Carlos

John frowns at me and blinks, and the glow in his eyes is gone so quickly he could easily convince me I imagined it if he wanted to. The rest of what I saw is harder to explain.

"So, seriously, what is this?" Becky the ex-wife asks. "Is he your roommate or something?"

"No," John says, still looking at me. "It's exactly what you thought the first time."

"Oh... Really? I didn't know you swung both ways." She eyes me with sharpened curiosity. "Well, aren't you going to introduce me? And why does he look terrified?" She takes a few steps closer and peers at me with a frown. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Becky, wait downstairs," John growls. "This doesn't concern you."

Becky shifts her attention to him and crosses her arms stubbornly. I suppose I should take it as a good sign that she seems absolutely undaunted, but then again, she could be even scarier than John, for all I know.

"Fine. But you better have a good explanation. I see too much shit like this in my job to turn a blind eye."

She turns on her heel and marches back downstairs. John's shoulders slump, and when he looks at me again, his expression is guarded, but softer than before. Still, as he closes the gap between us and stands in front of me, so close I can feel the heat of his body, I turn my head aside and shut my eyes.

"Carlos. Look at me." He rests his hands on my shoulders. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

"What are you?" Still clad in my towel, I shiver as much with suppressed emotion and adrenaline as with cold.

John takes my hand. "Come here."

He tugs gently, leading me towards his room. I resist briefly, fearful that I've been lured into some strange trap, but his gentleness wins me over.

"Sit down." He points to his bed.

I obey. He bends and opens a drawer built into the frame beneath it, and pulls out a set of soft garments — checkered pajama bottoms, a t-shirt, socks, and a sweater.

So that's where he keeps his clothes.

He sets the pile beside me. "Put those on, and wait for me here. I need to get rid of Becky. Then, we'll talk."

"Becky... Does she know... about that?" I nod towards the closet. My voice is little more than a rough whisper, but I don't dare speak louder just yet.

"No. No one knows. No one who isn't like me, anyway."

"Like you?"

He rubs a hand over his mouth. "Carlos, I've no right to ask you to trust me, and I won't. Trust has to be earned. All I can say is, I never intended to deceive you. All of this just... happened, and I haven't had time to figure out what to do about it yet. Just give me a chance, and I'll explain. You have my word."

Well, I did say he was a man of his word.

"What did Becky mean about seeing shit like this in her job?" I ask, my courage slightly restored.

"She works with the DA. Human trafficking, mostly. Someone bolting out of someone else's bedroom, naked and terrified, isn't a good look."

"I don't know about terrified," I say, my ego feeling a bit provoked. "A little alarmed, maybe."

John's mouth quirks in a smile and the light returns to his eyes. "Sure. We'll go with that." He rises. "Just give me a minute. Becky brought some papers for me. She coulda sent 'em by email, but I think she misses the dogs. Relax, and look around if you want. I've got nothing else to hide."

He leaves me, and leaves the door open a crack, giving me the impression that I'm free to go if I want to. I consider it for a moment — getting my stuff, sneaking out the back, calling an Uber, and going to hide at Ian's place. Whatever John is, I'd have a bear and demon at my back, and a whole pack of werewolves, if I asked.

Whatever John is...

As the thought replays in my head, a new one joins it: he could be a threat, not just to me, but to my friends. For their sakes, if for nothing else, I need to find out what's what.

Dressed in his warm clothes, which carry his strangely intoxicating scent, I sit at his desk and take my time looking through the file on my mother. Most of it is incomprehensible to me, written in the format and language that law enforcement agencies use to talk among themselves, but it's mostly the timeline that interests me. They were following leads for years after I thought they'd given up. The whole reason Aunt Toni moved us to Oregon was because that's where the trail went cold — or so we'd thought. This says otherwise.

After Oregon, there's a report from Washington state, then New Mexico, then Maine. It makes no sense, and it tells me that if my mother was — or even is — still alive, she didn't want to be found.

I lose track of time, staring at the puzzle before me, but John knocks softly on the door when he returns so as not to startle me.

"Sorry. That took longer than I thought it would."

He keeps his distance and sits on the edge of the bed, while I spin his office chair to face him.

"Is she gone?" I ask, unsure if I should feel relieved that we're alone.

"Yeah." He smiles. "She knows me."

"You're still fond of her."

"Sure," he says easily. "Becky's my best friend."

I frown. "Why'd you separate, then?"

"That's what you're leading with?" He huffs a laugh. "All right. I did say I'd explain everything." He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. "It was a... 'marriage of convenience.' Becky's parents are from China, and very traditional in their views. She has no interest in marriage, but they wouldn't leave her alone about it. Meanwhile, the closer you fit to society's norms, the less you're scrutinized, and I had an interest in blending in. It suited us both, but over time, we realized it wouldn't work. We weren't in love and never would be, and we were tired of pretending otherwise. So we split, and when my brother died and left me this place, I asked to be reassigned."

"Reassigned... by the police?"

He shakes his head and nods at the closet door. "You saw what's in there, didn't you?"

I nod.

He rises and crosses the room, opens the door, and sweeps his gaze around the interior. He steps through, then returns holding a battered shoe box, which he sets on the desk in front of me.

"I been digging through your past. Only fair I let you dig through mine."

He lifts the top off the box, revealing a small stack of papers, on top of which rests a photograph. In it, a smiling family — a mother, father, an older boy, and two younger children — stand in front of the castle at Disneyland. Judging by the style of hair and clothes, I'd guess it was taken about thirty years ago.

"That's my parents, my older brother, my little sister, and me," he says.

I study the picture. "Okay, but why are you showing me your old vacation shots?"

"This is the last picture I have of us all together. A few weeks later, my brother left for college. A few months later, my father, mother, and sister were dead."

"How?"

He sighs and picks up the picture. "My dad traveled a lot for work — all over the world. Don't know where he got infected, but by the time he got home, it was too late. He killed my mom and my sister. He would have killed me, too, if David hadn't shown up and killed him first."

"David? Who's David?"

"A vampire hunter, and a vampire himself; as he would say, 'one of the lucky ones.'"

Wide-eyed with alarm, I touch the spot on my shoulder where he'd bitten me. "Is that what you are?"

He shakes his head. "I'm infected, not turned. David found a way to control it — to stop the infection from taking hold — but it has to be caught early, and it doesn't always work. He'd been tracking my dad, hoping to catch him in time. Instead, he found me as I bled out. My dad hadn't bitten me, you see; he'd just clawed my throat. David took a chance. He knew if he infected me, the infection would save my life. He also knew he might have to kill me anyway; on the other hand, if I survived, he'd have a very motivated protégé."

"That doesn't sound entirely altruistic," I venture.

John laughs softly. "It was, and it wasn't. David isn't human — hasn't been for a long time — and he doesn't see things from a human perspective. On the other hand, his entire purpose is to protect humans from 'our' kind, and to protect our kind from humans."

"I thought you said he was a vampire hunter?"

John sets the picture back in the box. "He is. He's never been able to isolate it, but David's theory is that vampirism is caused by an elusive retrovirus: one that rewrites the host's DNA. Sometimes, the process results in someone like David; nine times out of ten, it results in a mindless monster, like my dad. David is part of a small, global organization of like-minded individuals who keep the monsters in check and the humans in the dark. You can imagine there wouldn't be much of a distinction between 'good and bad' if people learned vampires are real." He glances at me. "Speaking of, you don't seem as freaked out by that as you should."

I shrug and pick up the photo, holding it next to the one of me and my mom. "I talk to ghosts and get possessed by demons, remember? I grew up with this shit."

He grunts noncommittally.

"I'm more freaked out by this." I gesture at my mom's file. "Why are you looking into it?"

"Vampires aren't all I hunt," he says, confirming my suspicion. "Rogue werewolves, feral shifters, the odd warlock or power-hungry sorcerer. We stay out of intra-community conflict — supernatural on supernatural violence isn't our concern — but when humans are the target, we've got a case. Anything the human authorities aren't equipped to handle — or the shit we don't want them messing in."

"What about demons?"

"Sometimes."

"What about my mom?"

He rubs the back of his neck.

"After you told me about the Feasts, I did some digging. The last documented case I could find — three murders that matched the description you'd given and occurred within the right time span — happened about twenty years ago, close to the town where you grew up. Your mother went missing about a week later."

"What?" I look up at him sharply. "No. There's no way Aunt Toni wouldn't know about something like that, and she'd have mentioned it if she did."

"Are you sure about that?"

I frown up at him. "Yeah. Why are you asking?"

He sighs, crosses the room, and sits on the edge of the bed again. I rise and approach cautiously, standing in front of him.

"John? What aren't you telling me?"

"When you told me your aunt hadn't replied to your messages, I thought it was odd. Not unheard of for estranged family members not to speak, but odd given how highly you speak of her otherwise. So, I asked the local sheriff to do a wellness check."

Heart in my mouth, I take a step closer almost involuntarily. "And?"

"And she's gone. Her garage looks like it's been empty for weeks, if not months. The sheriff is investigating and has agreed to keep me informed of everything he finds. I'm sorry, Carlos, but it appears that Antonia Martinez is missing."

"Whoa, whoa," I hold up my hands. "You think Toni has something to do with this?"

"No; but I think it might have something to do with her. And with you."

I stare at him, no doubt with the wild, frightened look of a cornered animal, and he rises and approaches me slowly. As he does, his eyes shift color and glow with reflected light again, making me wonder how Becky never noticed there something a little different going on with him.

"Don't worry," he says. "I'll protect you if you let me, and we'll do everything we can to find your aunt. In the meantime... there's one other thing we need to talk about."

.....

Author's note: What do you think, dear readers? Did you guess right about John? I wasn't sure about vampires, since I already did a vampire hybrid dude in the Ari and Soren series, but that's what John revealed himself to be (sort of – he's not really a hybrid; more like half-baked. More details to come😅).  Originally he was going to be just a mundane human, but he kept dropping hints he was something else. Now we just have to see where this is all going and how Carlos feels about dating a guy who may or may not want to eat him in more ways than one...