by T. A. Staver
is quite embarrassing,” Chuck asked.
Abarran smiled. “It has happened more than you know, my son. It is because of the shape of your tongue. Just bite it with your fangs, and that will correct the problem.”
“Won’t my tongue just grow back? Whenever I have damaged myself, it heals to the exact way it was before the injury.” I hadn’t known that Chuck had injured himself. I made a note to ask him later, if I survived.
“Any damage done by your fangs won’t grow back. Some of the older ones have scars from…disagreements with other vampires.”
Chuck narrowed his eyes in concentration, and suddenly his fangs protruded from his lips. He opened his mouth, stuck out his tongue, and without pausing, he bit down.
“Ouch!” Chuck yelled. “Dammit, that hurt!”
“Chuck, you don’t have a lisp,” I observed.
“Yeah, but that hurt. A lot.” Chuck wiped his mouth with the back of his hand to remove the small amount of blood that had escaped his mouth. I looked at Abarran, and stumbled backwards. His full attention was focused on Chuck’s bleeding mouth. Abarran’s eyes had dilated so much that they appeared to be solid black.
“Perhaps I will partake of your human slave,” Abarran said. “I seem to have recovered my appetite.”
Not good. Not good at all. I eased myself back a step. I didn’t think I could outrun Abarran, but I was sure going to try. My heart started to pound, and I felt sweat breaking out on my brow. I don’t mind saying that I was scared out of my wits.
“Oh, I like that,” Abarran said. He turned his attention towards me. Other than the shape of his body, there was nothing human about him now. He was pure predator.
Chuck was dabbing at his mouth with his left hand, and held his right hand out like a distracted traffic cop signaling a stop. “Hold on there, Abarran. This human is under my protection.” I was hoping that Chuck would take this a little more seriously. He didn’t even look like he was paying attention.
“I will take what I desire, underling,” Abarran intoned. He advanced a step towards me, a smile slowly appearing on his face. I tripped on something and went over onto my rump. The gravel dug into my hands as I crabbed backwards on the ground. Abarran continued to advance. “I am the master here,” he said in a lower tone.
“Yeah, about that master crap, I don’t think so,” Chuck said. “You just told me that I was a ‘lone vampire’, and that we didn’t have an ‘appropriate master-underling connection’. So I’m thinking that this is my territory, and I’m the boss in my territory.”
Thank goodness, Chuck had tumbled to what was happening. Now if only he could get between me and a two hundred year old vampire, I’d start to get my hyperventilation under control.
Abarran stopped and turned towards Chuck. “You would question me on this? You would tell me what to do? I, who created you? You overstep your bounds, youngling.”
With his turning, I took the opportunity to scoot back a couple of more feet. As I did, Chuck moved into the gap I had created. His bulk had never looked so good.
“I don’t like you, Abarran. You bit me and turned me into a vampire without giving me a choice in the matter. You didn’t give me a gift; you gave me a curse.”
“A curse?! Are you a fool? I have given you the gift of immortality! You are a god compared to this human that you so foolishly attempt to protect.”
“I am infused with a demonic magic,” Chuck shot back. “My soul is in danger of damnation, I have to drink blood to keep from dying, and I can’t even look at the sun anymore. You think this is a good thing?”
Abarran stood with his arms crossed, his chin jutting in Chuck’s direction. “No, I think it is the best thing. I have traveled the globe, explored everything on this earth that is of interest. I have drunk the blood of every nationality this world has to offer. There is nowhere I have not been.”
“And yet you have not developed beyond what you were two hundred years ago; a murderer.” Chuck had crossed his arms also. His bulk loomed over Abarran like a wall.
“Bah. Does the lion murder the antelope? No, it hunts the antelope. I do not so much murder humans as I hunt them. That is the difference.”
Chuck suddenly looked into the distance, as if he were thinking of something. “Hunting,” he murmured to himself. Then he shook himself and the far-away look left his eyes. “That’s nothing but semantics, old man. You say tomato, I say tomahto. As far as I can tell, you are nothing but the devil’s tool here on earth, spreading death wherever you go.”
Abarran looked at Chuck with narrowed eyes. “How do you feed,” he quietly asked himself. “If you did not take human blood, you would be either dead or suffering madness.” Abarran studied Chuck for a moment. “I believe this hate comes from guilt, the guilt of killing humans.” He moved back a step to more fully look into Chuck’s face. “You will not last long, vampire, if you continue to hate what you are. You are a hunter. Humans are prey. Those are the facts of your existence. If you cannot reconcile these things, one day you will ‘look at the sun’. I think that it won’t be too many years and I will come back and create another vampire to take your place after you are gone. Then I can add this territory to my own. Until then, I have all of the time in the world to wait.”
With that, Abarran turned on his heel, and walked away. As he neared the darkness of the school, he seemed to turn into a shadow, and blend with the inky blackness. It was creepy and cool at the same time.
I was still on the ground, my hands hurting from the gravel. “Do you think it’s safe to get up now?” I asked Chuck.
“Yeah,” he said with a weary sound to his voice. “I think we’re good.”
I stood and wiped my hands on my pants. “Uh, I don’t think I did much good here tonight. Sorry, Chuck.”
“I shouldn’t have brought you,” Chuck said.
“You know what? You’re right! You shouldn’t have brought me here tonight. I could have been killed by that homicidal maniac! What were you thinking?”
Chuck looked down his nose at me. “Put a lid on it Rodger. I am a vampire.”
I shut up, but grumbled under my breath the whole way back to Chuck’s truck.
4
As we climbed into Chuck’s truck, I thought of something.
“What were you thinking about when Abarran talked about hunting? You had a funny look on your face, kind of like you were a million miles away for a couple of seconds. And if I may say, that was a most inappropriate time to be a million miles away. He still scares me.” I was figuring that I would be having nightmares about him for the foreseeable future.
Chuck turned the ignition, but sat back as the truck idled. “Remember when we talked last time, and we discussed how I was going to obtain blood? I don’t particularly want to feed on humans, but drinking bags of blood from the Red Cross or catching small animals wasn’t doing it for me. It never satisfied my hunger. It kept me alive, but that was about all I could say for it.”
“I remember,” I said. “I was just throwing ideas out there. I didn’t think you would actually live on the blood of animals.”
“Well, I have been. As time passed, I moved up to larger animals, like cows and sheep. Not much better than the smaller animals.
“One night, as I was heading for the local herd of cows, a wolf crossed my path. Her ears flattened to her head, and she growled at me. She was afraid of me, but still wanted to fight for the cows. I believe she needed to take food to her pups.” Chuck shook his head. “That’s not important. But what is important is that we fought. The female had no chance against me, but that didn’t matter: she fought. And when I drank her blood, it was like nectar! It filled me as nothing else had. I thought that I had found a new source of sustenance for vampires.
“From that night forward, I hunted wolves. There are few in this area, so it’s a challenge. It came to pass that a night arrived that I couldn’t find a wolf. Desperate for nourishment, I caught a coyote. It wasn’t as fierce as a wolf, and realized that I posed a thre
at to its existence. It tried to run from me, but I caught it. And low and behold, its blood satisfied me also! I was confused. How could both animals have blood that sustained me?”
“Was it because they were both mammals?” I asked.
“No, the cows didn’t satisfy my hunger, and they were mammals.”
I sat back and thought. “Did the cows run from you when you drank their blood?”
Chuck smiled. “I knew you could figure it out. No, the cows were startled and a little distressed, but they didn’t realize that I could end their lives. The wolves and the coyote, they knew that I was a predator, and acted accordingly.”
“So it’s not just the blood, is that what you’re saying?”
“Exactly. The hunt, the chase, and the emotions that are involved: that is what makes the blood nourishing to me. Drinking blood alone will not keep me alive. The being I drink from must realize that I threaten its life.”
Chuck put the truck in gear and drove us to my house.
5
We drove in silence. We walked to my front step in silence. We entered my house and sat down in silence. Chuck, of course, picked the comfortable chair.
I cleared my throat. “Where did you find that tux?” I asked.
Chuck laughed. “One of the things I can count on is never changing my size. I had my measurements from suits I had bought when I was a salesman, and I ordered it on the internet.” Chuck raised his arms out to the sides. “Pretty bad,