The old guy re-enters the kitchen grumbling about forgetting his tea. Apparently, it’s a serious problem to eat a cheese sandwich sans tea. Whatever, dude. You do you. Concrete floor at the bottom is far more trustworthy than century-old wood not to make noise, so I stop hovering.
And… I’ve just drifted onto the set of a bad Eighties horror movie. Okay, not really. The room is full of old timey mortuary gear like embalming stuff from the last century, tubes, huge needles, giant jars, and hand-cranked machines I can’t even begin to guess the function of. I’m fairly certain huge surgical saws, machetes, and sickles aren’t normal tools found in funeral homes. It doesn’t look like a procedure room, merely storage. But wow. So damn creepy.
We are definitely not in Kansas anymore.
I haven’t been this uncomfortable anywhere since my first OB/GYN visit. Wait, no, being inside Petra’s house beat it. Freaky bitch. This is pretty damn close, though. What is it about old quasi-medical equipment? Tweaks every nerve in exactly the wrong way.
Yeah, stop being a dumbass. No time to gawk. I hurry across the room, following the sound of struggling to another door. It leads to a hallway straight out of a haunted insane asylum. Filthy white tile covers the walls like in every creepy hospital from a hundred years ago. Six rooms, three per side, give me the willies. I know this is a funeral home, but it looks like where they used to take people for lobotomies. Two ancient gurneys stand against the wall on the left. Eek.
Sorry, lady, but if ghosts in straitjackets pop out of those side rooms and come after me, I’m out. I can only handle so much freaky at once.
The woman’s argument with the chain is coming from the far end, an open doorway at the end of the hall into another dusty, large area. I am a creature of the night. I should not be afraid of ghosts or creepy rooms. I’m already dead. A ghost can’t do anything to me unless they happen to be carrying a flamethrower.
Refusing to look left or right into the doorways, I run to the end, entering a large basement area containing a huge steel tank painted a dull brick red, connected to a mess of pipes and valves. A short conveyor of metal rollers sticks out from one of the narrow ends like a tongue. Latent heat wafts off what can only be the crematorium oven. It’s not roaring anymore, so it’s obviously been shut down. Not long enough ago for my comfort, though.
Seriously, there is something about old boilers and crematory ovens the human psyche is vulnerable to. I’m terrified like this thing is going to come to life and eat me even though on an intellectual level, I know it’s impossible. Too many damn movies. Okay, Sarah. Focus. You need to be more Sierra now and less Sophia.
Not too much Sierra, though. She’d try to fight the elders.
Yeah, there’s blood on the floor—dribbles, but still blood. Another gurney nearby still holds the scent of a person, no doubt the poor bastard presently collecting in the ash receptacle. I’m stunned to realize Ben and Cody got it right.
Wow… their neighbors really are the damn Klopeks. I’m legit in one of Dad’s movies.
The struggling noises come from behind a door in the wall a short distance past the oven. I bite back my childish fear of an inanimate object devouring me in flames. Honestly, going headfirst into a crematory oven would be much more merciful than other forms of torturous death—like being a guest on the Dr. Phil show.
‘My daughter’s become a vampire and she won’t listen to me anymore.’
Quiet as can be, I approach the door. Okay, ninety-nine percent chance this woman is going to scream when I open it. She is making a reasonable amount of noise already, so she might not notice me if I’m quiet. Really should get on with this before the Super Vampire Brothers come back. Dammit. Now I’m going to think of them as Count Mario and Count Luigi.
Ugh.
I pull the door open.
The windowless room looks like it had once been used for storage. It’s entirely empty except for four somewhat rusted support columns propping up the ceiling and a relatively young Hispanic woman. Don’t wanna be too judgey, but the tiny skirt, low cut top and gaudy platform heels makes her look like a prostitute. She’s locked to one of the support columns by a pair of handcuffs connecting her wrists together, hugging the pole. The woman’s taller than me by like four inches, but her height advantage is almost all coming from those shoes.
We are lucky. She’s got her back to me and is so absorbed in trying to escape, she hasn’t noticed the door open. Perfect. In all the history of vampire kind, I doubt many of us have ever used supernatural speed to ambush a woman from behind with the intent of saving her life.
I pounce on her blurrily fast, clamping a hand over her mouth to hold in the scream she reflexively tries to set loose.
“Shh,” I whisper. “I’m here to get you out. Make noise and we are both going to die.”
The woman nods.
I let go of her. She twists to look at me, squinting. “You’re free? Go get the police.” She yanks at the handcuffs. “These creeps think no one will miss me, but I got parents and two brothers. Hurry. Get outta here ’fore the old man gets you.”
“Don’t need the cops,” I say, reaching for the cuffs.
“Stupid. What you gonna do? These people are freaks. Saw ’em kill this other poor bastard they locked in here with me.”
“Wait…” I blink. “Didn’t they just bring you inside?”
“No, girl. I been here two damn days. Get the police. My name is Ava Marquez. These freaks killed two people. They used ta be in here, then they took ’em out. Then I see ’em out there dead, goin’ straight into that big ass oven.” She pulls at her arms, giving a teary whine. “C’mon, stop standin’ here. You gotta go get the cops before they kill me, too.”
Crap. What the hell are these vampires doing?
I mean, obviously, I know what they’re doing. How can they be so damn reckless and cruel?
Sigh. This is over my pay grade. I grab the cuffs and snap them apart like cheap plastic toys. Can’t do anything about the vampires, but I can help Ava.
“You… You…” She gawks at her wrists. “How the f—”
I stare into her eyes. “Be quiet and follow me.”
22
A Perfect Scenario for an F-bomb
Breaking those cuffs destroyed any chance of me avoiding involvement here.
The vampires at Club Abaddon got seriously pissed off at me for ‘stealing their food,’ and they didn’t even murder their victims. No telling how these crazy ones will react if they catch us before we get out of here. The best plan I can come up with at this point is ‘run like hell.’
Whoever happened to be in the squirming body bag either went straight upstairs to be dinner or is in another cell down here. While Ava stands there gawking at her wrists, I listen. Her breathing is damn loud, but not so much it hides the presence of three voices coming from upstairs. A man who sounds like a Texan, neither old nor young, appears to be discussing Game of Thrones with a woman who has to be in her early sixties, speaking in an unfamiliar accent. It doesn’t sound foreign in terms of nationality, more like time. It’s as if I’m watching a movie set in colonial Boston or something. Shit, she’s gotta be old. Another man occasionally speaks. He sounds older, too—like late fifties—and has a posh British accent. The three of them find the deaths and tortures on the show ‘unrealistically tame but hilarious.’
Okay, they’re messed up in the head. When the woman says she hopes they ‘kill that little girl soon, she’s annoying,’ I immediately dislike her. Not sure which character she’s talking about. Honestly, I haven’t watched the show. Too dark for me. Dad warned me about it. Sometimes, I can be a bit too ‘Sophia.’ The deaths of fictional characters, especially ones I really like, hit me almost as hard as real people.
Anyone who finds GoT ‘funny,’ is a damn psycho.
And speaking of deaths, I really need to get my ass out of here.
In addition to the creepy ‘hospital’ corridor I came in from, another passage heads out from this room
catty corner to it on the next wall. Looks like more ‘patient’ rooms. Old buildings like this often went through multiple incarnations. Before it became a funeral home, this could’ve been a hospital or even a tuberculosis sanitorium. Who knows? The weird stuff you learn from watching ghost hunter shows.
Getting bad vibes from the other hallway… so I don’t go there.
Gonna chance the kitchen. Wait. No. Basement windows. The crematorium room has four of them. Old style lever-handled latches make it impossible to re-secure the windows from the outside, so unless the vampires who live here are really unobservant, they’re going to know someone opened it. Yeah, but they’re already going to notice someone was here because Ava’s missing. Or not. Maybe they’ll think she simply escaped on her own. Here’s hoping.
Hell with it.
I grab Ava’s wrist—and hesitate. Those plastic bricks she’s got strapped to her feet are going to make a ton of noise. Damn, we can’t go running around the house. The faster we can get outside, the better. I lead her over to the nearest window, a narrow rectangle near the ceiling. Looks big enough for us to squeeze through. Sometimes, Dad’s genes come in handy. Ava’s got more of a butt than me, but she still looks capable of fitting. The bottom edge of the window is higher than the top of my head, the opening only barely as wide as my hips. It’s super awkward to climb out such a tight opening with nothing to stand on and most likely nothing to grab outside, but I plan to cheat.
After reaching up to open the latch and shove the glass panel outward, I face Ava. “Do not scream or make noise.”
Her eyes flutter under the weight of mental compulsion. While she’s dazed, I grab both her wrists, float off the ground, and glide backward, sliding feet first out the window and pulling her up after me, dragging her out onto the pavement. She lays there dazed while I dart over to shut the window, then pick her up, draping her over my back like a cloak. The instant we fly straight up, she snaps out of the fog and clamps on—but doesn’t scream. Having the weight of another adult on my back does not make flying fun. It’s about as ungainly as carrying a person the normal way. My speed is crap, maneuverability worse, and it’s tiring. To be fair, it’s much easier for me to fly Ava out of here than it would have been for mortal Sarah to carry her away on foot.
From the air, the development of suburban houses to the west looks like some kind of weird doodle. No two streets follow the same shape. Zero pattern. I keep flying past streets of private homes for about a mile to a small shopping center, where I land near a UPS store and a massage therapy place.
The instant Ava’s shoes hit the sidewalk, it’s like a reset button for her brain. She screams as if only now realizing we’d been a few hundred feet in the air.
I stab her in the brain—using mental powers.
Time for thought surgery.
Okay, let’s see. Yeah, the woman is a prostitute. The Super Vampire Brothers compelled her to get into the van when she walked over to solicit business from them. She wasn’t lying about having parents and brothers, but she hasn’t spoken to them for over a year. Ava’s hoping they’d have somehow magically known she ended up in trouble and come looking for her. The two days she’d spent locked up in the basement, she’d been making all kinds of promises to God about going home, getting off drugs, changing her life, and so on if he didn’t let her die. Ugh. This poor woman thinks her abduction happened as some kind of divine punishment for being a prostitute.
Okay, I’d never personally do it… but sex work is valid work. It’s wrong to vilify the women but not the dudes paying for it. And really, how is giving someone a pleasurable time a bad thing? Whatever. Don’t have time to philosophize. She’s gonna do what she’s gonna do. If going home to her parents makes her happy, do it. Worked for me. Good chance these vampires won’t find her there, though I doubt they’re going to try to hunt her down for escaping.
Like any self-respecting serial killer, they’re certainly looking for victims no one will miss.
In her admittedly confused memory—probably drugs or just sheer pants-staining terror—she vaguely remembers being locked in that room for two or three days with a pair of homeless guys, both of whom the vampire brothers dragged off while leaving her there. She later watched them load the men’s remains into the crematory oven when the elderly dude entered the cell to give her a few pieces of bread to eat. Good. She has no idea about vampires. And wow, dick. Couldn’t even give her a cheese sandwich? Just plain bread.
Okay, so. Back to mind surgery. I erase myself entirely. As far as she will remember, she slipped out of the handcuffs on her own, climbed out the window, and ran to this shopping center. She can find any random person here and ask them to call the police for her. Slightly mean of me, but I don’t want any electronic trails. If those vampires get mad, I don’t need them mind-controlling the cops and telling them who called 911. Oh, yeah. Also, better to prevent any cops from being killed. I make sure Ava doesn’t remember where she was held captive. She didn’t have the best recall of the house or location to begin with, so it isn’t too difficult to muddle it up more with a fake memory of wandering for a few hours after escaping. Her bringing the police to the old funeral home would end badly for the cops.
Probably end up being like a scene out of Grand Theft Auto after the player’s all leveled up. Waves and waves of police showing up and just getting torn apart—in this case by elder vampires. At least until the National Guard shows up. Nah, these vamps aren’t being subtle but I don’t think they’d quite push it into open war with humanity. They’d most likely kill the first cops to show up, then relocate before any others came looking.
So, no. Ava Marquez is not going to lead the authorities into a deathtrap.
Memory tweaking done, I glide into the air and wait.
A minute or two later, Ava blinks, screams, and sprints off like the vampires are right behind her. And yeah, those bricks she’s got strapped to her feet sound like wooden blocks banging together as she runs. I keep an eye on her until she’s safely surrounded by a bunch of people near the Grocery Outlet supermarket. Gee, minimum effort on naming the place, dude. Whatever. She’s in good hands now, so I swing around and race back to the Peters’ house.
I swoop in the window, landing in the ‘vampire command center’ bedroom.
Ben yelps, jumping so hard at my sudden appearance he kicks the desk while attempting not to fall out of his chair. Cody, seated on the foot of the bed, throws a comic book he’d been reading over his head and yanks the flare gun from the pocket of his coat draped over the bed next to him. He clutches the orange gun to his chest, making such a derp face I wish I had my phone out to take a picture.
To make a point, I dash forward, grab the flare gun out of his grip, and go back to where I landed too fast for the boys to react.
“Careful with this thing.” I hold it up.
“How the heck?” Cody looks down at his hands, back at me, and down at himself again.
I stroll over and set the flare gun down on the bed, within his arms’ reach. “Trying to show you something.”
“Huh?” He glances at the gun.
After walking back to stand by the window, about ten feet away, I point at the flare gun. “Ben, count down from three. Cody, on the count of one, try to grab the gun before I can.”
The boys exchange a glance, then shrug.
“Three… two… one,” says Ben.
Cody appears to be moving in slow motion, his fingers creeping toward the flare pistol. I rush over and swipe it out from under his hand, leaving him to grab a fistful of comforter.
Again, Ben nearly jumps out of his chair. “Whoa.”
Cody frowns. “Yeah, whatever. So you’re fast. “Your point?”
I hold up my right hand and extend my claws. “My point is, I’m not even a year into being a vampire and look how fast I can move. Any vampire older than me could sink their claws into your neck so fast you’d never see it coming. I’m trying to scare you guys into staying safe and alive.”
“They’re vamps, aren’t they?” asks Ben. “The neighbors…”
“Yeah.” I let my arm drop to my side and retract my claws. “And, we have a big problem.”
“Bigger than us having a vampire nest on our street?” Cody reaches for the flare gun.
Against my better judgement, I chuck it to him. “Yes, bigger. The two guys you keep seeing on the video? They’re definitely vamps. And they’re old.”
“No kidding, they’re like fifty.” Cody chuckles.
“Don’t be a dork. I mean vampire old. They’re elders. I want you guys to stay away from them.”
Ben points at his middle computer screen, a Google search. “But they’re killing people. Look at all these stories about missing people.”
“Most of those probably have nothing to do with this.” I lean on the back of his chair, skimming the webpage. “Some of them could be, but the vamps are going after victims society either won’t miss or will take a long time to notice. Homeless people, prostitutes, gang members…”
“Like a serial killer.” Cody nods. “Doesn’t mean it’s excusable.”
“Argh.” I stand away from the chair, grabbing my hair in both hands out of frustration. “I’m not saying it’s excusable. Recognizing a problem we can’t do anything about isn’t the same thing as liking it. One of those vamps would twist me into a pretzel before I could even react, and there are at least five of them. You guys are only going to get yourselves killed.”
“We have to do something.” Ben twists back and forth in his chair, sneakers skimming over the carpet. Guess their parents don’t have a thing about shoes in the house. “Ignoring it is the same as saying it’s okay.”
I pace. “Not saying we do nothing at all. But direct confrontation is beyond stupid.”
“So, what then?” Cody sights over the flare gun at the wall. “This should take care of one.”
“If you could hit him. And it’s still an unknown if a signal flare would even ignite a vampire on contact. Also, I told you before, it holds one shot at a time. Even if you did ash one of them in an instant, the others would shred you before you could reload.”
Vampire Innocent (Book 10): A Vampire’s Guide To Adulting Page 23