Blood and Beasts

Chapter 5

It was a silent drive out of Perth County. They returned the unassuming grey Honda to its proper owner and were back in Jack's equally unassuming black Ford.

Jack tried to keep things light with her as they drove, commenting on the music, the passing sights. Cara knew he was just putting on a front. Being kind was engrained in his nature. Truth was he was worried about her. She'd screwed up. Sure they all made mistakes when they were younger, but she'd been doing this too many years now to let a demon get inside her head like that. It could have gotten anyone of them in that room killed. It could have possessed her.

Toronto was now where they considered home to be. Cara and Jack had been on the road out west for a couple weeks to take care of some jobs in British Columbia, Manitoba, and finishing up with the McDermott's in Perth County Ontario. Their first stop once they were back in Toronto was a pub called Finnegan's, where Bethany and Gregory would be meeting them. The place was owned by Martin Shaw; he used to have some pretty nasty spirits in his house, before Bethany and Cara had helped him out. His gratitude continued years later it seemed, as he always had a table waiting for them, a meeting place where he guaranteed them safety and privacy. The food wasn't half-bad either. Martin didn't make a big fuse when Cara and Jack entered the place, but his glowing smile said enough. He gestured to the booth at the far end of the pub where Bethany and Gregory were tucked in.

Jack hustled over to Bethany. As she spotted them, she stood up and wrapped her son in a big hug. It hadn't been too long since Bethany had seen him, but Cara supposed a mother was bound to worry sending her child to face down a demon.

"It's good to see you," Bethany said, then added with a smile to Cara, "You too dear." Bethany ushered them into the booth she had been sitting on, and then slide in opposite them beside Gregory. He gave them a small smile through his stubbly jaw as they settled in, but that would be the extent of his warmth. Gregory was a hardened man, worn down from decades of the job.

When he was a younger man, before he knew all the vile things that lurked in the darkness, he had been married with a child on the way. A group of vampires had changed that. While they had been enjoying the evening air at a park, the vampires had lured his wife away, leaving Gregory hypnotized and helpless. They made him forget her, or rather, they tried to. All the pictures in their home, all the memories, all the love in his heart, the vampires weren't able to take all that away with one gaze into their eyes and a few soft words. But it was no good because they were long gone by the time he snapped to; she was long gone. He wouldn't see her again until after the police found her body on the side of the road, violated, drained of blood, the baby inside her cut out and taken.

Gregory took his revenge though, with the help of his younger brother, Logan. They learned what they needed to about vampires, and they started tracking them. Both were ex-military and well equipped for the job. They didn't find the group that had taken Gregory's wife right away, and they left a few other vampires as dust along the way, but eventually they did find them. They found them and slaughtered them all. 

Gregory found his baby too, a thing no bigger than his fist, cut from his mother far too soon, and only alive because of the vampire blood he'd been turned with. It was a sick thing some vampires did when they wanted a baby of their own. Gregory killed it too, but he took no satisfaction in this.

Gregory and Logan didn't stop hunting after that. They learned about all the other creatures that terrorize people in the night, and about the highly influential and corrupt organizations that allow this to happen. They met others that wanted to do the same as them, banish demons back to hell, slay monsters. Gregory's life was bloodthirsty, and he was willing to fight till his last breath. Logan was different though.