Jake tried to focus on the road and not on the images of the disaster that happened just that afternoon. He tried not to think about the team, his friends, gathered around the table in the disused basement the Society of Hunters used as a base. The faces of the five college students and the faculty advisor of this "club" doomed to death in the catacombs beneath campus as they poured over the woefully incomplete map on the table.
The nest of vampires under the theater arts building had been far bigger and better prepared than they had anticipated. Even hitting them during the day, when the blood suckers' physical and mental powers were at their weakest, the hunters had been outmatched from the start.
Jake pulled into the second parking space assigned to his mother in the high rise apartment building garage. He hadn't anticipated simply being underground again would cause images to flood back. Friends dying in traps and combat. And Meagan.
He cursed himself for failing her most of all. The look on her face when he turned around to see her being dragged through the concealed door he had obliviously walked past not two seconds before. The complete surprise in her eyes as the door slammed shut in his face. His childhood best friend turned love of his forever damned life gone because he couldn't get through a damned door.
Professor Alvin had to punch him to stop Jake from using the team's incendiary grenades to burn a hole through the door. He said that the only chance to save her was to slay the master and rest of the nest. That had ended in failure, with the master ripping the professor's throat out with its fangs.
The only thing that Jake had managed to do right was to hurl a Molotov cocktail into the chest of the master. Through the flare he managed to see its body and the Professor's erupt into flames. Jake prayed that the master was gone for good. He fled, dropping grenades as he ran. He burst out into the afternoon sun, the only one of the seven who went down to survive.
The next few hours were a rush of carrying out the protocols the professor had set out for this contingency; sending coded messages to other chapters, clearing caches of equipment, and, most importantly, burning the headquarters. The process was to leave nothing for the vampires to find and further turn the tables on the hunters.
Still, Jake was not going to sit around and hope that he had sufficiently covered his tracks. It was nearly one o'clock in the morning and he was riding the elevator to his mother's apartment. He had kept what he had been doing with the Society a secret from her, but now he would have to get her out of town and eventually tell her why.
He focused on his breathing and the techniques the professor had taught them to build a defensive wall around their minds. Those defenses had saved him a couple of times in the past, and he hoped they might do so again.
Jake let himself into the apartment with a key and quickly punched his code into the alarm panel.
"Mom!," he yelled, "Mom, get up!"
The apartment was neat and tidy to his relief, no sign of anyone breaking in or causing a struggle. The apartment was his mother Ramona's new home after she sold the suburban house she and his grandparents had raised Jake in. She worked in the city and said that once Jake was off to college she wouldn't put up with the commute anymore.
It was nice to have her nearby, he and Meagan would have dinner there at least a couple of nights a week, often staying over in the spare bedroom. Ramona had always been far more lax about Meagan and him being sexual than Meagan's parents.
"You will be safe," she said, "and if things go wrong you will do right."
Not that Jake needed reminding to not be like the man who knocked up his mother when she was eighteen and abandoned her. He intended to marry Meagan.
Or at least, he had.
"Jake? Jake, what's wrong?" he heard from down the hall as a light came on in her bedroom.
Jake turned on the kitchen light as he went by. His mother, Ramona, was standing in the hallway. Her hair was tousled from sleep and she was wearing one of his old t-shirts. Between her five foot five inch frame and his six foot height that it was long enough, even stretched over her generous bosom, that he wondered if she was wearing underwear. Certainly not a bra.
For the love of God, not now,
he thought.
"We have to leave, now. Pack up a couple of changes of clothes, toothbrush, anything you can't go two days without. We need to get someplace safe."
"Safe? Why aren't we safe?"
Jake brushed past her, trying not to bump her too hard as she stood her ground in the middle of the hallway, feeling her breast against his arm as she turned with him.
"Does this have to do with that secret club you and Meagan are in?"
Jake froze as the mention of her name caused the memory of the vampires dragging her away, her eyes locked on his, to become his reality for a second.
"What do you know about that?"
"It's the topic that causes the two of you to clam up whenever extra-curriculars come up or what you two do in your off-time when you aren't here. I cornered Meagan about it once and she said with was some 'secret society' social club and wouldn't say anything else. Is it something criminal? Are people coming to hurt you?"
"No, nothing criminal," Jake said, leaving aside being judge, jury, and executioner for some things the law might mistake for people. "Not criminal, but dangerous."
Ramona looked him in the eye for a long moment. Jake's mother had the most beautiful brown eyes. He felt himself wanting to fall into them.
Not now!!
"Alright," she said, raising a hand and putting her fingertips along his cheek. "I trust you, give me a few minutes."
Once in the guest room he knelt down beside the bed and pulled out a slim hardcase from underneath and put it on the bed. He hadn't noticed that his mother stepped into the doorway of the guest room. He turned the dials to the right numbers. In the case was a bundle of hundred dollar bills, a semi automatic handgun, and three magazines of ammunition. He chose one of the two with hollow points filled with silver and slid it into place.
Jake felt the embrace wrap around him from behind, his mother's hands traced along his arms, her chest pressed into his back. His kneeling position was precarious but Ramona's presence stabilized him.
"I am so proud of you, Jake," his mother's voice whispered in his ear, "I watched you grow strong, and gentle, and good. You had turned eighteen and you were everything I wished the father you should have had would be. Everything I wished the husband I should have had would be. The husband I deserve."
Pain pierced the skin of his neck, pain that burned to become ecstasy.
