Vampire Fire

by J. R. Rain

  Sweet, sweet Jesus...

  There is a car sitting in the suicide lane, waiting to make a left turn into one of the busier shopping centers. It’s also sitting directly in the path of the charging dog. The creature, I see, is about the size of the car, maybe bigger. Yes, definitely bigger. There is an elderly woman inside and she makes the sign of the cross. As the dog approaches, she covers her eyes with her hands. Sandy is fascinated to see what’s going to happen next, and inches closer to the street. The rapidly approaching dog is nearly across from her. But, to her disappointment, the dog leaps over the car in a single bound, its pitch-black haunches flexing and bulging with shimmering muscle.

  Shortly after that, the dog stops running. Perhaps it’s only coincidence that it has stopped running opposite Sandy.

  Either way, it stops... and all three heads orient on her.

  ***

  Sandy squeaks and takes a few steps back.

  The three heads are as big as dinosaur skulls, their teeth nearly as long. Their three sets of burning eyes would be enough to make anyone die of fright. How Sandy doesn’t descend into panic, I don’t know. Amazingly, suddenly, a big rig roars by, perhaps oblivious to the spectacle standing in the center lane. And as it passes, the dog disappears, too.

  Amazingly, I sense Sandy’s disappointment. Yes, she’s breathing hard, but she’s also excited. She feels validated somehow. She feels alive. She feels like anything is possible. All by seeing the world’s creepiest dog. But I know what she means.

  In an instant, the heavens—and hells—had cracked open for her, giving her a glimpse into the supernatural. And she soaked it in.

  It is now, as she stands there by the curb, as the cars around her seem to awaken from their fugue, that she sees the man twenty feet away. The man who is watching her... and grinning. She misses the tattoo on his forearm, the tattoo curling slowly around and around...

  I considered exiting her mind.

  But first, I had a job to do...

  ***

  To the world, we were just two women chillaxing under the shade of the jacaranda. Little did the world know that one woman—me—was deep inside the other woman’s mind.

  Deep, deep inside.

  After all, I was presently chasing down the darkness that I had seen earlier, a darkness that had been hiding inside her all these years, a darkness that was presently running for its life...

  ***

  It was a strange chase, indeed.

  I was reminded of my own journey deep inside Russell Baker’s mind, my sweet boxer boyfriend who had inadvertently become a sort of love slave of mine, thanks to the bitch inside me. The problem was, I didn’t want a love slave—and to release him from the spell, I had to plunge deep into his subconscious mind, to find his true self hidden deep below the cursed layers. I managed to release him then, and have yet to speak to him since, which I had demanded and commanded. He needed to be free from me, forever—and, yeah, that kinda broke my heart.

  This was similar, except there were no layers of spells to break through. It was just the wide-open expanse of her mind. A mind the entity knew well. After all, it had been a part of her for nearly a decade. Maybe longer.

  And so, it led me on a roller coaster ride through crackling synapses, swirling memories, forgotten memories, hidden fears, and unknown memories of seemingly another time and place. Past life memories, I realized. All of these I flew through, racing toward the shapeless blackness that always, always seemed just one step ahead of me.

  I caught it looking back at me, its red eyes glowing and full of hate—or so I assumed—as it hung a hard right and plunged ever deeper. We were in a void now, with only an occasional flashing of yellow light, the occasional random chirp. I could have been in outer space. Where we were, exactly, I didn’t know.

  Her mind, I thought. We’re still in her mind.

  Another flash of light, and something appeared next to me. It was an image of Sandy herself, but she looked different in the image. She looked stronger, younger, hungrier. Now I saw the fangs hanging over her lower lip. A vampire? Granted, I didn’t have such fangs myself, but the image was clearly of herself as a creature of the night.

  The image grew in size, and then rushed forward and out of sight.

  Another flash, and this time I saw her striding through a big, beautiful, Gothic home, with a winding staircase and tapestries and thick mohair rugs.

  That image grew as well, and rushed away.

  And still, I chased the shadow through this void, a void that was punctuated with the occasional burst of light... and visual appearances of something that, I suspected, had not yet happened. There she was, standing astride a pile of money. And there she was with a man hanging onto her, clearly worshiping her.

  And suddenly, just like that, the shadow stopped running and turned and faced me, eyes glowing red, but not with an internal fire.

  “Sssister, why do you chase me so?” it asked.

  I stopped as well, and found myself floating before it in the seemingly eternal darkness.

  “Who are you?” I asked. My telepathic voice seemed to have no range.

  “I do not remember, sssister,” it said, and we now drifted in a concentric circle, rotating together, facing each other in the darkness. “Not darkness, Sssamantha Moon. Thisss is where dreams are born. It is a beautiful place, is it not? I visit here often.”

  The entity was humanoid, although barely so. I suspected the creature had long since forgotten its own shape, if it ever had one.

  “I was human once, a long time ago...”

  “Why are you here?” I asked. Nearby, another flash of light appeared, and within the light was an image of Sandy driving in a black sports car.

  “I am here to live again, Sssam. Isn’t that what we all want?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  It did not immediately answer me, and we drifted and turned in this netherspace of creation—all while my physical body huddled in the shade and Sandy’s upturned eyes shuddered inside her skull.

  “In here, there are no secrets, Sssam. In here, we are one mind.”

  I considered its words. My own thoughts were certainly safe from most immortals. Not so safe from humans, some of whom I inadvertently opened up to. Some of whom had gotten so close that we were intimately connected. I always assumed it was the case because such effortless telepathy was beneficial for the dark masters. In fact, most everything I could do was to benefit the dark entity within me. These were her powers spilling over into my life. Controlling mortals were of benefit to her. Knowing their secrets as well. But other dark masters did not see a benefit of letting those of their own kind into their minds, and, as such, shielded their thoughts from other immortals. Which is why I generally had no access to other immortals’ thoughts.

  But here, my mind was projected, encumbered by my immortal body, free to roam Sandy’s mind, and, as such, an open book.

  “Yesss...” it hissed. “Yesss... you have worked it out marvelously.”

  “What are you?” I asked.

  “I am but a humble lost soul, looking for refuge.”

  “Why do you not go to the light?” I asked.

  “The light does not want me, Sssam. At least not yet.”

  I nodded, understanding. “You are destined for hell.”

  “My own private hell, Sssam.”

  “And you are afraid,” I said.

  “Yesss...”

  I spread my arms wide, although it was only a projection of myself spreading my arms. “And you are safe here?” I asked.

  “For now, but I feel him closing in.”

  “Him?”

  “You know the one of which I speak, for you have just met him.”

  “The devil?”

  With that, the entity quit moving and I felt his fear, coming at me in wave after wave. I had a sudden impression. After all, he was open to me as well. It was of a ceremony, a ritual. I saw the flash of a knife blade, followed by pain... and the slipping
away of life itself.

  “You were in training to become a dark master,” I said.

  “Yesss.”

  “You were killed.”

  “For a simple mistake, Sssam. The masters do not allow for mistakes.”

  “This was a long time ago,” I said. It was no doubt back around the time when Elizabeth and her fellow freaks walked the earth.

  “No, Sssam. Not so long ago.”

  Now, I caught within him the scene of modern buildings, of the Hollywood sign. Of secret ceremonies in the Hollywood Hills. I stood back, confused. I had been under the assumption the dark masters had been banned long ago.

  “The first wave, Sssam. But there is a second... and it’s forming now. And it’s about to break.”

  “How did you escape hell?” I asked, shaking my head. “How did you escape the devil?”

  As I asked the question, I already sensed the answer within him. It was the dark masters who had figured out how to out-trick the devil. And the entity before me knew just enough to slip between the devil’s fingers, but not enough to stay hidden forever.

  “He’s coming for you,” I said, remembering the way the devil had looked at Sandy last night, as she had watched the three-headed dog speed by.

  “It is so, Sssam.”

  “You don’t have long now.”

  “Not long at all...”

  I considered my options. I considered removing the entity, although I wasn’t entirely sure how. Still, I suspected with enough intent, I could. Yes, the devil was closing in on him, that much was obvious. Perhaps that’s why the dog had appeared. The dog had sniffed him out.

  The entity before me shifted and reformed, like a living inkblot. “Please, sssister. Won’t you allow me to stay a little longer? A temporary reprieve before the endless suffering?”

  I considered its request, and wondered how, exactly, I had come to a place in my life where I could grant a temporary reprieve to hell itself. I could only conclude that this was all insanity. With that said, I was just about to grant its request, just about to leave it be, and allow the woman named Sandy to remain possessed by a lower dark master. A not-so-evolved dark master. But then, I decided that I hadn’t come all this way—that is, all this way inside her mind—to come away empty-handed.

  No one deserved possession, especially by what I suspected was a sniveling, slimy, destructive creature, a creature that had influenced Sandy’s life for ill for the past decade, a creature that, I also suspected, had taken much from her, used her, and wanted to use her still.

  I couldn’t allow that, and I couldn’t allow harm to come to Sandy, either. After all, the devil had made it clear that he wanted the entity within her, one way or another.

  I had just reached my conclusion when the creature turned tail, but I was already moving, my hand lashing out...

  And caught hold of it...

  ***

  In the real world, I saw my physical hand opening and closing tightly.

  Back in the darkest recesses of her creative imagination, the thing before me jerked and fought me, but it had no real strength. No ability to fend for itself. All it could do was run, and it was done running.

  “Sssister... please... you know not what you are doing...”

  I ignored its pleading and retreated back through her consciousness, back through the many layers of her mind and memories and emotions. Faster and faster I went, until I found myself blinking in my physical body, and feeling disoriented.

  What I didn’t expect to see was a living shadow in my hand. I was reminded of a swarm of snakes or bugs; it swirled and darted over my knuckles, but I held tight—and not quite sure what to do. I doubted others could see it. I also doubted that this was really happening.

  After all, in the bright of day, in the shade of a flowering jacaranda tree, I was holding the lost and desperate soul of a dark master in training. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I wanted this oily, slimy thing as far away from me as possible.

  And so, using all my strength, which may or may not have been necessary, as the thing in my hand weighed next to nothing, I heaved it high into the sky.

  And as I did, I saw something I wouldn’t soon forget: something winged and black and shaped vaguely like a dragon appeared in the sky. But it wasn’t a dragon. It was longer, blacker, sharper.

  It was a demon. An honest-to-God demon.

  It snatched the undulating, black form out of the air with a clawed hand... and disappeared again.

  I was still looking up into the sky, seriously doubting what I had just seen, when a blue Volkswagen Beetle stopped in the road in front of me, to the chagrin and anger of those behind. The passenger-side window rolled down, and the driver, a young woman in her twenties—leaned across the seat and looked at me.

  “That’s one down, Sssamantha Moon,” she said, and as she spoke, the smile on her face grew... and grew and grew.

  Chapter Nine

  We were in my minivan.

  I had basically exorcised an entity from the girl, and released a decade’s worth of darkness from her. I had, in essence, freed her... and in the process, had sent a soul to hell. Even if only temporarily, although I didn’t really know that, did I? I was, after all, taking the devil’s word for how hell operated. Anyway, I had basically given the woman next to me her life back. I had freed her of a parasitic entity, and you would think she would be happy about it, relieved in fact, but you would be wrong. So very wrong.

  “I feel different,” she was saying again. “I feel weaker.”

  Minutes earlier, I had guided her to my minivan. I had needed her support as much as she needed mine. Chasing the entity through the many layers of her mind had been exhausting on a mental and psychic level. Not to mention, hauling the kicking and fighting creature out.

  I said, “Weaker, how?”

  She had been opening and closing her fingers. “I was always oddly strong for a girl. Hell, for anyone. I mean, not crazy strong, but usually stronger than my boyfriends. Heck, I was always the one opening the jar of pickles!”

  I knew the feeling, at least with Danny. Early on, he had become very resentful that I’d grown far stronger than him. Far, far stronger.

  “Then again,” she added, “I usually feel a little out-of-sorts during the day.”

  “Out-of-sorts, how?”

  “Weaker, brain foggier. I tend to sleep. My doctors didn’t know what to make of it. One of them called it an early onset of sundown syndrome. But my situation seemed to be the opposite.”

  I waited, and had already seen where this was going.

  “At sundown, I actually felt stronger. At night, too. I always felt I was—I don’t know; this is going to sound weird.”

  “Try me.”

  “Well, I always felt that I was sort of allergic to the sun itself.”

  “Not as weird as you think.” A question suddenly occurred to me. “Sandy, how old are you?”

  By my estimate, she looked maybe twenty-two, maybe even younger.

  She blushed a little, ducked her head. “Thirty-eight. I know, I look young. Maybe it’s because I avoid the sun these days. My friends call me a vampire, ha-ha.”

  She laughed it off, or tried to, but I saw the doubt in her eyes, the confusion. I also saw a shell of the girl I had met only a half hour earlier.

  “Well, to be a true vampire,” I said, doing a decent job of acting, “doesn’t one, you know, drink blood or something?”

  Her eyes flashed. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. I gave her a subtle suggestion to open up to me. She nodded, although I didn’t think she knew she nodded.

  “That’s just the thing, Sam. I eat all my steaks rare. I eat one or two of them a week.”

  “Rare?”

  “The rarer the better. Once...” She paused, looked away, and I prompted her again. “Once, I bit one of my boyfriend’s lips and kept kissing him even while he...”

  “While he what?”

  “While he struggled and bled. I pinned him
down. I was stronger than him, just by a little. He eventually threw me off him, but not before...” A pause, and another prompt by me. “But not before I drank like a lot of his blood. He was mad at me for weeks. He almost left me, but my boyfriends never do. Not until I kick them out or get restraining orders. Or my new boyfriend beats them up. It’s usually messy. Funny how guys get so attached, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Funny.”

  Especially when they are love slaves, I thought.

  Yeah, the girl before me had been, I was certain, a very minor form of vampire. Her powers, I was certain, were directly proportional to the entity within her. He had, after all, only been a dark master in training. The entity within me, of course, had been their strongest, or one of their strongest.

  Lucky me, I thought.

  The low-level dark master—or dark novice, perhaps—gave her, in effect, the best of both worlds. Unusual strength, but still a tolerance to the sun, a connection to mortal life. With only a mild need for blood, and the kind of skin most women would kill for.

  “And what would happen when you ate food?” I said. “Besides rare steaks?”

  “Oh, I have terrible IBS. I mean, it’s kind of gross to admit it, but I can’t keep a lot of food down. Sometimes I just skip eating altogether.”

  “But you can eat some foods?”

  “Yeah, some. Most meats. Dairy foods. But almost nothing else.”

  “Fruits and vegetables?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “They give me terrible cramps.”

  Again, I knew the feeling. That is, back before I had the opal ring. I took her hand and turned in my seat and faced her.

  “Your hand is cold, Samantha. People used to tell me I had cold hands—”

  “I know they did, Sandy,” I said. “And they also told you about their dreams, and you probably had to admit that you never remember your own dreams.”

  She looked at me and her eyes squinted a little, then she nodded. “Yeah, I don’t dream much, if at all.”

  “But you used to.”