by Jamie Ott
Uncontrollably, a growl issued from her throat, as is what happens, sometimes, when in danger: a vampire’s demon, within, would take over, and there was no stopping it.
She felt her fangs protrude, and they reached down to their full length, lightly touching her lower gums.
The alligator looked like it wanted to charge her, but it was entranced by her eyes.
Starr felt her power over the animal, and it excited her.
Go back to the water, she commanded, into its mind.
The alligator obeyed.
Fascinated, she watched it walk backwards into the water, and sink below the surface.
As she watched, it occurred to her that something was seriously wrong, for she’d never done any of the things she’d just done, before.
Yes, she was a strong vampire, but she was young; less than two years old. For most, it took at least a century for new fledglings to grow into all their new powers.
Until her waking, a few moments ago, she’d never been able fly, talk to animals, or sense people from miles away. Combine these things with the fact that she had no recollection of how or where she was, and the situation didn’t look good.
Starr needed answers right away, but she had the strangest feeling she needed to be somewhere, at the moment.
Her neck twinged again, distracting her from her thoughts.
“How in the hell did you do that?” asked one of the young men, in a terribly thick southern accent.
But when she turned, he screamed and ran off, shouting, “Demon! Courir!”
They ran as quickly as they could.
Starr just stared at the backs of them.
Judging by the man’s accent, and use of the word courir, she must be in Louisiana, somewhere, but why and how?
She sat on the bank and watched the water, trying to remember anything.
The alligator poked its head out of the water. Its large yellow eyes watched her, curiously.
The last thing she remembered was saying goodbye to her parents, but that had to have been a few days ago.
Slowly, the alligator walked up the bank of the marsh, and then lay down in front of her, watching her with its mouth partly opened.
Then she heard someone rustling in the trees, and the cocking of a rifle.
Superstitious swamp folk had banded together, and were coming to kill her; another strange thing, for Starr was not, normally, a telepath.
Go, she said into the alligator’s mind.
It slithered back down the bank, and sank under the water.
She stood up and moved into the trees, away from the clearing.
Hearing the small mob’s thoughts, she realized they thought she was one from the new vampire species; the ones that were more like rabid dogs, rather than supernatural humans.
“Stop,” she yelled through the trees. “I’m not like them.”
An old man shouted, in French, “Diable,” and shot aimlessly in her direction.
Starr could have stopped him, but she decided to walk on down the river bank.
~~~
She didn’t make it to another town until sunup. Yes, she could have flown, but she didn’t know where she wanted or needed to be. Walking was just something to do, for the moment, while she tried to figure it all out.
The town was a dusty old place where the people all wore dirty overalls. Many of them appeared to have never learned about teeth brushing while others didn’t care for shoes.
She must have been a sight to see, too, for they stared, hard, at her.
Still unsure of what to do, she continued until she reached the other end of town, where she sat on a dusty bench and watched the river ripples.
A dirty blue truck caught her attention as it blew up dust and rattled its way to a red wooden restaurant some hundred feet to her right.
The sun reflected off a silver metal box, next to the entrance door: it was a pay phone.
Eagerly, she went to make a phone call, but as she lifted the hand piece, she realized she didn’t know any numbers; she always relied on her cell phone for that. Whenever she got new ones, she’d enter the numbers into her memory card and never think of them again.
Damn! she cursed.
She looked at the phone’s address which was printed beneath a piece of plastic above the numbers; it said Red River, LA.
Just then, the door to the restaurant opened, and out came a man with a cigarette in his hand.
“You gonna use the phone?” asked the man.
Starr shook her head and moved aside.
Coming from the restaurant, the whispering and thoughts of so many people was a bear. More than anything, she wished she could silence them.
When the man sparked a match, the fire caught Starr’s eye, for some reason.
She stared at the little orange flame, feeling, again, like she needed to be somewhere, and then like water breaking down a dam, memories flooded her mind.
“Oh my!” she gasped, and sank to her knees.
She was talking to Bielz when the landing, they stood on, collapsed, and they were buried under the crumbling fiery cabin.
Covered in rubble, and her neck reinjured, she couldn’t move. She thought she was going to die, but was rescued by Credenza, who was the leader of a world vampire police organization. Flying into the night was the last lucid thing she remembered.
She felt another twinge in her neck which she rubbed. Lucenzo beheaded her, a few weeks ago, and, up until being rescued by Credenza, she was in recovery, and had only begun to move on her own, when the fire had been set.
Credenza must have done something to heal her. But, what? And why bring her to Louisiana?
Oh well, she said to herself.
It didn’t matter because she needed to find the others and make sure they were okay. Anything else would just have to wait.
With that thought, she took off into the air to find them.
Next Door Over
Chapter 2
Flying long distance was something that took a little getting used to. Direction, while in the air, was hard to grasp.
Somehow, animals always knew which way they wanted to go though.
Using the idea that she was, now, more animal than human, she told herself, repeatedly, that she wanted to go northeast, back to the cabin’s sight, and back to the kids. Although she landed in the wrong state, twice, it worked, for she made it onto the bank of Lake George, in New York, by the time the first stars, in the sky, began to shine.
Evidence of the fire was still present. The sky had a nasty brown tinge, and the setting sun looked bright cherry red through it.
Then she noticed, as she looked around, that the cabin wasn’t the only thing affected by the fire, but so was the entire side of the bank.
For nearly ¼ of a mile, from where she stood, all the trees on the upper part of the bank were burnt up. On the lower half of the bank, the trees that hadn’t been burned were black and charred, and all their leaves lay in piles of ash at their bases.
Another thing that seemed to have improved, since she woke in Louisiana, was her sight. As she looked through a barrage of charred trees, a mile down, she saw that another cabin had been burned to the ground; the only thing left was its cement foundation.
She went to the pile of blackened junk that was, once, the cabin where she and the homeless kids, from the clinic, stayed.
Starr kicked up the dirt and rubble, wondering if her beloved ruby studded sickles had survived the fire, or even the sterling silver and nickel nunchucks Antony had given her, before he vamped out, forcing her to rip off his head.
As she kicked up the rubble, she stopped over a particular spot of ash.
She could smell her there; the one who set the fire. Bielz died on that spot. A smoldered scent of flesh, burnt to a crisp, still resonated on the blackened bits of wood and debris.
Distracting her from her thoughts came whispering from further along the bank.
Listening intently
, she tried to hear if it were the kids.
The trees rustled, violently, from many yards away. There were many of them coming: the new species of vampires, and they were hungry.
Quickly, she looked for something to behead them with. She dug through the rubble, and tossed random chunks of material aside, hoping to find one of the machetes they always kept by the side of the house, but there was nothing.
It was too late; they were nearing.
Her inner demon wasted no time; her fangs drew, and she felt her skin grow warm, and her night time vision became even clearer.
Quickly, she ran up to the first vampire and gave it a jumping front kick to the face, sending his head spinning, flying over the trees.
For a split second, she stood stock still, in surprise. The kick, and separation of the vamp’s head, seemed too easy; almost like punting a football, there was little resistance. In that moment, she realized that, not only had she acquired new powers, but that her strength had greatly increased.
Two vamps came at her, from behind, but she didn’t turn, like she normally would have, for she could hear and calculate their movements.
Together, they put their hands on her shoulders, and opened their mouths to bite her neck.
Starr reached up and, like inserting her fingers into a bowling ball, grasped them by their heads, digging her nails into their craniums, feeling the bone break inward, and the softer flesh within; she yanked their heads off their bodies.
Four more vampires came at her.
In the stance of a perfect port de bras doing a flat footed pirouette, she made a 360 degree turn, using the heads to bat off the skulls of the first two oncoming vampires.
She smirked as she looked down and saw how the skin had nearly, entirely, been ripped away from the skulls: her hand was the only thing keeping the heads together.
Before, it would have taken a lot of work for her to kill that many vampires, but now it was so easy.
There were still two more left.
She dropped the bloody skulls on the ground.
One thing she’d always wanted to try, on someone, was a flying kick. Combined with her new power, she expected it to be quite fun.
Starr readied herself in a straight stance, a second, then ran and leapt into the air with her leg at an angle, flying her foot into its head, spattering blood everywhere, and all over her pajamas.
“Yuck!” she said aloud, and told herself she’d never do that again.
Then, suddenly, the last vampire, a big fat beast of about six and a half feet came at her. His body was the shape of a whale, he was unusually strong, and his hands were huge.
When he grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her toward him, fury and rage boiled in her. She pushed up his wrists, stood back and made to strike, but she merely side kicked her foot into flame.
The vampire screamed and fell to the ground as his body combusted.
It took a moment for her to realize what she’d done.
The only people she knew who could set fire through kinesis, alone, were Credenza and a vampire who worked for her, Alin.
What could all these new abilities mean? she wondered.
Did Credenza, somehow, transfer powers to her?
Did it mean she was in Credenza’s debt? If so, she would have a fight on her hands, because one thing Starr had said, over and over, was that she wanted to be left alone.
Someone called her name, from the trees higher up on the bank: it was Lily.
Lily had been bitten, weeks ago, by the new species of vampire. After, she immediately turned into a mindless organ eating, blood drinker, like the others, but, with the help of Lucenzo – the one responsible for the viral outbreak that turned thousands of people into the raging monsters – she had managed to hold onto her humanity.
“What are you doing here?” Starr asked surprised.
“We never left,” she replied. “How did you do that?”
“Set him on fire? I’m not exactly sure,” Starr said, as she took a couple of steps towards her.
Lily stepped back with a look of fright in her eyes.
“Why are you afraid of me?” Starr asked, feeling a little surprised by her instinct to retreat.
“You’re,” she paused, “different.”
“So are you,” said Starr, taking in her appearance.
It was almost as if she’d never been bit. Not only was the sickening pheromone smell gone - a cinnamon-like scent the new vampires had - , but her eyes were no longer dilated and her skin was rosy, instead of waxy white.
“Well, I should go,” she turned.
“Wait,” Starr said, and walked up to stop her.
Unaware of her increase in natural speed, such as walking, she appeared in front of Lily, with her hand on her shoulder, within a second.
Lily gasped and asked, “How did you move so quickly?”
“I…,” she trailed off, wondering what she should say. After a moment, she repeated, “don’t know.”
Starr couldn’t help but be amazed at her healthy appearance. Before, she was constantly drooling with a zoned out look on her face, like a zombie from a movie.
“Are you infected, still?”
“Yes, but the virus doesn’t have as strong of a hold on me anymore.”
“Is Lucenzo still treating you?”
“Yeah,” she drawled, and her voiced quavered.
Ignoring her discomfort, she asked, “Where is he?”
“I won’t tell you. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t even be here, right now. I can’t let you hurt him, because that would be hurting me.”
Starr just watched her. She didn’t know what to say.
“I don’t want to hurt…”
“I gotta go,” Lily interrupted.
Starr watched her walk into the trees.
When she’d made it, approximately, ten yards away, Starr went in after her.
When Lily turned her head backwards, at the sound of a crunching leaf, Starr levitated and continued after her.
She followed her further up the bank to a large three story cabin some miles out. Heavily surrounded by trees, it stood in the nook of a rock hill, next to a large red barn.
Starr watched Lily walk up the three wood steps, across the porch and through the front door. She was about to follow her inside, but, then, she felt an insatiable hunger for blood coming from the barn next to the cabin.
Quickly, she probed it with her mind.
What she saw filled her with fear and anger.
Inside there were a dozen or more naked vampires. Clearly, Lucenzo had experimented on them, as some were missing arms and legs – it was easy to see that they’d been neatly cut off - , and others had needle marks on their skin and faces. They lay on top of each other, like stacked books, with eyes open, thinking and dreaming of blood.
There were several rows of the vampires piled in stacks of ten.
How did he get them to behave like that? she wondered.
Feeling like she could throw up, even though she weren’t alive, she turned her focus to the house.
Lucenzo had cooked dinner, and Lily sat at the table and proceeded to tell him that she saw Starr.
Well, you might as well come in, Lucenzo whispered telepathically into her mind.
She would have liked to have gone in… gone in and killed him for beheading her, but it was only for Lily that she didn’t.
The cabin had enormous ceilings that rose up into the third floor, and the kitchen and living room were one large space. There were cozy looking couches and a large screen television in the living room section. Behind them was a counter, around which Lucenzo and Lily sat with a casserole dish in their midst, and table settings in front of them.
“I’m glad to see you are better,” he said, as he stood up to give her a kiss on the cheek.
She side stepped around him, and sat at the empty chair.
“Well,” he said, surprised by her speed, “You’ve healed fast. Normally, a behea
ding, if reattached immediately, can take months and months,” he said happily.
To hear him speak of nearly killing her as though he’d only stepped on her foot made her livid.
“What kind of sick things are you doing to the vampires in the barn?” she asked, trying to repress her anger.
“Well, I’m using them to create vaccines,” he said vibrantly, as he went to the cabinet, picked up a plate, and sat back down.
“You’re making a vaccine to help those you’ve infected?”
He pulled the casserole over to himself, and piled some onto the plate, and then set it in front of Starr.
Lily remained silent and looked from Lucenzo to Starr, repeatedly.
“We can’t possibly save everyone, Starr.”
“You realize the Fleet has gone on a mass mission to exterminate all the vampires?”
“Well, they shall not succeed,” he smirked, and looked straight at her with his crystal blue eyes.
Starr picked up the fork he set in front of her, and contemplated her chances of killing him with it. Feeling him watching her, she made to take a bite in an attempt to mask her thoughts, but paused and asked, “Why did you release the virus?”
“For the same reason as before: to change the world.”
“Before…” said Starr thoughtfully, remembering back to her time with Chanler in the Transcarpathian Mountains. He mentioned that it was one person who was responsible for all the vampire outbreaks in the last thirty years, but that they always failed to track him down.
Lucenzo pushed his long red hair back, and took a bite of his casserole.
“Lily, Sweetie, eat,” he said.
Starr continued to watch him, and then he said, “I did it so we don’t have to live in the shadows; so we don’t have to hide anymore; so we can start a new world. Just think of all the things we, vampires, could do: eliminate the need for government, no more hungry people, even homelessness would no longer be an issue. If we could turn the brilliant minds of today, and have them always, we could have some major technological advancement, even space travel would be more attainable. I want to see man progress faster. Perhaps man could never survive the atmosphere of Mars, but just maybe a vampire could.”
Starr didn’t know what to say. His argument seemed fascinating to her, but she still thought his actions were wrong.
After a moment of silence, she asked, “Where are your friends? Nico, Kris, and Mick? Have they been working with you all along?”