by Tim Greaton
I was hungry.
2
Thomas scratched his razor sharp fingernails along the concrete wall to let Belinda know he was coming. Being in the final stage of transition, she would be susceptible to any sudden changes, especially surprise visits. Someone just “popping in” could easily overwhelm her nervous system and send her body into a mindless rage, which would force her consciousness ever-closer to that precarious edge. Belinda had one maybe two days remaining as herself at most.
Thomas didn’t look forward to giving the order to burn her but he would. Such was the responsibility of a clan leader.
A new guard stood watch outside her locked steel door. Originally, an accountant or bookkeeper of some form, he was calm and matter-of-fact, exactly the sort of personality that the council liked to see turned. It had been decades since an aggressive or excitable vampire had been allowed into the Boston clan. Volatile types inevitably attracted the attention of human authorities and were harder to control, especially as the time for burning drew near. No. Accountants, mild-mannered house wives, even classical musicians were, surprisingly, a much better fit for the brutal and short life led by members of the clan. You needed only to look at their last leader for proof. Belinda had been a lab analyst.
The guard bowed and moved to open the door.
Thomas slashed his nails across the blond man’s cheek, just deep enough to teach.
“You always knock first,” he hissed to the novice. “She must be aware that someone is entering!”
The guard wiped blood from his already-healed wounds. Bowing, he licked the red liquid from his fingers.
Thomas pounded on the door.
“Belinda, it’s Thomas!”
“Come in,” came her voice, still strong, still in control. “Come see what death is like.”
Thomas grimaced then nodded at the guard to unlock the heavy, reinforced door.
Belinda’s burn chamber was as comfortable as could be devised. Her bed and most of her furnishings had been moved into the concrete room, as had her collection of 80’s rock and pop albums. What was left of her obsolete turntable sat in shattered pieces of clear and fake wood plastic on the corner of her dresser. A dozen albums and covers had been slashed into ribbons and now decorated the floor like ungainly confetti. The two-shelf album stand beside the bureau, however, remained largely untouched with hundreds of musical choices intact.
“I can have someone bring you another record player,” he said, turning to his predecessor.
“That would not be wise,” Belinda said from her standing perch at the edge of her bed. Steeled into a semi-crouch, she looked like a wild cat waiting to pounce on its prey. Her trembling hand ran through snarled brown hair. Her black tongue licked across chapped lips. Flakes of dried blood covered what used to be a complexion as perfect as pale porcelain. Crystal blue eyes were bloodshot with red stains in the corners. “Music causes my mind to wander.”
“You are looking well,” he said, which was true given that she had spent at least twelve of the last twenty-four hours screaming and digging at the flesh around the iron manacles that bound her wrists and ankles. Only a constant supply of fresh blood had allowed her body to rejuvenate quickly enough to stay ahead of the injuries. He glanced at the four adult bodies stacked like discarded luggage beside her bed. Normally, clan members were burned long before they reached this stage. Belinda, however, would choose her own time…or be unable to.
“Have you verified the rumors?” she asked.
“Jared and Short William found nothing.”
“What about the trio I sent to Maine?”
“We think they were intercepted by the Burlington Clan,” Thomas said. “I presume all three are dead.”
Belinda slumped to the bed. “So I should stop fighting. There’s nothing but fire.”
“Do not give up!”
Faster than any human eye could have followed, Belinda flew from the bed toward Thomas’ throat. She stopped with a clash of chains less than two feet from him. Her breath smelled of rot and decay.
“Do not tell me what to do!” she snarled.
She still had fight left in her. Thomas would have expected no less of a clan leader, even one so close to the burning. He bowed his head in deference. Regardless of the circumstances, she would always be his leader.
“Your Highness, I meant only that there is reason to hope. The trio tracked rumors through a dozen Maine villages and towns. They were on their way to a place called Groacherville when we last heard from them.”
Belinda’s chains clanked as she tested the extent of her shackles. Thomas remained still. A clan leader never backed away from danger. Besides, he knew the chains’ limits.
She snarled, backed away and asked, “Do you now believe this rogue vampire exists?”
Thomas nodded.
“I can’t speak to his longevity, but I believe the rumors have some basis in fact. I’ve already sent another team to the Maine town. I’m hopeful.”
“You may go then,” Belinda spat. Then her head sagged. “And I will find some way to survive.”
Thomas turned and left. If vampires had a god, he would have prayed for her success.
3
A familiar aroma greeted me as I regained consciousness. The earthy scent brought a momentary smile to my face. I remembered giggling with my friends and leaning forward in the Groacherville High School auditorium to sniff the back of Evan’s dark hair. He always smelled like a forest after a rainstorm. I loved that smell. My eyes snapped open to see a long twisted machine—a gun of some form—hanging on a cream colored wall across the room from me. The weapon was bent as though a giant had decided to NOT be shot.
“It was my father’s…in Desert Storm,” a deep voice said. “It got run over by a tank being driven by one of his friends who died a few minutes later. My father talked his commanding officer into letting him keep it. He called it the ultimate sad irony of war.”
I turned to see the source of the woodsy aroma standing in the doorway to the small room I occupied. I was lying on a bed. My neck sizzled with pain as I shifted to see Evan better. My body felt as though it had spent time over a charcoal brazier. I remembered the fire ants.
“You found me…at the base?”
Evan nodded. “You and six others.”
“Rachel, Amanda?”
Though he and the girls had not exactly been friends, everyone knew everyone in Groacherville. He shook his head. “If they were at the base, they got out okay.”
“I saw you kill a squirrel.”
“It wasn’t a squirrel anymore,” Evan said.
I shuddered recalling the creature’s fang-filled maw and nasty attitude to match. Then I remembered the beheading and mutilation. Suddenly, crush or not, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be alone with Evan. I tried to sit up, but the effort sent a wave of stinging pain across my chest and legs. My skin felt like it had been scorched with a torch. I slumped back to the pillow. Even that hurt.
“Why did you squeeze out its blood?” I asked.
“It was the only way to get the ants away from you. They wanted blood, so I made it easy for them. Look, I know you have questions and I promise they’ll be time to talk later. But, right now, I need you to call your parents and let them know you’re okay and that you’re at a party I’m having at my Aunt Stephanie’s house.”
Mrs. Stephanie Groacher was the school nurse who also ran the Groacherville Health Clinic two nights a week and on Saturdays. No one at school liked her.
Evan took two steps into the room and handed me a familiar pink flip phone. It must have fallen out of my pock—
I suddenly realized I was naked except for bra and panties! Fortunately, a sheet covered me but I yanked it up to my neck, paying the price in agonizing pain flashing across my entire torso.
I gasped.
“Careful,” Evan said. “The next few hours aren’t going to be easy. After that, though, my aunt says you should be okay.”
“Where are m
y clothes?” I glared at him.
“Don’t worry. My aunt undressed you. She’s in the living room taking care of the boys.” Just then the pink phone rang. He glanced at the screen. “I’m assuming ‘the wardens’ are your parents?” He held the phone out.
I took it.
“It’s probably best if you don’t tell them you’ve been hurt,” Evan said.
“Why not?” I asked.
The ringer was still going off.
“Because then I couldn’t protect you and really bad things could happen to everyone I found at Fort Groacherville.”
Though I had been only a toddler when the Army base was in operation, just hearing him say the name of the place sent jitters through my mind. How had I been so stupid to go to the abandoned base, especially when I knew the boys at school had been intent on finding its underground secrets? I let the phone ring one more time before answering.
“KK, are you alright?” my mother asked breathlessly. “I’ve been trying to call for almost an hour. Amanda and Rachel have both been calling. They said you got separated earlier but neither one knew where you were. Or maybe they didn’t want to tell me. Then I heard the police had sent both cruisers over to the fort.”
For the briefest of moments, I considered telling her everything—about the explosions, running through smoke with crutches, the fire ants, everything—but I stopped myself. There Evan was, only two feet from me, not just noticing me but talking to me, his perfect pale complexion squinted in sympathy. I had been trying desperately to get his attention for two years, and now that I had it I wasn’t about to screw everything up…not just to slake my mother’s curiosity.
“Everything’s okay, Mom. I’m at a party with some other kids from school.”
“Oh,” my mother said, her voice hesitant, “since when do you go anywhere without Rachel?” She didn’t say anything about Amanda because we both knew that though the beautiful blond had attached herself to Rachel and me during the previous school year, I had never really considered her a friend. At any moment, I expected her to return to the cheerleading crowd.
“I’m going to have your father to pick you up.”
“No you’re not!” I snapped. “You’re always telling me to go out more. Now that I am, you want to stop me. Besides, how many other parties do you think I’ll get invited to if you make me leave now?”
“So why isn’t Rachel with you?”
I had to think quickly. Rachel and I had been inseparable since before I could remember. Sometime during middle school my parents had started referring to her as their second daughter, and Rachel’s grandmother also treated me like part of the family. Like most teens, I had long ago learned that the most believable lies were the ones that were almost true.
“She’s been seeing a new kid who moved into her apartment complex. The other kids don’t really know him yet, so I guess he didn’t get invited.”
“Next time, I want to know about any parties in advance,” my mother said.
“Yeah, okay.”
“I also want phone numbers and an address for wherever you are. And I want to know exactly when you’re going to be back.”
“What’s the address here?” I whispered to Evan with my hand over the receiver.
“Tell her 6 Riverview Drive,” Evan said. “You’re actually at my house, but it would be better if she thought you were at my aunt’s house.”
I opened my mouth to ask why it mattered but clamped it shut again. What did I care? Being at Evan’s house, even if only as his aunt’s patient, was good enough. I gave my mother the Riverview address and explained that it was going to be a slumber party.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” she said. “What about your leg?”
“My knee feels fine,” I lied. “Besides Mrs. Groacher is the next best thing to a doctor.”
“Well, I want to talk to her!” my mother informed me.
I rolled my eyes for Evan’s benefit.
“Yeah, I guess you can talk with her. Hold on.”
I held the phone out to Evan who took it and went in search of his aunt. He returned a few minutes later. “You’re all set. My aunt promised to chaperone the ‘party’ and bring you home Sunday afternoon.”
“That’s when I’ll get grounded and your aunt will get a call,” I said. “My mother will know something was up as soon as she sees all these ant bites.”
“You’ll be healed by then,” Evan said, placing my pink phone on the night stand beside the bed. The sleeves of his blue button-up shirt were rolled up, revealing pale muscular forearms. Over the last few years he had grown to look like a gymnast or a bodybuilder, yet he had not played team sports or seriously worked out in the school gym since we were in elementary school. Other than helping to coach girls’ soccer because his niece was on the team, I had never seen him near a sports field.
“Nothing heals in two days,” I informed him.
“That’s why my aunt told your mother the party was for the whole weekend. She promised you’d be home by Sunday afternoon.”
“I can’t stay here till then,” I protested. “Rachel and I are taking the bus to the mall on Sunday.”
“There’s always next week,” Evan suggested.
“Stephen King won’t be signing books at Books-A-Million next week.”
A loud crash came from another room. People were yelling. Evan snatched the phone back.
“I’m sorry but you won’t be seeing Stephen King Sunday.”
I opened my mouth to argue but Evan had already left the room, slamming the door behind him. I heard the ominous sound of a lock snapping in place.
What had I gotten myself into?
4
Thomas sat at the huge mahogany desk and stared out the large window beside him. An ultraviolet coating on the glass made it possible for him to look out at the sunlit grounds of the meticulously manicured estate, a property that had been in the clan’s possession since colonial times. One of the human gardeners swirled around a tree with a state-of-the art riding lawnmower. Apparently unaware of the hundred brutal souls inside who would like nothing so much as to drain the life from his healthy young flesh, the young man sang and bobbed his head to music that poured from a pair of ear buds. Thomas could easily have dissected the music from the small engine clatter to identify the melody, but his thoughts were elsewhere.
His eyes flicked to the tear-off calendar on the right corner of the desk. Most members of the clan kept some version of a death calendar, a stark reminder of the price one paid for exposure to the vampire virus. The last page of Belinda’s calendar sat there like an enemy flag to remind him that even the strongest among them couldn’t outrun the tragedy of their condition. Belinda had so far beaten the odds by almost two weeks, but ultimately she too would fall prey to mindlessness and rage.
Thomas tapped her calendar page and stared at the blood red numerals: 1825.
1825 days, five years, usually to the day, that was the lifespan of a vampire’s mind.
He leaned back in Belinda’s—now his—deep leather chair and smiled grimly. The irony was not lost on him. The clans were easily the most powerful force on the planet, bar none. Money, power, stealth, the clans had it all. Even individual vampires were physically stronger and often more mentally acute than the humans from whom they were spawned, but nature had issued one irrefutable, terrifying decree: the genetic mutations that gave them so much superiority would ultimately burn like a torch inside their skulls until nothing remained, nothing but hunger and rage.
“Zombies,” Caroline said as she stepped into his office, “I’m so sick of seeing them advertised on TV and in the movies. Have you heard of that show “The Walking Dead”? Makes me feel like flying out to California or wherever the hell it is that they film that disgusting mess—”
“What have we heard from the team in Maine?” Thomas asked. He had no time for pop culture nor novice vampires who actually still cared about anything humans said or did. It wouldn’t be long before the
dwindling of her short lifespan would burn away all interest in anything but survival, but for now she had to be ignored. The short, previously plump but rapidly thinning, redhead was at least efficient in her duties.
“Carlson called in,” the young woman said. “He and the others are spending the rest of the day in a motel in Portland. They’ll be in the Town of Groacherville early tonight.”
“Keep me posted,” Thomas said, turning his chair to face out the window again.
“There’s one more thing, sir.”
Curious, Thomas glanced back at her.
“Our people caught two Vermont clansmen. Carlson wants to know what to do with them.”
“The bitch must know about the rogue,” Thomas spat, placing his hands on the cool wood of his desk. He was, of course, referring to the impetuous Vermont clan queen Claudia. His claws extended but his iron will kept them from scratching the desk’s perfect glossy finish.
“The Vermont people are under control?” he asked.
“’Captured’ is the term Carlson used.”
“Tell them to feed on vampire blood today…but carefully. And leave no evidence.”
“I’ll convey the message,” she said. She turned to leave but then paused. “I’m not really sure how all of this works, sir, but if I wanted to fly to California or wherever they’re filming that ridiculous show…do I get vacations?”
It would have been easy to snatch a pencil from his desk and hurl it through her chest but Thomas merely waved her away. If necessary, he would have her transferred to corpse cleaning duties for a few months. However, if she wasn’t better after that….
5
Hearing a girl scream, I gritted my teeth and slid to the edge of the bed. Though my knee miraculously didn’t hurt anymore, it felt as though several layers of my skin were being peeled away. I fought back tears and wondered why my gums and fingernails also ached.
“You can do this,” I told myself as I eased to my feet. The pain was like a living creature clinging to every pore of my body. The ants had done their job well. The clamor of voices beyond my room grew louder. Though my knee easily supported me, there was so much other pain it was hard to focus. I gasped and my vision blurred.