by Thomas, Ally
Michael, my fledgling had turned himself without my consent. He ceased to amaze me. Glancing my way, he smiled at me. His blue eyes glowed. Blonde and blue-eyed. The perfect vampire.
Grace let him slice into her wrist as he missed the important veins. Lynn looked on in disbelief. As I waited for Michael to prove his point, I wandered around the zombies who were now smelling my presence near them. I was beyond hungry at this point and wished I could lick a drop of blood from one of their faces.
“We’re good,” Michael yelled out as he picked up a young man with black hair. He was short and fat with his glasses broken and pushed up on his head.
“I missed it!” I yelled.
When I turned around, I saw the man pulling the whiskey glass from his lips. His lips were covered in Grace’s blood. But already the effects were taking a hold of him. He was changing back into his human self. The blood cleared from his eyes. The twisted expression of rage on his face disappeared. Finally he spoke. “What did you do? I’m okay? Am I okay?”
He ran over to the mirror hanging above the liquor bottles at the side of the bar. He searched his face. “Oh my god. Oh my god! I can’t believe this.” He pawed at his face, laughing and crying. “I thought I’d be like that forever. Oh my god, thank you!”
Grace shuddered as the cured man reached for her. “It wasn’t me, man.”
He looked over at me, and then Michael. Finally, he looked at Grace again. “You’re Rayea, yes?”
Lynn laughed. “Another fan. Oh goodness.”
Grace pointed to me, standing amid the confused zombies. “She’s the Vampire from Hell, not me. I’m nobody.”
I had taken Michael’s lead, had cut one of my wrists, and was passing out glasses of my blood out to them. A few I had to put the glass to their lips, but they figured it out quickly.
When I felt light-headed, I sat down in a chair. “You’re somebody, Grace and one hell of a vampire.”
Grace rolled her eyes at me and laughed. “Michael,” she said. “Have you seen Demetri maybe?”
“I haven’t. Have they not returned yet?”
Max appeared at my side. He hugged me. “You’re okay. Thank goodness! However did you save them, Rayea?” Swaying a little in my chair, I pointed to my slashed wrist. “The blood.”
A frown surfaced on his face. “You’re too weak to be serving people. Here, let me get you something.”
Before my head hit the table, Grace came out of nowhere and grabbed me. Propping me up, she asked me, “Are you okay?”
Slightly I smiled as my eyes fluttered. “I think I gave too much.”
The stream of people continued to surround us, circling the table, commenting, thanking us, and moving back to the bar to order drinks from Jeremy who seemed to enjoy being engulfed again in his daily routine of managing the bar.
“Rayea? Rayea?” Lynn’s voice swam before me. I couldn’t concentrate on the voices and activities bustling around me.
“She’s okay. It took a lot out of her. That’s all. When was the last time you fed?”
“Really fed? About two months ago I think.”
I smiled comically at Michael and Grace as I saw their mouths moving. I remembered something bad that had happened to me, but I could not lock in on it. Watching my friends seemed to be the most I could process.
When Max rushed in near me again, he announced, “Don’t let her float away. Gods need to stay grounded sometimes.”
I sensed an overwhelming number of gasps escape through the air. Then the voices began.
“Is that true?”
“Wow, how amazing!”
“Really? She’s a god?”
A blood god, I replied in my head. Really a vampire, no more.
Max pushed a glass up to my lips. “Drink before you faint. Come on, Rayea. Drink.”
Yanking my head to one side, I tried to avoid the contents. Who knows what blood Max was forcing down my throat? I thought.
Grace spoke for me. “Is the blood safe, Max? She’s wondering whose it is.”
I blinked my eyes in agreement and slowly nodded to Grace. A smile creased my lips.
“Your mother and her knitting circle friends mentioned how low your blood supply had become, so they got together, pricked those fingers, added in some white magic from Isis and the like, all the female gods you have yet to meet and asked me to keep a bottle on hand. In case of an emergency. Eos, Maia, they all send their best wishes.”
I pushed the bottle away. “I’m not getting married.” The room spun.
Michael and Grace sat me up straight again. “She’s delirious.”
Max insisted, forcing the glass into my hands. “Blick would never do that. I saw your father tonight, Rayea. He shapeshifted into his human self, a form many have not seen, except me and G and a few others. Don’t you think it’s possible he pretended to be Blick? Used his voice and called you? That would be something he would do.”
Grace leaned in, steadying the glass for me. “That would make sense, Rayea. Blick cares for you dearly.”
Lynn added, “It would be just something your father would pull to break you guys up, if he were still alive.”
For once, I rejected my stubborn comment, dancing on the end of my tongue. Instead, I accepted the glass from Grace and gulped down the blood. Before I spoke another word, I drank two more glasses and shared the rest of the bottle with Max, Michael, and Grace as Lynn looked on. Max was a shapeshifter like G. He wasn’t a vampire, but that didn’t mean he didn’t need some blood satisfaction now and then.
“Please tell them thank you for me,” I said to Max as he cleared the glasses away.
He smiled and nodded toward me. “With pleasure. But only if you call your mother soon. She’s talking about the flower arrangements now.”
Forcing a smile on my face, I stood up. Grace, Michael, and Lynn remained seated.
“So what’s this about Stephanie? You’re thinking of rescuing that bitch?”
Grace and Lynn nodded as if it had been the one thing on their heads the entire evening. A comment whirling around in their heads that they didn’t dare bring up with me. Somehow, Michael, being my only male vampire child, gave them the courage to approach me with it now.
Chapter 11
My Hero (Stephanie)
***
“We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.” ~ Tom Robbins
***
When I heard the door smash open, I never expected it to be Rayea and her friends. I didn’t know how long I had been locked in the wooden box in one of the closets, but it has to be weeks at least. They lifted me up and kept the lights off until I could regain my vision.
“You came,” I managed to say. “You actually came.” I guzzled down the water bottle someone handed me.
“Let’s get you cleaned up and put some clothes on you.”
I didn’t resist. I knew how wonderfully my sister would take care of me. She was the good sister, the one who would never turn her back on anyone. She’d never leave anyone behind.
Why had I waited so long to call for her? Why had I let that fiend have his way with me? Why had I allowed that to happen?
“We need to get her to the hospital, Rayea. She’s in bad shape.” A tall blond man steady me as I stood on shaky legs. My bones were weak and brittle. My body thin and gaunt. I didn’t care. I was happy to be alive.
“I’ll call the ambulance,” one of the girls with red hair announced.
Rayea nodded to her and she dialed the phone. My heart wanted to sing out. My soul expanded into a glowing ball of gratitude. After all I had done to my sister, here she was. I reached out for her, scratching at first to touch her. The women pulled her back. I began to cry. I couldn’t help it. Broken and destroyed. I was no more the fearsome creature I had been. I knew that now.
“None of them…” I swallowed hard again. “None of them returned. Thank goodness.”
“We can talk about that later,” Ray
ea said. “You’re safe now. I’m going to take care of you.”
I fell into her arms, screaming and blubbering over her, as I had no one before. My hero. My savior. Where would I be without her now?
Chapter 12
Choose Your Mate (Rayea)
***
“My strength and my weakness are twins in the same womb.”
Marge Piercy
***
As the weeks wore on, I visited Stephanie in the hospital. Daily if I could deal with it, but mostly I saw her a couple times a week. She was a mess and as scared as a little frightened rabbit. When the doctors suggested I care for her at my home, I couldn’t say no.
Michael decided to get back to work, looking for my father and tracing his movements. He would text me here and there with an update. He still hadn’t located J and Blick, and I tried not to inquire too much. Blick had not contacted me since that call, but when Demetri without him, I became worried.
Needing a break from the chaos, Lynn accepted Ashton’s invitation to go to New Zealand with him, where he was filming his next movie. She planned to stay with him the entire three months. “If anything comes up, text me. I may be on the other side of the planet, but I’ll still be online,” she had told me when I called her. They were already at the airport, waiting to board a direct flight from San Francisco International to Auckland.
As I listened to Lynn and Ashton giggle and carry on, interrupting each other as they told me all about the beautiful scenery in New Zealand they planned on seeing, I tried not to feel jealous. When Blick had called off the wedding, my chance at happiness had been destroyed, dead in its tracks. That had nothing to do with Lynn or Ashton, or Grace and Demetri for that matter and I needed to get over it and move on. As I hung up the phone with Lynn, I wondered what Grace was doing. Maybe I should swing by and see her. She had been avoiding me ever since I had insisted we save Stephanie from Nathan and his friends. I knew she had killed Nathan, T, and the others, a fact I had shared with Stephanie. Stephanie seemed okay with it. And even though Stephanie agreed we should have done what we did, I knew she did not like it. I knew how weird Grace felt being around Stephanie, even in her human form, and I didn’t blame her. Yet I could not walk away from Stephanie now. I wanted Grace to understand that. Somehow, I had to reason with her and repair our fractured friendship.
Justifying an excuse to stop by my house before I went to Grace’s place, I used the Blue Tooth connection in my motorcycle helmet to call the home number and see if Stephanie needed anything. On the sixth ring, she answered the phone. Her voice seemed groggy.
“Uh hello?”
“Did I wake you?” I asked, hoping I sounded more concerned than shocked that she was still asleep in the afternoon.
“I must have fallen asleep again. Where are you?”
“Coming up the drive now. You hanging out in the basement still?” I asked.
“Yeah, I cannot handle the openness of your living room. I know it’s ridiculous, but the windows, the street sounds…”
“It’s not ridiculous. You’ve been through a lot. It will take you awhile to adjust. I’m just glad …” She knew what I was about to say.
“Me too. I’m glad they’re dead.”
Suddenly jumping off my bike and diving into the bushes across from the driveway, I scrambled for my phone as it flew in the air. “Stephanie,” I blurted out. “Someone is in the house now. Stay where you are!”
“Who is it?” she hissed in fear. Long gone was the devilish sarcasm she had delivered to me so many times before.
“One vehicle. A red SUV. License plate number 666-SF1.”
“It cannot be!” she shrieked.
“I see movement in the living room,” I replied. “Don’t come out unless I call for you. He’ll kill us both if he knows you’re here.” I added an “Okay?” afterwards to soften my command. I’m sure she heard the panic rising in my voice. Our father could be alive and well, and standing in my living room as we spoke.
***
As I strolled into the main hallway to the living room, I tossed my keys on the foyer table. Holding onto my motorcycle helmet like I had a bowling ball ready to launch at someone’s head, I immediately recognized two people standing near the couch. A third person remained sitting as I entered the room. Awkwardly, J and Blick nodded toward me, glanced down, and then returned to their motionless state. They appeared to be extremely uncomfortable, but I could not tell why. G sprang from the couch and shoved his hand at me. “Rayea, my dear. Always a pleasure. You know your boyfriends here, Blick and the one they call J.”
I had not seen Blick since he had called me up and had canceled our wedding plans. I was in no mood to see him now, but something with this scene did not sit right at all. 1) Seeing the odd behavior they both exhibited made me become concerned. 2) Having a spontaneous visit from G or J seemed too random and too strange as well. 3) Catching the phrase G had just used, the one they call J, started sending alarms ricocheting in my head. This was about to get complicated. But I knew if my father was pretending to be G, I had to play the game. I had to make it look seriously believable. I grumbled under my breath. Let the games begin, Fucker.
“What do I owe this pleasure, sir?” I asked as I pulled back only slightly on my politeness.
“There is to be a wedding,” G spoke up. “You must choose, my child.” He waved a hand at both men and returned to the couch, crossing his short legs. Being a burly man of about five feet, I had never seen G wear anything but Hawaiian shirts, khaki shorts and canvas loafers. Here he sat in a white button up shirt that clung to his upper body and arms as if it was about to strangle the life out of him. The full-length black slacks also appeared too tight and cut into his upper thighs as he sat.
Abruptly, I turned to the island area in the kitchen. I mumbled something about refreshments and noted quite emphatically that G had on pointed leather boots, probably western and made out of some type of animal skin. No one in the House of G family were allowed to wear animal products, especially shoes. I had learned of this rule long ago and my vampire intuition jack-knifed off the charts. Gritting my teeth, I gently placed several glasses on the coffee table for my guests. I hadn’t paid attention to what I had selected, so I had no idea if I had put wine or water before them. J and Blick continued to focus on items of interest around the room, neither looking at me and neither moving an inch. They stood like fashion models – J regal in his dark grey Italian suit with his sandy brown hair pulled back into a pony tail and Blick wearing a crisp white t-shirt over his muscular chest and dark blue jeans as his long black hair fell over his shoulders.
I grabbed their glasses and walked over to them. “Drink.”
“That won’t be necessary,” G stated flatly. “Leave them alone.”
I raised an eyebrow, looking at both J and Blick.
Quickly Blick glanced at me. Our eyes met. The golden lights from his eyes struck me. Pain.
When I heard - and felt - Blick’s sporadic thought, a pure emotion of excruciating torment, I knew the danger they both were in. I had been through a mind-melt before, when J was simply trying to access my memories. A friendly gesture that had ended up making my ears bleed. Granted, I had responded to the mind invasion by accessing his own. But the feeling of that intense scar in my brain had never left me. I had to do something to save J and Blick before it was too late.
But I knew I had to keep playing the game. If my father, Satan was the man sitting on the couch, holding my friends in some mind-paralyzing mental lock, the odds were stacked against me. Would I be so lucky going up against my father a second time?
You did once. You can again.
Recognizing J’s voice rush through my head, I smiled at them both and quickly returned to G. I had to play the game out. I had to keep it together and figure out why he was here while keeping my friends out of harm’s way. I thought about reaching out to them telepathically again, but stopped myself. That’s probably exactly what he’s hoping I’ll do. He�
�d enjoy melting their brains while I watched.
G broke the silence again. “I want you to choose your mate. Did you hear me?” He forced out a laugh and picked up the glass, staring into it. “What is this?”
Holding the glasses, I saw the red liquid. “Red wine,” I offered, making my voice sound like I was already bored with the situation.
“You drink yours first,” he replied, squinting his eyes at the contents and leaning his head over to sniff.
I shrugged my shoulders at him and gulped down the wine, knowing it would be a gesture of disrespect that would irritate my father. I had not toasted my drink to him. He would recognize my actions as an insult. If Satan was hiding in G’s body, it would be possible for me to call him out. One trick Eos, the goddess of Immortality had shared with me was summoning a celestial being. A god or angel or the like hates to be told to present themselves, especially when they are up to some mischief. This scene had the work of my father written all over it.
As I swallowed down the wine and recognized the taste of an extremely vintage bottle Ra had given me, I rolled my tongue over my fangs. The lingering taste of spicy cinnamon in the blood laced wine enflamed my hunger.
After G drank from his glass, a large jagged smile brought creases to the corners of his eyes. The man I knew with the gentle gray eyes looked up at me with sinister distaste and contempt. His expression was anything but inviting and jovial. G was a kind soul, a man who would die before he saw his son sacrificed, a man who would refer to him with love, not disgust. This man before me wanted immediately to be obeyed. He wanted his desires to be granted instantly. I knew of one man like that - my dead father, Satan.
“You’ll choose one of these here before you or I’ll choose the person. Do I make myself clear?”
I did not say a word. Instead, I returned to the kitchen area across from the living room and grabbed the bottle of blood wine setting on the counter. I wondered how fast I could slid my hand under my motorcycle helmet that I had placed next to it and whirled it at the man posing at G. Had he any idea what he had just been given to drink?