Young Forever

by Lola Pridemore

  Something inside of me longed for more. I think it was because I was turned into a vampire so young. I wasn’t as mature as I should have been. I wanted more out of life and didn’t just accept things. I was never able to outgrow my teenage ways and had a certain starry-eyed viewpoint that made me delve off into the world of fantasy all too often. I think I was in love with love, or, at the very least, the idea of love. Sometimes I would dream about a good-looking young man to turn into my companion. We couldn’t have children but we could have a life together. We could do things. We could swim the ocean at night or climb tall trees and share the beauty of the stars. He could give me love, real love, and I could return it. We could hold hands and share kisses. We could steal a child and raise it as our own, kind of like the way Gerta had raised me.

  “What do you think of that?” Aloiki said out of nowhere. “Isotta?”

  I shrugged, not knowing what he was speaking of. “I am sure it will be fine.”

  “Fine?” Gerta snapped. “We cannot risk it! We have to use common sense when it comes to these things.”

  I nodded. “I suppose we do,” I said and closed my eyes and fell asleep and the next century or so became a blur. We did this and we did that. We moved here and then we went there. We crossed rivers and oceans and we ate very well. We tried this and we tried that. We lived through earthquakes and the birth of cinema. We lived through state fairs and the Olympics. We witnessed the rise and fall of evil dictators. We saw the birth of industries and the death of some horrendous diseases.

  And all of it bored me. Well, most of it. It was fun, some of the stuff we did, for a while. But I always carried that longing with me, that need and want of more, of love, of real, true love that would bring me some sort of indefinable happiness.

  After all of our traveling and doing, we somehow ended up in a city on the coast of South Carolina, the place we now call home. Even though we lived in modern times, the city was very old looking and Gerta loved the cobblestone streets, saying they reminded her of her homeland, of the old days because she was, well, from the old days. It was a time she longed for and romanticized a bit. I didn’t get it as I apparently remembered the old days differently from her. But soon enough, the old days started to look like fun compared to what we suddenly found ourselves up against. With all the new science and technology, it became harder and harder to get a kill. It became harder and harder to feed. Therefore, it became harder and harder for us to survive.

  No longer were there quick kills, then just tossing the body. No, we couldn’t risk it. There were more people. They noticed when someone went missing. They knew more. There was now electric light. There were telephones. It was just so much more difficult. We just weren’t made for this new world.

  Because of this, we were all hungry most of the time. Gerta had resorted to walking on skid row to find homeless people who reeked of cheap liquor and wouldn’t be missed. They were usually so inebriated, she would return, quite literally, drunk.

  “There has to be a better way,” she said one day, then burped. “Excuse me.” She covered her mouth quickly and looked slightly embarrassed.

  “We could pretend to be doctors,” Aloiki said. “And go to the sick ward. We could take out a few at a time and no one would notice.”

  “Of course they would notice,” I said, rolling my eyes. “This isn’t the 1800s. They know what kills people now.”

  Gerta nodded in agreement but didn’t say anything. I looked out the window of our hotel suite and wondered what we could do. Over the last few decades, things had changed dramatically. It wasn’t like it used to be when killing off a whole family meant nothing but instilling fear and inspiring some folklore. We were the creatures of the night that entered homes and took lives. We were the boogeyman—or woman—who frightened young children. We were the damned.

  But what good did that do us now? Those stories people made up about us were all but forgotten. Times had changed. That was then. Now we were in a pinch. We needed blood and lots of it.

  I sighed and took in the city view, wondering how we had ended up here of all places. It was a nice place to be, that was true. The city was clean and full of beauty. It had a beach nearby. The houses were old and beautiful. I loved the fountains and the Spanish moss. I loved being here. It was a nice place. But we couldn’t stay, not if something didn’t change.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” I said suddenly.

  “What?” Gerta said. “At this hour? We have to be asleep soon.”

  “Let’s go,” I said and went to the door and opened it. “Come on.”

  Aloiki and Gerta glanced sideways at each other and then followed me without a word. We walked around the sleepy downtown area for a while, going by the water.

  “Perhaps we should go back to Bavaria,” Aloiki said. “Remember how well we ate even though everyone was starving?”

  “It has changed, too,” she said.

  I didn’t participate in their conversation and let what they were saying go in one ear and out the other. I was looking for something. I didn’t know what. But something had told me to get out of that hotel room and into the streets and search for a clue, for some hope. And that’s all we had now—hope. We could not continue as we did before. If we did, we would be dead. It was that simple.

  “Isotta,” Gerta called. “We need to get back.”

  I shook my head and turned to her. “Gerta, if we don’t find a solution to our problem, we might as well stay out and let the sun burn us. We can’t continue on this path.”

  “But we have money,” she said.

  “Money is not the issue,” I said. “Blood is. We need blood.”

  “We could find another doctor,” Gerta said.

  I thought about that but shook my head. We had, in the past, gone to doctors and bought blood. It was always a tense situation, though. They usually became so greedy that they would threaten to expose us if we didn’t divvy up more money. That meant we had to move again. It was too risky and never worked out for very long. We needed another way. We needed lots and lots of blood, all that we wanted.

  “Perhaps this is the end,” Gerta said sounding, for the first time since I’d known her, defeated.

  “We will find a way, Gerta,” I said. “We always have found another way…” I stopped talking and trailed off because as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I saw, of all things, a blood bank. Right there in front of me was the solution to our problems. And, the odd thing was, the lights were turned on even though it was early morning, just before dawn broke. Of course, we’d flirted with this idea before but it seemed too risky and the blood wasn’t as fresh, it wasn’t as tasty. And, really, when you’re subsisting on only one thing, you want it to be enjoyable. But now, we didn’t have a choice. We had to do something. Right then, a blood bank looked prefect.

  “Smart girl,” Aloiki said and headed towards the front door.

  “No,” I said, sensing that something was amiss, and held his arm. “Something is going on in there.”

  He glanced over the place and shrugged. “Something like vats of human blood to fill my veins. I’m going in even if I have to crash through the front door.”

  “Halt!” Gerta hissed at him. “Listen.”

  He stopped and we all listened. There was a noise coming from the building, something like an argument.

  Gerta sniffed and looked around. “You’re right. I smell them, too.”

  Oh, yes, indeed. There were other vampires around. Were they in the blood bank? Gerta and I stared at each other, each considering the situation and what we could do. It was a rare occasion when we ran across other vampires. There weren’t as many in the world as the stories would have you believe. Most times, we would pass each other cautiously, warily. Because we were usually competing for the same resources, sometimes we would be attacked. Other times, when we sensed hostility, we would attack. Vampires are loathsome creatures who will fight and kill at whim. Gerta, Aloiki and I weren’t as bad as most but we were
always prepared to fight to the death, if it came to it.

  “They’re in there,” Aloiki said.

  “We must leave and make our plans before they sense us,” Gerta said.

  “No, we must stay and fight,” I said. “We have to do this, Gerta, we can’t hesitate. If they sense us, they will hunt us and if they hunt us, they might catch us off guard. If they do that—”

  “They will kill us,” Aloiki said. “Fair enough. What shall we do?”

  I thought about it. What should we do? It seemed like the perfect solution to our problem. We needed to eat. It was that simple. We were being too old-fashioned in our approach. This was the new way and we had to adapt to it.

  “We attack,” I said. “And then we get some of that blood.”

  Gerta and Aloiki nodded. I smiled at them, getting really excited about what was about to happen. We hadn’t been in a scuffle in a long time. The last time I’d even seen a vampire was in the seventies at a crazy party. He’d been a young one, only a few decades old. He wanted to be my friend then had the nerve to try and kill me, to take some of the gold Gerta insisted I carry around with me, like it was the 1800s and you could spend it like it was cash. Well, needless to say, I had to kill to him.

  “Oh, look what we have here,” someone said behind me.

  I turned to see the male vampire who was swinging a baseball bat, of all things. What was he going to do with that thing? Toss me a ball and ask me to throw it at him? But then, another one came out of the shadows and then another and another until there was a total of ten angry vampires. They were a nest, or as Aloiki called them, a colony.

  So, there were ten of them and three of us. Ten versus three. It wasn’t a fair fight at all. Ten of them? Three of us? I had to chuckle because this was going to be brutal; for them, I mean.

  We’d taken on fifty vampires on one occasion and demolished them all. They’d been a group of them living in an old abandoned house’s basement for years. We would have just ignored them, as we do sometimes, because we didn’t like to kill anyone if we didn’t have to. And the mess afterwards was usually too gruesome for words. They either burst into flames—if you pushed them out into the sun—or they dissolved into a mass of blood and innards, which stank. That would eventually turn to this black goopy mess that was impossible to get off a rug. But there was always some remnant of them left behind and it was either in the form of some ashes on the street or a mess on the rug.

  But those vampires, the ones who lived in the basement, had stalked us for several days. We knew they were doing it and chose to ignore it. But they persisted and began to threaten us. So we decided to let them “lure” us into the basement so they could make mince meat out of us. So rude. Seriously. But after about five minutes, there were all on the floor dissolved into the black tar looking mess that they were.

  And why had we been able to do that? To completely mop the floor with them? Because we were old. We’d been around for centuries. I was old and Gerta and Aloiki were older than me. With our combined strength, we were as strong as an army. Well, maybe not that strong but as strong as a good-sized group. Humans weaken with age, but vampires gain strength. We get more tenacious, more agile. Our minds get sharper and, soon enough, we can do stuff like run up the sides of buildings—which we rarely do as that would draw a crowd—and, sometimes, if we’re lucky, we can read minds, which I refuse to do because it’s rude and classless and I don’t really want to know what people think of me. We’d been around a while. We had a lot of experience and this wasn’t our first rodeo, as they say. This usually made all the difference in the world because we didn’t make rookie mistakes. We looked at killing other vampires as a necessity to survival, if they posed a threat. If not, we left them alone. We don’t attack every vampire we see, either. No. Some vampires are nice, just let me say. We have vampire friends all over the world.

  This would not be the case for these vampires, the ones on front of us now. We couldn’t make nice with them. They were, in a word, just plain dumb. They had no idea what they were up against. They thought they were going to bully us. They were young and too used to dealing with humans. They thought they were invincible. They thought they were going to be our undoing. They were dead wrong.

  After we got started, it didn’t take any time at all to do what we did best. The baseball bat came in handy and one hard swipe to the head of a large thug and he was out, as were his friends, one at a time. Stake, stake, and a few more stakes and we were done. (Most of the time, we all carry a small, wooden stake with this. It’s like a gun for vampires.) It wasn’t that hard. We just used our cunning and our strength to overcome them and we even took a prisoner, a younger girl with red hair who begged us for mercy, who told us that if we spared her life then she would show us how “they” did it. She told us that if we worked together, we could get even more blood by posing as nurses for hospitals and, in her words, “stuff like that.”

  “What do you think?” Aloiki asked us, holding fast to her arm and not allowing her to run away.

  I glanced at Gerta, who shrugged. “She could be helpful,” I said. “And, really, what choice do we have?”

  “Yes, let’s spare her,” Gerta said. “She is small and looks frightened like a feral cat.”

  I stared at Janelle. She did, sort of, remind me of a cat, a feral one at that. “So, how do you do this?” I asked and jerked my head towards the blood bank.

  “You go in and eat,” she said. “But that’s not the easiest way to get blood. In fact, that’s one of the hardest ways to get it.”

  I was intrigued. “What can you do?”

  “It’s easy,” she said and removed her arm from Aloiki’s grip. “You can do all sorts of things. You can take people’s blood like you’re a phlebotomy tech.”

  Like a what? Then I thought about it. Oh. Ohhhhh!

  “What an intriguing idea,” Gerta said and smiled at the young woman up. “What is your name?”

  “Janelle,” she said.

  And that’s how we got stuck with her.

  * * * * *

  One good thing about vampires is that they don’t hold grudges. We’re usually a pretty well laid back group of paranormals. Janelle seemed to fit this mold pretty well because she didn’t seen too broken up over her boyfriend, the one I took the baseball bat from and to. For some reason, I thought she’d be pissed. But she wasn’t and over the next few months, Janelle, who repeatedly reminded us that she had been a business major in college, showed us the ropes of getting blood from hospitals and blood banks. There were many ways to get what we require—and what we needed most—and quite simple, too, and somewhat hassle free. Why we didn’t think of this decades ago was anyone’s guess. It was probably because we were too stuck in our ways, too hung up on the hunt. I was getting excited about having an endless supply of blood and I even began to toy with the idea that we could open our own blood bank. How cool would that be? However, Janelle quickly squashed that plan.

  “No, no, no,” Janelle said quickly. “Running a blood bank is out of the question, you know? There’s too much room for error and, really, it would be a hassle. Too much paperwork and all that. There are other ways to get blood without doing that.”

  She talked so fast my head spun a little. “Why couldn’t we run a blood bank? It just makes sense,” I said, getting very disappointed.

  “No, you can get blood from there, but no, you don’t want to,” Janelle said, shaking her head.

  “Then how do we get the blood?” Aloiki asked.

  “There’s all kinds of ways,” she said.

  ‘Well, tell us,” Gerta said excitedly.

  “First of all, you know, there’s the nurse angle.”

  “What the heck is that?” Aloiki asked.

  If you dress up like a nurse,” she said. “You can enter a hospital, mesmerizing your way through then just pick a patient, enter with your kit—don’t forget the syringe, that’s the most important thing—then draw some blood, then leave. That’s on
e way to get blood.”

  “Wow,” Aloiki said.

  “Also, you can dress up like hospital personnel and visit blood banks,” she said. “It’s easy. Just show them a sheet of paper with the number of units you need and most times, they release it to you. But you have to do this sparingly. You can’t be selfish. If you do, then it’s over.”

  Gerta and I nodded at her.

  “It’s a great way to survive,” she said. “That’s what we were doing, me and Butch.”

  “Butch?” I asked.

  “The big one you hit with the baseball bat,” she said.

  I nodded, feeling uncomfortable. I wondered if she held a grudge over it, but then let it go. If she did, she did. There was nothing I could do about it. And I was beginning to, sort of, like her a little. It was nice having someone new around, though she was annoying and there was just this little something I didn’t quite trust about her. But I let that go, too. It does not pay a vampire to be overly paranoid.

  “Yeah, it was just us for a while then we, you know, decided to bring in some more guys, you know, turning them here and there, so we could have some time off. They’d bring us enough blood back. We still liked to hunt occasionally, too, you know? You know, before, you know, you guys killed him.”

  She said “you know” way too much. I groaned inwardly and asked, “You were in love with this Butch?”

  She nodded. “He was my first real boyfriend.”