So You Used to Be Human - Book 3 (Original Version)

Chapter 25: Trailer Park Days

Claude had insisted on driving the car the provided, an over-powered muscle car that looked more suited to high speed chases and quick get aways. He had denied it of course.

"If you're involved in a high speed chase then something has gone very badly wrong," he said. "Which means it wasn't planned well."

I had grinned as disarmingly as possible. "The plan is usually go meet the dude, get the thing, deliver the thing and hit the bar."

We had met in the meeting room and the other guys were more than a little nervous about Claude. They had met him before, usually in passing, but seemed suspicious that he was human and knew we were all vampires and yet was somehow not trying to kill anyone. I'd tried to assure them that he wasn't psychotic or even had any interest in killing vampires, but they were a hard sell.

"This is the last job, am I right?"

"Yeah, why?"

"That's the one that usually goes wrong. The others are just to test you. This is the one that really counts."

"You do this kind of thing a lot?" Benjamin wanted to know.

"I've had some... experiences, but if you note, I'm still around." They didn't look too convinced and Claude rolled his eyes. "It's not exactly the kind of profession where having a resume comes in useful, okay? If I had a resume it would be a rap sheet and that means that I'd been caught a whole bunch of times. I'm the guy who always gets away."

Benjamin wasn't buying it. "Yea, but if you get away, that means the other guys got caught."

Claude grinned confidently and clapped him on the shoulder. "Only if they didn't listen to me."

"So what's the job this time?" I asked Frankie, and he nodded his agreement to Claude coming along.

***

No one knows how old Jesus Delgado was, but as far as they were concerned he had always been around, to the point where he had become something of a legend even among the vampires, especially to those who had never met the man. He had been a connecting figure with vampires around the continent, especially in a time when vampires weren't as well connected. He carried news, stories, letters and some secrets around with him. Sometimes he had been known to transport other live cargo, but his main value was that he was the only one that the far flung vampire families could trust, so that made him the best negotiator. When Harry saw the growth of the cities, it had been Jesus who had carried the invitations to the other families and to some of the more remote vampires in outlying towns. He was the one who let other vampires know that they were not alone in the world and that times were changing. He was the reminder that they so desperately needed.

As the cities grew, his role had changed, but he had remained a Gypsy of sorts, always on the road. First in his covered wagon across the plains, the only one that travelled at night ad struck fear into the hearts of all who encountered him. Some said he was a vengeful spirit or some murderous lunatic, after all, who but a madman would dare to drive his horses at night? They said he had guards for the daytime while he rested, but the fact is that he was one of the early tinkers that frontier towns depended on for pots and pans and news from afar. It was how he got around in plain sight.

Civilization changed, expanded and grew, the roads and highways springing up to connect the cities, and Jesus changed to suite, trading in his horses and wagon for a truck and eventually to a caravan. Whatever it was, he just kept on travelling the roads, being the connection in his ever changing home on wheels. In the last twenty years he had bought himself a highly customized winnebago, nothing that wouldn't look out of place in any trailer park around the country and in a time of constant communication he actually became more elusive and harder to find. There were rumors that he sold all manner of drugs or trafficked in girls or depending on the part of the country, transported immigrants across the borders, but those kinds of stories always exist wherever there is a questionable character. The important thing was that wherever he showed up and parked his winnebago, whether for a night or for a month, he had a whole host of people who were willing to take up arms to defend him and make sure nobody brought harm to the one person who connected them all. While he was there, people brought their questions or problems and he mediated for a while.