Religious Fangs, a novel

by Roberto Luengo

“Yes.” Cristobal mumbled.

  Guillem kept looking at the bodies, there were young and old people in equal proportions with even a few children. Most of them looked lower class, so much for the president of the people. These most probably were the ones that refused to bow before him. It was already 7am when they arrived just under the Veracruz avenue which should take them easily to the city east so they decided to get off the boat there and keep going on foot. Guillem was the first to get down and help the others do so.

  “And now what?” Edward asked very tired.

  “We need to climb up to the Veracruz avenue and follow it to the Talmac hotel and from there to Santa Ines. Let's go!” Said Guillem trying to show himself as full of energy even though all of them new it was a lie.

  Cristobal, Xavier, Maria and Tom managed to climb up to the Veracruz avenue quite easily, but Guillem and the others were having a lot of difficulty doing it, in particular with Roberto who was still was quite weak and kept dragging them down. Guillem thought the guys would help them from above the slope, but instead he heard someone saying “We have some Cabristas here, we are under attack!”, followed by a few screams and gun shots.

  Roberto managed to hide under the bridge while Guillem helped Edward and Lucio climb up to help the others. After they were up, Guillem tried to do it himself, but the side of the river was quite wet and he kept sliding down every time, his heart shrinking with every gun shot as he kept expecting to maybe find one of his friends shot dead without him having been able to help them.

  Already desperate he got as far away as he could and ran toward the slope trying to use the impulse to help him climb it, this time he managed to climb a couple meters, but the land gave away under him and made him fall one more time, the stone and dirt that came down with him destroyed the narrow ledge he was going to fall into which made him fall even further, all the way down into the river hitting his head in the process with a few trash cans stuck in the edge of the river.

  The strength of the water current dragged him down river, he tried swimming to safety, but the continuous hits he kept receiving from the rubbish floating in the river plus the strength of the water current kept dragging him despite his best efforts. After his many tries he finally managed to hold onto something and felt how it began pulling him toward the side of the river, when he was finally able to open his eyes he saw how Roberto was holding the other side of the pole he was holding onto and was spending every bit of strength he had left in his body to save him, but the river was too strong and Roberto was visibly weak, he almost fell into the river a few times, but managed to recover his equilibrium again every time. Guillem gave him and his friends his silent blessing and let go of the pole.

  He was still conscious for what seemed like and eternity, being hit once and again by rubbish and swallowing the stinking water until finally everything was dark and he lost consciousness.

  A different darkness

  Guillem regained consciousness. He was still being dragged by the river and feeling as he drowned once again, the water and rubbish invading his body, but when it was finally over and he lost consciousness it just started once again, and again many times more until finally something different happened. He felt hunger, so much hunger.

  Guillem slowly opened his eyes, he was hungry. His body felt different, as if it was numb and rigid. He was in a tiny room illuminated by a small lamp next to him, the walls were made of grey stone blocks and there were no windows anywhere, only one door made of iron which seemed as if it could only be opened from the outside since it lacked a knob. He slowly got up, he was leaning down in a single bed with a metal frame and an old mattress. Someone had washed him completely and put some rustic, but clean clothes on him.

  “Hello? Is somebody here?” He said as he got up, his body still feeling too rigid. His skin was all wrinkled which he thought was normal after drowning in the Guaire river. He yelled as he walked to the door. “HELLO! I AM AWAKE! WHERE AM I!” And he started hitting the door with all his strength.

  It finally opened and a young woman came in. She was about 16 years old with long blonde hair and skin as white as milk, she was only dressed with sexy underwear. Guillem immediately thought about her blood and that a girl so beautiful must be so sweet and tasty. He tried calming himself down, decided to close his eyes and think about something other than his hunger, but as soon as he opened his eyes one more time and saw her standing with all her innocence in front of him and blushing, all those thoughts came back to his mind and finally unable to control himself he gave in and leaped at her making her fall to the floor with him above.

  First he bit at her neck with all his strength feeling as he tore open the flesh, but as soon as he felt the sweet nectar that was her blood he could not think about anything else other than drinking it. It was so delightful that he could not remember ever tasting anything more spectacular, the pleasure was as he had always imagined having sex, just better. A lot of blood flooded out of the wound in her neck which he drank happily and in his desperation to get more he kept biting and tearing the flesh of her neck, he could still feel her breathing, but she was not moving at all, she just kept sighing and somehow he knew she was enjoying the experience to the point he was sure he felt her having an orgasm.

  After a few moments enjoying her taste Guillem felt the presence of someone else next to him, he stopped feeding to see who was interrupting his meal and saw the most threatening guy he had ever seen before, he just felt an uncontrollable need to run away from him as far and as quickly as possible, but he was blocking the only exit from the room. He stood up and ran to the farther corner of the room where the mattress was located, he jumping on top of it and stayed quiet staring at the intruder.

  “Continue, kill her. Be the predator you can be.” The intruder said, but Guillem did not move at all. He just kept staring at the new comer, trying to intimidate him with its grin.

  “Afraid? It was to be expected. Here I will stay until you snap out of it.” Guillem saw as the girl, smaller and more appetising than ever got up and left the room.

  An eternity passed for him, but slowly he felt as he regained his self control. As he did so he could better see the intruder, it was a tiny guy completely covered with a hooded overcoat, his looks were not threatening at all, but still he felt the small guy was somehow dangerous.

  As soon as he was able completely calm himself down, he dropped to the floor and started praying. The tiny guy knelt next to him and prayed as well. It was a very short guy of about 160 centimetres, the overcoat seemed as if it was taken from a bad movie of monks, the hood was covering his head almost completely.

  “What did you do to me? What am I?” Asked Guillem as he stopped praying and was looking at the blood marks all over his clothes, he noticed as well that his skin was not wrinkly any more and even though it still looked pale it seemed to be a lot healthier. “How is the girl? Who are you?”

  “She? She is happy! Her reason to exist is to serve us in everything we need. Food, sex, work, anything. Do you want to ask her how she feel? You do not have to believe me.”

  “NO! Leave her alone. What do you want from me? What did you do to me? What am I? Some sort of vampire? Who are you?”

  “You are right on that. A vampire is what you are. An immortal. A predator of men. Created by God to be a wolf among his sheep. What did I do? Give you the opportunity to exist forever, why? You were going to die in that little disgusting river anyway and I needed you. My servants were looking over you and rescued you as soon as there were no witnesses. My name is Sebastian Valdez.”

  “My friends? Are they all right? Roberto was badly hurt and I do not know how were the others.”

  “My people has already taken care of them. All of them are in their houses and Roberto is in the East Hospital, all of them safe and sound. Before you ask, they are crying a lot because of your loss, but that is the way of the sheep, they are emotional all the time. And finally your family is fine as well, crying obviously.”
/>   “I need to see them. Am I your prisoner?”

  “No, you are not. Do whatever you have to do and I will not interfere. But remember what you are, your family and friends will not accept you at the moment. My people can take you anywhere you want. Now I am your only family.”

  “I do not want your people going with me anywhere and you are not my family. How do I exit this place?”

  “Follow me.”

  Sebastian exited the room and Guillem followed him very closely, they walked through a long corridor built using the same grey blocks as his room. There were doors on each side, all of them closed and there were many catholic crosses everywhere as well. Finally they arrived to a stair which they followed upwards to what seemed like the ground level of a very large house. The stair took them straight into the house's kitchen which was fairly large, but better described as antiquated, there was another young lady there cooking in her underwear. They kept walking, exiting the kitchen and then into a great saloon with timber floors and antique furniture including an old grand piano in the middle of the place, in the way he noticed that there were a lot of video cameras, they were the only thing that could be qualified as modern technology and finally they arrived to a huge wooden door.

  “Here is the door, leave if that is what you must do. But remember what you are, I would advise you to come back here before 4am so you do not have any sun related risk.”

  “Come back? Here? You transform me in some sort of hellish creature against my will and you pretend me to come back here? You must be crazy. What day is this? How long have I been unconscious.”

  “Ha! Do whatever you want, go die into the sun for all I care, but let me ask. Where are you going to sleep during the day? With your family? Do you want them to see their son's corpse during the day? You will not look very pretty while sleeping. Do they have a place where no sun will come in? Maybe in the house of one of your friends? We are in Los Samanes, remember the way back here. Put this overcoat and use the hood as you see fit,” he said as he took an overcoat from a coat hanger located next to the door “I do not think you want anyone to recognise you, remember, you are dead and will be declared so very soon. Here take this money and this watch as well.” He said as he give him an overcoat with a hood, an envelope with money and an old pocket watch. “Only one day has passed. By the way, things are still very dangerous everywhere and you do not yet know your full capabilities, so do not endanger us, if you do something stupid like making yourself public I will have to destroy you straight away and clean up any mess you create.”

  “I do not care for your security or my life, whatever you want to call it. I will do whatever I need to do even if you do not like it. We will see if I come back here ever again.” Guillem said as he went out of the house and ran away.

  Guillem ran all he could, he wanted to cry, but there were no tears in his dead eyes, they felt so dry, but it did not hinder him at all. The minutes went by, but he could not feel tired in any way, he tried to force his body to feel something so he ran as fast as he could, but instead of getting tired he just kept accelerating all the way to something like 60 km/h, despite the speed he kept complete control over himself. He knew he should feel fear about the speed at which he was running, but instead he felt nothing. At his maximum speed it took him no more than 2 minutes to get to his house in Santa Ines. The streets were completely solitary, in the way he saw many piles of burned tires and destroyed cars which had been pushed to the sides to give way to traffic, some of them were police cars. In Santa Ines there were many houses with their gates, doors and windows destroyed, graffiti and the ever present destroyed cars still parked within their garages.

  He stopped in front of the house of a close neighbour, hiding in the shadows and approached his old house carefully.

  He saw people in a close park so he decided to first see who they were. They were in a section of the park covered by a metal laminates roof supported in four concrete columns. There were some deteriorated exercising equipment that was freely available for everybody to use. As he approached he saw four people there, they were Cristobal, Tom, Edward and Lucio. Cristobal was hitting a punching bag frantically while the others were just sitting on a rusty bench staring at him. All of them had a few bandages and seemed to be in pain except Cristobal who although was bandaged kept exercising harder that he had ever seen him do it.

  “Come on Cristobal, let's go see Guillem's family. They are expecting all of us.” Said Tom, but Cristobal kept exercising at the same rhythm.

  “Yes big buddy, come on.” Said Edward. “You have been there since we lost him. Even your family is worried. You are going to reopen you wounds again, remember what the doctor told you. It does not matter how fast you have recovered, you should not be exercising this much, your body might still not be at its best.”

  “Yeah Cristobal. You are behaving like a little child. Our friend is dead, it is not your fault.” Lucio said.

  “Lucio shut up.” Cristobal yelled back at them. “Please leave, I do not want to do something I will regret later.”

  “Do not be an idiot. You know what is your problem? You cannot hear the truth? Let me tell …” Lucio was saying, but Tom signalled him to stop talking.

  Cristobal turned toward Lucio filled with anger, his face was completely red and was breathing heavily. Guillem had never seen his friend so mad. Cristobal started walking toward him and Lucio got up from the bench with a challenging stance while the others just kept quiet waiting to see what was going to happen.

  “Get out of here Lucio before I take your head off.” Cristobal roared standing in front of Lucio, his eyes being a head above Lucio's, but Lucio kept staring at him unafraid.

  “You do not intimidate me. Hit me, that will not change the fact that you have to let him go and you have to learn to listen to your friends.”

  Cristobal punched with all his strength the concrete column next to Lucio, just a few centimetres next to his head, leaving a large crack in the concrete where his fist hit it.

  All of the present people went pale including Lucio and Cristobal, there was a very tense silence for a few minutes. Guillem himself could not believe what he just saw Cristobal do.

  “Are you ok Cristobal?” Asked Tom. “You cracked the column! How is your hand?”

  “Yes I am fine.” He said looking at his fist. “I am not hurt or anything.”

  “We better go, let's not talk about what happened here any more. Do you want to go see Guillem's family? They are all reunited.”

  “Yes let's go.”

  They went out of the park and Guillem followed them all the way to Guillem's family house. Tom, Edward and Lucio were walking very slowly and complaining of the pain they were suffering while Cristobal was just following them in silence.

  The lights in his family's house where turned on. After his friends went into it, he approached the kitchen's window and looked inside. From outside the window he managed to see his parents, friends and other neighbours, most of them were crying or engaged in conversation. On the kitchen's table he saw a few pictures of him and many flowers arrangements. He managed to see all of his other friends except Roberto, they had some visible bandages and seemed in pain as well.

  Guillem did not want to see his family sad and he new he should be crying, but he was still unable to do it, his feelings were almost non existent. After a couple of minutes looking through the window he walked away from the house and sat down in a close parking lot to think about everything that had happened in the past couple of nights. He began feeling a lot of hunger after his short race from Sebastian's house to his family's, should he attack someone else now? What if he lost control again and killed that person? Maybe he could attack someone bad, or sick, maybe he could track down one of the gang members from last night and free the Great Colombia from a cold blooded killer. After thinking about it he did not want to hurt anyone, even if they deserved it. He kept trying to force his body to cry until finally he saw as his skin gained a life like c
olour, felt his blood running through his veins one more time and finally tears piled up in his eyes just as if he was alive. He was finally able to cry as he wanted and so he did for a while.

  He kept thinking about what was best to do about himself and his family. To say something to them would probably destroy them, their religious beliefs would never allow them to understand his existence and even if they did, to know about the existence of vampires and who know what other creatures would make them live in constant fear. The same happened with his friends, what sort of life could they have knowing monsters walked around drinking people's blood. And that him, their friend and spiritual guide, was one of them.

  Time kept passing and Guillem was sitting in the same place when he heard as his family's house main door opened and people came out.

  “Are you sure you have to go? It is late and I do not think it is secure. You could stay sleeping here tonight.” He heard his mother telling someone.

  “Yes, do not worry, I better go now. I do not want to cause any problems to you in a moment like this.“

  “Thank you for coming, you are a sweet girl. Even in a moment like this, the things you told us about our son were wonderful to hear. He grew up to be a great man.“

  “I will never forget him. What he did in the CUGC saved my life.” The girl said as she walked away from the house. “Will come back soon to check on you!.”

  The girl went to the parking lot where Guillem was hiding, as she approached Guillem tried to hide better in the shadows, but did not do it well enough to avoid being seen.

  “Who is there?”

  Guillem covered his head with the hood and kept still, hoping the woman would just leave, but she came directly toward him. He recognised her, she was Lissette, the lady prisoner he spoke to in the CUGC.

  “Guillem?” She said very agitated and with tears in her eyes. “Is it you? I know it is you. I knew you were not dead.”

  Guillem ran away at all the speed his legs could provide him leaving Lissette standing in the parking lot confused and then hid in the shadows next to the park. From there he saw how Lissette kept searching her surroundings for him and mumbling something, but finally decided to go away toward the highway. In order to get to the highway people from Santa Ines had to take a very long and narrow stair which was surrounded on both sides with very tall bushes, the bushes were usually cut down whenever somebody got robbed there, but other than at those opportunities, nobody cared to maintain it properly. All the other roads toward the highway lacked pedestrian footpaths so only cars could use them. She was probably heading that way to see if she could find a bus or at least a cab.