Parasite ; Sleeper Cells ; Kingdoms of the Dead

by Ian Woodhead

  “I know that you are close by, my little rabbit. I can feel your little hear beating away.” The Swarmer First Father raised his arms up towards the ceiling. “Remove yourself from your concealment. I just wish you to explain your deed. I might even consider allowing you to continue existing.”

  Damien watched him take one step forward, his arms were just millimetres from that beam of sunlight. Damien watched the other two vampires cringe back, moaning. He did consider taking the leader up on the offer. After all, these vampires were now the only family he had left. There was nowhere else to go.

  She then remembered that this strange looking vampire, currently doing deals with his life was shacked up with the female who had turned Damien. That wily vampire obviously had plans for Damien that no doubt involved him somehow, getting rid of their First Father. At least, that’s the impression that he received.

  “I know what you are, my little rabbit. I’m guessing that you do too now. Perhaps one of my clan defied my orders, perhaps a Deathgazer turned you? It matter not, I will not take these irregularities into consideration. I just want to know how my First Son died. Are you going to show yourself? Your time is running out and so is my patience.”

  Damien stopped in mid motion when the First Father turned around and looked towards the empty stall. He knew that he hadn’t been seen, not that it mattered. The First Father’s piercing eyes rooted him to the spot. He felt like he was gazing into eternity. The leader then blinked, severing the connection. Damien scuttled back behind the low partition, feeling his heartbeat increase again. That was just nightmarish, what the hell had he just seen?

  The vampire’s eyes had glowed like a pair of sick green headlights. He now saw why he didn’t need to be as big as the other vampires, that thing could just suck out your soul with one evil glare. He took a deep breath, composed himself and slowly looked around the side again. The vampire hadn’t moved but at least now, Damien could actually look at the first Father without feeling like a rabbit caught by a large fox.

  Damien found his mind leaving his body and heading for the First Father, while the vampire’s attention was elsewhere, Damien found it ridiculously easy to slip into the First Father’s thoughts.

  It took Damien a moment for him to realise that he was no longer inside the market. He rolled onto his back and gazed up at the full moon, he smelled the scent of dead leaves under his naked body and felt the cold wind blowing over his chest. He turned his head to the left, catching sight of a young brown haired woman leaning over the crudely made wooden bridge, crossed a shallow stream. She held her hand in the fast flowing water, occasionally grabbing twigs as they floated past.

  Deep down, Damien knew that despite how real this felt to him, his body hadn’t moved from that piss-stained floor. He fought back the panic and feeling of disorientation when the body that he now shared sat up and walked over to the stream. The body waved at the girl before kneeling down and gazing into the clear water.

  A pair of intense green eyes stared back at him. Damien almost screamed, he was now inside the body of the Swarmer First Father, was he reliving a moment from the vampire’s past? The girl’s musical giggle reached his ears. That voice sounded so familiar. His head turned.

  “I knew you would enjoy this,” said the vampire.

  “Oh yes, Desmonus, I can’t thank you enough for this privilege. The other house slaves will be so jealous.”

  The vampire jumped up and ran over to the girl. “Say just one word to anyone and I will hurt you.” The vampire sighed before he sat down and dangled his feet over the edge of the bridge. “Forgive me, Eleanor,” he said, sighing. It is not always possible to stop my volatile emotions from ruling my body.”

  Damien had difficulty believing that this vision of loveliness was the same person who bit him. There was nothing about this Eleanor that caught his eye. Damien knew that if the vampire that he was currently occupying were to turn away, he’d have difficulty placing her face.

  The girl placed her arm around his shoulders. “It is I who should ask for forgiveness, my sweet protector. I spoke without thought.” She kissed the back of his head. “Desmonus, whom of those tongue dancing fishwives, would even listen to some lowly servant?”

  The vampire looked up into her large brown eyes. “You are such a beauty, my Eleanor.”

  She jerked her head back, Damien saw tears in her eyes. He wondered if this vampire was taking the piss. He so wished he could access the vampire’s thoughts, he’d look to finding out what this Desmonus was thinking instead of just being some invisible passenger. Damien watched the girl wipe her eyes, wondering what it was about this girl that made him feel to antagonistic about her appearance. Was it because he had only seen her as a beautiful vampire? Eleanor leaned over and kissed the vampire’s nose. Damien did see that at least her teeth were in good shape.

  “It still takes me time to believe that you do not jest with your words, Desmonus.” She smiled. “Even after two years, I still wake before the dawn bells, smiling at my fortune.”

  Desmonus gasped when the girl leaned across and wrapped her fingers around the vampire’s flaccid penis. “If I am your shining night star, my love, then why does your rod bend so easily?”

  She started to stroke him, squeezing then releasing as her momentum built up. She giggled when the vampire laid down against the wooden planks, his hands finding her large breasts. “Do not mock me,” he said, leaning forward. Desmonus ran his long tongue across her large nipples.

  “Why would I mock my lover, Desmonus?” she said sitting down on his ankles. She lowered her head and flicked her tongue over his inner thighs. “Will you ever make me like you?”

  Damien felt like some pervert peeping through a window, watching a couple copulate.

  “I love you, my Eleanor, not just like you.” Desmonus sat up and curled his fingers through the girl’s hair. “Do not stop that, my darling.”

  Eleanor abruptly released the vampire’s raging penis and stood up. “I want you to turn me, Desmonus. I want to be like you.” She stood astride him and gazed into his eyes. “You will soon find another girl to warm your cock, Desmonus. I am not a fool. I know that I am not the first girl you have used.”

  The vampire growled and jumped to her feet, he wrapped his fingers around her wrists and pushed her over to the edge of the bridge. “You dare to issue demands?”

  Damien could tell that the girl must be in a great deal of pain. The vampire was not gentle with his hold, yet despite this, she didn’t cry out. He inwardly sighed, hoping that they’d get this argument dealt with so they could get back to the sex part. The girl might not be much to look at but from what he briefly saw, she certainly knew how to use her tongue. Damien couldn’t wait to feel that tongue of her wrapped around his anatomy. He was sure that would take place, if he could find a way to appease her comrades.

  “Desmonus, I love you.” She shouted. “And I suspect that you love me too.” She licked her lips. “You talk in your sleep, and I have heard muttering of dissent from your comrades.” Eleanor looked down at his fingers. “Please, you’re hurting me.”

  “You will tell me everything that you have heard. You will do this now or I will let you go.” He picked up the girl by her wrists and dangled her over the stream.

  “Do what you must!” she snarled. “I will not comply.”

  The vampire shocked Damien by pulling her back onto the bridge and wrapping his arms around her shivering body. What sort of relationship was this? Did this girl get turned on by deliberately trying to upset this vampire? He looked at the ugly bruising that he had caused on both her wrists and sighed heavily.

  “How do you intend to explain away these marks, Eleanor? You know that the house master will expect a convincing answer.”

  She gazed into his eyes. “I do not care anymore, Desmonus. I just want to be with you. I want to be with you forever.” The girl flung her arms around the vampire’s neck and hugged him tight against her body. “I know you can sense my hot
blood coursing through my body, Desmonus. It would take just one nip. I know you want to. Why do you deny your yearning? “

  He pulled the girl off him. “You are right, Eleanor. I do love you. It is your warmth and tenderness that drew me to you.” He looked behind him.

  Damien’s eyes went wide at the sight of a huge fortified wooden city on the horizon. He guessed that they were a good few miles from its outskirts. The place must be enormous. He had not seen anything like that in the history books. He guessed that it must be as large as any modern city, maybe even bigger. Was that where these vampires used to live?

  “If you were to turn, all qualities would be lost. You would no longer be the woman who I fell in love with.” He brushed back her hair. “You seem to have forgotten that I am only the First Son. Although I have existed for almost as long as our First Father, I do not believe that I have yet gained the gift to turn you.”

  “It has not stopped you from experimenting, Desmonus,” growled a male voice.

  The vampire pushed her back and jumped to his feet. He spun around and watched four large figures step out into the clearing. For the first time since his confinement, Damien did feel emotion from his vessel as a huge blast of fury rushed through his body. Damien watched their ruby red eyes blaze. The vampires lunged and three of them grabbed Desmonus. The last vampire turned his head and pointed at the girl.

  “Do not move, child. I shall deal with you soon.” He walked up to Desmonus and gently ran his long fingers down the side of his face. “It pleases me to find that your prophetic talent does not always deliver. It does not please me to hear that the rumours of your dissatisfaction and subsequent clandestine rebellion was not a lie.”

  Desmonus spat into the vampire’s face. “You are not worthy of the title of First Father. You have reduced us all to the role of ineffectual Shepherds. Amulius, we are all slowly dying. We hunt the human, not farm them.”

  The First Father threw his head back and roared with laughter. “Was that what you were doing with that girl, Desmonus? What were you hunting for?” He clicked his fingers. “Child, come here.”

  Damien watched Eleanor get to her feet and slowly walk towards the group, a huge smile was fixed to her face. He wanted her to turn around and run for her life. Did the idiot not know what these things were? They were going to rip her into pieces and eat the silly bitch in front of her lover. It was obvious. Damien then mentally slapped himself, wondering if he had caught stupid disease. Of course they weren’t going to eat her, unless this Eleanor had a twin sister who took her name.

  Amulius grabbed her by the hair and pulled her towards him. “Perhaps you do have an argument worth investigating, my former First Son. I see now that selected individuals, both human and vampire have taken advantage of my benevolent reign.”

  He lifted Eleanor off the ground and shook her like a rag doll. Damien heard something inside the girl crack. Desmonus moaned when the First Father dropped the girl onto the grass, her head rested at an unnatural angle. Her neck was broken. “So it begins,” he announced. “We know the names of all your co-conspirators, Desmonus. Do you have anything else to say before we eat you?”

  Damien felt another emotion rise through the vampire’s system, strangely enough, this vampire was feeling triumph. He didn’t get it, what was there to be happy about? The vampire chuckled. Judging from the expression etched upon the First Father’s face, he couldn’t understand Desmonus’s apparent need for jollity either.

  “I do have some more words to say, you feeble-minded fool. My prophetic talent has never failed me.”

  The trees around them shook as over a dozen more vampires dropped from the branches and landed in the clearing. Damien watched in fascination as the two holding Desmonus released him and charged the intruders. The First Father stumble back, almost stumbling over the girl’s broken body. He turned around and ran, disappearing into the trees. The vampire watched for a few moments as the intruders ripped apart the two remaining vampires, smiling as the leaf litter turned scarlet.

  He dropped to his knees and gently lifted the dead girl up into his arms. “This is one event I did not foresee, Eleanor,” he whispered.

  The vampire turned to the side. “We move tonight as we discussed. The First Father will return with enough bodies to end all our existences.”

  Damien watched two vampires both lift their heads from out of the open torso of one of the dead vampires. Just that image alone made him reassess everything he knew about these creatures. He had never read or seen anything about them actually consuming flesh. He’d always assumed that they just drank blood.

  “Let them come, they both said. They are all just as soft as the newborn lamb. Have we not just proved that?”

  The others laughed with them.

  Desmonus sighed. “And you two are proving to me that your heads are full of lamb’s wool. You wish to stay and fight three hundred of the First Father’s soldiers?” he stood up, lifted the corpse, and held the body against his chest.

  “Will you be sharing her, Desmonus?” asked Healiod. The vampire whimpered when Desmonus growled. “I meant no disrespect. We all know that you had feeling for the human girl. It’s just that, well, she is just meat now. It would be impractical to allow her flesh to rot.”

  Desmonus walked over to twelve vampires, his feet flattening the pieces of the two dead vampires into the soil. “We are only thirteen. For our new clan to survive and prosper, we need to grow. My talent tells me that we shall do just that.” He gazed down at the girl’s face. “My talent also tells me that the time has now arrived to show you why you all risked your lives to join me in my quest to find our forgotten destiny. We are predators. Our ancestors lived only for the glory of the hunt.”

  He opened his mouth and sank his teeth into the dead girl’s neck. Damien groaned in ecstasy as he shared Desmonus’s pleasure as her cooling blood slipped down his throat. The vampire abruptly released his grip and looked at the other vampire’s astonished faces before he licked his chin dry. “I know, even the First Father can not create our kind from a corpse.” He gently laid her down then readjusted her head until the sound of the bones in her neck cracked. Desmonus chuckled at the unbelieving faces above him. “Did you not believe that I had the power to create? That, like the rest of our kind, my bite would only produce ghouls?” He stood up and pointed towards the huge city beyond the tree-line. “Go now, leave me with her. You all know where to go.”

  Eleven of the vampires slowly back away, their faces still displaying rapture tinged with incredulity. Only Helix remained stationary. “You are our new First Father,” he said dropping to his knees and bowing his head.

  Desmonus nodded. “The clan of the Swarmers will scourge this land. This land will belong to us, the Deathgazer Clan will soon be extinct.” He looked across at the city. “Those pathetic creatures that defile the very name of our kind will not roll over like dogs and allow us to end them. You must remember that, Helix. Now go, allow a moment with our first true Swarmer.”

  The vampire waited for Helix to catch up with the others before he tenderly brushed his long fingernails between her breasts. “You have always been the only person in my life for whom my talent has not worked,” he said. The girl’s eyes flickered. “Considering the enormous task that awaits our embryonic Clan, it may have been a wiser choice to throw your corpse to my new followers and let them enjoy your flesh. I do not need complications at this crucial stage.”

  He now saw the Eleanor that Damien remembered showing through the girl’s plain looks. The transformation took just seconds. He watched her eyes open and felt the vampire groan out. He too saw what his bite had done to this woman.

  “You will be at my side forever, Eleanor.”

  Damien gripped the edge of the roof, lowering his head when he saw the two vampires pass below him. Both Helix and Healiod had not thought of looking up. He knew that if he was in their shoes, he would have considered the possibility that their target might not have just stayed on
the ground. After all, the market was that large and, he suspected, that those two idiots will have travelled the same routes repeatedly by now. Damien slid further back, wondering why exactly why he relived that piece of Desmonus’s ancient past.

  He waited until the vampires were out of earshot before he rolled onto his front, got onto his hands and knees and slowly made his way across the roof, heading for a hole cut into the wood, near the wall. Damien smiled when the dark interior of the first meat counter came into view. He knew that if he still had his human eyes, all he’d see was a rectangular hole of pure black. Damien reached the hole and lowered his feet before dropping down. That feeling of being like a pursued rabbit vanished, left him feeling, for the first time since running from the vampires, safe.

  The wall beside him offered Damien a wide array of weapons that could help him even up the odds of surviving his inevitable conflict with the three vampires looking for him. He walked up the tiled wall and ran his fingers over a long bladed knife, with a serrated edge. Damien grinned and pulled it off the wall. This would do just fine. Perhaps with this acting as a deterrent, he might actually be able to explain his situation without those three bastards draining him like a sea sponge.

  He walked over to the metal shutter and wondered what reaction he would receive if he rapped his fist against the metal. It wasn’t that much of a stupid idea. At least in here, he could keep his back against the wall. Okay, so he was trapped but he was in that position already, until that sun dipped below the horizon.

  “You could just hide here,” he whispered. That idea did sound very appealing. If he waited until dark, sneaked out, and tried to hook up with Eleanor then perhaps he might stand a better chance of surviving.

  “Hiding is what the food is best at,” hissed a voice.

  He spun around and raised knife then slowly backed away. “What the hell?”

  Desmonus emerged from between the space of two walk-in freezers. “You, my friend, are a mystery to me. Normally, I enjoy solving these unexplained enigmas.” He flew his arms out. “Right now though, I have enough mysteries to keep my already deluged mind busy for the next thousand years.” He laughed. “I suspect that all of these human achievements must have melted the tiny mind of my ex First Father. I had warned him over the perils of attempting to domesticate the human species.” The vampire’s green eyes glowed even brighter.