by J. C. Diem
My mother had managed to infiltrate the compound once, so I knew there had to be a way in. I followed the fence line, searching for something that could offer me assistance. Finally, I found a small hill that might be close enough to the fence to allow me to jump over it.
Still new to my half-undead form, I wasn’t sure what my limitations were yet. The sun apparently couldn’t kill me, but a large dose of electricity might. I climbed to the top of the hill and an image rose of the dream I’d had of the strange shrouded woman. She’d told me that she had a task for me and that the choices I’d make would affect the lives of everyone I loved. It seemed that confronting my mother had been the right choice. Along with having no emotions, I also no longer felt the need to raise zombies.
Judging the distance from the hilltop to the fence, I was fairly confident that I’d be able to make it. Even if I was zapped to death it wouldn’t really matter. I could already see that this existence would eventually drive me as insane as Katrina apparently was.
Returning to the bottom of the hill, I took the gun from the back of my jeans and held onto it so I wouldn’t drop it. The Berretta had always been my favorite handgun and it might still be useful.
Sprinting to the top of the hill, I launched myself into the air. Time seemed to slow down as I soared high over the fence. For a short time, it almost seemed as if I was flying. Then I landed lightly on my feet well past the deadly barrier.
Shaking my head at how easily I’d cleared the fence, I ran to the gate. I found the remote control device and slipped it into my pocket. It only took a few seconds to close the mile-long distance to the building. The garage door swung upwards when I pushed the button. I retrieved my backpack and watch from the SUV and hesitated. I’d only been with the nest for one night and day and I was already filthy. There was no running water at their lair and no way to keep clean.
The temptation to have a shower and wash my hair was too strong for me to resist. The scanner on the wall flashed green as my prints were read and the door unlocked. Mark always had to scan our prints into the system when we visited a new base. It seemed they remained on file afterwards.
Turning left, I entered the main area and headed upstairs. Taking the spiral staircase up to the second floor, I froze when a phone rang. It was coming from the communications equipment to the right. I knew who it had to be. Mark must have been notified as soon as I opened the door to the compound.
Crossing the floor, I picked up the phone. It was a landline rather than a cell phone and there was no video option.
“Lexi? Is that you?” Mark asked. While I could hear the panic in his voice, it didn’t move me at all. I could hear Kala and Flynn breathing in the background.
“It’s me,” I replied. Even I could hear how dead my voice sounded.
Kala’s breath caught. “Something’s wrong with her. She doesn’t sound like herself at all.”
“Have you seen Katrina?” Mark asked.
“Yes. I tried to kill her last night, but I failed. I’m hers now.”
It came out more starkly than I’d intended and Flynn made a sound of protest. “You can’t be a vampire already. It takes three nights for the transformation to occur.”
“Not for me. It happened shortly after I drank her blood.” They remained silent while they tried to come to terms with what I’d become. “I’m not the same person you used to know.”
“What are you now, Lexi?” Mark asked cautiously.
“I don’t know. I’m not really alive, but I’m not completely dead either. I’m something new.”
“Have you killed a human yet?”
“No, but I’m sure I will when I get hungry enough.”
“If you do, we’ll have no choice but to hunt you down and end you,” he said. I heard the pain in his voice at being faced with that prospect.
“I know.” I also knew he would ignore my warning, but I gave it to him anyway. “Be careful if you come here. Katrina will know as soon as you enter New Orleans and she’ll eradicate you all.”
“We’re not just going to give up on you, Lexi,” Kala said.
“You can’t save me,” I told her tonelessly. “I’m already lost.”
I hung up then took the phone off the hook so they couldn’t call again. From the lack of background noise, they were still at the compound in Texas. Hopefully, they’d be smart enough to heed my warning. I might not be able to care about them anymore, but I didn’t particularly want Katrina and her cronies to kill them.
Entering the hallway that led to the bedrooms, I headed for my room out of habit. I took a long hot shower and scrubbed away the accumulation of grime. It was eerie standing in front of the mirror when I dried myself off. Physically, I hadn’t changed at all after becoming half-undead. The only difference I could see was my far weaker reflection and emotionless face.
After blow drying my hair, I changed into fresh jeans, a plain white tank top and donned my holster. I slipped the Beretta into place then pulled on my battered black leather jacket.
Retreating to the ground floor, I paid a short visit to the armory. Stuffing spare ammo into my backpack, my hand encountered my ereader. I hesitated then decided to leave it there before slinging the backpack over my shoulder.
I stopped in the kitchen on my way out. Faint hunger pangs were starting up in my stomach. Now would be a good time to see just how much I’d transformed. Searching the cupboards, I found a sealed packet of cookies and opened them. The smell of chocolate chip wafted out and it didn’t make me feel ill as I’d expected. Taking a tentative bite, I chewed, swallowed and waited for my body to reject it. When it didn’t, I ate a few more cookies then stashed the rest in my backpack. My ability to eat solid food was just one more difference between myself and my new kin.
I took my time returning to the swamp. This time I stayed on solid ground so I wouldn’t get dirty again. Katrina knew I was different from her and her servants, but she had no idea how unusual I was. If she knew that sunlight couldn’t hurt me and that I could eat regular food, she might take her minion’s advice and kill me after all. It seemed prudent to keep this information to myself.
Without the overwhelming pain of losing Reece constantly assailing me, I no longer had a desire to end my existence.
₪₪₪
Chapter Six
I heard quiet murmurs rather than moans and groans when I returned to the house. It seemed they’d finally finished their naked acrobatics. I entered the parlor to see Katrina sitting on her ratty throne with her worshippers at her feet. She looked at me sharply when I entered the room. Taking in my appearance, she sneered. “Well, don’t you look lovely?”
The four female vampires tittered dutifully while the males looked baffled. “She looks like a clean version of you,” one of them muttered not quite quietly enough.
Katrina leaned forward and slapped him hard enough to knock him to the floor. “Would you care to repeat that, Kevin?” Her eyes bored into him and he quailed, shaking his head frantically. “I didn’t think so.” Settling back into her chair, she looked at me quizzically. “Why did you bother to clean yourself? You’ll only get dirty again.”
“Don’t you care about your appearance at all?” I might be dead inside, but I still didn’t want to look like I’d been wallowing in a sty.
Katrina shrugged one shoulder. “Not really.”
“What do you care about?” I was genuinely interested in hearing the answer. So far I’d just seen them having sex or sitting around doing nothing.
“We care about blood and sex. What else is there?”
“Speaking of blood,” the female teen ventured timidly, “I’m starving. When are you going to let us feed?”
“You fed a week ago,” our master reminded her. “You know we have to limit our food intake. If we kill too many, the humans will become suspicious and they will begin hunting for us.”
“I don’t see why we have to stay in New Orleans,” another of the females whined. She was in her thirties and
was pretty with short black hair and bright blue eyes. “We could move around every few years rather than staying in one place. We’d be able to hunt at will then.”
“We’re staying near this city because I like it here,” Katrina said icily. “It was my home before I was turned. Besides, our kind don’t roam around like a pack of mangy dogs.” She cut a glance at me, but I didn’t react to her dig at my alter ego.
Kevin surreptitiously rolled his eyes. She might control them, but there was no loyalty in their ranks. They felt only hatred and contempt for her.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your nest?” I queried. Unwilling to sit at her feet like a supplicant, I remained standing.
Katrina heaved a put upon sigh. It must have taken practice to perfect the art since she didn’t have air in her lungs. She pointed at the teenage girl. “That’s Amanda. The other girls are Pricilla, Candice and Tiffany.” Pricilla was the one with the short black hair and blue eyes. Candice and Tiffany were both in their twenties. They had matted blond hair and were fairly ordinary in appearance. They didn’t appear to be very bright.
“The men are Benjamin, Kevin and Orlando,” Katrina continued. Benjamin was short, lean, had auburn hair and was boyishly cute. Kevin was average in every way with brown eyes and shoulder length brown hair. Orlando had a mixed heritage with curly black hair, light brown skin and dark brown eyes. All three men were in their twenties. The entire group was staring at me in a less than friendly way. I didn’t take it personally since they didn’t seem to particularly like each other either.
“What do you do when you aren’t feeding or having sex?” I asked.
“What do you mean ‘what do we do’?” Katrina said derisively. “We aren’t humans who feel the need to fill our empty lives with pointless tasks. We exist. That’s enough for us.”
Amanda and Pricilla began squabbling about something and I backed out of the room. I headed to the bedroom that I’d claimed as my own and put my backpack beneath the bed. I wasn’t trying to hide it, but I also didn’t want any of the others snooping around inside. Questions would be asked if the cookies were discovered and I couldn’t think of a plausible lie.
Taking a seat on the bed, I quickly became bored again. Merely existing might be enough for the others, but I already knew that it wasn’t going to be enough for me.
“Alexis,” Katrina said imperiously, knowing I could hear her. “Come here.”
Maybe she was bored as well. Her entertainment was to force me to comply with her will. Although her command didn’t compel me, I retraced my steps to the living room. “You called?” I said tonelessly.
“Sit down.” She pointed at a spot close to her feet. Amanda shot me a hate filled glare and shuffled aside to make room for me. I’d apparently taken her usual place. It occurred to me that Royce had been a replacement for my father and Amanda was supposed to be a copy of me. We looked nothing alike, but we were a similar age.
I managed not to flinch when my mother’s cool hand came to rest on my shoulder. The bite mark that she’d given me last night seemed to pulse beneath her hand. The contact strengthened the link between us and I caught a flash of her thoughts. She was remembering back to when she’d first been turned by her master.
His technique had been very different from hers. He’d seduced her into allowing him to snack from her over a period of several weeks rather than draining her straight away. She’d fallen deeply beneath his spell and had become enamored of him. When he’d finally decided to turn her, he’d fed deeply from her and had given her his blood to finish the transition on the third night.
When she’d woken, her blood thirst had been all encompassing. She’d blindly gone where he’d led her and it had been to her old home. He’d watched from the shadows as she’d opened the window to my nursery and had climbed inside to feed from me.
Apparently, having his servants kill their closest relatives was a rite of passage for his nest. Her master hadn’t counted on my father’s skill with a gun and his willingness to protect me. My father had put a bullet in Katrina’s head and she’d escaped through the window. Mark had been waiting for her and he’d come very close to putting a stake through her heart.
She’d managed to break free and had fled to her master. He’d fed her his blood, which had expelled the bullet from her forehead and had healed her. Only the faint scar remained to remind her of how close she’d come to true death.
Being denied killing me had planted a seed of obsession inside her. It had grown over the years rather than fading. When the Shifter Squad was sent to New Orleans on a mission several months ago, she’d sensed me. When she’d figured out I was her long lost daughter, she’d been determined to finish what she’d started eighteen years ago.
When her bite didn’t kill me like it should have, she’d taken that as a sign that we should be together. She knew her master would never allow a werewolf to join his nest, not even one as strange as me. She’d hatched a clever plan to engineer his death. Her plan had worked and my team wiped out her master and most of her rivals. She’d quickly taken charge of the few remaining vampires. Then she’d found and turned Royce and Amanda. They acted as her substitute family until she could have the real thing.
Now that she’d added me to her collection, I had a feeling Amanda had become superfluous. I also sensed that Katrina would want to find a replacement for Royce. I caught the glimmer of an idea from her. She was toying with a plan to use me as bait to draw my father out so she could convert him. In her madness, she thought that bringing her family back together might make her feel whole again.
I’d had a gaping hole in my mind after losing my bond to Reece, but the emptiness inside her was far worse. It was a chasm that could never be filled. Like all undead, she had lost her soul. She would forever feel a hunger that could never be satisfied no matter how much blood she drank or how many lives she took.
“I want to know how you survived your mother’s bite when you were a baby,” Pricilla said, drawing my attention to the conversation that I hadn’t been paying attention to.
“Answer her,” Katrina commanded when I remained silent.
“Mark thinks I survived because I was given a blood transfusion. It flushed most of the vampirism out before it could take hold.” Their expressions were doubtful, but no one openly accused me of lying.
“Who is Mark?” Kevin asked.
“He was my boss.”
“Aren’t you a bit young to have a job?” Amanda queried.
Benjamin was frowning and he suddenly remembered my history. “You work for that organization who hunts down our kind.”
I nodded in agreement. “They’re called the Paranormal Investigation Agency, or PIA for short. They have a base near here. That’s where I went to shower and to change my clothes.”
Katrina’s fingers clamped down on my shoulder. “Do they know you’re here?” I heard the panic in her tone and turned to face her, managing to knock her hand away in the process.
“Yes. An alarm was sent to Mark when I opened the door. He called to find out what happened to me.”
Rage flashed across her face, making her ugly again. “You stupid girl!” Her hand lashed out and blood burst from my bottom lip when she slapped me. It healed almost instantly and I barely felt the pain at all. “They could be on their way here right now!”
“I’m sure they are,” I replied calmly. “Unlike you, they actually care about me. They’d rather see me dead than become an even worse monster than I already was.”
“You knew,” she said in realization. “You knew they’d come if they discovered that you were here.”
I inclined my head in agreement. “Mark’s been looking forward to catching up with you for a very long time, Katrina.”
Seized with panic, she stood and her nest followed suit. “We need to get away from here.” Her survival instincts had kicked in and were now in overdrive.
“Where will we go?” Amanda asked, wringing her hands in anxiety.
Obeying her command, I pulled my gun and fired two bullets into the teen’s head before she knew what was happening. She fell to the floor in a boneless heap and I kicked her over onto her back. I was pretty sure the wounds had killed her, but I wanted to be completely certain. They might be my kin, but I didn’t have any qualms about destroying them.
Picking up Katrina’s prized armchair with one hand, I smashed it against the floor. I sorted through the splintered wood until I found a piece with a sharp end then knelt beside the fallen vampire. I rammed the makeshift stake into her heart and thick dark blood burst from her mouth.
Satisfied that she wasn’t going to get up again, I stood and turned to see the others huddled together. All of them were staring at me in horror. Even Katrina was stunned at how swiftly and ruthlessly I’d dispatched her minion. “Well, she’s dead,” I said as I holstered my weapon. “What now?”
Katrina managed to gather herself and turned towards the door. “Now we run.”
₪₪₪
Chapter Seven
Being faced with the possibility of death was about the only thing that could have driven Katrina from New Orleans. Vampires were unstoppable at night, but they were rendered completely vulnerable when the sun went down.
Her fear of Mark and his team was so strong that she forced us to sprint at top speed for several hours. I soon learned that using up so much energy roused my hunger. I’d darted into my bedroom to grab my backpack before leaving, but I couldn’t eat the cookies while they were watching me.