Vampire Vacation

by D C Young

  “You are no match for me, Lady TamTam.”

  “How the hell do you know my name?”

  She spun in his direction, leading with her katana. No such luck. He’d jumped out of the way.

  His minions were beginning to grab at her. She didn’t want to kill innocents, but if they pissed her off she would. Shrugging them off, she advanced on the vampire.

  “At least let me know your name before I kill you,” she said.

  He threw back his head, laughing. “Why I’m the King of the Vampires.”

  She didn’t see the humor in and she saw humor in most things. How did one get to be King of the Vampires? She didn’t even know they had a king.

  Didn’t matter. His reign would be short. She slashed at him, but once again he managed to get out of range. Was she losing her touch? Or was it the fact that he was an old vampire with a lot of power.

  “Tell your vampire hunting friends that my people will not take it anymore,” he said.

  “Take what? Being turned into dust? Tough.”

  He laughed again and she took that moment to run at him. He sidestepped her. She glanced back at his followers. They gathered at one end of the forest. Good. She wouldn’t have to kill any of them. Those bodies were much harder to dispose of.

  They began to chant. It sounded like they were in church. She rolled her eyes, and then concentrated on her target. She had no idea who he was or why he’d come into her territory, but he was going out as dust in the wind.

  She never failed so it didn’t matter how many times he laughed. She would take him down. Wiping her mouth, she faced him with renewed vigor.

  “Prepare to die.”

  “Au contraire, Lady TamTam. I’m going to be very much alive. We will meet again, but today is not the day of my death.”

  This time she could detect a hint of a French accent. Great. Now vampires were illegal aliens. As if she didn’t have enough on her plate. Vampires were coming here from other countries.

  She didn’t care what his country of origin was; he was still going to be dead. Dust. A former vampire.

  “Pretty words, but they don’t mean a damn thing to me,” she said.

  She advanced on him. He stepped back. She stepped forward. He stepped back. Into a tree. She smiled. She couldn’t help it. He was toast. Or dust. Hers, no matter what.

  She lunged at him, but her katana only caught the tree. Something flapped past her.

  “Shit.”

  She yanked her sword out of the tree, but the vampire was long gone. “Damn.”

  Now she had the followers to deal with. She swung the katana in an arc then whooshed herself out of the copse. No one followed.

  When she reached the top of the hill, she paused pulling out her phone. Someone higher up needed to know about this.

  Chapter Eight

  Mary Lou

  Surviving River Street.

  Damn, it’s hot today! I thought to myself as I sipped on a strawberry daiquiri from Saddlebags bar.

  The sun was shining down on River Street that afternoon and I was ever so thankful for Savannah’s open container law… as long as it was in a plastic cup, we could walk on the street with it no matter what it was. As selfish as it might sound, seeing as Sam’s ability to imbibe was limited by her ‘condition’, we always had a designated driver. But Rick and I had both planned on taking full advantage that day, so we’d called our airport Uber driver, Dani, to help us out for the trip downtown.

  The trees planted along the street were also casting generous amounts of shade which was greatly appreciated as well. The weather had been pretty mild up until a day ago when the sun started shining as if it had nowhere else to shine but on Savannah. The kids had loved that of course; they spent most of the day at the villa on the beach getting as brown as five little beans. Even Tammy hadn’t been able to resist the call of the waves.

  The cousins had found a turtle nest, seagull roost and countless other wonders of nature along the beach and most evenings they would take to the shore and walk for miles. I’d observed them from the balcony doing things I remembered doing with Sam and our other siblings as kids; skipping stones, hunting for sticks, picking berries and eating them straight from the bushes in the garden.

  I don’t think I’ve seen those kids so happy and at peace in a really long time…

  Innocent, that was the word I think I was looking for. In any case, whatever it was, I was glad they had found it on this trip.

  I looked around for them as I sat for a minute on a wrought iron bench facing the river. Tammy and Anthony were reading the names on the bricks around the World War II memorial. It was a huge monument featuring two halves of a cracked Earth; a world divided in two. All over it and around it in concentric circles are the names of the fallen and the missing who served in the war from the Greater Savannah area.

  My three were on their hands and knees making paper and charcoal rubbings of any famous last names they could find to take back to their teachers at school in the Fall. They all looked very happy.

  Sam stood near the river bank in the full sun, taking photographs. She loved the warmth of the sun on her otherwise cool skin. She reminded me of a turtle laying out on a rock in the pond to bask in the sun and warm up. We’d both referred to this new condition as her cold-bloodedness; it wasn’t disparaging, just a fact.

  I was glad to see her back at her photography. It was something she’d enjoyed before becoming a vampire; something she’d ceased to get enjoyment from. But now, she was taking it up again and it made her happy.

  Everyone’s happy, Mary Lou. Happy, happy, happy! What makes you happy though?

  Seeing my family like this… that’s what makes me happy. We’ve had so many close calls and losses the past ten or so years; weathered so many storms and had so many triumphs. It was just great to see everyone relaxed, rested, enjoying a moment in time without the memories or influences of the past bogging them down.

  We were having new experiences, doing new things and even meeting new people.

  Speaking of meeting new people…

  I looked at my watch. It was about that time. We had to get going to the other side of the Hyatt hotel. Some friends of Sam’s, Vaughan Sisters, were supposed to be meeting us by the Savannah Belles Ferry to take us on a tour of the East end of River Street.

  Personally, I just wanted to have lunch, let a bartender pour another strawberry daiquiri in my cup and get my hands on some of those famous pralines I’d heard so much about!

  Chocolate covered, please!

  Within the next fifteen minutes, I’d managed to accomplish the first two things on my short list. The pralines came later but they were definitely worth the wait. I wouldn’t leave until I had two one-pound boxes filled with four different varieties of their pralines.

  After that, we shopped for souvenirs and cute little antiques at the end of the street. The walk back up to the street level wasn’t too strenuous but when we realized how far we were from where we’d agreed to wait for Dani, Rick stepped out to the edge of Bay Street and hailed a taxi for us.

  By the time, Dani had the car pointed down US 80, there were kids nodding off to sleep and tipsy adults who couldn’t wait to get back to the villa and order pizza for dinner.

  Chapter Nine

  Tammy

  I saw a vampire today…

  Yeah, you read that right… I saw a vampire today, and it wasn’t my Mom.

  We were in the Bonaventure Cemetery when it happened; strolling down the walkways and looking at the cool old graves. There was a small group of people who looked like they were visiting one of the family plots. It was a beautifully arranged one; one of the more elaborate sites. A statue of an angel the size of an adult woman sat on top of the crypt, wings folded and with her head rested on one hand as if she were deep in thought… or grieving.

  Seven people milled around the double burial plot. Some were pulling weeds; others carefully wiped the marble headstones clean from dust and grime. Ther
e were five graves in addition to the angel’s. The six who were cleaning up were humans; it was easy to tell. They kept their heads down, fully consumed with their tasks but whenever they did pause to look up at passersby, a tinge of disdain for the picture snapping, chattering tourists was evident.

  They were unremarkable but the creature that stood by the angel’s feet, softly stroking the ankles and toes of the statue, was different. He was tall and of slender build. Despite the heat and humidity, he was dressed in full black, trench coat and boots included, of course. What gave him away was his glowing, pale skin slathered in heavy coats of sunscreen… SPF, about a thousand. He looked exactly like my mom used to a couple years back when she would pick us up from school. Also, I had difficulty reading his mind. A dead giveaway! Did you see what I did there? LOL.

  Anyway, I was pretty much convinced at that point but to be sure, I put my phone into my back pocket and reached into my bag for the little ULTA compact I always carried. I pulled out a tube of pink lip gloss too, for good measure. Then, I turned my back to him, opened the compact and applied my lip gloss. Bingo! He cast no reflection in my mirror! I probably should have been more scared than I was just then but my mom was a vampire too, a proven badass and she was just a few steps ahead of me admiring a Roman style archway that was dubbed ‘The Gateway to Heaven’ by local visitors.

  I took one last look at Mister Vampire, nodded my head in acknowledgment and walked off to rejoin my family. I stood beside my mom and took her hand in mine. Her skin was its usual zero degree temperature but I’d stopped shivering at the touch of her skin a long time ago. She seemed surprised at the spontaneous contact, but I pretended not to notice and kept my eyes on the amazing structure we were admiring.

  More often than she knew, I wished that I could talk to my mom about how quickly my psychic abilities were growing. Obviously, she knows I have a gift but I don’t think she realizes how unique each psychic’s abilities can be. Thanks to her friend, Allison Lopez, mom has a better understanding of psychic phenomena, and a lot less fear about my powers than she did at first. But until I find a way to actually talk to her about it, there’s no way she’ll be able to comprehend what I can do and the things I’m going through finding out about my abilities.

  That’s one of the main reasons that I write. I know my journal and stories probably aren’t Kindle-worthy but it’s an outlet that helps me a lot. If I don’t figure out how to tell my mom these things, one day I can at least just give her my notebooks to read.

  Yeah… my mom thinks her life is weird but here I am, a teenage girl, angst about wanting to talk about stuff with my mom instead of being busy figuring out ways to completely avoid her. Now, that is weird!

  Lady TamTam is my hero. She’s a mixture of my psychic self and my vampire mom. Once, when mom read one of the Lady TamTam stories I had lying around, she’d said it reminded her of someone she knew. For some reason, that had scared her just a little bit. I have no clue who she’d been talking about, but after that comment I’d started to wonder if I hadn’t picked some of Lady TamTam’s attributes from my mom’s mind.

  Whatever the case might have been, as soon as we got back to the villa, after our walk through the cemetery and lunch at Outback Steakhouse, I found my journal and finished the piece I’d started the day we arrived in Savannah.

  When it was finished, I appropriately named it, ‘I see dead people everywhere’.

  Chapter Ten

  Lady TamTam

  Lady TamTam had just reached the top of the hill and paused to pull out her phone. She knew that someone higher up needed to know what was going on.

  “It’s TamTam. Just encountered a vampire with human followers. French accent. Called himself the King of the Vampires.”

  “You’re the second person to encounter him tonight,” her contact said.

  “Right. Now I’m going after him.” She glanced down and the humans were still there as if not sure what to do next. She’d grab one and get some information out of the person.

  “Don’t. Just come in. We need to brief you.”

  “There is no way that I’m letting that vamp go free with several hours of darkness left.”

  She disconnected then turned off her phone so no one could bother her. She whooshed back down to the group, grabbed hold of one of them and put the blade of her sword against his neck. “Tell me who that was?”

  He laughed as if she’d told him a joke. At a party. Did he not see the blade against his body? “Tell me.”

  “No way.”

  It wasn’t as if he was scared of the vampire she’d asked him to betray. He showed no fear. Not of her. Not of the vamp. What was going on? Vampires usually ruled by fear.

  Not this one. She grabbed someone else. Same reaction. Had they all been drugged? Did none of them know how much danger they were in? She couldn’t believe that she’d lost her touch like that.

  She’d allowed a vamp to escape and these humans were unaffected by her big sword.

  What was she up against? Where had he come from?

  She left the humans to their gathering then turned her phone back on. She had three messages. All of them told her to come back.

  She sighed, dialing her contact. “What’s going on?”

  “You need to come back. Emergency meeting.”

  She had no idea what was that important other than tracking the vamp. She’d lose him if he didn’t pick up the trail tonight. “I talked to his followers. They all laughed as if I was no threat to them.”

  “Come in, Lady TamTam. Right now.”

  She debated which the better course of action was; not knowing exactly how long it might take her to track down this new creature. Then again, maybe her group had better intelligence on him than she did.

  “I’ll be there right away.”

  She disconnected then moved rapidly to the meeting place. She’d just joined this band of vampire hunters and still wasn’t sure she’d made the right decision. Still. Here she was, meeting with them at an old mansion.

  A former vampire lair. Lights were on in every first floor window. Being a loner, Lady TamTam still chafed at touching base with these people. She frowned as she opened the large front door.

  The noise of voices hit her like a wave of the ocean. She stepped back, then adjusted. She’d have to get used to this since in the past she lived alone. Fought alone.

  But the vampire hunting business was becoming more dangerous and a free agent was too vulnerable.

  “Hey Lady T, wait till you get a load of this!”

  She bristled at the nickname that the younger hunter had given her. Everyone seemed to have a nickname. She was Lady TamTam. She never shortened it. Then, she noticed all six of the vampire hunters she had met as part of the group, were standing outside the house’s ballroom door. They were waiting for her like she was the guest of honor at a quinceañera.

  “Can you just give me the short version so I can get back out there?”

  “Oh, no, Lady T, you need the whole story. You got to see this for yourself. Just wait.”

  He sounded almost excited. Hunting vampires was what she was born to do. Some of these younger ones had chosen it. The life had chosen her and she could never understand getting this much joy out of it; unless there was a kill. Then she could party with the best of them.

  She followed the man into the living room where it was even noisier. If she could have been anywhere else she would have been. Then Lady TamTam paused and took a good look around her. Everything began to take on a surreal aura. The music was loud… that was real. The room itself was real but every guest there except for herself, and the young vampire who’d shown her in was a ghost. Very real ghosts too.

  They all turned around to face her as Lady TamTam entered the room, then as one eerie, ghostly voice, they asked, “Are you here to help us?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Rennie Telfair

  Welcome to Seagull Point

  It was a delight to make the acquaintance of
Samantha Moon. I must say that she is very likely to top my list of favorite people… or beings. Even her children, Anthony and Tammy, were a delight to have visiting me at Seagull Point. Samantha’s sister, Mary Lou, her brother-in-law, Rick and their three rapscallions were no exception either.

  I don’t think Seagull Point has been this full in ages.

  Her daughter Tammy, a budding psychic, was a bit nervous because of the long dead family members that still tootle about the place. I suppose that having dead relatives around the house would be unnerving to most. They even get on my nerves, at times.

  I’d considered all of the information that I needed to relay to Miss Moon during the week following our initial meeting and decided that it had been the better part of wisdom to keep her in the dark until things had a chance to develop and I could give her the more critical information about the very powerful spirit of Yemaya and her not so benevolent plans for New Orleans. The two bits of information that I had for her were actually related to one another, so I was, in reality doing her a favor by having withheld the first bit in order to pass along the second.

  It was after dinner when Samantha sent the children off to the dock with the other family members, so instead of my tea time beverage of bourbon and Coke, I was ready to enjoy a digestif. I had a Drambuie and poured a glass of Sherry for my guest.

  “It will aid digestion…” I began with the same quip that I’d used in California during our first meeting.

  “No matter what you’re digesting,” she’d said, completing the sentence.

  Finishing off each other’s sentences is always a good sign that a connection and an understanding has been made. Though I’d had little doubt concerning our future friendship before, at that point even the most minuscule of them had been wiped out completely. We settled into the comfortable chairs in my study and began the inevitable conversation upon the subject that was most pressing to Sam and her work with Mister Fulcrum.