Black Angel (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 22: Preparation

In the wake of the killings, school is cancelled. None of the victims were high-school students, only college kids out for a night on the town, but the school board thought it best given the circumstances. Having such a large, well, slaughter so close by is bound to deal out some piping-hot trauma. 

"Gabriel. Gabriel, hello? Gabriel!"

"Huh?" I blink and turn to Melody, seated cross-legged on her bed with her phone gripped tightly in her hands, one palm covering the speaker. 

"It's Shawn," she says. Her voice tremors slightly. "He's at the morgue right now; they found Leo in the park last night." 

"Oh, shit." I don't know what else to say. Simply expressing pity doesn't seem appropriate to me, as I sure wouldn't want it from anyone.

"Does he need us to come down or something?" Luca asks immediately, his icy blue eyes widening with concern. Leave it to him to come up with the perfect response: Melody's face melts with appreciation as she relays the question to Shawn.

After a second she shakes her head. "No, he says it's a family matter." They talk for another few moments before she ends the call and lets her phone drop with a soft thud onto her bed. The room is silent, Luca chewing his lip with a worried expression, Melody staring blankly at the walls as though in some sort of trance.

"I knew Leo," she says after awhile. "He was a good guy."

Luca and I look at each other, both apparently lost for words. Melody shakes her head and runs one finger along her comforter absent-mindedly; her red eyes gaze off into space with an unfocused look.

"Who could have done this?" she asks, and her voice is so quiet I have to strain to hear her.

"That's always the million-dollar question, isn't it?" I remark dryly. I grab one of Melody's stress balls from off of her dresser and begin rolling it around in my hands, tossing it upward every once in awhile.

Melody gives me a dirty look. "Could you at least pretend to care, Gabriel? For fuck's sake, the aloof attitude is getting on my nerves."

I open my mouth to say something I'll no doubt regret, but Luca quickly comes to my rescue. "Melody, it's not that he--or we, for that matter--doesn't care. I don't know about him, but I never knew Leo. We all deal with things in our own way, and obviously you hurt more because you knew him better than we did, and..." He floundered a bit, then continued, " Well, anyway. We're here for you, Melody. And Shawn. You both know that, right?"

She doesn't say anything for a long while, but she seems to accept Luca's fumbled explanation. I mean, the kid's right. I never knew Leo, never even knew he existed before the day Shawn mentioned he'd been accepted to Harvard. Poor guy was barely a semester into his freshman year. Way too young to die, let alone in such an awful and publicized way.

"All they've been able to figure out," she finally mutters, "is that these aren't the first murders of this type to occur. Sure, humans found drained isn't far from the norm, even in our time. But vampires?" She shakes her head, biting her lip. "The only possible suspect would have to be..."

"A Krusnik," Luca says softly. I flick a glance at him, and he seems much paler than normal.

"Well, yeah, I suppose." Melody nods. "But the only Krusnik in the area are Six and Five Hundred."

"I don't think they'd do something like this," I say. "It's basically an act of war, pulling this shit. Krusnik are forbidden from even looking at humans the wrong way, let alone killing them."

"Well, I'm no detective," Melody says, tossing her hands up. "That's all I've got." 

Luca says nothing, staring down at his worn shoes. Now that I look at him, I notice how old his clothes look. His jeans are frayed and riddled with holes, his seemingly once-white shirt now a faded gray-ish yellow from too many washes. Something tells me, that, in a house full of orphaned children run by only two women, spending money is a very rare luxury. Which gives me a wonderful idea, one Melody would no doubt find rather saint-like.