by Jen Pretty
Vlad stepped up beside me as I stumbled down the rocky bank. He offered me his arm like in the old-fashioned movies with ladies in petticoats and men in top hats. I tucked my hand under his arm and rested it on the inside of his elbow, steadying myself on the uneven surface. At the bottom was a flat overgrown weedy strip of land before another drop off into the dark water. There were well-worn paths through this area, making walking easier.
I let go of Vlad and started glancing at faces. They were mostly what you would expect, older men with greying beards and balding heads. Some were muttering to themselves or ranting. There were a few small groups of men and women who huddled around small fires, but there were also families. Moms, dads and kids in sleeping bags, lined up like rows of dolls on a shelf. I didn’t like to think that some children grew up like this, without a safe place to sleep or to call home. My life may not have been great, but I always had a roof over my head and a door that locked.
I continued my search for vampires. When we reached the far end of the docks, we turned around and moved back the way we came. Scanning the faces produced no one of interest, and I grew frustrated when my hour was up, and I still hadn’t found a single vampire. I didn’t want the children out here, unprotected.
“Oof,” I heard behind me. I spun around and let out a scream as a group of vampires descended on us. Vlad was beside me in the next breath. He scooped me up. Holding me to his chest, he sprinted down the packed earth path faster than I had ever moved.
The stop was sudden and jarring when Vlad ran straight into another vampire. I tumbled along the ground several feet, scraping and scratching my skin on the ground. I came to rest flat on my back in the dirt and looked up to find a vampire I had never met standing over me hissing like an angry cat. He reeked of copper pennies and death. He reached down and grabbed my hair, pulling my head back to expose the soft expanse of my jugular.
He reared back to strike, but the monster was ripped away, pulling out some of my hair in the process. Vlad produced an ungodly roar. I looked up in time to watch Vlad twist the monster’s head off with his hands. His signature move.
That sudden violence didn’t end the fighting as six more vampires descended upon us, tearing and biting at Vlad in an attempt to get to me. Other members of our team appeared amid the struggle, assisting Vlad. A long knife flashed and then another. Blood sprayed the parched ground like water from a hose, and one by one they destroyed the rogue vampires.
I shoved off the ground, wincing. Vlad appeared in front of me, checking my injuries. A sharp pain stabbed my side when I took a breath, possibly a cracked rib, and there were scrapes on the palms of my hands. I couldn’t find any other injuries.
“Where is the rest of the team?” Vlad asked.
“Eric was killed before we even knew it was an ambush and Gabby … disappeared,” Cedric answered, shaking his head.
“Eric is dead?” I hadn’t spent any time with Eric, and he seemed shy. But he must have been a strong vampire to be on the team.
“Gabby disappeared?” Vlad questioned.
Cedric just nodded, biting his lip. Cedric may have been the team leader, but Vlad’s true place in vampire hierarchy was evident at this moment. He was older than the rest of the vampires except maybe Vincent.
“This was a setup,” Vlad muttered as he turned us back towards the van, taking my arm and pulling me up the embankment. He was moving too fast for me to keep up and I tripped hard before he noticed. I cut my knee on a rock, and he cursed, scooping me up and setting my feet down on the asphalt.
“I’m sorry, Lark,” he muttered unhappily. “That old bastard is going to throttle me.”
“It wasn’t your fault. Do you think Gabby was abducted?” I asked, wondering how she disappeared.
Vlad laughed without humour “No, I think she finally jumped ship. She has been talking more and more about how the rogues should have rights. We should have seen this coming.”
“But you guys are a team. She wouldn’t send a bunch of rogue vampires to attack you.” I recalled the conversation they had in the dining room. About the rogues and how she thought they should be allowed to live. There was a big gap between thinking rogues should live and thinking we should die.
“Oh, kiddo, I had almost forgotten what it’s like to be young and naïve,” Vlad scoffed gently.
I immediately felt like I was six years old again, and maybe to Vlad, I was. But I still had a hard time believing Gabby, who had eaten with us just at lunchtime, concocted a plan to get the whole team killed.
Maybe I was naïve.
Back at the van, we all piled in and drove silently back to the mansion. I was covered in vampire blood again.
Cedric pulled out his phone and spoke silently into it before tucking it back in his pocket. His face looked paler than ever, and I assumed he had called Vincent. The vampire was probably not too pleased.
I watched the city go by out the window, letting my mind wander to my past – to the family I had lost and the many people I had met. I wondered how Mr. Fellum was doing at the Discount Emporium and if someone had rented my old apartment.
I longed for the days when my biggest concern was that my car might not start, or my rent might be late. Those thoughts turned back to Gabby and her betrayal. Eric’s needless death. I didn’t even feel fear as I thought I should. I felt anger, rage. My breath started coming in and out fast and heavy. The injustice of this world bit at me with fangs sharper than a vampire’s. The humans had no one to protect them from the violent beings who roamed the shadows and took their lives without thought. The fury built until it poured out of my mouth with a deafening scream.
I strained against the seat belt that held me solid to my seat until I heard metal groan. The van came to a stop, and panicked voices started speaking rapidly. I couldn’t even hear them over the thrum of my pulse in my ears. I slammed sideways, knocking the van door open. Steely arms circled me, but I pushed them off and spun to face my attacker.
“Calm yourself, Lark,” the vampire who had ruined my peaceful existence commanded.
I flew across the pavement slamming into him and smashing him against the side of the van. My rage knew no bounds, and my wrath would be swift and brutal.
“Demon!” I yelled, but my voice didn’t sound like my own. It sounded harsh and violent.
I threw a fist at the vampire’s head, but he disappeared, and my punch went through the van window. The glass shattered and cut open my arm up to my elbow, the bright red blood that sprung from my ruined skin brought me back to reality. I stood staring at my arm as if it were a foreign limb somehow attached to my body. The pain felt distant somehow like it was irrelevant.
Maybe I was dreaming.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“You aren’t dreaming.”
I turned towards the voice. Frankie.
“Then … how did you get here?” I asked him, not quite sure what I was even asking.
“I came just now when Vincent summoned me. It seems you stumbled on Durga’s powers and tried to knock Vincent’s head off,” he replied, looking just a bit too pleased to report my actions.
I looked over at the vampire. “He ruined my life.”
Frankie laughed. “Was it so great to begin with, Lark?”
No, he was right. Vincent didn’t ruin my life. Vampires did. I shook my head trying to clear my thoughts.
“I need to sit down, Frankie.”
Frankie walked over and took my hand, the one that wasn’t bleeding freely, helping me up the front steps to the mansion. At least we made it home before I lost control of myself. All the vampires scattered as we entered. In fact, when I glanced behind me, the team and Vincent had abandoned the front yard. Scattered like leaves on the wind.
“Where did everyone go?” I asked
“An out of control, Durga doesn’t give a vampire a warm and fuzzy feeling. I’m sure once you calm down, they will be fine.”
I snorted. “The vampires are afraid of me?”
; Frankie led me through my bedroom door and across to my bed where he sat me down and kneeled in front of me.
“You just almost killed the oldest vampire in this corner of the country, maybe the world. Vampires are the top of the food chain,” he replied while untying my muddy shoes.
“Jesus,” I muttered.
The vampires were afraid of me.
“Why did I attack Vincent?” I mumbled mostly to myself, but Frankie answered.
“Have you met him? He’s a bit of an ass,” Frankie laughed as he stood me up and led me to the bathroom. He sat me up on the counter and turned on the taps in the sink. He gathered a washcloth and some tweezers and started cleaning my arm. Bits of glass were embedded in my skin, but the bleeding had stopped already. As Frankie plucked the bits of glass out, I realized that my information packet on Durga was sorely light on factoids about my new powers. I watched my skin close up almost as soon as each piece of glass was removed, leaving whole fresh skin without a trace of a scar.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
“That comes in handy when you put your fist through a sheet of glass, huh?” He smiled up at me.
Our eyes locked. His smile slowly fading, he reached up and wrapped his hand behind my neck, weaving his fingers through my hair. He leaned forward, his lips touched mine tentatively and then more firmly before breaking away.
He turned his head to the side. “Sorry,” he muttered and then he disappeared. Just like that, poof, he was gone.
My long-standing assumption of Frankie’s gender preferences was apparently misguided.
I shook my head and smiled at the lingering feel his lips on mine. After a few moments replaying our interactions for the last few weeks. I wanted to thump myself for being dense.
I had no idea why he apologized though or disappeared for that matter, but all the glass was out of my arm, so I shook off the weird feeling that I was missing something. Had I thought something strange while he was kissing me? I tried to remember what I was thinking, but I was drawing a blank, so I just flicked on the shower and started prying myself out of my dirty, bloodstained clothes. This was becoming a habit.
The hot water melted the stress away as it washed away the layers of caked grime. My ribs felt fine now, and although I was missing a small patch of hair from the vampire at the docks, my scalp didn’t hurt either.
Scrubbed clean, I tossed on some yoga pants and a tank top and moved back into my bedroom. Shanti had suggested some meditation and now seemed like a good time.
I turned off the lights and sat cross-legged on the floor at the foot of the bed, facing the window that looked out over the backyard of the mansion. There were no lights on back there, but I could just make out the tree line in the distance and the place where the black of the trees met the dark blue of the night sky. I looked at that place until I could make out the branches and leaves. They suddenly became startlingly clear, and I closed my eyes to shut out the sudden new capability.
I rested my hands on my knees and shut down all my senses. Letting my mind drift away from any coherent thought. I had always been good at meditating before vampires came into my life; shutting down and blocking out was easy for me.
It was connecting with people that I found impossible.
That was the last thought I had before drifting off to sleep.
I was in a temple. The ceiling was painted in ornate gold leaf, and the walls and floor were white sandstone. The wind blew through the open parapet, raking sand across my skin. I was sitting in Lotus Position on the floor in the center of the room, but I was not alone. In front of me sat Shiva. The third Hindu god.
His posture matched my own, his knuckles resting on the floor, palms forward, legs crossed, and eyes shut. His long tangled black hair swayed slightly in the breeze, but the rest of him was perfectly still.
I took a long moment and soaked in his full appearance. His light, nearly translucent skin and animal pelt clothes. The cobra that circled his neck like a deadly decoration and the white ash smeared across his forehead, partially covering his closed third eye.
His eyes flashed open. “Durga.”
Then he was gone, and my eyes opened to the new pink sky.
“Where did you go?”
Startled out of my peaceful moment, I turned my head to find Vincent sitting in the armchair in the shadows of my room.
I didn’t know how to reply to his question, so I just stared. Dressed in all black, his neatly pressed slacks and dress shirt were a perfect match. He had one leg crossed over the other, and his index finger rubbed across his chin in thought. I hadn’t really looked at him before, beyond a cursory glance. Sharp teeth – check. Glowing eyes – check. If you looked past that, he was just a man. A man I had tried to kill only hours ago.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized before looking back out the window. I remembered in the haze thinking he had ruined my peaceful life, but it hadn’t been peaceful. It had been painful. I had been afraid all the time. I didn’t know what my life was now, but it wasn’t worse.
“You ready to get to work?” he asked softly.
I kept my eyes trained out the window, pulling in a deep breath through my nose and uncrossing my legs, stretching them straight out in front of me before letting go of the breath. I stood up and turned towards the door.
“Let’s do this, fang face,” I said as I walked out the door.
His chuckle behind me felt good. Like we had finally found common ground.
✽✽✽
“Fuck,” I muttered from the gym floor. I might be stronger and faster than I used to be, but I was still ending up on my ass a lot. Good thing I now had super special healing abilities too.
Being fast and strong also doesn’t help if you don’t know how to punch or kick without breaking yourself.
“You are improving,” Vincent said with way too much humour.
I flipped him off as my knuckle crunched and popped back into the correct position. At least his nose was doing the same thing. He didn’t seem bothered by it or the blood running down his chin.
“How am I supposed to take out vampires if I can’t do enough damage to kill you?” I asked narrowing my eyes at him. He didn’t seem bothered by my suggested death threat either.
“You will learn to use a knife when you’re ready, but weapons can be taken away from you.”
I leapt to my feet and charged the bloodsucker. He dodged as I spun to follow him, but he was already on the other side of the room, I pushed myself towards him and caught the back of his shirt. He spun quickly flinging me off and into the wall of the gym. The wet thud of my sweaty body hitting the wall rang through the room, but I wasn’t deterred. The pain was distant, and I was starting to understand that this was part of my new power. In the middle of a fight, I could ignore everything else. Maybe my alter ego Durga blocked it out. I felt the urge to fight now. I hadn’t felt that before. I felt powerful.
We had already been fighting for a few hours, and I was getting tired. The sun was up, but it felt so good to be strong, fast and nearly invincible, I didn’t want to stop.
I ricocheted off the floor, leaping across the room to tackle Vincent, but he stepped aside as I got close and only my arm caught him. I wouldn’t be taken down by his spin this time. I clamped both hands to his arm and rode out his deflect then pushed hard off the floor, getting the height I needed to knock the vampire off his feet. As he crashed to the ground, I rode him down, straddling him where he lay panting on the floor. Victorious, I raised my hands to the sky and flung my head back.
That was my mistake because he just flipped us over, pinning my arms to the ground and grazing his teeth across my jugular.
“You’re dead,” he whispered in my ear.
I felt goose bumps rise on my arms and legs and the hair at the back of my neck stand on end. My breathing was already ragged, but I felt a hitch at his voice in my ear.
He stood up pulling me up with him, keeping my body flush with his until we were both on our feet, then
he let me go and took a step back.
As soon as his eyes left mine, the sounds of the room filled my ears again, reminding me that most of the vampires were in the gym lifting weights or running on treadmills in an attempt to watch the show without being obvious. I rolled my eyes. Bunch of nosey assholes.
I retreated to my room and had a long hot shower before slipping on an oversized t-shirt and sliding into bed. It was full daylight, and I hadn’t had breakfast, but I was too tired to stagger back downstairs. I had hoped that my new-found magical superpowers would allow me to stay awake during the day like an average person, but it wasn’t meant to be.
✽✽✽
That evening I woke earlier than usual, meaning I had gotten less sleep than usual, but I didn’t feel tired, so I grabbed a quick meal and drove over to check on my studio remodel.
When I pulled up the contractors were just pulling out, and Randy waved happily from the doorway. I couldn’t believe how much he was enjoying taking care of the work on the studio. He seemed to thrive on organizing. I returned his wave as I parked my SUV.
“You will not believe what the contractors have done in the locker rooms,” he gushed, “They are so talented.”
I found it hard to believe that contractors could do that much to amaze me, but as I walked in, I saw precisely what Randy had been talking about.
Heavily frosted glass partitioned the shower stalls, white marble coloured lockers covered two walls with built-in benches in a cream colour, and the floor was tiled to match. The dispersed lighting left the place seemingly warm despite the hard surfaces everywhere.
The men’s locker room was similar except in more of a masculine grey tone. I couldn’t believe my studio had locker rooms. The central area was still in shambles of ladders and boxes of supplies. Wires hung from the unfinished ceiling but having one part done felt amazing. As I returned to the main area with Randy, the artist I had hired to do the mural h just finished packing up her paints and waved as she walked out.