cities where their children are in school.

The police, clad in their body armor—their squad cars parked to block off the street and protect the houses across—not only looked out of place, but not even a curtain moved to surveil their presence.

It reminded Gillian of a movie set, and the whole place looked like a mockup of a city neighborhood.

Andrew Miles has to be at home today—he never arrived at work this morning, and it is the first time he has missed a day in twenty years.

Gillian took stock of that quiet street; less than two hours had passed since Colt called her in, and she left the gym.

Despite the early hour, the sun baked down on them, and sweat trickled down their bodies as everyone got into place. Apart from the inhabitants being at work during the day, something just feels off about this place.

The far-off sounds of a lawnmower caught her ear, cars on the nearby highway, and a dog that barked down the block. Someone in the house across the street finally peered from behind a curtain—an elderly woman, more curious than concerned, yet nothing stirred inside the home they were surrounding.

“Are we ready?” Boss asked.

“Yes, sir,” Colt answered, her voice more clipped than usual.

The day shift had figured out who their killer was earlier. They asked for and were issued a warrant to search his house in record time. A frown furrowed her brow.

She found it odd that he didn’t show up for work on the very day they were due to arrive on his doorstep.

The briefing that morning flickered through her brain. Colt told them Andrew’s parents missed their weekly meetings with their parole officer twice in the last two weeks.

They had been housed in a community-funded home, and both of their rooms had been broken into—small personal items had been stolen, and nothing else.

The hidden camera out at the back of the facility in the staff parking area had caught his profile for a few seconds, just long enough for them to establish that he had been there. It gave them grounds to investigate his parents’ disappearance, painting him as the main suspect.

There was a slim chance that they would find proof inside his house, but sometimes killers were too bright and too smug for their own good.

We can only hope this one made a mistake and that we find something to charge him with. And maybe he will do us a favor and resist… She blocked the thought and, with it, her vampire’s instincts.