by D. S. Ritter
She paused. “Fuck. How am I going to get my car?”
Chapter Ten
Sam took a cab home that night and caught the first bus into town the next morning. It was a short walk from the nearest stop to the old mortuary. By the time she reached it, she was grouchy and aching for a coffee. And then, she saw her car.
SUCK IT LIFIE was scrawled on the side in big, red, spray painted letters. The back right window was broken in, and someone had driven the stakes they’d left inside into the seats. Sam sighed.
“Today blows,” she said, kicking a tire. Her eyes wandered over to the old mortuary and her stomach turned to ice. The door stood open, creaking quietly in the breeze.
Right away, she knew it wasn’t a good idea, but she needed to look inside. Finding the place in shambles seemed inevitable, but a morbid curiosity overtook her and she walked up the porch steps, even as she mumbled about how stupid she was being. Had any of the local vampires survived? Did anyone need help in there? A step creaked and raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She was ready to bolt before she even set foot inside.
She pushed the door open all the way, letting in as much daylight as possible. The entry, which had been beautiful and well-kept yesterday, looked like a hurricane had been through it. Glass sconces had been shattered or just torn away. The crystal chandelier hung askew, dangling by a thread of electrical wire and attackers had ripped the paper from the dented, cracked walls. The beautiful oriental rug was bloodstained and covered in greasy gray dust. Ash. Sam’s skin crawled. She was probably standing on Nelson’s remains.
She followed the hall which looked terrible, into the den. The carpet was soaked with blood and smeared with more ash. The chairs and coffee tables had been torn to pieces, many of which, they’d embedded in the floor. Makeshift stakes. There was so much ash. How many vampires had died? She couldn’t estimate: it had been smeared and ground into the carpet.
She caught movement at the corner of her eye and whirled around. Up on the wall behind the low stage, hung Alissa.
She was barely animated, pinned about an inch off the floor. Someone had driven large chunks of wood through her abdomen, and she coughed weakly, blood dripping from her mouth.
“Oh, shit,” whispered Sam, running over. “How do I help you?!”
Alissa tried to speak, but there was a gurgling sound. Blood seeped out of her everywhere.
Sam looked at the damage and made a judgment call. “I think this will hurt. A lot,” she warned, “but I think we gotta do this… You can heal, right? You’re going to heal?”
The vampire made no response. The shards of wood were buried too deeply in the wall for Sam’s human strength to remove. She tried to pull one, but it was as though they had cemented it in place. She turned to plan “B.”
Sam wrapped her arms around the vampire’s body. This will either save her, or kill her, she thought, but at least she won’t be suffering. She pulled. Alissa’s flesh gave, and she slid off of the stakes and on top of Sam. She weighed a lot less than expected, and Sam hefted her before she fell to the floor. Blood was getting everywhere, smearing the front of Sam’s shirt.
“We gotta get you something to drink,” she said, laying her down on the stage. She looked like a torn up porcelain doll. “I’ll come back with some blood or something… wait there!”
Trying to remember the way, Sam stumbled through the corridors until she stumbled upon the basement door. Literally. They had ripped it from its hinges.
She peered through the gaping doorway to basement stairs, which led into complete darkness.
“Fuck,” swore Sam, looking down into the black. There was no way of knowing what might be down there. Plucking up her courage, while reminding herself how stupid this whole adventure was, she turned her phone’s flashlight on and crept down the stairs.
“Please, be empty,” she whispered to herself as her fear grew with each step down.
She reached the concrete floor and followed her light into what had once been the morgue. The ash was thick here, with many of the clean white tiles cracked and smeared with congealing blood. The smell of burned flesh and copper hung in the air, threatening to make Sam sick. She tried not to breathe too deeply as she walked over to the industrial fridges set against the wall.
In the first one, all she found were empty medical blood bags. She opened the second, and the third. There was nothing. Either the invading vampires had gorged themselves, or destroyed the entire supply. Fuck, thought Sam as she shut the last fridge. What could she do now?
She felt something brush the back of her shirt. Her spine went ridged and Sam froze for a second. She pointed the flashlight, but there was nothing there. To her right, she thought she heard something shift. That was enough.
She bolted, racing for the stairs as fast as she could run. She thought she saw shadows in her periphery, but didn’t stop or look, her singular focus on the stairs. Sam took them two at a time, and when she reached the ground floor, picked up the door and heaved it down the stairs, hoping to block the way. Like that would stop anything hiding down there. She backed away from the doorway, half expecting a monster to burst out of the darkness. But there wasn’t a sound and nothing moved.
Sam whirled on her heels and ran back to where Alissa lay. She had tried to sit up, but, failing, had flopped over on her side. Her mouth hung open like a dead fish’s, and she barely held on.
“They got into the blood downstairs,” said Sam, sitting down beside her and rolling up her sleeve. “I got an idea though. This isn’t going to like, make me a vampire or something, is it?”
Alissa shifted her head in what Sam hoped was a negative.
“Okay, just don’t kill me, or something, okay? Leave plenty for me, all right?” She held her wrist near Alissa’s mouth. The prone vampire’s eyes locked on hers as fangs met living flesh.
Sam realized then that the movies were bullshit. The sexual moaning, the looks of ecstasy. It was all bogus. A vampire bite hurt like hell. A searing pain that went all the way up her arm, forcing her to double over in agony. Not white hot, but on a par with that time she’d grabbed a hot pan from the oven bare-handed. She flashed back to her fight with the thorny octopus monster the year before; the scars she had from that were just fading.
She swore, tears leaping to her eyes, as she fought the logical reaction of trying to get the hell away. Alissa continued to suck, and with each draught, Sam felt the pain going further inward. “Fuck this shit,” she cried, struggling not to pull her arm away. “I hate this, I hate this, I fucking hate this!”
The sensation became maddening, and she just wanted it to be over. So much worse than when she’d gotten her tattoos. Maybe, if they’d done it with a rattlesnake fang…
After far too long, Alissa disengaged from her wrist and they both lay on the floor, panting. “People...” breathed Sam, “people do that *willingly?”
*“You just did,” replied Alissa, weakly.
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Until nightfall. The rest... are they...?” The vampire fell silent.
“I’m not sure,” said Sam, too light-headed to sit up. “There’s a lot of... Maybe some of them got away?”
Alissa fell quiet for a long time, and Sam suspected she was crying, if such a thing was possible. “There hasn’t been a war in centuries. I was still young, the last time one happened.”
“War? Who are these guys?”
“I’d heard rumors of a new coven moving into the area. I expected we’d have turf disputes, but it’s not as though my people are territorial. Most of them consign themselves to what we get from the farms. We don’t hunt, and most interaction with humans is of a more social nature. I thought our two covens could coexist without problems.
“I don’t think they agree with that view...”
“Where can I find them?”
The vampire rolled on her side, her perfect, photo spread hair now knotted and frizzled, got in her face for a second. “Telling you that w
ould be like killing you. You see what they did to us. We are so much stronger than you. It would be like sending a baby into a den of wolves.”
Sam sighed. “I won’t go,” she said, hoping this was not a lie. “I just need to know where it is. Smith wants to know.”
“I doubt there’s much Smith can do against these... animals,” said Alissa, “But, I’ll tell you. So long as you and your friends don’t go there.”
“We won’t.”
They lay there in the quiet dark for some time. Sam was feeling sick to her stomach. “Do you guys at least give people a cookie or something? Like the Red Cross?” she said, squeezing her eyes shut.
Chapter Eleven
After helping Alissa down into the tunnels, Sam returned to her vandalized car. She felt like absolute crap as she pulled the stakes out of the driver's seat. She wanted to pull them out of all the seats, but suspected it would be hard enough driving home without using up more of her energy. Every movement was painful, like she’d gotten a full-body tetanus shot, and she felt heavy all over. She kept visualizing flopping onto her bed and just sinking into it until she disappeared into a cocoon of sleep.
The drive was slow because she kept zoning out in her exhaustion. She’d come back to herself and discover she’d been going ten miles under the speed limit, on autopilot. Her flu-like symptoms continued to escalate, and she shivered with fever chills. Her head pounded and her reactions were sluggish and fuzzy. She couldn’t get over the idea that people let vampires do this to them because they liked it.
“Who could enjoy this?” she demanded of an unassuming traffic light. It was worse than being drunk. Worse than being sick. She felt like her head was wrapped in cotton with rocks inside her skull, knocking around every time she moved it. “God, it might be better if they did kill people...”
Dragging herself up the apartment stairs was awful, but at the end stood her door, and beyond that, the promised land; her bed. She peeled off her blood-stained clothes and left them in a pile on the carpet, thinking she should put them in the sink to soak, and then realizing how little she cared at that moment. As she collapsed into the mattress’ embrace, she barely had the presence of mind to set her alarm. Work? No way, she’d be calling off today, no question.
***
When she woke up hours later, the sun still hung in the sky, though it had begun its decent toward the horizon. Despite the overcast, Michigan fall day, Sam squinted in the light and had to make sure she’d closed the blinds. That aside, her headache was gone, and she was great, if not hungry. Alissa had warned that she might feel strange after the bite, but aside from the light sensitivity and a strange craving for raw beef, Sam felt damn good. Her aches and pains from earlier had melted away. Plus, she had energy, like she’d slammed a couple energy drinks. She forgot all about calling in sick. For the first time in years, she felt rested and ready to go. Contemplating going for a jog before work, she picked up her phone.
Sam D:
The coven got wiped
Alissa’s ok. Hiding
Got a new lead
[unknown number]
You went back alone?
Sam D:
Needed to get my car.
Don’t tell anyone. They’d be pissed.
[unknown number]
No shit
I’ll come see you at work
Sam nodded to no one in particular. God, she wanted a thick, bloody hunk of beef so bad, it sort of scared her. She tried to imagine dealing with the craving on the job and decided she would need to hit the supermarket before going in. Having never been a smoker, she imagined this nagging need was probably similar. She thought of nothing else but how to get her hands on some meat.
By the time she reached the meat counter at the local supermarket, the transaction was something akin to an addict approaching a dealer.
“Um,” she said, her eyes scanning the scanty offerings in the refrigerated display case. She hated the market near her house; it had terrible produce unless you wanted it out of a can and now the butcher department was disappointing her. “I guess I’ll take that one,” she said, pointing to the least meager piece of beef. Truth was, she hadn’t eaten much steak before and didn‘t know how to pick a good one. She picked the biggest and hoped it would suit her purposes though she wasn’t totally sure what they were.
The woman behind the counter wore a tired expression and looked upon Sam like she pitied her. The twitching probably had something to do with that. Also, the clammy sheen to her skin. Sam still had the energy, but it had a rawness to it she wasn’t a huge fan of. She tried not to jitter as she watched the woman plop the meat onto a foam palette and wrap it with plastic. A little drop of juice escaped the flesh and rolled around on the tray, and Sam tried not to drool.
Everything would be okay once she got that steak home.
By the time she pulled into a parking space in front of her apartment, she didn‘t want to wait another second. She pulled it out of the plastic shopping bag, tore off the plastic wrap and slurped up the juice that had collected on the little tray.
Sam had never felt so disgusted and so satisfied at the same time. Her mind screamed at her that this was exactly how you got food born illnesses, but the rest of her could not care less. Once she’d finished off the little dribble of meat juice, she picked up the steak in both hands. It was chilly, which was both refreshing and disappointing. She thought for a second about taking it upstairs and warming it up in a pan, just to you know, body temperature. But, why wait that long?
Before she understood what she did, she bit into the raw meat and sucked. A wave of pleasure washed over her, so strong, her eyes rolled. She sunk her teeth deeper into the flesh, tasting the juices as they trickled down her throat. She tasted it wasn’t the freshest, or the best, but it was still so good. Somewhere in her mind, she knew she was doing something wrong. This was not what normal people were supposed to do. Normal people liked steak, but not this much. She felt no shame though.
When the flow of juices ebbed, she turned the hunk of meat and bit another part, hoping to find more. As weird as this seemed, it went a long way to get the monkey off her back, and aside from straight enjoyment, she relaxed, the tension of need slowly releasing her. She wondered if this was what it was like to be a vampire. For a moment, an ice-like chill rolled down her spine. What if Alissa had lied? What if she was becoming a vampire? She took another sip of juice and her brain roiled with the pleasure. No, she had warned her things would get weird. Sam decided to believe she would not be nocturnal from now on. Besides, if she was, at least she had the perfect job for that... And meat tasted just so good. Obviously, she’d need to pick up another couple of steaks after work and—
he meat back on the tray, weirded out by her own inner thoughts. She was not becoming a vampire, that wouldn’t be a great thing. No matter how good raw steak or blood — oh, what about actual blood — no, becoming a vampire was not a thing she could get behind. She went up to her apartment and put the meat in the fridge. She told herself she’d cook it later, and like it.
Chapter Twelve
“You okay, Sam?” Tina stared at her with some concern as she fidgeted, waiting for her assignment.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Sam, bursting with energy and barely keeping herself in check. “Just had too many energy drinks, I guess...”
“Uh huh,” said Tina. Sam could practically see her checking off the symptoms for some drug addiction, but whatever. She was there to work. Why wouldn’t they just let her work? Why did everything have to be so damn slow?
Matt was in the office as well, shuffling paperwork. “Hey, Sam,” he said, “have you heard of this new club opening in Ypsi? It seems wild.”
“No,” said Sam, trying not to sound completely disinterested. “Is it cool?”
“I don’t know,” said Matt, “They wouldn’t let me in, but it looked amazing. Like something out of New York. Big bouncer, cool looking people, velvet ropes and everything. They converted this old
warehouse into a club. I’m going to go next weekend.”
“Even though they didn’t let you in this time?”
“Yeah. I think I can get them to let me in. I mean, I can be cool. I just wasn’t trying hard enough this time, but I think I’ve got it now.”
“Right.” There was an awkward silence for a little while. “So, how’s the Liquifier doing…?”
“Well,” he looked kind of sheepish, “I’m kind of giving it a break for now… I ran out of the powder, and it’s actually pretty expensive, and well, there’s plenty of nutrition in normal food, right?”
“Sure,” said Sam. “Absolutely.”
Matt smiled in a way that was not very happy and they silently, mutually agreed not to bring the Liquifier up again.
***
Even when she was in the garage, Sam felt too restless. It was like she was stuck on a caffeine high. Her heart raced, and she was irritable. The worst was when a customer drove up with a ticket, and she put it in the machine and it didn’t read. She tried a second time and sighed. Manual collections were a pain in the ass.
“Oh,” said the customer, a middle-aged man with a woman in the passenger seat, “not working?”
“Nope. It’s okay though, sometimes this happens,” said Sam, checking the time on the ticket and doing the math in her head.
“If it’s not working, then I guess it’s free, huh?” Ah, that old chestnut. Sam had no patience for that shit today.
“Ahaha. No.” she snapped. “That’ll be three dollars. I can take cash or card.”
The man frowned and handed her his credit card. She swiped it on the handheld terminal Empire issued and called in the collection so HQ could raise the gate. She didn’t even wish the guy a good night, his comment had annoyed her so much.
“Hey,” said a voice, making her jump. She whirled around and found John standing behind her, dressed in street clothes. He’d left his ridiculous cape at home. “You are jittery as hell.”