Avenging Autumn: Seasons Change Book 1 of 4 (5 page)

“
The next month she came to me
again saying she was concerned about these numbers. Once again I
told her to ignore it, only a little more forcefully this
time.

“
Somehow the European Businessmen
caught wind of her snooping around and they warned me that she had
to stop, so I had to demote her for her own safety.”

“
And they weren’t satisfied with
that?” Benny asked.

“
Actually, they were, however,
Autumn continued to snoop around, and they must have found out
about it again.”

“
And you think these people are
responsible for her death.”

“
I do.”

They had reached the hearse and Benny stopped
at the rear door, turned and looked his father in the
eyes.

“
Am I missing something?” Frank
asked, after a few minutes of silence.

Benny’s voice was nearly a whisper when he
spoke, “I’m going to kill them. Will you help me?”

Frank’s expression didn’t change, “If your
serious about this, there is something else you should
know.”

“
What is it?”

“
These people from Europe,” Frank
paused.

“
Go on,” Benny implored.

“
They’re vampires.”

Jack let out a snort of the giggles, “Come on,
Dad, quit fucking around.”

Benny looked at his brother with a smirk,
“Jack, is that really so hard to believe after what you’ve seen
tonight?”

Jack abruptly stopped laughing, “Point
taken.”

“
I don’t understand,” Frank said,
confused, “What are you guys talking about?”

Benny reached out and pulled the back door of
the hearse open.

Autumn looked up at her father in-law and
waved.

“
Hello, Autumn,” Frank said with a
smile.

4. Odin Sway

During the summer of 96, Benny and Autumn
where hanging out a lot and much to Benny’s pleasure he had found
that this girl he was quickly falling for was going to attend IUPUI
as well.

“
If you don’t mind me asking,”
Benny responded when he heard this news, “what made you decide to
go all the way to Indianapolis for school when IU is much
closer?”

“
I don’t know,” Autumn answered,
“maybe I thought there was a guy up there who was going to art
school because it’s supposed to be one of the premiere schools of
art in the country, and he wouldn’t mind a new girl shacking up
with him.”

Benny smiled at her, “You’re going to go there
just for me?”

“
Of course, I’m majoring in
accounting, which is pretty much the same where ever you
go.”

He only stared at her, unable to find the
words to express how he felt. Finally he leaned down and kissed her
deeply.

They had not been intimate yet but Benny knew
they were very close, so his next gesture wasn’t just an act of
kindness but also an attempt to speed things up. “I got a little
surprise for you too.”

“
Cool, I love
surprises.”

Benny reached into his jacket pocket and
produced an envelope. He then opened it and pulled out two concert
tickets.

Autumn read the headliners on the tickets and
squealed, “Oh my God, you got Marilyn Manson tickets.”

“
Yep, this Saturday at the State
Fair grounds.”

She kissed him again and that night they made
love for the first time. Then the second. And a third.

“
So, if she was killed by a
vampire, why cut her throat? Why didn’t they suck her blood?” Benny
asked.

“
They don’t work like that,” Frank
explained, “their very secretive and they wouldn’t do anything to
draw attention to themselves. They wanted to leave a message and
that’s how they did it. Now tell me what’s going on with
Autumn.”

Benny told his father everything Autumn had
told him and when he finished he repeated the question he had
previously asked.

“
Will you help us, Dad?”

Frank pulled his wallet out of his back
pocket, fished through it a little and removed an old, beat up
business card.

“
I’ve never trusted these people,”
he said, “from the very first moment I met them. Go and see this
guy, he’ll give us everything we need.”

“
So you’re in?” Benny asked,
grinning.

“
Of course I am,” The Old Man said,
returning the smile.

Benny hugged his father for the second time in
one day, “Thanks, Dad.”

The two men stepped away from each other, both
giving Jack an embarrassed look.

“
So, what do you say, Jack,” Benny
urged, “are you in?”

Jack let out a sigh. “Vampires, huh? We could
all die on this little adventure.”

“
What do any of us have to live
for?” Benny in-quired.

Jack thought about the question a moment and
about how much he loathed his job, “Well, when you put it that way.
Fine, I’m in.”

“
Alright then,” Frank said,
clapping a hand on Jack’s shoulder, “let’s get started. First, you
guys need to go see that friend of mine. I have a few things to
grab from my office, and then we’ll all meet back at Jack’s
house.”

The Writemans said their goodbyes and the
hearse sped out of the parking lot toward Bloomington, which was
about ten miles north of Triloville.

Frank turned and began to walk back into his
build-ing when he heard a rustling in a nearby tree. He looked up
in time to see a small bat flying away to the north.

He had a feeling more visitors would show up
soon.

As Jack, Benny, and Autumn pulled into the
drive-way of the small two bedroom house in Bloomington, the
headlights of the hearse fell on a skinny, balding man, waving at
them from the leaf covered lawn. Benny couldn’t help but laugh at
the man’s pink bathrobe and large, yellow toothed grin that almost
made him look like a mad scientist’s assistant in an old black and
white monster movie, all he needed was the hump on his back. Jack
rolled the window down.

“
How’s it going?” the man shouted
over the rustling leaves that were being blown around by a sudden
harsh wind, “Hey, it would probably be easier if you guys turned
around and backed into the garage.”

“
No problem,” Jack said. He rolled
the window back up and turned to Benny, “Dad sure keeps some
interesting friends. Why do you think we need to back into the
garage?”

“
I don’t know for sure,” Benny
replied, “but I think we just met an arms dealer.”

Once the garage door was closed and the hearse
was safely inside, the three Writemans got out and looked at the
stranger, unsure of what to do next.

“
Don’t be nervous or anything,” the
man said. “Your dad called me and told me you were coming. You must
be Jack,” he shook Jack’s hand and then took Benny’s, “and I take
it your Benny.”

“
That’s right,” Benny said
quietly.

The man gave Autumn a confused look, “And you
are?”

“
Autumn.”

“
Right, right, Autumn. Name’s James
Palatino, nice to meet you all. Follow me.”

James led them inside the house, through the
living room and down the hallway toward the bedroom. “That’s a
bitching car by the way.”

“
Thanks.” Benny and Jack said in
unison.

“
Your dad found me shortly after he
started dealing with the vampires,” he said, “he told me what was
going on and I agreed to help him. He didn’t want to make a move
against them, but he wanted to be prepared for the likely
pos-sibility that they would turn on him. So we started getting
to-gether every Sunday over on the Indiana University campus to
play chess and talk sports.”

“
Oh, so you’re his chess buddy,”
Jack mused.

“
That’s me, only we weren’t really
talking sports. We came up with our own series of code words that,
as far as I know successfully hid our dealing’s. He’d mention
something about Payton Manning’s stats, which would be total
bullshit, and I’d know what he wanted and how many bullets he
wanted to go with it. I don’t think vampires follow sports so if
they were listening they didn’t pick up on anything. As a result
your father is now well prepared for the current
situation.”

James reached for a string that was dangling
from the ceiling and yanked on it. A set of steps came sliding down
and the four of them climbed up to the attic. Benny, Jack, and
Autumn stood quietly in the dark for a few minutes as James
shuffled away from them. A light switch was hit and the room lit
up, when Benny’s eyes focused his mouth dropped open in pure shock.
What lay out before them was racks and racks of guns of various
makes and models. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands of weapons lined
the walls and filled the middle of the attic, which ran the length
of the entire house.

“
My Dad ordered all of these?”
Benny asked.

“
No, actually this is your Dad’s
section here,” he said, pointing to a corner area, “the rest of
this stuff belongs to other clients.”

“
All you have are silver bullets
here,” Jack observed, “how many other people are out there shooting
vampires?”

“
You’d be surprised and not just
vampires either. Anyway you can take as much of this stuff as you
want and toss it in your car. Oh, and here, your father wanted you
two to have these; he has one of his own as well.”

James pulled two straight samurai swords off
of an elegant stand and handed them to Benny and Jack.

“
How did he know we would be
involved in this?” Benny asked.

“
Like I said, old Frank wanted to
be prepared for anything, including making sure his family could
defend themselves.”

Benny pulled the blade out of its sheath and
marveled at its beauty.

“
Those are made of pure silver and
they’re ready to use, the hilt is wrapped right around the base of
the blade.”

Benny and Jack began hauling the equipment
back to the car as Autumn and James stood aside quietly.

Most of the guns were pistols, a lot of 9mm
semi-automatics, some magnums, a couple of 38 revolvers, but there
were a couple of Uzi’s as well as 12 and 20 gauge shot-guns, two
AR-15s and three AK-47‘s. They also found about twenty four small
crates full of silver bullets and one crate loaded with strange
looking hand grenades.

“
Those are silver shrapnel
grenades,” James offered, “throw one of those babies into a group
of vampires and it will explode, sending little shards of sharp
silver in all directions. You’ll take out a shit load of
them.”

“
A shit load,” Jack said, smiling,
“is that a calculated estimate or did you just guess?”

James let out a nerdy wheezing laugh, “Good
one.”

The Writemans exchanged a comical looked and
began to laugh as well.

All the weapons were loaded up and Benny
noticed there were still three small crates remaining in his
father’s corner of the attic.

“
What’s this?” he asked.

“
Ah,” James answered, “those are a
necessity when it comes to killing vampires.”

Jack pried the lid off the nearest crate. “Heh
heh, wooden stakes, of course.”

“
There’s a hundred in each crate,”
James added, “they should last you for a while.”

“
I should hope so,” Jack
finished.

As Benny loaded one of the crates of wooden
stakes into the hearse, James turned to Autumn and studied her a
moment. “I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but if you got a
little sun you’d be a very pretty girl. I mean you’re as pale as a
dead…wait. Autumn! You are dead aren’t you?”

“
Yes, very,” Autumn said
politely.

“
That’s right, come over here, I
have something to show you.”

Benny and Jack entered the room in time to
hear this and the three of them followed James through his house
once more. He stopped at a large book shelf that sat against his
living room wall, ran a skinny index finger along the books on the
fifth shelf, and pulled out an old, tattered book. The cover of the
book read “Contacting the Dead”.

“
I’m sure you’ve seen psychics on
TV who claim they can talk to the dead,” James explained as he
flipped through the pages, “well, as it turns out, not all of them
are con artist. According to this book, which was written by a
proven psychic, there are spirits floating around on this plain of
existence. Some of these spirits are lost souls who can’t find
their way to the realm of the dead. Others, the ones who talk to
these psychics, are people who have died and left some sort of
unfinished business behind in their past life, so they feel they
have to take care of these things before they can move
on.

“
Now let me read you this quote
here. ‘On some, very rare occasions throughout documented history;
spirits have been known to return to their own bodies because the
need to fix something is so great. This phenomenon is often
confused with zombification, however it is actually called walking
ghost syndrome. The walking ghosts retain all of their memories and
intelligence whereas zombies are merely mindless dead bodies
resurrected from their graves by gifted people called necromancers.
The only resemblances between the two have been some cases of super
human strength.’”