by DC Alexander
“I don’t think you understand your position. I left last night before I was overcome with the desire to taste you. I have fed, but I am holding back; you smelled delicious last night. I do not use humans for food but if you are going to kill these people I will make an exception in your case.”
He stood as straight as he could, I suppose he thought he was menacing. He was silly is what he was, still barefooted, skinny as he could be, he just didn’t have that menacing vibe going on.
“You don’t kill people? You suck some blood from them and let them go, or what?”
“I don’t ever bite them. When I was first turned I did, I couldn’t stop myself, but it was horrible and I’m not that sort of person. And if I bite someone I might infect them and turn them as well, I’m not going to do that to anyone.” For a bad guy, he seemed a lot like a clerk behind a register to me. He didn’t have a lot of bad guy vibes.
He said “I am very strong and fast, you need to assure me you won’t attack my people any more or I’m going to have to do something you will regret.”
I said “Carl, do you think we can let this one live? Or undie, or whatever you call it…I mean, he don’t seem very dangerous, if he telling the truth, he aint a killer. I can’t tell if he’s telling the truth or not, he aint putting out the right signals.” I’d turned to face Carl but I was keeping an eye on Andy. Good thing, too, I guess Andy decided to show me how bad he was, he accelerated toward us pretty fast. For about a step, then I had Dirt let the ground become very soft under him and he sank up to his neck, at which point the earth hardened and solidified to become as close to granite as Dirt could manage. I think it was pretty close. I congratulated Dirt on a job well done.
I’d been watching the ghouls coming down alongside the house thanks to Dirt’s help, I let them get in the backyard where nobody on the street could see them and we sunk them. One of them immediately began to have problems breathing, I asked Dirt to let its chest expand and that was taken care of.
“Ok, here’s what we have. I got a sword here somewhere” I looked for the sword carefully, it’s about twice as sharp as a straight razor; “Ah Ha! There it is” I found it in the leaves. I picked it up and swung it a time or two. I waved it around at arm’s length it feeling like somebody out of one of those fantasy games with the huge swords. If Dirt hadn’t held my feet down for me I would be all over the place; I just didn’t have the mass, even though the sword was light for its size.
“I don’t let anything come in my area and kill humans. No enslaving. No eating. No kidnapping. If anything does any of that I kill it. That’s my job and I take it seriously. I am about to cut the head off everything stuck in the ground here if some of yall don’t give me reasons why I shouldn’t, they was dead bodies out there in that tunnel and that means somebody died. I’m going to make that right, it aint gonna happen anymore.”
I heard slow handclapping behind me, I looked back and Artemis stood there with a couple others. She said “See, didn’t I tell you, she is precious! Nice trap, Ophelia, well done!”
I said “Oh, hey Arty, how you doin?” Hoping I would piss her off, she ought to know my name. Probably did that to get on my nerves. I pointed at Andy “Is this here a vampire?”
The two with Artemis laughed loudly, one of them said “Yes, Arty, is that a vampire?” Like it was the funniest thing in the world, and Artemis snatched her bow off her shoulder with one hand, notched up an arrow on it and shot it at me in one smooth motion. I accelerated as she moved and she was still faster than I was, but the arrow could only go so fast, and I managed to move my leg enough that it brushed the inside of my thigh as it zipped by. She already had another on the bow. Maybe I should have let the first one hit my leg, because this one was coming at my face.
I shoved the sword up to block and it was light as a feather. Dirt supplied me with strength and stability, I had it going on. The arrow hit it dead in the center and fell to the ground as I threw the sword at Artemis.
I wasn’t trying to stick her with the sword; I just wanted to distract her. She was fast. She had another arrow on the string as I released the sword.
She swayed to the side so the sword would miss her and Carl shot her in the stomach with his .45 from where he was standing, forgotten, off to the side. She folded up over the bullet wound and collapsed to the ground. The sword clipped her hair as it whirled past her, if she hadn’t went down it might have taken her head off.
“Hold!” the word spoken by the woman with Artemis reverberated and everything stopped. “This has gone far enough. You; “she turned to face Carl “put the weapon away.” Carl holstered the pistol, he didn’t have any choice; her command was absolute.
She turned her attention to me “Is this your man? Did he act on your behalf, by your leave?”
“Yes, he acted for me and I take full responsibility.” I didn’t want Carl to take a fall for looking out for me.
“This is done, then, and no fault shall accrue, the thing is finished. In future you shall not address Artemis by a familiar name or the consequences shall fall solely on your head.”
“Artemis, is this acceptable to you?” She got up, the mark on her stomach was just a dimple and it went smooth as I watched. She healed just that fast, damn!
She said “Yes, Deeka, I accept your judgment.”
That seemed to be the end of it, I was glad, it hadn’t looked good there for a minute; Carl was pretty handy with the .45 though, he stepped right up when I needed him.
I got the sword and walked over to the planted group, Artemis and her buddies moved aside slightly to get out of my way. “All right. I guess I got this to do.” I was sick at what I was about to do. It was ok in the middle of a fight, I could do what was necessary, but this was going to suck in a major way.
Andy the vampire said “None of us killed anybody around here. You’re making a mistake. You need to check your facts.” He was being so reasonable I had to listen.
“Man, you don’t sound like a vampire, you sound like a clerk. Where did the bodies and bones and all come from in that tunnel?”
“Graves, they were digging up graves. And one from the mortuary, before it was embalmed.” He seemed embarrassed.
“All those people were dead before they came out there, none of yall killed anybody?”
“Yes. I don’t have any way to prove it, none of them had papers, but they were all dead before we ever touched them. We aren’t killers, none of us. We were keeping the young ones penned till they came out of the feral stage.”
“Yall seemed ready to kill when you came in here.” I didn’t want to take his word and turn them loose if he was lying but I didn’t want to kill them if they were innocent.
Deeka spoke up “He speaks the truth. I have no stake in this, but I would move on and see what happens next.”
“And you would know, how?”
“It is my purview to know when truth is spoken, when lies are told, when justice is served or perverted. You can accept that I tell you the truth.”
“Ok, thanks, I appreciate that.” I turned to the buried group, “It looks like you get a pass on the execution. Before I let you go, if I can let you go, I have some questions for you, Andy, if you don’t mind.”
He said, “Yes, sure, ask away.”
“Are all vampires like you? I thought they had accents and wore cloaks.”
“Yeah, and they’re handsome, and have lots of pretty hair, and they fly, and all that. I was an accountant. I worked for an income tax service. I was attacked on the way home, it killed me. I came to in a casket, buried, they had buried me. I dug myself out. It took a while. Did you know fingernails grow after death? They’ll grow back if you tear them off. Hair grows too, unless you use everything your body has on fingernails, eventually the hair fails. I found my maker, who was a mindless animal, literally, he had been driven insane. Maybe he was buried as well. At any rate, he attacked me and I killed him in self defense. I went back to my house and I’ve been there ever since.
It’s been eighteen years; in that time my little family has found me, they share blood willingly for protection and a place to live. It worked well until you showed up. And here we are.”
“That’s quite a story. I encountered something like you in a cellar not too long ago, it was naked and mindless though, and seemed to be starved. It was pretty much an animal. If this is your territory, why is something like that living here? Did you leave it there, knowing it was killing all those people?”
“I knew of it. I didn’t go hunt it down, I’m a little squeamish, to tell you the truth.” The female of the buried group, Megan, spoke up “He gets sick at the sight of blood, he can’t bite us, he gags. He wouldn’t kill the thing, and he didn’t tell us to do it; he worried about it all the time and did nothing. We all told him it was a mistake, but he dithered.” She made a spitting sound, disgusted. I had no doubt she wasn’t squeamish in the least.
“Yeah, well, it’s gone now. Andy, are you strong enough to hold this territory, or is some other vampire going to come in here and take over? Is that something I need to worry about?” That was a weird problem to have, a vampire that was too nice and too weak.
“I’m afraid if some other vampire decides to come in here, it will kill me and take over. I’m too weak to hold this much area. There isn’t a thing I can do about it though.”
All the ghouls were disgusted. Artemis and her group were disgusted as well, they weren’t getting any show. Carl and I weren’t disgusted. We didn’t have to kill anyone. I was still concerned about Artemis and I kept an eye on her.
I reached down to touch my leg, it had an irritation on the inside of my thigh, it was wet. Where the arrow had brushed me blood had trickled down my leg. The arrow had cut all the way across and it was bleeding freely. I squeezed the capillaries closed to stem the blood flow and wiped my hand on my ruined pants.
Andy’s head swiveled and locked into position facing me, he quivered with intensity. His teeth popped out and he growled.
I squatted down well out of reach “Hey, man, what’s goin on with you?”
Artemis said “He smells your blood. You have connections to the earth, it lends power to you. If you would have him powerful, offer him your blood.”
“I aint getting anywhere near that thing. I don’t feed sharks either, specially I don’t feed them me. Look at the teeth on that bastard. Naw, aint happenin.”
Artemis said “Catch some blood in a container and give it to him to drink. You could easily heal if he savaged you, but you might become undead. I wasn’t advising you to feed him directly.”
I had our coffee cups sitting there on the steps, I ripped my pants leg open where it was cut and pushed the cup against the skin. It was awkward. I relaxed and released the blood to seep out, the tiny clots dissolved and a steady flow started. In a minute the cup was almost full. I stopped the bleeding and took the cup over to Andy. He pulled his head away as far as he could and got perfectly still. When I moved the cup toward him he struck like a snake, teeth first, and would have knocked the cup out of my hand if I wasn’t pretty fast myself. I walked around behind him and he turned his head tracking me. There was nothing sentient in his eyes, he looked like a snake. I held the cup over his head and lowered it while catching him by the back of the neck. He struggled and turned and twisted, so that didn’t work. I caught him by the forehead and pulled his head back. I got his mouth pointing straight up and poured the cup in. After the first drop hit the inside of his mouth I could have tossed the cup straight up and he wouldn’t have missed a drop. His mouth stretched impossibly wide as I poured the cup in. The last few drops were slow. I stepped back and moved away.
His eyes were closed. Then he leaned his head forward and a shudder racked his body. I backed off a little bit just in case he transformed or something. I sat down and put my hand on the earth.
Dirt was pissed, truly upset, that I had not only not killed the vampire and thus erased a blank spot, but I had given it my blood to empower it and make it healthy. I explained that I was making an alliance with this one to keep all the others away, this one would help kill others if necessary. I had strengthened this one so it could help defeat the others. That line of reasoning seemed to work well, I was a little surprised and how easily it was accepted. Dirt had a lot of experience with solutions that took a roundabout way to accomplish a goal it appeared.
Stopping the blood from my leg seemed to help Andy regain his senses. Maybe getting some high test blood helped too. He was looking at me and somebody was home again “Thank you, that was wonderful. I wasn’t at all in control and I apologize. That stuff wasn’t like anything I ever tried to drink before. I can see why you’re powerful if you have that flowing through your veins. I don’t think I could control myself if you bled around me when I was hungry. It wasn’t at all sickening. It was water in a desert, rain in a drought, light...”
I interrupted “Hey, that’s cool, its good stuff, I got that.” That little bit probably wouldn’t do much for him. It was something though and I wasn’t a dessert bar.
“I’m going to let yall out now. Behave, get on out of here, and I see yall later, ok?” They rose up from the earth and were standing on the ground free and unfettered. I figured between Artemis, Dirt, Carl and Artemis’ friends we should be able to handle them easily.
The female came over to me and said “I thank you for your mercy and your trust. You are a fool or you are truly powerful to release us after such treatment and it is obvious you are no fool. I am Megan and you have my service in your time of need, and that of any of my clan.” She bowed formally and backed away, then turned and faded into the night. The rest of them left with her.
Andy said “Yeah, what she said, and thanks.” He turned to go and stopped and touched the top of his head, pinched it, then he turned back to me and said “Wow, No shit, I got hair! Thanks! ”He laughed and twirled and zipped out of sight out to the street, no more hedges for that boy I guess.
I turned back toward Artemis and her buds and they weren’t there. Oh. That was what Megan was talking about; they thought I knew the others were gone. It suited me just fine for them to think I was a badass.
I ran through a mental checklist; I needed to put up the sword and shotgun; we could leave the rest alone till tomorrow. I opened the back door and we went in, Carl helped me put carry the stuff in and I put it up.
He said “Partner workin ok with you?”
“Yep, I got no complaints. I liked that shot, you might have saved my ass. She was gettin serious with the arrow shit, I’d run out of things to throw.”
“I wondered why you didn’t sink her ass. That would’ve slowed her down.”
“I just didn’t think of doin that, damn it. They are some serious bad asses, I suspect. I think they believe they’re gods, and they got a lot of mojo to back it up with. They might be some kind of spirits. I aint gonna worry too much about what they are, I just aint gonna piss them off if I can help it. The thing about takin me somewhere and gettin me tattooed sort of left me worried about what they could do if they got mad. And getting shot in the belly with a .45 didn’t seem to do much to her, did it? ”
“No, that was freaky, it put her down, and she got right back up. It made a hole though, so one in the head would have to put her down.”
“I don’t know if they stay down though. Try not to kill any of them if you can help it. It would probably piss them off.”
Chapter Seventeen
A ndy the vampire hired Carl and his crew for lawn maintenance and house repairs. Andy never saw the house in day light and hadn’t realized how decrepit the place was. Carl pointed it out and Andy wanted him to do some painting and minor woodwork; Carl sub contracted the work out, acting as a general manager.
Andy had hair now, he might have lost it due to the burial problem he had encountered, and my blood fixed it. He came over and visited some nights. He didn’t want to be a bother but he was lonely. There wasn’t a lot for him to do, he missed all the action in
the daytime and the nights got dead pretty quick on weekday nights.
He always called before he came over. It took a week for me to catch on. He’d call and said “This is Andy, how are you doing?” I’d reply “I’m fine, how are you doin?” and he would ask “Did you get cut or hurt or anything today?” I actually thought he was worried about me and it was just too weird, then I realized what was happening. He checked to make sure I wasn’t bleeding so he wouldn’t go into a feeding frenzy.
He offered investment advice and it was probably good but I wasn’t ready to invest. He made pretty good money by taking a long view, he was all about dividends.
We still had lost items every week. If it was a purse, the purse would be empty when we found it. They just wanted the bag back. Sometimes ID was still in it.
Lost kids were mostly runaways. I checked every time to make sure they were ok, I’d find the kid and talk with him or her. Most of the time it was simply growing pains, they wanted to get out and be independent. Occasionally it was a bad home situation. I wasn’t qualified to deal with that, I made sure the law got involved and whatever it was stopped.
Elizabeth went down to a hope house to visit with somebody she knew, and she talked about it. The women were hurt, lost, felt they were to blame for their situations. I stopped by and talked with them to check out the injuries and see if there was anything other than simple physical abuse going on, it turned out to be a pleasant visit and I looked forward to going back.
My hearing was getting a lot better. I heard all sorts of things I didn’t want to hear. I worked on getting where I didn’t pay attention to it. My sense of smell got pretty strong too. I couldn’t eat a lot of things, the chemicals were horrible. Most meat smelled really bad so I stuck to vegetables for the most part.
