Vampin' Ain't Easy

by Kimbra Swain

  Tierney had mercy on me and ripped the ropes off with a sharp tug.

  “Thanks,” I said, rolling away from Dick’s limp body and her scent. “This is some bullshit. I either have to join you or go back there and tell him that his best guy is a traitor. Why didn’t you just leave me on the street? I was doing just fine without all of this crap!”

  I kept my distance from them as I tried to determine what I should do. I knew for a fact that I wasn’t going to kill my father, but I couldn’t figure out how to save Trey in all of this. Perhaps he could go east with Tierney when the smoke cleared.

  “You belong at the head of our family,” Trey said.

  “I do not. I hate my father, but he is the only one of you with any sense!”

  “What did he promise you?” Trey asked. “Be his good son for a few days, then he will let you go forever? It was a lie, Malik. He’s already ordered me to kill you once limp Dick there takes over for his father.”

  “Limp Dick,” I chuckled.

  “Malik,” Tierney scolded.

  “Sorry, Mom,” I replied. She sneered, but I didn’t care. “I don’t believe you.” I didn’t believe him. It was a lie. My father had no desire to kill me. If he wanted me dead, he could have done it while I was out of the family. He knew exactly where I was. He knew my habits and my haunts. And I remembered Beau. If I didn’t finish this, he would kill Beau. “Where is Stanley? You better not have hurt him!”

  “We didn’t,” Trey said.

  “What happens if I refuse to help you?” I asked.

  “Then your father’s orders stand. After the ceremony tomorrow night, I’ll hunt you down and kill you,” Trey said.

  “So much for that cousin bond,” I smirked.

  “I’ve helped you and supported you longer than anyone, but you keep throwing it away. If you throw this away, you deserve to die,” Trey said.

  “And if Father dies, all of this order we have will go to shit. He founded this alliance. He made the other houses. He made the rules, and as much as I hate our kind, it keeps order. You want to throw it out of the window. For what? A free for all on humans?” I ranted.

  “That would be stupid. They are our food source,” Tierney said.

  “Then what is the point?” I asked.

  Tierney looked at Trey, then we all looked at Dick who groaned on the floor.

  “Your father wants to do away with all of us,” Trey said.

  “Us? Family?” I asked.

  “No. Vamps. All of us,” Tierney said.

  “There is no way,” I replied.

  “It seems he shares your philosophy on our kind. Somewhere along the way he learned to loathe himself. Just because he hates who he is doesn’t give him the right to exterminate all of us,” Trey said.

  “Father is powerful, but not that powerful,” I said.

  Dick groaned again, then rolled over massaging his jaw. “Yes, he is.”

  After watching Trey and Tierney coddle Little Dick, they led me to a room with a table and four chairs. Against the far wall, Stanley sat with his arms tied behind his back. His eyes widened as I sat down with the other three.

  “As you can see, he is alive,” Dick said.

  “If he was dead, you would wish you were,” I replied.

  “Can we just talk about this?” Tierney asked before relations devolved.

  “Spill it. How is my father going to destroy the entire vampire race?” I asked.

  No one spoke, but all eyes were on Dick who patted his sore jaw like a pussy. The damn thing had already healed, but he continued to rub it for sympathy. Why Tierney slept with him was beyond my comprehension. I tapped my fingers on the desk, then finally, Dick broke out of his pity party and spoke.

  “Two years ago, one of our kitchen maids had a breakdown. She was a vamp. She began blabbering about the end of the race and how we would all burn. We dismissed it to some sort of freak illness. It stuck with me because vampires don’t get sick and they don’t have mental breakdowns. Three months ago, it happened again. I asked my father about it, but he kept ignoring my inquiries, so I contacted Tierney,” he said, then looked at her.

  She picked up the story. “We had three vamp servants do the same thing within one month. One of my father’s most valued associates is a geneticist. He’s always doing experiments with our blood and tests to determine the scientific nature of our make-up. He did the autopsies on the women and determined that each one of them had a strange factor in their blood that he hadn’t seen or noticed. He began searching his samples and found that about a third of the vampire population in my father’s home had this difference.”

  “I sent her blood from our most recent victim. She had the same factor. I immediately had myself and my father tested. None of the males in the household had the factor,” Dick said.

  “In fact, every single anomaly belonged to women. I have it,” she said, lowering her head.

  “What does it mean? Where does it come from?” I had a thousand questions in my head, but those were the ones that came out first. Tierney looked at her hands and didn’t speak again.

  “We’ve discovered that each vampire affected with the factor once had contact with our fathers.”

  “Contact? Sexual?” I asked.

  “Not just sexual. Shared blood,” Dick clarified.

  I shot a look at Tierney as the memory of her wanting to share blood with me pounded in my head. She closed her eyes and remained very still.

  “I don’t get it. Spell it out for me.”

  “After much digging, I managed to confront my father about it. He finally admitted that as part of the original laws signed by all four realms, the heads of the families would share blood with their servants in order to create a bond with them. This bond goes back to your father. Each one of the factions started with Timothy Demonbreun. He made my father. He made Tierney’s father. They are the children that came before you. It’s a good damn thing we aren’t actually related because heaven knows, we’ve all fucked around. Well, except you. The question is, have you ever shared your blood?” Dick asked.

  “No,” I responded quickly.

  “Because he made you, you have as much power as our parents. Only four vampires could have reprogrammed those guards: you, your father, my father, and MacFarlane. I suppose you didn’t try to kill yourself. Maybe you did. You seem stupid enough to try such a thing.” This prick had self-confidence and bullshit sweating out of his pores. I hated him. I wouldn’t be caught dead-well, more dead-in an alliance with him.

  “I don’t like your tone,” I said.

  “Tough shit.”

  “How did you get your father to step down?” I asked.

  “It’s a long story, and we don’t have time. If we kill off your father and ours, we will free those who have been tainted by their blood,” he said.

  Stanley shifted across the room, drawing Dick’s attention. When he turned back around, I knocked him out again. Just because I didn’t fucking like him.

  “What the hell, Malik!” Tierney screamed. Dick’s limp body slid off the chair to the floor. I rushed across the room and let Stanley go. “What are you doing?”

  “You stay away from me,” I said to her.

  “We were trying to let you in on it,” she protested.

  “Malik, don’t do this. It’s a bad idea,” Trey pleaded.

  “Please tell me you aren’t that stupid. Did you hear what he said? He said I have the power to control these sleeper agents like her father and his father has. You are trying to kill them. How long is it going to be before you try to kill me, too?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t. We are family,” Trey said. I shook my head at him. He could have been the one to take my place, but he kept bringing me home. It didn’t make sense. Now, he wanted to kill my dad. “My father is your family. He’s treated you like his own son, and you want to kill him for it.”

  Tierney grabbed my arm. “Please don’t go. We don’t have to do it his way, but I won’t stand by and be mani
pulated by a bunch of spineless men.” I felt her desperation. Out of all of them, I knew why she was here. It was an antiquated need by males to dominate females. I had the same blood in my veins. The monster inside of me responded to that assertion of power, but I had to know the truth of it. Only one man could tell me that truth.

  “Let’s go,” Stanley said, tugging me away from her. I turned my back on the girl and left her with limp Dick and the traitor.

  Stanley and I stepped out of the building into the cool night. “Where are we?” I asked.

  “East of town near the airport. If we head west, we might find a cab,” he said.

  I slapped him in the stomach, then took off running. He grunted, then followed behind me. We made our way through the warehouses to a gas station. The roar of airplane engines overhead shook the small building. I stepped inside to find a young man behind the counter. His nametag was blurred. He stood behind a plexiglass protective wall.

  “Hey Buddy,” I said.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” he said immediately.

  I looked down at myself, and I seemed to be presentable, but I remembered the hulking brute behind me. “He’s just a friend and we don’t mean any harm. I just need to make a phone call. Do you have a cell phone I can borrow?”

  “I’m not giving you my phone,” Blurry said.

  “Maybe call us a cab? Or an Uber?” I asked.

  “You need to leave,” he protested.

  Stanley grunted, and I took a deep breath. I had never in my life done this to a human, but I knew the time had come to actually use some of my vampire skills. I approached the window, and the young man stepped backward in the small room against the wall of cigarettes and vape liquids. I released my scent on the man and watched as his legs trembled. A vampire could seduce any human, male or female.

  “Give me your phone,” I said. A tear rolled down the man’s cheek as he fished his phone out of his pocket. He reached across the space and slid the phone through the small opening at the bottom of the window. “Who should I call? Who do we trust?”

  “Call a cab,” Stanley said. I thought through all the people I knew at my father’s building. Gore could have ties with Trey. Stella was mysteriously out near my apartment when I found the dead bodies. Father was probably busy with the other Lords. Lydia was a no way, no how. So, I did what Stanley suggested and called a cab.

  After I disconnected, I slid the phone back under the window to the man whose eyes were watery and fixed on me.

  “Thank you,” I said. He nodded. “What’s your name?”

  He pointed at his nametag. Blurry, it was.

  “Come on, you idiot. Why are you playing nice with him?” Stanley asked.

  “I feel like I violated him,” I said.

  “He would let you violate him and love every minute of it. Hell, with a scent like that I might let you violate me.”

  “Doesn’t make it right.”

  “Dude, we are vampires. There is nothing right about us.” I’d never heard Stanley express any disdain for our kind. Maybe it was time we were more than just vampires. That would require me to do the last damn thing on this earth that I wanted to do.

  “Do you believe them?”

  “I’ve never heard of some mysterious control over women. It sounds pretty disgusting, but things in the old world wasn’t the same as it is now. Vampires can evolve, too. If I had to bet, your father might have that power, but wouldn’t use it,” he said.

  “Even on Lydia?” I asked.

  “She’s an exception. That woman is a mess,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “She has multiple personalities. Bi-polar or something,” he said.

  “Maybe that’s a signal of Father controlling her?”

  “Perhaps. Mr. Demonbreun has plenty of power without mind controlling her or any other woman.”

  “I’ve seen him kill,” I said. Flashes of executions that were held in his home flashed through my mind. My father with his bat-like wings outstretched behind a blackened body standing over a “guilty” subject. His claws were long like a cross between a panther and Wolverine. Blood and fangs. It was an image that I will never forget.

  “He is vicious.” Stanley stared at me waiting for more. As my father’s son, the same demon lived inside of me. Minus the wings. No need to admit to it.

  I laughed nervously as another plane roared above us. We waited on the curb for the cab to arrive. The man driving the cab asked for our destination and drove us to my father’s building without another sound. When we arrived, Stanley exited, leaving me in the cab.

  “I’ll be back with cash,” he said.

  “Get him a good tip,” I said. Stanley returned with double what we owed the cabbie who took the money without question. “What’s it like inside?” I asked.

  “Quiet,” he replied.

  We walked through the doors not noticing anything out of the ordinary, then boarded the elevator.

  “Stella, I hate elevators.”

  “Me, too.”

  When the doors opened on my father’s floor, the quiet loomed around us. I prepared myself as we entered his private section of the house. I listened with my hunger. When I turned the corner into the living area just outside of his bedroom, my father stood at the window with a glass of liquor in his hands.

  “You have some explaining to do,” I said.

  “That depends on you. Are you ready to accept your inheritance?” he asked.

  “I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be in charge of a bunch of ticking time vamps,” I said.

  “Stanley, leave us,” he told my friend.

  “No. He stays. He’s the only one I trust.”

  “You shouldn’t trust anyone.”

  “You are right, but he stays.”

  “Are you afraid of me?” He turned to me with concern in his eyes.

  “I’m confused, and I’ve been left out of some very important information about you and our kind,” I replied.

  “You chose to live on the outside.” He had a point. “I believe that your cousin Trey killed the humans living in your building.”

  “He’s with them,” I said.

  “Them?”

  I nodded to Stanley who took a seat in an armchair next to the door, while I helped myself to my father’s liquor. Then, I took a seat on a black leather couch facing the windows that overlooked the neon signs lighting up the bars and honky-tonks in downtown. Father joined me on the opposite end of the couch.

  “Trey, Dick Junior, and Tierney,” I said.

  “The heirs,” he said.

  “Only Trey isn’t an heir.”

  “He would have been had you not come with him the other night. It would have been a huge mistake on my part. I never saw his betrayal coming.”

  I had so many questions that I didn’t know know where to start.

  “He says you ordered him to kill me.” Might as well get past that one.

  Father took tentative sips of his liquor. He knew he couldn’t lie to me. “I told him that if you stepped out or refused to come when I called that we would deal with you. I gave no specific order to kill you. Although you infuriate me, I’m still convinced you are the only hope for our people.”

  He gave general orders to motivate Trey. By giving the impression that he wanted me dead, Trey decided to make his move to take the place he claimed that he didn’t want. I saw it in my cousin’s eyes. He wanted all the things I’d turned my back on. “I think they are worried you are going to unleash these sleepers on them.”

  “They are called Renfields, and I have no intention of unleashing them on anyone.”

  “Dick said you turned several of them crazy because his father defied you.”

  “Blackburn did defy me, but I didn’t turn any of his people against him.”

  “They went crazy.”

  “If they went crazy, it was because Blackburn refused their loyalty. Sharing blood with a servant is an intimate act. One that I rarely us
e.”

  “All females?”

  He shook his head. “Why would you ask that?”

  “They said it. I have to know, Father. I’m not a crusader for women’s rights. I’m not the heir you wanted. I’m just me, and that’s a reject, then I’m happy with the label. I embrace it. But when it boils down to this mess and saving Beauregard’s life, I need to know the truth. All of it. Don’t fucking hold back,” I said with a growl. I felt the demon inside of me stir.

  Father’s lips tilted up on one side in a wicked grin. “You feel it?”

  “Answer me!” I demanded.

  “I can control whomever I want to control. Men, women, human or vamp. A gift courtesy of the Frenchman who turned me. One of the old ones. There aren’t many of them left, but you grew up in this house. You’ve seen it all. I don’t judge or demand based on gender. Stella is one of the most valuable servants I have. Her love for fashion and style keeps me up with the times without having to do it myself. I don’t give a shit what she was or what she wanted to be. She provides a service for me that is invaluable. I expect that from all of my closest advisors,” he said.

  I knew Stella’s story. The hatred spilled upon her by those who didn’t understand her heart. I joked with Stanley by calling him Stella. It was a damn compliment as far as I was concerned.

  “Do you control Lydia?” I asked.

  “Do you still care for her?”

  “No, that ship has sailed.”

  “Lydia had problems before I turned her. I’m surprised you didn’t notice. She can flip a switch. And I’m not talking from happy to angry. It’s more like angel to demon, and I know a demon when I see one. I have blood shared with her, but I believe it to be for her own good. She’s tried more than once to take her own life. She’s unstable. I had hoped that I was doing her a favor, and perhaps a favor for my son who might return to his first love.”

  I had noticed how she would switch from one thing to the next. When we ran from my father, she had acted like she was all about it. The longer we lived away from home, I realized how often she changed her mind about being away from the vampire lifestyle. Stupid love blinded me. I vowed that I’d never fall into that trap again. Tierney scared the fuck out of me. She wasn’t like Lydia at all.