Leaving the Cecil Hotel, or whatever was left of it took hours. The easiest part was the physical aspect of it. Gabriel froze a path of ice in front of them, making it easy for them to walk back to the shore, and they walked, and then began to run as the twinkling stars faded, and morning began to break against the horizon.
Carlos knew his higher thought was leaving him, the lower part of his brain would soon be the only thing functioning if he didn't have anything to eat after the extreme amount of blood loss. They were underground, in an abandoned subway tunnel, and Carlos told Gabriel he would be back, that he needs to pick up some food, that when he came back that he better not find out he ate before him, and Gabriel sulked and pouted, their relationship looking less and less normal and more like owner and pet.
So, Gabriel, The Misbehaving Pet waited in the abandoned tunnel, drooling every time a rat came by, his index finger twitching as if he were holding a gun, some part of him still forced to listen to Carlos by his strange secondary curse. He sat on a rotting wooden bench painted the boring public grey that is standard for all boring public places, with their boring public furniture, counting each rat missed meal that crawled by, growling when they dared to even glance at him.
A familiar smell in the dark tunnel was a welcome and abrupt change.
It wasn't Carlos, but it smelled like him, all of the family having the same distinct smell, the smell of smoke, the same distinct feeling when you looked them in the eyes, and Gabriel felt her arrive before he could see her yet again, her presence louder than her small frame.
Momo jumped down the subway stairs, and landed in the tiles, sending them flying, nicking her knees, and cutting into her arms. She didn't flinch and stood erect to greet Gabriel, but she wasn't happy to see him. Carlos had gone against what the older siblings had done, he had brought attention to them with their stunt that was now on almost every major website.
Gabriel could feel her murderous aura as she slowly approached him, and she knew he was hungry, so she brought in something he couldn't resist. A nice "juice-box", just for him. She shook it in her hand and Gabriel froze, weighing death against a moment of pure pleasure.
Momo was not the oldest of all the siblings, in fact, she was a grandchild, the daughter of Kato, at only ninety-seven. She was turned at fourteen, and when she spoke she still sounded like a teenager, her composure, however, that of an adult, and it frightened the meat suits whenever a well-meaning one approached her during a weekday asking her why she wasn't in school.
She wasn't in school, she never returned, nor did she like to play pretend like the others and sometimes return, because there was no use in pretending to change things that could never be undone. Momo's glow in the dark fingernails gave off a neon pink glow, and she shook the juice box in the air, waving it like a toy.
"Come here sweetie, it's your favorite. O negative."
Gabriel knew it was a trick, Carlos knew it was a trick, Momo knew that they both knew, and Gabriel cried in frustration, drool dribbling down his chin, still following instructions that he could not eat until Carlos returned.
Little squeaks from the rats, mice, and Momo's black sneakers echoed in the dark, and she paced the subway floor, shaking the juice box, waiting for him to succumb to his desires, but Gabriel wouldn't. The curse was stronger than the addiction and Momo sighed, hating that she couldn't kill him and not feel guilty and that the others might hate her as well.
In a flash, she ran up to Gabriel and pushed him off the bench, and he snarled, squirming all over the floor, enraged and confused. Momo was jealous, she was no longer the baby, and to add insult to injury he seemed to be fond of her.
Carlos arrived with several blood bags he stole from a nearby hospital to see Momo kicking Gabriel repeatedly in the stomach, as he writhed all over the floor and snarled like a wild animal. Carlos whispered to himself again that this was another test, but the tests were now ridiculous, mundane, and he was starting to prefer the more obvious ones, such as the demon from the night before.
They stopped squabbling when food had arrived.
Food, the international peacemaker, secondary to the gun, quieted the arguments, and they ate quietly in the dark. The air was still and heavy, and Carlos was the one who pushed it with his voice, apologizing to Gabriel.
"I'm sorry about earlier, I should have been there to protect you," Carlos sighed.
Gabriel glared at Momo with intense hatred, his eyes never leaving hers, and she glared back, their staring match eternal, because neither had the need to blink.
"I'm not sorry, he needs to die before he kills you, Father," Momo replied.
" What? No, he's not going to kill me! I meant earlier, at that horrible tourist trap!"
Gabriel's gaze finally left Momo's, and he leaned to the side to look past her, and at Carlos who was sitting on the side of her on the bench. He was a deflated balloon, a shell of the former monster he was, and Gabriel believed he had failed him as well.
"You did fine, don't worry about it," Gabriel reassured him.
"I could barely do anything. If I was stronger all those people wouldn't have died. I put our lives in danger just to have those meat, I mean people, listen to me."
Gabriel got up and sat on the other side of the bench and took his hand, and he didn't protest, the skinship welcome, because this time Gabriel wasn't attempting to eat him. Momo was afraid, as she was already too late, smelling their affection for each other, and tried to hide the disgust and venom in her voice.
"How long have you been feeding him your blood Father," she asked.
"Please don't call me that."
"Answer me."
"For three months," Carlos hissed. " Does it matter? He won't stop!"
"Yes it does," Momo screamed.
She got up from the chair, as it was now somehow poisonous.
"Carlos, you can't just block yourselves off from everyone else! It's not fair," she whined.
"Carlos can do whatever he wants, " Gabriel smirked. He leaned on Carlos's shoulder and held onto his arm like a haughty trophy wife, and Momo let out a shrill noise.
"Don't you think it's weird he hasn't improved at all, since he was turned," she asked Carlos.
"Doesn't it take a year for them, you know, whatever this is to end, " Carlos asked.
He pried Gabriel off of him and he began to protest and Carlos just let him hold onto his arm again, too exhausted to argue two monsters at once.
"Yes, but not like this! Don't you think it's weird that he's obsessed with you! What do you think will happen if you keep giving him your blood!?"
"Don't be jealous," Gabriel whispered. "We have a special bond-"
"Shut up," Momo shouted. "This is unnatural!"
"I don't want to hear about nature from a girl with pink hair," Gabriel snapped.
"I am an astral, like you, dumbass, of course, my hair is pink. "
The squabbling between the two continued, and Carlos tuned them out thinking about what she said. How it was unnatural. Nothing about them was natural. If Gabriel and he weren't the only ones wrapped up in each other, then they would be wrapped up in the rest of the family bound to their own delusions as well.
What poison was best to choose?
Carlos thought that maybe he wasn't concerned for Gabriel's safety because he liked him, but because he kept giving him his blood, and wondered if Santos was worried about their safety because he gave them his blood, their biological connection being the only thin strand that gave them any chance of love.
Gabriel gripped his arm tighter and told him that it wasn't the case.
"Of course I love you Carlos, I-"
"Gabriel you're like five, you don't know what you're talking about," Momo screamed. "Carlos gave you his blood and now you'll become obsessed and eventually kill him! "
Carlos was now worried. He was worried before about Gabriel, the way someone saw a young man and said, well he's just not right, but he's got the spirit. Now he was worried about Gabriel in the way someone said that boy is just not right.
"You're jealous of our special bond," Gabriel exclaimed.
The more Momo spoke, the more erratic he became, his grip tightening onto Carlos as if he would slip through his fingers like water, and Carlos had to remind him that he was tearing off his arm until he finally relaxed.
"I tried warning you, I am not jealous! I gave you my phone number!"
Carlos's eyes searched the air, and then he remembered. The numbers. What other reason would she repeat a stream of numbers? His cheeks burned and he squeezed his eyes shut, wondering how he could have been so caught up in himself to not have come to the most obvious conclusion.
"The same thing has happened to me," Momo pleaded. "I'm trying to help you, Carlos!"
Gabriel was now quiet, as he could feel Carlos's fear, and it made him afraid of being alone again, and his fear amplified Carlos's and they were both afraid of themselves of each other, and what a simple mistake would do to the two of them.
No one argued with Momo as she warned them of the very same mistake she had made.
Many years ago, when she was young and dumb, at the prime of her youth at forty-four, Momo had her own child as well, a man she had turned who went by the name Joaquin.
Joaquin was hired by Momo because she needed to move freely, tired of the fact that she could not even pass for eighteen with her short stature, young fresh face, and voice. Eternal youth had its downsides, and it was easier to blend in than to fight the meatsuits, as they were the majority, and she would be a lone soldier fighting the rising tide.
When she met Joaquin it was in Sao Paulo. He was forty-two, a very concerned man walking home from work late, very concerned that at night as to why a young girl was with a disheveled man, holding hands, and who did not seem to be her brother, father, and was clearly too old to be her boyfriend.
Joaquin ruined his nice business suit as he fought off the man, believing that he was protecting a young woman and her virtue from a predator, when the young woman was using her youth to eat predators, the easiest to ensnare, their lust clouding their logic.
After a lot of explanations, a lot of arguing, and some undeniable proof that Momo was much older than she seemed, Joaquin let the pervert go, and he ran off, more afraid of the girl with fangs than the man who almost snapped his neck in half.
Thus began the very long relationship between the two.
Momo doted over him, and it was a very strange dynamic, a young girl concerned over a man much older than her, but Momo needed someone to worry about. Forever fourteen, she had missed so many parts of growing up. Unable to have children, or get married without worrying about strange moral grey areas, jailed in her own body, she wanted some experience of being older, and Joaquin let her play pretend at being his mother.
The years came as quickly as they went, and Joaquin was not long for this Earth.
Joaquin did not take good care of himself, a large man, and he did not listen to his mother's nagging for years that he should slim down a bit. So when she offered to turn him, he gladly accepted. Joaquin was an oddity of a man turned at the age of seventy-five, but they all adored him just the same.
Carlos started to remember.
How could he have forgotten the oddity of an old man, turned so late in his years? It was a joke he had heard many years ago, about a man in the tropics who was too slow to catch his own dinner, and his mother had to catch it for him.
His mother stood in front of him now, crying, saying that in a very silly attempt to make him stronger, she gave him more of her blood after she had turned him. That in her own silly ways she ignored his obsessions of her and assumed his familial love had turned to something more. That she had to stop being silly when his obsession turned strange, and day at night he would chase her down, trying to tear her apart limb from limb.
So, she had to do more than bury her son but kill him as well, and nothing was silly anymore.