An Angel Among Vampires

by M. Cheykota

  An Angel Among Vampires

  By M. Cheykota

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you, muse, for all the ways you have helped me. I am not sure I could have written this book without your constant nagging like, “What’s next?” or “Write it down!” Then again, I would not be here now, would I? Anyway, your presence and feedback inspired me. This book is the result. Thank you for your time, criticism, and friendship.

  Thank you, my passionate brother, for all your work on this magnificent cover. Your work is a piece of art.

  Dedicated to Auntie Mia

  Prologue

  Lily cuddles the small bundle in her arms with care. She gazes down at her precious daughter and she cannot keep the grin from spreading across her face. Her straight, white teeth shine brilliantly against her smooth, mocha colored skin. Her shoulder-length hair is back in a high, tight ponytail to keep most of her hair out of her face. She turns her smile towards the vampire standing next to the hospital bed.

  Jacob comes to Lily’s side, lovingly brushing back the thick, dark stragglers that escaped her ponytail and that is sticking against her sweaty forehead. He bends his tall, lanky form over her and kisses her on the cheek. He tosses his ear-length, wavy black hair out of his eyes and smiles back at her, showing the tips of his fangs.

  “Jacob, she’s beautiful.” Lily exclaims looking into Jacob’s whiskey brown eyes.

  “She’s perfect, just like her mother.” Jacob kisses the baby on her tiny forehead, running his hand tenderly over the baby’s dark hair, similar to her mother’s dark brown hair.

  Hearing what sounds like a woman’s scream, Jacob looks around the hospital room, distracted by the sounds of the monitoring equipment.

  “What’s wrong?” Lily asks nervously.

  “I thought I heard a woman scream.” Jacob says while looking back towards the door, using his sensitive hearing to detect where the scream came from. “Maybe I ought to check it out.”

  “This is the maternity ward, honey. Women sometimes scream when a child the size of a watermelon squeezes out of a hole the size of a lemon.”

  Jacob grimaces then adopts a worried frown. He looks up and down her body for signs of discomfort.

  Lily chuckles quietly. “It was painful, but definitely worth the pain. It’s a good thing that I heal fast because of my angelic powers.”

  “Do you need anything?” He asks, fussing over her blankets to make sure her legs are fully covered.

  Lily pats his hand affectionately. “I’ll be fine. I know you are anxious to leave now that the sun is finally going down, but we need to make sure everything is okay with the baby first. We have no idea what to expect with a child of her kind.”

  “Who would know better what to do for our child than us? I know you are worried about her, but if they find us here, we are vulnerable. You are not at your full strength and I am limited in my movement until full dark. Not to mention, trying to keep what we are a secret from everyone here at the hospital.” He tries reasoning with her.

  “It’s just a little while longer, sweetheart, and then we’ll go home.” Lily reassures him.

  Their nurse walks in and announces, “It’s time for the baby to come back to the nursery and for her mom to get some rest.” The nurse, demonstrating her experience, expertly takes the baby from Lily and returns her gently to the bassinette on wheels. “See ya later mommy and daddy.” The nurse squeaks in a mock baby talk, as she wheels the baby back towards the nursery.

  Lily smiles and reaches for Jacob. He moves closer to the side of her hospital bed and accepts her outstretched hand. Exhaustion taking its toll, Lily closes her eyes and drifts off to sleep moments later. Jacob pulls a chair next to her bed and watches her while she sleeps.

  Less than an hour later, there is a lot of upheaval outside the room near the nurse’s station. Jacob goes to the door to investigate, but as he is opening it, the door swings open wildly and slams him against the opposite wall.

  Lily quickly awakens from the commotion.

  Three men stroll into the small, private maternity room snarling. The first man in the doorway looks tall, with short, spiked, blonde and grey hair with acne scars all over his face. He snarls, exposes his sharp fangs while he enters the room, leaps into the air, and lands on top of Jacob, holding him to the ground. A second man with short brown hair, brown eyes and slightly tanned skin enters after the blonde, pulls out a sword with lightning speed, and plunges it into Jacob’s heart. His looks are average, but the savage look in his eyes makes him more dangerous than the blonde man. A third man appears in the doorway. He looks older than the other two. He is likely in his mid forties, but his East Indian heritage makes him look nearly ten years younger. His dark brown and peppered grey hair flows straight, nearly touching his shoulders. The cold look in his black eyes, streaked with silver, causes a scream to build up in the back of Lily’s throat.

  Lily lets out the scream when she realizes the men entering the room are vampires and tries to get up from the bed, but she is still too weak from childbirth. She has remarkable healing powers, due to her being an angel, but unlike vampires, she does not have the capability to heal faster by drinking blood, therefore she must wait for her body to heal naturally. Before she is able to move, the Indian vampire moves with lightning speed and grabs her by the neck, preventing her from moving her upper body. She calls out desperately to Jacob, not realizing he is already dead.

  The Indian vampire is holding her down tightly, keeping her immobile. He whispers into her ear. “My vampire, Jacob, cannot hear you. There is no one around to save you this time, angel. You should have known that we would find you eventually. You should have heeded the warnings not to have that abomination. I will enjoy draining your body of your sweet blood. When we are done draining you, we are going to walk down the hallway and do the same to your precious little child.”

  He yanks her head to the side roughly and plunges his fangs into her jugular.

  Lily screams and pleads for her baby’s life. “Spare my child. She has done nothing wrong. She can do nothing to you.”

  The three vampires ignore her pleas. The other two vampires walk around the bed, leaving Jacob’s skewered body on the ground. The blonde vampire grabs her arm and latches on to her with his fangs. The brunette vampire does the same with her other arm.

  Realizing she will be dead soon with three vampires feeding from her at once, she uses the last of her fading strength to telepathically implant a compulsion in her nurse’s mind since she is already familiar with manipulating her nurse’s mind. Lily gives the nurse the information on where to find her human sister, Maddy, and commands the woman to take her baby to her sister immediately. Within minutes after the vampires begin draining her, Lily is unconscious and her heartbeat is so slow, the monitors can no longer detect any of her life signs.

  All of the vampires release her once they drain her completely of her unique blood. The brunette vampire returns to the impaled body of Jacob, retrieves his sword from Jacob’s heart and in a quick motion, removes Jacob’s head. Jacob’s body disintegrates, leaving a pile of bone dust on the floor next to the bed.

  The East Indian vampire motions them towards the door. The brunette vampire sheaths his sword and all three vampires go back out towards the nurse’s station, leaving Lily’s dead body next to a pale pile of bone dust.

  The three vampires already killed any nurses, orderlies, doctors and security personnel they did see when they reached the maternity floor, so there are hardly any medical professionals or hospital security left alive on the maternity floor.

  They make their way down the hallway to the baby nursery. Once there, they notice that there are not many babies left in the large, windowed room.<
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  “The nurses must have heard the screams and evacuated the babies.” The blonde vampire broadcasts to the others telepathically.

  There is only one nurse left in the nursery guarding three babies. The vampires move towards the nurse silently. She turns and sees the men stalking closer to her. Noticing the unnatural silver streaks in their eyes, making them nearly glow, her fear rises within, causing her to scream loudly.

  The blonde vampire captures her mind through her gaze and she quiets instantly. He searches her mind for the whereabouts of Jacob and Lily’s baby, but the woman does not have any useful information.

  “She is not a nurse for this floor so she does not know about the baby.” The blonde vampire relays aloud to the other two vampires.

  “Where are the other babies?” The Indian vampire asks.

  The blonde vampire sifts through the nurse’s surface thoughts before answering. “She is not sure. The regular nurses from this floor were removing the babies from the nursery, taking them downstairs to another floor. She was walking by from another area when they told her to stay with these babies until they returned to remove these too.”

  The three vampires hear police sirens in the distance, coming towards the hospital.

  “What do you want to do, master?” The brunette vampire asks the Indian vampire.

  “We need to leave. I do not want to draw the Vampire Council’s attention if the humans discover us here. We will have to find the child later. Check these just in case it is one of them.” The Indian vampire replies.

  The brunette vampire plunges his fangs into each of the babies’ necks. None of the babies is the one they are looking for so he kills the remaining children, tearing out their jugulars and removes the nurse’s head with his sword out of frustration.

  With the sirens now outside the hospital, the three vampires leave the nursery using vampire speed to reach the stairs. Once at the stairs, they climb the steps in almost complete silence until they reach the rooftop.

  There is a man standing near a helicopter on the roof smoking a cigarette. The blonde vampire sifts through his mind and learns that the man is the pilot. Using vampire mind control, he commands the pilot to fly them to a nearby empty field and the three vampires disappear into the shadows of the darkening night.

  Chapter 1

  Seventeen years later…

  “Jess your fighting instructor is here!” Aunt Maddy yells from upstairs.

  Great! I groan. My body is still sore from my Aikido lesson yesterday.

  “Jess, did you hear me?” Aunt Maddy calls again.

  “Yes, I heard you!” I yell back irritably.

  I stare at the ceiling for a few more seconds, silently cursing my aunt, and then make my way to the basement stairs.

  My instructor appears at the top of the basement stairs. He is a middle-aged Asian man with salt and pepper hair. His short legs bring his stocky body down the stairs carrying his familiar duffle bag full of weapons.

  I watch him glide down the stairs, wondering what he is going to be using to beat me up with today.

  “Hello Jess.” He takes stock of the current bruises visible on my slender, bronze body, not yet fully healed from yesterday’s Aikido lesson. “I hope you been practicing the moves we went over last week.”

  I grunt in response.

  He must have taken the grunt as a yes because he continues talking.

  “Good, because I intend on moving on with today’s lesson. If you didn’t practice, you will be wearing a lot more bruises on your body.”

  Sighing, I make my way over to the practice mat in the middle of my basement room so I can stretch out my sore muscles while I wait for the lesson to begin. My unmade bed is in the adjacent corner of the stairs against the wall. My mini-fridge with my bagged blood is across from my bed in the opposite corner next to my small three-drawer dresser. The small bathroom door is between the bed and dresser, hiding the small pedestal sink, toilet, and shower stall. The rest of my basement room is bare open space except for the small desk and chair at the foot of the stairs.

  Instructor Lee puts down his duffle bag in the corner of the room next to the desk after pulling out two wooden practice swords, called bokens. He throws a boken over to me. I catch it easily in my right hand by the hilt.

  “No warm-up?” I mentally gauge the weight and feel of the boken in my hand.

  “No.” He replies. “You knew I was coming today. If you needed to warm up, you should have done it before I got here.”

  “Fine.” I snap back at him.

  His thin eyebrows rise in mock surprise.

  “Sensei.” I add belatedly.

  I watch nervously as he adjusts the clothing of his traditional garb. He lifts his boken from the ground using his feet, swinging it into the air and catching it in his right hand by the hilt. “Then let’s begin.”

  For an older man barely 5 feet tall, he moves extremely fast. Before I am able to raise my sword in defense, he kicks me in the chest, knocking me on the floor and is standing over me, offering me his hand.

  I lay there for a moment, gasping for air from the impact.

  When I finally manage enough air to speak, I complain. “Hey, I wasn’t ready.”

  “You should always be ready and on guard. Someone attacking you is not going to ask if you are ready before they attack.”

  I ignore his proffered hand and roll backwards, feet over my head to stand.

  He throws my boken back to me. “Shall we try that again? Make sure you keep your body weight centered. This will allow you to keep your balance and you will also be quicker on your feet.” He continues to lecture me as we circle around each other.

  He comes at me again, but I am ready this time. His blows seem to be coming from every direction. I use all my senses to stay barely ahead of his attacks. After several minutes of constant, high-speed attacks, he finally backs away and lowers his sword.

  “Good. You have been practicing.” He praises me with a smirk on his face.

  I look him over and he hardly looks like he is sweating. I, on the other hand, am drenched in sweat from head to toe. My feet are even slippery against the vinyl mat, forcing me to wipe the bottoms of my feet on my sweat pants to dry them. The hair that has escaped my thick, dark ponytail is sticking around the edges of my face. I try to swipe my hair off my face with no success.

  Instructor Lee is staring at me with a studious look on his face.

  I know that look. I hate that look. Whenever he has that look on his face, I usually end up sore for days and spend hours in ice baths to slow down swelling. I think to myself.

  “I think you are ready to move on. Your technique can still use some refining, but that will come with more practice. For now, I think we should move on to more challenging and unique weapons.” He says as he moves to his duffle bag in the corner.

  “Are you serious? We have only been working with the bokens for a few weeks. Do you think I’m ready to move on?”

  “You are a fast learner Jess. You are one of my best pupils. I believe you will be fine. You should have more confidence in your abilities. Maybe if you did, you would not move so slowly. You would also learn to take more advantage of opportunities to attack me, not just defend against me.”

  I am not sure what to say. Believing I can move faster than what I currently am is completely different from it happening that way. I know I am half-vampire, half-angel, but it is not as if I am born with the knowledge of what abilities I should have. My instructors often tell me that I should be able to move so fast that it would look like I disappeared and reappeared somewhere else. I assume they get this information from my aunt since they are human, but hearing what I am capable of doing and knowing how to do it are two very different things.

  My aunt informed all my instructors that I am a vampire, even though most humans are not aware of the existence of vampires. They accepted the opportunity to train me in secret as a challenge for themselves. No one except my aunt and me knows that I am n
ot only half-vampire, but that I am half-angel too. That makes me some sort of freak the vampires want to drain dry and the angels wish did not exist.

  There is nothing like both sides of your heritage rejecting you to get your blood boiling. Then again, my human Aunt Maddy doesn’t treat me much better. She treats me as if I’m an abomination too. If it were not for my parents putting stipulations in their will on the money she would receive upon their deaths, I would probably be in foster care or dead. The conditions they setup require my aunt to make sure she educates me with tutors and receive all types of self-defense training from the time I could walk until I am eighteen, or she wouldn’t receive a dime of their money. My parents’ lawyer comes by once a month to ask me personally if my aunt is providing me with tutors for my education and that I am receiving the specified training as dictated in the will. As much as my aunt despises me, she wants my parents’ money badly enough to put up with me for 17 years. Since they left their money to her for my upbringing, instead of me, I put up with her crap until I can figure out a way to make it on my own.

  “Jess, are you paying attention?” Instructor Lee asks.

  His question snaps me out of my thoughts. “Not really, but does it matter? You are just going to beat the crap out of me anyway.”

  “I would not be able to beat the crap out of you if you would keep your mind on the task and try a little harder.” He argues his point. “Part of the speed comes from your mind. If you believe you can move faster than the eye can see, you will. This is a method believed and practiced in most martial art forms. I think this will greatly apply to you in order to unlock your potential. Get a bag of blood; gather your strength and we’ll try again.”