Teeth Read online

Jacqueline laughed, “Yeah. They are. Ask Mr. Bloomfelt, I’m sure he’ll explain it and waste an hour of Biology for you.”

  “Speaking of, I’m going to be late. Can I take this and look through it?” Tamara stood and reached for the notebook.

  “Absolutely. But bring it back in one piece, okay?”

  “Of course, why wouldn’t I? Meet you in the car.” Tamara shoved the notebook into her backpack roughly, dropped her cereal bowl into the sink without rinsing the remaining milk, and slammed the back door on her way out.

  Jacqueline shook her head and muttered to an empty kitchen, as she stood and grabbed the keys. “Because you’re an excitable teenager on a mission...”

  — TWO —

  Andrea didn’t hear the door close behind Dillon as he headed off to school. She was immersed in her morning routine of absorbing everything the couch crew on Fox & Friends whispered in her ear. From the breaking news of early morning perils, to the recaps of overnight events, she listened to it all as if it was the gospel and she was the congregation. On some level, she really thought they were her friends.

  At least they tell me the truth.

  She was so intensely fixated on the final news segment, as if it personally affected her, she spoke out loud, shocked by the audacity of protestors picketing a bakery. As the blonde news anchor said, “Simply because the shop owners were practicing their God-given freedom and refused to make the wedding cake for a lamian couple.”

  “But they have their own businesses!” Andrea shouted at the television as if they could hear her or her justification for anger. “Their own bakeries. Ain’t no reason for them to be ruining the reputations of the hard working human businesses. Why don’t they use their own stores? Stick with their own kind. Go back into hiding. Maybe then America would be great again.”

  The program was wrapping up and one of the men mentioned catching the special the night before about the doctor all of the women in her church group were calling Dr. DNA. She perked up, her interest immediate. She reached for the remote, grabbing at it with the jerking motion of someone taking their anger out on inanimate objects. She searched for the show in her On Demand menu and changed the station, as the school bus drove past her living room picture window.

  “Dillon?” She raised her eyebrows as she looked around the empty house. She hadn’t even thought of him as she’d been loudly lamenting the downfall of society based on the freedom of choice and power of God given to pastry chefs.

  “Their own kind…” She muttered at the television, but the words were meant for the teenage boy whose face filled various frames along the walls. She glanced up at his latest school picture and let her eyes wander across the photos leading toward the stairs, the years spanning the faded paint.

  The photos were a mixture of studio—or rather traveling photographer pausing at one of the local department stores—and snapshots blown up at photo centers and displayed in cheap frames. There was a great picture of the two of them at the beach, the water as blue as their matching eyes. Another of them with Dillon’s first pet, a cat they called Chaos, who ran away less than a year later. Andrea almost smiled at the boy and his cat, remembering how little Dillon would compare his jet-black hair to the cat and ask if it was his brother.

  He was an adorable little boy.

  But now… Now he’s…

  She let her thought trail and moved to the next set of pictures, Christmas with matching sweaters, Halloween in costume, and a random photo she’d liked at the time for the pure smile on Dillon’s face as he stood next to the car and looked back at her. That car.

  Her beloved Saturn had come out the year Dillon was born, but was no longer being made. It was as out-of-date as Dillon claimed Andrea’s beliefs were, and parts were as hard to find as her compassion when it came to all things lamian. It was a good car, powder blue—as strange and striking as her eyes, but much paler, softer than the anger now living in her baby blues. The Saturn had never failed her.

  Unlike Dillon.

  A decade and a half of images—moments and memories from their lives. Dillon. His mother. But no signs of his father. None. Andrea had kicked the man out when Dillon was only a toddler, after he’d revealed he was lamian, and she refused to speak his name ever again.

  Her immediate anger and confusion at his normal looking teeth turned into a growing obsession. An unhealthy preoccupation with everything vampire, rather than lamian. Everything wrong and presumed, including the rumors and point-blank fiction. She mixed the truth with all the rest and considered it all her gospel. The lamian were evil. They were not of God. And she wanted nothing to do with them.

  She’d spent the next decade praying nightly, hoping her sweet boy would grow up and remain human. She begged the crucifixion at the front of the church, as well as the statue of Mary near the back. She had recited so many Hail Marys and Our Fathers, even doing her Rosary during TV commercial breaks when she watched television—if pious desperation were rewarded, she should have been.

  But the boy’s eyeteeth had come loose and fallen free late last spring. His new teeth had finished growing in. Their sharp little white points visible when he smiled now, and her panic grew with them.

  She’d invested years into their relationship, their future, as if he would be human. To find out he wasn’t was a slap in the face she was still reeling from. And which caused her to openly debate whether he was a monster.

  Or waiting to become one.

  She’d caught herself telling Dillon the little things she did for him—pointing out the care she’d provided over his lifetime, the thousands of meals she’d made, the sacrifices she’d endured—as if she could rattle off the reasons he shouldn’t kill her and drink her blood. He’d only stared at her in confusion the first time. The second time he’d laughed and pulled her into a hug, his mouth so close to her throat she thought she’d die of fright before he ever bit her. But he didn’t bite her. He claimed he didn’t want to bite anyone.

  “What you’re suggesting Doctor, is genocide. Pure and simple.”

  Andrea blinked and looked back to the television. The show had started and she’d missed the beginning while wallowing in the lies and empty future of the memories displayed on her walls.

  “Not at all. It’s simply allowing God’s disciples to choose His creation.” The doctor smiled, his teeth almost luminescent from professional bleaching.

  The reporter and doctor sat across a highly polished desk from each other. Their backdrop was an electronic mural of various stills from the doctor’s research. The interview was meant to look relaxed and casual, medically sound and professional, but Andrea could hear the forced civility and feigned neutrality in the reporter’s voice.

  “But aren’t you against abortion?” She leaned forward and cocked her head at the doctor.

  Andrea immediately dismissed her as a whack-job liberal, based on nothing more than the shocking streak of bright pink running through her hair at the temple.

  They’ll let anyone pretend to be a reporter these days.

  “I’m against aborting humans. But that’s why I’m developing this embryonic test for the recessive gene. If we know whether it’s human, we can make an informed decision.”

  “But a person can have the gene and never trigger. They can appear, for all intents and purposes, as a human for their entire life. Isn’t it true the distinction between human and lamian is really nothing more than a genetic deficiency morphed into a myth of murder, mayhem and madness? Having a genetic difference doesn’t make you inhuman. It isn’t something you should strike from nature. I don’t see you offering to do this for people with the Alzheimer gene, or autism or Parkinson’s.”

  “People with Parkinson’s can live normal lives for decades. And those people are still human.” He looked at her as if she was stupid, and Andrea nodded, agreeing with his presumed assessment.
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br />   “You say this as if lamians are worth less, devalued as citizens because of an enzyme deficiency. That’s like saying kids who are allergic to peanuts aren’t people.”

  “No, no. Not at all. I make no assumptions either way. I am simply trying to provide a test for parents to achieve peace of mind. What they do with the results is not my decision.” A Cheshire cat grin slipped past his practiced façade for a moment before he pulled it back into a stoic expression of sincerity.

  “That’s convenient. Trying to remove yourself from the use and only provide the tool?” The reporter seethed openly at the man with her rhetorical question, and then she looked at her notes and smirked. “And when will this test be available?”

  “We’re hoping the trials will be completed by the end of December and we’ll have approval for the publicly available product by January.”

  “Is that because your wife is pregnant with donor sperm and she will reach the third trimester in late December, and thus, under the current laws, unable to abort if you find out she’s carrying a child who holds the recessive lamian gene?”

  The reporter smiled, as the doctor froze—as he was obviously unprepared to address her knowledge of his wife’s condition.

  “I…” He blinked as his mouth hung open.

  “Is it not also true that you belong to a group of influential people who are currently gathering their resources and contacting various lobbyists in hopes of getting legislation passed to—”

  “Now listen here, little missy. There’s a science to this issue. It’s not only a social cause, or a matter of people feeling good about themselves. These creatures are genetically different. They lack vital enzymes, which requires them to drink blood, to eat raw meat, and to live longer. The criminal element among them sees this as a reason, a way, a logical excuse for violence. There’s no point to purposely giving birth to a criminal.” His voice raised in both fervor and pitch as he spoke, a spray of spittle punctuating his words.

  “Creatures? These creatures? Really? You do realize they are legal citizens with rights. The same rights as you and I. They are not creatures, they are so closely related to humans you cannot even tell them apart unless you ask…” The reporter narrowed her eyes. “Or give them a genetic test.”

  “A well-trained monkey, shaved down and put in a suit, isn’t automatically entitled to the same rights as a human.” The doctor clamped his mouth shut and sat back suddenly—the ramifications of what he’d said swam across his wide-eyed gaze as he glanced from the reporter to the camera and back.

  The reporter’s eye widened enough to see the whites around their green center.

  “I can’t…” The reporter stood, pulled the small mic from her collar, dropped her notebook on the seat, and walked off camera.

  The show cut to commercial while Andrea stared at the television, her mouth agape in shock.

  “That girl baited him. Pushed him. How dare she?” Andrea spoke as if there were someone to hear her, to agree with her. “This doctor was trying to provide a valuable tool to would-be parents. A test, that had it been available at the time…”

  Andrea’s comments turned to inner thoughts, as she realized, if the test had been available, she would have gladly taken it. And upon reviewing the results, she would have absolutely gone to the clinic over in Springfield. But the test hadn’t existed when Dillon was conceived. And she had no way to know or react.

  Or rather, she couldn’t react then.

  Perhaps it wasn’t too late to react now.

  Maybe she could take care of the problem, before he became a monster.

  — THREE —

  The precinct was unusually quiet after lunch, especially for a Friday. The phones were silent, foot-traffic through the building all but nonexistent, and the rank and file quietly processed their mornings while their bodies worked on digesting their food choices. Whether it came from home, around the corner, or the vending machines down the hall, lunch had come and gone. Tupperware containers were rinsed, sandwich boxes were discarded, and the crumpled bags of guilt were shoved down to hide among the refuse in trashcans. Everyone was back to work. The silence of diligence and concentration left the air in the station as empty as the break room.

  Detective Connor Murphy flipped through the Sherman case in preparation for the upcoming court appearance. Studying the notes and photos, he had tuned out the quiet of the desks around him. A shadow crossed his desk suddenly, and he visibly jumped as it gained a voice and broke the silence of the room.

  “Hey Murphy, Chief says you get this one… since you love ’em all soooo much.” Jasper, the newly transferred officer, snickered through the overly thick mustache he openly referred to as glorious. Connor was sure the man was single, but doubted he was lonely.

  Connor couldn’t tell if the snide chuckle was because Connor had jumped or because Jasper was gleefully dumping an unwanted file on another officer. Rather than handing it to him, Jasper dropped the pristine manila folder onto Connor’s desk, covering the Sherman file as if it were unimportant. Detective Murphy sighed as he immediately recognized a fresh case by its crisp edges and lack of a label on the tab. If he were lucky, it would at least have the scene sheet inside.

  “You know, it’s not that I…” Connor shook his head and rolled his eyes as he looked up at the other officer. “Never mind.” He pointed to the file with an open palm. “What is it?”

  “Vamp victim—what else? Bloody and torn up and all you.”

  “Wait, a murder and I get no assist on this?” Connor turned toward the glass wall of the chief’s office and sat up taller, waving the file in the air. The blinds closed in response.

  “Guess that means the usual.” Jasper turned and walked back toward the front of the room, shrugging it off as Connor’s problem now.

  “Do it yourself or prove you need manpower.” Connor murmured under his breath as he flipped the file open and looked over the scene analysis.

  Erik Smith—the name of the victim—didn’t ring any bells. The picture procured from his driver’s license didn’t look familiar. His neighborhood was literally the tracks that divided the social classes of Riverside. And according to the scribble at the bottom of the page, the scene had already been processed and the body was downstairs.

  “Shit.” Connor pushed his chair back and grabbed his suit coat. He hated dealing with scenes after the lab crew had been through them.

  “See? This is exactly why I keep saying we need a registry.”

  Connor’s head turned slowly toward Detective Pattee. In a town small enough to force every rank in the building to share and drive the marked squad cars, there was only enough money for two detectives on staff. Most days, Connor would gladly take the entire burden, if it meant transferring Pattee elsewhere.

  He looked the man up and down. Pattee was the same age as Connor, but the lines in his face, matured by hate, made him appear older. He was tall and too skinny, with tight mean muscles and a haircut that screamed, “In my spare time, I drink skunky beer and write in the margins of Mein Kampf.” Connor was convinced he was only a cop because the military wouldn’t take him.

  Asshole. Why does he want to make a big bad list of hate this time?

  Pattee looked from Connor’s eyes to the file in his hand, and Connor realized the other detective had taken his cursing as having something to do with the perpetrator rather than the crime scene itself. He scowled at the man, hoping to stop Pattee’s well-known cyclical argument before he suggested something stupid like a Vamp Klan again.

  “What? Just think how easy… I mean, if they were all on file—”

  Goddamnit, here we go.

  “So you’re gonna start arresting people based solely on dental records? Just because they have teeth, they must be criminals? That’s profiling, asshole.”

  Officer Pettijohn interjected. “Hell yeah,
and maybe we can start by rounding up all the psychics.”

  Connor turned and looked at the young officer who’d spoken up to side with Pattee. Pettijohn was so green he hadn’t figured out how to fill out most of the paperwork, let alone shave without the need to dot his face in tiny pieces of toilet paper. Connor didn’t have the time or patience for either of them, but his annoyance boiled up and fell out of his mouth without care.

  “You understand both humans and lamians run those businesses, right? And more than half the time, when someone’s pissed off at a psychic and claiming they’re a lamian using their gifts against them, it turns out to be human scum.” He sneered and shook his head. “Maybe you should stop listening to those hate-filled podcasts on your lunch breaks.”

  Connor strode to the front of the room and froze at the captain’s desk, ignoring the still dropped shades of the chief’s closed office. He waited for his superior to look up at him. Captain Harris reluctantly acknowledged Connor over the top of his reading glasses and shook his head. “Don’t have the extra manpower right now, Murphy. You know that.”

  “Not even Adams?” Connor glanced toward the officer sitting at the corner desk.

  Adams looked up at the mention of his name. He had put on some weight since being assigned to desk duty, his punishment after questionably discharging his weapon during a routine traffic stop. Paperwork whenever even one bullet was expended was bad enough, but poor judgment on Adams’ part and the car’s passenger streaming the whole thing on Facebook live had almost cost him his job. He was off the streets for another ten months. Judgmental and racist, he was still a good cop. Connor could use him internally if nothing else.

  Captain Harris raised both eyebrows and shook his head ever so slightly. The shock at Connor even suggesting Officer Adams was unspoken, but loud as hell.

  “Did anyone even look at this file? Body left for days. No witnesses. This isn’t cut and dry.” He looked the captain in the eye. “And I get no one?”