When Carl and Brian walked in, they saw Buck holding Ron’s.308 caliber rifle in his hands and aiming it toward the back wall.
“One of you can use this,” Buck told them. “And it looks like he still has plenty of ammo left for it. It should be dead on at 200 yards.”
“Give it to Brian. I’ll use that weapon instead,” said Carl, eyeing the twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun leaning against the rear corner wall, next to a small bed, and three boxes of buckshot beneath it.
“Looks like you two have you’re weapons. Now let me look in Ron’s closet to see if he has the weapon that Phyllis needs,” said Buck. He poked his head in the closet to look around before reaching in, and pulling out an 1852 Prussian saber sword that Ron had since his childhood. “Looks like he kept it very sharp, too,” he said as he caressed his right thumb down the thirty-three-inch blade, made of 1055 high carbon steel, testing for its sharpness.
“Sweet!” replied Carl. “Phyllis already decapitated Dietrich with an axe, maybe she can get Titus with that sword, too.”
“I don’t want Phyllis near Titus, if possible,” responded Buck. “I plan on dealing with him myself while you three take down his minions.”
“Will you need a weapon also?” Brian asked Buck.
“Maybe, maybe not, but just in case, it won’t hurt to have this,” said Buck as he pulled out a compound bow from the closet with five arrows attached to it.
“Double sweet!” said Brian as he saw the compound bow. “Carl had a good idea earlier as we were driving back to Circa. If there’s any black powder around, it’s possible to make small explosives that could be attached to the end of the arrows, depending on whether we have time or not.”
“Great idea,” answered Buck. “I’m almost positive that there’s black powder on the store shelf for muzzle loaders, and we also have some small bean bags, which might work.”
“We could fill some of those bean bags with black powder, find some type of fuses to put in them, and light them as you’re shooting Titus with them,” said Carl. “Dietrich seemed to slowly get weaker as we shot him while you fought him, and it might also help to weaken Titus in the same manner before you attack him. We just need to make sure that we keep him away from feeding on blood any way possible, while you and Phyllis keep your blood intake up as you fight.”
“I agree with you on that, Carl,” Buck replied. “Phyllis and I will need to be at full strength. I’m hoping we can battle them tonight on the last full moon, when I’ll be at my absolute best, but it might not work out that way. Either way, we’ll need to be ready for them.”
CHAPTER 19
They each grabbed the weapons that they wanted and walked back out of the garage, turning the lights off behind them and shutting the door. Buck stood still in the parking lot of the garage, glancing around and thinking, while Carl and Brian watched, wondering what he was pondering.
“This might be the best place to make our stand,” said Buck. “There’s a great sight advantage here for good shots at them, good protection inside the garage for you two if things start to get ugly, and big night security floodlights outside the building if it gets dark. Phyllis and I can see in the dark just fine, but you’ll both need lights.”
“Good point, Buck,” replied Brian as Phyllis quickly ran up to them.
“I warned everyone who stayed in the village about Titus,” she told Buck. “They’re all going to shut down their lights, lock their doors, and stay out of sight.”
“Excellent,” responded Buck. “We’ve decided to make our stand here, since it appears to give us the best tactical advantage against them. I need to run up to the store quickly and grab some black powder and bean bags to make explosives with, and then I’ll be right back. Carl or Brian will need to invite you into the garage, and you all can start preparing.”
Phyllis nodded in agreement and then her face lit up with excitement as he handed her the sword.
“This is your weapon, for minion decapitations,” he told her.
“Very nice,” she responded. Then she sadly asked, “This was Ron’s sword, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was, and I know he’d want you to have it,” he answered before kissing her on the cheek and speeding off to the store.
Brian and Carl invited Phyllis into the garage as they walked back inside again, while also turning the lights back on. Carl began eagerly loading his shotgun, and Brian likewise loaded Ron’s rifle, while Phyllis stood silent and distracted, glancing around the garage.
“Is everything okay, Phyllis?” asked Brian.
“Being in this garage just made me realize how much I miss Ron, and I’ve been so distracted with everything else lately, I feel guilty for having not thought about him much,’ she answered.
“Well, I didn’t know Ron, but I bet he would have understood, and would have wanted you to focus on saving yourself and others,” replied Brian.
“Yes, others like us,” quipped Carl in an attempt to humor her, which successfully brought a smile upon her face.
“Thanks,” she replied.
“Phyllis, not to nag or beat a dead horse, but you and Buck should try to drink some more blood ASAP, before they show up,” said Carl. “You’ll both need to be at the top of your games.”
“Agreed, and we still have some caribou blood left in the fridge at Buck’s cabin. After Buck returns, we’ll go drink up. But if we can’t make it, we always have you,” Phyllis said, laughing, in an attempt to re-humor him.
“And, I have returned,” said Buck as he walked back into the garage, holding a small wooden box. “We’re going to have to make this quick. As I was running back here from the store, I got a whiff of some vampire scents with a Western breeze in my face, meaning that they’re somewhere near the area already.”
“You can smell them?” asked a surprised Phyllis, while Carl rushed to the small garage windows with the shotgun, glancing outside and on the lookout for Titus.
“Yes, but that’s because of my sense of smell from my werewolf side,” he answered. “My guess is that our vampire sense of smell will become better for us both, with age and years.”
“What do you have in that box?” asked Brian. “Did you find any black powder and fuses?”
“Actually, I found something even better, more efficient, and easier to attach to the arrowheads, and probably just as effective,” he answered as he opened the wooden box with its ten, one-and-a-half-inch long, chubby, red-colored M-80 explosives stacked inside. “I had forgotten that I had these! These are the good firecrackers, too, with three to five grams of pyrotechnic flash powder inside each one, making them as potent as a quarter stick of dynamite, I was told. Glad I never fired them off and saved them for a rainy day.”
“Impressive!” exclaimed Carl with excitement as he gazed at the potent firecrackers inside the wooden box.
“I have five arrows attached to Ron’s bow, so I should be able to attach two M-80s to each side of the arrowheads, giving Titus double the pleasure,” said Buck. He walked over to Ron’s workbench and sat his compound bow down, while pulling some electrical black tape from the top shelf of the toolbox. “This should work,” he added as he began to tape the M-80s to each arrowhead, with the fuses facing backward, and taping them with rapid speed, completing all five arrows in less than thirty seconds.
“Wow! You’d be a handy mechanic,” said Carl. “Fastest service anywhere!”
“Unfortunately, I don’t know a thing about mechanics,” he answered. “It will be hard for Circa to find a replacement for Ron.”
“Buck, maybe we should quickly scurry down to your cabin and finish off the caribou blood in your fridge, before they show up,” said Phyllis.
“If Titus and his minions happen to show up before Phyllis and I return, do not attempt to engage them without our help, unless you have no choice,” said Buck to Carl and Brian. “You should be safe in here.”
“Fair enough,” replied Brian, as he and Carl began to double check that their weapons,
ammunition, and hunting knives were accessible and ready for use, while Buck and Phyllis walked out the door to glance around before rushing to the cabin.
“Looks like Buck left the compound bow here for now, but at least Phyllis still has the sword,” said Brian. “Let’s hope they don’t have to use them yet.”
“And let’s hope we don’t need to use ours yet,” responded Carl.
“I just had a quick thought about something,” Brian said.
“Hopefully, a helpful thought,” Carl replied with a smirk on his face.
“Remember when Dietrich said, while he was trying to kill us, that wooden stakes wouldn’t affect him?” asked Brian.
“How could I forget?” Carl answered.
“He didn’t say anything about wooden stakes not having an effect on all vampires, or lower-ranked vampires like minions. He just said that stakes couldn’t harm him.”
“So it’s still possible that stakes could kill his minions,” surmised Carl.
“Possibly, but not a sure thing,” Brian admitted.
“Well, I still got the four stakes that I made earlier, under the seat in my truck. Let’s grab them and tuck them in behind our belts, just in case they do. All we can do is try them. No harm no foul,” said Carl.
CHAPTER 20
“Titus! Come take a look at this,” exclaimed Lukas, one of Titus’s minions, as he stood over the frozen caribou carcass on Buck’s property, observing the multiple vampire puncture wounds in the neck of the caribou. Titus and his minions happened to wander into Buck’s cabin accidentally while moving off road and toward Circa.
“It appears that we are close to Circa now,” said Titus as he walked up to the frozen carcass near Lukas, while the other minions browsed the area. “What do we have here?” he asked himself in a low tone when he saw the puncture wounds in its neck.
“Do you think those were made by Dietrich?” asked Lukas. “Or could Dietrich have created some of his own minions also?”
“It’s possible,” he answered, “but creating minions wasn’t Dietrich’s cup of tea. He often found minions to be more annoying than helpful, and it would be considered rare for him to do so.”
“Titus! Come take a look at this over here! I’ve never seen anything like this!” shouted a black minion named Angus, who was built like an athletic linebacker, standing near the woods.
Titus glanced over and was there in an instant, observing the many different kinds of tracks in the snow, but the tracks that Angus noticed stood out from the other tracks. “Intriguing!” he said as he gazed upon the combination of tracks, which were mostly human footprints mixed with the footprints of some kind of unknown beast.
“What do you think made those?” asked Angus.
Titus bent over to smell the tracks with his powerful sense of smell. “Very intriguing. I smell a combination of human and wolf scent everywhere, yet I see no wolf tracks.”
Angus stood silent briefly before speaking. “Could there be some kind of lycanthrope in existence, if that’s possible?” he asked. “Do you believe in those, or have you seen any?”
“Dietrich and I have both been on this Earth for a very long period of time, and if something like that exists, neither he nor I have seen one, nor heard of any existing other than in folklore stories,” answered Titus. “It appears that we have some sort of mystery going on in this village, and I want bloody answers! I expect you four to be extra cautious when we invade Circa soon. Something unusual has happened here, and there could also be other rogue vampires in the area. Lukas, Simon, and Angus, I want you to go scout Circa by entering in from the highway, while Billie and I circle around and come in from the Yukon River.”
“Yes, sir!” responded Simon, Lukas, and Angus to Titus’s command.
“Before you leave, surround the cabin and glance through the windows to make sure no one is hiding inside,” said Titus. “I don’t hear any sign of life from within its walls now, but check it anyways. I don’t want anyone to escape this village alive.”
Buck and Phyllis were speeding down the trail that led to his cabin at supernatural speed, with his cabin just around a small corner and nearly in sight now, when Buck came to an abrupt stop, grabbing Phyllis hard in order to stop her also. Buck held his index finger up to his mouth, signaling Phyllis not to speak, while he quietly pulled her off to the side of the trail and into the trees, with both of them kneeling down, in a hiding position. Buck drew the word “vampires” into the snow with his index finger for Phyllis to read. They both quietly brushed some small branches and twigs aside with their hands in order to peek through and get a better view of his cabin. Phyllis’s face displayed an expression of grave concern as they saw one figure that looked like Dietrich, who was standing near the front door, and four other figures circling Buck’s cabin, in an attempt to peep through the two small windows on the front, along with the two windows in the rear. Phyllis pointed her index finger down to the snow and wrote out a message for Buck that read: “How will we get to our blood now? And what if they have found out about us?”
Buck replied back to her with another message in the snow that said: “Let’s go back to the garage.”
Phyllis seemed to happily agree with a nod of her head. Buck covered up the messages that they wrote in the snow before he and Phyllis quietly but speedily raced back down the trail and toward the garage.
“Listen!” said Titus, and he and his minions remained silent for a moment, trying to identify the noise that he heard. “I heard something down the trail! Simon, I want you to quickly investigate it before we advance with our previous plans, in case the noise was caused from something other than an animal.”
“Yes, sir!” responded the oldest minion, Simon, and he rushed down the trail, in search of any possible suspects or suspicious activity. He didn’t have to run far before he saw the fresh footprints of Buck’s and Phyllis’s in the snow, just off the trail entering into and exiting the trees, and stopped to inspect them. He followed their tracks into the trees, where the footprints ceased after a few feet and had a secret view of the cabin.
“What is it, Simon?” asked Titus as Simon walked back onto the trail.
“It looks like two people were just here, and they were watching us from the trees and left again,” answered Simon.
“Indeed?” asked Titus, and then he was at Simon’s side in a flash to inspect the footprints for himself. “It appears that our presence here is known. If whoever was in the truck that Thomas let escape didn’t warn Circa, then no doubt, whoever made these tracks will, as I’m positive that they’ll lead to somewhere in the village. And whoever made these footprints cannot be human if they easily avoided my detection of them, so use caution if you find them. Let’s proceed with our plan now!”
Simon, Lukas, and Angus sped down the trail toward the highway and into Circa, while Titus and Billie headed toward the Yukon River to approach from the rear.
Buck and Phyllis ran back into the garage door, where Carl and Brian were waiting for them.
“Were you able to feed?” asked Brian.
“No, I’m afraid not,” answered Buck. “Titus and his minions were surrounding my cabin, and we couldn’t get anywhere near it. But Phyllis and I still feel strong and not weakened yet, at least.”
“Dang, they’re really close now!” replied Carl. “At least we still have about two hours of daylight left.”
“Did you guys say there were five minions?” asked Buck.
“Yes,” answered Brian. “Six total, counting Titus.
“It looks as if one of them is missing then, and could be anywhere. We only saw a total of five at my cabin,” said Buck, then he noticed the wooden stakes tucked behind Carl’s and Brian’s belts. “Will those kill them?”
“They won’t stop Titus, but there’s a possible chance they could stop his minions, but we’re not 100 percent sure about that,” answered Brian.
“They better be very sharp because all of them were wearing matching black leather sim
ilar to motorcycle racing leather, which is very difficult to penetrate. But let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope they do work on his minions. Stakes would give us all an advantage and make the fight less difficult, if so,” replied Buck, “especially for you two.”
“Easier for us is always better,” answered Carl as he began gazing out the front garage windows for any sign of the minions, and with his shotgun in a ready-to-fire position.
Brian and Phyllis stood guard at the windows on each of the side walls. Buck was putting his finishing touches on the compound bow, preparing it for rapid firing with practice drawing of its string and aiming at the walls, and at an imaginary Titus.
CHAPTER 21
Titus and Billie were now walking down the Yukon River on frozen snowmobile trails, very close to the backside of Circa, 200 hundred yards from the backside of the clinic and its loading dock, when Titus stopped to gaze at an old, rustic, wooden hull-bucket-line gold dredge, frozen in time there since the early 1900s, and just twenty-five yards off the river and up its bank. He noticed several footprints entering and leaving the dredge, from and toward the backside of Circa.
“Dietrich!” exclaimed Titus.
“Excuse me, sir?” replied Billie.
“My destruction of Circa can wait for a moment, as I need to first investigate that gold dredge,” said Titus as he ran to the dredge in seconds, soon after followed by Billie. “Dietrich was here. I can still smell the remnants of his scent and feel his presence,” he told her. “I want you to continue on to Circa as planned, toward the others, while I stay here and investigate further.”
“Yes, sir!” she responded before disappearing off to help Angus, Lukas, and Simon attack Circa and avenge the death of Dietrich for Titus.
Titus leaped onto the ten-foot high hull from the ground and walked through a large opening, about eight feet high and eight feet wide, and inside on the lower level of the huge, dark, and empty dredge, with his presence spooking a dozen pigeons, causing them to fly outside, while observing its giant-sized conveyor belt that was once used for separating gold from dirt, and several old metal spiral staircases that led to the upper levels. “Dietrich, my brother,” he mumbled to himself in a low, sentimental tone as he observed his brother’s previous activity there, and could seem to feel his presence also.
Village of the Full Moon Curse Page 15