by Aiden James
“Damn, it seems like it’s taking forever to get there!” Tyreen remarked, just as we came up on the Alumni Center.
She pulled her parka’s zipper all the way up to her chin to try and stay warm. Cold enough to see our iced breaths linger in the air in front of us, a deeper chill seemed to emanate from the shadowed archway that marked the center’s side entrance.
“The main floor’s lights inside the library should be visible in just a moment,” I assured her, peering into the darkness around us.
I slowed down just enough to peer at the thick bushes near the Alumni Center’s entrance, trying to appear nonchalant though my heart raced. I pictured the hairless creature glowering at me with yellow eyes from the other night, and shuddered.
“This is really stupid!” said Tyreen, shaking her head while she picked up her pace.
She didn’t wait for me to catch up to her, which amused me somewhat, given her stated worries about my welfare. Fear had definitely triggered her personal survival instincts.
“Hey, wait for me!”
I picked up my pace to match hers, but she didn’t slow down. Not until she was across the street and walking up the library steps.
“I assume you remember where you left your shit?”
Tyreen said this as she stepped through the entrance, again not waiting for me to catch up. She motioned for the two night guards running up to greet us from their station that it would only take a moment, explaining tersely how her friend had left something in the lobby earlier that day. I expected my satchel to have been collected by someone, and hopefully brought to the “Lost and Found” box near the front desk. However, as Tyreen spoke to the first guard to arrive, I saw my bag’s strap peering out from under an orange and white checkerboard vinyl couch across the room.
“I’ll be right back!” I announced, slipping past them before they could interfere with my agenda. I scooped up the satchel, relieved that my stuff was still safely tucked inside the bag. “Got it!”
I nodded to both guards, flashing the disarming smile I’m known for while Tyreen discarded her bitchiness long enough to offer a warm ‘thanks, guys!’ on our way out.
“I hope this was worth it,” said Tyreen once we reached the parking lot. The temperature felt as if it had dropped another five degree during our brief visit inside the library. She pulled her hood on and fastened the top buttons around her face above where the front zipper to her parka stopped. She looked like a damned Eskimo—a damned scared Eskimo as she nervously looked around her. “You are ridiculously stubborn…you know? Was this really necessary?”
“You mean getting my Ipad and the book I’ve been nibbling on for the past week? Hell, yeah!” I retorted, hoping she could see the playful expression on my face.
She already had moved through the parking lot, her pace even quicker than before. I should’ve known she’d try to hurry back to the dorm once her feet found level pavement, since her tone sounded irritated. Aside from the combination of the wintry chill and my forcing this unwanted excursion upon her, the eerie feeling of being watched had returned, only worse…as if whoever or whatever studied us had moved closer. I couldn’t detect anything around us—not even the canine unit patrolling the campus grounds on foot.
“Hey, wait up, Tyreen!” I called after her. “Do you have to be in such a frigging hurry?!”
“Hell, yeah!!” she replied, pausing to shoot me a perturbed and worried glance over her shoulder. “The sooner we get back into Massey Hall, the better off we’ll—“
A low menacing growl interrupted her, resounding from across the street, as it emanated toward us from the deeper shadows in front of the Alumni Center. Tyreen froze, as did I.
Shit!
“What the hell was that??” Her tone clearly revealed her terror. Several hulking shapes bobbed above the shadow line, moving down the sloping frost-covered lawn toward the street. A shrill shriek echoed eerily in the air from near the Alumni Center’s entrance.
“It doesn’t matter—just run!!” I urged her, fearing we only had a sliver of a chance to outrun whatever lurked in the darkness. Yes, we could’ve turned back and headed for whatever protection the library offered. However, assuming the two campus guards were the only ones in the building, we’d soon be in a much worse predicament. At least there were a dozen Knoxville police officers hanging around the lobby at the dorm. With the mental images of what these creatures had wrought upon Peter’s townhouse the other night still fresh in my head, the choice was an easy one.
If only we didn’t have to run past the bastards.
“What the hell are those things??” Tyreen murmured fearfully, not moving.
“The last ‘mo-fos’ you’ll ever see if you don’t get your ass in gear!!”
Ignoring the fact that one of the suckers had reached the sidewalk, its yellow eyes glowing like a pair of candles inside a Halloween pumpkin, I grabbed her arm and yanked her behind me, sprinting down the street toward the dorm’s long driveway.
When I heard the scrapes and clicks of sharp talons, claws, or whatever else they dragged across the pavement running alongside, I prepared myself for the worst. Peripherally, I could tell there were seven or eight of these things closing in from the lawn, and another handful had emerged from the dense brush on the other side of the road.
If it had just been me, I might’ve considered giving in and letting them take me, praying my life would end quickly and that I wouldn’t be an ongoing living meal for them. But, Tyreen’s presence and the fact her endangerment was entirely my fault negated that option completely. Somehow, I had to get her to safety.
They say in the direst circumstances people can surprise themselves with superhuman feats. It certainly was the case for me. A powerful surge of adrenalin flowed through me, enabling me to increase my strides while keeping a secure grip on Tyreen. It was like I suddenly floated toward our dorm, and where up until then nary a damned cop was in sight, I felt immense gratitude for the handful mulling around the entrance.
“Hey, help us! HELP!!!” I shrieked, when within fifty feet of the cops.
Unlike the B-horror movies my brothers and me devoted our spare time to watching back in high school, the police didn’t act like a bunch of donut-munching buffoons. Once they heard me scream, they quickly mobilized themselves and pointed their pistols and rifles in our direction. Obviously, they saw something following close behind us, coming up fast, like greyhounds chasing a pair of scared rabbits.
“Get over here, NOW!!!” one of them shouted, motioning for us to make a beeline to where they huddled in front of the entrance. Three other cops bearing shotguns stepped outside to join them, wearing slack-jawed expressions of stark disbelief.
“Ow-w-w!!” Tyreen cried out as I yanked her arm even harder while sprinting with all my might to the entrance. Suddenly, multiple fire flashes erupted from in front of us, causing both of us to duck instinctively. The volley of gunfire flew above our heads and toward either side.
A bloodcurdling shriek, inhuman in its timbre and hair-raising in its enraged anguish, filled the air just behind us. This time I did cast a glance over my shoulder, horrified by the hideous face just behind us. In the soft glow afforded by the security lights, I saw the orange eyes of the thing gleaming, and its mouth full of razor-sharp, jagged teeth pulled back from deformed lips. They were covered in blood. Tyreen’s blood.
It must’ve happened in the instant I yanked her arm, as the right side of her parka glistened with crimson streaks. Her eyes began to roll up, and I could tell she was about to faint.
“Tyreen!! Hold on!!!”
I sensed the bastard moving up closer to take another bite, only from me this time. There was no way I could fight the monster off if it caught me, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let it get Tyreen, who collapsed on the ground.
This was going to be where it ended. My life and hers, I just knew it. Both of us totally fucked.
A sudden spray of bullets pummeled the creature and two others that
appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. More angry shrieks—even worse than the previous one—erupted all around us. I thought for sure we’d all be attacked. The police with raised weapons gazed anxiously into the darkness above them while I hovered over Tyreen’s motionless body.
But the menace retreated, at least for the moment.
“Are you all right?” asked the cop closest to me. He didn’t wait for a response, perhaps seeing I was unharmed before he even asked, other than a limp from aggravating my ankle again. A hardened veteran roughly my father’s age, he glanced at me with steel blue eyes before turning his attention to Tyreen. “Let’s get her inside, Jim!” he told another cop who came up to join him. “Bobby, I need for you to call in another patrol for back-up, and tell ‘em to have the S.W.A.T. team ready in case we need it!”
“Got it, boss!” said another cop, taller than the rest.
Three more police officers came over to help carefully carry Tyreen into the lobby. I followed close behind them, fearing the worst while praying she’d be all right. I looked outside to confirm our attackers had truly left, as they had the other night. I didn’t see anything, but the darkness beyond the security lights could easily hide any predator. I knew they had to be hiding out there someplace, biding their time before launching another attack. Meanwhile, the cops outside remained huddled together, searching the darkness with the same fearful look I’d seen on Tyreen’s face earlier. Like us, they had no idea how to combat effectively these lesser vampires. But they would be schooled soon…sooner than any of them could’ve ever imagined, I’m sure.
That, however, was the least of my concerns. I was beside myself, thinking Tyreen might die from her injuries. She had lost a lot of blood, which left a dripping crimson trail as they brought her inside. But one of the cops, named Ty Sorwell, had spent time as a paramedic. He assured me that she’d be fine. When I didn’t believe him, he showed me the wound to her shoulder, which was the main one. Deep tears in her flesh, but not so deep the bleeding couldn’t be stopped. When I worried about how an ambulance could reach the dorm with the menace still out there, he assured me Tyreen wouldn’t need one for now, and that we had enough medical supplies to get her through the night.
Obviously, he didn’t wish to venture outside any more than I did. But, the low tremors shaking her body told me that she was in shock, something I’m sure Ty knew too.
“We need to get her stable, and then she’ll be fine,” he said. The youngest male in the group, and by far the best looking, Ty’s soft brown eyes reminded me of Peter’s. “You might want to take a seat by the TV while we get everything taken care of.” He smiled, revealing two perfect rows of veneers.
“Okay,” I agreed, and took a step toward the middle of the lobby where the television was. But, then I thought of Johnny and Peter waiting upstairs, and me not being able to call them since I left my cell phone in my room. “Just let me go upstairs, so I can let her boyfriend know what’s happened. I’ll be right back!”
Before he could stop me, I’d made my way to the elevator. I noticed three guys sitting in front of the TV suddenly look up, as if until that moment they had absolutely no clue what was going on. Luckily, the elevator door opened right away, and I stepped inside.
As I pushed the button for the fourth floor and the door began to close, an immense crash shook the building’s main floor. I heard screams and even more gunshots, along with the sound of breaking glass and terrible inhuman screeches from near the main entrance.
Looking back on this, I should’ve stayed and try to lure the bastards away from Tyreen. But at the time, I thought Johnny and Peter—and whoever else was upstairs—could help us aid the police in fighting these fiends.
Such tragic folly, especially after I learned later that nearly two dozen of the creatures attacked the lobby. We couldn’t have saved anyone.
When I reached my floor, the handful of girls who had yet to leave were running around in a panic. Breaking glass and more unearthly shrieks resounded from either side of the hall, and behind the doors leading to the men’s side of Massey Hall I heard similar shrieks, and screams from our terrified male counterparts, no less.
“Txema—get back in the elevator!!” Elaine Johnson, our floor’s RA shouted at me. “They’re attacking everybody! They’re—oh my God!! Oh God, NO-O-O!!!”
I had stepped out of the elevator, and Elaine stood outside her room, just inside the entrance to our wing. Or, I should say she stood there for a moment following the destruction of her room’s picture window. Within seconds of her panicked scream, something flew out into the hallway and grabbed her. My first impression was of a hideously deformed, hairless, white man. Very tall and naked, except for a dark tunic around his waist, with no shoes covering elongated feet with sharp nails curled at the end of each toe.
But, that wasn’t what frightened me. The fiend leered at me, with a pair of glowing yellow eyes and a mouthful of jagged sharp teeth, opened wide with dripping saliva. It held Elaine’s trembling body fast with one hand while it used the long sharp fingernails on its other hand to tear her throat open. Too late to save her, I could only stare in horror. Tortured by her terrible screams, as the thing’s horrible Nosferatu face bore itself into her neck, its pale skin quickly turned crimson from my RA’s blood.
It had all become too much for me…the terror and the horror, and I burst into tears. Before I collapsed where I stood, I caught a glimpse of a blurred image racing toward me that followed an explosion of the wooden door to the guys’ wing. Then something grabbed me, and I became aware of two small needle-like sensations upon the birthmarks on my neck. For the second time in four days, my body grew weak and the world swam around me. Unable to move, I couldn’t respond to anything—not even Peter and Johnny’s panicked screams as they ran toward me from further down the hall. For the second time in four days, everything went black.
Chapter 12
The last time I lost consciousness like this, I awoke in a huge cold room that at first seemed like a constrictive coffin. A cold hand with sharp fingernails grabbed my throat, and I remember hearing whispered voices decide my fate. The voices grew steadily more menacing until Peter’s voice broke through and pulled me back into the warm comfort of my dorm room. A safe and welcome place, my friends surrounded me—ready to do whatever they could to make things right.
It certainly wasn’t the case this time around.
“Welcome, Che-e-e-m-m-a-a!”
The voice was inhumanly deep despite a thick Eastern European accent. It rumbled throughout the dungeon-like room I found myself in. I tried to determine what nationality the voice represented. Was it Romanian? Turkish? Hungarian? Or, maybe it was the homeland of Dracula himself, Transylvania. That one brought a weak smile, given all the nonsense I’d endured for much of the past week.
But, the voice was without menace, at least so far. The exaggerated phonetic pronunciation of my name bore a touch of humor.
There was further warmth, too, and not just from a roaring fire that burned within a nearby fireplace. The thunderous male voice carried mellowness as it bounced off the stone walls, like a long lost uncle amused by his niece’s childish antics.
I sat in a large wooden chair with a tall back. Keep in mind that I’m not small in stature. Yet, the chair made me feel even more like a little girl, where my feet barely touched the barren floor.
“Wh-who are you?” I was still nervous. Disoriented.
I looked around the room, hoping to get my bearings as to what and possibly where this place was. Obviously the ‘where’ would be most difficult to determine, but the ‘what’ was getting clearer for me. It wasn’t a dungeon, unless my mysterious host favored the bowels of an ancient castle. Ornate tapestries hung from a wall to my left, and to my right a row of three stained glass windows, featuring haloed figures in Byzantine dress. It reminded me of that sort of thing, based on clothing examples I remember seeing from a medieval history class I took in high school. Perhaps this place was some kind of church
or cathedral.
The voice chuckled, and a hulking figure that had been sitting in a similar chair near the tall fireplace stood up. I could tell in the shadows that whoever it was wore a long dark cloak, probably some sort of velvet, as the sleeves shimmered from the firelight and soft rays from the moon streaming in through the windows.
“I am Ralu Izcacus,” said the owner of the voice. “I am the reigning king of the largest vampire nation, known in privileged circles as the ‘Vampire kan isyanı’. Surely, you have not heard of us, although your world will soon know us very well. As the people in your country, America, are fond of saying, this past week has been our ‘coming out party’.”
The way he emphasized the word ‘vampire’ spoke to arrogance and deep pride. I thought about all of the needless killings I’d witnessed very recently while he laughed again. He stepped toward me and then leaned against a jeweled golden scepter, bringing his face within a few feet of mine until I gasped. He was taller than I would’ve initially guessed, nearly seven feet in height. But if he ever was an attractive man, comeliness was no longer part of the deal for him. Like the Nosferatu-looking vampire I witnessed earlier devouring Elaine Johnson’s throat, his head was bald, and his ears pointed. His sharp, jagged teeth were muted at the moment, for his mouth was closed. Just the fangs protruded from each side, making him look like a dangerous saber-tooth cat sizing up its prey.
His appearance frightful, I suddenly felt uneasy. It was mainly the eyes. Fiery crimson in their intensity, they bore the same luminance so prevalent among every preternatural creature I had encountered this past week. But, the difference here was Ralu’s eyes made him look worse than predatory. He looked frigging evil—like the damned devil himself!