by Rob Shepherd
Ryder could not believe his luck had finally changed. He was actually working the shift when they were coming in for opening night.
“Do you think she will actually talk to you Ryder? Come on man, she is so famous and everyone knows she and JJ are a couple,” Luke said teasingly.
“That is an unconfirmed rumor,” Ryder replied with only a hint of irritation in his voice. He straightened his uniform as he and Luke opened the doors to the theater, letting in the wet, but excited patrons.
It was a steady stream of, “Welcome, Ma’am, enjoy the show.” Or “Good evening, Sir, enjoy the movie.” for both Ryder and Luke. That is until the moment when flash bulbs began to pop, as a long black car pulled up with both JJ and Liz riding inside.
“You take JJ’s ticket and I’ll get Liz’s,” Ryder said quickly.
“No way, JJ gives me the creeps! You take his ticket,” Luke argued.
“Come on Luke please!” Ryder begged. “Hurry they’re coming.”
“No!”
“Too late,” Ryder said as he pushed his friend to the left side of the entrance so he could take JJ Heath’s ticket.
“You will pay for this,” Luke said angrily.
“Sorry, Luke.”
“Whatever,” Luke answered as the two famous actors approached with a large crowd of people behind them.
Ryder swallowed nervously and then smiled as Liz stood in front of him. “Hello Ma’am, ticket please.”
“Of course,” Liz said with a large smile. “Will you be working in the concession stand later?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said with a smile.
“Good, I have a thing for popcorn. I’ll see you later.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Enjoy the show,” he told her, moved the velvet rope to let her pass, and quickly turned to take the tickets of one Hollywood star after another. Ryder spared a moment in the flood of people to see how Luke’s line was moving. Oddly it had not moved at all. Luke was standing mesmerized as JJ Heath spoke quietly to him.
“Luke you need to get your line moving, the show is starting any moment now,” he called pretending that it was just any patron that Luke was talking to.
“Luke!” he called again and this time, both Luke and JJ turned to look at Ryder. But it was JJ’s gaze that gave him the feeling of a spider walking down his spine.
“Enjoy your show, Sir,” Luke mumbled as JJ sauntered past the velvet rope. He turned back, shivered and began to take tickets quickly. Until all who were attending the movie were inside.
30 minutes later
Luke had been mostly quiet for the last 30 minutes, as they worked quickly behind the concession counter, taking care of everyone’s needs for sugar and salty treats to feast on during the movie.
Ryder tried to talk to Luke during the rush of customers, but he refused to even look at him. At first, Ryder thought that he was still mad about who took Liz’s ticket, but as things slowed down, he kept getting this feeling that there was something else wrong.
“Come on Luke talk to me,” Ryder said as the last customer went back into the theater.
“Did you ever notice?” Luke finally spoke up, his voice shaky and weak sounding.
“Notice what?”
“He is so young, like he never ages,” Luke said again sounding shaky.
“Who…what are you talking about,” Ryder said with concern as he put his hand on his friends shoulder and turned Luke to face him.
“JJ Heath. Have you noticed that all the years he has been in movies he always looks the same? Like he never ages,” he said. His face was almost as pale as his platinum blonde hair.
“Nonsense, it’s all stage make up,” Ryder replied trying to lighten the mood. “I wonder if Liz is a young as she looks without her stage make up.”
“Actually, I am only twenty two,” Liz said as the other two turned around to face her. “JJ is thirty six, I believe, but you’re right, he doesn’t look it, does he?”
“No, no Ma’am,” Ryder stumbled over his words in embarrassment. “Sorry we were just…”
“It’s alright really. I am sure lots of people wonder. And please call me Liz,” she said with a brilliant smile. “And what is your name my good fellow?”
“I am Ryder and this is Luke,” he said pointing to his friend.
“I…I don’t feel very well, if you will excuse me, I think I am going to clock out and go home,” Luke said still looking wan and pale.
“Alright feel better. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Ryder said as he watched his friend walk way and yet that strange feeling returned. “Luke wait,” he called, but his friend kept walking.
“What’s wrong?” Liz asked looking concerned.
“I don’t know. I just got this odd feeling like…like I’m not going to see him again, but never mind, I’m sure he will be fine. What can I get for you?”
“Some popcorn, some chocolate, a Coke-a-cola and a real friend,” she said, sounding a little sad.
He looked up at her large brown eyes and saw that she was not joking around. “What do you mean? I’m sure you have a lot of friends.”
“No not really. There is difference between my friends and your friend Luke. My friends are admirers of my work, or someone who just wants me to play another role so they can make money. None of them really care who I am, or what makes me happy.”
“I’m so sorry, Liz. It’s not right for someone to call themselves your friend if they don’t really care about you for who you are,” he said handing her order across the counter. “I think I know where you can find a friend.
Six months later 11:45pm
It was a lovely warm night in late spring. A full moon shone brightly as the young lovers strolled through the park hand in hand.
“Have you heard from Luke at all?” Liz asked with concern.
“No, I’m really worried,” Ryder said. “He has never gone this long without contacting me. We have been friends all our lives.”
“So he came to the States with you?” she asked as she turned and put her arms around him.
“Yes, just two young lads off to America to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood,” he said with a smile. “I find myself working at a theater and going to school to make model sets for movies.”
“Did you ever find that fortune, my fine British fellow?”
“Yes,” he said. His dark blue eyes almost seemed to glow as he leaned forward and gently kissed her. “You are my fortune.”
“You are the sweetest man alive,” she replied.
“Come with me to the bench, we should have a good view of the full moon,” he told her as he took her by the hand to the park bench. “It is so bright out here tonight; it is almost like day time.”
“Yes, only everything is bathed in sliver. It is all so much more magical.”
“Magic is just what I was hoping for tonight,” he said as she sat on the bench and he knelt in front of her. “You have brought so much beauty and magic into my life. I wanted to give some back tonight.”
Ryder reached into the pocket and drew out a black velvet box and held it before him. “My noir goddess, please, I beg you to be my wife.”
With tears in her eyes she took the little velvet box from his hand and opened it to find a simple, yet lovely, opal ring.
Liz felt like her heart was going to burst from happiness, but before she could say the words she longed to say to the love of her life, two darkly clad arms roughly grabbed her from behind and she felt teeth sink into her neck.
With shock and surprise, she looked up and tried to squeak out, “Ryder!”, but she saw a sight that seemed just as crazy. Ryder was struggling with his long time childhood friend, Luke.
Ryder fought against his fear as well as his old friend. “Luke what do you think you are doing? Are you daft? I have to help her! Let go of me!”
“JJ wants her, he will have her!” Luke said.
“JJ Heath? That is bloody crazy, why would he want to hurt her?” he asked, trying to shake his friend’s arms
off of him, arms that he felt were crushing the life out of him. “Let me go he is killing her!”
“No he will not kill her, he will make her strong forever,” Luke hissed in his friend’s ear. “Like he is, like I am.”
“This is crazy Luke, let go,” he begged as he saw his blood soaked girlfriend being dragged out of sight.
“No,” was all Luke said as pain exploded in Ryder’s head and the world went dark.
Two Years Later
Ryder sat in the theater again watching All Time Love. He was happy he only had another year to go before he had his degree in engineering movie sets. But for now, he was happy it was summer time, and there were no classes. It meant he could put more time into putting together all he needed to find her.
He sat in the back of the theater with a small flash light in his teeth, so he could see papers and the map that he held on his legs, trying to figure out where Liz would be headed next.
When she was first taken, he almost believed she was dead. The police found him on the edge of death with tattered bits of her blood-soaked dress farther off in the park.
When he woke up in the hospital, it had been two days since she was taken. He had already been cleared of suspicion in her disappearance and she had already been declared officially dead.
At first his memory of what happened was not really clear, and he believed as everyone else did, that she was dead. But slowly, the events came back to him, hazy and distorted.
A memorial service was held just a few days after he was released from the hospital. Even though they had no body they had a coffin, in which members of her family placed things from her life that they knew she loved. He had gone back to the park hoping to find the ring, but all he found was the empty box. Although it was not much, he put that in the coffin. After he did, he looked up and through his tears he saw and odd sight.
A few yards away, he noticed a delicate, pale hand with the shimmer of a ring reaching around a slender tree. He could have sworn he saw a whisper of glossy black hair before the hand disappeared behind the tree. He looked around and no one else seemed to notice. Since that day, he focused on remembering what happened. He even tried to find Luke, but of him there was even less.
As the weeks and months went by, he went to school, but kept remembering more. He mulled over in his mind all that he had seen, and all that Luke had told him during the attack. It all made sense now. JJ Heath was a real vampire, and this is why he never seemed to age. Ryder finally understood what happened to Luke when he took JJ’s ticket that night. JJ had him under his power. He guessed that it was not long after that night that JJ had turned Luke to a vampire as well as his beloved Liz.
Ryder looked closely over the map that he had marked his sightings of Liz, when it hit him where she was going to be next. “Ah-ha,” he said out loud, dropping the flashlight into his lap.
“SSSHHH!” the people in the next row down shushed him.
“Sorry,” he whispered, but he wasn’t sorry. He knew where she was going to be. The paper today said that there were a few strange deaths in San Francisco. The victims had odd puncture wounds on the neck or wrist and were almost completely drained of blood. This alone was not enough to convince him that it was Liz. But the fact that each of the victims were peacefully composed, holding a note, a note that read, “I am so sorry”, and a great deal of money in the other, were more than enough.
There was also the fact that the Russian ballet was going to be in San Francisco next week performing Swan Lake. Liz loved that ballet. She would be there, he knew she would, and he was going to convince her to make him into a vampire too.
Six Days Later in San Francisco
The night was too hot for him to be dressed like he was going to a gentleman’s club, but it is what a man attending the ballet would wear. The only thing that Ryder did not have was a beautiful, and well-dressed lady on his arm.
He knew she was here. He could feel it. Ryder sat as still as he could during the ballet. Sweeping music and the lovely costumes he would have normally enjoyed, but tonight they could not hold his attention.
He looked at every woman in the concert hall. All of them. Blondes, red heads, and especially brunettes. He also watched for JJ, for surely he would be lurking nearby watching over his prize.
A few times he thought he saw JJ. He kept having this feeling, the same feeling he had that night in the theater years ago. Like a spider was crawling down his spine. He would turn his head and looked around for the dark hair and youthful face, but he never did spot him.
It was near the end of the ballet, as the last few notes drifted through the air, when he saw someone he did not expect. A face he knew better than Liz. Luke!
When the lights in the audience were raised, Ryder jumped quickly to his feet and took off after the gentleman with the platinum blonde hair. All this time, Ryder thought he would be angry, but in his heart, he missed his friend.
“Luke wait!” he called desperate to get his attention. “Come on!”
The apparently young, blonde haired man stopped at the sound of his friend’s insistent call. “Go back to LA, Ryder,” Luke warned him. “Things are not exactly what they seem.”
“Just tell me where JJ is keeping her and I will go find her,” Ryder begged.
“I can’t do that,” Luke said simply.
“But, why?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“I have to see her, get her away from JJ. I know what she is now, and I don’t care. I just want to be with her. Even if she makes me like her.”
“You better leave Ryder, before she sees you.”
“I want her to see me!” he yelled causing several people to look at him disapprovingly.
“I’m not joking around here, Ryder. You better go now,” he said grabbing his friend’s shoulder in an iron like grip.
“Luke you are strong now and can help me free her from JJ,” he said struggling against his friends grasp as Luke propelled him forward.
“It’s not JJ you should fear,” he said with a mere hint of emotion in his voice.
“What do you mean?” he asked raising his voice. He was sure he was going to have bad bruises on his shoulder, as he pulled away from Luke and faced him. “You have to tell me what is going on and where Liz is.”
“Ryder please don’t make me…”
“It is alright Lucas,” a soft voice said from behind him. It was the voice he longed to hear. “I need to be the one to explain thing to Mr. Ataxia.”
“Yes, Miss Anne.”
Ryder whipped around to find himself face to face with the woman he loved. “Anne? Why did he call you Anne, and why did you call him Lucas?”
“We are dead Ryder, or undead to be more exact, but we can no longer go by the names that the rest of society knows us as because to them we are dead.”
“Alive, dead, undead, Liz, Anne, I don’t care. I’ve found you and that is all I wanted to do,” he said as his heart was pounding in his chest. “Whatever you are, and what you call yourself, I don’t care. I just want to be with you. Make me what you are!”
“No,” she said, her perfect face and deep brown eye had just the tiniest hint of red in them.
“Look Liz, err Anne, if you are worried about JJ, I am sure Luke and I can protect you.”
“Oh, Ryder,” she said with a genuine smile. “How I love you, always the English gentleman, protecting the lady fair.”
“Let me be with you. Make me like you and I can protect you,” he said as he took her hand. “You have the ring on!” he exclaimed with delight.
“Yes, I always will wear it, but you should go, like Luke said.” She paused sounding harder somehow. “Things are not what they seem.”
“Then just tell me what the hell is going on!” he yelled, causing more people to take an interest in their conversation.
“Come with me,” she told him still holding his hand, and pulling him toward a door that lead to a set of private box seats.
When sh
e closed the door behind them, Ryder looked over the edge and saw a deserted concert hall. He hoped that she would be more comfortable sharing with him what she was so obviously scared to tell him.
“Things are not quite what you think they are Ryder,” she said still in hushed tones.
“Yeah both you and Luke keep saying that, but I don’t understand, so please explain to me what it is that I’m not understanding.”
“It is a long story,” she said sitting down gracefully.
“I have spent the last two years looking for you. I think I have time.”
“Do you remember the night JJ, took me?”
“Worst night of my life,” Ryder confirmed.
“Well the thing is, JJ was not taking me,” she said looking down at her hands. “He was taking me back.”
“I’m more confused than ever,” he said feeling like the room was spinning.
“You see, Ryder, my love, I am five hundred and twenty four years old. I was turned to a vampire at the age of twenty two, by a woman named Sariah. She wanted out. She had been the coven leader for more than a thousand years. I actually did not want to be changed to a vampire, but humans rarely get much choice.” She stopped for a moment to look at him. “She told me that every hundred year I should take a break, and be human. JJ was the last break I took. I brought him into our coven. He stayed with me to be sure I didn’t try to commit suicide like the last coven leader had. Your friend Luke was changed by JJ, but you don’t have to fear JJ anymore.”
“W…Why?” he asked, feeling so stunned he could hardly speak.
“Because I destroyed him,” she said with no emotion. “I put a freeze on creating vampires after I brought JJ into the coven. No one should live this life by force. Everyone should live a long, happy, human life. That is what I wanted before I changed, and it was what I hoped to have with you, for even a little while, but JJ disobeyed me and created Luke.”
“I don’t care, not about one daft little bit of this!” he declared jumping to his feet. “Make me like you, take me with you.”