BloodStar

by Montoya, Cassidy

  It was hard to isolate the waves of hatred, but they were coming hard and fast now. There was too much blood everywhere, the music too loud, too much movement. Why the fuck was the feeling so intense?

  Then it hit him hard. He wasn’t looking for a single assailant; this feeling of death, murder, rage—it came from multiple sources. Human sources. He wasn’t looking for one point of origin, but dozens.

  Christ, the warehouse was under attack. He knew it before the first wooden bullet flew, before the first stake was javelined.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Anya and Marley prowled the frosted streets of Billings, a town big as any in Montana. A group of teenagers headed into a movie theater. In celebration of the pagan holiday, the theater was screening the movie Halloween, bringing Michael Myers back to life every year at midnight. It was predictable as the princess, Spiderman, and robot standing in line; lots of heroes, no villains.

  That’s because the real monsters are already accounted for, thought Marley with wicked amusement. God, was she looking forward to this?

  Although the winds seemed to be letting up a bit, the blizzard ensured there were no late night trick-or-treaters. It was way past the hour decent folks brought their kids out in the freezing cold just so they could spend the next five days stuffing their mouths with high-fructose corn syrup; even the lazy-ass, jeans-clad teenagers with a sense of candy-entitlement and no imagination were missing. This was good for the vampires.

  Anya picked up the scent of an adolescent boy out walking. He was in a residential neighborhood that had no doubt been alight with glitter and sparkle and sounds of small children squealing in delight and fright earlier. They must have struggled to stay in character with their burdens of snow boots and winter-coats covering their costumes. The streets had long since gone quiet, though, almost as if in preparation for the beasts that now skulked in feral silence.

  Marley ached to get down to business. God, the scent blew Sam’s away. This kid’s blood would be like water to the parched, peace in wartime, fucking Christmas morning.

  Marley was well on her way to becoming a blood junkie, getting high off feeding, thinking only of the next fix. Booze-schmooze. She had no compunctions about this new ism the way she had with her old one.

  Every vamp needed blood, fledglings more than Elders, Elders more than Ancients, but they all had the same compulsion, as constant as creek babble: Feed now, feed more, feed forever.

  "Go now," said Anya. "Be quick, and be quiet. We need to catch up with Samuel."

  The boy was ahead an eighth of a mile, and Marley began to stalk. There was something so delicious underneath the boy’s skin that she thought she might not survive the prelude.

  Anya offered no training, no technique, just the simple imperative—go now. It would take time for Marley to understand that she had talents as a vampire, as some did, and hers was an overwhelming persuasiveness, already rivaling Anya’s influence.

  She moved into a neighborhood alley. It wasn’t a trashed, seedy backstreet, but simply a byway that allowed for parking and storage. These houses fronted on streets with no driveways, only sidewalks leading impassively to the next house, and the next. Snow wasn’t plowed behind the houses, only on the street-proper, but Marley found she floated on top almost as though she were wearing snow-shoes.

  Marley closed in, hunting in his jet-wash. The scent of adolescent virgin-male swirled around in her nostrils and almost made her weep ruby tears of famine. Eventually she paralleled the boy, catching glimpses between houses as he strolled along to an appointment he would never keep. Marley’s stomach was bound taut in anticipation. Blood would reach that part of her body first before making its complicated journey through the rest of her systems. Damn, she lusted for sustenance, actually felt sexual lust for the blood.

  Her desperation for this boy was exquisite, and her vampire instincts kicked in. This was something she’d not yet tapped into as her food source was ever present in the apricot confines of their room. She sped her pace enough so that she could intercept him with all the innocence of a benign passerby.

  Colby Kale was on his way to meet up with his crew, which mainly consisted of other gamers like himself. They were going to order a pizza and have a World of Warcraft tournament (WOW to those in the know). Jimmy Bonnes, Boner for short, would probably be in costume, but not Colby. He hadn’t dressed up in three years. He spent a significant amount of time on the phone earlier trying to convince Boner to give it up, just wear street clothes, but Boner wasn’t hearing it.

  "Dude," Boner said, "Matty’s sister’s gonna be there."

  "Yeah, and you think you’re going to impress her by dressing up like a fucking Dungeons and Dragons freak?"

  "You don’t think so? She plays. I bet she thinks it’s cute," said Boner.

  "I bet she thinks you’re a douche."

  "I got her douche right here." Colby knew Boner had a big handful of crotch, waggling his jeans up and down as if there was something inside to be proud of. "Engineered especially for those hard to reach places."

  "Jesus, Boner, just meet me there at midnight you sick fuck."

  It took some convincing and a thorough room cleaning, but his mom finally relented and let him walk the five blocks to Matty’s pad. She would regret this for the rest of her life. So would Colby, although his tenure would be a much shorter commitment.

  He didn’t know what his mom was so bent about, anyway. The blizzard was practically over, moving east finally, and it wasn’t like he was a stranger to trekking through the snow. They’d all been trapped inside other than school for three days, and he argued that being in the fresh air would do him good. He even bundled up in his heavy snow gear just for his dear-ole-ma.

  He was about halfway to Matty’s when the chill set in. Colby shut off his iPod. He’d have to make the rest of the journey au natural—no music. Colby hated earbuds. The sound was bunk compared to full size headphones. Most of his classmates walked around with their buds strung underneath the backs of their shirts and popping out at the neck, and then looped over the tops of their ears, but not Colby. It was surround-sound all the way. Unfortunately, it was kind of hard to wear his really-bad-weather-beanie at the same time as his phones, so he sacrificed Guns N Roses (another way Colby was old school to the last bullet) for some extra warmth around his ears.

  The nature of Colby’s chill—not the diminishing storm like he thought—was creeping along parallel to him through the alley. He looked at his pocket as he walked, trying to fit his headphones inside gingerly so he wouldn’t tweak them out, and when he looked back up he almost ran right into the most beautiful, no—hot, this chick was smokin’—creature he’d ever seen.

  He was able to register one thought before he found himself in the whirl-and-swirl of entrancement: She’s an angel!

  Marley was nearly knocked off her feet by the kid’s virgin glow. This was a tidbit she hadn’t been prepared for, and couldn’t have named if asked to describe what was so luscious about the teenager. His cheeks were flushed from the cold and his breath came out in smoke stacks of steam, each exhalation a dizzying array of spices. Marley was an instant zealot, and more ravenous than ever in her life.

  The poor kid didn’t stand a chance. The moment he laid eyes on Marley it was all over. She wasn’t aware of her powers of entrancement, although Sam could have written a dissertation on them by this time.

  It wasn’t fair. She pushed her body up against the kid, taking note of the immediate increase in his pulse rate and the delicious scent that came next. She signaled to follow her with a gentle psychological push in the direction she wanted him to go, and he came right along like the good little tail-wagger he was. She led the boy to the secluded alley and pulled him behind a large, wheeled trashcan. There she gave in to the need.

  Colby was an accomplished masturbator, perhaps only rivaled by King Boner. He’d tried lots of techniques, his favorite being the most fundamental—Jergens lotion and a tube sock. Most of his fri
ends (and yes, they did discuss it, at length over particularly heated games of WOW) were caught up in complicated methods, but not Colby. He thought his was second best only to the real thing, and still, he might as well have been jerking off with sandpaper wrapped around his dick compared to what he felt when the angel bit into his neck.

  The last fifteen seconds of his life amounted to the longest, most intense orgasm on record. It took him only one quarter of a minute to come, and it took the angel only one quarter of a minute to extract the lot of what kept him upright. He knew he was going to die, even as the violent spray of semen pushed its way out into the choked passage between his swollen pubescent cock and his second-hand jeans, which still bore traces of his older brother’s spunk at the forensic level.

  When it dried, the leftover crust would forever sully his mother’s understanding of her innocent little boy.

  Colby wouldn’t make it to the WOW tournament, and really, he wasn’t all that disappointed. If the price for the pleasure this angel gave was his life, then it was a bargain. He knew, somehow knew to the bone, that he could go his entire life, and a woman like this would never again give him the time of day, let alone yank his baby batter out of his spasming cock from what felt like the tips of his toes.

  Fuck World Of Warcraft, he thought. This is the real WOW-factor.

  The venom excreted from Marley’s hollow teeth and in her saliva had a healing property that would work just fast enough to conceal the bite wound; enough for a relatively thorough examination, but not well enough if the medical examiner had chops. The authorities would probably conclude that the kid died as the result of a sordid encounter there in that alley, maybe related to homoerotic endeavors or some sort of sexual exchange for drugs. It would be all the more horrific for happening in the heartland, and his mom would always wonder if one of the theories were true. After all, he was dead behind a trashcan in an alley with cum dried down the front of his trousers. It was a nice neighborhood, and the community would be shocked. People who previously slept in serenity would begin to double check that they'd locked their doors and cars, and eyeball their peepholes before venturing outside.

  Marley felt everything the boy felt, and she felt it through his perception. It was fucking mind blowing. The boy’s final feeling upon death was not terror or horror, but amazed wonder, and in his wonder and sexual climax, a hormone cocktail made its way into his blood that was different than what Marley had ever experienced with Sam (who had trained extensively to take control over autonomous processes of the body to consciously inhibit the hormone dump). There was no understood science behind the marvels of virgin blood, but all Kindred felt the difference. It was cocaine and heroin together, morphine directly to the vein infused with a shot of espresso, a can of energy drink, maybe some ginseng.

  Virgins were blood-bags of bliss, plain and simple.

  Marley ran back to Fort Collins with Anya through a blurred landscape where everything passed her by at breakneck speed and she stood perfectly still. Young Colby was not Marley’s only victim; twice more she stopped, lured once by sleeping trucker, and again by another virgin, this one a seventeen-year-old girl stopped at a rest area.

  That Halloween night, Karissa defied her parents and went to Fort Collins for a Halloween party. Six or seven berry splash wine coolers later she was on her way home to Cheyenne but needed to pull over to "drain the main vein," as her older brother so eloquently described it. There are few moments more vulnerable for a woman than when she is seated on the porcelain throne, pants and undies around her ankles (or knees in a particularly nasty restroom as this one happened to be), and locked in the relief of voiding her bladder after a six or seven wine-cooler-night.

  The party had been fantastic and worth every minute of punishment waiting for her back in Cheyenne-tucky, but certainly not worth the price she was about to pay.

  Karissa was technically a virgin when she left the party, but a boy she’d always remember (but who had forgotten her already), maybe even a college boy, had put his hand down her pants and played with her while he pressed her against a wall and kissed her. The kisses were hard and lusty, and tasted like beer, and she loved it. She loved it almost as much as she loved the feel of his arousal against her soft belly as he rubbed up on her.

  She didn’t love the finger thing he was doing so much, though. He was intent on getting inside her (thank God he only wanted to shove one finger and wasn’t going for two), and more than once he achieved his goal even though Karissa wiggled around and curved her pelvis to make it difficult. Every now and then in his drunkenness he lost his bearings and his finger strayed upward and kneaded her home-base, and Karissa would explode in a split second preview of orgasm. She never made it all the way because the drunk, maybe college boy kept mistaking her rasp of ecstasy for an invitation to redouble his efforts at the good old fashioned finger-bang, and his attention was once again focused, bearings found, and he was back to trying to shove his middle finger up her pussy, long scratchy nails and all.

  The vampire stalking Karissa had no interest in hopes and dreams, wasn’t concerned about the crime and punishment of disobedience to parents, and was about as anxious to get her meal’s name as the maybe-college-finger-banger back in Fort Collins. Scratchy nails and wine coolers were not the vampire's worry (although a week before, wine coolers would have made at least the bottom of a long list of alcohol the bloodsucker would have paid good money for).

  What the predator was concerned about, even though she didn’t know the details, was that Karissa had in fact remained a virgin, which put her on par with rare prime rib swimming in a sea of bloody juices.

  Karissa wasn’t scared of the three a.m. darkness, nor did she take issue with the sounds of the highway whishing by outside at irregular intervals. She could do this alone, and was in the middle of wiping up when she heard another person step inside the restroom.

  Slow footsteps sounded off one by one, the dull clack of low heels, maybe boots, getting closer and closer. They stopped just outside Karissa’s stall and made no pivot to enter the next-door partition. Karissa felt a wave of fear, and when her door jiggled back and forth against the flimsy lock, well, this was the moment she would have wet her pants had she not just emptied her bladder.

  "Someone’s in this one," called Karissa. Her voice was strong, not shaky, and she was proud of this.

  "Sorry," said the woman outside, and her voice was ethereal but not necessarily in a good way. It had a quality that stabbed Karissa’s frontal lobe, a lettuce-wilting tone. "I need to get in. I can’t wait." The voice didn’t sound urgent at all, though.

  By this time Karissa was up, pants buttoned, belt being buckled. "Well, use one of the other ones. There’s like three more toilets in here."

  There was a laugh, and then Karissa’s bathroom stall door exploded inward. The dull clackety-clacking boots had kicked it damn near off its hinges.

  Karissa didn’t have enough time to register any impressions of her bathroom interloper other than the boots, jeans, and fitted turtleneck that hid a gorgeous body before she melted away.

  As Marley feasted she realized her metabolism wasn’t the only thing in desperate need of satiation. She found herself wound up, wanting to fuck. Twice she had to pull her hands away from the young girl’s breasts while she drank, and when she moved to the femoral artery, Marley’s face was practically buried in the girl’s crotch. There were few rational thoughts in the frenzy of feeding, but she wasn’t comfortable with how badly she wanted the taste of this girl’s innocence on her tongue. Worse, she wanted it specifically at the moment the girl passed. How nasty was it that she was turned on by the thought of the kid taking her last breath while Marley popped her clit like it was a hunk of Juicy Fruit gum? Who wants to fuck a dead person? Good God, did being a vampire turn on some switch for necrophilia? Jesus Christ, gross.

  The not-okay factor was compounded by the fact that Marley was (or at least always had been) heterosexual. But goddamn, this little girl�
�s pussy was so pink, so luscious—Jesus, just a taste. She put her tongue to the sweetest skin, and rasped one ice-cream-style lick. Oh God, the girl wasn’t gone yet, had already moaned the National Anthem of orgasms while Marley fed, and when her tongue hit home, the fading girl said, "Yes. Do it."

  Marley’s hand strayed north toward the girl’s breast again, and as she moved in for an honest to goodness clitoral-feast, Anya’s voice broke the trance.

  "Time’s up. We go, now."

  Fuck. Marley wanted this so bad, and to hell with the does-this-make-me-gay. But, alas, she couldn’t ignore the command of her sire.

  She left the girl to expire on the filthy floor of her concrete, tax-funded tomb, and walked outside with blood all over her face and mouth.

  "Jesus, you’re like a child," said Anya. "Clean yourself."

  They could be back in Fort Collins in under an hour. Would Sam be there? Marley wanted him. Anya had all but guaranteed he’d be waiting for them. Marley spun the night in circles in her mind, still hot on virgin blood. She was going to take Sam to her bed and nudge him to do everything and more she’d wanted to do to the girl in the rest stop. He wouldn’t be hard to convince. She was sure of it.

  And would Sabian come? She wasn’t so sure anymore, and after a night like this, it might not even matter. Sabian, Sam, some kid behind a dumpster. Whatever. Just bring on the blood.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  There was no mistaking the shriek of a staked vampire. The humans in the VIP room ran to the rear and cowered together on Roman’s couch. The Kindred took various exits, crashing through windows and parachuting to the main floor, hell bent on battle. Some filed down the stairs, fighting the armed assailants barreling upward.