Submitted for Feedback -- "The Catalyst"
Who knew a six-year-old boy could be so giddy over someone he just met?

It had been nearly a week since Cory met Samantha Blanchard, the Las Vegas homicide detective the Watkins family was enlisting to help with the strange men who several months ago had threatened the little boy’s life, and Cory was still abuzz over the woman. Melinda thought it was the bond intrinsic between a mother and her offspring, but Gerald was a skeptic; they hadn’t told Cory about Samantha being his real mother and how he was really adopted.

Gerald didn’t even believe in all this vampire nonsense Melinda fed him after they met the detective. To his, Slayer was nothing more than some really old metal band.

But he wore his wife’s cross around his neck as he and Cory walked down the hallway toward their hotel room, grocery bag in hand. He’d done it mostly to appease Melinda, who’d been a bundle of nerves since meeting with the detective. Gerald scoffed at the notion of he and his son being attacked in the middle of busy Las Vegas by vampires, but it put Melinda’s mind at ease, so he wore the necklace without complaint.

“Does she ever shoot anybody?” Cory asked as Gerald fumbled with the keycard, finally sliding it in the slot.

“I don’t know,” Gerald said with a mild frown, hating that a boy so young would think such a thing. “Only if she had to, I gue—“

The man fell silent as the door swung open and he found the room nearly pitch black. He furrowed his brow and pushed his glasses closer to his face, stepping through the threshold and flipping the nearby switch. The room burst into light, and Gerald dropped the bag of groceries once he saw a lamp on the floor in pieces and the mirror above the television was shattered.

“Melinda?” he called out in near-panic, pushing Cory behind him to shield him from the destruction, Gerald’s heart pounding in his throat. Blood splattered on the wall behind the bed and trickled onto the carpet.

Gerald felt sick.

“Daddy,” Cory said in a weak, helpless voice. “Where’s mommy..?”

Gerald swallowed his nerves away, unsure himself. Then, as if on cue, he caught a noise coming from the bathroom. His head whipped around and he saw the door shut and the light coming out under the door. His heart skipped a beat, his ears catching a strange sound, almost like a sucking or slurping.

“Stay here,” Gerald told his son in a shaky voice, pointing at that exact spot of the floor.

The man pushed the door open, only to stop dead in his tracks, wide eyes fixated on the sight of his wife sprawled out on the bathroom floor, some…thing hunched over her—

Oh, my God…they’re real.

The vampire's name was Dean, and he'd followed Melinda Watkins all the way back to the hotel after seeing her walk through the parking lot of one of the casinos. Dean was freshly turned, only four months out of the grave, and he'd been part of the cult looking for the boy they'd adopted for half of that. It had occurred to him that tailing the woman was a good idea, then decided to kill her when he crossed the lobby in her wake.

He'd get more brownie points that way.

He'd approached her politely enough, asking her if she'd seen his sister who he'd been supposed to meet on one of the upper floors, then showed her his other face when the elevator doors closed behind them. From there, he'd half-carried, half-dragged her down the hall, one hand cruelly tight over her mouth to keep her from screaming.

"The kid," he'd said sharply, closing the door firmly behind them after shoving her inside. "Where's the tyke?"

Gerald thought he might vomit right then and there, but the fear and anger gripping him over seeing a vampire hunched over his dying, bleeding wife overrode all of that. Without so much as another thought, Gerald screamed and grabbed the vampire by his greasy hair, pulling the monster to its feet and shoving the cross necklace in its face. The cross touched its forehead, and Gerald felt his stomach churn at the sight of those horrible ridges and those yellow, piercing eyes.

“You’re lucky this is all I have,” he yelled, his voice shaking with emotion. “Now get out of here, before I call the Slayer!”

Cory, still in the main room, heard the scream and jumped. Wide eyed, he stared at the bathroom door before making a bee line for the bed, diving under it and crawling to hide from whatever it was that made Daddy scream.

If Daddy was scared, it was something real bad. And Cory hoped to God it wasn’t one of those bumpy-faced men.

Where was the police lady in all this?

What followed had been brutal and short, and when the other one, the husband, came tearing into the room, Dean was still hunkered over Melinda like an animal, her blood leaking out of the corner of his mouth. He snarled at the sight of the cross, one hand instinctively shielding his eyes even as he tried to fasten his pants with the other, and he stumbled to his feet to shove the human out of his way, barreling out of the bathroom as though he were on fire.

"Honey's home!" the fledgling yelled gleefully. The Watkins' were staying on the second floor of the hotel, and there was a plate-glass window on the far side of the room. "Hope you don't mind if I eat and run, but this was just a social call. We're gonna find him, you know we are!"

The window shattered as Dean threw himself out of it, and glass sprayed onto the carpet and then outwards before he landed on the hood of a Ford pickup, buckling the metal severely. He rolled off of it with another whoop, then charged out of the parking lot, down the street and out of sight.

He'd at least put the fear into them if nothing else.

Gerald heard the window shatter, but it didn’t register. His gaze stayed on his wife, lying helpless in a pool of her own blood on the bathroom floor. Her blouse was ripped, falling off her left shoulder. She had two tiny holes on the side of her neck, blood still trickling from them. He also saw bite marks along the top of her left breast, and the anger once again rose from his gut.

Hands curled into fists, Gerald kneeling on one knee to examine his wife closer. If she was breathing, it was so faint he couldn’t see it. He held a finger just under her nostrils … nothing. Her eyes had rolled into the back of their sockets, and he felt no pulse on the side of her neck.

Just cold flesh and warm blood.

Melinda was dead. Gerald Watkins’ wife was dead because of some freak of nature. No … it was because of Cory’s mother. Her life as a…whatever she was, brought those fucking creatures into their lives. If Samantha wasn’t a fucking Slayer, they wouldn’t have spent the past couple months dodging vampires on their way to Nevada, and they wouldn’t be sleeping with one eye open every night wondering when Cory was going to be attacked again.

Closing Melinda’s eyes with his fingers, Gerald wiped away a tear before reaching into his cell phone and dialing 9-1-1. He left the bathroom, for the moment having forgotten about Cory, speaking into the receiver. “Yes, this is Gerald Watkins in room 215 at the Las Vegas Hilton. I need to report a homicide.

“Blonde woman, 32. Melinda Watkins. Her attacker fled the scene before I could get a good look. Jumped out the window.

“Thank you.”

As Gerald hung up the phone, Cory climbed out from under the bed. He tugged softly on Gerald’s shirt, a sad look in his eyes. “Daddy..?”

Gerald shook his head, running a shaky hand through his hair and taking off his glasses. “I’m sorry, son,” he whispered as a tear ran down his face. “Mommy’s…gone.”

“Where’d she go?”

Gerald had no answers. So until the police arrived, he and his son just sat in silence.

A squad car arrived in the next ten minutes, then two more as the area was cordoned off by yellow police tape. There was a foot search for the killer, but he was long gone, leaving his victim and her shaken family in his wake. An ambulance was summoned, and Melinda Watkins was examined by EMTs before being pronounced dead at the scene and put into a body bag. The uniformed officers were careful to keep the boy clear of the sight, but they were less able to accommodate the husband.

"He keeps asking for Blanchard," Officer Toby Jeffords told Detective Starnes after she finished questioning one of the cleaning staff, who'd seen the deceased getting into an elevator with her attacker. "Asking for her personally like he's the mayor or something."

"Well, where is she?"

"She's been called, that's all I know." The young cop adjusted his hat, a slightly peevish look on his face. "As if we're her social planners."

Starnes quelled him with a disapproving stare, one foot beginning to tap impatiently on the carpet just outside of the hotel room. She'd been called away from dinner at home to assist at the scene, and the attitude she was getting currently was doing little to make her feel positive about the state of the nearest precinct house. She'd also seen the body before it had been removed, and that churning feeling she always got in her stomach when weirdness was involved was thoroughly in effect. "Did the boy...Cory see anything at all? Mr. Watkins was able to give a loose description, but he's still in a fair amount of shock."

"Kid was under the bed," the officer replied, shifting under the weight of Starnes' look. "Probably a good thing, if only because of how the glass sprayed everywhere when that window was broken."

The detective nodded, made a few more notes, then waved him away. "When Blanchard gets here, let me know," she said tersely. "I don't like how this looks, to say the least."

Gerald shook his head and ran a shaky hand through his hair as the detective came his way. It was a female, at least, but it wasn’t Samantha. Oh well, so long as he didn’t get any more of the attitude the man had given him. Gerald had just found his wife brutally murdered; show some fucking compassion.

Gerald couldn’t help but wonder if this girl was a Slayer too … and just how was it determined who was or wasn’t one, anyway?

At some point, he’d have to ask. But now here, and not now. Not with them wheeling his dead wife’s body away. Of course the police hadn’t found the attacker; he wondered if they’d even looked. It wouldn’t have surprised Gerald if the police knew of vampires, but covered it up for some reason.

It seemed like a thing to do.

Cory sat beside his father, a constant look of confusion on his face. The boy still had no idea what was going on, and at his young age, he didn’t completely register what happened to his mother. They’d kept him away from the bathroom and did everything they could to make sure he couldn’t see what the paramedics were doing.

And Daddy still hadn’t answered his question, but as the police woman approached, he decided to wait before asking again.

“It’s a different police lady,” he said softly to his father.

"Mr. Watkins, I'm Detective Starnes," the cop said by way of introduction. She offered her hand, uncertain as to whether he'd take it. The man looked as if he might literally fly apart at any second, and the way the boy was hovering so close to him was heartbreaking. "I'd like to ask you a few more questions, beyond what statement you've already given."

She eyed the boy, and then gave his father a significant look. "Would it be all right with you if I have a uniform escort him to the vending machines? I'd like to speak to you alone before Detective Blanchard arrives. Is he allowed to have sweets?"

Gerald nodded and shook the detective’s hand, glancing down at his son. He quietly envied the boy’s youthful ignorance, how he still did not grasp the full weight of the evening’s events. “Can you go with the nice policeman to get a snack while Daddy talks to the police lady?” Gerald asked.

Cory nodded and followed the uniformed officer away as Gerald gave a heavy sigh and removed his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’ll be as helpful as I can,” he told the woman, “but you might not believe what I have to say.”

Which is why I keep asking for Samantha.

Starnes made a noncommittal noise, then said, "I've worked out of the coroner's office for the past four years, Mr. Watkins. Strangeness seems to...abound in the area. You might not believe some of the case files that have crossed my desk."

She consulted the notes she'd made, then gestured towards the broken window. Shards of glass still littered the carpet, and some of them glittered on the bed as well. "You told the officers you saw your wife's attacker," she began, keeping her tone calm. "Have you been able to recall anything else about him for the description? We've started a canvass of the area, and depending on the physical evidence from the scene we might begin checking the hospitals in case he injured himself with the leap through the window. If you can remember anything else at all, it would be of assistance.”

She was going to have to check with the medical examiner later. Those injuries to the Melinda Watkins' throat, not to mention her breast, gave Starnes an uneasy feeling. Drugs were easy to get in Las Vegas, and you never knew what substances a perp could be on. But those had been bites, and specific ones.

No, she didn't like the looks of this in the slightest. And Samantha Blanchard was apparently directly involved, if Gerald 's insistence on speaking to her was any indication. Would there have to be an official inquiry?

“Fangs,” Gerald said simply, not really caring whether or not Starnes believed him. She asked him a question, and she was getting an answer. “And the most disturbing yellow eyes I’ve ever seen. These … horrible ridges on his forehead, and I could be wrong, but I swear I heard him snarl when he found out I was there.”

He and Samantha were going to have a long conversation before the next day was through, and he felt entitles not only to explanations, but apologies and a sort of vengeance. Because of that bitch and her little vampire stories, his wife was dead and his adoptive son was in danger.

Again, Gerald drew a deep, ragged breath, shaking his head. “I apologize for insisting to speak with Detective Blanchard specifically,” he said. “She seems familiar with men like I described.

“And Cory is her son.”

Fangs. Fangs and yellow eyes. Oh, goody. Maybe the perpetrator wasn't the only one who was on drugs.

Starnes began to make more notes, her expression impassive. This was a murder investigation and her job was something she mostly liked. If nothing else, she always wanted to do it well. Her black ink pen scratched quietly over the paper and she decided that, officially or not, Blanchard was someone she needed to keep an eye on.

"Cory's adopted?" she asked, deciding to stick to the more mundane details at first. "Is that why you and your wife were in town, to have him meet Detective Blanchard?" She had never worked with the other detective, but she'd been aware when she had arrived in the area, if only through gossip. "Do you have a personal relationship with the detective, Mr. Watkins?"

The pen stopped scratching, and Starnes returned her attention to the man. "Are you suggesting that she knows who did this?"

Gerald shook his head. “No,” he said. “But, with all due respect, detective, she’s better equipped to deal with the thing that killed my wife better than just about anyone else I’ve met out here.”

Then again, Gerald had no way of knowing just what Samantha knew or was involved with. She gave up her son for adoption the day he was born, so obviously she didn’t have her head on straight or her life in order. And just where did one decide a life of hunting and fighting vampires was a good one to lead, anyway? Seemed to Gerald that’d be a short career – not to mention life span.

“Detective Blanchard gave Cory up for adoption shortly after giving birth to him,” Gerald explained. “We were told if his life was ever in danger for whatever reason, we could find her. Two months ago, men fitting the description of the creep who just ate my wife were banging on our door, asking for Cory and saying something about a Slayer.

“We come out here, and we get fed this story about vampires and Slayers and all this … crap. I didn’t believe a word of it … until I walked into that bathroom tonight and saw that thing drinking Melinda’s blood.”

Gerald’s voice rose as he spoke, not out of anger, but nerves. He felt as if he were at his wit’s end, like any minute he was going to snap. He’d already gotten sick once before the police showed up, and he silently wondered if maybe he’d fall ill again before the night was through.

It was tempting to ask Gerald if he'd been drinking, but Starnes didn't. The man's wife was dead and he'd walked in on the act as it was being committed. She paused for thought, sifting through her papers before looking at the shattered windowpane again.

"Would you like something yourself?" she inquired, gesturing in the general direction of the vending machines. "I could have some coffee brought in, or a soda if you'd like one. I know this must be very difficult for you, and both you and your son have my condolences. When you say you were told to contact Detective Blanchard if Cory were in danger, was she specific about a threat? Who is your son in danger from?"

Gerald shook his head at the offer for something to drink or eat. Considering how he’d felt in the time since finding his dead wife in the bathroom, Gerald couldn’t even keep nothing down, so he knew adding something to his stomach would not end well.

Then again, what about this situation was going to end well?

The man sighed, again removing his glasses and glancing up at the night sky. He shook his head and gave a shrug of the shoulders. “She never said,” he explained. “But when those … things showed up at our house that one night, we knew something was wrong. Melinda and did some digging, and found out a huge law firm was involved in the whole thing.

“Mysterious men in our yard asking for the son of a Slayer. I don’t know about you, detective, but that sounds to me like cause for alarm.”

Why was it not a surprise that lawyers would be mentioned? Starnes made a mental note to look into that, jotting down a couple more things, then began to focus on the more...unusual aspects of this. Where the hell was Blanchard? The woman was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

"Slayer," the cop said, her tone merely inquiring. If Watkins were a mental case, eventually he was going to slip up somewhere. But despite his clearly distraught state, he also seemed rational. Rational and sober. Starnes just hoped she didn't have to question Cory.

"Was there a previous attack?"

Gerald again shook his head. “No, this was the first the … men had actually attacked us.”

There's a word missing there, the cop realized, and her gaze narrowed. As much as she had not liked this when she first arrived on the scene, she liked it less with every word that Gerald Watkins said.

Another uniformed officer poked his head into the room, then approached the pair of them to hand Starnes photographs of the pickup the perpetrator had landed on after his swan dive through the window. Glancing at them, the detective was surprised to see the indentation in the metal hood, and she showed it to Watkins, one eyebrow lifting skeptically.

"Is that where he landed?" she asked, clearly dubious. The fall must have broken at least something, which might make a check of the hospitals more productive. Even if the killer had been stoned at the time of the murder, he'd be in severe pain after coming down from the high. "Did you see him before he fled the scene? Did he seem injured?"

Gerald glanced at the pictures, shaking his head. “I was in the bathroom,” he said. “I was with my wife when he ran off. I didn’t see him jump out of the window or land on that truck or anything like that.”

Though if the creature was anything like and Melinda had been told, he would’ve likely just dented the truck and gone about his merry way. The vampire had yelled something as he left, but the shock of everything muddled the message and Gerald couldn’t for the life or him remember it.

“The last I saw him, he had blood on his lips and had to zip his pants back up,” Gerald continued, his voice getting shaky. “His fangs reeked of my wife’s blood and her neck wounds were still bleeding.”

Starnes flushed just the tiniest bit, and she looked down at the photographs again. Taking a step closer to Gerald, she lowered her voice. "There was no assault," she said, then amended that to, "Not a sexual one, at least. The medical report will confirm it, but the EMTs said that except for the...bites...there were no injuries."

Such hollow comfort, she thought, and her own stomach knotted. To have to tell someone that while their wife had just been brutally murdered, at least there was nothing else to have to explain to her young son. The cop liked her work and wanted to do well at it, but sometimes...sometimes she really hated her job.

"How's Cory holding up?" she asked. "I've been told that he hid under the bed, do you think he might want to speak to someone? A counselor, that is, if not now then in the next few days?"

“I have no idea,” Gerald said with a bit of regret, his shoulders slumping. “I don’t think he really understands what happened tonight. And I’ve yet to figure out a way to tell him that he’ll understand and…”

The man paused, shaking his head and again pinching the bridge of his nose. That was a conversation he never wanted to have with his son, not when he was 6 or 12 or 18 or 50. There was no real way to tell your son a vampire just killed your mother.

Then again, Melinda wasn’t Cory’s real mother. Gerald figured he’d find that part out sooner rather than later.

“He doesn’t even know Detective Blanchard’s his mother.”

"We have services available, I can arrange something while you're still in town if you'd like," Starnes offered. "I've got kids too. Older than Cory, almost out of high school, but they never really grow up, do they? Not enough."

Parental solidarity led the cop to touch Gerald on the arm as the ambulance was finally steered out of the parking lot, bearing the body of his wife away to be examined further, and the night air blew in a soft breeze through the broken window. "I'm terribly sorry for your loss. Detective Blanchard has been informed of your request to see her, and I'm sure she'll be here soon. I intend to speak with her myself. I've also got more than a few questions."

Gerald nodded and gave the detective a determined glance. “I was actually thinking of going and seeing her myself,” he admitted. “She gave my wife her contact information the last time we met, so I know where she lives.”

He watched the ambulance drive away, the slowness of it making him feel sick all over again. Emergency vehicles weren’t supposed to go that slow, and they weren’t supposed to have the siren off. Turn on the goddamn siren…

The man sighed, wondering what his son was thinking or feeling at the moment. He wondered how much Cory actually understood, and how that made him feel. Gerald was amazed he’d stayed as calm as he had through the entire process the police had undergone, but he could feel that thread he was on growing shorter by the second.

“If what she told me is true – and after tonight, I have no reason to believe it’s not – we’re gonna need her help more than I thought.”

Starnes withdrew the touch, folded both hands behind her back. Whatever had happened here tonight, Blanchard was in it up to her eyeballs, and it was looking more and more as if that official inquiry was unavoidable, if only for the sake of the little boy's safety. While she was not Samantha's immediate superior, she was a senior officer with plenty of good will among the other investigators of Clark County.

Questions needed to be asked. And then answered.

The siren started with a wail, and the ambulance roared through a red light on its way to its destination. Such terrible business. Starnes was suddenly very glad that she was no longer having to work these cases on a nightly basis.

"Take my card," she said, handing Mr. Watkins a square of paper from her shirt pocket. "If there's anything you'd like to know, anything you want to add, don't hesitate to call this number."

Gerald stared at the card, nodding mostly to himself before sliding into his back pocket. He grabbed for the cell phone in his other pocket, flipping it open to dial a number before a gold shine caught his eye from below.

Looking down, Gerald noticed … he was still wearing that cross. The cross his wife had given him to protect himself and Cory while they were out. The cross that scared the vampire away after he’d killed Melinda.

Some cross.

Gerald ripped it off his neck with a growl, breaking the chain and causing the link to fly onto the pavement. He stared at the gold cross before a couple tears rolled down his cheeks and he stuffed the religious pendant in his pocket.

The man didn’t feel much like listening to God right now.





[NPCs Dean and Detective Starnes were written by Stargazer; NPCs Gerald and Cory Watkins were written by Jeff.]