by Minda Webber
I had just started to congratulate Debbs and Dagan as soon as the vampire’s scream died down, when I felt a movement of wind behind me. I threw myself left and rolled. Something big and bad was coming from behind me. It didn’t take a genius to know that it was another vampire.
I didn’t understand what was going on. Had the vampire guard been killed by a newly risen vampire. The problem with that theory was that the one Debbs just staked was old. You can tell by the paleness of their skin and their eyes. Their eyes will reveal their age if you can look directly into them for a few seconds. Most humans can’t do that because a vampire can more or less bespell you with his eyes. But since I’m a Frankenstein, a family long familiar with dead flesh, we’re immune to vampire stares. Debbs is too because of her Van Helsing blood. Hart and Jason aren’t. But Seth is, since he’s a necromancer and son of the Mummy. Which means if you are paying attention, that not being bespelled was a useful trait in a world where vampires existed.
Suddenly I felt claws rake my right arm. The skin split and I felt the blood beginning to flow down my arm. At first, it was just numb, but I knew that later it was going to hurt like the very dickens.
While I was rolling on the carpet, I lost my flashlight and stake, but found another flask of my Holy water. I ripped off the lid so that when the vampire turned me over and leaned down to rip out my neck, I threw it in its face. It was too dark for me to see anything. I had great night vision, but dark is dark. Still, I could tell the water hit its face by the immediate smell of scorched skin and screams of agony.
I backed away as fast as I could on my butt, hands searching for a flashlight. “Help over here,” I yelled. I wasn’t worried anymore about anyone hearing us because I don’t think the vampire guard and night security guard were alive now.
I heard the vampire’s shrieks end abruptly. Someone had killed it. Before I could even stand, Dagan was by my side. His night vision was like any predator’s, super great. Suddenly, we were bathed in light. Debbs had found the light switch and flipped it on.
Dagan began to check me out carefully, concern in his eyes. I looked down at my arm dripping all over my Levis and the coattails of my jacket. He ignored his own bloody forearm. Suddenly the concern turned to hunger and he turned away, embarrassed, though he kept his one arm around me, supporting me.
“You don’t look too hot,” Debbs said. “Are you hurt bad?”
I shook my head, then glanced back at Dagan. He was hungry and the blood was going to waste, dripping all over me and the floor. I took off my ripped jacket and held up my arm for him to take.
“What are you doing? Are you postal? You’re going to feed him?” Debbs asked angrily as she stood hands on her hips glaring at me.
“It’s going to waste, he’s hungry and we don’t have a lot of time.” I knew she was mad. I knew she was upset. I was feeding one of the monsters that she hunted. But I also knew that both Debbs and I owed Dracula’s grandson our lives. I’d remind her tomorrow when she wasn’t so angry about not staking or at least capturing a Dracula for her family, and the fact that he preferred me to her.
“You sure?” Dagan asked. I heard the hint of disbelief in his voice. “But my saliva will help the wound heal faster.” He said the last to Debbs.
“Yep,” I said and the smile he gave me was worth having something suck on my arm. His blue eyes lit up like a summer sky and his grin reached ear to ear. He gently took my arm and I felt the slightest of tugs and then warmth filled me as he began to feed.
I looked away from the golden head bent over my arm and glanced back at my best friend. Her glare had only gotten fiercer. I shot her a look that let her know I wasn’t going to listen to her gripe about this. “Debbs, think. You owe Dagan your life. So do I. He killed both vampires. So I owe him my life twice tonight. And it’s not over.”
Her eyes narrowed some more so I added, “Debbs, where are the guards?”
“Dead,” She replied. “There’s one in the coffin over here.” She pointed at a coffin about two feet from her.”
“Vampire guard?”
She nodded and seemed to think. “This was a setup.”
“Oh yeah,” I replied. “Big time. But why?”
Dagan had finished cleaning up my arm. Like the old world gentleman he was raised to be, he stopped when it was clean. There was no biting, no sloppy sucking. His willpower had to be phenomenal to stop feeding when he’d only had a snack on a first rising.
“They’re after me, no doubt, and you’re caught in the crossfire.”
As he said those words, it hit me like a ton of bricks about the same time that it hit Debbs. “Jason,” I said, horror filling my voice.
“Hart?” Debbs eyes were wide open as we all three took off at a run with visions of blood and guts filling our heads. I couldn’t imagine anything happening to either of our guys. Though Debbs and I weren’t dating them or anything, we loved them like buddies.
Our footsteps pounded up the stairs, loud in the darkened stairwell. I ran my hand quickly along the wall, then flicking off my flashlight, I flicked on the light switch as we reached the front story landing. I saw Hart come out of a room with some papers in his hand. I started to shout with relief, when I saw a vampire crawling across the ceiling almost directly overhead Hart. A vampires crawling across a ceiling is more than creepy, like a spider climbing a web, arms and legs twisted a bit as he glared down, fangs flashing a harsh white.
The vampire dropped down and pinned Hart against the wall. The vampire bit hard as he went for the neck. Hart threw up his arm and blood splattered as skin and muscle were ripped. Jason was coming out of the same door and seeing Hart pinned he yelled at the top of his lungs and threw himself on the vampire’s back. “No, you blood-sucking parasite!”
I had stake in hand and jumped into the fray and shoved upwards into the vampire’s chest as Jason was flung off the tall vampire’s back. My stake hit a rib which deflected the blow. Debbs threw her silver-bladed ten inch knife and it imbedded in the vampire’s upper back, cutting into the muscles of the neck. The vampire flung both Hart and me away as he turned on Debbs and snarled, his fangs glistening with Hart’s blood, his eyes red with bloodlust. He flew towards Debbs just as Dagan hit him from the side, tackling him. Debbs opened up her Holy water and started to throw it. I stopped her by shoving her arm away. “You’ll hit Dagan!”
She stopped and lowered her arm, breathing hard. I hoped she had forgotten that Dagan would have been burned too if she’d thrown the Holy water. But I couldn’t count on it. It felt funny going against Debbs since we rarely ever argued. She knew everything about me, every great thing, every small thing and even every embarrassing thing.
Frowning, Debbs slipped another knife from her sheath, but by the time we turned back towards the fight, Hart had pulled his gun and shot the vampire in the head. The recoil from the bullet caused him to lose his grip on Dagan. The vampire snarled and then leapt back shaking his head side to side as Hart took another shot. This one took the vamp down for the count. He was dead.
“Wow.” I said.
“Wow?” Jason asked, blood covering his pale yellow shirt. “You just said wow? Hart’s almost vampire lunch and all you can say is wow?” He was angry, his brown eyes almost black with his anger. “We almost get killed on this lame expedition of yours to get blood and help this monster out.” He glared at Dagan who was slowly standing. His left wrist was bleeding and he had a shoulder wound from the ghoul earlier. “You’re really messed up this time V.J!”
“Back off,” Dagan said, warning Jason to leave me alone, his blue eyes almost glowing in the dim lights of the hallway. Jason stood up taller, but was still at least four inches shorter than Dracula’s grandson.
I pushed myself between the two of them and Debbs grabbed Jason’s unhurt arm. “What can I say; it’s been a rough night? ‘Wow’ seems to sum up the situation pretty fast. Did you happen to notice where the human security guard is?” I asked.
“I didn’t see hi
m,” Hart said as Debbs wrapped a bandage around Hart’s arm, stopping the bleeding.
“You know we’re going to have to pour Holy water over it, don’t you?" She asked as she packed the bite wound.
Hart sighed. “I know.”
I shuddered in sympathy. Holy water on a vampire bite hurt like iodine on a bad cut. “Look, we should get out of here now. We’ve got vampires trying to kill us and ghouls tracking us and we’ve been in here a while.”
I leaned down and picked up the employee list and found Rhonda Macon’s work schedule. “Rhonda’s working the Haunted House downtown tomorrow night.” The Haunted House was huge and everyone went before Halloween. “There’s no address for her. Did you find out anything on the shipping of Dagan?”
Jason reached inside his jacket and pulled out a sheet of paper. “That’s all there is.”
Both Dagan and I reached for it. I let him have it. ‘It doesn’t tell me who ordered me shipped here.”
“It should,” I said as I looked over his arm and saw that in the space where the shipper was supposed to be was a name so crudely written that nobody could figure it out. “Must be a doctor.” I know my own doctor had lousy hand-writing.
“Come on, let’s go. Hart needs to be doused with Holy water and Jason needs to get some more stuff on that ghoul bite,” Debbs advised as she noticed Jason’s color. Remarkably, Dagan was bravely ignoring all the blood flowing, although I did see him lick his lips twice.
“What about the police? Shouldn’t we find the other guard?” Hart asked as he followed behind Debbs. Jason was in the lead and walking swiftly towards the front entrance.
“We’ll call 911 from the payphone on Bulverde Road by the Shell Gas Station.” I knew that if we told the police everything we knew, then our parents would know. I wanted to keep it on the DL-keeping things quiet. I didn’t want my dad and mom dragged into a royal vampire fight. The last time they had been dragged into one of my monster messes, I had been grounded for three months.
I know I probably wasn’t using the best of my wits in the decision, probably none of us were. Being hunted by paranormal creatures was a big deal and my folks would want to know. My dad kept telling me I was growing up and I needed to really think things out before I jumped in with both feet without looking. But a lot was at stake and I do mean that literally as well.
Debbs couldn’t afford to tell her mom because she’d be in trouble for getting involved with a Dracula in the first place. Luckily for Debbs, her dad was in Europe with her two oldest brothers at some vampire extermination convention. He could always tell when Debbs was hiding something, so I was glad he wasn’t home. Dr. Jekyll wouldn’t be upset, but he’d probably insist that Dagan stay in the asylum until Dracula came and got his grandson. I liked that solution least of all because I wouldn’t get to be around Dagan. And Dr. Jekyll would make Dagan take all these tests on paranormal IQ and abnormal stuff.
On the other hand, Hart’s uncle would probably pat him on the back for the fine shooting he had done tonight. Then Uncle Joe would rush down to the bar where he hung out. There he would tell everyone who would listen that his nephew had saved Dracula’s undead life, which certainly wouldn’t help Dagan any and would probably only cause more hunters or ghouls or whoever or whatever, to come after Dracula’s grandson. And us! It wasn’t an easy decision, but we all decided that for the time being-no police. Also, more importantly, no parents. And each for our own reasons.
As we hit the front of the building, we found the human guard inside the front door with his throat ripped out. Ten minutes later, we called 911 telling them about the dead bodies at the Rest and Rise in Peace Funeral Parlor. Boy, was ever a place misnamed.
CHAPTER SIX
I watched Dagan quickly climb up the back of our three-story house, where the attic was located, under the bright glow of the moon. When he opened the window to the attic I went in the front, making sure that my jacket covered the scratches on my arm, by laying it over my wound. Since my mom was in Dallas visiting her sister, my dad was playing Monster Trivia with my two younger sisters and my little brother, Frankie, letting them stay up later than usual on a school night.
“What was the cook’s name in Dracula, Dead and Loving it?” my dad asked.
I knew that one, and answered, irritating my sisters and little brother. “Essie.”
“That’s unfair,” Allie said, glaring at me with her fourteen-year-old injustice-stare. I got that stare a lot from her.
“V.J cheated,” Roxie cried out, her red curly hair bouncing as she hopped up and down. She was eleven.
“V.J,” Frankie cried and tried to tackle me as I wrestled him to the couch.
“Hey Dad,” I said.
“How was the mascot hunt?” he asked, as he gave me a crooked smile.
“Oh, we didn’t get what we needed,” I said, hedging. “We’ll try later.”
“You don’t seem upset about it. I thought you were just so desperate for a mascot,” Allie said, stressing the desperate.
“Our zombie wasn’t right,” I said, and switched subjects. “I’m hungry. Anything to eat? Then I’ve got to finish a history assignment.” Which really wasn’t a lie, since the youngest Dracula was stuffed of history. He was also so good-looking that I couldn’t quit thinking about his beautiful blue eyes or his thick wavy blonde hair.
“Pizza,” Dad replied, as he picked up another trivia card.
“What kind?”
“Canadian bacon and pineapple,” Allie answered which wasn’t that big of a surprise since this kind of pizza had always been her favorite as well my own.
“Hamburger and mushrooms,” Frankie said with his mouth half-full of said pizza.
“Good, my favorites,” I said as I patted my little sister Roxie on the head.
“Is that blood on your jeans?”
Geez! My dad had eagle eyes. “Yeah, Hart cut himself digging and it was kind of messy.”
“Is he okay?” Allie asked, her eyes filled with distress. I suspected that my little sister had a crush on Hart, but wild horses wouldn’t drag it out of her mouth. Or even bribes of chocolate. Chocolate was the thing Allie loved most in the world, besides our parents, cats and driving me crazy.
“He’s okay. It wasn’t a serious cut,” I replied, and saw Allie smile.
My dad shook his head. “Poor Hart. He’s one big accident waiting to happen.” My dad liked Hart, and my mom loved him like a second son. She was the one I had called that night I found out that Hart’s Uncle Joe had forgotten his thirteenth birthday. There was no cake, no presents and no Joe, just Hart eating a peanut butter sandwich by himself.
Mom came and picked us both up and then brought us home to birthday cake, hats, ice cream and presents for Hart. My Dad had made a few when Mom had called him from the car. Luckily, they weren’t anything reanimated…well, except for the turtle, but Hart had loved it, since he didn’t have a pet.
I leaned over and kissed Dad’s cheek, agreeing with him.
Now, whose turn is it?” My dad asked as I walked out of the room heading for a piece of pizza in the kitchen. Just because a good looking vampire was upstairs waiting for me, wasn’t enough for me to forget pizza.
“Mine,” Roxie said. “Or we can count V.J.’s answer as mine.”
“Not fair,” I heard Allie complain as I walked into the kitchen. I banged around for a minute, grabbed a slice of pizza and headed upstairs to the attic.
After sneaking into the attic, I looked around and found Dagan. Our attic was a storage place since our basement was where my Dad’s lab was located. Dagan was standing by an old dresser which had a bunch of knickknacks stacked all over it. He was holding up a nightingale made of glass.
“Hi,” I said, suddenly feeling shy. You know how it is with boys you really like. You’re not shy around your friends or guys you don’t like, but when you really like somebody your tongue gets tied up in knots. You start acting differently than you normally do, which is kind of silly when you look at
it. If the guy likes you before you get interested in him, then he likes you for who you are. I knew that and still I found myself tongue-tied.
He smiled. “Thanks for putting me up for tonight.”
“It’s no big deal.” I got out of the doorway and shut the door, finally realizing that I didn’t need my sisters or brother up here sticking their very able noses in my business.
“I’m lucky it was you who dug me up. Just imagine a Frankenstein and a Van Helsing digging up a Dracula,” he said, as he leaned back against a large chest in the corner.
“Yeah, what are the odds,” I replied, as I walked closer and sat on an old trunk. There was just something about him that made me want to touch him or listen to him talk. I’d had crushes before and had even been kind of in love, but what I felt whenever I was near Dagan was different. It was like I’d been plugged into an electrical socket on low voltage. Of course, I knew how this felt, since I had accidentally been plugged into an electrical socket once when another one of my best friends and I were working on an experiment with eels for science class.
“Astronomical,” he said thoughtfully. “Still, I’m lucky it was a Frankenstein that opened my grave and that’s something my family hasn’t been in a while…lucky.”
“Why?” I asked, curious, because I’m always curious, and because it was Dagan.
“Well, my family’s always hunted and we’ve always been hunted, but the last seven years, luck has been with the hunter and not the hunted, us.”
He looked sad and I recalled that one Sunday at breakfast my dad had laid down his newspaper and remarked that one of Dracula’s sons had died. “My father met your dad at some monster convention right after my eighth birthday party. I remember him telling us all about it when he got home. Your dad has passed away, hasn’t he?”
He nodded solemnly. “Strange, but it wasn’t vampire hunters that got him, but another vampire clan. He wasn’t human anymore and had been a vampire then for about four years. Two years ago, my older brother died. He was twenty-two and human. They beheaded him so he wouldn’t come back as a vampire. It was werewolves that got my brother!”
