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Forever Young Copyright © 2018 by Daniel Pierce
Book design and layout copyright © 2018 by Daniel Pierce
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.
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No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.
Daniel Pierce
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Forever Young
Book 1 in the Forever Young Series
By
Daniel Pierce
1
My chest ached, and I tried to convince myself it was in a good way. My brain was on board, but my knees simply refused to buy it. No amount of endorphins could persuade my aching joints that it had been a good idea to take up running again in my late forties.
Go running, people had told me. Get fit. You’ll get the girls.
At this rate, the only girls I would attract were EMTs, and they weren’t likely to be flirtatious. No one is when they have to hoist a grown man into the back of an ambulance.
I pushed myself a little harder and checked my smartwatch. I’d made it halfway to my goal without puking, a major accomplishment in my midlife crisis so far. My eyes weren’t what they’d once been, but I could see the glowing lights of a gas station in the distance. If I could push a little farther, if I could just make it there, I could get a drink and stretch. Maybe I could give my knees a little break before I started the long road home.
I wasn’t ready for a marathon yet. Once upon a time, a billion and three years ago, I’d done marathons regularly. Then came work and Linda, but Linda didn’t like all the training. She didn’t like anything that took attention or time away from her. In the end, she didn’t like me much either.
I pushed the thought out of my mind, down through my feet to give me extra speed. Screw Linda. Who needed her? Running was once my passion, and it could be again. All I had to do was find that runner’s high, and that old feeling would override the pain.
I made it to the gas station. It reminded me of something from an old zombie flick. The pumps were the old-fashioned ones, the kind I thought they’d outlawed back in the nineties when they figured out the planet might be nice to keep around for a while. No one had emptied the trash cans for a long time, and the windows on the service station were so filthy, someone had actually scrawled “wash me” into them with their finger. The lights were on, though, so the place was open.
My back muscles clenched, and I looked around. Something around here wasn’t right. I didn’t see any security cameras.
Or cars. Or people.
The station was the only visible building for miles around, and I couldn’t see any tractors grinding their way across the fields or farmers encased inside them. Nevertheless, I felt like someone was watching me.
The notion was foolish, of course. Everyone felt creeped out on old rural roads in Maine, especially when they were alone. We had Stephen King to thank for that. If someone were watching me, though, I was about the worst target to rob or kidnap. I was a middle-aged, middle manager at a healthcare insurer, but thanks to alimony, I couldn’t even say I was middle class. I was more of an advanced charity case who worried about bounced checks and cheap takeout food.
I pushed open the station door, jingling some bells attached above the frame. Nobody was behind the counter, but employees in service stations like this, often worked alone. The attendant was probably off doing inventory or using the bathroom. For all I knew, they were taking a nap. Who the hell would even notice?
I looked around for a few minutes, hoping to find something to drink, but the store didn’t sell water. All they sold were cigarettes and beer. I considered picking up a beer, just to quench my thirst, but decided against it. Beer and running didn’t mix unless things at the bar went horribly wrong.
I strode to the cash register, but there was still no sign of the attendant. However, there was a key laying on the counter, attached to a carved wooden tag saying Bucks. I assumed it was the key to the men’s room. Somewhere around here would probably be a key labeled Does.
Hunter humor. I’d never been much of a hunter myself. I also hadn’t judged people for hunting until I caught Linda in bed with the deer hunter next door.
Whatever. He deserved what he got with her.
I grabbed the key and headed around the building toward the bathrooms. The entrances were always outside in old gas stations like this, which didn’t exactly bode well for its cleanliness.
I opened the door and locked it behind me. I hadn’t been wrong about the level of tidiness. Bugs scattered when I turned on the lights, and I gave some serious thought to just going back outside and relieving myself behind the building. I remembered the sensation of being watched, though, and didn’t need to get a ticket for public urination. I tried to breathe through my mouth, refusing to touch anything but myself with my hands, and stepping very carefully as if I was in a minefield that stank of piss and other things.
I’d just faced the toilet when the sound of metal shearing made me turn around. The sound set my teeth on edge, and since the street light flooded the room with light almost right away, I was blinded, too. If my arrival frightened the roaches, then this piercing sound sent them into a frenzy. The tick tick tick of hundreds of tiny legs ran across the floor and the tiles, as they tried to get away from whatever had torn the door open like wet tissue paper.
I couldn’t see it at first. All I saw was a blur, and then something slammed into my head. It was small but had the force of a baseball bat swung by Paul Bunyan. I fell to the stained, fetid floor, dazed and gasping for air.
Cold, powerful hands, lifted me by the collar of my running jacket. Now I could see my attacker. He wasn’t big, only about an inch or two taller than I was and on the slim side. His hair was the color of a forgotten plum, between red and orange, and his skin was alabaster white. The eyes looking at me were obsidian black, ringed with red. When he curled his lips back, cruel fangs were in the place of normal teeth.
Maybe the blow to my head was harder than I thought.
Regardless, I wasn’t going to take it lying down. I brought my arms up and pushed out against Death Ginger’s hands. His grip was strong like he’d immersed my lapels in concrete, but I pushed hard enough to break his hold after a minute. I scrambled backward, racing for the giant hole that used to be the doorway.
He was incredibly fast, moving like a blur at the edge of my vision. I didn’t know if it was because my eyes were too old or because he’d hit my head with something—and at this point, I didn’t care anymore. All I cared about was the way this guy was blocking my exit. The bathroom didn’t have any windows or another door. I had nowhere else to run or hide.
I was going to have to fight.
Death Ginger sneered a challenge. “Little mouse wants to play?”
Great, a criminal who thinks he’s a fucking comedian, I thought as I took a low stance and went in for a tackle. I hadn’t played a lot of football back in high school, but I had done some wrestling. I’d also gotten into my share of fights. If I could get him low enough, I could knock him down and get away.
I succeeded in knocking Death Ginger down. That part of my plan worked, and I was proud of it. Unfortunately, he had time to grab onto my head while I
was tackling him to the floor. His grip wasn’t gentle, and I gasped in pain.
That little gasp of pain actually made the son of a bitch get hard. Sadly, I was in a position to notice, his erection a violation against my body.
He wrenched my head to the side, exposing my neck. I panicked, not knowing what he was planning to do. Was he trying to break my neck like I’d seen in the movies? He could do it, but why? Why would he do it to me? I was just some guy. He hadn’t tried to rob me. I had no one in my life who would pay a ransom. It wasn’t a hitman hired by my ex-wife. Even Linda was better off with me alive than dead.
I screamed when two razor-sharp blades pierced my throat. No, not blades. Those were his teeth—his long, awful fangs.
Go ahead and scream, mouse. There’s no one around to hear you. No one for miles.
Death Ginger’s voice echoed inside my head. He couldn’t have spoken out loud because his mouth was busy sucking on my neck, an obscene draining that made my throat rise even as his hands clamped down on me harder.
I’d seen movies where they tried to make the moment when the vampire fed on someone look pleasurable or erotic. The victim—or meal—always looked like they were having the best orgasm of their life, right there on the screen. I didn’t know where that came from, except maybe from some Hollywood sicko’s brain. Having the asshole Death Ginger bite my neck felt nothing like that.
The sensation was more like when I’d cut my finger while slicing a lime, except magnified about a million times. This cut was much deeper, and it had a damn vacuum cleaner attached to it. That was what it felt like to have a vampire sucking on my neck.
I fought. Anyone in my position would have unless they’d been drugged. It was pure instinct. When a human-sized mosquito tried to drain you dry, you wanted it gone.
I tried to pry his fingers from my head and jaw, but those icy digits weren’t going anywhere. He didn’t look like much, and I wouldn’t have avoided a fight if I’d seen him on the street, but he was stronger than anyone I’d ever seen before. He could have crushed my jaw with a thought if he wanted to. I threw an elbow into his solar plexus.
All it did was break my elbow.
Given what was sticking into my back while all this was going on, Ginger Guy was getting off on my struggles to get free. My heart beat faster and faster, the harder I fought, finally giving an erratic gallop that made me wonder if this was the end of me and my shitty life.
Here. In this stinking bathroom, on a floor that reeked of everything awful in the world.
My instincts were wrong since fighting just meant the blood ran faster into his mouth, so he didn’t have to work so hard for his meal. I was gasping for air in less than a minute. In less than two, my vision dimmed.
When the nasty bathroom got dark, the view I lost wasn’t anything great. I hated the thought that the last thing I would see was going to be brown splashes on the yellowing tile behind a broken toilet.
I dug in with my feet and tried to use all of my body weight to tear away, even though it probably meant Death Ginger would tear my actual throat right out of my body. I didn’t care. At least I’d have a fighting chance.
With a final lap at my neck, he stopped. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, but I could still feel him pulling back and throwing me onto the floor by my head. My body felt chilled now. I shivered on the putrid concrete floor.
The asshole slurped noisily like he was leaving a buffet before he’d gotten his fill. His jacket rustled as he moved, and I guessed he was wiping his mouth. “Best meal I’ve had in a while.” He kicked me in the ribs twice, his boots crunching on the floor as he left the bathroom.
My lungs burned. I was dying. No one was around to find me. I had my phone, but I was too weak to reach for it.
Somewhere near my head, I heard the squeak of a rat, and I knew everything would be over for good.
2
I gasped when I woke up, which seemed reasonable given my overall condition. The last time I’d been conscious, I’d been on my way to meet my eternal reward—or whatever—my lungs completely deprived of air. Now, the opposite was true. They had all they could take and then some.
I was also as naked as the day I was born and lying on some mighty nice sheets, too.
They were cotton but the nice kind, like you see with a label that made a big deal out of thread count and sourcing and whatever else justifies charging a hundred bucks to cover your mattress; not that scratchy, cheap shit I had at home.
I couldn’t see myself, not without moving around more than I wanted to, but I didn’t have that “old sweat” feeling people got when they didn’t shower after a workout. The itch of dried blood vanished, and best of all, I couldn’t feel any grime from the nasty bathroom at the gas station.
I didn’t even hurt. Considering the state I’d been in when I passed out, the lack of pain seemed a little implausible.
Maybe I’d died. The idea of me going to heaven seemed about as likely as the idea of me surviving Death Ginger, the human-mosquito, and somehow not having any pain afterward, but one of the two things had clearly happened. I should have at least had a headache after getting hit in the head like that.
“We know you’re awake,” a woman said. She had the slightest hint of an accent. It wasn’t quite French. I guessed she could have been Quebecois. “You might as well open your eyes.”
I did. If she knew I was awake, there wasn’t much point in pretending anymore. I even pushed myself into a sitting position, although, I kept the sheets over my hips for modesty’s sake. When I saw the two women sitting in there with me, I added a pillow.
When I’d blacked out, I’d been alone, with at least one rat and probably the entire cockroach population of Minot, Maine. I woke up with two of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. They were both less than half my age because the universe hated me, and it really hated my libido. One was delicately beautiful, with almost violet eyes and long blonde hair. The other had a slightly tougher look to her, with short dark hair and big dark eyes.
The blonde smirked just a little and leaned into the brunette. “How do you feel, Jason?”
I pulled my knees up against my chest. “H-how do you know my name?”
The blonde laughed, and the brunette snickered. She pulled my wallet out of her jeans pocket and tossed it onto the bed.
“You had this on you when we found you, genius,” the brunette said. It was the first time she’d spoken. If I had to guess, I’d say she came from Chicago or somewhere around there.
“Oh.” I blushed. “Um, where are my clothes?”
The blonde wrinkled her nose and stood up. She’d been sitting on a long, low chaise. Now, she walked closer to me, sitting on the edge of the bed. Her perfume was weird. It didn’t smell like chemicals at all, not like Linda’s used to. It smelled all natural, like marjoram or some other spice. “We burned them. You’d been lying in filth for too long. Don’t worry. Your virtue is perfectly safe with us.”
“We have strong feelings about consent,” the brunette added. “I’m Tess. This is Margaret. Welcome to our humble abode.”
Something felt off about the place, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. “Where are we?”
“We’re near Owl’s Head. It’s some distance from where you were found, but that’s probably for the best anyway.” Margaret smiled gently at me, and the swell of suspicion that had been growing inside of me ebbed. “We brought you here for your own safety. You’ve been here for several days.”
I leaned back against the headboard. “I—shit, I can’t spend days away from work. My ex is going to sue me for everything I’ve ever owned if I get fired.” I glanced over at the candles and finally figured out what was off about my surroundings, other than the women and my nudity. “Is the power out?”
“The house isn’t connected to the grid. We have propane for the stove and the heater, but we don’t need electricity really.” Margaret chuckled like she was making a joke. “Don’t worry. You’re very safe
here.”
I frowned. I didn’t feel unsafe, not around these women. However, I did feel a little bit like a dirty old man, considering the age difference. “What happened?” I rubbed at my neck. “The last thing I remember is being on the floor in that bathroom, getting attacked by some ginger creep.”
Margaret and Tess shared a glance, and Tess took up the narrative. “The ‘ginger creep’ was a vampire,” she said. “You’re very lucky to be alive right now.”
I shuddered. I could still remember trying to pry that jerk’s fingers off of me and getting nowhere. “A fucking vampire. Of course. Happens all the time.” I sighed, gusty and raw before looking at the women again. “I was sure I was going to die. Hell, I thought I was dead. There was a rat, I remember that. I heard it, but I couldn’t even see it any longer, and that was it. Lights out, game over.”
Tess looked away, and Margaret put a hand over mine. I almost wished she wouldn’t do that because I was just a man, a lonely man at that, and I didn’t get a lot of pretty young women holding my hand. I wasn’t going to push her away, though, so I just tried to focus on unpleasant things.
Things like the roaches in that bathroom certainly did the trick.
Margaret shot me a knowing look, her violet eyes dancing, and she gave my hand a little squeeze. “Jason, I’m afraid your life just got a lot more complicated.”
I snorted. “My ex-wife garnishes seventy percent of my salary. I don’t think it gets more complicated than that.”
Tess raised an eyebrow and handed me an ornate silver mirror. I took it, even though I tried to avoid mirrors these days.
She was fast enough to catch it when I dropped it. Every gray hair had vanished, replaced by the same thick mop of dark hair I’d been so proud of in college. Thirty years had disappeared from my face. There were no blemishes or lines, just the stubble of several days without shaving. All of the muscle tone I’d lost over the years was back with a vengeance.
Forever Young Page 1
