Blooded: Dead Things

by A. D. Key

  Our flamboyant waitress, her apron had several colored pins, placed a strawberry Smirnoff in front of us and Leon hysterically expressed his amusement; knowing that his beer loving cousin disliked any alcoholic beverage with a fruit taste. “No,” I said and forced a chuckle. The server brought her right arm out from behind her back and placed a Bud Light on the smooth table. “Funny. I like you,” I admitted to enjoying this practical joke.

  “I.D.?”

  “I left it—”

  “I won’t tell if you won’t.” She knew instantly that we weren’t old enough to legally drink. Both of us were eighteen. I was barely a month older than Leon.

  “Will that be all?” she asked, running a hand through my blond hair.

  I nodded and she handed each of us a white slip of paper and returned to the loud kitchen.

  “This my lil’ cuz’ is better than a check.” I turned the paper over for Leon to see. It read: TINA 555-555-0138.

  “I hate you,” he said nonchalantly. I smiled and chugged down the beer.

  After Leon paid at the counter I asked again about his vision. “I already told you,” he said, hand motioning while we exited the diner. “I saw this parking lot. Her walking into Rolling Acres. Sitting at that bar. Third stool from the right.”

  The restaurant was located a block from where the shops held their Mother’s Day sales. Ugh! Mother’s Day!

  This place seemed to have one of the bigger parking lots in the area. I stood on the sidewalk racking my brain, trying to figure out what went wrong. “That is when everything went black and she was…”

  “Lying in her own blood.”

  Leon knew why I had paused at the end of my sentence. Since his eighteenth birthday my cousin has been receiving visions and not once did any include a person’s corpse. The cause of death had always presented itself. And we were supposed to stop it.

  “Oh, no!” He gasped suddenly and rubbed his blurry eyes, even though that never helps. “It’s happening.”

  My chest burned with panic. Right here? Right now?

  Meanwhile…

  LANA

  ASMALL breeze lightly played with Lana’s raven-black tresses, but it was just enough to make her grab it all and drape it down the side of her neck. Covering her left ear. The ear that lost part of its cartilage at the top, about the size of a dime, to Kronos. The teasing at school was one thing, but having to deal with the looks from strangers could be a bit much. Her mom didn’t have the money to have it repaired properly and the prosthetic piece was constantly falling out. So much she ditched it. The scars on her lips drew attention but not enough for people to stare.

  “I searched my half of the city, but… I’m sorry, Lana. I didn’t find him,” Cole dejectedly informed his comrade. Disappointment captured her oval face. “Guess you didn’t either?”

  The Shadows have been searching within Hastings, Nebraska for about an hour, doubling back repeatedly with no hope in finding their nemesis Kronos. Their abnormal abilities apparently delivered nothing. Frustrated and disconcerted, Lana walked left clear of a shiny silver advertisement with dark red letters that spelled Mother’s Day Sale. “We must have missed something when we searched the woods last night.”

  “Maybe he moved on.” He pushed the button for the crosswalk; the cracked sidewalk no longer went straight.

  “Cole, forget your logic. What does your instinct tell you?”

  “You know that only works when there are Deaths.” He unnervingly ran his fair fingers through his loose dark hair. The seventeen year old, having been a Shadow for one year, was not fond of fighting Deaths—a group of Vampires. Facing off with a solitary vamp equals an adrenaline rush. Two or more Vampires is when fear enters the equation. He would rather slay one Vampire than hunt Deaths.

  “Forget that. We know Kronos.” The impatient raven-haired girl heedlessly moved across the crosswalk, disregarding the flashing DON’T WALK signal. She sighted wet spots and a brown and white coffee container sticking out of an overflowing trash bin as they advanced to the other sidewalk.

  Only steps from the walkway, an unsightly lime green station wagon madly honked them to move faster—like a train desperately shouting at people on the railroad tracks. The traffic light changed to red just before the car rashly entered the junction, and its right turn signal was on despite the fact that it did not make a right turn.

  Astounded, Lana and Cole eyed the speeding vehicle. “That’s right,” Cole started. “Draw more attention to that ugly piece of—”

  “Did you or did you not feel his presence?” Lana interrupted, turning right on the sidewalk like she was on a mission. He matched her quick pace.

  “I did. Kronos was there.” Several advertisement signs had begun to disappear along with the consumers. “Saturday-morning-slash-afternoon-sale-madness must be over,” he said.

  Lana was still thinking about the Vampire. “He still has to be there. Hiding. We stayed there till dawn,” she said with spangles of cheer in her eyes.

  Cole smiled down at her, fully understanding. “You’re right. He’s trapped.” They happily begin their run to the bone yard, barely inside city limits, where Kronos unremorsefully took a life last night. There was a glint of hope in Cole’s tired eyes. He knew there was no way Kronos would want to feel the sun on his face—or any part of him for that matter.

  LUCAS

  THE BEST PLACE TO receive insight into the future isn’t in any populace for two reasons.

  One, it is embarrassing. Humans in general tended to judge. Leon does not like going through pain to come to the realization that he is surrounded by an onslaught of people. Second, he doesn’t like elucidating afterwards that a physician is not necessary. Hopefully.

  I could tell what was happening by the way my cousin covered his eyes. Glancing around the parking lot, I spotted our ultramarine blue 1970 Chevrolet Biscayne. “Come on,” I said, placing a hand on Leon’s back guiding him away from the restaurant.

  “Has the ringing started?” I asked. My question was answered when an abashing Leon quickly slammed his hands over his ears and groaned louder. There was a shrillness, Leon depicted on more than one occasion, was like the high piercing noise of all the school bus brakes in the world suddenly going bad. It had escalated in his eardrums.

  “Can only imagine what this is gonna look like,” I muttered and gripped Leon’s hand. Us prominent hand holding guys ran through a row of parked vehicles. We neared the car and someone whistled. Caught off guard, and Leon unable to see, we stumbled over each other’s feet, tumbling in front of a party of four women. Embarrassed, I immediately got up and helped my semi-blind cousin to his feet.

  “Please tell me you aren’t gay. That’s nasty,” the shorter woman said.

  “You know what they say about assuming. It makes an ass out of you and me.” With a plan in mind, I took Leon’s hand and begin walking. Just as we passed by the shorter woman, I took my free palm and slapped her butt. “Bad girl,” I said and sprinted to the car, practically pulling Leon.

  “Next time we walk,” I told my tormented cousin, opening the door for him. I darted around to the driver’s seat.

  Hastily, I sympathetically handed my angst-ridden cousin a white wash cloth from the backseat. By the time Leon slammed it in between his teeth tears had begun to scuttle along his cheeks. He grunted powerfully and intensely. Grinding down on the rag. Blood abruptly gushed from his nasal passages. When this happens the ringing dwindles, disappearing completely. Leon wholly loses his sight and hearing. At first everything goes coal black—according to Leon.

  Leon’s senses finally return, immediately ending the vision. A trickle of blood has emanated out of his ears. He flung open the door and puked.

  “Uh…” Leon moaned, leaning back in the seat. “A girl our age. Raven hair. There’s something wrong with…with her ear. She screamed raucously while something violently bit her cheek… Daylight emerged from the obscurity. A streetlight accompanied a gate with the words Rush Cemetery.”


  Screamed raucously? I knew he couldn’t help it. Leon was a certified genius who had to be very descriptive sometimes for some reason. I wanted to tease him but he looked like he was about to hurl again.

  Familiar with the next step—research—I put the key in the ignition. The old, sentimental car had been bequeathed to the two of us by my mother after her unexpected death. Her death being why I hate Mother’s Day.

  On the way back to our motel room, I decided to take Leon’s mind off his aching head. “All the numerous times mom caught the two of us pretending to drive this… And out of that motherly fear of hers, she began hiding the key. Then the day came when I turned nine and no matter where she chose to hide it I always found the thing.”

  “She caught us a couple of times in the field. Slowly cruising along without fear of punishment.”

  “I woke up early one morning to the smell of her bacon and eggs. Saw the key dangling unexpectedly from the wall. I snatched that puppy up, put the key in the ignition, turned it over, and nothing happened. Little me was so devastated. That very day I realized what I wanted to be when I grew up. A mechanic.”

  “It wasn’t until later, after they all…died, that Uncle Joe told us she had started removing the battery,” he recalled smiling through the pain of losing our parents. Mom, dad, my aunt and uncle. “Too bad we can’t cross being Hunters off the list.”

  “And inopportune visions,” I added.

  “They’re embarrassing at times, but it’s not that bad.”

  “Not that bad? Dude, your face gets its period.” He rolled his eyes at my wisecrack. “What happens when you’re with a girl and—”

  “—Enough, Luke,” he cut me off.

  “Alright, seer dude. What the hell was that vamp doing in your vision?” I asked pulling into the motel parking lot.

  “It wasn’t a Vampire.”

  “What do you mean? What was it?”

  “You’re not going to believe it.”

  3: The Weeping Willow

  LANA

  THIS PLACE ALWAYS looks more inviting than the one I live across from.

  To avoid the blinding light shining in her eyes, Lana looked down and left into green foliage that never seems to end. Mercifully, August Cemetery does not bestow a startling impression of gloom and doom amid day hours. The dazzling yellow sun omitted creepy shadows, and Vampires could not be found playing. The grave markers didn’t look prehistoric unlike Rush Cemetery—the graveyard across from where she lived. This cemetery was not shoe-smelling-new, but it was undeniably modern compared to other quantities in Hastings.

  Lana and Cole slowed to a walk. They had ran nonstop through the congested city, but loping in a burial place would be eye-catching. It was daytime and people would likely be here visiting, laying a loved one to rest, or perhaps both.

  Lana had said goodbye to her grandparents six years ago due to diabetes and cancer. Her adored father, also a Shadow, was taken a year later at the hands of Kronos; that battle also resulted in the physical scarring of her lips. But the underestimation of the thirteen year old girl’s strength is what lead to a far worse scarring for the Vampire.

  The damage to her ear though, that’s new. Trying to dodge flying acid was harder than Lana had anticipated.

  Nine months ago, sometime during the first week of school, it was her turn to relieve Cole from watch (hunting of Vampires) for a week. The raven-haired senior, finding no signs of bloodsuckers in the quiet night, thought it best to return home before she died of boredom.

  The Shadow had been walking New Hope Road next to August Cemetery, it eventually intersects with the main road where the cemetery’s entrance is located, when she suddenly had that feeling, the sixth sense—the sense that yelled Vampire!

  She continued on the potholed road, now recently paved, when she saw and heard a boy her age sitting on the freshly dewed grass crying next to one of the road’s rare streetlights.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Are you, Lana?”

  “Uh…yeah.”

  “He said you go in alone or he’s gonna kill her.”

  Given the teenage boy with short brunette hair had called the Shadow by her name and referred to the Vampire as male, she knew it could only be the Vampire she was on a first name basis with—Kronos.

  “He… I think he’s a damn vampire. And not the lame kind. He’s really gonna fucking kill my girlfriend.”

  Lana gazed up. The street lamp cast a small amount of light in the dark night. The Haunted House she had heard about, and passed by very little due to the lack of food in the area for Vampires, eerily stood a little ways back from the light. A nauseating feeling quickly ensued in the pit of her stomach. The only thing she knew about this derelict place was the lady haunting the house had brown hair and was supposed to be a nice ghost.

  Nice ghost or not, the lot had been uninhabited for decades and Lana was not really looking forward to finding out—especially with a bloodsucker in there—if the woman catered disgusting brown faucet water or delicious cookies. Which she never hears about. If a ghost can alter the water, why can’t they manifest giant ass dough with chocolate chips? Lana had wondered.

  But it was (still is) her obligation to save people; Casper or no Casper. Lana looked down at the teenage boy already lamenting the death of his girlfriend. He clung to the hard pole, face wet with tears, as if at any moment it would turn into his girlfriend and everything would be fine.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Blayne,” he answered without looking at her.

  “She’s going to be okay. He is not going to kill her,” Lana reassured him. She took a deep breath. The Shadow stepped forward onto the pebbled walkway leading through knee-high blades of grass, some had slumped over the path underneath her pointed toe boots with a low heel.

  For the first time in several years, her knees had begun to shake as she approached the abandoned house (save for the ghost in question). The shutters had fallen down over time, only one or two remained giving it that spooky vibe. The three floors towered above her, and she wondered if the top floor with the lifeless window was truly considered to be a third level. The area looked (still does) too small to be a third story.

  The same sixth sense that alerts her of the close proximity of—Deaths—multiple Vampires developed into the same feeling that warned her about the presence of Kronos and she seriously hoped her instincts were right about there being one killer in the faded yellow house.

  Still hearing the sobbing boy behind her, Lana nervously looked up from the foot of the stairs that separated the bushes surrounding the porch. The dark house seemed to have grown two stories taller. But the petite girl frozen in front of the Haunted House knew it was her imagination. Houses do not grow.

  The door stood directly across from her. The Shadow gripped the stake. Sweat coated her palm and seeped into the wood. Realizing she had been holding her breath, Lana exhaled and placed her foot on the first step.

  Instantaneously, yellow light shown through all the windows, as if there were numerous beings standing by all the light switches waiting for her. Lana vomited. Chunks of that night’s dinner landed right there beside her foot.

  The Shadow knew it was now or never. Lana sprang up the steps, across the small porch, and easily pushed open the rotted door.

  She found nothing. No furniture. No invincible lady. No Kronos.

  The lights had to have come on somehow.

  Lana noticed the two doors to her left and right. Someone or something had spray painted black X’s across them. Great. Kronos is playing. Through the maze I go.

  The vigilant eye of the Shadow shifted over the empty house while her feet carefully moved over the dust free floor—surely a house this old built in the 1920’s, and unoccupied since before her birth would have some degree of dust bunnies. He swept his footprints away.

  The CLONK CLONK of her boots against the hardwood floor made her even more on edge. He’s going to know where I’m at
! Like it matters. He can hear the rhythm of my heart. Lana knew it would be pointless to take her shoes off, a futile effort, but the extra noise was increasing her anxiety. She decided instead of removing them, she would hurry up and end yet another exasperating game hosted by Kronos.

  Lana passed the marked doors and entered the next unfurnished room. Immediately to her right on the other side of the first room’s wall were stairs that lead to the next floor. On the hazardous steps (termites had fed on several of the boards and were crawling about) a thickly painted black arrow pointed from the bottom up.

  Her sixth sense had confirmed this was the correct path.

  The Shadow cringed with every step she took, the creaking of the ancient wood sounded just as loud as the noise made by her shoes. At least there’s light in here. She sighed. The lighted bulbs in the antique chandeliers hanging from the ceiling would make it easier to see when she needed to fight off an attacker. Or possibly fall down and kill me. Why would he even turn the electricity on?

  From the center of the stairs, Lana saw a door at the top that displayed a question mark painted with the same dark black as the arrow and X’s. She quickly saw this was not the only one; the room to the left of it and the door to her right (it faced the crooning wood that lead her up here and ran perpendicular with the room across from the stairs) both had the same punctuation marks.

  Lana mentally named the door to the right, Number One, the one in the middle, Two, and the other a good ways down from it to the left, Number Three. There was one room left.

  At the far end, facing her and Number Three, was another door frame that was rotted; the ceiling around it had apparently been leaking for some time and brown circles nearly covered it. She feared the whole structure would cave in and end her life for Kronos.

  There was no X or ?. Instead it had a red smiley face.