“That’s more of a plan than I can think of.” Ben shrugs.
“Okay. So we wait for it to get dark and head out.” Cody scratches his stomach when it growls.
Over the next few hours, we trade stories of high school, mostly about stupid stuff our friends and teachers did. It’s kinda funny hearing a lot of the same sorts of things from them as what I experienced, despite us going to school so far from each other. I guess high school, in and of itself, comes hand in hand with a certain degree of derpitude regardless of location.
This gets us theorizing on what high school might be like in other countries… if teachers there are the same. Or if the usual cliques show up all over the world. Ben keeps rubbing his ‘magic ring,’ which has no sign of a glow at the moment.
“I don’t think your ring was reacting to me at all,” I say. “That first night we met, I watched you walk off, and it kept glowing long after you got far away.”
“What about the big guy?” asks Ben.
“Maybe… but what if it sensed the portal?” I draw a circle in the air with my finger. “It glowed rather bright in the cave the closer we got to his lair. But, I suppose it could still have picked him up.”
“Do you think it works like light?” asks Cody. “If that big guy’s old and powerful, he might be giving off so much energy it can’t even see you.”
I stand with a grunt, brushing dirt and forest bits off my butt, then hobble over to Ben. He presses himself against the wall, though he doesn’t appear frightened of me. More nervous. I grasp his hand and touch the ring, but it doesn’t do anything.
“Maybe because I’m not a vampire right now.” I shrug.
“Huh?” asks Ben. “How can you be not a vampire?”
“It’s not dark enough in here. I can tolerate some degree of daylight, but when the sun’s on me, I’m basically a normal person. No speed, strength, super hearing or anything like that. I can’t even make my fangs come out.”
“Still better than being a corpse,” says Cody.
I point at him. “Damn straight.”
We sit around staring at each other for a while. The boys venture outside and return half an hour or so later with strange fruits that look like apples only they’re the size of grapefruit.
“Tastes like an apple,” says Cody after a test bite. “But almost rotten.”
“They were on the ground. The others are too high up in the trees.”
So, yeah. Killing time until sundown gets boring. How boring? We start talking about what random movie or cartoon characters might be like as vampires. Ben goes outside to pee. Cody follows. When they return, they invariably ask me if I need to go to the bathroom anymore. I’m not going into gruesome detail about what happens if I eat normal food, so I simply say ‘no.’
Ugh. Why are boys so obsessed with bathroom stuff? The most hilarious thing in the world to Sam is farting. The only thing funnier to him than that is a fart that makes someone gag. And fart jokes still make Dad laugh. Men always accuse us of being mysterious and beyond explanation, but they shouldn’t throw that stone. Stuff they do makes no damn sense either.
Eventually, the sun sets.
The brothers jump back and gasp when a brief flare in my eyes paints half the cabin bright red.
“Relax,” I say. “That’s just me, umm, ‘coming online.’”
“You have signal?” asks Cody.
I laugh. “No. That’s just what I call it when my powers kick back in. I think I got the idea from some old movie my Dad showed us with a space battleship. They always said ‘weapons online’ right before they got into a fight.”
“Cool.” Cody stands. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Any idea where to go?” I ask.
“Well, the sled we used to carry you left a drag trail we should be able to follow.” Ben points at a pair of arm-thick branches tied together with twine with a sort of sling-like arrangement of vines at the bottom.
“Oh.” It’s a little embarrassing to think about how much I panicked, but neither of them make a big deal of it. “Thanks.”
Ben once more takes the lead, following the trail they left bringing me to this cabin. I glance back over my shoulder a few times as we move away from it, mystified at how they could’ve found it. Barely a minute’s travel away, it’s pretty much invisible among the foliage. Huh. I guess the boy is psychic. Or, maybe they simply got lucky and stumbled across it.
We pass more of those fruits, most of which are little more than rotting brown lumps on the ground. One or two are as big as small pumpkins. Ugh. I don’t like that. Apples should not be that big.
“We’re either in an alternate world or outside of Chernobyl,” I mutter.
They chuckle… and their stomachs growl.
I glance upward. Non-rotted apples hang from branches well over thirty feet off the ground. That certainly explains why most of the ones down here look exploded. I glide up into the trees, pick two that appear ripe enough to eat, and carry them back down.
“Oh, cool!” says Ben, all trepidation at being near me gone. He grabs one and attacks it like a starving dog as he walks.
Cody nods his thanks and eats as well.
Great. Everything about my life is weird now. Alternate worlds, apples the size of cantaloupes, undead minions, vampires trying to kill me. I can’t even take a damn vacation in peace. I wonder… if I hadn’t been a vampire, would I have even been aware that one lived in a secret chamber at the bottom of the caverns? Probably not. And my aversion to sunlight is the only reason Dad even picked this as our road trip destination. What better place for a vampire to go on vay-cay than a huge-ass cave. Mr. Beast certainly seems to share that opinion.
My parents have to be completely freaking out. Sophia’s going to be a total mess.
Shit. What if that vampire somehow figures out they’re my family and goes after them out of revenge for ‘stealing his food.’ Stress and worry build and build until I let out a scream of frustration.
The boys whirl.
“Sorry.” I breathe into my hands for a few seconds. “I’m really stressing out over my family.”
“Yeah. Dad’s gonna kill me,” mutters Ben.
“What are you going to tell him?” asks Cody.
Ben grimaces. “Umm. If I give him a BS story, I’ll only get it ten times worse when he finds out.”
“You’re going to tell him you were hunting a vampire?” I ask, incredulous.
“Yeah. He’s not going to believe they’re real, but he’ll believe I was trying to find one.”
They fall into a glum silence. Maybe an hour later, I catch a whiff of death on the wind. And no, Sam didn’t fart again. I mean actual death.
“Guys…”
Ben looks back at me over his shoulder, but before he can say anything, he wipes out and lands on his ass.
“Oof!” Ben rolls to his left, rubbing his rear end. “Stepped in something slippery.”
Cody stops short. “Ugh. That’s disgusting. What the hell is it?”
I creep closer and crouch to examine a dark red smear. It looks as if Ben stepped on some manner of internal organ that ruptured and took his foot out from under him.
“I think it’s a spleen.”
Cody gags. “Seriously?”
I stand, shrugging. “No, not really. That just sounded funny. I have no idea what a spleen looks like.”
“It’s a dead guy,” says Ben.
“Awful small for a dead person,” I say.
“It’s a piece of a dead guy,” mutters Ben, giving me the side eye.
Cody pokes at it with a stick. “Could be from an animal.”
“No.” Ben points. “It’s people.”
I look to the left. A person’s head sticks up from the foliage, so pale he’s clearly dead. Blood stains his face below the nose like he vomited gore. A hand juts out of the weeds not far away attached to a different body. Time to take advantage of my not needing to breathe. I advance toward the carnage, looking aroun
d.
Five men who look anywhere from mid-twenties to fortyish lay sprawled around a fairly small area. They’re wearing normal clothing, but it looks like they got into a fight with a steamroller and lost. Three have crushed torsos. One guy looks like he flew into a tree so fast he burst open—he’s probably the former owner of whatever Ben stepped on. Number four is missing both arms, and the last guy looks like an action figure that some kid ripped in half at the waist.
“God damn,” whispers Cody, between gagging. “Okay. I’m officially ‘concerned’ now.”
“That means he’s scared shitless,” says Ben, as he stoops to root around the bushes.
“What are you doing?” snaps Cody. “Don’t touch dead people.”
Ben stands back up, lifting a modern pulley crossbow out of the weeds. “Check this out.”
“Awesome.” Cody stares at it.
“Not that awesome.” I gesture at the dead guys. “It didn’t do them much good.”
Ben struggles to cock it, his face reddening. “Damn. This thing is stiff.”
I offer a hand. “Let me try.”
He gives me a ‘but you’re a girl’ stare for about three seconds before his brain engages and he passes it over. I grab the string, pull it back with two fingers, and toss the thing back to him.
“Don’t fire it with nothing in it,” I say. “You’ll break it.”
“Here.” Cody squats and removes a nylon quiver from one of the corpses’ belts. “There’s nine bolts left.”
Ben blinks. “That was on a dead man.”
“Yeah, so? He doesn’t need them anymore. And we might wind up dead right next to them if we’re helpless.” Cody looks around at the dead, still struggling not to throw up. “Is this a search party? Did they send people looking for us?”
“Maybe. But… that would also mean that the park rangers know about a vampire living in the caverns with a magical portal to another dimension.” I fold my arms.
“Right, so this search party wasn’t here for us.” Ben loads a bolt.
Cody walks away from the gory scene, waving a hand back and forth in front of his face. “They don’t stink too much. They haven’t been dead all that long. But they stink enough that they were probably here before us.”
“Which makes me wonder what brought them here.” I say.
“Yeah. They had a crossbow, so they must have been expecting trouble.” Ben turns in place, gazing around. “But we haven’t seen anything.”
“Something smashed them.” Cody nods toward the dead. “Those rabbits we keep seeing didn’t do that.”
“Not unless we’ve wound up in Monty Python’s world,” I mutter.
“Huh?” asks Cody.
Ben blinks, perplexed.
“Not worth explaining. Old movie. But if only one of them had a bow, I think that means they weren’t expecting definite trouble, just the off chance they might run into something. So whatever they came here to do, it didn’t require combat… or hunting. Otherwise, they would’ve all been armed.”
“Why don’t they have a gun?” asks Cody. “A crossbow is kinda weird, right?”
“Dude.” Ben pats his pocket. “None of our tech works. Maybe guns stop working, too?”
I raise a hand, shaking my head. “Now hold on a sec. Guns aren’t dependent on electronics or computers. Are you suggesting that gunpowder might not work in here? A gun’s basically a simple machine. Simpler even than the mechanism in that crossbow. And chemical reactions…”
“Umm.” Ben scratches his head. “Good point.”
“Maybe they wanted to be quiet?” asks Cody. “Hoping nothing noticed them.”
“Nothing like what?” asks Ben.
“Like whatever smashed them to death,” I say.
The boys look at me for a few seconds of tense silence.
“Hey.” Cody points. “The ring!”
Ben shifts the crossbow to his right hand and holds the left one up. A brilliant spot of teal glow clings to the side of the ring, covering only about a quarter of its top.
“Weird.” Cody leans close. “I’ve never seen it do that before. Usually the whole thing lights up.”
“Yeah that’s messed up.” Ben looks around at the forest, the luminous spot moving around as he turns.
I point. “The light’s moving when you turn. Maybe it’s like a video game. Just follow the waypoint?”
Ben holds his hand flat and spins around. Sure enough, the glowing spot slides around the top of the ring like the needle on a compass. “It’s pointing us at something. Yeah. They don’t make video games like they used to. All the new ones basically handhold you the whole time, leading you straight to every objective.”
“Umm.” I laugh. “Aren’t you like fourteen? How are you talking about ‘the good old days?’”
He grins. “I play my Dad’s computer games. The graphics kinda suck but the stories are way better. Sometimes they get pretty hard. Used to be, they sold ‘hint books’ with all the answers for people who got frustrated trying to figure out where to go. Dad has all the hint books, but he says they’re only for collection purposes and he’s never read them until after he beat the game.”
“Bull,” mutters Cody.
Ben snickers. “So what does teal mean?”
“It doesn’t mean vampire,” I say, smiling. “And hey. I’m fully powered up and it’s not reacting at all to me.”
“Well, you are only a few months old,” says Cody. “Maybe you’re not powerful enough yet. You’re like still level one.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay. Whatever.”
“Do we follow the ring or not?” asks Cody.
“Let’s go for it,” I say. “It’s bad to look a random magical emanation the mouth.”
18
The Ruins of Nope
Ben hands the crossbow to Cody. “Here. I can’t look at the ring while carrying it.”
His brother takes the weapon. After attaching the quiver to his belt, he checks the safety (a sliding button on the trigger guard), and nods once, his expression grim.
The glow leads us onward. Ben holds his left hand flat in front of him, gazing down at the light every so often to make sure we’re still on course. After what feels like two hours, we arrive in a small clearing of trees beside a steep, but passable hill studded with frayed roots and sprays of tiny white flowers. If not for being trapped somewhere unknown and worried sick about my family, I’d find the scenery beautiful.
Being unencumbered by trivial things like gravity or fatigue, I make it to the top of the hill first and let out a whistle of awe at a sprawl of ruins scattered around a much thinner growth of trees than we’d been walking in all night. Low-lying fog drifts over stacks of stones and a few grave markers. On the left, waist-high crumbling walls outline the corpse of a larger building. Rocks of various sizes lying upon the ground trace the path of a fence that disappeared a long time ago, the rusting remains of wrought iron bars partially sunken in the ground. A stone table that looks suspiciously like an altar stands about sixty yards away straight ahead near a thicker copse of trees that shroud the spot like the roof of a little chapel.
“Damn,” whispers Cody. He stopped climbing as soon as he could see over the top of the hill. “Totally creepy.”
“This seriously looks like that movie Evil Dead,” I say. “If either of you guys see a demonic book, don’t frickin’ touch it.”
“Klaatu, verrata, screw that.” Cody chuckles. “Are you sure this is where we need to go?”
Ben holds up his hand. “Umm. The ring’s pointing straight at the altar.”
“Of course it is.” I sigh. “We only assumed it’s detecting helpful stuff. It might just sense power, good or bad.”
He starts walking. “We’re already here. Let’s check it out.”
Cody tries to grab him, but Ben ducks. “Hey. This is how you wound up in a vampire’s cage.”
“Come on. There’s nothing here but fog.” Ben walks faster.
I hurry after
him. “This place feels creepy.”
“Graves, fog, and ruined buildings always feel creepy,” says Ben.
“Do you make a habit of visiting abandoned cemeteries?” I ask.
“No, but the one where Mom’s parents are is almost like this… minus the sacrificial altar.”
The fog thickens almost in response to our presence. By the time we’re halfway to the stone table, it’s difficult to see much more than ten feet in any direction. Of course, this sets the brothers into ‘soldier overdrive’ and they start swiveling around looking for danger.
“Every damn game,” mutters Cody. “Graveyard plus fog equals skeletons.”
“Except, we’re not in a game.” I listen at the surroundings, but hear only distant birds. “No idea why the fog is thickening. Nothing’s moving but us.”
“Hey.” Ben points ahead. “I see a runic arch on the other side of the altar.”
A tall stone structure in the shape of an upside down U stands on a round platform a short distance past the stone table. It’s a little hard to see with the fog, but I’m sure the sides are covered with engraved symbols that don’t belong to any language I’ve ever seen.
“Come on dude, this ain’t World of Warcraft.” Cody sighs.
“It really does look like that.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “This keeps getting weirder and weirder.”
“No, I’m serious.” Ben hurries up to a jog, ignores the table, and jumps a knee-high stone wall behind it before running over to the arch.
Cody edges past me, and I catch myself staring at the side of his neck. Ben’s hair is long enough to hide it, but his is short. Surviving that sunbaked trip took a lot out of me. Grr. I avert my gaze, clenching fists at my side. Biting either one of these guys wouldn’t do much to keep us friends.
I follow at a safe distance. Fortunately, the table is empty—no cursed books.
Up close, the arch is bigger than I thought. The center of the U at the top is about twelve feet high and it’s wide enough for a van.
The Last Family Road Trip (Vampire Innocent Book 4) Page 14
