Mortal children know the sound of their own name being called when they know they are in trouble, but this scene is no comparison and the name called through an empty shriek, to mortal children, cannot even be described.
"Jessica!" The sound of it echoes through the hallways till it reaches the library floor. Before Jessica can sneak out the door, her father has #own up the stairs, the heat of his anger warming the hallways. Jessica peeks out the library door into the open hallway. Her Father flies instantly toward the crack in the doorway. Jessica pulls back, frightened.
In a tiny voice she addresses him, "Father?"
Her Father rages, "You have betrayed me!"
Jessica explains, "He was intruding."
"You were not to feed, you were to wait!!" he commands.
"He broke in," she protests.
Her Father starts, "Where?!..." and then flies instantly to the zombied form without waiting for a response.
"What have you done?" he implores.
Jessica puts her face in her hands, nearly crying, "I'm sorry!" She watches her father lift the body into his arms.
She asks, "Is he alright?"
Her father scolds her at an intensity not to be tarried with, "Jess-ica!! Never ask that! Vampires never ask that!"
Jessica repeats herself, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry..."
Her father flies off, transporting the ghoulish intruder, out the door, down the hall, and down the stairs. The front door slams shut behind him.
The Quill Pen Killer
Chapter Five: At First Bite A Vampire
- Jessica's side –
The next day, Mattressa, the house manager knocks on Jessica's bedroom door.
"Cleaning!" she calls out in a chipper voice. "You up?"
Jessica opens one eye, pulls the pillow over her head and groans, "Nooo! Go away. And stop sounding so cheerful."
Mattressa opens the door slowly, and asks, "Are you sick? It's hours past your normal, early rising."
Jessica glowers at her from beneath the covers, "What?! You're always wanting me, you and father, to be more of a vampire girl..."
Mattressa tries back out of the conversation, "I didn't mean..."
But Jessica launches into a full rant, "You're always complaining," she mocks her father's voice, "Up soo early! What vampire does that?!"
Mattressa smiles at his imitation and admits, "Usually, yes..."
"Well, now I'm not. I'm not getting up so early. Okay?!"
Mattressa begins to shut the door, "I'll tell him, then, you're sleeping."
Jessica sneers and says with sarcasm, "Maybe now he'll be proud." She turns to the other side, covers the pillow over her ear and sighs, "Now go away."
"My goodness!" Mattressa scolds and shuts the door.
That evening, not too much later than she gets out of bed, Jessica meets up with Raven at a coffee shop. They select a table and order coffee drinks. They both sit down and Jessica sets her notebook is on the table. Jessica tells Raven about the encounter, attack really, as she says it, of the intruder. Raven can't believe his ears. He is so impressed, at first, and he asks her lots of questions, like, why did she think he broke in and what did her father do when he found out.
"Well I don't know," Jessica replies to his rapid-fire line of questioning.
"I saw the check later, on the desk, after my father carried him out. I think that it must have been what the fiend was after. Can't think of why else he would have been in there."
"So what did your father say... after he got back?" Raven asks.
"Don't know," she admits," He didn't get back, or at least not while I was there. I slept very late too... almost all day, wasn't feeling in the weather yet... and now I'm here. So I actually haven't seen him yet."
"Are you nervous?" he asks.
"Scared silly."
"Is that part of it?"
"Part of what?"
"Being a vampire," he asks, "Will you sleep late now? Be out all hours? Up at night, that kind of thing?"
Jessica wonders, "I don't know. It seems to be a part of it, you know, the whole carousing late night, evil vampire thing," she looks down at her fingernails and quickly shoves them into the pockets of her zippered hoodie.
"But you're such a morning girl..."
"I know! And all those years of hearing it too, the gripes and complaints: 'you can’t be up this early’, ‘bug off its not even 10’ – when school starts at 8, 'o fright these early mornings of yours'... always having to let my father sleep in, even as a little thing. Thank fright for Mattressa, " Jessica smiles.
Raven throws up his hands resolutely, "Well, you've got him there. He can't punish you. You own it now, I guess. Afterall, he did complain about the other.. and compare..."
"Horrendously!" Jessica states.
"I know, Jess," Raven pauses. Jessica is silent. He looks at her, finally asking the big question that lurks between them, almost as if it were a ghoul in the unused chair that sits beside them, "what else will it mean, to us, now, as friends?”
Jessica responds timidly, "I don't know."
Raven continues, "Will we..."
"Stay friends?" Jessica interrupts.
Raven raises one eyebrow, not sure what to say, "Uhhuh... Something like that,"
Jessica stammers, "Well, I won't... I won't want..."
"You won't suck my blood, will you?" he blurts out.
"Crumpkins, no!" Jessica gasps. "Forlorn sakes and evil pie... No!"
"You know, I had to ask you about it, though, don't you..."
"Nefinately dot," Jessica replies.
Raven laughs, "We haven't talked like that for years."
"Not since our last pinkie swear. And I won't ever-"
"Cross it! No way," Raven interrupts.
"No way," Jessica swears.
Raven holds out his pinkie, "Pinkie swear?"
"Pinkie swear!"
The Quill Pen Killer
Chapter Five: At First Bite A Vampire
-Her Poor Father's Side–
Starting that same night, of Jessica's first bite at the steps of the DeAngeliuson's Mansion just as her father exits with the ghoul in his arms.
Jessica's father flies, instantaneously to the steps of Ickabod's. He pounds upon the door with the knocker in his hand. The same night of Jessica's bite to the ghoulish fiend's neck, Ickabod, after the party, feeds. His statue does not cry or drip. But as Jessica's quill pen darts across the page, music of a string quartet fills her ears and as the song reaches crescendo, a statue in a dark corner of a house, somewhere other than Ickabod's, trickles a single drop or tear of blood.
Jessica's Father flies in through the door way, at instantaneous velocity, (the way a vampire flies when he's very upset - trust me, you don't want to cause a vampire to fly toward you at instantaeous velocity) as soon as Ickabod opens the door.
"You are in a state, aren't you? What have we here?" Ickabod remarks looking at the 'thing' Jessica's father is holding. Her Father's voice sounds shaky.
"Jessica's first victim!" he cries.
Ickabod tries not to laugh, "Baleful ways and odious nights! It was a party, wasn't it? Jessica! Her first."
Her father asks, his voice suddenly more relaxed, "Do you think I've over-reacted?"
Ickabod walks toward the sitting room, talking with his hands as he goes, "Not sure, but from the tone of your voice, my dark arts affiliated friend, you almost have me snickering at what a sight you were when I first opened the door. You look a bit calmer now. What are you going to do, keep him
as a pet?" He chuckles.
Jessica's Father looks down at the ghoul in his arms who begins to open his eyes wide, and blinks once looking up into her father's eyes.
Suddenly feeling quite silly holding the 'thing' he remarks, "Oh, yes."
Ickabod says, "Dear cousin, put him here." He traipses into the living area and points to a chaise lounge chair. Jessica's father follows, a bit bewildered, and grateful to his level-headed friend that he adores.
"Thank-you, Ickabod," he says and sets the ghoul down, at first watching him from above to see what he will do.
Ickabod, trying honestly to help Jessica's father, says,
"You look a bit silly."
"I feel silly," Jessica's Father admits.
Ickabod suggests, "Something to drink? A nerve calmer?"
Her Father, wringing his hands, looks up at Ickabod, "Yes, certainly," he says.
Ickabod pours him a tiny amount of green tea elixer into a very fancy glass.
"I don't want one, but here you go. I'm actually quite glad you came. He'll be fine here, come with me, I've had quite a night. Most glorious feed... haven't feasted in ages! Now quickly, to my new art purchase..." They enter the room with the statue.
"I've been waiting," he tells Jessica's Father.
"Is it doing anything?" he asks.
Ickabod watches, "No. I mean, not yet."
Jessica's Father watches a moment, too, then asks Ickabod,
"What does it do?"
Ickabod exclaims calmly, "Bleeds."
Jessica's Father replies, simply, "O." Ickabod gleams a pearly white smile, allowing just a hint of his fangs to show through and asks, "Sinister, isn't it?"
Now he is wringing his hands together while Jessica's Father shrugs his shoulders, "I suppose. How
long..."
Ickabod interrupts, excitedly, "How long does it take? I don't know. Here, pull up a chair. While we wait, tell me all about Miss Jessica, and why you're so angry... I thought this was what you wanted... always asking me, why isn't she more like the vampire girls at school... and yet, here you are, about to blow the roof off with your anger, not like you know that guy, and he looks like, well, no loss at all... Holy phlebotomy, hold on! Did I see something?" he jumps up, pulls an eye piece out of his pocket looks closer at the statue's face, and sighs, "No. Villians! Well, go on..." He sits back down, puts the eye piece back into his pocket and asserts, " Tell us..."
" Us?" Jessica's Father asks him.
Ickabod motions quickly to himself and then the statue, "Her and I," he says, "go ahead." Jessica's Father looks down at his hands and begins to cry.
"O there, there," Ickabod comforts and pulls out a hankie, "here you go. Teen-age girls. I don't have one, but I've heard. Enough to put a stake through anyone's heart, I suppose. Her first feast..." he pauses, "Vice! but my party wasn't just last night, already, was it?! I feel so cruel! And devilishly thirsty."
"Already?" Jessica's father asks dabbing his eyes. He watches Ickabod nervously jump up to check, again, on the statue. He snaps his eye glass in and out.
Ickabod's attention to Jessica's father wanes, "Hmmm. Yes. You were saying?" He sits back down, pats his friend's shoulder a little too bruskly to avoid pretenses that he is not enjoying the heart to heart chat.
He wraps up 'their little conversation' by saying, "There! Feel better now?" He sees his friend out the door and telling Jessica's father that he will take care of the ghoul who is still 'recovering' on the chaise lounge so that he 'won't have to worry at all about what to do with the victim, Ickabod calls him a cab.
“Too much in a stupor to remember what happened, but he probably won’t intrude upon your house, again.” Jessica's father thanks his dear friend in unending appreciation and says his good night.
As soon as Ickabod closes the door, he hurries back to look at his statue. Ickabod's disappointment brings on a thirst he has never known before, and back over at the DeAngeliuson's mansion, Jessica's writing becomes a necessity. While Ickabod's mansion corners host a multitude of zombied-out, drained-of-blood strangers, acquaintances, and dates, his statue remains virtuously dry. Nothing. And whilst Jessica writes, a statue in a dark corner, of an unknown house, somewhere, drips a single, blood-drop, teardrop each and every time.
The Quill Pen Killer
Chapter Five: At First Bite A Vampire
-Raven's side–
Again at the coffee shop table, Jessica pours another spoonful of sweetener into a spoon and watches it cascade into the steaming cappuccino as she ever-so-slightly tips the spoon.
"That's your third spoonful of the sweet," Raven cautions her, "Maybe you should taste it first."
Jessica agrees, "Yes. Good idea." She daintily lifts the cup to taste the sweet-to-cappuccino ratio, but continues to drink; gulping and grasping the cup with both hands until, after a last and final gulp, she puts down the cup and licks the milk mustache from her top lip.
"Ahhh." Smiles without showing teeth; her lips pressed tightly together.
Concerned, at the show of his coffee date sucking down the hot cup of liquid until the cup goes virtually dry and then immediately looking around for another, Raven inquires, "Jess? You alright?" Jessica looks down at Raven's cup, then back at the serving counter, and then at Raven.
"I'm suddenly very thirsty," she says.
"I'm suddenly very freaked out," he admits.
"What?" Jessica looks at the cup in her hand, "No," she pauses, "you think?"
"Think what? That you have to feed?!" Raven exclaims, eyes wide, nodding slowly, "Yes. And I gotta say, Jessica, I don't like witnessing this new side of you. I don't like this one bit."
Jessica shifts in her chair trying very hard not to ask, “Don’t you mean bite?” as they normally would, but these aren’t normal times.
Instead she insists, "You're just over-reacting."
She lifts her favorite quill pen, and expresses to Raven, "I feel like writing." She opens her notebook. “I just need some more," She lifts her cup. Raven looks at her blood-written pages and scowls.
"Some more Ink?!" he exclaims, "Um, no offense, Jessica, but I gotta go." he stands up backing a safe distance away from the table.
"Raven!" Jessica protests. He nervously grabs up his book, book bag, hat and coat.
"Bye Jess!" Raven's voice sounds shaky as he hurries out of the coffee shop leaving Jessica at the table, thirsting for more, well, truth be told, ink. He was right. And who wants to stay at the table with a vampire girl while she figures out that this craving she's experiencing may not just be a simple hankering that she's accustomed to satisfying with a bag of chips, a cappucino, or a sandwich? It may now have become a full-grown, ancient vampire calling: a thirst for blood!? Well, not Raven, that's who! (Out-ta there! Aren't we all?!)
Raven hurries home wondering if he'll stay friends with his childhood pal or if 'vampire' is just too big of an obstacle. The thought he keeps pushing back (because he's ashamed of such stereotypical thinking, despite its gnawing at back of his mind) is if garlic really works to keep vampires away.
What Raven does know, is that the cold night air feels good to him and that the brisk walk is helping to calm him down. What he doesn't know, is that two stories up from the corner he has just rounded sits an office where a discovery is about to be made, which just might end up saving Raven, and several other innocent victims from Jessica 's increasing thirst.
The Quill Pen Killer
Chapter Six: Not Every Girl Gives Up The Ghost
Up two flights of stairs from a glass door with painted gold lettering, The Tide, stands another door, an orange door with a window and several spots of chipping paint where underneath shows the door had once been painted blue. Inside the dimly lit office, the warmth and smell of the radiator mixes with smells of dust and ink creating a sensation that brings to mind warm sweaters and old books, just the place to calmly track that sneaking suspicion, that inkling, that hunch, without the cold sense of fear rippling through your bones. (Might be why reporters are so nosey, because they have that luxury. Two flights up in the womb of research, picking through details and facts, the 'picker' does not come face to face with a ghoul threatening to break legs, or eye to eye with a vampire thirsty for blood.) And so sits Date, determined to get to the bottom of things, of statues, a statue, one type of statue in particular. The type of statue that drips blood. Date looks through a file cabinet.
Her boss, Angelo, who views himsel
f as a witty man, calls, "Quittin' time!" across the newsroom crowded with papers and books that only the two of them, on this night, anyway, work in.
Date looks up, her hands full of clippings and mutters, "Huh? O, yeah."
Angelo, always ready to criticize for tardiness, asks smugly, "Late assignment?"
"Not really," she replies, "personal project."
"O, anyway I can help?" Angelo asks expecting her to say no.
"Yeah," she says brightly, "did we ever write anything on that rumor about statues crying blood?"
"I wouldn't exactly call it a rumor, but yes, I think it was... check this file drawer," he slaps the papers in his hand against an old double %le cabinet, the top of it stacked with even more papers.
"Thanks," Date heads toward it and begins digging.
"I saw it myself, you know," he says. Date stops and looks up to see his face, see whether he is teasing; he isn't.
"For real?" she asks.
"Yes," he replies in all seriousness.
Date makes a face, "Eeewwe."
Angelo is taken aback by her reaction. He almost laughs at first, but then he explains, "It was rather spiritual event in my life. Why are you looking into it, especially as skeptical you seem to be about it."
Date tosses her hair, nonchalantly. "O a guy I know, just bought a statue." This time Angelo does laugh.
"It never works like that. You don't just buy one, and then, it bleeds. "
She assures him, "He's pretty convinced."
Angelo asks, "Has it yet?"
The Quill Pen Killer (Vampire DeAngeliuson Book 1) Page 5