“Just got in town and ditched my friends for a while, thought I’d see what downtown Portland was all about. You a regular here?”
“Sometimes,” the girl answered, looking around. “I thought I’d meet my friends down here, but I don’t see any of them. It figures, they’re always ditching me. I’m Katy.”
“Bad on them,” the vampire said. “”I’m Amp. Good to meet you, Katy.”
She waited for the girl to look back at her, finally making eye contact, her intensity riveting the girl to the spot, Amp’s control dominant. The movies and books Amp had seen about fictional vamps called this glamouring, but she thought of it as her control stare. She knew she could accomplish just about anything in the world by taking control of human minds and emotions. It came in handy when getting stopped for speeding or not having a credit card handy at the gas station. Or being hungry.
“Me and you are going to go outside and go for a little walk, just the two of us,” Amp said softly. “And screw your friends; I’m going to make this a night you’ll never forget. I’m gonna rock your world, cutie.”
Amp started for the door, taking the girl’s hand and leading her out into the warm spring night. It was the time of year that still held promise of cool nights, but was leaning heavily toward summertime. The two walked down the street, moving away from the lights of the clubs, finding a park. “Come on, let’s find somewhere to sit,” Amp said to the girl.
She pulled the girl into the darkness of the park, finding a bench. The two sat, Amp’s arm around the girl’s shoulders, hugging her tight. She leaned in and kissed the girl, the redhead not certain why she was doing these things; it just seemed so right.
“I’ve never…you know, kissed a girl,” the girl murmured.
Amp chuckled, her right hand moving up under the girl’s t-shirt, feeling the smoothness of the girl’s stomach.
“Oh my god, I’m about to pass out,” the girl whispered, her breath coming in jags.
“I’m going to make you feel things you won’t ever feel again, so just relax and enjoy this,” Amp whispered.
As the girl groaned, Amp bent to her neck, bit cleanly to the jugular and fed, the potent serum stored within her gums releasing through her fangs into the girl’s bloodstream and giving the girl the first of several small, potent orgasms building to a crescendo of pure pleasure. Amp, in frenzy at the girl’s delicious blood, tried desperately to gauge her intake and not bleed the girl out. She fed from the teenager, reluctantly pulling her fangs away from the girl’s neck after two minutes. She carefully licked the incision, her serum sealing the tiny puncture marks almost immediately, leaving no sign of the invasion.
The action brought the girl back to a state of semi-normalcy, Amp letting her sag back against the bench. She was still under Amp’s mind control, but little by little she was recovering.
“Oh my God, what the hell happened?” Katy gasped, pulling her shirt down and straightening her clothes. “It…it was like nothing I ever imagined…shit, I’ve waited my whole life for this.”
Amp chuckled, hugging the girl to her. “Poor baby,” she whispered. “I think I ruined every relationship you’re ever going to have. I think it would be good if I just helped you not to remember, then you won’t go through life comparing everybody else with this night.”
“What do you mean, not remember?” the girl asked. “I don’t want to forget you…or it. It was so cool, I want to be with you again…and again. I promise you, I need you so much; I’ve always needed someone like you. Please.”
“Can’t do it again, sugar. I’m leaving town real soon. But if you keep this a secret between us, I’ll let you remember it. Don’t drive yourself crazy trying to figure it out, just remember it as my gift to you. You gave me a hell of a treat, too. You taste so good, I could do you over and over. Come on, fix your clothes and let’s walk back to the club.”
------
Danner Gray had been reborn as a vampire shortly after the Revolutionary War. Tall and lean with thick brown hair touching his ears, he was classically handsome, a man who fit well in any time period. For all of his first hundred years he had been a loner, having few links among the human population, even fewer among the scattered vampires of North America. The man had no desire to be responsible for deciding the destiny of others; survival was his only focus.
Even the best laid plans don’t always go according to script.
Danner had moved to Cincinnati from Philadelphia in 1882, looking for a new home and a safer environment. Philadelphia had seen a recent influx of rogue vampires created during the Civil War, and they didn’t care who they hurt, or how badly, including fellow vampires. He had been in Ohio less than a year, and had established a few non-threatening associations with other vampires in the area, always careful not to let anyone know where he stayed. A vampire could live a long, safe life if he had a touch of paranoia ingrained in his psyche, and Danner had more than a touch.
He had been living in a two room shanty along the shores of the Ohio River, keeping a low profile, finding plenty of drunks and river vagrants to feed from at night. He had spent several evenings digging a small cellar under one room in his shack, equipping it with a solid trapdoor he was able to lock from the inside. There he was able to sleep during the day without the worry of being discovered.
One evening, walking the shore of the river and enjoying the summer breeze, he was startled by a horrific scream from nearby. Locating the source of the terror, he found a large red-haired man stabbing a young girl with a butcher knife, the girl covered with her own blood, her mouth working but no sound coming out of it. Danner, with superhuman speed and strength, stopped the man from delivering the killing blow, breaking the man’s neck and discarding him into the water like the trash he was.
Dropping down beside the girl, Danner took her in his arms, searching for signs of life. The blood pouring out of her was intoxicating, the pulsing of the flow evidence she still lived, but not for long. Without any experience in the art of healing, Danner did what came natural to him; he fed from the girl, but in a slow, patient, methodical manner, trying to release as much of himself back into the girl as he was taking, then allowing the girl to feed from his wrists, letting her take whatever he could coax into her.
He didn’t realize he had been working on her for hours until he felt the dawn approaching. Picking the girl up and moving with his incredible speed, Danner made it to his home, into the darkness of his shack. He had done all he could to save the girl’s life, but from the look of her, he felt he had failed. She still breathed shallowly, but her color was grey, and she had never regained consciousness. Nevertheless, he gently laid her beside him in the cellar, a feeling of disappointment the last thing he felt before sleeping.
When Danner sat up, wide awake, knowing it was close to dusk, he immediately looked at the girl lying beside him, expecting to find her corpse, knowing he would have to dispose of it immediately. He was shocked to see the girl slept soundly, her breathing regular and strong. Pushing up the trap door, he easily picked the girl up and lifted her out of the cellar, climbing out after. It was then he noticed the beautiful glow about her, no longer grey but a healthy, clear complexion. Her wounds were healed, and when she awoke, her eyes were bright and alive…and she was hungry.
He knew instantly; she was vampire.
And the two had been together for the past 130 years.
Riley had come along much later.
------
The girl Amp had fed from was sticking in her mind, her face and taste and body not fading as others had in the past. Fricken human, she thought to herself. What the hell am I doing fixating on a human? They’re supposed to be nothing but food. But she had tasted so damn good.
“Danner, how come you’ve never taken a human mate?” she finally asked.
“Too much commitment,” Danner answered. “There’s good and bad parts of a deal with humans. Since vamps can’t feed off of each other, having someone at home to feed on every n
ight is a plus. The danger and uncertainty of hunting strangers is minimized. Then there’s the sex. With humans sex rocks…although sex with vamps isn’t anything to sneeze at; just different. The big deal is anytime a person makes a commitment, it cuts down on the rest of their time. I like to roll whenever I get the urge, and I roll with you guys.”
“Did you ever come close, you know, falling for a human?” Riley asked, minimally interested in the conversation.
“I’ve met a few who I really liked, but not anyone I wanted to spend most of my time with.”
“If you turn them, then it screws up the dynamic, right?” Amp said.
“Right. Vamps either mate with humans, or they don’t mate. A vamp can keep their mate alive for a long time by feeding them our blood; for several hundred years, if done correctly. It’s a weird thing, and I’m not interested. I like the idea of hunting and feeding, as long as I feed off of babes who I can get busy with, and then erase. Or hunt bad people who I permanently erase. Why all the questions?”
“I don’t know…just thinkin’ ‘bout something. Doesn’t matter.”
“Okay, let’s talk about this trip. I told you I’d explain where we were going, and why we’re going there.”
Danner was talking as he drove, the car heading north out of Portland, their stay lasting but a brief few hours. All three had been sated, and would be comfortable for the next few days.
“Don’t matter a whole lot, Danner,” Amp said from the backseat. “Where you go, we go. Always have, always will.”
“Yeah, I know,” Danner answered. “But this is different, this isn’t a normal move. I’m being called, actually ordered to appear to my sire. We’ve never talked about my sire, mainly because there’s nothing to talk about. He turned me, kept me around for a month or so, and then disappeared. I was so not equipped to be vampire and had no one to mentor me. I only knew one thing during those days; I was always hungry. I fed from anyone and everyone. It was a long, difficult process of mistakes, corrections, and finally figuring how to do this gig the right way. It’s why I was so overbearing with both of you guys. Riley was easy, you listened, did what you were told, and never made a mistake twice. Amp on the other hand was a hellion. The morning you woke up in Cincinnati, I ended up kicking the shit out of you, and kicked your ass every day for a month. You wanted to feed, didn’t give a shit about who you hurt, who you killed, just knew you needed what they had, and you were going to take it. It was quite a relief when you finally mellowed. I never regretted saving either one of you guys, but Amp gave me a few moments of serious reflection. Anyway, I’ve always been honest with you both; have never tried to bullshit you. So I’m telling you now, we’re going to see why I’m being beckoned, and then we’ll kind of figure out where to go from there.”
“How were you beckoned?” Riley asked.
The three vampires were rarely apart, so neither Riley nor Amp could understand the power of an absent sire on one of his children. Danner had seldom used his force on his two children, in fact treated them like equals most of the time. When he had been forced to use his raw power, he had tempered it so Amp or Riley had imagined they had made the deciding choices. Neither had ever suspected Danner’s mind control had actually solved the issues.
“I felt it, was ordered to leave whatever I was doing and get my ass to Alaska. So let’s see what happens, what’s so important. There’s another thing we need to talk about. When this trip is over, and I hope it’s going to be soon, we need to find something a bit more permanent. I’m tired of the moving, and even though you guys have never complained of my paranoid behavior, I know it gets to you. Amp has always wanted to live somewhere for more than a couple of years, and I think it’s time. Going to have to be near a big city, just from the food standpoint. You guys talk it over, and after this, we’ll find something we can all live with.”
The two were speechless, both wanting this for a long time, but willing to go along with Danner out of loyalty and devotion to their sire.
“Thanks, Danner,” Amp finally managed. “It’s about the best present you’ve ever given me.”
“Good stuff,” Riley chimed in, the three vampires smiling.
“What I was trying to say before, I don’t have a clue whether this is going to be dangerous or not, and since we pretty much have a relationship based on doing our own thing, if either of you doesn’t want to make this trip, it’s okay. I’m not going to force you into whatever this is. This is my problem, and if you don’t want to go, it’s okay.”
“Screw you, Danner,” Amp said in her typical straightforward manner. “We’re a team. We spit on danger. Bring it on.”
“Me too,” Riley chuckled. “What she said.”
------
The rest of the drive to Seattle was uneventful. They stopped during the day at an out of the way motel, covering the windows with the blackout curtains they always carried with them. In Seattle, they arranged to drive their car on the ferry at night, and were asleep in their stateroom when the boat departed early in the morning. It was a three day trip to their destination, and when the boat docked in Petersburg, it was just past dusk. Riley drove the car off the boat, and the three set out to discover what the town offered.
It didn’t take them long to determine there wasn’t much to Petersburg. It was a small town on a small island, one main road leading around the land mass. The downtown was quaint, having not changed a lot in the past hundred years or so.
Riley drove slowly down the main road, no other traffic on the street, although there were a few people out and about. He pulled the car to the curb in front of the Harbor Bar, and turned to Danner. “Looks like the only place in town,” he chuckled.
“Yeah, let’s try it, maybe someone will know how to find this guy,” Danner said.
The three walked into the bar, finding the place crowded with a menagerie of young and old, native Alaskans and college age tourist. There was a long wooden bar to their left as they entered, the room opening toward the back into a cavernous area with several tables and chairs and pool tables, most occupied. Danner headed to the back, finding a place in a corner.
The guys were dressed like most of the other customers; jeans, boots, and flannel shirts, the uniform of Alaskan men. Amp was slumming a bit, wearing a pair of black yoga pants hugging her like a second skin, and a white hoodie several sizes too big. She looked like somebody’s hot little sister, not a customer in an Alaskan bar.
“What can I get you guys?” a pretty girl asked.
“Uh, three Buds,” Riley answered. “Longnecks, no glasses.”
“How old are you, honey?” the girl asked Amp.
“21,” Amp answered, her focus on the waitress, catching her eyes and holding them.
“Right, I thought so,” the girl replied, turning and going to the bar to fetch the three beers.
As they were waiting on their beers, Amp walked further back into the bar towards the pool tables. In the far corner, five men and three young women were sitting around two tables pulled together, several empty pitchers littering the table, the group loud and having a good time. The girls, no more than 18 or 19, were sitting on laps, smiles on their faces. It took Amp but a second to recognize the five men as vampire, the three girls as human. Amp was surprised at the one who spoke first. He was about thirty, black horn-rim glasses, and a shaved head.
A geek, Amp thought, although when he spoke she quickly reevaluated.
“”Hey pretty girl, you’re welcome at our table,” he began, his stare telling Amp he recognized her as vampire.
Standing, dumping the girl from his lap, the man suddenly appeared anything but the geek Amp had first envisioned. He was built solid, his arms cords of muscles. His jeans were tight, his t-shirt tighter, the thin waist building upward to a strong chest and thick neck. This one was not somebody to mess with, Amp thought.
“Come on, we don’t bite,” the man chuckled, waving his hand to invite Amp closer. “Well, maybe sometimes,” he added with a ch
uckle. “My names Ernie. This is Will, H.D., Doc, and Little John. And you are new to Petersburg?”
“Hey, I’m Amp. My friends and I are just here for a short time.”
“Have a beer, Amp. We’re doing what we do best, nothing of substance. Kinda our code of conduct.”
The other’s laughed, each one relaxed, confident in their place in the world, Amp thought. These vamps reminded Amp a lot of her friends. They were laid back, not excitable or angry, just chilling. Good stuff, she thought.
“Thanks,” she said, sliding into an empty chair. “Are you guys from here?” She was hoping these five were part of the coven Danner was visiting. They were, at least to her initial evaluation, the type of vamps she could relate to.
“Naw…just visiting. We live in Washington State, Skagit Valley. We come up here a few times a year, just to sample the fruits of the town,” Ernie laughed.
When the barmaid returned with the beers, she placed the order in front of Danner, picking up the twenty he had laid on the table.
“I’ll get your change,” she said.
“No change,” he answered. “Can I ask you something?”
She smiled at the good looking man. “Anything you want,” she said, thinking these were two of the best looking guys she had seen for a while.
“You from here?”
“Yep, grew up in Petersburg, my Daddy runs a fishing boat, the Orca, and I work it with him some. I’m supposed to go to Gonzaga next year, but still having my doubts. How come?”
“I was wondering, do you know a man named Beryl Wilson. I heard he lived in Petersburg, and we just got in tonight, so we haven’t had a chance to find him.”
“Oh sure, funny sort of guy. He’s nice enough bordering on the creepy side. He comes in here sometimes, has a regular crew of guys with him. Good tippers, and they don’t ever make any trouble, which is a huge plus.”
As she talked, the front door banged open, and four men walked through it, each dressed for the Alaskan springtime.
Kill Wilson (Petersburg Vampires) Page 2
