Greater Vampires

by Trudie Collins

  They sat in silence for a while and Luke noticed her looking around the room. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  Anna blushed. “I was just wondering if that door locks on the inside as well as the outside.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Luke said. “This room also has microphones and cameras in it. We have to keep a close eye on anyone we lock in here. My room, however, does have a lock.”

  He took her hand and led her from the room.

  That is a vampire bite

  The following Friday night, most of the hunters at 14 were watching a film when the alarm went off. JD was still at work and Scott was out on a date, but the rest were there and eagerly ran to their rooms to get changed.

  Everyone was by the front door, waiting for Jane, when Sarah turned up, dressed in her hunting suit.

  “No,” Craig said as soon as he saw her. “You are not coming with us.”

  “Why not?” Sarah asked. “I am fully recovered and I’ve been training enough to not be a liability.”

  “Because JD would skin me alive if I let you come.”

  “No he won’t. He said I could.”

  “Yeah right,” Craig said and took his phone from his pocket. He dialled JD’s number and tapped his foot as he waited for it to be answered.

  “Craig,” JD’s voice sounded in Craig’s ear. “What’s up?”

  “Sorry to disturb you at work, but we have a situation here. Your wife wants to come on a hunt with us and said you gave her permission.”

  “Did she now. Let me speak to her.”

  Craig held out his phone and the look on Sarah’s face confirmed that she had been lying to him. She reluctantly took it.

  “Hi honey,” she said, then winced. Nobody could hear what JD was saying to her, but whenever she tried to say something he cut her off.

  “Alright,” she eventually said. “I will.......I love you too.......okay, see you soon.”

  She hung up and handed the phone back to Craig, who was grinning at her. “I hate you,” she said then turned around and headed back up the stairs, ignoring Jane as she passed.

  “What was that about?” Jane asked.

  “She tried to come with us. JD had other ideas.”

  “Oh. I hope we’re gone for a long time. I don’t want to be around when JD gets home. I imagine he’s going to have a few words with Sarah that we are better off not witnessing.”

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing it,” Jonathan said and Katie elbowed him in the ribs.

  “If you two have quite finished,” Craig said loudly, “we have a hunt to go on.”

  As JD wasn’t there, Craig did the speech about looking out for each other and being careful. There were only four of them, but they took two cars, just in case. Sanctuary 7 said there were only three vampires at the location they were being sent to so no other Sanctuary would be sending hunters.

  They were still out when JD arrived home and he immediately sought out Sarah. He found her in their room, lying on the bed, reading.

  “Are you still mad at me?” she asked as he entered the room.

  “I wasn’t mad at you. I can understand why you want to go hunting. Come and train with me. Prove to me you are fit enough and I’ll let you go on the next hunt, provided I am there as well.”

  Sarah got off the bed, walked over to him and took hold of his tie. Instead of undoing it, she used it to pull him over to the bed. “I have a better way of proving how fit I am,” she said and kissed him passionately.

  Neither of them made it to the training arena.

  They were still in the shower when the hunters returned home.

  “What’s up with you?” Natalie asked as she handed around energy drinks. Every looked dejected.

  “The hunt was a bust,” Craig said. “The vampires had all gone by the time we got there. The strange thing is, there was no sign of any victims.”

  “That’s weird,” Natalie said. She wasn’t a hunter, but had lived with them long enough to know that was not normal.

  They were still talking about the strange evening when Sarah and JD joined them. Both still had wet hair and nobody asked what they had been up to.

  Craig quickly summarised the failed hunt, but JD wasn’t concerned. Though this was the first time it had happened to anyone from 14, other Sanctuaries had reported the same thing. It was rare, but it did happen.

  Natalie was cuddled down on Craig’s lap when she noticed a mark on his neck. “It looks like you have been bitten by an insect,” she said as she gently touched his skin. “Or two.” Then she looked closer. “If I didn’t know better, I would say you had been attacked by a vampire.”

  “Very funny,” Craig said, but JD didn’t find the comment amusing.

  “Let me see,” he said and walked over to the pair. He pulled Craig’s head to one side so he could get a good look at his neck and swore.

  “That is a vampire bite. What happened tonight? Why are you lying to me?” Those who had gone on the hunt could hear the anger in JD’s voice and looked at each other nervously.

  “I’m not,” Craig said. “You know me better than that.”

  “Cut the crap Craig. A vampire bit you. I want to know how and why everyone is covering up for you.”

  “I swear to God I have no idea. We got to the wood, searched it thoroughly and found no sign of any vampire or victims. We split into pairs and at no time was anyone alone. I can’t have been bitten.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Jane said. “I never let him out of my sight.”

  JD walked up to her, grabbed hold of her hair and roughly pulled her head to the left, making her wince. The skin was smooth and unblemished, but when he checked the left, he could see two faint puncture wounds.

  “You’ve been bitten too.”

  “Let me see your neck,” Jonathon said to Katie. He knew that there was no way she could have been bitten, but he also knew that neither Craig or Jane had been.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said when he saw her wound. It was small, but unmistakably a vampire bite. He moved his hand to his own neck and found it tender to the touch.

  “I don’t understand,” Jane said. “What’s going on? How can we have been attacked without knowing anything about it?”

  “Go and see Doc now. All of you.” It was an order so all four instantly obeyed. Natalie went with them. She looked scared as she held Craig’s hand. JD should have said something to reassure her, but he had other things on his mind.

  He led Sarah to his office and phoned the head scientist at Sanctuary 7.

  “JD,” Patrick said as soon as he answered. “What can I do for you?”

  JD quickly summed up what had happened. “Was there anything strange about the hunt you sent my people on tonight?”

  Patrick assured him that there wasn’t. Readings had picked up three vampires feeding and nothing suggested there was anything to worry about. The only strange thing was that the readings didn’t last for very long.

  “Has this ever happened before?” Sarah asked.

  Patrick paused before answering. “Yes,” he finally said. “But only once. There have been a few occasions where hunters have returned having found no trace of vampires or victims, but only one time have bite marks been seen on their necks. That’s not to say it hasn’t happened more often without anyone noticing the evidence of a vampire attack.”

  “Why was nobody told?” JD asked.

  “What would you have us say? A hunting team got attacked, but they all seem unharmed and have no memory of anything having happened to them. How well do you think that would have gone down?”

  “I see your point. It might have caused widespread panic. Do your people have any idea what happened?”

  “No. The Sanctuary involved agreed to keep it quiet. To be honest, I think the hunters were too embarrassed to talk about it.”

  “My team will also keep it to themselves,” JD said. “For now. Let me know if you hear of this happening again.”

  “I will,” Patrick said
and hung up.

  “So what do we do now?” Sarah asked.

  “I have absolutely no idea.”

  ————————————-∞————————————-

  That evening, Anna was staying at Luke’s place. Hoping that she would become a regular visitor, the vampires had stocked the cupboards and arguments had broken out over who got to cook for her. Everyone was going out of their way to make her feel welcome, but she suspected this was for Luke’s benefit, not hers. Still, she appreciated the effort they were going to.

  The meal was over and a few of them were relaxing in one of the lounges, telling Anna more about life as a vampire, when Helen, Brian and Cassy walked into the room. Instead of joining the rest for dinner, they had gone out in search of blood.

  “How did it go?” Martin asked his sister. She had been struggling recently to stop drinking the blood of a victim before she took too much and he was worried about her. This was the reason she went out with Brian and Cassy.

  “Hunters found us,” she said.

  “What happened?” Luke asked.

  “We had just finished our meal and had released our hosts, when four hunters turn up and attacked.”

  “Was anyone hurt?” The look Helen gave Luke told him how stupid the question had been.

  “We injected them with just enough venom to control them,” Cassy said, “drank some of their blood, told them they found no sign of vampire activity when they arrived, then sent them home.”

  “I don’t like this,” Gavin said. “We’re running into hunters more and more often. Sometime soon we may have to think about doing something about them.”

  “What are hunters?” Anna asked. They hadn’t come up in any of her conversations with Luke or his family.

  “They’re a group of humans,” Luke said. “Kind of like a secret society, I suppose. There are a number of teams in this area. They live in large old houses that they call Sanctuaries. Somehow the people in Sanctuary 7, if my memory serves me right, can detect when a vampire is feeding. Any vampires, greater or lesser. They dispatch the nearest team of hunters to kill the vampires and help the victims, if they can.”

  “So they’re a danger to you.”

  Gabriel laughed. “No. They are no match for us. They’re a nuisance, nothing more. But they are useful to have around. They take care of the vermin for us.” He could see Anna frowning. “The lesser vampires.”

  “I don’t understand,” Anna said. “Feeding doesn’t take that long. At least Luke doesn’t. How can they get there before the vampires have finished?”

  “I don’t take long with you,” Luke said, “because I take the bare minimum I need. I take more off others, taking my time to savour the taste. I have more enjoyable things to do with you so I rush it.”

  Anna blushed. Brian took over. “Most lesser vampires keep drinking until they have taken every drop. This takes a lot longer than you would think. Most of the time the hunters arrive too late to save the victims, but sometimes they get there in time. Killing the vampires is their priority as that saves lots of lives.”

  “How do you know all this about hunters?” Anna asked.

  Brian grinned at her. “Whenever we get control of a hunter, we make them tell us everything we want to know. We know the location of most, if not all, of their Sanctuaries.”

  “So how do they detect a vampire feeding?”

  “That, we don’t know,” Luke said. “Simply because no hunter we have ever interrogated has known. It’s a secret kept by certain members of Sanctuary 7 and they never go hunting. We could go and visit them to find out, but we aren’t really that interested.”

  Anna turned her attention to Gavin. “You said you might have to do something about them. What did you have in mind?” She had been assured that none of the vampires that lived with Luke would kill anyone, but the comment still had her worried.

  “I have no idea,” Gavin said. “But I’ll think of something and it will not involve bloodshed. Well not much anyway.”

  Then ask for forgiveness not permission

  The weeks slowly passed. Anna began to spend more and more time with Luke and he was soon staying nearly every night with her. She got on well with all of his family and was even becoming good friends with Gabriel. Getting to know Gavin helped. She now kept Gabriel in line at work by threatening to tell Gavin if he ever did anything wrong.

  JD allowed Sarah to go hunting once more and all of the hunters soon got back into the same routines as they had before she fell pregnant. The miscarriage was never mentioned, but JD suspected that Sarah thought of it often.

  JD worried more about the attack on his team than he let them know, but it never happened again so he began to put it from his mind.

  One evening, Sarah decided it was time to talk about children once more.

  “I want to try again,” she said as soon as JD got into bed.

  “No.” Sarah’s mouth dropped open in shock. They had discussed this a few days after she lost the baby and he had agreed that they would as soon as she was ready.

  JD saw the look on her face and grinned. He tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear then gently lifted her jaw with his finger, closing her mouth.

  “We are not going to try again,” he said in a soft voice. “I don’t want to put that sort of pressure on us. We will simply stop taking precautions. If something happens, it happens.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” Sarah said. “When can we start? Now sounds like a good idea.”

  “You have a one track mind,” JD said, pulled her closer and kissed her. Just as things started to get interesting, the hunt alarm sounded. “I am going to kill someone next time I visit 7,” he said as he reluctantly moved away from Sarah. “Very slowly and very painfully.”

  Sarah laughed as she got out of bed. They weren’t the last ones to arrive at the front door and from the dishevelled look of Jonathon’s hair, Sarah suspected that she and JD weren’t the only ones who had been interrupted.

  ————————————-∞————————————-

  Anna was just settling down in bed when her phone rang. She had been out with some friends so Luke wasn’t with her. Suspecting that it was him who was calling, she wasn’t concerned when she saw that the caller ID said it was Gabriel. She wondered why Luke wasn’t using his own phone as she answered. “Hi Luke.”

  “Are you sober?” Gabriel’s voice sounded down the line. Anna didn’t like the tone of his voice. He sounded stressed.

  “Of course I am. I was just expecting Luke to phone so I assumed that he was borrowing your phone.”

  “Shut up and listen to me,” he snapped at her. Since she and Luke had become an item, he hadn’t spoken to her so harshly. As Luke’s girlfriend, she was now classed as one of the family and everyone treated her as such, including Gabriel. Something was wrong, seriously wrong.

  “What’s happened?”

  Gabriel ignored the question. “I need you here, now. Are you able to drive or do you need me to come and get you?”

  Anna got out of bed and began to dress as she spoke. “I’m okay to drive. I didn’t have any alcohol. Luke’s hurt, isn’t he?”

  “Not exactly. He just needs blood right now and we think it will be safer if he takes yours rather than someone else’s.”

  That didn’t sound good, but Anna didn’t waste any time by asking questions. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  She didn’t stick to the speed limits. The gate was standing open when she arrived, so she could drive straight up to the house. She didn’t take the time to go around the back to the garage, choosing instead to abandon her car on the driveway. As she ran up the steps to the front door, it opened and Gabriel stepped out.

  “What’s happened?” she asked as he led her inside.

  “Luke and I went out to feed. We found a couple of men, both drunk. I started to feed on mine, but as soon as Luke drank some blood from the other he began screaming. I brought h
im straight back here.”

  “Where is he?” Anna asked.

  “Locked in the basement bedroom. He has stopped screaming, but can’t keep still. He is throwing himself against the walls. If he was human he would have caused himself some serious injuries by now.”

  “What’s causing it?” Anna asked as she ran down the corridor. She was heading toward the stairs to the basement, but Gabriel grabbed her arm.

  “You can see him from in here,” he said and took her to one of the offices. Inside, Gavin and Brian were watching a screen. On it Anna could clearly see Luke. He was moving so fast it looked like he was flying. The sounds that echoed around the room every time he hit the wall made her wince.

  Gavin heard movement behind him and turned around. “Thank God you’re here,” he said. “We think Luke drank some tainted blood. It won’t harm him, but until he gets it out of his system he’s going to be unable to control himself. We believe that fresh blood will help, but we daren’t put anyone in there with him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s likely that he will tear them apart.” Anna shivered.

  “What do you want me to do?” She had no doubt that she would do whatever they asked of her, no matter what the danger.

  “I don’t know yet,” Gavin said. “We need to get your blood to him, but I can’t risk sending you in to him. At least not yet.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  Gavin nodded. “Go down to the basement. He will hear you through the door.”

  Anna ran from the room and took the stairs so fast she almost fell down them. Martin was sitting just outside the bedroom door. He looked as stricken as she felt.

  “Open the door,” she said to him.

  “No way. I can’t let you in there.”

  “Fine. I’ll do it myself. Just lock the door after me.”

  She made to undo the bottom bolt, but Martin grabbed her hand, then pulled back as he felt an electric shock. “Do you know what you’re doing?”