by A. D. Koboah
All those images were eclipsed by a small, thin man with eager eyes and a greedy smile. The one who turned him into a vampire, emptying his life of the people he loved. Effectively casting him into the void he was in now for all eternity.
He pulled his wrist away from my mouth. “That should be enough.”
I felt better. My limbs sang with strength. My vision had cleared and I saw I was lying on a beat-up sofa in a room with peeling wallpaper and shabby, stained furniture. Shadrach stood up, looming over me. He wiped the blood from his wrist and then stood watching the inch-long gash on his wrist knit itself closed, his expression a strange mixture of boredom and loathing.
“I... You...” I tried to glower at him, but felt too peculiar with that blood invading every inch of me.
“Oh, you didn’t think I was going to kill you just now, did you?”
The most I could manage was a withering look. Amusement curled around his lips, but there was still that enmity in his eyes, turning them into windows that looked in on darkness.
“I told you, I like you, Dallas. But I couldn’t resist scaring you a little. I wish you could have seen your face when you thought you were about to die.”
I tried to talk, but found I couldn’t speak. My skin, muscles and bones felt hot. They tightened painfully and I had to hold back a gasp.
“I probably should have warned you about this part,” he said when it began to feel like molten lava was pouring through my limbs. His face was deadly serious now, those dark windows steady as he stared down at me. “It’s excruciating isn’t it? Maryse was like that for days. Hopefully it won’t be the same for you. You know I’ve heard stories of people who, for some reason or other, aren’t able to complete the change. Their bodies harden, leaving them immobile and they are stuck that way for all eternity. All they’re able to do is scream. That’s quite a scary thought, isn’t it, my dear?”
He paused whilst I curled into the fetal position. A scream was lodged in my throat, but all I could do was gasp painfully whilst the pain intensified.
“I’m bored, I’ll be back in a little while.” He walked to the door and then turned to face me again. “Then again, I may not feel like coming back.”
I tried to speak, to tell him to stop, but he had vanished.
Alone, I was finally able to let the scream that had been building escape my lips. I screamed and screamed against the musty smelling sofa as pain, the potency of liquid flame, streaked through me shredding my flesh with needles of fire. I howled into the gloomy room. There was no one to hear my cries, for Shadrach was long gone.
Mercifully I was only able to endure the pain for a short while, which felt like an eternity, before blackness swooped in again.
***
When I awoke I was not sure whether night had segued into day, for the room was awash with an ethereal light that seemed to emanate from the shack itself. The peeling wallpaper was awash with it, as was the stained furniture. Even the windows coated with grime seemed to emit a silvery luminescence lighting the room in a gentle, eerie radiance. The open door was a rectangle of blinding argent.
My ears thrummed with sound. Creaking that seemed to come from within the shack, the heavy sigh of the wind outside and a sound I couldn’t identify that was like millions of things prickling somewhere out there in the vast night. I even thought I heard the gush of water from somewhere far away, but I could not be sure. The damp, musty smell in the room seemed to have intensified and beneath it was a multitude of other scents I could not identify. My attention was torn away from the sight, sounds and smells around me by an ache in my bones, a dull ache that seemed to smoulder through to every inch of me. Focusing on the ache seemed to make the sounds, smells—and even the light in the room—dim.
I felt a shiver of excitement when I realised what all of this meant. I rose to my feet, my movements quick and fluid as if my body were a slip of fabric caught in a light breeze. I faced the sofa I had been lying on and placed a finger beneath one of the armrests. Using no force whatever, I lifted it easily as if it were a sheet of paper. Still using just a finger, I threw it against the wall. The boom of the sofa hitting the wall was at first painful to my sensitive new hearing, but I was immediately able to control it as I had been able to control everything else I could hear.
“Oh, hell yeah!”
That was when I found myself drawn to a noise outside: A heartbeat.
Shadrach. That bastard hadn’t gone anywhere. He had been here all along.
And weren’t vampires supposed to be dead? So how could his heart still be beating? How was my heart still beating come to think of it?
“I was told vampire blood is what keeps our dead flesh animated. Our hearts keep that blood circulating, keeping us alive.”
I turned around to see him standing in the doorway, a small smile on his lips as he appraised me.
“My, you make a beautiful vampire.”
“You creep!” I said. “How could you scare me like that?”
He moved to the sofa and set it right.
“You should lie down. It can take a few minutes to get used to the changes that have taken place. You’re also still quite weak.”
He was right. I didn’t exactly feel weak, but the ache in my bones was making me tremble slightly. I did as he asked and he knelt beside the sofa, pulling out a blanket that smelled almost as bad as the room. He wrapped it around me and stroked my cheek.
“Rest for a while, Dallas.”
He’s acting like a completely different person and not the sociopath I met when I came here.
“Yes, I know.” He peered at me sheepishly, his lips curved in a little smile, a few lines marking the space between his eyebrows. “You’ll have to forgive me for all of that. You see, humans annoy me, so I can’t help being a bit sadistic around them. But now you’re one of the family, so to speak, I promise to behave myself.”
He had been trailing his hand down my bare leg at that moment and I felt the oddest sensation, like a mental nudge. Just like when I was drinking his blood, an image came into my mind. I knew he was thinking of me standing naked and dripping wet in front of my bedroom mirror, but—surprisingly—there was nothing sexual in his thoughts, only fondness.
He glanced toward the door, his brow puckering in consternation. He sighed.
“Maryse is back. I think you should stay here while I go and explain what I’ve done.” He straightened and smiled down at me tenderly for a few moments. “I’ll be right back.”
He vanished. This time, with my new eyes, I saw his form appear to pulse. The air around him wavered before closing in on him. Then he was gone.
A few minutes later, Maryse—a petite girl who looked around sixteen—came storming into the shack. She wore jeans and a denim jacket with white runners. Her hair was plaited back from her head in neat cornrows. Her skin was a burnt copper, her small, even features pressed into a mark of displeasure as she stood staring at me with her hands on her hips. She turned to Shadrach.
“Have you lost your mind? Why the hell would you go and turn her into a vampire? He’ll kill us for sure this time!”
“Relax, Maryse. He won’t even know we had anything to do with it. Dallas and I have a deal. Once she tells me what my mother wants me to know, we’ll get her home and never hear from her—or him—again.”
“Your mama? Your mama’s dead.” I said getting to my feet.
There was a hint of impatience in his smile. “Yes, we established that fact not too long ago. But you said her spirit is still around me, so tell me what she’s told you.”
“Please. Your mama has got better things to do than hang around your sorry ass. She’s dead. Gone. Get over it.”
“You lied to me?”
“Hell yeah, I lied to you. As if your mama would be hanging around watching you sleep with everyone. And the old woman with the three nipples—what the hell?”
Maryse burst out laughing.
“This isn’t funny,” Shadrach said.
&nbs
p; “Actually, it’s quite hilarious.” Maryse glanced up at him, looking much younger when she smiled. “She played you—as the young ones like to say.”
“What wasn’t funny was making me think you were going to kill me,” I said. “And then all that bullshit about leaving and letting me think I was going to stay like that.”
Maryse let out a low giggle. “You didn’t kill her to start the process? Oh my God, the pain.”
They burst out laughing.
“Honestly, you’re such a creep,” I said. “Look at how old you are and you’re still walking around crying over your mama. She didn’t even know what was happening when you killed her, let alone that it was you.”
His laughter came to an abrupt stop and he stared at me intently, awe in his eyes. He had been so caught up in the blood lust that he hadn’t been aware of the fact that his mother hadn’t known he was the one who killed her. Relief poured through him, the burden he’d carried for decades lifting.
Damn it! I’d done exactly what I set out not to do.
He moved to me and placed a kiss on my cheek.
“Thank you, darling.”
“Whatever. Anyway, I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure, but it hasn’t. I’m going now and you better mind I don’t tell Avery about the way you treated me.”
“Oh, I see now. You did this for him?” Maryse said.
“I don’t see how it’s any of your business, but yeah, I did. I’m in love with him. And now I’m a vampire, we’ll be together forever.”
They looked at each other and began laughing once more. I faced them with my hands on my hips and waited for the laughter to subside.
Maryse was the first to speak. “Oh, my dear child. He won’t want you.”
I felt a quickening of my heart, the same twist of agony I’d had at the park as a child.
“Bullshit!” I moved to a mirror I had seen in a corner of the room. “He may not like what I’ve done to begin with, but I have a plan and I’ll soon have him eating out of my hand.”
I glanced in the mirror to check my hair and, to my dismay, noticed blood on my dress. I turned to glare at Shadrach. I’ll have to change into something else. Maybe my white jeggings.
“That’s your plan?” Maryse asked. “A weave and tight jeans?”
They started laughing again.
I was hearing their thoughts now, like a gentle breeze rippling through my mind, and they revealed Maryse was anything but amused by the situation.
You idiot! You shouldn’t have done it. This airhead doesn’t know what she’s got herself into. He won’t be happy and who do you think he’ll take it out on?
Relax, Maryse. I’ve actually done him a favour. She’s not what she appears to be. I’m sure she’ll look gorgeous in those jeans. And those pretty brown eyes of hers. I don’t know of any male, alive or dead, who wouldn’t—
“Thank you, Shadrach,” I snapped. “That’s about as much as I want to hear.”
Their laughter ground to an abrupt halt and they both stared at me warily.
“You shouldn’t be able to do that yet. That skill can sometimes take days to develop,” Shadrach said.
“Well, I can because I’m special. Now, it was nice getting to know you guys, but show me where the bathroom is so I can change and get out of here. I have a flight to book.”
The expression on Maryse’s face was incredulous for a few moments. Then anger leapt out at me, tightening her mouth. She advanced until she was just inches away.
“You seriously think nothing’s going to change now. Didn’t you hear him say he killed his own mother? You won’t be able to control yourself in an enclosed space with humans. You’ll slaughter them all before the plane has even left the airport!”
Shadrach moved forward and pulled her back, his voice gentle when he spoke to me.
“You’re a vampire now,” he said. “You don’t need to take a plane. But we’re not letting you go anywhere until you’ve made your first kill.”
“Eww, please! I have no intention of killing anybody, let alone drinking blood.”
They exchanged glances. I noticed Shadrach was looking a great deal more uneasy than he had a moment ago. He managed a smile, a nervous one.
“In that case, we’ll help you get there and disappear long before your friend discovers we were the ones who did this.”
Chapter 4
Shadrach and Maryse carried me with them through the Mississippi countryside, delving in and out of shimmering fissures, bending everything in our immediate vicinity to our will and parting it for us so we moved to a completely different location in a matter of seconds. Despite the wonders of my new body and the supernatural powers at my fingertips, I could only think about Avery. I kept picturing him alone in the clearing surrounded by desolate shadow, regret in his eyes as he watched me walk away from him. It was difficult not to give into tears again, but I was consoled by the fact that I would soon be with him.
When we materialised in the field of flowers outside the mansion, a stillness descended on me. I was hardly aware of Shadrach and Maryse who barely stayed long enough to utter a goodbye before they fled back into the void.
I stood in front of the mansion which loomed before me, an elegant understated beauty that was grand yet welcoming in the deeply sensuous Louisiana night. Two giant oaks stood guard on either side. Crickets sang a welcome chorus and the humid air was made intoxicating by the sweet scent of the Queen Anne’s lace. The mansion and its grounds were now enclosed behind a brick wall, and the field of flowers ended before iron gates. A gravel drive formed a horseshoe around the field of flowers. A silver Lamborghini was parked to my left.
As I stared at the mansion, I felt a chill run down my spine. It felt as though I had waited decades to be here and I was overcome with searing delight and excitement. As I stood there trembling, I thought I saw the mansion as I imagined it looked when Luna first saw it: weathered and faded in harsh sunlight whilst still managing to hold onto its grandeur amidst the rambling foliage.
I blinked and it was gone, but it was a while before I moved to the front door and rang the bell, wishing the butterflies beating heavy and wet against my stomach would still. Footsteps sounded within and I held my breath as the door opened.
I exhaled in a disappointed whoosh when a tall, willowy woman with lustrous red hair opened the door. She was probably in her forties and had almond shaped brown eyes. Her bone structure and innate gracefulness reminded me of a retired ballerina who still carried the poise and elegance honed from years of dancing. She was dressed in a cream, sleeveless top with a khaki-coloured pencil skirt that stopped mid-calf. Tan pumps completed the look. She looked surprised to see me standing there.
Jealousy leapt into my heart and I narrowed my eyes. “And who are you?”
“Mallory,” she replied, her voice breathless with a husky undertone. I felt that stab of jealousy deepen. “Mallory Wentworth. You’re Dallas Marshall, aren’t you?”
I nodded, my hand on my hip, my lips tightening into a pout as I stared at her. She smiled. Although she was completely poised on the outside, I could feel a prickle of mild disquiet emanate from her.
“I’ve seen your photograph so often in those gossip magazines. But I didn’t expect you to be even more beautiful in person.”
Some of the tension left me, although I was still pouting at her. “Thank you. I’m here to see Avery. But...but...he is not supposed to have a girlfriend!”
“Me? Oh no.” She laughed. A light airy sound that would have caused my jealousy to deepen, were it not for her words. “I’m not his girlfriend, I’m a relative.”
“Aww...well that means me and you may as well be family then,” I said with a chuckle.
She laughed softly, but the disquiet emanating from her deepened. She was skilled at keeping her thoughts hidden, but I managed to catch a single sentence.
When did she become a vampire?
“So where’s Avery?” I said.
“He’s out—somewh
ere. I’m afraid I can’t invite you inside without his permission. But I can have him back here in a few minutes.”
“Okay. Do you mind if I just check my make-up?”
I stepped past her across the threshold and to a small mirror in the foyer without waiting for a response.
Her eyes widened.
She watched me smooth my hands over my hair as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. The colour drained from her face.
“Oh, this mansion is just beautiful,” I said, looking around the foyer with its high ceilings and dark wood, squared panelling on the walls. A dark beige rug with gold detailing lay on the white marble floor. “I can’t wait to see the rest of it. Me and you are going to get along just fine, you’ll see.”
On impulse, I hugged her.
She stiffened and her heartbeat sped up. I noticed her scent for the first time, not the smell of soap or the lush flowery scent of her perfume, but another scent that came off her warm skin in hot waves, and which made my entire body quicken in response. The dull ache I had woken up with turned to flames that coursed through me. My muscles tensed and my throat constricted as it spread across my skin, seeming to heat my brain so I felt woozy, almost disconnected from myself and all that was happening around me. Thirst, hot and painful, tugged at me with cruel fingers.
“Oh, you’re so warm.” I involuntarily hugged her tighter.
That was when I became aware of another presence. It was the oddest sense of something, some dark mass, riding along the thirst for blood that had snatched me up in its seductive arms. Dread—clean and visceral—flooded me as that something pushed against my psyche as if I were a door it could open and move through. When I felt intense pressure above my front canine teeth and they began to lengthen, pushing down mercilessly on my bottom lip, I abruptly let Mallory go. She tried to remain poised, but her face was a chalky white against her flame-coloured hair.
Still aware of that dark mass pushing against me, I spoke as if from a faraway place.