The Cowboy Who Strolled Into Town

by Riley Moreno

  She remembered that night; it was seared on her mind. They had taken Dorian a fortnight ago, the attack of the vampires had left the village annihilated with only three captives, people they had let turn for their beauty. Demelza hadn’t found Dorian amongst the dead. She had followed them, tracking them to the caves of Qumran where their shadows danced against the walls in their hedonistic joy. Dorian was caught in the embrace of his Creator, his Master, a she-vampire of astonishing beauty and youth. Ameera. She had cackled when Demelza had asked for her to return Dorian.

  He’s going to be my little pet.

  A battle had ensued and Demelza had slain many of the covens in her rage at Dorian’s turning. She charged towards Ameera who guarded Dorian with her own body, marveling at her own strength after the fall, and struck out with the blade she had carried all the way from the village. Ameera had ducked just in time, leaving Demelza with her blade hilt deep in Dorian’s heart. His skin had turned ash white, his pupils had dilated with the relief of death. He had died in her arms.

  Dorian.

  Taken from her too soon; cruelly, senselessly and with a vengeance that was purely divine in nature. She had turned the blade on herself then and discovered how deep the treachery went. She felt the pain and she bled copiously but she didn’t die. She never could. She was left to roam an Earth without her love, her heart buried in the caves of Qumran, to never die, to never know peace.

  He is in America.

  On the same continent as you.

  Demelza frowned deeply, then shook her head and put the demons words out of her mind and headed down the hill; avoiding the paths she knew would be crawling with night patrols that had been set up since all the children started going missing. No child would be in harm’s way now; they could all sleep at ease. Her job at Creekwood was done and she would be moving as soon as they discovered where she was needed next.

  The Priesthood kept a strict eye on her movements and she felt stifled by it at times. They were originally a band of monks she had stumbled upon during a Viking raid. Stabbed through the gut with a long spear she had scrambled in to their hiding place. They had looked as pale as death and were frightened of her wounds. They didn’t know at the time that she could not die, but they found out eventually and so kept her close for their protection.

  The Priesthood had then grown, taking expeditions in to the wild where rumors of demon mischief and spirit hauntings were rife. They had enlisted her help and she had given it willingly, not informing them of her own personal history, her penance and fall from grace. All they knew was that she had the gift of immortality and was fighting the fight of God; they didn’t pry in to it further.

  She had traveled the world with them, on foot, on ship and recently on plane. She had watched The Priests initiations and seen them die, in combat or of old age. But she had always been there, a symbol of eternal piety and the fight of good against evil.

  The Priesthood had trained more humans to operate a larger area as it had grown in to a large secret organization; they would infiltrate the infested community as a small family; happy parents with their only teenage child, case the area, look for clues and hunt the supernatural source behind the attacks down. It was effective but only Demelza had a stellar record with zero Priesthood fatalities.

  With her ‘parents’ Adrian and Sarah, Demelza had been given the charge of the mid-west in the United States of America. She had cleared out the area of its demons, lone vampires, shape shifters and the occasional spirit haunting.

  Demelza spotted the family car idling at the foot of the hill waiting for her. Adrian saw her coming out of a copse of trees and flashed the headlights to give her the green light to come over. She scrambled in to the back and sighed deeply.

  “I take it went well?” Sarah asked looking at Demelza’s singed clothes and mussed up hair. The skin on her face and arms had already begun healing.

  “It went well,” Demelza said, “as well as it could go with a demon. Could we get some burgers on the way home? I’m starving.”

  Adrian started the car and drove towards the city center.

  “I’d put the contacts back on if I were you,” Adrian said handing her a small black case, “I know you hate it but the whole purpose is not to draw attention.”

  “They make my eyes itch,” Demelza whined but began to put the contacts on obediently.

  “You know sometimes I find it hard to believe you really aren’t a regular teenager,” Sarah rolled her eyes. “Whining all the time, and eating like a horse,” she said turning around in the front seat to face Demelza wrinkling her nose in a teasing fashion.

  Sarah had alabaster skin and shocking red hair which made it easy to pass her off as Demelza’s mother. Dark haired Adrian had the sharp bone structure and high cheekbones to fill in the gaps. They had been Warriors of the Priesthood when they were younger and were veterans of many slayings. Now they were older and could no longer be absent from their adult lives, not enough excuses or sick days to go around, and not enough employment opportunities when you were constantly on the go. So now they were the parents and guardians of younger Warriors, passing on the baton of wisdom and courage. Except Demelza, the undying, forever to remain in the body of a sixteen year old girl.

  “Where are we going next?” Demelza asked stuffing French fries in to her mouth. “Any leads?”

  “There have been missing person reports in the Ozark region,” Adrian said.

  “Mostly teenagers,” Sarah added taking a bite out of her burger, “all between the ages of 14-17. We’ll get more details in the next few days. We need to shut this operation down properly before we move to the next.”

  “So what they just go missing?” Demelza asked intrigued, “No bodies? No trace?”

  “Yup,” Adrian said, “although to be fair there were a few sightings, friends claiming they’d seen the missing at night staring in from their windows. But the police wrote them off as hysterics.”

  “How many claims?” Demelza asked.

  “Six,” Sarah read from her small journal where she made notes.

  “So what, mass hysteria?” Demelza scoffed.

  “We’re going to find out,” Sarah shrugged and Demelza sat back silently eating her food in deep thought.

  Her mind flitted back to the demons claim that Dorian was still alive; still out there somewhere, that her blow hadn’t been fatal. But how could it be true? She had seen him die and watched his body turn to ash. She gazed longingly at the moon, hoping that it were true, knowing in her hearts of hearts that it wasn’t.

  Chapter Two

  The Coven of Pensmore

  The clock ticked away silently as Mr. Brown kept droning away about the Civil War. His face gesticulated wildly and his three chins wobbled with every exclamation. You could tell that he was passionate about the subject at hand, as if he had just stumbled in to class from the battle field and wanted to enlist them in the good fight.

  Dorian’s lip curled in distaste.

  What do you know of war, you sorry sack of meat? He thought. I was there and there is no glory in the death of the young. We feasted like kings as you blindly killed each other. Human’s never learn.

  Mercifully the bell rang to announce the end of another school day. Dorian slipped out of class as fast as he could, his revulsion boiling his insides in to frenzy. He still found it all bewildering. He had spent centuries in discourse with Pherasus as to the nature of their new existence. Dorian found that he no longer needed to breathe to survive. He didn’t eat nor did his body produce any waste; he didn’t sweat, he didn’t cry, he didn’t feel any of the old cravings or desires. For all intents and purposes he wasn’t human at all.

  Yet he was not divorced from human emotion. Disgust, anger, fear, loathing, desire, happiness and joy; he felt it all. His dead heart would still constrict at the flash of red hair in a crowd, his hands curl with the need to touch at the sight of alabaster skin.

  Demelza.

  His lip curled with hate.
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br />   He bumped into people as he maneuvered the crowded halls; many of the girls came in his path deliberately and he knew it. His chiseled jaw and blade thin nose topped with bristling thick lashes were an aphrodisiac for the newly blooming virgins’ blood in their veins. It was for this very attraction that he had been sent to one of the many high schools in the area.

  Dorian, along with many of his brothers and sisters scattered all over the district and its many tiny towns, was responsible for seducing and luring young blood to the coven where the unsuspecting love struck teens were attacked and devoured by the horde. Hardly any were left whole, the ones who were, were turned immediately. It was especially gruesome when the sated coven decided to play with the food rather than drain it and be done with the miserable victim.

  But he was in no mood to start a flirtation today. Dorian sped out of the car park and raced his car out of Highlandville, population 1010 and falling. He sped on the Wood Forks road, taking the sharp turns at reckless speed. There was no thrill, no adrenaline when you knew that a small misstep wouldn’t cost you your life. When the stakes were so low it didn’t really count for anything.

  Pensmore Castle loomed like a grotesque, bloated giant at the top of the hill, the Ozark Mountains providing a scenic backdrop to the house of bloodlust and hedonistic macabre. There were caves in those Mountains, heavily fortified and tunneled through for an easy escape if Pensmore was eve found or taken. The Coven must always survive.

  The Pensmore Coven was a hundred strong, with numbers growing every twenty days. The Ozark Mountain region had provided them with isolated small towns that the younger looking members of the Coven had infiltrated, rotating after every few years. Dorian was in Highlandville High this year, having graduated from Joplin High last year. Ameera had taken over Joplin now.

  The rotation was very strict; if the Coven expected to stay in the Ozark Mountains for the conceivable future they needed to be discreet. No more than one person missing from one district at a time and since there were over twenty high schools in the region the disappearances went unnoticed.

  Runaways, they were termed because their bodies were never found; gone to New York, or LA to chase the American dream of making it big. Then there were the occasional hunt gone wrong, man goes missing and turns up with puncture wounds and bite marks, the body torn to pieces by some wild animal. But other than that the Ozark Mountain area slept peacefully unaware of the sinister shadow it lived under.

  Dorian walked in to the cavernous main hall, his sneakers squeaking on polished marble. The twin staircase was covered in scarlet carpeting, like the blooded wings of a wounded angel. Dorian wished for a scalding hot bath to wash away the disdain of the day.

  “You’re home early,” Ameera called from the large sitting room before Dorian could climb the stairs. “No satisfying prospects?”

  Ameera was delectable; there was no other word for her. She had raven black hair that curled ever so softly over her cherubic cheeks. Her slightly upturned nose twitched and scrunched playfully and her cornflower blue eyes could mesmerize without her needing to use hypnosis. She had been a blooming fifteen year old when she had been turned on the wastelands of present day Siberia; her first victims had been her twin younger brothers, trusting three year olds who had followed their sweet sister to the ice ridges just beyond their home. She had developed a taste for children ever since.

  “I have a few lined up,” Ameera said plopping on a sofa gracefully, her shapely legs jutting out of a flouncy short skirt. “None of them young enough though,” she mused inspecting her nails. “Don’t you just love it when they squeal though?” she laughed suddenly, “like pigs.”

  “I have no taste for it,” Dorian sneered.

  “Of course you don’t” Ameera rolled her eyes, “your taste buds are still new.”

  “Plus I don’t thrive on cruelty,” Dorian mocked and Ameera stopped inspecting her nails. In the blink of an eye she was pinning him to the doorframe, her powerful grip on his throat, her teeth bared to reveal the two sharp points of her canines.

  “I’d be careful how I address my Creator,” she hissed in his face, “if it weren’t for me you’d be dead in the dank caves of Qumran where your blessed lover stabbed you in the heart.”

  Dorian didn’t respond, his face a mask. He knew if he showed any sign of weakness, a quivering lip, a moist eye or a clenched jaw Ameera would make him suffer for it. So he stared in to her blue eyes till the fire in his own black eyes died away. She let him go with an arch smile and headed back to her sofa and her nails.

  Dorian climbed the steps deliberately slowly and waited till he reached his room. He shrugged off his off his clothes as the bathtub filled with scalding hot water. He examined his body in the mirror, lithe yet strong, a swimmers body with a face like a Greek god. He had been a fisherman in his past life, fighting against the waves in his small boat, jumping in the sea to play with the dolphins, rescuing the girl who had appeared at the spot where a star had fallen from the sky.

  Demelza.

  He had loved her from the minute he set eyes on her but her love was fickle, when he had been turned in to a monster she had stabbed him, killed him in a frenzy of hate. The only way he had survived was because his Creator, Ameera, had refused to let him. She had commanded him to remain tethered to the Earth, to her, in spirit, like a kite remains tethered to a tree even though it is torn to pieces as it clings on for dear life, anything to the fate of flying off and away in to the stratosphere; the unknown.

  Three thousand years he’d waited to be returned to his body and science had finally advanced enough to provide him one. Cryogenic chambers that regenerated around the soul, bringing back the limbs once lost. It had been a risk with Dorian who had no body to speak of, but they had found a descendant of Dorian’s brother, a man with ancient DNA in his body. One of his limbs had done nicely to recreate his ancestor.

  He had missed his body. He had not missed its need to hunt. It was his turn to bring the prey this month and he did not rejoice in it.

  Chapter Three

  The New Girl

  Her mouth stuffed with her third peanut butter and jelly sandwich of the day Demelza pushed open the school doors to Highlandville High, her hoodie providing some cover from the rain pelting outside. Her eyes were watering already and the contact lenses itched so bad she was continuously rubbing her eyes. She headed for the principal’s office to receive the code to her locker number and her schedule. She was already attracting attention without wanting to, but that was an occupational hazard of being new in a small town.

  Demelza maneuvered the crowd like a pro, not making physical contact with anyone as she made her way to her first class. She kept a sharp eye out for Kathrine Kinney, one of the girls who claimed to have seen her missing friend outside her window one night. They were supposed to have English together.

  She took a seat in the back of the class, keeping her hood up so she could observe the students without being too obvious. Katherine Kinney ambled in, her periwinkle blue dress hugging her figure in a way that was bordering on provocative but still decent enough to pass school dress code. She was a pretty girl with golden blonde hair and green eyes, and she had a pointed chin and full lips.

  Her target sighted, Demelza was about to start the mundane business of being a student when a boy walked in and completely shattered her world.

  Dorian!

  Demelza would have known that face anywhere. Those piercing dark eyes shadowed by thick lashes, a straight narrow nose, not without character, and that mouth that had left her trembling on the edge of the abyss till she fell for the smile that crept up is shining, brilliant face.

  She realized that she wasn’t breathing. She felt her fingers go numb and then tremble so she found it hard to hold on to her pencil. Countless days and millennia had gone by since she had last set eyes on that face.

  Maybe it’s just a trick. He hasn’t punished me enough so He tortures me with Dorian’s image reborn. Yet her heart leap
t with joy and her eyes filled with tears of relief. She felt her throat constrict with a yell of triumph and her feet itch to be by his side.

  He sat in the first row, his back to her, but she knew that back, intimately, recreating their brief intimacy over and over in her head over the years that she had believed she had lost him. Wiping her face with the back of her hand she resolved to get to know this boy who looked so much like her Dorian, the case of the missing students forgotten.

  “We have a new student,” the teacher, a frumpy middle aged woman with tea stains on her blouse, said squinting through her reading glasses at the note in her hands. “Demelza Saint?” she looked up enquiringly at the class till she spotted the hooded girl in the back. “Would you like to come up and introduce yourself, child? Tell us where you’re from, and a little bit about yourself.”

  Demelza stood up reluctantly, seeing the boy had thrown her off her game and she didn’t have to pretend to be the shy new girl in school, the nerves were genuine, like a shy bride meeting her husband for the first time she kept darting looks at the boy. Demelza had seen the boy stiffen when the teacher had called her name and she wondered why.

  She stood shuffling her shoes in front of the staring class, noticing them looking at her head quizzically and she hastily removed her hood revealing her red hair winding down her spine in a thick braid. She studiously avoided the boy’s eyes, chiding herself for acting like a naïve young girl in love.

  “Hi,” she waved; her head down, “my name is Demelza and I’m from Creekwood, Illinois. I like reading books and listening to music,” keep your interests neutral and boring, don’t make a splash. “That’s all I guess,” she shrugged at the teacher who nodded for her to sit down.

  Demelza sneaked a look at the boy before she walked to her seat and stopped dead in her tracks at the intense hatred she saw. She wasn’t imagining it. The boy had looked at her with a steady loathing, as if he knew her and despised her.