The Night's Baby

by Stina

  “Shit,” Tep said under his breath. “And if they know about the baby already, then they are already preparing for war. They will stop at nothing to get him.”

  “Why?” Adirah asked. “He’s just a baby. He has nothing to do with this war.”

  “That is where you are wrong, my dear Adirah,” Dena said releasing Kesh’s shirt. “He has everything to do with this war, for a single drop of his blood would turn an Ancient Lykan or vampire mortal. We would die instantly. The Lykans have always been thirsty for power, and they will dispose of anything that will get in their way. Especially a little vampire baby who can do what it took us a whole war to do.”

  “So what do we do?” Kesh asked after another moment of silence passed.

  “We will train you both in the way of the Ancients. You must learn to fight like us if you wish to survive. But even with the two of you, that will not be enough.”

  “I will recruit my clan, the Sefu!”

  “Yes.” Dena nodded. “But we will also need the Malum.”

  “What?” Adirah sneered. “They tried to kill us.”

  “Only because of a long, drawn-out, petty feud between the two kings,” Tep spat. “When I was created, all vampires were brothers and sisters. None opposed each other.” He paused to give Kesh a knowing glance. “And none broke the law to kill each other.”

  “Vila would have murdered us, including my unborn child. What she did was an act of treason, punishable by death.” Kesh’s voice was icy. He didn’t care that Tep could probably snap him in two. He didn’t like his tone. He was starting to get the feeling that maybe his family wasn’t wanted, and suddenly he felt on edge. “If the prophecy says my son can turn anyone mortal, including Ancients, what do you want him here for? How do I know that you aren’t trying to kill us?”

  “Because Dena will rip out all of our throats if we harm a hair on any of your heads,” Lira said with a shrug. “Plus, I like the little baby. I may fight anyone who tries to hurt him too.” She smiled at baby Adis, and he returned it with a wide grin of his own.

  “Tep is the only one who has an issue,” Constance spoke up. “He always acts like he has a stone stuck up his ass.”

  “I don’t have anything stuck up my ass!” Tep snapped. “I just know we only have two weeks until the full moon. That is when the Lykans will be at full power. Do we really think that he will present an army of enough vampires ready to fight for the cause by that time?”

  “You’re asking us,” Dena said. She’d reclaimed her seat and was leaning forward with her hands clasped together. “Shouldn’t you be asking him?”

  All eyes went to Kesh and his went to Adirah, who too was looking at him. With all her heart she wanted to think that what they said wasn’t true, but deep down she knew it was. She heard it in all of their voices. She’d always known her son was special, and always wondered why he wasn’t born with the thirst. Kesh’s prediction about that had been slightly right, just missing a few details. Never in her right mind would she have thought that her baby would have a soul. When she gave birth to him, she was sure she was giving birth to a child doomed for eternity. She wondered how he would grow. Would he be a child forever? Would he reach a certain age and then stop outwardly growing? She never shared these thoughts with Kesh, for fear of worrying an already-worried mind.

  “Kesh,” she said and reached for his hand. She sensed his hesitation and knew it could only be at the thought of calling a truce with the Malum. In all honesty, it made her sick to her stomach. Calum most likely wanted her head on a stick, and Adirah wished that she just would have finished the job when she had the chance. She had no idea how they would turn enemies into allies, but something would have to give. “We have to try. For Adis’s sake.”

  “I know,” Kesh said. He sighed deeply, wishing everyone would stop looking at him like he was some unearthly creature.

  “You are an unearthly creature,” Lira said with a grin.

  Kesh couldn’t help returning it.

  “So what is it, Kesh? Is this something that you will be able to accomplish or not?” Tep’s voice was loud and impatient.

  Kesh opened his mouth to tell him to give them their bags so they could leave. But suddenly a thought came to his mind. The elixir! It was tucked safely in a pocket in the front of the bag he’d packed. While he knew that he did not have enough for the entire Malum clan, he had enough to force Talum to listen to reason. After that, he could only hope for the best.

  “One,” he started, “you all have to agree and give me your word that you will never read my mind again. Two, my answer is yes. I will deliver you a full army filled with both the Sefu clan and the Malum clan.”

  Chapter 9

  “Number twenty-eight!” a woman’s voice called out in the small, family-owned coffee shop.

  When no one answered, Lina stepped away from the counter and went back to the register to check the name on the order. She could have sworn that the young man hadn’t left as she made his bagel and coffee. It was almost noon, and she groaned at the thought of having to throw away yet another bagel. She, once again, had forgotten to take the money first before she prepared the order. Her manager, Mr. Meyer, would definitely have her ass if he did an inventory count and the drawers didn’t match up with the product he had left.

  She hated her job and never in a million years thought that she would end up working in a coffee shop. But after dropping out of Billet, she lost her full-ride scholarship and was subjected to attend the local community college. She also didn’t have a choice but to get a job so that she was able to afford her small one-bedroom apartment and other expenses. Still, that was better than attending a school full of vampires. She couldn’t even think about stepping foot on that campus again after all of the things she had witnessed. Not only that, but she had slept with one of them. It sucked knowing that he had only used her to get to who he really wanted. She really liked him, and she thought that maybe he liked her too. After finding out what he really was, all of that went out the window. He left her high and dry to get her wrist broken and almost get murdered.

  Ever since the incident, she was paranoid in all that she did. In the back of her mind, she always wondered if one of them would come to finish the job. So far it had been a year, and nobody had come looking for her. Still, her curiosity drove her mad with wanting knowledge about them. She’d grown to despise them and wanted to know how to kill them, just in case she was forced to defend herself. It seemed as if everything in folklore would work, besides garlic. However, the stake through the heart, holy water, and exposure to sunlight should work. The only thing she didn’t understand was how they could walk around completely exposed in the sun.

  She sighed at the empty restaurant, but still, she called the name on the order one more time. “Ramel Preston?” she called. “Although I know you aren’t here! Ramel Preston.”

  “I’m so sorry about that!” The voice shocked her, and she couldn’t help but jump. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “You didn’t frighten me,” she said looking at him. “Shocked would be a better word to use.” She realized she was looking at the guy who had placed the order and she wondered if she took notice of how good-looking he was the first time. Probably not, since she was looking at the cash register instead of his face.

  He had chocolaty brown skin that looked like it tasted oh so lovely. His lips were full, and he had a square forehead. He wore his hair in a perfectly lined-up short high-top cut. He wasn’t super muscular, but he wasn’t at all skinny. His eyes were the same brown as the silk fitted shirt he was wearing and the matching loafers on his feet. He had a little peach fuzz on his chin, and when he smiled at her, his dimples spoke words that he didn’t say.

  “Well, I’m sorry for shocking you, Lina.”

  “How do you know my name?” Lina asked, still transfixed by his good looks.

  “Um, it’s on your name tag,” Ramel said grinning.

  “Oh.” Lina could have k
icked herself; that’s how stupid she felt. “Duh.”

  “It’s just one of those days,” he said and dug into his pocket to pull out some cash. “Here’s a twenty. You can keep the change. I believe in tipping for good service.”

  His baritone voice carried an easygoing tone, and Lina almost didn’t hear what he had just said. When she finally did comprehend it, she shook her head when she took the money. “Your stuff is only five bucks. What did I do to deserve a fifteen dollar tip?”

  “Well, I’m new in town, and you are the most beautiful woman I’ve seen so far. That alone deserves that whole twenty. If you get off soon and aren’t busy, I’d like to take you somewhere nice.”

  Lina felt herself blushing, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she cashed him out and handed the money to him. He stared at her hand like he was confused why she was giving the money back.

  “Here, just take it,” she said and rolled her eyes. “Guys like you come in here all the time trying their luck with me. One, I’m not going to be bought with fifteen dollars. And this isn’t the movies; you can’t just ask a girl you’ve just met out on a date.”

  “Why not?” Ramel said, still not taking the money.

  “Because you just don’t. What if I were crazy? Or a murderer? Or a—”

  “A vampire?” he finished, eyeing her curiously.

  “N . . . now, why would you say a vampire?”

  “This is not my first time seeing you, Lina,” Ramel said to her, ignoring her question. “I have come here before, while you were on break. I have seen what you look up in all of your free time.”

  “Umm, that’s kind of creepy,” Lina couldn’t stop herself from saying. Then she lied through her teeth. “Everyone knows that vampires don’t exist. Why would I be looking up those kinds of things?”

  “You know, just like I know, that that is a lie,” Ramel said and leaned on the counter. “I know you have seen them before. I know that whatever you saw must haunt your dreams.”

  “How do you know about vampires?” Lina asked. “Is that why you came into the shop today when no one else is around?”

  “Yes,” he answered truthfully. “I know about them, and I have vowed to make every last one of them pay.”

  “So, are you a vampire hunter or something?”

  “Are you ready to know that?”

  When Lina hesitated, Ramel balled up her still-extended hand and pushed it back toward her. “When you are ready, please come and find me. I will tell you everything.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a motel card. He handed the card to her. “This is where I’m staying for the next few nights.”

  Lina just nodded, gave him the things he paid for, and watched him exit without another word to her. Glancing down at the card she saw that it was a hotel not too far from where she was working. She only had an hour left in her shift and, although she knew she could go home, if she went there she would just be alone and miserable. Like always.

  “The Chase Motel, huh?”

  * * *

  One o’clock couldn’t come fast enough for Lina. She was slightly irritated when she had to wait an extra fifteen minutes to leave, since her coworker, Steve, was late for his shift. She heard the bell on the business’s door as it opened and when she looked up, she had never been happier to see his disheveled hair or his doofy glasses.

  “Sorry, Lina! Traffic was a bitch on the way here!”

  “On your bike?” Lina raised her eyebrow at him.

  “The people wouldn’t get out of my way.” He shrugged his shoulders and gave a sheepish grin. “Thanks for holding things down until I got here. I know you may have things to handle; pretty girls always do.”

  Through her irritation, Lina was able to offer him a smile. It was always obvious since her first day of working there that Steve had the biggest crush on her. Although she would never be able to return his affection, she was flattered nonetheless. In reality, that was the first time since she’d met him that he had even been late for work.

  “No problem, Steve,” Lina said gathering her things. “You have a good day, you hear?”

  “You too, my beautiful buttercup.”

  Lina had made it to the front door of the building and paused with her back to him. Her face was twisted up, and she almost turned back and said something to him. “Yeah, just gonna ignore that,” she said and left.

  Her car was parked in one of the two employee spots: a small gold Honda Civic. Even though the motel was in walking distance, she didn’t want to leave her car at the coffee shop. Who knew? Steve might try to break in it in hopes of finding some panties to sniff.

  It didn’t take long for her to reach the motel. Minus the few cars that were parked there, it was pretty much vacant. It wasn’t a bad-looking motel, which was always surprising to Lina. She always thought of motels as infested with rats and roaches. This one looked like the management actually kept up the property.

  She pulled the motel card from the pocket of her jeans and looked at the back of it in hopes that the room number would be on it. Indeed, it was. “Room 215,” she said out loud to herself until she found it. She parked not too far away from the room and got out of the car.

  Before she even reached the door, it opened. “Well, that didn’t take long at all,” Ramel said with a smile.

  “Were you watching me through the window?”

  “Not until I heard your loud-ass muffler pull up while I was trying to nap.”

  “Oh,” Lina said and pointed behind her with one of her thumbs. “I can go. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “No, no.” He shook his head and stepped out of the way so that she could enter. “Come on in.”

  Hesitantly, she did as he said. She didn’t know him from a can of paint to trust him, but she was already there. No turning back.

  “Wow, this place looks like a five-star hotel!” She set her tote purse on the computer desk and looked around the large room. The bed sat high off of the ground and had linens that looked softer than soft. The carpet was plush and clean, and there was a sofa to the far right of the room. Ramel had the fifty-inch television that hung on the wall turned off, and the large bathroom was on the other side of the room.

  “That’s what I thought too. Not too bad for eighty bucks a night. I could have done a lot worse.”

  There were a few seconds of silence. Awkward silence. Lina shrugged her shoulders and fell down into the computer chair. “Soooo . . .”

  “So. Back at the coffee shop, you asked me how I knew about them?” he asked and went to the side of the bed where all of his travel bags were. From one he pulled out a laptop and went over to where Lina was sitting. Placing it in front of her, he opened it and clicked a few times. “Take a look.”

  She scooted closer to the desk so she could take a closer look at what was on the screen. There were pictures, lots of them. But not just any pictures. They were images of vampires, live vampires. Some were staked to trees, while others were chained in what looked like cellars. She clicked out of the images, and a document popped up; well, more like a journal.

  “‘New effective ways to use holy water to weaken the damned.’” Lina read the words out loud. “‘Injection, blood dilution by drinking before’”—she paused and looked at Ramel with wide eyes—“‘before hunting.’ So you do hunt them?”

  “For the past three years now. Ever since . . .” His voice trailed off, and he closed the laptop.

  “Ever since what?”

  Ramel turned his back to her and walked to the bed. He plopped down and stared at the lines on his hands for a second. “Ever since they took her from me.”

  Lina swallowed and contemplated whether she wanted to know who he was talking about. “Your girlfriend?”

  “My sister,” Ramel said. His voice had grown distant, and dark. “We were only a year apart; I was a year older than her. She was eighteen at the time they came. For some reason, they spared me. But they took her. I still remember the blood and her screams. They haunt m
y nightmares every night.”

  “That’s why you started hunting?”

  “I still remember what the vampire who took her looked like. His face is etched in my memory, and I will never stop until I find her.”

  “Have you gotten close?”

  “That’s what has brought me to North Carolina. I have tracked him. He goes by the name Rex, and I have reason to believe he is here.”

  Lina bit her lip. She hated thinking about the undead walking freely around her. It made her sick to her stomach.

  “Is something wrong?” Ramel asked with concern in his voice after seeing the drastic change in her facial expression.

  “It’s just . . .” Lina paused. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Last year, I kind of had my own run-in with them. That’s why you see me looking them up all the time. But, it’s not to hunt them. It’s to help me stay out of their way.”

  “Why?”

  “I attended Billet University last school year and . . .”

  “And?”

  “There was a whole clan of them. They attended the school with us. They had their own frat house and everything.”

  “Wait. They attended school in the daytime?”

  “Yes.” Lina nodded.

  “But how is that possible?”

  “In some of the old texts I’ve read, it says that some vampires were given the knowledge to make rings that allow them to walk around in the daytime. Magic rings.”

  “Magic? Are you sure it wasn’t sunscreen?”

  “Sunscreen wears off,” Lina answered. “I never saw any of them have to leave to reapply.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah,” Lina said and felt her mind wander to Adirah. She didn’t know why she was about to tell him everything; she just knew that she needed to get it out somehow. “They took a close friend of mine. She fell in love with their leader. So I guess that’s not really taking, right? Not if she went willingly. This guy I was kind of seeing told me he would help me find out if they were all really vampires. Well, I know now, but I didn’t know for sure at the time. We broke into their home, and one of them broke my wrist. Tried to kill me. Adirah saved me, though.”