by Morgan Rice
She quickly stepped back into the shade. She couldn’t understand what was going on. Thankfully, it was late in the afternoon. Hopefully this hangover, or whatever it was, would pass quickly.
She tried to think. Where could she go? She wanted to call Jonah. It was crazy, because she barely knew him. And after last night, whatever she’d done, she was sure he’d never want to see her again. But, still, he was the first one who came to her mind. She wanted to hear his voice, to be with him. If nothing else, she needed him to fill her in on what had happened. She desperately want to talk to him. She needed her phone.
She would go home one last time, get her phone and her journal, and get out. She prayed her Mom wouldn’t be home. Maybe, just this one time, luck would be on her side.
*
Caitlin stood outside her building and looked up apprehensively. It was sunset now, and the light didn’t bother her as much. In fact, as night approached, she felt stronger with each passing hour.
She bounded up the five-story walkup with lightning speed, surprising herself. She took the steps three at a time, and her legs weren’t even tired. She couldn’t fathom what was happening to her body. Whatever it was, she loved it.
Her good mood dimmed as she approached her apartment door. Her heart began to pound, as she wondered if her Mom would be home. How would she react?
But as she reached for the doorknob, she was surprised to see that the door was already open, slightly ajar. Her foreboding increased. Why would it be open?
Caitlin walked tentatively into the apartment, the wood creaking beneath her feet. She slowly stepped through the foyer and into the living room.
As she entered she turned her head—and suddenly raised her hands to her mouth in shock. A horrible wave of nausea hit her. She turned and vomited.
It was her Mom. Lying there, slumped against the floor, eyes open. Dead. Her mother. Dead. But how?
Blood oozed from her neck, and collected in a small puddle on the floor. There was no way she could have done it to herself. She had been killed. Murdered. But how? By who? As much as she hated her Mom, she never would have wanted her to end up like this.
The blood was still fresh, and Caitlin suddenly realized that it must have just happened. The ajar door. Had someone broken in?
She suddenly wheeled, looking all around her, feeling the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Was someone else in the apartment?
As if to answer her silent question, at that very moment, three people, dressed head to toe in black, appeared from the other room. They walked nonchalantly into the living room, heading right for Caitlin. Three men. It was hard to tell how old they were—they looked ageless—maybe, late 20s. They were all well-built. Muscular. Not an ounce of fat on them. Well groomed. And very, very pale.
One of them stepped forward.
Caitlin took a step back in fear. A new sense was coming over her, a feeling of dread. She didn’t understand how, but she could sense this person’s energy. And it was very, very bad.
“So,” the leader said, in a dark, sinister voice. “The chicken comes home to roost.”
“Who are you?” Caitlin asked, backing up. She scanned the room for a weapon of some sort. Maybe a pipe, or a bat. She started thinking of exit points. The window behind her. Did it lead to a fire escape?
“Precisely the question we wanted to ask of you,” the leader said. “Your human friend had no answers,” he said, gesturing at her Mom’s body. “Hopefully, you will.”
Human? What was this person talking about?
Caitlin took several more steps back. She didn’t have much room left to go. She was almost flush against the wall. She remembered now: the window behind her did lead to a fire escape. She remembered sitting on it, her first day in the apartment. It was rusted. And rickety. But it seemed to work.
“That was quite a feed at Carnegie Hall,” he said. The three of them slowly approached her, each taking a step forward. “Very dramatic.”
Caitlin scanned her memories desperately.
Feed? Try as she could, she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.
“Why intermission?” he asked. “What was the message you were trying to send?”
She was against the wall, and had nowhere left to go. They took another step closer. She felt certain they would kill her if she did not tell them what they wanted.
She thought as hard as she could. Message? Intermission? She recalled roaming the halls, the carpeted hallways, going room to room. Searching. Yes, it was coming back to her. There was an open door. A dressing room. A man inside. He had looked up at her. There had been fear in his eyes. And then…
“You were in our territory,” he said, “and you know the rules. You are going to have to answer for this.”
They took another step closer.
Crash.
At just that moment, the apartment’s front door shattered open, and several uniformed policeman rushed inside, guns drawn.
“Freeze, motherfucker!” a cop screamed.
The three wheeled and stared at the cops.
They then, slowly, walked towards them, completely unafraid.
“I said FREEZE!”
The leader kept walking, and the cop fired. The noise was deafening.
But, amazingly, the leader didn’t even stop. He smiled even wider, simply reached out his hand, and caught the bullet in midair. Caitlin was shocked to see that he stopped it in mid-air, in his palm. He then held up his hand, slowly made a fist and crushed it. He opened his hand, and the dust slowly poured out onto the floor.
The cops, too, stared back in shock, mouths open.
The leader grinned even wider, reached out and grabbed the cop’s shotgun. He yanked it from him, wound up and struck the cop across the face. The cop went flying backwards, knocking over several of his men.
Caitlin had seen enough.
Without hesitating, she turned, opened the window and climbed through. She jumped onto the fire escape and raced down the rickety, rusted steps.
She ran for all she was worth, twisting and turning. The old fire escape probably hadn’t been used in years, and as she rounded a corner, a step gave way. She slipped and screamed, but then caught her balance. The entire fire escape shifted and swayed, but it didn’t give completely.
She had descended three flights when she heard the noise. She looked up, and saw the three of them jump onto the fire escape. They started descending, impossibly fast. Much faster than her. She increased her pace.
She reached the first floor, and saw that there was nowhere to go: it was a 15 foot jump down to the sidewalk. She turned her neck, saw that they were coming. She looked back down. No choice. She jumped.
Caitlin braced herself for the impact, and expected it to be bad. But to her surprise, she landed she landed lithely on her feet, like a cat, with hardly any pain. She took off at a sprint, feeling confident she would leave her pursuers, whoever they were, far behind.
As she reached the end of the block, surprised by her incredible speed, she looked back, expecting to see them far away on the horizon.
But she was shocked to see that they were only a few feet behind her. How was that possible?
Before she could finish the thought, she felt bodies on top of her. They were already tackling her down to the ground.
Caitlin summoned all of her newfound strength to fight off her attackers. She elbowed one of them, and was pleasantly surprised to see him go flying several feet. Encouraged, she wheeled over and elbowed the other one, and was again happily surprised to see him go flying in the other direction.
The leader landed squarely on top of her, and began to choke her. He was stronger than the others. She looked up into his large, coal black eyes, and it was like staring into the eyes of a shark. Soulless. It was the look of death.
Caitlin used all her might, every last ounce of her strength, and managed to roll and throw him off of her. She jumped back to her feet, once again in a sprint.
But she had
n’t gotten far before she felt herself tackled once again, by the leader. How could he be that fast? She had just thrown him across the alley.
This time, before she could fight back, she felt knuckles across her cheek, and realized he had just backhanded her. Hard. The world spun. She regained consciousness quickly, and prepared to fight back, when suddenly she saw the two others kneeling beside her, pinning her down. The leader extracted a cloth from his pocket.
Before she could react, the cloth was over her nose and mouth.
As she took one last, deep breath, the world spun, turned foggy.
Before the world turned to complete blackness, she could have sworn she heard a dark voice whisper in her ear: “You are ours, now.”
Chapter Nine
Caitlin woke to complete blackness. She felt a cold, metal pain on her wrists and ankles, and her limbs were sore. She realized she was chained. Standing. Her arms were outstretched, by her sides, and she tried to move them, but they didn’t budge. Neither did her feet. She heard a rattle as she tried, and felt the cold, hard metal dig harder into her wrists and ankles. Where the hell was she?
Caitlin opened her eyes wider, heart pounding, trying to get a feel for where she was. It was cold. She was still dressed, but barefoot, and she could feel cold stone beneath her feet. She also felt stone along her back. She was up against a wall. Chained to a wall.
She looked hard about the room and tried to make something out. But the blackness was absolute. She was cold. And thirsty. She swallowed, and her throat was dry.
She tugged for all she was worth, but even with her newfound strength, the chains did not budge. She was completely stuck.
Caitlin opened her mouth to yell for help. The first attempt didn’t work. Her mouth was too dry. She swallowed again.
“Help!” she screamed, her voice coming out raspy. “HELP!” she screamed again, and this time gained real volume.
Nothing. She listened hard. She heard a faint, swooshing noise somewhere in the distance. But from where?
She tried to remember. Where was she last?
She remembered going home. Her apartment. She frowned, remembering her Mom. Dead. She felt deeply sorry, as if somehow it were her fault. And she felt remorse. She wished that she could have been a better daughter, even if her Mom wasn’t great to her. Even if, as her Mom had blurted out the day before, she wasn’t really even her daughter. Had she really meant it? Or was it just something she had thrown out in a time of anger?
Then…those three people. Dressed in black. So pale. Approaching her. Then… The police. The bullet. How they had stopped the bullet? What were these men? Why had they used the word “human”? She would have thought that they were merely delusional, if she had not seen them stop that bullet in mid air.
Then…the alley. The chase.
And then…. Blackness.
Caitlin suddenly heard the creak of a metal door. She squinted, as a light appeared in the distance. It was a torch. Someone was coming towards her, carrying a torch.
As he got closer, the room lit up. She was in a large, cacophonous room, entirely carved from stone. It looked ancient.
As the man got close, Caitlin could see his features. He held the torch up, to his face. He stared at her as if she were an insect.
This man was grotesque. His face was distorted, making him look like an old, haggard witch. He grinned, and revealed rows of small, orange teeth. His breath stank. He came within inches of her, and stared. He raised a hand to her face, and she could see his long, curved, yellow fingernails. Like claws. He dragged them slowly along her cheek, not enough to draw blood, but enough to make her repulsed. He grinned even wider.
“Who are you?” Caitlin asked, terrified. “Where am I?”
He only grinned further, as if examining his prey. He stared at her throat, and licked his lips.
Just then, Caitlin heard the sound of another metal door opening, and saw several torches approaching.
“Leave her!” shouted a voice from the distance. The man standing before Caitlin quickly scurried away, backing up several feet. He lowered his head, admonished.
A whole group of torches approached, and as they got close, she could see their leader. The man who had chased her down the alley.
He stared back, offering a smile with the warmth of ice. He was beautiful, this man, ageless, but terrifying. Evil. His large, charcoal eyes stared at her.
He was flanked by five other men, all dressed in black like him, but none as large or as beautiful as he. There were also two women in the group, who stared back at her with equal coldness.
“You must excuse our attendant,” the man said, his voice deep, cold, and matter-of-fact.
“Who are you?” Caitlin asked. “Why am I here?”
“Forgive these harsh accommodations,” the man said, running his hand along the thick metal chain that held her to the wall. “We’d be more than happy to let you go,” he said, “if only you would answer a few questions.”
She looked back, unsure what to say.
“I will begin. My name is Kyle. I am Deputy Leader of the Blacktide Coven,” he paused. “Your turn.”
“I don’t know what you want from me,” Caitlin answered.
“To start with, your coven. Who do you belong to?”
Caitlin wracked her brain, trying to figure out if she had lost her mind. Was she imagining all of this? She thought she must be stuck in some sort of sick dream. But she felt the very real cold steel on her wrists and ankles, and knew she was not. She had no idea what to tell this man. What was he talking about? Coven? As in…vampire?
“I don’t belong to anyone,” she said.
He stared for a long while, then slowly shook his head.
“As you wish. We have dealt with rogue vampires before. It’s always the same: they come to test us. To see how secure our territory is. After that, more follow. That’s how territory shifts begin.
“But you see, they never get away with it. Ours is the oldest strongest and coven in this land. No one kills here and gets away with it.
“So I ask again: who sent you? When do they plan to invade?”
Territory? Invasions? Caitlin couldn’t understand how she was not dreaming. Maybe she had been slipped some sort of drug. Maybe Jonah had slipped her something. But she didn’t drink. And she never did drugs. She was not dreaming. This was real. Too awfully, incredibly real.
She could’ve just dismissed them as a group of completely crazy people, as some weird cult or society that was completely delusional. But after all that had happened in the last 48 hours, she actually found herself thinking twice. Her own strength. Her own behavior. The way she felt her body changing. Could vampires be true? Was she one of them? Had she stumbled into the middle of some kind of vampire war? That would be just her luck.
Caitlin stared back, thinking. Had she really killed someone? Who? She couldn’t remember, but she had this awful feeling that what he said was true. That she had killed someone. That, more than anything, made her feel terrible. She felt an awful feeling of pity and regret wash over her. If it was true, she was a murderer. She could never live that down.
She stared back at him.
“I wasn’t sent by anyone,” she said, finally. “I don’t remember exactly what I did. But whatever I did, I did it on my own. I don’t really know why I did it. I’m really sorry for whatever I did,” she said. “I didn’t mean it.”
Kyle turned and looked at the others. They looked back at him. He shook his head, and turned back to her. His glare turned cold and hard.
“You take me for a fool, I see. Not wise.”
Kyle gestured to his subordinates, and they hurried over and uncuffed her chains. She felt her arms drop, and was relieved to have the blood flow back to her wrists. They uncuffed her ankles next. Four of them, two on one each side, got a tight grip on her arms and shoulders.
“If you won’t answer to me,” Kyle said, “then you will answer to the Assembly. Just remember, you have chosen t
his. They will show no mercy, as I may have done.”
As they led her away, Kyle added, “Make no mistake, you will be killed either way. But my way would have been quick and painless. Now you will see what suffering is.”
Caitlin tried to resist as they dragged her forward. But it was useless. They were leading her somewhere, and there was nothing she could do but embrace her fate.
And pray.
*
When they opened the oak door, Caitlin could not believe her eyes. The room was enormous. Shaped in a huge circle, it was lined with hundred-foot-tall stone columns, ornately decorated. It was well lit, torches placed every 5 feet, all throughout the room. It looked like the Pantheon. It looked ancient.
As she was led in, the next thing she noticed was the noise. It was a huge crowd. She looked around and saw hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women dressed in black, moving quickly all about the room. There was a strangeness to how they moved: it was so fast, so random, so…inhuman.
She heard a swooshing noise, and looked up. Dozens of these people leapt, or flew, through the room, going from floor to ceiling, from ceiling to balcony, from column to ledge. That was the whooshing noise she had heard. It was as if she had entered a cave full of bats.
She took it all in and was completely, utterly, shocked. Vampires did exist. Was she one of them?
They led her to the center of the room, chains rattling, her bare feet cold on the stone. They led her to a spot in the center of the floor, designated by a large, tile circle.
As she reached the center, the noise gradually died down. The motion slowed. Hundreds of vampires took positions in a huge, stone amphitheater before her. It looked like a political assembly, like the pictures she had seen of the state of the union address—except, instead of hundreds of politicians, these were hundreds of vampires, all staring at her. Their order and discipline was impressive. Within seconds, they were all perfectly seated, quiet as can be. The room fell silent.
As she stood in the center of the room, held in place by the attendants, Kyle stepped off to the side, folded his hands, and lowered his head in reverence.
Before the assembly sat an immense stone chair. It looked like a throne. She looked up and saw that seated in it was a vampire who looked older than the others. She could tell that he was absolutely ancient. There was something about his cold, blue eyes. They stared down at her as if they had seen 10,000 years. She hated the feeling of his eyes on her. They were evil itself.
