The Vampire-Alien Chronicles

by Ronald Wintrick

  “That was even more disconcerting than the run through the city!” James Ray said. He was weaving noticeably on his feet, dizzy from the hyper-accelerated jockeying around, his sense of balance thrown completely off kilter. “I never want to have to do that again!”

  “You'll be able to do it yourself the next time.” Sonafi said. “We decided to grant your request.”

  “It's either that or kill you.” I joked.

  “Thanks.” He said. “What about the rest of my family though? They don’t know anything about this.”

  “Let's hope their ignorance protects them.” Sonafi said. “If not, we'll do what we must.”

  Brid hunted through a big key-ring with lots of keys and picked out several identical keys on a separately floating ring. He took this ring off the larger ring and handed it to me. Three identical keys. “Front and back.” He said, then he paused and looked at us seriously. “There should be no way they can find you here. I'm really sorry about the other house. I feel like I am completely to blame!”

  I could remember a time, not so very long ago at all, when I would have agreed with him and told him so. I had never reacted to any of my other children the way I had to Brid. He always had so much energy, was so precocious, so intelligent and able to find every little way of rubbing me the wrong way, that I had found myself acting out of character, blaming him, becoming angry with him, and that all now flashing through my mind as I contemplated the way he was blaming himself for this.

  “No!” I said. “This is all my fault! I should have taken action a long, long time ago. The fault is my own.”

  Now Brid really surprised me. He smiled. “Father! It's not your fault. It is the Others who are at fault, and we are going to make them pay for it. Every bit of it!”

  CHAPTER 18

  I opened my eyes. The sun had set. I was still alive. We had not been detected. Not that I was yet aware. Not that we were aware. I turned and looked at Sonafi.

  “We're still alive.” She said.

  “We were fools to stay here.” I said. “If we had been attacked we would have stood no chance.” But I had known that Sonafi did not want to sleep in a hole in the ground and I had decided to trust in Brid's judgment. “But he assured us we would be safe.”

  “And we were.” Sonafi said.

  “I'm sick!” James Ray said. We were all sleeping on the floor of one of the downstairs rooms that had been converted to a photographer’s needs. That meant it had been sealed completely from the sun and all ambient light. Except that there would never be a photographer and his trays of smelly chemicals. The carpet was thick and Sonafi and I had been perfectly comfortable sleeping on it. James Ray, however, looked positively deathly.

  I did not go through the transformation from Human to Vampire. I was born a Vampire and did not know what the sickness was like. I knew from those whom I have watched that it is an excruciating ordeal. The blood James Ray had taken from my vein had quickly permeated the lining of his stomach, transforming everything it came into contact with, including the stomach acid, and was absorbed directly into James Ray’s bloodstream. A Vampire's cellular structure is many times more complex, aggressive and virile than Human DNA. Once the Human has taken Vampire’s blood, orally or in any other manner, the only thing that will halt the transformation is death itself.

  “I think I am going to die!” James Ray said.

  “That's no longer a concern.” Sonafi said. “Though for a while you will well wish you were.” Sonafi had gone through it. She knew how much it hurt. There was an incredible amount of pain associated with having a cellular invader rewrite your DNA. It invaded the cells and destroyed the parts it was overwriting. It used that material as the protein building blocks for the new it constructed, dividing and replicating itself until it gained a systemic blood pressure and would begin to settle down. The tissue replacement was the last phase of the change and by far the most painful. This was the part James Ray now underwent.

  I helped him to his feet and then up the stairs. This was a small, modest one-story home. The windows were curtained so I helped but mostly carried James Ray to the couch and sat him down on it. He was shivering, his flesh crawling at the battle being waged within him. His face was screwed up as tight as a drum and he ground his teeth loudly.

  “Your teeth will regenerate.” I told him. “Grind them all you want!”

  “My teeth will not matter when I am dead!” James Ray insisted.

  Sonafi laughed. She was in the process of seating herself in front of the computer. The house had little but at least it had a computer. It would be a while as we waited for the Transformation to complete itself and, like a magnet Sonafi was drawn to the computer. “You're not going to die! It may seem so for a while, but you are, in fact, going to live a very long time.”

  “Unless you get killed.” I interjected.

  “In that I had thought you had already succeeded!” James Ray ground out between gritted teeth. “I did not think for a second that either of you would come to my aid. I just knew they were going to kill me when they learned what they wanted to know.”

  “You were right about that part.” Sonafi agreed. “They were definitely going to kill you when they were done.”

  “I feel I haven't said it enough, so I'll say it again.” James Ray said. “Thank you so very much. It would have been a very ignoble way to end my life.”

  “As well as painful.” I added, but James Ray gave me an exasperated look in response to that comment. He was in fact abiding the pain with grace and dignity. There have been those who had screamed through the entire process and had to be bound and gagged so as not to alert everyone in the vicinity. I thought that his strength and rectitude now, during the worst of the Transformation heralded good things to come. His long association with us may have gone towards adding to his fortitude for the Transformation. There was a constant sharing of DNA among all living things on Earth and James Ray had been in a way immunized through his long association.

  “I'm hungry!” James Ray said then doubled up in pain. Though the excess blood and tissue of the new host was used during the Transformation, a lot of energy was expended to effect the change and a net loss was accrued. The first hunger was excruciating. It was why a newborn had to be chaperoned. Unless you did not care the effect he would have on the Human populace around you.

  “The Transformation is all but complete.” Sonafi said. “We will go when you are able.”

  Immediately James Ray began to struggle to his feet, in a hunched over, grab-like manner that gave a fair indication of how badly his stomach was camping. “Please! I'm starving!” His eyes implored more than the words ever could.

  I reached down my hand and turned the head of my cane-sword which I had reattached to my belt and slid the blade several inches free. Then I reached down my other hand and let my wrist settle against the blade. I drew my wrist down the exposed edge and felt the skin separate, the blood to pour. He began to draw against me greedily, sucking like the starving animal that he was. I let him drink for several moments only and then drew my hand away. He tried to hold it in place but his strength was as nothing to mine and I pulled it away. James Ray made a mewing noise then and at that moment really truly had lost all reason. Sonafi then produced from somewhere about her person an edged weapon, like a magicians trick it appeared, and used it to make a small cut upon her own wrist. As I pulled away my own wrist, Sonafi placed hers in place of mine, back at James Ray’s lips.

  He attacked her wrist, biting and chewing at it viciously, but he could not further break her skin beyond the cut she had already herself inflicted. She permitted this assault knowing that he could not help it. When she did not resist he soon settled down to the act of it. She let him drink for far longer than I thought she would be able and then gently pulled her wrist away.

  He remained where he was a long moment, his eyes following Sonafi's wrist as it was withdrawn, then he straightened his back and drew himself to his full height. Slowly he g
athered his wits about him. His eyes cleared and sanity returned. He drew a deep breath, and then another. Vitality flowed back into him and I could see that he was becoming aware of his newly heightened senses. His hearing, his sense of smell, the physical emanations felt through his feet in contact with the floor, the Humans walking in the surrounding houses, the cars traveling on the roads, his own heart beating thunderously in his chest, the swish of blood through his own veins. All these things and a million others. The first few moments of a Vampire’s new life, once he had made the Transformation and fed for the first time, and the clamoring of his hunger was abated were wondrous awe inspiring moments. When a whole new Universe was opened like a blossoming flower for one who had before now been blind, deaf and dumb all at once. An explosion of reality so intense that its likeness could not be described, only lived, and only lived once. With time like with everything else would come familiarity, but for now James Ray existed within a bursting new reality, trying to turn in every direction at once, including that of his new sixth sense, that of telepathy.

  'I can feel you!' James Ray thought/sent. His first attempt was something he had to make an effort at but would now come as naturally as blinking his eyes or moving a finger. There was no obvious mechanism the thought was as good as the act. He thought it. I heard.

  “Of course you can!” I said. “You're telepathic now. But you must close your mind. Do you feel how our minds are closed? How you cannot see what we're thinking? You must make your mind the same or you will draw the Others to us.” Then I did open my mind, as I had done for Agent Irving, and allowed him to see the Others for the first time. They were not entirely new to him. He knew of our conflict with the Others, but this mind to mind communication, far more than the meaning the word telepathy could convey, took him to the very edge of the reality itself. This was as close to the reality of actually being there as one could get without really having been there and I felt the shock to his system as he both learned what they were and saw what they were doing.

  “Oh my God!” James Ray said. “It's a lot to absorb.”

  “Brid has arrived.” I said. His step was light but he was approaching quickly and there was no hiding even the faintest of vibrations from me. I had noted his approach some moments previously but it was not until I had listened for a bit that I was able to distinguish that it was Brid. I moved to the door and opened it as he ascended the stoop.

  “I left the car again,” he said as he entered, “but it seems as though our Federal Agent ally may really turn out to be a true ally. My car wasn't bothered. Here. I brought phones.” He took four units out of his loose trousers pockets and handed them around. “Don't call from here and discard the phone afterward. If you think it's necessary.”

  He meant Curt Irving. He meant he was expecting me to call Curt Irving. I had been thinking about that a lot. No question about it. At least with the disposable phone I could do so without the concern of drawing the whole of the FBI down on us. My immediate concern however was to learn more of the details of what had, after all, been a worldwide attack on the Community by the Others. I asked Brid what he had discovered.

  “It's every bit as bad as we thought.” Brid admitted. “They attacked nearly everywhere. They have decimated the Eldership. They attacked in force, moving quickly from one place to the next, completely planned and ruthlessly executed, they followed the night and made a complete sweep in one 24-hour period. We are now woefully few in number. The St. Louis Enclave is the only one to have come through it totally unscathed. We expect this is a situation they will want to alter. We expect them to attack at any time.”

  “What have you done with the Russians?” Sonafi asked.

  “Volga is making herself acquainted with my Field Generation technology. I'm never going to hear the end of it now. She thinks I am some kind of super-geek, or something.”

  I realized that this, to him, was some kind of a compliment, but it was what he had not said, something I thought I detected by omission, that drew my attention. “What about Nikita?” I asked.

  “What about her?” Brid asked after a noticeable pause. He had an expression I recognized on his face. Embarrassment.

  “Yeah, what about her?” Sonafi asked, looking up from her computer screen. “Where did Nikita spend the day?”

  “They both spent the day at my place.” Brid evaded. Sonafi looked my way, a slight smile curling the corner of her lip. We both thought the same but let it pass. Brid was obviously unwilling to admit anything, but I was sure that there was more here than met the eye. Brid changed the subject. ”James Ray has come through this well.”

  “I was not so very well just a short while ago.” James Ray said. “I was sure I was going to die.”

  “In a sense, you have died. Died and then resurrected.” Brid said. “You may look the same. You may retain all of your memories. But you are not the same.”

  “I’m beginning to understand that.” James Ray said.

  CHAPTER 19

  Brid led us to his car and then we drove to a neighborhood I did not recognize. I noted the flitting shadows as we turned the corner of the block but of their mental signatures I could make out nothing. It must have been the thermal suits Brid had designed.

  “I see them.” I said, guessing correctly that this had been a test.

  “That's not good.” Brid said. “We were hoping we would be totally inconspicuous. If you saw them, the Others will too. It is too much to expect to fool them twice.”

  “Who are you talking about?” James Ray asked. He had, of course, seen nothing.

  “We're surrounded by Vampires.” Sonafi said. “Don't you see them?”

  “No.”

  “You won't.” Brid said. “I can't.”

  “But you can?” James Ray asked me.

  “Yes. I can. I'm old.” I said.” I guess that's a good thing.”

  “I've done everything I can to make them invisible.” Brid said. “I don't know how else I could possibly tweak it. We're going to be visible to the Elder Others.”

  “If you don’t perfect your strategy you’ll be caught in your own trap.” I said.

  “I’m aware of that and I’m working on it.” Brid said.

  “I'm hungry again.” James Ray interrupted. “It's beginning to hurt.”

  We took James Ray into the night and helped him find his first meal. It wasn't that he would have needed the help. We came along only to assure that he did not kill.

  “I feel like a horrid monster.” James Ray said once he had fed. We still stood in the Human's home, the Human waiting patiently to be told what to do. If he thought anything of James Ray's statement, he did not say so. If anything it would be to him confusing.

  “Are we not at least as humane as Humans?” Sonafi asked. “We do not kill. Most of us. We take only what can be given without hardship. The experience was even pleasurable for him!”

  “I still feel horrible.” James Ray said. “I knew what the price was when I asked for this, however, and I know there is nothing I can do to stop myself when I am within its throes. The hunger is overwhelming. There was nothing in my Human experience of it's like.”

  “You must forever guard your innocence.” I said. “Once taken it cannot be reclaimed. I wish I could go back and undo many of the things I have done but things that have been done cannot be undone.”

  “I do not want that.” James Ray admitted.

  Sonafi and I fed close by and then we rejoined James Ray on the street where he waited for us. I still carried all three swords but I had been thinking about that, whether I should keep them both. I could fight two handed, of course, but the cane-sword was my second weapon of choice. I could use its hardened steel case effectively to block strike or with a flick of the wrist free the short blade for thrusting. The short blade was ruthlessly effective in close quarters and if my Cumosachi was keeping them busy elsewhere, the short sinuous blade of the cane-sword would often sneak in to find a home.

  I would hate to part
with Rostov's blade. Its workmanship was the equal of my own Cumosachi, but I could think of no better gift to give my son to show my new admiration for him. Trebly so because Sonafi and I had just lost all of our belongings or we presumed that to be so and to give something of this value now would be to add especial honor to the act of giving it. Maybe Brid might then have an old blade he might give James Ray.

  But the Others had placed the Community in a precarious position with their thorough assault. I believed that if the Others were able to eliminate Sonafi and I now then the rest of the Community would soon fold without much more of a struggle. Strike off the head and the body must die. I had not been actively participating in the leadership of the Community, but now that the parameters of the struggle were clearly understood, the remaining members of the Community would quickly rally round me. Or around Brid, and I would execute Brid's will.

  “Will you call the Federal Agent?” Sonafi asked, reminding me.

  “I suppose that I must.” I said. “I am almost afraid to hear what he has to say.”

  “If that number hasn't been disconnected.” James Ray said but somehow I did not think that it would be. Even if the FBI did not want to play along they would not throw away the possibility of tracking and capturing one of us if we were foolish enough to call. Well apparently I was going to be that fool.

  We were only seven blocks from Brid's new home and we could not call from this close in case all did not go as we hoped. After distancing ourselves several miles we found a secluded spot in someone's back yard to make the call. James Ray was completely preoccupied with his new senses and we basically just ignored him. I pulled out the phone Brid had indicated I should use and entered the numbers I had memorized directly from Irving's mind. I had to wonder, as the phone began to ring, if knowing that I knew every detail of his life meant he had uprooted his entire family, his friends, his Agency associate’s families, the list went on. I had spared his life yesterday. Just by that act alone he should know I could be trusted, yet after having had time to think he may have doubted his first impressions. It wouldn't be the first time someone had second thoughts, about something they once thought they were sure of. The ringing ended.