The Blood Talisman

by Kim Culpepper

  He attempted to balance himself again by putting his arms and hands straight out to either side of him. He crept over slowly to the man by the deer and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Hey buddy, what happened? I didn’t hit ya, did ya? I mean, did I?”

  Alex glared up at the man through the tears that streaked the blood on his face. Blood dripped from Alex’s chin and covered the tight black and grey female shirt he had put on earlier. Mud still covered his green scrub pants and he couldn’t imagine the sight that he looked at the moment.

  “Oh shit,” the drunken man said, “what the fuck happened to you? Man, I’m sorry. Did I do this?”

  Alex composed himself and took the bloody shirt off and wiped his face with it. He turned his hands back and forth to stare at the blood that covered them. He was completely ignoring the drunk man who stood there in shock, staring at him. Alex pulled himself up off the ground and walked back to his stolen Mustang.

  “Hey, where you goin’?” the drunk man hollered out.

  Alex got in the car and glanced over onto the passenger seat at the cell phone he had stolen along with the car. He wanted to call Amalia again, to hear her voice for comfort. He wouldn’t tell her what had just happened. He was shaking as he dialed her number. The cell phone repeatedly beeped to warn him the battery was nearly out so he knew he didn’t have long.

  “Hello, Alex is that you?”

  She sounded worried, tearful even. Alex figured she needed him home as much as he needed to be there.

  “Amalia… I had a… um… I’m on my way home, sweetie.”

  “Alex, there are some people here looking for you. Please hurry.”

  “What’s wrong?” Alex asked anxiously.

  Amalia screamed.

  “Amalia? Amalia?” Alex yelled into the phone.

  The phone dropped and Alex heard breathing sounds and gurgling in the background.

  “Amalia!” Alex yelled into the phone once more.

  The cell phone beeped its last beep and died. Alex threw it down and slammed the door to the Mustang. He floored the vehicle, leaving the drunk from the BMW in his dust.

  Alex drove through town after town. He would stop at nothing to get to Amalia at this point. The Mustang got good gas mileage and he was in Mississippi before he knew it. He had driven as far as the car would let him. The car sputtered and came to a stop, somewhere near Greenville. Alex had no money to get gas. He was only a couple of hours away by car but he looked too much of a mess to try and hitch a ride.

  “Maybe I can concentrate and use these new powers of mine to get to her quickly,” he thought.

  His new idea of travel terrified him. His mind raced and he found focusing to be a challenge. In between the meal he’d reluctantly eaten and the realization of werewolves being real, he couldn’t concentrate on the littlest of tasks. Amalia would be his muse. She would be his compass and he would concentrate on the thought of returning to her.

  He decided to hoof it. He stepped out of the car onto the highway as a big diesel truck flew past him, honking its horns in an irritated tone. Alex looked along the road and saw a sign that told him Greenville was twenty-nine miles and Indianola was fifty miles away. Alex sighed: he had a long way to go. He felt anger rise within him and he closed his eyes, listening to the speeding vehicles that zipped passed him. He felt the wind on his face and it calmed him a bit, but the anger was almost unbearable.

  He looked to a nearby forest and headed that way. His head began to pound and his heart began to race. The feeling of fire in his veins had returned and he prayed for the pain to stop, but it only made him angrier. He was angry for what had happened to him, angry for the Mustang being dead, and mostly angry because he was not getting to Amalia as fast as he wanted. Much to his disappointment, he was returning to the beast. The wolf within overcame his body and he began to run through the forest.

  He raced through woods, along roads and past houses. He felt the wind hit his face. The noises of the people he passed engulfed him: their very breathing and the highs or lows of their voices as they chatted on their phones, talked to their pets, or laughed at their televisions. The sounds of the internet going through phone lines and the sound of every raindrop there and in between. He felt and heard everything, but it went so fast that he never had time to even think of each moment that happened. And he was finally there.

  He stood at the doorstep of the home he shared with Amalia. He was breathing heavily and he fell to the ground. His anger finally left him and now he was only filled with worry and love for Amalia.

  The door was ajar but there was no sign or sound of life. Alex slowly pushed the red front door fully open. He noticed that Amalia had finally gotten that brass door knocker that she’d always wanted.

  Alex stepped inside and caught the smell of blood emanating from throughout the house. Something big had happened here and he was scared of what he might find. He didn’t want to find her dead. He crept into the foyer. Amalia’s keys to her car were thrown on the floor, along with some unopened mail. The living room looked almost normal, except for the TV, which was snowy.

  Alex walked over to the TV and turned it off with the push of his finger. He stopped to listen and see if he would hear a breath, a heartbeat, or any sign that she might be here and alive. The silence felt like a lump in his throat that he could not swallow down.

  “Either she’s not here or she’s…” He couldn’t bear the thought of her dead, but he needed to find her to ease his mind either way. The smell of blood got stronger as he neared the corner to their kitchen and dining room area. “Please don’t be dead,” he kept saying to himself.

  Blood covered a huge section of the gray ceramic tile in between the stove and the sink cabinets. He knelt down beside the pool of blood and began to smell. It was her sweet blood. He recognized the perfume that she always wore and the smell of her was distinct.

  “Please God, please God,” Alex whispered.

  He sat backwards onto his feet and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath of the blood-scented air and a vision of her came to him. He saw what had happened, but it was faint. He only got glimpses. Her screaming, the cell phone dropping from her hand, and her beautiful chestnut hair whipping the men across the face as they struggled to hold her tight. One face he recognized and it made him immediately angry. It was his commander’s face. It was Commander Fortner.

  He saw the Commander throw her to the ground and held her hands together in his.

  “Where is he?” he yelled at her.

  She shook her head back and forth violently. He held her down tightly to the floor and he licked her on the neck. She cried out, but Alex heard no words. Their voices began to fade so he took a second sniff of the pool of blood on their kitchen floor.

  This time she lay there crying with nobody holding her down. The other man stood over her as she cried. He was laughing at her tears. He began to chant words that were unrecognizable to Alex, but he kept listening. He then leaned down to her and held her body down with one hand. The anger within Alex was now pounding in his head like a pulse. He knew that he was about to change to the wolf, but he held on to learn what happened to his Amalia.

  The man bit her just above her clavicle and he began to drink her blood. The blood that escaped his mouth ran onto the floor in the kitchen. Amalia lost consciousness and the images faded. He lost the connection.

  It was the end of the nightmare. He could not tell if she was alive or dead. He couldn’t bear the thought of her dead. Tears filled his eyes and rage filled his heart and soul. He changed into the beast and tore at his clothes and began to run through the house that was once theirs. He slashed the couch and pulled all of the stuffing out. He knocked over the TV and ripped out the wires from the back. He rolled on the ground and clawed at the carpet. The beast slowly turned back to Alex.

  He sobbed into his hands, thinking about everything that had happened to him within the last few days. Now his wife was missing. He would peel his own skin fr
om his bones to get her back. He lay there on the living room floor looking up at the ceiling fan. It turned slowly. He watched it every turn and concentrated on the hum to calm himself. He drifted until he was asleep.

  Chapter 7

  Commander Fortner pushed what was left of Dr. Jackson into the crematorium located in the basement of the hospital. He brushed his hands together as if he had just taken out the trash. A hand patted him on his shoulder. It rather startled him until he noticed it was the hand of the CEO of the hospital. Fear immediately spread into his stomach and it gurgled with uneasiness.

  “You need to stop and eat. Keep your strength up, John,” he eerily whispered into the Commander’s ear.

  Not many people got away with calling him John but he didn’t object to anyone in Administration calling him by his first name for obvious reasons.

  “Yes sir. Been busy, Mr. Strix.”

  “Please call me Ram. My last name kind of gives it away, don’t you think? I come from a long line of vampires. Maybe it’s time to change our surname.”

  John wrinkled his forehead up at Ram in confusion.

  “Strix is Greek for owl, but it soon became a bad omen when we were cursed to feed on the blood and flesh of humans. Since the turn of my blood line, we have searched for immortality and the necromancer that made us. As soon as one of us got close enough, death would always swoop in to claim us. My father got the closest and even attempted to kill him. That’s when we learned that he can only be killed by one of his children. Nobody wants his power more than his son Sol so I set out to make him my best friend,” Ram responded to his puzzled look.

  John locked the door to the crematory and turned to face Ram. “You think he would really kill his own father?”

  “Undoubtedly he hates the guy. An eternity is a long time to wait for power that you would inherit upon your father’s death. Sol has his own agenda though. He doesn’t want to share the power so he wants his sisters dead as well. We will see how it goes when they are all in the same room.

  “Anything else?” John said, as he rubbed two fingers across his lips.

  Ram’s knowledge made him nervous and he wanted to be done with this conversation. He found the less he knew in this place, the better off he was.

  “I wanted to commend you on getting our escapee’s wife and bringing her to us. However, we were not happy with the guy that went with you and we want to know how you lost control of the situation.”

  “I was looking for Jacobs in the house and…”

  He was interrupted by Ram’s hand over his mouth. Ram pushed him back into the sheetrock wall of the dim basement. The sheetrock cracked under the pressure of the Commander’s body and the vampire’s strength.

  “We are not to call them by any name other than what they are, and, in this case, he is an ‘escapee’. When he is found he will be an ‘asset’. Do I make myself clear? If I have to tell you again, you will be joining Dr. Jackson in the crematory.”

  Ram slowly took his hand off of John’s face, finger by finger, and pulled him away from the wall. John dusted the sheetrock bits off of his clothes and looked back up at Ram.

  “Yes sir, I understand. It won’t happen again.”

  John continued staring into Ram’s face for further approval but his blank stare was hard to read. Ram really never showed emotion on his face other than when he was about to eat someone. “The escapee was believed to be hiding within the house and I was searching for him, but I had to leave my assistant alone with the escapee’s wife to do so. When I came back, he was feeding on her and I stopped him. It was my mistake for leaving him there and it won’t happen again.”

  John lowered his head, waiting for the punishment that would surely result from this incident.

  “You were lucky to escape from him. I’m surprised he had that much control. Most vampires cannot stop until their victim meets death. You are right though, it will not happen again. I sent you guys there to do a job and he wanted to prove himself, but he will never get the opportunity again. He has been fed to our assets. Its good game for them, you know? Nothing like practicing on your own kind, of course, but vamps are close enough. Wolves and vamps are not all that different: both were created by witches, both gain their strength from the blood energy of humans. The difference is that we are smarter than those stupid little mutts. We will gain control of the blood talisman before they get close to even finding out that there is a blood talisman that will make them immortal.”

  They began to walk back towards the large meeting room where Dr. Jackson had had his first and last meeting with Administration. John’s normal demanding footsteps were light and soft as mice. He made no attempt to overstep Ram in any way. He knew to never cross a man that could overtake him and kill him in the same death stroke. He never minded handling assets, but at the end of every day, Ram and the other vamps in Administration were in charge.

  Ram held the door to the meeting room open for John and they both walked in together. The long table that decided every hospital worker’s fate was being cleaned by two very weary housekeepers. One wiped the long table down while the other mopped the floor. Administration’s ‘lunch’ had gotten a bit messy.

  “Rameses!” a familiar female voice called from the back of the room. Its owner began to trot towards John and Ram and she put her tan, manicured fingers around Ram’s arm. Ram kissed her on the forehead, just below her glowing blonde hair, and she smiled in approval.

  “John, you’ve met my wife, Ember. Ember, this is Commander John Fortner. He has been quite a blessing. He follows instruction really well.”

  “Yes, I believe we have met before when you brought in the escapee’s wife. She’s been next to unmanageable, Ram. I need to know what you have planned for her.”

  “The escapee will search for her. My plan is being set forward as we speak. It won’t take him long to follow the scent back to here. In the meantime, I want John to take some of our other assets to condition the escapee’s environment. I need him strong. I need him to feed on human flesh. Do you think you can handle that, John?”

  “Yes Mr. Strix… I mean, Ram. May I request one of your vamps to tag along? To help keep our assets in line.”

  “I’d love to go, Ram,” Ember offered, before Ram could answer.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Ember. You’re too valuable. You and four other men? I think that you would be a little outnumbered, don’t you think?”

  She pulled her manicured finger off of Ram’s arm and looked at him in spite. She put her hand up on her hip and said, “Outnumbered? HA!” She kicked off her heels and walked over to the tired housekeepers. They immediately stopped cleaning and looked up at her.

  “Yes ma’am?” the one mopping the floor asked.

  In one quick movement Ember snapped her neck and her lifeless body fell to the floor that she so assiduously attempted to clean. The other housekeeper began to scream but, before she could holler out much of a shriek, she was dropped to the floor in a similar fashion. Ember turned back to look at John and Ram in a ‘how about now?’ way.

  “My wife, such the dramatist.” Ram sighed and rolled his eyes. “Okay, you can go, Ember, but that was such a waste of good blood.”

  “I will prepare right away, sir!” Ember said excitedly. She saluted Ram as a soldier would.

  “Now John, you guard her with your life. She is not there to protect you. Remember that!” Ram said as he poked one finger at John’s chest.

  “Of course, sir,” John replied and bowed his head in agreement.

  Chapter 8

  A drip of water hit Alex on the forehead as he lay asleep on the living room floor of the house where he and Amalia had made so many great memories of their life together. Thunder sounded in the distance and rain smashed furiously against the windowpane outside. He sleepily cracked his eyes open and turned his head to the side. A picture of the two of them frolicking on the beach together was barely hanging onto the wall above where their TV used to be. It now lay on
the floor beside him, in shambles.

  Another drip of water hit his temple and he turned his head back to see where this strange leak was coming from.

  “Hey there!” a female voice called from above him. She had a golden glow around her head until he rubbed his eyes and realized that it was actually her wet blonde hair.

  “Uhhh,” Alex muttered and rubbed the water off of his forehead.

  “Alex? You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow, who woulda thaught that you would turn into a wolf.”

  Alex’s eyes popped completely open and now he was surely awake. Selene’s familiar voice resonated with him and his curiosity was piqued.

  “Selene? How do you know what I am?” he asked, as he sat up and turned to face her.

  “More importantly, how did you get scratched by a werewolf?”

  Alex rubbed his head. Her voice was giving him a headache. He longed to hear Amalia’s sweet voice again. He longed for her touch and her smell.

  “I was on duty overseas and…”

  He stopped short because he felt slightly faint. He turned towards the back of his couch and leaned against it.

  “You need to keep your strength up, little wolf. When was the last time that you fed?”

  “I… well… how do you know what’s wrong with me?”

  “I heard the commotion last night when I was passing by. I was curious so I peeped in through the window and saw you, or rather the wolf, and I haven’t seen one of those since I was a little girl.”

  She continued on but it sounded more like mumbles to Alex. Selene’s scent was beginning to overwhelm him and it even made him a little nauseous. It was a sweet smell and surely any normal man would be more than happy to have her as his own, but Alex only wanted Amalia and her beautiful scent. She always smelled of sweet fruits. Peaches and pears. Citrus and apple. Selene was more lilac and fresh linen.

  “Smells,” he interrupted Selene’s unwelcome banter.

  “Excuse me?” Selene replied.