by Diana Graves
“Katie,” I said as I climbed the lawn. “Katie, we need to get out of here.” She didn’t question it. She ran back down to the road. I looked at my mom’s house. It was quiet in there. I couldn’t hear a peep, nothing. Nothing but silence. A sinking feeling in my gut told me that my mom wasn’t in there.
“Raina!” Katie screamed from back down on the road. Our path to the main road had been cut off by three of those things, moving faster than zombies ever could, but they were much bigger than ghouls. It didn’t really matter which they were, fire would kill both.
I was almost instantly by her side.
“Can you fly?” she asked me.
“No, I don’t think so, but come on. We can take out three.” I encouraged her to move forward and I looked back. There were ten of them coming up from behind us. There were more moving in the shadows between the houses. I kept an eyes on them while Katie kept her gun trained on the three coming at us from the main road.
“If they’d stop jerking around, I could shoot them from here,” Katie said.
A scream cut through the darkness. I heard it, Katie didn’t. If I were to guess the distance, I’d say it was at least two miles out. How many of these things were out there? How far were they spread out? “We need to move faster than this,” I said.
“Sure thing, just let me clear the path,” she grunted before she pulled the trigger, and the thing closest to us stumbled to the ground, but it wasn’t dead. She missed its head and instead shot it in the neck. A second shot did the job. The back of its head sprayed out over the side of a police car.
The other two things made a mad dash for us and I poured white hot flames out of my hands to consume them both. The flames ate the glove from my left hand and Raphael’s light was brightest white in all the darkness, like an enormous beacon. It took only seconds for the monsters to go down, but it was long enough for the other things to advance on us. I kept the fire coming, roasting anything not Katie that came within ten feet of us. Katie shot one, two, three of them in the head with terrific accuracy, but she missed the fourth and it jumped her. It tackled her to the ground, but the onslaught was too great for me to stop blasting them with fire. They’d all be on us if I did.
I glanced at Katie. She had bashed its head in with her pistol, and stood over it, breathing hard.
“You okay?” I asked
“Never better,” she murmured before she fell back to the ground.
“Katie!”
“Raina?” I heard a familiar voice call from beyond the horde.
I forced myself to look away from Katie’s still body and past the fire pouring from my hands. I saw military trucks with bright headlights roaring down the road, pushing the police cars to the side like toys. Men in full riot gear were storming toward us, multiple helicopters flew overhead with bright spotlights shining all over the damn place. Several precision gun shots took out a large chunk of monster heads to my right, creating an opening for which we could escape. I stopped the fire and grabbed Katie by her waist, and ran as fast and hard as my inhuman legs could, stopping only when I stood in the thick of military Humvees.
“Katie?” I asked softly. I kneeled on the ground and held her in my lap. She was hot to the touch, fevered. A man in black army gear walked up to us with a gun in his hand. It was pointed at Katie.
“Step away from the body,” he said sternly.
I looked up at him with narrow eyes. He had a long hard face, short brown hair and thick stubble around his mouth and jaw. “She needs a doctor.”
“She’s going to be a fucking zombie, step away from her, NOW!”
I shook my head, “You can’t catch zombie. It’s not some kind of fucking disease. Zombies are dead tissue controlled by necromancers; that is all!”
The soldier stepped closer. “If you don’t step away from it right now, I will shoot it in your arms and then I’ll shoot you when its blood infects you. Do you understand me?”
I let my fire flare from my free fist, “If you don’t point your fucking gun elsewhere, I will roast your ass! Do you understand me?”
He whistled and two more men joined him at a trot. One of the new guys also pointed his gun at Katie, but the other tried to reason with me. Brave man. He kneeled down beside me, his dark eyes full of pity. He placed an ungloved dark hand on Katie’s forehead, then he shook his head and let out a heavy sigh.
“Miss, we’ve seen this play out a hundred times. Who was she to you, your friend?”
“My sister, she is my sister,” I said with tears in my eyes. “Don’t talk about her like she’s dead. She’s not dead!”
“She’s infected. It won’t be long now. It’s better to stop it when it’s just a fever. She will get worse, trust me. She’ll start to convulse, then she’ll puke and then she’ll be a zombie. She won’t be your sister anymore and she’ll be harder to stop. Come on, let these men do their job.”
He pulled at my arm, trying to force me to stand. “No, I won’t leave her! I won’t ever leave her!” I turned back to my little sister, “Katie, wake up.” I choked back tears, but it was useless. “Fuck!” I screamed and I held her to my chest and cried into her hair, her soft champagne locks. She started shaking uncontrollably and I held her tighter.
“Raina,” said the same familiar voice that called to me while I was fighting the horde. I looked up over Katie’s twitching head to find my good friend, Detective Fillips. She was a tiny woman with short curly mousy-brown hair that peeked out from under her helmet. She was too cute to be as badass as she was, with her petite child-like combat boots and a gun almost as tall as she was. “Raina, she’s gone.”
“No,” I said, even though I could feel hot blood pouring from her mouth and down my front. I winced at the terrible sensation.
“Raina, you know she’s gone. She’s a zombie or…something.”
I bit my lip and took a deep breath. “Do you have somewhere safe to put her?”
“A burn pit,” said the first man, his gun still pointed at Katie. I glared at him.
“We’ve tried, Raina, we’ve tried. They can’t be sedated. They’ve broken through every sort of restraint, even chains and straitjackets. If left in a cell by themselves, they tear themselves apart and eat their own flesh. I’m sorry, Raina. Katie was a good hunter, a good person—so was your mom—we found her, parts of her.”
I just looked up at Fillips with eyes drowning in tears and panic. I caught my breath and the tears fell down my cheeks when Katie started struggling in my arms with violent purpose, growling and clawing at me. I held her tighter still. With my teeth clenched my wounded mind raced for a way, but I could feel the sun rising, my own flesh growing warm. Steam was rising off of it. Katie started screaming as the sun’s rays touched her, too. Zombies didn’t bake in the sun…Not zombies, vampires.
“She’s not a zombie!” I yelled at them. “She’s a vampire, look, she’s burning in the sun, same as me.”
“They burn a little, but they don’t burn through and through like vampires,” said the kinder soldier.
“I’m taking her home,” I said, and I stood with the screaming, thrashing Katie in my arms, tearing at me. Her head was positioned firmly against my chest, her face to the side so she couldn’t bite me, but she could still claw me. I tried to ignore the pain of her nails digging into my arms. I’d heal.
“You’ll be taking home a plague,” said one of the soldiers, but I was already running at full pace, with the sun at my back and Katie in my arms. Was this what Apollo had planned? Flood the world with newly dead vampires? But the newly dead were only crazed with blood lust for the first few days. After that, they’d be as civil as they were before their infection. I needed answers, but more importantly, I needed to get Katie somewhere safe, safe from gung-ho army men and safe from herself.
BUYING TIME
ALISTAIR NEVER DID get that message. Later the man that took Katie’s call would claim it was too late in the morning to make a difference. Maybe so, but I was still pissed at hi
m. When I stumbled into the main corridor with the sun at my back and a zombie in my arms, everyone was shocked as shit. They moved away from me with wide eyed stares. “Help!” I shouted at the onlookers. Three men and a werewolf helped me get her to the VCC.
Good old Doctor Gabe tried everything he could think of to help Katie. As Fillips said, sedation didn’t work, Katie broke through every restraint we tried on her, and when we put her in a room alone, she got bored of pounding on the walls and started ripping flesh from her arms and legs and eating it. Hours later, two vampires were holding her down on a gurney in Bastion’s Vampire Care Center. The main area of Bastion’s VCC was a large room full of glass cells, one sedated vampire per cell. Katie was in a private room just off of that area. My uncle, Seth, was one of the vampires holding her down. Nick was the other. Alistair and I were contemplating pouring quick-dry cement in a mold and placing her in the middle of it with only her head exposed for feeding, but that seemed cartoonish and impractical.
“She wants to eat, right?” Nick said with some serious strain in his voice. “She wants to rip flesh, so let’s give her some flesh to rip into. Call a butcher and get some dead cows in here for her to play with until she comes out of it.”
Alistair and I looked at each other. I shrugged. It seemed like solid reasoning to me. We can’t hold her, we can’t sedate her and we can’t leave her alone…so, let her do what she must do in safety. The part of me that was still elf felt a little queasy at the prospect of letting her claw and rip up cows, but the alternative was no alternative.
“She might prefer live cows,” said Gabriel.
“No,” said Alistair instantly. “She’ll remember this when she regains her civil mind. No need to add to the trauma.”
“Then, I’ll find a local butcher,” said Gabriel, and he dashed out of the room.
The door closed slowly and for a moment I could see Everett sitting out in the dark hall, crying while Damon tried to console him. It was a sweet gesture, but the amount of grief Everett was suffering from was too great for any words to help him. What Everett needed was something to do. When he first arrived he was in the room with us, brain storming, but he couldn’t handle the sight of her. I couldn’t blame him. She was a gory mess, with so much raw meat exposed, skin hanging in sheets from her arms and legs where she’d torn at herself.
“I need a break,” Seth grunted. Alistair nodded and went to relieve him. He placed one hand on Katie’s throat, just under Seth’s, and the other on Katie’s wrist. Her legs and stomach could flop around all they liked, but Nick and now Alistair, were making damn sure her head and arms were completely immobile.
Seth stepped aside and massaged his bruised hands for a moment before he came to my side. He looked so much like my mom; tall, big black elf eyes, pale skin, narrow face and long black and gold hair. Looking at him made my eyes fill with tears, but I refused to let them fall. I looked away and pinched them out on my index fingers and wiped them on my dirty dress. I was still covered in blood, my clothes were torn, but almost all my injuries had healed already.
“Hey,” Seth said. He put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m glad you’re home.” I moved to hug him, but I stopped myself when I saw just how dirty I was. “Come here,” he said, and he wrapped his arms around me anyway. I hugged him back and I did let a few tears fall then. “Your mom was so proud of you, Raina. I know she didn’t say it or show it. She often pushed away the people she loved most.”
I had to look at Nick. She pushed him away hardest of all. I always thought they would eventually reconcile, but that was never going to happen now.
“Will you tell Tristan you’re his dad, now that Anna’s gone?” Nick asked Seth.
I grimaced. Mom raised Tristan as her own son because thirty-four years ago vampires couldn’t have kids. Hell, they weren’t even allowed to share the same home as kids, even their own. Mom made one request, or demand really. Tristan was never to be told the truth about his parents. She was sure if Tristan found out he’d be devastated. She even made Seth sign a legal contract and refused to let Seth see Tristan for years. Nick asked a good question, but the timing was all wrong.
“Too soon,” I said. Nick looked at me meanly. I didn’t understand why.
Seth moved away from me before he answered him. The bruises on his hands had already healed. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Gabriel came back in from the hall, followed by Damon, but Everett was gone from the hall as best I could tell.
“I just got off the phone with Ethan. He owns a deli and for a small fortune he’s agreed to have half his stock of uncut beef and pork delivered here in less than thirty minutes.”
“Or it’s free?” Nick chimed in. He stifled a very inappropriate laugh when he caught my glare and probably a few others.
Damon walked right up to me, getting in my line of sight of Nick and Katie. I gave him a mean face, too. “Raina, I’m sorry.” And he hugged me, but I couldn’t bring myself to hug him back. I took in his warmth, though. He was the warmest person in the room. His arms felt like a blanket straight from the dryer on a cold winter’s day. I closed my eyes and suddenly they felt sore, just like the rest of my body. It was nearly eight o’clock in the morning and all us vamps were up way past our bedtime.
“We’re all going to need showers if people keep hugging on me,” I said.
“You should go get cleaned up. Thomas wants to see you before you go to bed for the day,” Damon said.
I wanted to. I really really wanted to. A hot shower and some kiddo time sounded like the best thing in the world to me, but I couldn’t. Not yet. “I can’t leave until I know Katie will be okay. I have to know if the raw meat thing will work. I won’t leave her until then.”
“I understand,” he said. “I sent Everett to help bring in the meat. It will give him something to do, something helpful that will keep his mind at least a little occupied.”
“Smart thinking,” said Alistair. There wasn’t as much strain in his voice as there had been in Seth and Nick’s. Guess he had more muscle on him.
The five of us took turns holding Katie down while the minutes ticked away. Since I wasn’t leaving Katie, Alistair asked someone to bring in buckets of soapy water, fresh water and a robe, so that I might give myself a sponge bath. I thanked him. The blood was starting to get seriously sticky itchy. I stripped naked in front of them without hesitation and cleaned myself thoroughly…There was really no point in being shy about my body. I gave birth in front of Gabriel, Alistair and Damon. And Nick put me back together, lady parts and all. Seth was probably the only man in the room who hadn’t seen me naked recently, and he was a wizard as well as a vamp. They don’t much care about such human sensibilities as modesty in regards to the naked body.
I was just wrapping the long white robe around me and tying it tight, when a large group of men, including Everett, came through the door hauling in huge chunks of meat over their shoulders. I watched them as I rung the remaining water out of my hair and into the now dirty bucket of water. No part of Everett was elf kin, but he wore a face of disgust as he walked by me.
Seth and Damon were holding Katie down, while Alistair directed the men to place the meat on the ground just in front of Katie’s bed. The room was beyond full of men and meat. Nick got out of their way and came to stand by me. Gabriel was standing by the door with his finger on a switch.
“Just stack it as quickly as you can and step away,” Alistair said as he moved to stand by Nick and me.
“If the few men at the front could back up just a few inches more!” Gabriel shouted over the crowd, as the butcher’s men apparently decided to stay and watch. “Good, good. Now, Seth, Damon you’ll want to make a run for it when I say so.”
“Gotcha,” said Seth.
“And—run!” Gabriel shouted just after he pressed down on the switch. Seth was standing just behind me before Damon even let go of Katie’s neck and wrist, but he made it out of her arm’s reach and over the threshold just in time for the c
lear partition made of metallic glass, an unbreakable glass wall, to come down and divide the room in two; Katie’s meaty side, and our side.
Katie looked so monstrous with much of her arms and legs torn up, and her skin blistered and cracking from exposure to the sun. Whatever strain of vampirism she had was new. She turned within seconds. That, I’d seen before, but she didn’t burn completely in the sun, and she was stronger or at least more desperate. There was no moment of thought, not even a second of hesitation in her. Even when a new vamp is trying to tear your throat out, there’s some kind of intelligence lingering behind their eyes. You know that they are in there somewhere and given time, a day or two or three, they will come back to you. There was no such look in Katie’s eyes. They were milked over, dead eyes. Most new vamps can do a little damage to themselves if left unsupervised, like biting through their own lips when consuming their victim too vigorously, or clawing their fingers down to the bone…but purposely tearing off their own meat and eating it; that was new. Not healing at all was new too. What else could we expect?
The crowd took a collective breath when Katie banged on the glass. It was called unbreakable glass, all VCC had walls and cells made of the stuff, and thus far I’ve never heard of one breaking, but I’d seen Katie bend and break steel chains and straps. I’d seen her rip herself free of a straitjacket. Was there nothing she could not break free of?
As Katie pounded on and on, my fellow vamps and I were very still, but the others jumped with every crash of her fists, shoulders and head.
“Come on, Katie. Go for the meat you’re standing on,” I whispered under my breath. Without really thinking about it, I grabbed Alistair’s hand for comfort. Damon noticed though, and his noticing it made me notice it. If I could have seen Damon’s expression rather than feel it, it would have been one of sadness mixed with anger, but the anger was directed at himself, not me or Alistair.