Life as a Teenage Vampire

by Amanda Meuwissen

  Connor clutched his phone tighter and dropped his head back onto his pillow. His mother was staying the night there, but had taken on an extra shift to get some work done instead of just fretting all night. His father had gone home, since Connor wasn’t in any danger. He actually felt strangely fine, all things considered, even enough to lower his IV meds so he didn’t feel as fuzzy. The ache wasn’t too bad. He preferred that to having so many drugs in his system that he felt numb. But there was no way he could get out of the hospital on his own.

  “Psst, hey, Con-Man, you alive?”

  Aurora pushed open his door, sneaking inside the room, still decked out in her Prom dress, though her hair had lost a bit of its curl from hours of dancing and revelry. Jules came in behind her, in much the same state, following by Nick and Michael, neither of whom had their dates accompanying them. Michael had a crown on his head—of course.

  “What are you guys doing here?” Connor hissed.

  “I told Mavus I’d be stopping by,” Aurora said. Only the dart of her eyes around the room, at his prosthetic on the table, the machines attached to him, displayed some level of discomfort.

  “I didn’t think you’d actually be able to pull it off. How’d you get them to let you in? It’s nowhere near visiting hours and none of you are family.”

  Michael stepped forward. His suit was burnt orange with gold, the jacket buttoning more on one side with three clasps that looked like the heads of comets. “Meagan was the tail,” he said, catching Connor’s once-over of his outfit and gesturing down his legs to indicate the skirt Meagan had likely worn. “And we got in because I can be very persuasive. Do you know how many nurses I had swooning over me when I was here for my leg?”

  “I can only imagine,” Connor droned.

  Nick had gone more Jules’s god route and looked like Poseidon, not in a traditional suit but with a long vest that reached his ankles in various water themed shades of blue. Connor had seen the trident he planned to use as an accessory earlier in the week, which had probably been left in the car.

  “No JJ?” Connor said to him, then turned to Michael. “Or Meagan? You ditched your dates for me?”

  “They wanted to hit the after party,” Nick shrugged. “It’s at JJ’s house anyway. We’ll meet up later. Were you seriously shot with a crossbow by the murderer?”

  Connor gestured down at his bandaged midsection, the covers of the hospital bed down by his waist. “Something like that. What about Tim?”

  “He gave us a free pass to stop and see you as long as we head straight for the after party once they kick us out,” Jules said. “He’s got everyone patrolling for the cars that distracted Officer Nustad.”

  “They won’t find them. And if they do, the hunters won’t be with them anymore.”

  “Hunters?” Nick questioned.

  Aurora and Jules exchanged a glance.

  Connor looked around the room at his friends, Michael and Aurora on one side, Jules and Nick on the other. He couldn’t get out of the hospital without help, but with four extra bodies, who’d already managed to get into the hospital and ditch their police guard…

  He snatched up his phone from the bed. Nothing. Still no new messages. Emery was in trouble, and Connor’s only hope of helping him were the people in this room.

  “What if you didn’t go to the after party?” he asked, gipping the IV and ripping it free from the catheter in his arm. Then came the catheter itself. That stung a little more.

  “What are you doing?” Aurora dashed closer to the bed.

  “Em’s in trouble. The only people who could have given him backup were with him, and it wasn’t enough. I haven’t heard from him in twenty minutes. The only chance he’s got is us.” Thankfully, they’d already removed the heart monitor since he was stable. Connor tossed the covers aside and cringed as he sat up, shifting his legs over the side of the bed.

  “Whoa, Connor.” Michael moved forward as if to stop him, nearly pressed against Aurora’s back. Her cheeks colored and she fought to keep her eyes facing forward. She definitely hadn’t danced with him during Prom, or taken advantage of him tagging along for this visit. “You were impaled. And what are you talking about? What’s going on with Mavus? They caught the killer. Right?”

  Connor looked back at Jules and Nick, Jules’ eyes wide with an almost imperceptible shake of her head, but Connor didn’t have a choice. “They caught one of them,” he said, “but Em went to meet with the others. And if we’re going to save him then I have to tell you two what Jules and Aurora already know. And then you’re going to bring me to my house to load up.”

  “Load up with what?” Michael asked, taking Connor’s good arm as Aurora took the other, and helped him down from the bed. He ached, especially with the IV no longer pumping drugs into him, but he could manage, as long as he took it slow.

  “Guns. Weapons,” he said to Michael steadily. “Tonight, boys and girls, we’re dealing with vampire hunters.”

  Episode 35

  Connor

  Helping Connor into his button down, shoes, and prosthetic should have been the easy part, but sneaking out of the hospital didn’t prove a challenge either. Connor spotted his mom down the hallway, but she continued on down another corridor. She’d be back to check on him eventually. This wasn’t a situation where Connor could get back into his hospital bed with no one having been aware. They’d get caught. They’d get in trouble. They just had to hope it was after they saved Emery’s life, assuming the hunters hadn’t killed them on the spot.

  Connor refused to believe that was the case.

  They snuck past the reception desk in full view. Connor mixed in with the others, but just chatting, and walking, with Michael thanking the woman at the desk for letting them say a brief hello to their friend, and the nurse barely even looked up to acknowledge them. Gamble and his police watchdog were in another wing. They were outside and in Jules’ Charger in a matter of minutes.

  Nick was unsurprisingly silent during the ride, but Michael couldn’t stop saying things like, “Mavus is a vampire? A vampire?! And we’re going after vampire hunters? With guns?”

  “Just go with the flow, Fergus,” Connor said when they pulled into his driveway.

  “How are you all handling this so calmly?”

  Jules shrugged from the front seat. “It’s surprisingly less earth-shattering than you’d think. I actually totally forget Mavus is a vampire half the time.”

  “So he can’t do anything cool?” Nick asked.

  “Oh, he can do plenty of cool,” Connor said, “but he’s still Em. Come on.”

  The street was quiet. Connor just had to hope his father was in bed.

  He wasn’t. The TV being on alerted him of that as soon as he slipped in through the backyard sliding glass door with the others, but when no other sounds gave away that they’d been detected, Connor tiptoed into the living room and found his father passed out on the couch. He was a deep sleeper, and they only needed a couple minutes.

  Connor gestured them into the guest room, where they kept the gun cabinet. Connor had a key for it on his keychain and unlocked it without hesitation. There weren’t enough guns for everyone, but he didn’t expect most of them to try target practice for the first time on a bunch of living breathing human beings.

  He claimed his mom’s . 22 rifle and handed Aurora the 9mm. She nodded, looking far more poised than she had with Michael Fergus leaning against her back. Connor reached down to grab extra bullets, but when the motion caused him to wince and worry about pulling his internal and external stitches, Aurora grabbed the bullets for him, and he stuffed them into his pockets.

  “Your parents gave you a key to their gun cabinet?” Michael asked incredulously.

  Connor didn’t even turn to him as he worked on loading the rifle, and Aurora did the same with the 9mm. “
I’m 18, and not stupid.”

  “But you are stealing guns out of the cabinet right now,” Nick pointed out.

  “That is true,” Connor admitted, “I also know how to safely handle one and am doing so because someone is threatening my best friend’s life. Want me to put them back?” He looked at Nick and Michael pointedly.

  “No,” Michael said.

  Nick shook his head.

  “Good.”

  “But what are you going to do?” Jules asked.

  They had guns, bullets, and as Connor watched Aurora, he gaped a moment at how she unhooked her flowing skirt, revealing shorts underneath with a shrug. Jules didn’t have that luxury, but they’d manage.

  “Aurora and I don’t have competitions over who can hit the bullseye the most times for nothing,” Connor said. “The point will be to NOT hit anyone, unless we have no other choice, but if we can distract them, give Em and the others a chance to get away, anything, then we have to try.”

  “You’re assuming the hunters are still at the place they told Mavus to meet him,” Nick said. “What if they’re not?”

  What if they had already killed Emery and headed out of town, he meant, but didn’t want to say it. But no, not with how much Tim had his officers scouring the town and blocking the ways in and out. Getting out of town with bodies wasn’t an option. The hunters had to lie low, somewhere no one would look for them, and the patch of woods down from the middle school was just out of sightlines, not near any major roadways, with the perfect amount of space to keep prisoners. Or bodies. Or to bury bodies…

  But no. No. Connor still had a chance to save Emery.

  “What about us?” Michael asked when they turned to leave the guest room. “I’m not saying I want a gun. None of us have the skills you two do, but then what? Won’t we get in the way?”

  “You want to leave?” Connor asked.

  “No,” Michael said firmly, “but I don’t want to be the reason something goes wrong either. I’m fine with playing distraction, keeping lookout, just being extra bodies to help however we can, but what can we use to defend ourselves?”

  Jules offered a thoughtful grin and gestured them all back out to the Charger. Connor’s dad never once stirred, and when they reached the car in the driveway, Jules popped open the trunk to reveal a collection of old baseball bats, and the wooden axe from the spring play.

  “I may have claimed this baby as my own,” she said, touching her fingers to the silver and red painted prop. “Senior’s prerogative. So this is mine. But when we get there, boys, the bats are all yours.”

  Connor and Aurora carefully stowed their guns in the trunk with the rest. Michael threw his crown in there as well. They were silent as they drove toward the middle school, waiting at any moment for one of Tim’s patrols to appear and stop them.

  When they reached their destination without incident, Connor only felt more nervous, but he pushed all hesitation aside and had Jules park at the front of the school so they could move around to the back on foot and hopefully take the hunters by surprise. Every footfall reminded Connor that he was far from 100%, and a single wrong twist of his midsection could put him in serious peril again, but nothing was keeping him from saving Emery.

  ~

  My body ached from the shockwaves of the device Bane had used to subdue me. If I was coming to, I should have felt better than this, healed, restored. Then I stretched my arms forward and saw that the wrist cuff remained, sparking with little shocks of blue lightning. A course of electricity still ran through me, making it difficult to do anything more than sit up. I cringed, and reached with the other hand for the cuff on my right.

  “Try to take it off and you’ll be hit with a worst blast than the one that first knocked you out,” Bane said, stepping into view only a yard in front of me.

  As my vision finished clearing, I took in my surroundings. We were still in the copse of trees behind the middle school, more hidden and tucked away than out in the dip of the field down the hill, but still within view of the buildings. Alec sat in the grass beside me, also conscious and wearing a similar cuff on his wrist that sparked and made him grit his teeth. He nodded to me, then over at Wendy tied up on the ground surrounded by the other three hunters. Eli was tied up with her.

  “I assume this is an easy situation to understand,” Bane said. “Try anything, and I’ll shock you. And don’t think you can use your typical speed in your current condition. At the moment, I assure you, I am faster.” He held a device in his hand, like a remote.

  Eli called out, “This is insanity, Uncle! You have no evidence to suggest they’ve done anything but protect themselves! Please, Prosser, Mitchell, Gatch,” he looked at his fellow hunters above him. “You believe in the pact. I know you do. You can’t side with him just because he’s the one leading, just because you’ve trusted him in the past as someone who uses his authority with honor. This? There is nothing honorable about holding either of these vampires captive.”

  All three of the other hunters shifted on their feet, furrowed brows or frowns making it clear that they questioned Bane’s motivations. They could be swayed. But I’d learned only too recently in school how easy it can be to follow along with what someone in a position of power tells you to do.

  “So why don’t I clear things up?” Bane said, turning back to face the hunters, while keeping his stance squared with us still visible in his periphery. He looked back at me. “I’m sure you’re curious. I’m sure there is a very specific question rolling around in your head, Mr. Mavus. Care to share it?”

  There was one question, the only question left to ask. “Why haven’t you killed us yet?”

  Bane grinned and backed up a step to gesture grandly at Alec for the other hunters to see. “Because we can’t seem to figure out just exactly who you are. Alec, is it? Alec. But who are you really?”

  “You killed my children,” Alec said through grinding teeth, one knee up with the arm without the wrist cuff resting on it, as if he were ready to spring to his feet at any moment, “and you have repeatedly threatened a child of theirs. Your people are the reason Emery’s good friend, an innocent bystander, is in hospital. Isn’t all of that enough to tell you who I am and why I am on his side?”

  “You think I’m so blind,” Bane sneered, oldest amongst everyone around us, but the age in Alec’s eyes was showing, the coldness that still tripped me up sometimes. “I know who you are. Alec? Just Alec, sire to the Leonards and patriarch to young Mavus? Please. I’m sure you’ve had more names than I can count. Maybe even something like…Judas? Or Cain?”

  The hunters with Wendy and Eli all stood up straighter, held their weapons tighter. Eli’s eyes widened and his mouth fell slack. Wendy alone remained unmoved. Her wrists were bound behind her, tied to Eli’s, hidden from view.

  Alec, for his part, merely smiled, but it was sinister and dark, with no light reaching his eyes. “Now you’re just flattering me.”

  Bane huffed and stalked closer to Alec, but held back just out of arm’s reach. “I don’t care which legends are true, but one thing I do know is that you are him. You are the king. The beginning of all the rest. Even with six of us against one, catching the wife alone, she put up an incredible fight, the kind of power you don’t see in vampires so young, only a few hundred years old. The husband was the same. A fighter, powerful, the kind of power that could only come from a direct line to the source.”

  I heard what Bane said, but it didn’t compute. The source? The source of all vampires? The king who had struck the bargain with hunters in the first place? That was Alec? He’d be the oldest, most powerful thing on the planet.

  I looked again at Wendy, and realized she’d known all along.

  “You’ve never created other children. Not since the beginning. And all of those initial children who spread the disease—”

 
“Who stole their power, it was not granted to them,” Alec spat.

  “That’s one version,” Bane said. “Either way, all those children are long dead, but their creations continue to plague the world, for thousands upon thousands of years. Maybe longer. There’s no way to know for how long, how old you really are, which tales are true, which historical figures you’ve been. How you’ve shaped history.”

  “You flatter me again,” Alec said. “I merely live to live. My hands have been in nothing but the quest for a peaceful existence and the lives of my children. Children, I’ll remind you, that you killed without provoca—” He cringed and fell back to the ground after making to stand, stronger electricity shooting up his arm.

  “You’re the reason for every death any of your children, direct or otherwise, ever caused,” Bane said, using his device once more until Alec growled and nearly fell back prone. “That’s provocation enough. No matter how you want to look at it, my sister and countless others are dead because you exist.”

  “The king…” Eli said, shaking his head as if to dismiss that this was true. I didn’t know if I felt safer knowing this, or betrayed that he hadn’t told me.

  “Do you understand now, Eli,” Bane said, “why the ruse was worth it?”

  “So you admit, freely and under your own will,” Wendy spoke up, “that this was all a ruse? That you had no evidence of William or Mallory Leonard defying the pact, or of Emery having committed any crimes? You killed them and planned to kill Emery initially just because you wanted to. You continued in the charade, knowing you were in the wrong, once you realized you had a chance to catch the king. The very man who created the pact you swore to uphold.”

  “Man,” Bane sneered, jabbing a finger back toward Wendy. “You are a fool if you think he is anything other than a monster. That any of them are!”