Panning his light on the ground around the landing, he noted both bare foot prints and those of shoes. Those with shoes made an almost straight line for the sewer line and disappeared in the sluggishly flowing waste water. Following the bloody prints of bare feet, Nick found piles of trash piled anywhere from a few feet to nearly the ceiling by the far wall.
Nearly covered by the trash, he spotted bare, white skin. Pulling a garbage bag away, a girl struggled to rise and run. Barely alive, Nick could see both bite marks on her neck and scratches on the bare girl. She was also brown with dried blood that she had crawled through or perhaps had been sprayed on her during the killings.
“P-please d-don’t k-kill m-me,” she begged ending her struggle to rise as the little strength she had left her.
Removing the other bags of garbage the girl had probably pulled over her to avoid being found, Nick noted her bare upper body. Her shirt gone, Nick noted more bite marks near her wrists and the upper forearm where blood was often taken in hospitals. One of her breasts had the marks of a vampire’s teeth as well and her jeans were unbuttoned. Whichever vampires had abused the girl, they had considered her more than just a meal. He didn’t know if the vampires had turned her intentionally or if she had absorbed some of their blood in the aftermath of the reapers’ attack. By her extremely pale complexion and lack of strength, he guessed that she had just turned and probably never had any blood.
“Don’t worry, little one, I’m not here to kill you.” He pulled her out of the garbage and sat her on the concrete floor. It was still filthy, but compared to the garbage it was nearly clean. He held his hand in front of her mouth and the little vampire didn’t even understand the gesture. It might be too late to stop the change as the voran had discovered was possible in victims before they turned, but maybe he could start her off on a better path than the killers that had taken her.
“You need to take some blood,” he coached her gently. Green eyes, shadowed with the flashlight on the ground, looked at him almost in tears.
“What did they do to me?” the girl asked in confusion.
“They nearly killed you, but you survived,” he answered and took his thumb and forefinger pushing her lips away to reveal fangs slightly longer than a human’s should be. “Now bite down on my hand. The blood will help keep you alive.”
“But I don’t want to bite you,” the girl replied sounding dazed and he feared that she was about to pass out. A vampire who hadn’t had enough blood could die of starvation, even those on a voran’s blood he was pretty sure though no one had tested it. For a new vampire, who had never really drunk blood, she would only last a day or two at most before dying the final death.
Sighing, he was surprised that her instincts hadn’t overridden her humanity yet. Marek had been starving when he happened upon the voran, but had fed before. This girl wasn’t even able to stand up from a lack of blood.
“Just do it so we can get out of here. You’re not strong enough to even hold onto me, let alone capable of making the jump to start climbing out of here,” he stated being a little sterner with the girl.
She was young, a teenager, and probably reasonably obedient in the face of adults. He was there to save her and someone in charge. The girl bit him hesitantly, but she broke the skin on his left hand. It was the area of his hand Nicola liked to use to feed, so he knew that it would work. He could also control the situation if the little girl got out of hand on her first feeding.
Her eyes looked up at his in curiosity and she mumbled around the hand, “You tashte shweet.”
Nodding with a smile he replied, “I’ve been told that before, now take a little more. I want to make sure that you are strong enough to get out of here.”
She didn’t get greedy as her eyes continued to look at his just waiting for the man to tell her to stop. When he did, she released and wiped at the sides her mouth before licking the extra blood off of her fingers. Picking up the flashlight, he avoided shining it directly into her face, but was able to check the clarity in her green eyes. She blinked and he could tell that the girl was more lucid.
Taking his outer t-shirt off, Nick handed it to the little vampire before buttoning her pants as it was beginning to bug him for some reason. He discovered only soft skin before he cinched the zipper as if dressing a young child. The girl had his shirt pulled on and seemed completely unabashed at his touch or the fact that she had been half naked when he found her.
“What is your name?” Nick asked before shining the flashlight up at the ceiling. He could feel her aura strengthen with the infusion of his blood and thought that she might have a similar aura to those of Marek’s clan with just the small taste of his blood.
“Samantha, but everyone calls me, Sami. I prefer Sami,” she added and her words were cleared of the slurring as the girl had as she had hovered barely above unconsciousness.
“Well, Sami, we can do this one of two ways. I can jump and try to throw you high enough up that shaft so you can try and climb out, or I can take you on my back and jump with you to climb out together. How are you at climbing?”
He looked to see her jaw open and the little, blonde haired girl said, “Are you crazy? That’s like at least ten feet up. There’s no way you can throw me up that shaft. Even if you could, there’s no way I can climb up.”
With a little laugh at her disbelief, Nick retorted, “So there is just one way out of here then. Check.”
He patted his left shoulder and squatted slightly for Sami to climb on him. While the girl didn’t believe it was possible, she still mounted his back. Standing tall, the man adjusted her higher and made her link her feet in front of him while tightening her grip.
“You know that you’re crazy right?” she asked as the girl laid her head on his shoulder to breathe in his right ear. “There is no way you can possibly leap high enough to touch the ceiling let alone make it up there.”
Having seen the same things he had as Nick had flashed the light on the shaft and ceiling, the girl had a valid point; if he was just a human. Even with the extra weight of maybe a hundred pounds added from Sami, the voran was pretty certain he could make it.
“Just hang on and we’ll see,” he cautioned before concentrating on his telekinesis or whatever a comic fan might call it. From a standing leap as he kept the flashlight panned up to see the exit, Nick launched the two of them upward and into the shaft. While it was a good leap, gravity began to take hold to pull him back well shy of the top of the shaft so he set his feet and knees as well as his left hand against the wet stone of the shaft.
“Hold the light for me,” he ordered as the man lifted the flashlight to his shoulder with his free hand. “I’m going to need both hands for this since the stone’s slick besides.”
“How did you do that?” the girl’s voice said beside his ear even as she took the flashlight.
Using all four limbs to steadily pull the two of them up the remaining shaft, Nick replied with a question, “You know what those men were that took you here, right?”
A slight pause meant that Sami didn’t want to discuss the fear filled truth, but she was a brave girl and finally answered, “Vampires?”
“Yup, and unfortunately you were close to death when you went down that shaft. You probably got some of their blood in your wounds or in your mouth at some point. When that happens, a human who dies after ingesting vampire blood will become a vampire also.”
A scared gasp and the shaking of the flashlight meant Sami was on the verge of becoming hysterical, but Nick pushed on through judging her strong enough to hear the truth. “I can help you from becoming a monster like in the movies.”
“By using blood bags or eating small animals?” the girl made a gagging noise but not from being actually sick so much as being disgusted.
“Actually no, I have some vampire friends that use a few drops of my blood to remain nearly human. They can eat normal food and drink what they want. They just need a few drops of voran blood every few days and live a near
ly normal life.”
Dim light from a second flashlight held above the shaft, proved it would only take a minute longer to be free. Continuing their conversation, Sami asked quietly, “Does that mean I can go home again? They always make vampires leave their families or they wind up killing them when they lose control of the hunger. Television and movies have different ways of telling it, but they almost always have to move away and disappear.”
“Even with voran blood, a vampire doesn’t like the sun. You won’t burst into flames easily, but your skin is very sensitive to it and you’ll probably be pretty groggy most of the day anyway. Without a source of voran blood, a vampire can’t usually control the hunger. That’s when vampire hunters need to destroy them, because they hurt and kill people.”
“Are you a vampire too?” the girl asked somewhat muffled as she placed her head against his shoulder. He could feel her tears moistening his undershirt.
“No, I am a voran. My kind is supposed to kill the monsters,” he replied.
Her hand didn’t even waver as the girl must have figured it out as they spoke. “But you didn’t kill me.”
“Because you aren’t a monster, Sami,” he assured her gently. “With my help, you’ll never become one either.”
Chapter 19- The Reaping
When they made it to the top, Nick was able to push over the edge to stand without help before the others even knew what had happened.
“Nick!” Charlotte started to greet him with a hug when she realized that he wasn’t alone. Sniffing the air, the werewolf knew Sami to be a vampire, though she didn’t know how freshly turned the young girl was. “Who’s your little friend?”
“This is Sami, one of their victims,” Nick stated quickly. “A few made it down and ran. I think they used her up and left her for dead without realizing that she had taken in some of the vampire blood from above when the reapers attacked. She was barely alive when I found her and Sami was the only one I felt when I scanned the area.”
Lam frowned in the light and crossed her arms as she said, “You could have left her to die. As weak as you say she was, the girl would have starved to death by the end of the day most likely.”
“Hey!” the little blonde complained indignantly at being talked about as if she wasn’t there. She still hadn’t released him and since there was blood all over the floor Nick didn’t make her get down. Her feet were bare and he doubted the young girl was ready to walk across a bloody floor.
Shaking his head, Nick asked, “You said you kill evil spirits. Do you sense evil in her?”
With an exaggerated sigh, the Japanese woman returned to her human form responded, “No, but she’s a vampire now, Nick.”
“And she’s never harmed anyone. I had to force her to take some blood from me or she wouldn’t have made the climb.”
He began the walk to the stairs followed by the others. At the base the man made the vampire get onto the stairs, about the only place dry of blood. “Stay here,” he ordered her and added to the others. “I’ll get my sword and turn the vampire bodies to dust. I hate to hide all the bodies, but perhaps throwing them down the shaft for now will give the police a way to discover them without giving everything away.”
“But all the blood and remnants of the vampires...” Shedu began unsure of the plan.
“Humans need closure. I’ll use my contacts in the police force to help decide the best way to discover them. If they want a collective burial plot or have them moved to be found somewhere else, it can be handled. Only the vampire traces need to be obliterated and the silver sword can do that,” the voran answered.
Sami sat on the lower stairs looking at the other three. The girl didn’t seem afraid and when Nick returned to use his sword to create a reaction of flame in the corpses and even shed blood; she managed to take it in calmly. Whether shock rendered her immune or she was that strong emotionally, he wasn’t sure. It was said that movies had hardened the newest generations to some of the horrors in this world. Maybe that was all it was.
Logan and the upstairs team had found nothing to really report. Two dead vampires and a single human victim had been found near each other. If they had been caught off guard by the reapers while feeding or had simply left the dead human to be found nearby; no one could decide. The vampires were simply cleansed with the sword and the human was dumped down the shaft with another dozen dead victims.
With the scene as cleaned as they were prepared to do, since it was originally designed to be an attack mission and they didn’t want to draw any extra interest from the locals; they prepared to leave. All was ready save what to do with Sami. It took a little looking, but in the former store’s office they found a few pieces of clothing apparently abandoned with the building and remaining furniture.
A large, black sweatshirt with hoodie was discovered that would be perfect for protecting the vampire’s upper body and face once it was pulled into place. Clothing without blood on it was at a premium, but they found a pair of socks that would cover her bare feet. While a vampire wouldn’t burst into flame easily, the burning sensation of the sun could prove quite painful. Sami was a new vampire and weak. The likelihood of her burning to death was greater than someone like Nicola who had nearly eight decades of strength to draw on.
Alad had watched the voran doting on the vampire girl and said nothing. For a man who often rushed into things and hated vampires, it was a bit surprising even to his comrades. Nick thought that if it was someone other than a young, innocent girl like Sami, the kasha might push to destroy her as Lamassu had inferred earlier; but she was young and innocent, a victim.
They all walked to the Escape and watched as Sami settled in the back of the SUV. Tinted side windows ran from front to back with only the windscreen being clear. Once inside the shelter, the blond removed her hood and smiled at those remaining outside a moment longer.
“We can give it a few days and clean up the evidence better,” Nick stated knowing that it was a bit of a risk, but had the feeling the local residents cared more about their anonymity than to bother to report seeing a few people entering a foreclosed building. “There is a chance that if you staked it out, the reapers might return.”
Alad frowned and rebuked the idea saying, “Why do you assume that we will be the ones to watch the building?”
“Any vampires remaining around here risk being targeted in turn by the reapers. I have the scent of vampires on me, even if am not one. Werewolves might be safer, but they’re the natural enemies of vampires so are likely to be attacked as well. That only leaves someone that they won’t know, unless you think the reapers know of your people.”
Shedu shook his head and replied before his subordinate could answer, “No, we know of them, but few of our race have fought reapers. Those who have, made sure that none could spread the word of the kasha.”
“Maybe we should let the vampires know about us,” Alad said disapprovingly. “We could put a little fear into them and maybe the blood suckers would find more humane ways of dealing with humans. If they would just stop spreading their disease, it would help.”
Nick smiled sadly and shook his head. “You can’t police strays and rogues. Even nests like these have no rules against taking too much. Fear of kasha would only make them do a little better job of hiding their crimes. Many don’t even know what they are until it is too late. How will they learn of you, if they don’t know themselves?”
The argument ended and the two groups separated to return to their homes. Nick looked in the mirror to see the young girl slowly give in to the extra fatigue caused by the sun and most likely her exhausting night as well. She had been kidnapped while walking back from a friend’s house only two days ago from the safety of the Polish community to the north. He would check a list for missing persons when they returned to his apartment. Surely her parents must have been worried sick over their daughter’s sudden disappearance.
Keeping Sami at his apartment only until he could see Marek tonight, since there wasn’t
enough room for more, Nick wondered what Nicola would make of the girl. She would have to use his bed or the spare which was used by Logan and Kate now. Using his bed meant sharing with Nicola. Though she had been magnanimous with the expansion of sharing him with Charlotte, the vampire was unlikely to want to share more of the steadily shrinking space in the apartment.
Arriving at the parking garage under his building, Nick was glad that he could take the elevator straight from the garage to his floor without dealing with his doorman. The lobby was well monitored and there was a guard house entry to the garage as well; but, as a well known resident of the building, the voran could bring visitors up through the garage with less attention.
He parked in his spot and looked back to see Sami dozing against Logan’s shoulder. Kate looked a little unhappy with the fact, but with a back seat best used by just two people, one of them was bound to have been used as a pillow by the tired vampire.
Picking up Sami in his arms, Nick took the lightweight girl and carried her to the elevator. Her head leaned against his shoulder but she had just enough awareness to hug his neck and shoulders with both arms. Again he couldn’t help thinking it was like bringing a small child to bed like a parent, though Sami was fifteen and a woman in size, if a petite one.
Once inside, he realized that he had another problem. The girl was so groggy that she was unlikely to be able to clean up. Covered in blood from head to toe under the clothing they had found for her, there was no way he would put her in his bed with Nicola.
“Can you get her cleaned up, Charlotte?” he nearly begged.
Logan laughed and asked, “What you aren’t going to wash your new pet yourself, Nick?”
Giving him a sad shake of his head, the man replied, “If I were the only one here, it would be one thing; but it would be kind of inappropriate for me to take a fifteen year old girl into a bathroom, strip her and wash her down, don’t you think?”
The werewolf winced at the blunt description and how in normal society, that of humans, Nick would find himself in jail very quickly even if it was basically a nursing job. In spite of her being a vampire and having seen most of her during the rescue, the voran was just as happy to have Charlotte take over the nursing duties for the young girl.
Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires) Page 26
