by Riley Moreno
“Dorian?” she whispered inaudibly but it was as if he had heard her and he sneered at her before looking away. Demelza was too shocked to do anything but sit heavily in her seat, her mind a complete blank at the impossibility of it all.
Chapter Four
Thin Line between Love and Hate
The weather had steadily gotten worse as the boom of thunder joined the incessant downpour and the day continued from morning to noon. Demelza stood with her loaded food tray deciding which table to sit at. She didn’t see Dorian anywhere but Katherine Kinney was sitting alone on a table by the window.
“This seat taken?” Demelza asked cheerfully.
Katherine shrugged noncommittally and went back to stabbing her tatter tots. Demelza sat down and started scarfing down food. Katherine watched Demelza with a hint of distaste.
“Hungry are you?” she said sarcastically.
“Starving!” Demelza exclaimed between shovelfuls of food. “I’m Demelza by the way,” she extended a hand.
“Katherine,” she said with a small smile. “We have English together. I like your hair; it’s a very unusual color.”
“I get it from my Mom,” Demelza said and took a large gulp from her milk carton. “I like your eyes,” she said frankly, “and I love that dress.” Demelza knew exactly what to say, Katherine was like countless other girls she’d met in her travels: vain, popular and accustomed to a lot of attention. Her claims to have seen the missing girl, Dorothy Meeks, had made her a joke and her stock had plummeted in the hallowed halls of the school; hence the eating alone and avoiding people.
“Thank you,” Katherine smiled prettily, “my aunt sent it all the way from Chicago. You’re the only one who noticed!”
Demelza sensed a whine in there and continued to compliment the dress and how it looked on Katherine keeping an eye and ear out for Dorian. She was completely flustered and needed to focus on the case. If it was in fact Dorian she had seen, Dorian brought miraculously back to life, then they were in deeper trouble than she had anticipated. Dorian meant that Ameera and her coven weren’t too far away.
“We had matching dresses, actually,” Katherine was saying, “but Dorothy wouldn’t let me wear mine because of the whole Wizard of Oz thing. She could be mean but we were friends, until she started dating Dorian and then I hardly ever saw her. He’s also pretty cut up about her running away.”
“Who?” Demelza asked nonchalantly.
“Dorian Fisher,” Katherine said, “he’s also in our English class. The one with the dark brown hair, the thick lashes?”
“Oh, yeah,” Demelza said her heart beating faster and sinking at the same time. “But why would she run away? I mean, wasn’t she happy here?”
“She was always flighty,” Katherine shrugged, “there were times when she’d dare me to run away with her to New York. God, did Dorothy love New York. I guess she had a bit of a complex, the whole running away to the Land of Oz like she was the Dorothy. I saw her once,” Katherine said cautiously but it seemed she hadn’t had anyone to talk to in so long she had thrown caution to the wind and was blurting everything she’d kept bottled inside out. “After she ran away. It was about five days after she’d gone and I thought I saw her outside my window staring at me. Maybe it was a dream,” she laughed it off but Demelza could tell that the experience had unsettled Katherine.
“I bet that was a shocking experience,” Demelza said.
“It was!” Katherine said with relief at being understood. “I miss her. She was my only friend.”
The bell rang to signal the end of lunch and Demelza took the last spoonful of her pudding. She checked her schedule and sighed to find Physical Ed on her sheet. She found the prospect of holding herself back immensely irritating but the humans needed to be indulged if she wanted to pass off as one of them.
“I’ve got PE now,” Demelza said, “see you around?”
“Yes,” Katherine said with a wider smile than before, “I’d like that.”
The gym was humid and stank of human flesh. The amount of sweat a body could perspire was astounding to Demelza who had never had the experience. She assembled with the rest of the girls in her gym shorts and waited for the coach to instruct them in a mundane sport Demelza wouldn’t enjoy. She watched the boys’ line up across the gym and saw Dorian lazing on a bench looking bored.
Demelza’s heart missed a beat and she began to blush. Now that she knew it was Dorian she wanted to get as close to him as possible. She wanted to run her hand through his hair, and kiss his lips. But she reminded himself that Dorian was a vampire, probably responsible for the missing people, and that she had come to bring him and his coven down.
Why were they always at odds? She remembered the few brief weeks they had had together after her fall; the reluctant touch, the unloosening of tongues and hands, the final giving of all that she had to give; the silent fisherman and the trembling angel discovering each other in the small hut by the sea; a slice of heaven that was forever forbidden to them by their union. And then it had all come crashing down.
She had to get close to him; she inched closer to where he was, hoping she’d be selected in the same team, or maybe the opposite, anything that allowed the most physical contact. She was disappointed when he walked forward and handed the gym teacher a note excusing his participation in class. She watched him sit on the bleachers watching the game of dodgeball and she didn’t need to fake physical ineptitude, her heart was beating so fast and her stomach full of so many butterflies she kept tripping on her own two feet.
The shower was a blessing; her skin felt like it was on fire. She had sensed his eyes on her throughout and the scars of her wing stumps felt like they were ablaze again. She closed her eyes and imagined his fingers on her shoulders, traveling down to her arms, enfolding her delicate hands in to his powerful ones as he pulled her back to him.
Demelza took a shaking breath to come back to the present where Dorian was a vampire stealing young girls in to the night, and seemed to hate the very sight of her. She patted herself dry and put on her clothes. She needed to put Dorian out of her mind and concentrate on the task at hand. Sarah and Adrian didn’t know about Dorian, none of The Priesthood knew about Dorian, nor would they understand. She couldn’t risk them knowing about him because all they understood about the unholy was its complete annihilation. There was no other alternative.
How does that make us different from the monster’s we hunt?
Demelza set her hood on her head as she left the school grounds. She sent a quick text to Sarah, telling her she was scouting the expanse of woods and hills near the school and would be home late. Not that Sarah would worry. It’s not like Demelza could die.
The heavy rain became a spraying mist in the thick woods the smell of pines and sodden earth a heady perfume. She smelled resin, pinewood and animals in the distance. She also smelled the underlying scent of old blood. That was never a good indicator of anything untoward in the woods though, carnivorous animals were mostly responsible for the recent kills that she smelled so she put it down to one of those. A coven that hunts together must be discreet and so must have a place where they dispose of their victims, a gathering place.
Like the caves of Qumran.
Demelza walked in earnest, looking at a map of the area on her cellphone. She was looking for the nearest cave she could find, cursing the clever location as she saw the entire network on the map. The Ozark Mountain area was a veritable hive of caves that ran in to each other and opened all over the mountain region.
It will be near impossible to close the coven in; they have too many escape routes. I’ll need the entire Priesthood for this operation. But then I risk them finding out about Dorian. And what if one of the Priesthood killed Dorian in the fray?
It never entered her mind that Dorian would be responsible for the deaths of her comrades.
The mouth of the cave was narrow, big enough for a human child to enter standing while an adult would have to crawl on all fours. There was moss on the r
ocks and complete darkness inside. Demelza stooped down and took a peek inside. She cursed her contact lenses, rubbed them out of her eyes, letting them fall to the forest ground, and looked again.
The walls were slick with rainwater reaching them from some fissure in the ceiling; the floor was littered with bat droppings and tiny bones of birds and mice. It was a disused cave, frequented by some small feral animal in the winter months. No use to her.
“You haven’t changed.”
Demelza stood rooted to the spot. She could sense his eyes boring in to the back of her neck.
“Neither have you,” she said turning to face Dorian. He was leaning against a tree, his arms folded across his broad chest, his dark eyes hooded as he observed her from afar. Demelza wanted to lean in to those arms and kiss his clenched jaw to ease away the loathing she sensed from him but his indifference kept her where she was.
“Looking for more filth to exterminate?” he asked with a tight smile. “Or weren’t you satisfied with stabbing me through the heart?”
“That blow wasn’t meant for you.”
Dorian scoffed.
“Please don’t patronize me,” he spat, “the minute you saw that I had been turned, that I was unholy and evil you’re lips curled in distaste and you wanted me gone, eradicated, like a mistake you made. You stabbed me because you didn’t want to be reminded of the man you’d lost, because I wasn’t him was I? I was some monster!”
“Who has been feeding you these lies?” Demelza asked archly, “And more to the point, why have you swallowed them whole without choking?”
“Ameera saw you, they all saw you,” Dorian accused, “You were going for Ameera who guarded me but then changed your direction at the last minute to attack me.”
“What did you see?” she asked stepping forward, her fury at the accusations and his misguided hate propelling her forward. Dorian hesitated and took a step back, taken aback by the gravity of his desire for her, a desire that had never dampened no matter how much he convinced himself of her treachery; if he’d believed it at all.
“I saw you charge and plunge a blade in my chest,” he said quietly. “That is all I remember.”
“And you would believe the word of those who turned you against your will, who decimated your entire village, over mine?” Demelza asked frustrated tears in her eyes. “You would believe that I would fall from Heaven for you and yet abandon you at the first sign of human weakness?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” Dorian admitted, swallowing audibly. He had seen her walk to the front of class like a mirage this morning. Her red hair a beacon from the only time he had known happiness, the scent of her hair like ocean spray, the pallor of her skin like virgin marble yet to be crafted in to art. The nights of sweet honey musk and damp earth clouded his mind now and he didn’t flinch when Demelza walked forward and touched his cheek lightly with her delicate fingers.
“Believe me,” she whispered and pressed her lips against his and the rigid constriction of his body eased for the precious few second that he allowed her touch on his skin, the feel of her soft lips on his cold ones. He pulled back abruptly and pushed her away.
Dorian had sensed her beating heart through her veins and his hate, for her and for himself, had returned manifold. That Demelza should be alive in every sense of the word, in a body still pure and holy even after the fall, while he was a despicable creature who should be buried in the earth, food for worms, but he walked around devouring purer flesh to satisfy the cravings of his vile body.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t what he had wanted for his life. He had never asked for depraved immortality. And if it were true that she had tried to kill him then he wouldn’t blame her for saving him from this fate. He blamed her for failing!
“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself in to,” he growled, “we are too powerful here. Leave if you know what’s good for you!”
Demelza watched as Dorian jumped from branch to branch and away in the distance leaving her breathing heavily, wanting him more than ever before.
Chapter Five
Desperate Measures
Demelza unrolled the detailed map of the Ozark Mountains on the kitchen table using salt and pepper shakers to hold it flat. She bit in to an apple and placed that at the center of the map. She tapped a red Sharpie against her lower lip, tracing the location of mountains on the map with her eyes.
“We’re going to need immediate support if we want to flush this coven out,” she was saying, “there were fifty vampires when I saw them last but that was centuries ago. They might be twice that number now or more.”
“You’re assuming they’re all staying in one place, though,” Adrian frowned at the network of caves that seemed to crisscross every which way on the map spanning a colossal area the Priesthood would have a hard time organizing a strike against. “Isn’t it unusual for a coven to stay together for so long? Most usually strike out for a few centuries of independence.”
“Yes,” Demelza nodded finishing her apple and discarding the core in the bin, “but I know the Creator of this coven and she’s a controlling, manipulative piece of work. She wouldn’t stand losing a single one of her children.”
“But the Priesthood has, at most, twenty operatives in the United States,” Sarah said leaning against the kitchen counter sipping on coffee, “including the Warriors’ chaperones. Would that number be enough to cover such a large area? They could use any exit and we’d be spread thin.”
“So we need to narrow down their options,” Adrian said with a laconic smile. “We close off all the caves with ultraviolet light and only leave one open. Ten Warriors go in to the coven’s lair while the rest wait at the only opening. I think I can get enough ultraviolet bulbs with portable generators but I’m going to need a few days to arrange them at all the caves. That should be enough time for the rest of the Warriors to join us as well.”
“Yes, but we need to know where the coven is to flush them out of their home,” Sarah said peering at the map for the ideal place the coven could be.
“I’ll find out,” Demelza nodded, “I can use the next few days that you need to organize everything to find out concrete information, how many vamps, how ancient they are and which exits they use regularly.”
“Do you have any leads?” Sarah asked.
“Yes,” Demelza said with a curt nod, “Katherine Kinney saw her friend Dorothy who went missing a few months ago. She was dating a boy I’m sure is one of the coven. Since Dorothy is still a new vamp she’ll be visiting the places she frequented when she was alive.”
“Keep us posted,” Adrian said folding up the map and grabbing the keys to the car. “Sarah and I will be rigging the caves so if we’re not at home most nights don’t panic.”
“I’m not a child,” Demelza rolled her eyes, “Just give me hourly updates so I know where you two are in case you need me.”
“Will do,” Sarah said giving Demelza a mock salute before she followed Adrian out the backdoor. Demelza bit in to her second apple and shook her foot in anticipation of the night to come.
~*~
The moon was twelve days in its cycle and large. Demelza hoped the confrontation would take place when the moon was full and bright during the night. I can see well and good in the dark and so can the vamps, she mused looking down at the clearing in the woods near Katherine’s house, it’s the Warriors I’m worried about. They’ll need full visibility to do maximum damage.
Demelza had been up in the tree most of the night; from her vantage point she could see the Kinney’s house, dark and tucked in for the night, as well as ten feet in to the woods. Demelza was starving. She hadn’t had anything since a dinner of three pot noodles two hours ago. She hadn’t brought any snacks because she feared the noise of her chewing would alert Dorothy’s sharp hearing.
It was one of the first things she had noticed when she had fallen, a ravenous hunger that was sated momentarily till she needed more. She had eaten Dorian out of house and home the
first day but he had only laughed and shook his head at her in wonder. He had brought her more; more fish, more bread and butter, more wine, and watched her eat with fascination.
Your essence that needed only the Love of our Lord to nourish it needs a new source of enrichment.
Your hunger will be an endless pit, I’m afraid.
The first monks of the Priesthood had surmised, not unkindly as they had seen her eat man-sized portions unlike their frugal ones. She had run through their stores in a fortnight as well.
Demelza was about to lose hope of ever encountering Dorothy when she saw a patch of pale blue flit through the gaps in the trees. A pale blue dress that was provocative yet presentable, and quintessentially Dorothy blue. Demelza expected to see Toto in a basket in her hands with a scarecrow, a tinman and a lion following her.
She had been gorgeous in life; you could tell by the lustrous chocolate brown hair and big green eyes that must have sparkled. Now the hair was a bit dank and the eyes dull but the mouth was scarlet and pouting; she had fed recently, an animal by the look of the claw marks on her arms.
Dorothy wasn’t adapting well to her new status as vampire, Demelza could tell. Most new vampires who took to the vocation like fish to water were already mastering their new strengths and taking immense joy in terrorizing the night; Dorothy, who looked like she’d turned about four months ago, was still haunting the places she had loved. The girl stood just within the tree line of the woods to stare at Katherine’s house.
“You miss it?” Demelza asked startling the young vampire who hissed in surprise and hid behind a tree. “Don’t worry,” Demelza said swinging a leg from the branch she was sitting on, “I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to talk. So,” she said when Dorothy slid cautiously out from behind the tree, “do you miss it? Being alive.”
Dorothy nodded then cleared her throat which had lost its use over the past few months and croaked; “I miss breathing,” she said, “sometimes I forget that I don’t need to anymore and Ameera scolds me for breathing so loud.”
