Edgar smelled Johnny again two weeks later during a late night near a record store.
Johnny himself was nowhere to be found, but that very specific smell of too many people’s blood, snack food, and that strange (cherry?) additive was unmistakably the same as the man who had had Edgar hoisted up in a human-sized food processor.
Behind the cover of sunglasses swiped from a dollar store, Edgar asked the store clerk about the guy who had called himself Nny, and learned that ‘that fucking wimp’ had been there a few hours before trying to buy a collection of classical music and an album that had just been released that week. Apparently, Johnny had met with some resistance and had stormed out, promising to deliver proper punishment later. Since he didn’t smell copious amounts of fresh blood in the area and the guy at the counter was still living, Edgar assumed Johnny hadn’t yet finished said punishing.
So he waited outside the store, just around the corner, for that very specific smell to get stronger.
And he waited for hours.
Soon, he felt a desperate need to eat, but Johnny still hadn’t returned. Unfortunately, the record guy was too situated in front of cameras and would be too easily missed to eat. Edgar slipped away, mentally assuring himself he’d be back as soon as the last drop of blood was gone from whatever hobo he found.
When he returned a hour later, the smell greeted him about a block in advance. Unfortunately, it was not Johnny’s smell, but the scent of the dead record store clerk. A CD propped the man’s mouth open to an unnatural size, aided by his broken jaw. His blood pooled on the floor and had been spattered on the counter.
“Damn,” Edgar said to the limp and bloodied body, nudging it with his foot. “Did you sell him some girly pop music or something?”
“You again,” Johnny’s voice said accusingly from the door to the stock room behind the clerk’s former post.
“Hi there,” Edgar said, waving.
“Congrats on the pants.”
“I… yeah, thanks.” Edgar frowned at the memory of the drugs in the system of the kid he’d taken them from, but that nasty aftertaste only strengthened his certainty that talking with Johnny again might be a good idea. “What are you going to do with this guy?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re just gonna leave him here?” Even though he’d just eaten, Edgar had a hard time resisting making a light snack out of the greasy bastard.
Johnny nodded, adjusting a stack of CD’s in the bag at his side. “I can’t be caught.” He paused, looked up to consider Edgar for a moment, laughed softly, and then added, “Except by people who can’t afford to turn me in, apparently.”
“I could turn you in if I wanted,” Edgar defended. “I just choose not to.”
“Still not dead, huh?”
Edgar replayed the prior conversation in his head, searching for anywhere in which Johnny’s comment could have been considered a natural response. “No,” he answered. “I sort of thought you’d figured out that I can’t do that.”
“Well, good luck with that,” Johnny said, stepping over the bloody form on the floor in front of him.
“Hey! Hey wait!” Edgar called after him. “I’m coming with you!”
“No you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
In a stunningly predictable move, Johnny stabbed him again, in the shoulder this time.
“This,” Edgar said, exasperated, “is really not working. I already told you.” He heaved the knife out of his arm and handed it back to Johnny, who took it slowly and with some visible disgust.
“You’re still not coming with me,” Johnny said, shaking some excess blood from the blade.
“Why not let me pick up the glasses you broke?”
“If they looked anything like you did after all that, there’s nothing to pick up.”
As he objected, though, Johnny began walking and Edgar trailed along after him and that strange smell of his.
They argued until they stood at the edge of Johnny’s dead lawn and then until the threshold of Johnny’s door. Edgar was stabbed again when he took a step to enter.
“Is this it, really?” Edgar asked, resigned to the knife in his neck. “I mean, when you can’t stab people, do you explode from internal pressure or something?”
Johnny made a hissing noise and flung the door open, gesturing theatrically with one hand. “Come in and find them, then,” he said.
An invitation. Perfect.
Johnny stood beside his bag of CDs with his arms crossed in the dark room, watching Edgar intently.
“Do you want me to do a trick?” Edgar asked.
“Maybe you could shoot lasers from your eyes. That would brighten up my day considerably.”
“I’m not that kind of vampire.”
“Vampire?”
“Yes.”
Johnny laughed at him. “Well, you missed. The heaving white bosom is next door.”
“I’m serious.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, really,” Edgar said, stepping forward and pulling his lips back to reveal his teeth. “See? What did you think I was doing with a bag full of blood?”
Johnny narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the display of fangs. He reached behind him and produced a knife, yet again from seemingly nowhere, and poked one of Edgar’s teeth with the tip.
“Ow. What are you doing?”
“These look like those things the goth kids get when they want to look more special than every other sack of black make-up out there.”
“They’re no- OW! Stop poking them!”
“I don’t believe you.”
“How should I prove it to you, pull one out or something?”
Johnny tucked the knife back into where he’d pulled it from. “Yeah,” he said, “that’d be good.”
“I’m not pulling my teeth out for you!”
“Won’t it grow back all special?” Johnny waved his hands. “You were able to grow your whole body back together all magic-like.”
“I’m not pulling my teeth out,” Edgar repeated.
“Then I’m not believing you.”
Edgar sighed. “Should I bite someone? Would that make you happy?”
“Like it would really make me not want to throw up to see you slobber on someone.”
“You just want to see my face bleed, that’s what this is.”
“This could be true. It could also be that I find you disturbing on a few levels.”
And then Edgar realized he’d been called disturbing by a man who kept pieces of corpses in his bathroom and had only in the last hour cracked a man’s head open in an attempt to make him into a cadaver jukebox.
“I… thought we had a few things in common,” Edgar prompted.
“The not-dying. I suppose.”
“Yeah, don’t you think that’s interesting?”
“I’m not a vampire,” Johnny said defensively.
“I wasn’t accusing you! And besides, ‘vampire’ is not a bad thing to be.”
Johnny made a face indicating he clearly did not agree, turned away from Edgar and began unloading his bag. “I suggest,” he said, casually waving a knife he pulled from the depths of the bag, “that you go find those glasses of yours.”
“Oh. Oh, right, sure. I’ll get right on that.”
Edgar walked hesitantly away from Johnny and in the general direction of the strongest smell that was not Johnny or his refrigerator. It turned out to be the bathroom, but after tuning that scent out as well, Edgar found his way to familiar territory. A smell that he was not used to at all began to hook its way into him. It was both foreign and very comfortable at the same time.
The smell of blood that had once been in his own body led him to a room containing a grotesque and uncleaned killing machine, garnished with bits of Edgar’s old clothing. On the floor among the mess were the shattered remains of his hopeless glasses. He pocketed them, if only because Johnny thought Edgar wanted the glasses for something and leaving them would be strange. How long would he be able to make up excuses to stay and secure free food? Was there a way to convince someone like Johnny that he needed a sidekick?
He pondered while he wandered aimlessly through the rooms in the depths of the house. Not following a scent this time, just walking. Like he used to. There were paintings on the walls, and there had once been paint under all the blood. It seemed Johnny was, or had been at one time, a fairly energetic artist. Edgar could live with an artist. Hell, Edgar could live with an anybody whose entire home reeked of food. Johnny could have been an obese truck driver or some kind of religious nutjob who felt the need to exorcise him at every opportunity, and Edgar would still have wanted to stay. It was definitely a plus that Johnny was a skinny, angry, little guy who was apparently too crazy not to let a vampire into his house, but it would have made little difference if he wasn’t.
And then it hit him, and then it made sense. Edgar didn’t need to convince Johnny that he needed a sidekick or a bodyguard or a pet. He didn’t even need to beg Johnny for lodgings.
After all, what could Johnny do to stop him? Stab him?