Thirst for Vampire (Kingdom of Blood and Ash Book 2)
Page 34
“I can’t be here right now. I don’t want to talk about this. I’m not saying goodbye.”
He grabbed his skateboard and left through the garage. I heard him come in later, after dark, and Becky walking slowly down the hall to tuck him in. They’re talking quietly, and I hear Damien cry, which he hasn’t done in years. Maybe he’s ready to accept it.
I’m not.
I wait for her to fall asleep in front of the TV, like she always does after treatment, then carry her upstairs gently. She weighs almost nothing. I kiss her forehead, then pull out the vial of elixir I have in my pocket.
“What’s that?” she asks, half asleep.
“Just a standard IV,” I lie. “The doctor said to keep you hydrated. It’ll pinch.” She closed her eyes and nodded as I injected her with the experimental serum. Then I tucked my arm around her fail body as she drifted off to sleep.
Hours later I woke up suddenly, alone, in the darkness. I’d fallen asleep in the armchair in the living room. I heard noises in the kitchen and a sharp yelp.
“Cooper?” I called quietly. “Here boy!” We’d had the dog since he was a puppy, when we gave him to Damien for his tenth birthday.
I crept into the kitchen slowly, letting my eyes adjust to the dim green glow of the timer on the oven.
Cooper lay on the kitchen floor, whimpering, illuminated by the soft glow from the fridge, which was cracked open just a hair.
I thought he’d gotten into the ketchup at first, but the smell was all wrong. A chill ran down my spine when I realized it was blood.
My arm trembled as I lifted my cell phone for more light, casting away the shadows… all except one. A dark figure, her skin far too pale, her dark hair a nest. Blood dripped down her wrists and chin. Her eyes were wide and luminous, but vacant, like she didn’t recognize me. She snarled, backing into the corner, and chewing on Cooper’s bleeding heart with both hands.
I snapped my eyes awake, gasping for air. Pain rushed through my body all at once, and my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest.
I couldn’t move, and for a second I thought I’d been paralyzed. But lifting my head, I could see thick bandages tied around my arm and torso. I was tucked under heavy blankets, in a fancy, modern room.
But something was wrong with the wide open windows facing the horizon. A warm yellow light pierced through the room, bouncing off the polished floor and erasing everything in a brightness that seemed unnatural.
I blinked against it, lifting myself up. I groaned as I put weight on my legs, but they held. I seemed to be in one piece. Someone was lying on another bed across the room, wrapped in white sheets, his face half hidden in shadow. I froze when I realized it was Damien. He was so pale, so still. But then I saw his chest rise and fall and breathed a sigh of relief. His father had been right. He’d made it.
I shuffled towards the large pane of glass until the light enveloped me completely, holding one hand up against it until my eyes adjusted.
“You shouldn’t be up,” Trevor said from behind me. He was at my side in a moment, clutching my hand. He dragged a chair closer and gave me a glass of water.
“What happened?” I asked. “Where are we?”
“You did it Em,” he said. I tasted a warm tear as he kissed my forehead and wrapped an arm around me. “You fucking did it.”
I squinted at the sweeping, foreign landscape, emotions I couldn’t name swirling in my heart as I saw the pink and purple clouds, and the sun setting behind the blue mountains in the distance. In the deep blue sky above, I saw a half moon surrounded by a handful of stars. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
THE END (FOR NOW)
I hope you enjoyed Thirst for Vampire – please take a moment to post a review while the story is fresh, I’d love to hear your thoughts! I’m working on the third book in the series and hope to have it done next year. If you’d like to be notified when it release, sign up to my email list (and you’ll also get some bonus stories to read right now!)
www.urbanepics.com/VIP
Author’s Note
This book took years to write. During most of that time, I was semi-nomadic, traveling full-time with my wife. Then at the beginning of 2020, we’d had enough of living out of suitcases and decided to get an apartment in Taiwan, where she’s from. Staying still allowed me to concentrate and finally finished this story, but it’s also true that the existential dread and frustration of quarantine and lockdown probably also crept into the narrative about vampires and mutid woods in a dystopian landscape.
Six months into the global pandemic, I’ve outstayed my welcome in Taiwan and they’re refusing to renew my arrival visa. Normally this would be a simple fix; I’d hop over to Hong Kong or Vietnam, fly back the same day and get a new arrival stamp. But like many countries, Taiwan has shut the door to foreign arrivals without a visa. Those countries offering visas also won’t let me in, without a 2-week mandatory quarantine; and if I want to come back to Taiwan, I also need (on top of lots of paperwork and legal documents) a negative Covid-19 test dated to within 3 days of travel – a very challenging hurdle.
All this to say, as I put the finishing touches on this book, I’m also facing essential deportation and potentially a very long period of separation from my wife, until I figure out a way for us to coexist in the same country again. I understand the safety regulations are necessary; I also understand the conflict between holding on to those you love, and being at the mercy of large-scale, impassive forces you can’t control. So if it seems there’s a bit too much focus on the tension between personal autonomy and the widespread “Greater Good”… this is why.
Still, I hope you enjoyed the story. Book three will get even more dramatic and insane, so I hope you’ll stick with me until it’s ready.
Thanks for reading!
D.S. Murphy
www.UrbanEpics.com