by J. Thorn
“Both are light and extremely sharp,” said the one vampire. “Decapitation is the only sure way to kill the enemy.”
She nodded, strapping the dagger’s sheath to her thigh with a rawhide string. The sword had no sheath.
“A scabbard for the sword?” she asked.
“Your hand,” said the vampire. “Until you get to the cave, you will not want your primary weapon anywhere but in your hand.”
She followed them out into the camp where the other vampires pretended not to stare. She wondered how much Voldare had told them, if anything, about the mission. Ultimately, it was in their best interest to redesign their future into something that didn’t require a ruined, empty world. But then again, she knew there were probably factions within the Bloodline that had acclimated to this lifestyle and would fight change, even if it were for the better. She thought of her children who refocused her mind and her mission. The fate of these vampires would ride on hers.
Sometimes, the few make the decisions for the masses. That’s what history has proven.
They walked down the path, back the way Samantha had come when she’d climbed out of hiding behind the rubble of the movie theater. She remembered a movie from her childhood, one where the astronauts walked in slow motion toward the spacecraft launch pad. She felt as though she was now walking in slow motion as well.
The vampires walked on each side of Samantha and stopped as the movie theater came into view. The wind pushed across the battlefield where several of the headless vampire corpses still lay stinking from the most recent skirmish.
“We go no further,” the vampire to Sam’s left said before both of them turned and disappeared back into the woods.
Sam gave them a sarcastic wave before turning to face the movie theater. She slipped behind several thin trees clumped together in the middle of the parking lot. Samantha waited, scanning the horizon for evidence of Silven’s warriors, still not comfortable enough to take flight with her own wings. When she saw nothing, Sam sprinted across the empty parking lot and dove into the pile of rubble she’d hid inside during the battle. She sighed and closed her eyes, listening to the wailing wind.
Sam counted to three, opened her eyes and ran from her hiding spot toward the area in the parking lot where she had climbed over the guardrail from the woods. The dagger hugged her hip but she kept the sword out and up, ready to use it if necessary. As she neared the guardrail, Sam felt her throat tighten. She stopped running and snapped her head to the left and then the right.
Where in the hell did I come up?
Samantha used her sword to move the weeds away from the rusted metal, hoping to locate the place where she’d emerged or at least gain a line of sight into the gulley. She ran five feet to one side and then the other. Sam spun and looked at the movie theater rubble—the gutted doorways and collapsed block walls had fallen in the shapes of bashed-in skulls.
A cold sweat breaking on her forehead, she felt eyes staring at her from within the ruin. She decided to hop the rail and flee into the woods. Then, she’d look for the trail because staying on the edge of the parking lot made her vulnerable.
Sam leapt and turned her ankle, a hoarse cry escaping her lips. She rolled, dropping the sword and smacking her head off a tree. Although her vampire blood would heal her, it did not prevent the pain from radiating through her body.
She blinked and shook her head, her vision fuzzy. A sensation like a bellyful of cold, greasy meat roiled in her stomach. In the past, only two things had ever caused that feeling: Intense hunger for blood, or the precognition of extreme danger on the cusp of erupting.
Sam stood on one foot, hobbled around in a circle and saw nothing but trees in every direction. Even the top of the gulley remained hidden behind low-hanging branches. Sam decided to re-trace her tumble and try to climb back up when she heard the voices of the V.I. warriors reverberating across the empty parking lot.
“Down there. I see her.” The shout bounced against the ruined theater and echoed in the still air.
She sprinted away from her pursuers and stumbled through the trees and deeper into the woods, confused by the pursuit and unsure of which direction she was headed.
***
They did not pursue her quietly.
“This way.”
“She’s over here.”
The voices came from everywhere, echoing off the trees and rattling her skull. The words sounded loud in her ears but the vampires remained calm, systematic. Sam could tell they had hunted prey in the forest before and that made her shiver.
“Eastern edge.”
She heard branches snapping and cracking as the V.I. vampires who spotted her flipped into full pursuit. Samantha wondered if the message was already making its way back to Silven, forcing him to double-down on his efforts to find her. She didn’t think he would have any way of knowing her mission or what was around her neck, but Sam knew that vampires were a crafty bunch and it was quite possible that he did. From the sounds of the search party coming up behind her, they were intent on capturing her.
The ground leveled and she put the embankment behind her. Sam’s ankle swelled and the pain lessened, but it didn’t heal fast enough for her to run at full speed and it wouldn’t have a chance to heal until she could stop and rest it. She only needed a few minutes, minutes she didn’t have.
“Seventy-five yards, heading east.”
Sam caught the black shadow of a V.I. cape coming through the branches. She looked at the trees, deciding it was still wise to run and only to fight when she had no other choice. These were hardened warriors stuck in war for decades and she was an immature vampire.
“Fifty.”
She sprinted to her right, knocking the branches from her face although some ripped at her hair like angry fingers. She pushed on, down a slope to where a creek split the forest in half. It was impossible for her to gauge the depth of the water, but its breadth stretched at least thirty feet from one bank to the other. She lunged forward and immediately regretted the decision.
The swift current yanked at her ankles and Sam panicked. She couldn’t possibly drown, but while her humanity had not been worn away like the other vampires, her human emotions and fears still simmered near the surface.
The water whisked Sam downstream as she slapped at the water and kicked her feet. It pulled her around a bend and for the first time, she saw the V.I. warriors running along the bank on both sides. They shouted and pointed, but Sam couldn’t hear as her head bobbed up and down in the water, the sounds alternating between shouts and rushing water.
Her injured ankle struck a rock, sending a bolt of electric pain up her leg. She screamed, but the cold water filled her mouth with the taste of bitter minerals. Sam spat and reached for a tree root protruding from the creek bed on the right side.
At least I’m not getting hypothermia in this water, she thought.
Silven’s men tossed a net over the creek where the banks squeezed the water into a tight funnel. The water moved faster, but the net stretched across the entire opening. She hit the nylon net and it tore hunks of flesh from her face. Sam twirled and thrashed as the vampires on the west side of the creek pulled her ashore. One of the men grabbed her ankle, sending a new swell of pain up her leg. The other brought a club down on her head. Sam coughed, blinked and then fell into the despair of unconsciousness as the rest of the search party surrounded the net, holding Samantha on the bank.
“Enough. We need to know where she’s going before we take off her head.”
The V.I. warrior holding the club nodded and laid it on his shoulder, but he did not take his hands off the grip.
“Did someone send word to Silven?”
“Yes,” said another warrior. “As soon as she was spotted on the battlefield.”
“Then we do nothing but wait for him.”
They bent down and pulled Samantha’s unconscious body from the net. The vampires took the dagger from her hip and bound her wrists and ankles. She moaned until the warrior
with the club brought it down on her skull again.
11
The rubble came in and out of focus, and for a moment, Samantha thought she saw the movie theater standing in all of its neon glory, the way it had in the distant past. She blinked and like a mirage in the desert, it wavered and faded, revealing nothing but an overshadowing pile of rusted metal and concrete.
The net swung and she felt an aching in her stomach. Sam turned her head sideways and puked through the nylon rope. The vampire captors did not slow down. They kept marching her toward the edge of the parking lot where she saw that Silven and his closest advisors waited.
Samantha closed her eyes, hoping to wait out the vertigo, urging her vampire instincts to dispel the sickness and heal the gash on her head where the club had struck. She felt the power coming to life inside of her, but it couldn’t come fast enough.
They dropped her at the feet of Silven.
Samantha crawled out of the net and looked up at him.
“Who are you?” Silven asked.
“Wonder Woman,” Sam said.
Silven used his polished boots to kick her in the stomach, causing another round of vomiting.
“I know you,” she said, saliva hanging from her lip. “You’re the head of the V.I. Top dog.”
Silven looked around at his vampire warriors.
“So, you are conspiring with Voldare.”
Sam laughed and sat up, pushing the hair from her face. She saw another vampire approach, but this one did not wear the helmet and black cape like the other V.I. warriors. He was winged, red-eyed and clearly a defector from the Bloodline.
“Tun,” she said. “You’re Voldare’s right hand.”
Samantha shook her head, realizing how dire things had just become. The mole. Just as Voldare had feared.
“What is your plan?”
Samantha looked at Silven and then back to Tun.
“I’m just trying to go home. I don’t have a stake in this battle.” No one caught her pun.
Silven stepped in front of Tun, his black cape billowing out behind him in the increasing wind.
“How will you do that, dear?”
Sam stood and Silven’s vampires closed in on her, weapons drawn. He looked around and they lowered their swords.
“Don’t talk down to me,” she said.
Silven turned his head sideways, his mouth falling open. He looked over a shoulder at Tun and smiled. As the vampires had carried her to him in the net, the locket fell out and now lay upon the top of her shirt. Silven reached for it on her chest when Samantha’s hand came up and clenched his wrist.
“It’s mine,” she said.
He broke free of her grasp and yanked the Locket of Lir from her neck. She swatted at his face, but Silven blocked her hand without taking his eyes off the charm.
“We’ve been here, fighting and refining our combat skills, for a long time. Please don’t take it personally.”
He backhanded Sam across the face, knocking her into the dirt. The V.I. warriors chuckled. Tun stood, his red eyes focused on the locket.
“I need that to get back to my children,” Sam said.
“And change the future,” said Silven. “I’m not a fool. I know what you and Voldare have planned. I will not have him, or you, ruin what I’ve built here. We’re not going back. You’re not going back. And because of that, I’m not afraid to tell you that I would know how to stop the pandemic.”
Samantha paused and turned her head sideways.
“You can’t use the locket without me,” Sam said. “It’s worthless if I’m dead.”
Silven narrowed his eyes. “On the contrary, you cannot use the locket without me.”
Sam shook her head. “You have nothing I need.”
“I see you’ve thought of nothing further than returning to your personal life. How exactly do you plan to stop the pandemic, or is that not really on your agenda?”
“Give it to me.” She swiped a hand toward him, but they held her down.
She felt the desperation of truth rising. It was nearly accurate that, at that moment, all Sam could think of were the faces of her children fading from her life forever.
“You will fail at saving humanity. Unless you have a blood sample from a survivor to provide your primitive scientists with the raw materials to develop an antidote—”
“Silven, stop,” Tun said, knowing he wouldn’t.
Silven continued and Sam listened. Listened hard.
“Trust me. I know the science behind it. I used to have a picture in my lab with a quote by Albert Einstein below it. He once said, ‘Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.’ I understand nature and I will find a way to replicate stem cells.”
Bingo.
“You once called yourself a doctor,” she said, putting the contextual clues together.
“I still do.”
“So much for your Hippocratic oath.”
Silven’s cheek muscle twitched and some last, faint vestige of humanity receded behind his hooded eyes.
Sam spun away from Silven’s face and now shot her vitriol at Tun.
“How can you betray Voldare?” Sam asked him. “Why?”
The vampire turned from her, not bothering to answer.
Silven shook his head. “None of that matters. Tun came to me as a vampire free to control his own fate, as you are. He doesn’t want to go back to living in the shadows, fear of being outed or hunted. He’d rather live here, even if it means an occasional battle.”
Sam stood and rubbed the sting of his blow from her face.
“This is your future, too,” Silven continued. “You don’t understand that you’re a vampire and that you’ve been turned. If you destroy our future, you destroy your own future as well.”
She thought about the locket and believed someday she could learn how to wield its power beyond the singular expectation of time travel. While what Silven said was true now, it would not necessarily always be the case. She might be able to learn how to use the locket to prevent her own turning. It was possible but not something she felt comfortable saying to him.
“I don’t care about myself. I care about my children.”
“So noble of you,” Tun said. “You entered this world alone and you’ll leave it that way.”
Samantha grimaced and took a step toward him when Silven stepped between them.
“He’s right and you’ll learn that. You haven’t been around long enough to understand how it all works. Honestly, I don’t care about you or your children. I care about this future, and this locket.”
Silven slid it into his pocket and circled a hand in the air. The guards closed in on Samantha and followed Silven and Tun to the edge of the parking lot where the trees hung low, obscuring sight of the ground from the sky.
***
Sam could have sworn the sun became brighter than it had when she’d arrived, turning red. It seemed scientifically impossible, yet Voldare had claimed the toxic atmosphere would never relent, the outcome of an environmental disaster that had resulted from the pandemic. Yet, the treetops seemed to pierce it from below and the glowing orb turned the shade of blood. The wind came across the parking lot, rippling through the tall grasses. She looked down at her wrists and the chain wrapped around the trunk of a long-dead oak. Sam tugged twice, but despite the dead wood, she could not budge the tree.
Silven and his vampires had left her there, most likely believing she was harmless without the locket. If she did escape, there would be a high chance of her becoming a casualty of the war that was about to erupt.
I can’t die here, she thought. I must give my children the future they deserve.
***
She heard the vampires before she saw them. They sounded like a flock of birds, desperate and screeching in the sky. Samantha looked up as the first shadows moved through the bleeding sun.
Voldare’s army descended on the parking lot, each vampire pulling its wings in tight before landing in formation.
When she saw Silven’s army forming on the other side, their swords out and flashing in the red light, she understood why the Bloodline landed instead of attacking their enemies from the air. The blades of the V.I. would slice through the thin, membranes of the Bloodline’s wings, leaving them at a disadvantage before they even engaged. This battle would be talons on steel, as all the ones before had been. Sam struggled to fully understand why the Bloodline opposed the V.I., but she had no misconceptions about Silven. He fought for this world, like an escaped convict facing a bounty hunter.
Sam saw Voldare. He wasn’t wearing the compassionate veneer he’d conjured up for her in the cell, but rather stood with the rest of his army. Their mouths shrieked and their red eyes burned in hollow sockets. She heard their talons scraping, like metal on metal. She looked over to Silven and made a promise to herself.
I will take the locket from him, no matter what.
Two V.I. warriors appeared from the forest and stood on each side of her.
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
Neither acknowledged her sarcastic comment as they stared out at the battlefield, each army going through its last maneuvers before the fury of hell would be unleashed.
“Please,” she said, taking a different approach. “I don’t care about your war or which of the vampire factions is right. I only want to protect my children.”
Again, neither vampire looked at Samantha. She thrashed back and forth, summoning as much of her vampire strength as she could and yet, it wasn’t enough to break the chains.
She sighed and stared out into the parking lot, past the rubble of the movie theater where Voldare and Silven would meet yet again. She had no way of knowing this ritual would be vastly different than the ones before.
***
“Must we go through this madness again?” Voldare asked.
“We are nothing without our rituals,” said Silven, looking over Voldare’s shoulder and at the line of Bloodline vampires behind him. “I don’t see Tun.”
“Don’t be coy. It does not become you. He has left our camp and I’m sure you’re aware of this.”
