One Night Burns (The Vampires of Livix, #1)

by J Gordon Smith

  “You’re fumbling more with those keys than you did with my bra.”

  “This is my second set and has a whole bunch of keys on it for this place. Many the same brand so it’s hard to sort them out.” He leaned in, “Maybe a pretty girl has me flustered too.” He kissed me deeply. I didn’t care if he found the key.

  But he flicked a key in and with a twist pushed the door open.

  He closed the door putting us in complete darkness. I clutched at his arm while he retrieved something from his pocket. Then an unmistakable sound as flame danced from an old Zippo lighter in his hand. He moved the flame to a well burned candle languishing on a cast iron trivet set on a side table.

  “You smoke or used to?”

  “No. I bought it when I first came up here on my own. I liked the classic sound of those lighters and they work well, especially after a factory refurbishment.”

  “There’s no electricity here?”

  “We turn it off when no one is here.” He pulled off his shoes. I did the same. He walked toward the large living area. “A wind turbine down the shore line in another clearing catches the breezes while photo cell panels bolted on the South and West roofs capture energy on the sunny days to charge batteries and run an inverter.”

  I looked around the living area as much as the flickering candle revealed. Old furniture like gnarled chunks of timber and leather upholstery. Victorian encrusted lamps and lamp shades. Like the inside of the house furnished when built and never changed nor updated. An authentic hunting lodge. What did vampires hunt here? Did I have to guess? “It’s not musty. I worried it might be.”

  “We have a caretaker check on the house and he does a good clean here every couple of months. More frequently in the summer when it gets used more often.”

  “Very Bruce Wayne, my Vampire friend.”

  “No. It’s a guy that works at the school district and runs a house cleaning business on the side. You can imagine everyone up here has several jobs to cover bills – but it’s laid back small town stuff.”

  “So show me more.”

  “This way to the kitchen. The hallway there leads to the first floor bedrooms and bath.” he opened a door with stairs behind that went up, “and more bedrooms with another bath upstairs.”

  “Basement?”

  “No. This rocky shoreline would have taken too much work to put a basement under the house. There’s a storm cellar on one side of the garage for storing root vegetables and in case of tornadoes –”

  “Like Dorothy?”

  “Yeah, like Oz.”

  Garin led me back to the living room. He set the candle on the fireplace mantle. He reached into a bin next to the fireplace and drew a long taper. A flick and ring from his lighter and the taper flamed. He poked it into the readied fireplace. Little flames curled and licked and danced from the taper into paper and some wax starter and burned into the bark and thin sticks. The flames crackled and hungrily burned across the face of larger logs. The fire popped and hissed. Music from the dawn of time that danced with the beats of the distant crash of the waves. A murmur behind the thick stone walls of the house and buttoned up windows as Garin pulled me back to the couch facing the fire.

  We kissed deeply. I pulled at his shirt and he at mine. We stared at each other for a long heartbeat before smashing together. My arms around his head and his around my waist. The fantastic sense of skin on skin. My chest against his as we caressed. My hair flooded across both of our heads. Our pants unbuttoned. Probing.

  I wince in pleasure as he nibbled my breast. I have my hand on his chest, his stomach, and reaching below his belt.

  Garin froze.

  “What?” I pulled my hand back.

  “Shh – I heard something!”

  “Turkeys?”

  “No.” He got up. He buttoned his pants and grabbed his shirt. He tossed my stuff to me, “Get dressed!”

  I’m alarmed. What had been a romantic old hunting lodge now seemed ancient, dark, and foreboding. Stuffed animal heads I hadn’t noticed before now flickered out of the darker recesses of the room. The animals grinned with sharp teeth and wicked scowls. I pulled my top on not worrying about finding my bra. Garin already had his shirt on and his socks and shoes.

  An explosion roiled the fog with a bright red mushrooming fireball. The cabin’s heavy shutters rattled and shook but held firmly against the powerful blast.

  Visible through the thin strips of glass set in the oak entry door we saw Garin’s car burn. Tendrils of flame and chunks of steel landed in hot bits on the ground or bounced around tapping like claws on the metal roof before screeching to the crushed stone drive. Fiery red splashes lit the nearby pine tree trunks and boughs. The car burned ferociously from whatever had caused the explosion.

  Garin dropped shoes at my feet. He opened a kettle near the fireplace and flung water into the pleasantly cheerful fire. Billowing angry gray streamers belched out of the fireplace. Sooty charcoal smoke mixed with additional steam broiling up the chimney hissing like a basket of black snakes.

  The front door exploded free of its hinges. Glass and wood shrapnel shattered across the room bouncing from furniture and walls. Garin tucked me protectively behind his body as across the broken threshold strode three snarling vampires. We recognized their leader as the cowboy with the melting ice cream cone at the Victorian Festival. While he didn’t wear the cowboy hat he still wore his long coat and boots.

  The rear door on the water side of the house crackled open sending bits of wood and metal ricocheting. The breezes brought in two burly vampires. Shutters and glass burst inward as other vampires dove through the windows. Burning red eyes and grim snarls of wicked fangs glinted in the guttering candle light. Their teeth clicked together like insect mandibles. I wanted to shriek and recoil but I stayed silent and dug my nails into Garin’s back as I peeked around him.

  “Who are you?” Garin demanded.

  The cowboy licked his lip, “Your end. That’s all that matters for you. And that little girl too.” He licked his lip again, “Glad you brought a tasty snack.”

  The cowboy pushed his coat back and drew a pair of falchion swords previously shrouded by the coat tails. The smooth blades clearly marked with the Damascus water flow lines.

  Garin bent his legs. He scooped one hand under me and hefted me onto his back. The vampires rushed us. In a fluid motion Garin squatted down and kicked out. The first kick dropped one of the attackers to the ground with a smashed knee. He spun and kicked the second back into the third. I hung on as best as I could. Garin leaped through the open window, touched the gravel as his arms and legs absorbed the shock so I could hang on and then with another bound we vanished into the woods.

  We moved fast. I winced at every branch that whipped out of the darkness. Our furious speed felt like putting your hand out the car window on the freeway and getting hit with mile marker signs.

  I heard calls behind us. Cracking timbers and pounding feet. Ahead and behind a blur of branches and darkness. The scent of pine needles and ghostly limestone boulders and split volcanic blue-black living rock erupted everywhere in jagged fists with clawing talons.

  “ – Hang on really tight ahead.” Garin warned me.

  I hardly got the words out, “You think I’m not already hanging on as tight as I can?” I bumped along as violently as Garin ran.

  “I know the trails here. Our pursuers don’t –”

  Garin ran down what looked like a deer path that curled up like a ski-jump ramp and ended in darkness. Garin launched us into the fog bank and the silence.

  We floated for what seemed like eons. A single bough from a white pine flashed to the right. Another bough flickered through the gloom on the left. I gripped both arms around his neck. I would have choked a normal man to death already. My legs squeezed hard around his waist. I buried my head into the back of his.

  Another bough whisked by. Then another. Then a barrage of them brushing like whispers. Garin’s shoulders and arms lifted as he reached
for a tree branch. His finger tips touched one then the next and, “Now!”

  He twisted his fingers in the needles. He reached deeper with his other arm. The branch bent. He released that branch and hauled on the next. Then the next and the next. At last we dropped a few feet to standing. Like hopping off my couch onto the carpet in my living room. I let go and stood on the soft needles strewing the forest floor.

  “Hold still for a minute. Stay quiet.” Garin flashed into the fog. A swirling dampness floated before me where Garin had been standing on the pine needles surrounded by shadowy black trunks of white pines ready for mayhem.

  My legs wobbled like jelly. I feared I would faint or fall over. I knew my arms would be badly bruised tomorrow. If we lived that long.

  Garin seemed satisfied when he came back to me. No sounds of pursuit nearby. He turned and scooted me on his back again. He whispered, “We have to do more to foil their tracking. They will figure out the leap point too easily.”

  “That fall wasn’t enough?”

  “Not for long.” He started forward toward the sounds of the water, “I had to take an easier route because I didn’t want to risk you.”

  “The easy way?” I gripped his neck.

  Garin sped us down the hill and through a ravine. He hopped across a river and down moss-covered rocks spilling off the cliffs. He bounded from boulder to boulder and a long jump across the sand into the pounding waves obliterating his footprints in the knee-deep water he waded into. He eased into a shallower layer of water but one still ensuring his footprints and our scent churned away in the eddies. Here he didn’t have to worry about brushing me with tree limbs, so like hanging onto the windshield of an accelerating convertible, he really increased his speed.

  Garin cupped his hand close to my ear, “I’m taking us North around The Point. You’ll see the lighthouse at the State Park. Then we’ll come back around to the docks at North Port.”

  I tried saying in his ear, “How long?” But several attempts later he finally understood, like trying to listen to the squeak of a mouse.

  “Twenty or thirty minutes.”

  The square block of the lighthouse appeared out of the mist as its beam pierced the fog when it swept around. Flickering lights in the campground weaved among campers singing around their bonfires. We splashed through the surf like the ghost of Poseidon and vanished before the campers noticed us. Single cottages lined this side of the peninsula as we left the campground area on the Bay side. The shoreline transitioned from sandy and shell-filled beaches into chunky fist-sized polished rocks. I can see the lights of what is probably North Port far to the South. The fog is absent on this side of the peninsula. A sandbar reached across the water and Garin ran along it and jumped from its end. I can’t believe how far he jumps with me on his back. We land in thigh-high water on another sand bar. He’s running again. That jump cut several miles from following the curling harbor.

  We approached the pier lights at the North Port Marina. I can see the pizza shop from earlier in the evening. Garin stopped and set me on a park bench. We watched the marina under its dimly glowing amber overhead lamps and peered along the shore in both directions. A short hill and a utility building shielded us from the town. I pulled my sweater tighter. Unclear if the fear or the chill in the air or dampness from the water spray made me so cold. Garin didn’t breathe hard nor sweat.

  “How do we get home?” I asked.

  “The bus?”

  I smiled faintly, “No.”

  “Either that or I carry you. We’d be there by dawn,” he held his hand out to me.

  “No really, how?”

  “There’s another house of the family’s up here. My Uncle’s. There could be a car at the house.”

  “Don’t you think our attackers could reason we’d go there?”

  “Probably.” Garin watched the waves hit the breaker wall and then said, “But they wouldn’t know about the old airstrip. My Uncle used to fly a single engine plane a lot. He’d keep an old truck at the airstrip and I doubt they’d molest that truck. He kept his plane down state and used that truck when he flew up. Other times he might drive or run to the cabin and never use the truck.”

  His Uncle must be a vampire too and Garin showed me a reason not to laugh off the ‘run to the cabin’ comment. Garin put me on his back and he ran around the perimeter of the town before taking weedy roads toward the airstrip. He plunged into the woods. Old growth trees with sparse underbrush. Like an enchanted storybook forest. Wisps of fog snaked among the tall trunks or lounged in low forest floor depressions. Garin pushed quickly around jutting boulders and into the fringe of trees at the edge of the airstrip and watched the field from behind the trunk of a large pine. A few planes anchored down with a vehicle or two parked loosely on the grass nearby. The rustic airstrip lacked formality of marked parking spaces. A hobby endeavor for weekend fliers or people getting hours in their planes toward certifications. Yellow cones with lazy green flashing lights marked three landing strips and their approaches. Shocks of grass littered cones where the fairway mowers could not reach and no one went out with a string trimmer to touch up such small details. The few sheds on the property lay as half-cylinders of corrugated and galvanized steel against the lawn. The newer sheds showed worn edges and streaks of light corrosion. The older enclosures sported a dozen layers of paint peeling away from rusty scars or that collected debris bubbling and mottling the paint like cancerous growths awaiting their time to burst open and spill their own rusty stain down the siding.

  Garin set me down and motioned for silence while he listened intently. I held my breath and stood as still and quiet as I could. We did not see any sign of movement. He picked me up quietly and sprinted to the buildings. The wind scrubbed so hard against me I closed my eyes until we stopped. We crouched low by one of the buildings like a pair of detectives on a drug bust. We moved from shadow to shadow between the sheds.

  Garin grabbed a door on a particularly ancient hut. A lock hung tightly through the clasp. A few tries from his key ring and the lock popped open. The door creaked and protested as he rolled it aside. Inside a hulking pickup hid under a tarp. The old canvas a powdery gray-white from the dust and bird debris covering it. Garin unhooked the front of the tarp and pulled the canvas off the truck into a pile behind it. Standing tall on its high suspension with commercial tires and cobwebs dripping from its under side gleamed a 1986 fire-brick red Ford pickup. The truck waited silently amid neatly arranged tools and aircraft parts.

  Garin rummaged through rusty coffee cans on the shed’s window sill. He finally retrieved a key fob with an old key on it showing green with age since its last use. He unlocked the truck and stepped in. He pushed the clutch and turned the key in the ignition.

  The truck started like it had been driven recently. Not left to rust for years.

  I hurried to the passenger side and got in. The interior of the spartan cabin smelled of musty leather, rusty iron, and old dry rope.

  Garin pulled the switch plunger to turn on the driving lamps and light up the dashboard. Both the main and auxiliary gas tank fuel needles indicated full. “I always liked this truck. It has a 460 V-8 engine in it. Bulletproof.” He pushed the clutch in and dropped the shifter into first gear. Garin rolled the truck forward into the open air. He got out to close and lock the garage then returned to the cab. He hurtled the truck forward and I bounced around on the seat, up and down against the seat belt, until we left the airstrip and ran smooth on the regular road.

  “Who is your Uncle?”

  “Uncle Tremper used to work at Rhino Laboratories in Livix. He retired and then we haven’t seen him in years. But then vampires can stay low when necessary or from desire.” Garin hit the top of the steering wheel, “I should have left him a note in case he came looking for it.”

  “I think he’ll understand.”

  We drove toward Livix. Mostly in silence. It seemed longer than our drive up there even though Garin drove hard through the night. He kept me aw
ake for a while describing how his Uncle Tremper had taught him how to use the swords of a vampire. “The last I saw of him. My mother might have heard from him more recently though. But he remained transient, always in and out of our lives.”

  We arrived at my building and he followed me up to my apartment door. “I’d give you a good night kiss but it’s morning.”

  I said, “I’ll sleep for a week.”

  “I’m sorry our weekend turned out like it did.”

  “Me too.”

  I watched Garin’s dangerous predatory shape leave the building. Then from inside my apartment I watched the lights of his truck vanish into the morning haze. Dangerous.

  A wave of fatigue splashed over me and I stumbled back to my bedroom shedding my clothes. I made sure to put on clean underwear before curling my blankets around myself. I remember watching a news program once and how they had found some girl dead in her house “naked”. The part they went on and on about. Not that the poor girl had died horribly from something or other nor that her death came from an accident or murder. But that she did not have proper underwear on when she expired. So I wore my underwear.

  I fell quickly asleep.

  -:- Eleven -:-

  “Won’t you sell your business to the Bank of Draydon?” asked Dr. Theron Aravant, the bank’s Chief Executive Officer.

  “No.” said Thyia.

  “Why not?” pleaded Yashar. “It makes perfect sense. The Bank of Draydon has many companies that can supply parts and skilled workers. Vertical integration reduces transfer costs. Your components can supply other Bank funded projects and garner more sales,” he leaned closer to Thyia, “it’s a fair offer. Such a sale slows your personal losses we are currently accruing. You’ve put a lot of cash into the business to sustain operations over the last two years alone.”

  Theron steepled his fingers for effect in these types of discussions, “We’ve been watching your son, Thyia. He’s spending a lot of time with a human girl.”

  “He seems to like her. I can understand why … beauty is a powerful attractor.”