I walked to the Alpha Psi house, fists clenched. No parties next door tonight. The street was quiet and dark. Empty too—the only car parked on it a white van that looked like it would belong to the people that would be paid to repaint frats and sororities than actually belong to them.
It was then I saw light in the thick bushes lining the street: two bodies, both male, hiding in the darkness, but full of young energy, thickly built, glowing brightly. They seemed to be reacting as I approached the sorority.
Oh please try to rape me. After what Jackson had done tonight, I liked the idea of hurting men. I was so in the mood to rip off some dicks and drink blood from the stumps like they were water fountains.
Feeling reckless, I extended fang.
One of them I saw whispering into a cell phone while the other withdrew something from his backpack. What he pulled out shined so bright it blinded me.
Cross.
I couldn’t see its shape, but I didn’t need to—I felt it against my skin, practically radioactive.
My eyes dazzled, I ran in the opposite direction, but heard the side door of a van slide open. Barely able to see anyway, I could just make out three more men jumping out and then they too brought out the crosses.
Completely blinded now, I lunged at them hoping ferocity would make up for my bleeding eyes. But my rush came up short, the crosses not just acting as mini-suns, but gale-force winds driving me away from those that held them.
I turned the other way, but sensed the first two men approaching with their own crosses extended.
I whipped my clawed hands around, trying to keep them away, but before I knew it, I felt something lance into my back.
At first, I thought it was a stake, and wondered if this was the moment I would be cast into Hell to burn forever.
Then I felt my flesh being punctured again and again, and realized they were metal, not wood. Knives, cutting into me, slicing my tendons, keeping me from running or swinging my arms. I still fought them, even with my wrecked body, until one of them managed to hit an artery. My heart didn’t pump, so the blood in me didn’t spray out so much as flow like draining car oil. And just like a car without oil, I seized-up, all the fight went out of me with the blood.
“Quick, get her in the van,” a man’s voice said, and I felt my body being lifted up, and tossed into a metal box. Its lid slammed shut, and I was in a darkness so total and perfect it was indiscernible from the unconsciousness that quickly, mercifully seized me.
5
A Captive Audience
I awoke to see David Hitch’s smiling face. “Rise and shine, vampire.”
Vampire. I actually hated the word. Weird one should feel that way, since like other adjectives—female, white—it was succinct and accurate.
The problem was the word was so overdone. Total saturation from TV, to chick lit novels, to their eventual movie adaptations—by the time I was 16, the word vampire wasn’t just clichéd. It was cheesy.
When I’d actually become one, I was grateful the word had fallen out of favor among my contemporaries. The elegantly antiquated Nosferatu was still in good standing, as was undead despite pop culture corrupting the term to include flesh-eating zombies. Nightfallen was a newer term, evolved from Nachtgefallen which rose to prominence during Germany’s Romantic period.
Nightfallen was the one I liked the most. It left out all the blood and death.
If the term wasn’t entirely honest, it did edge against the truth of there being a line between the world of the day and the world of the night, and that you were a different person in each. I’d come to know that truth before I’d died—the girl attending church with her parents Sunday morning was different from the woman that had been undressed by her boyfriend the night before.
The way Hitch said vampire, though, was different. The hatred shining through his false cheeriness, suddenly the word didn’t sound cheesy. It sounded more like a guilty verdict.
He was inches from me. I’d tasted him before, so his scent was familiar. But it wasn’t hunger I felt as my eyes focused. The satanic, primordial part of myself shouted in my ears, Kill him, and I was in perfect agreement.
Canines extending fast, I tried to rip out his throat only to realize I couldn’t move. Glancing over my own body, I saw why: they’d crisscrossed dozens of chains over me. They’d even placed several lengths over my neck and forehead, assuring I could barely move my head.
I seemed to be on a rusty hospital gurney, which somehow made it worse. Why would he have something like that unless they intended to operate?
“Oh, look, the teeth!” Hitch said, still smiling. “They were so scary that first time. Not so much now.”
I tried to use my headlights on him, but he unzipped his fleece—the cross around his neck blinded me before he zipped it up again. By the time the spots cleared from my vision, he was holding a knife and saying, “Don’t try that look-into-my-eyes crap on me. I’m not above digging your eyeballs out if I have to.”
There was a single, naked bulb suspended from the ceiling, lighting the room. I looked around as best I could. It was a basement. Had to be an older house given the peeling paint on the walls and the earthen floor. The air smelled moldy—probably a house abandoned by its owners and now ignored by the bank. A nice hideout.
Work desks had been built into the basement recently. On them, I saw a bit of wiring, lengths of pipe, and containers of ball bearings. Magazines for guns like I’d seen Jackson use were here and there. A few new shovels lined the walls, along with axes. Rake handles had been refitted with metal spear tips—I saw my blood on some of them.
My senses fully returning to me, that’s when I sensed it: the sun.
The basement hadn’t any windows, but I could still feel it, like a predator circling a tent.
They could put me outside right now, I realized. Pick up the gurney, and cart me into the brightness of day. It would probably take a full minute for me to completely burn, but every second of it would be agony—every cell in my body breaking down in smoke and fire, every nerve conveying magnitudes of pain like lightning strikes through copper wire.
Bad as that was, I knew what would follow would be worse. Whatever the differences between the Nightfallen races, the one constant was that we were damned. God hated us. You could tell by what crosses and holy water did to us. Lakes of fire awaited me, in which I would drown forever.
I held my breath. I didn’t need it to live anyway, but it kept me from screaming.
“No need to be all shy like that, girl,” Hitch continued. “Feel free to hiss and carry on. Give me an excuse to cut that smile a little wider. Go nuts, if you want. Get it out of your system. Who knows how long you’ll have the chance.”
I kept quiet.
“No? Nothing to share? Well, since we’ve got some time, I guess I will.” There was a barstool in the corner. He pulled up a seat close to me and folded the knife back into his pocket.
“Wow. Ginny. Been looking for you for a while now,” he said. “Would give people your description. You can just imagine how creeped out people would get, me asking if they’d seen some girl that looked like she’d get carded trying to get into an R-rated movie, so didn’t get too far with that. Did hear a couple times that someone looking like you would hang out in the local coffee shops. But I never checked into it. Wasn’t ready, you see.”
He hesitated, the false cheerfulness finally washing from his face before he spoke again: “I was scared. There. I admit it. I was absolute terrified of seeing you again, and not being ready. Terrified of most things after meeting you, actually. Hard to be good at anything when you’re afraid to walk home from practice at night. Boom—no more scholarship.
“The funniest part was, I finally ran out of excuses for meeting up with Emily only during the day, or making sure we didn’t go outside at night. So I gave in, went to a sorority formal with her. I’m actually having a good time, even though it’s nighttime, Not going to lie, the booze helped. Still, great night. And
then I look over at one of Emily’s friends.”
“Mimi Breck,” I said.
“That’s right. Mimi. She’s standing by a car getting directions from one of her friends to the after-party. Then I see it: no reflection in the window. What made it worse was that I’d always liked her.”
“You killed her,” I said, a statement not a question.
“Yep. Well, me and my friends. Took some prep. We kept up with working out while stealing holy water from Catholic churches—they don’t put out that much, actually—buying guns and axes, stuff like that. Getting chemicals, and learning the wiring and remotes for bombs. We even bought a lathe so we could make our own stakes. It’s upstairs. We figured the police might be able to track us down if we were seen buying too many tent stakes from Home Depot.
“Before I rammed the wood through her heart, though, while the guys were pinning her down, I asked about you. She hadn’t any idea who the hell you were.
“Then I hear about some underage chick at the party last night. Asking about Mimi Breck. Wasn’t hard to guess it was you. And if you were sniffing around there because Mimi got killed, you might come back. So we threw together that welcoming committee for you,” he said, the grin returning. “I’d say we’re having good luck in our first week of business.”
“It might be just beginner’s luck,” I said. “Might be best to quit while you’re ahead.”
“Yeah, that would be the smart thing to do,” he said, sounding surprisingly genuine. “I’m sure this road is going to end badly. It’s the forces of darkness we’re up against, and we’re just … us. But what else can I do, now that I’ve seen what I’ve seen? Can’t pretend like that evil doesn’t exist.
“How could I quit now? I’ve got too much in already. It cost me the sport I loved, cost me college,” he continued. “Cost me Emily too. When I saw that Mimi didn’t have a reflection, I spazzed, threw-up, ran off. Everyone thought I was drunk, not to mention crazy. Along with my earlier fear of the dark, a high maintenance girl like her only has so much patience. Well, fuck her, I guess.”
That’d be news to Emily Lin—I’d seen the picture of them by her bed. Obviously, she still cared about him. But I was damned, and telling him about Emily wouldn’t let me escape divine judgment. If letting his sad, bitter, broken little heart continue to bleed was the most hurt I could inflict on him, then that was how it would be.
“I think it’s for the best, though,” he kept on. “I mean, what was my life before this? Practice, class, get drunk, fuck. Rinse, repeat. Where’s the meaning in it? Where’s the part you can be proud of? But this,” he patted my chained body, “this war against darkness? It matters. It gives life meaning. There’s nothing more important.”
He seemed to come back to himself, slightly embarrassed. “Well, here I am, talking too much. You’re probably just lying there wondering why we haven’t killed you yet. You see, we’re interested in that friend of yours. The one that likes guns. We want him.”
Tell him where the pretender is—buy time, and perhaps save yourself, my predator mind said. Sound advice. He deserved it after rejecting me. If Hitch and his fellow hunters were going to kill me anyway, why not let them get Jackson too? Spread the misery around—if not for Jackson, I wouldn’t even be here.
But instead of bargaining for my existence or just telling them where Jackson lived, it came out, “I’m not giving him up.”
My predator mind howled its disappointment in my ears, and in truth, I’m not sure why I said that. For Nightfallen, it’s all about self-interest. We do nothing without expecting something in return. Maybe I held out hope that somehow, there might still be a better ending with Jackson.
Besides, was there any doubt Hitch was going to kill me regardless?
Hitch didn’t seem particularly bothered by my bold and Nightfallen-uncharacteristic stand. “We don’t expect you to give up your boyfriend,” he said, taking my cell phone from the pocket of his Ramsgate fleece. “We used your fingerprint to unlock the phone. Lots of texts to this ‘JW’ contact.”
He held out the phone towards me. The phone’s flash went off, and I laughed. “I’m not going to show up in your photos.”
That triumph was short-lived. “Yeah, keep laughing bitch. The chains are still in the picture, and I’m guessing he’ll know they’re not holding the invisible man when I text him that we’ve got you.”
“What are you saying to him?”
“That if he wants you back as anything besides ashes, he’ll meet us tonight,” Hitch said, as he began making his way up the stairs. “Of course, what we’re not telling him is that it’s a trap.”
6
Set Traps
That night, they loaded me into their van. Hitch was driving; his four fellow hunters were in the back with me.
“Man, this is so creepy riding in the back with her,” said one of the four closest to me, a heavier one wearing a sweatshirt with Ramsgate Wrestling on it. A gold chain peeked around his neck, its pendant—no doubt a cross—hidden beneath his collar. I guessed they all were wearing similar necklaces.
He looked like the kind of big guy that would be the life of a party, which was what made his whine about me as incongruent as the AR-15 that sat in his lap.
“We’ve got a tarp in here, Smitty,” said another across from him. This one was leaner but also powerfully built. He was a fighter—his hooknose had clearly been broken at least once. He also had a rifle and also, almost hilariously, a bandolier of stakes across his chest. “We can toss it over her if you’re feeling all squeamish.”
The third one laughed. “Lay off him, Matt. Smitty can’t help it. This kind of thing happens all the time.”
“What kind of thing, Bobby?” Matt asked.
“Big guys turning out to be pussies.” Bobby was about the same build as Matt, but even more into the hunter persona. Night vision goggles were propped on his forehead. Unlike the other two that, except for the weaponry, were dressed like normal students, Bobby was in Army fatigues.
Smitty cursed as the fourth one chimed in. He was squat, much shorter than the other three, but almost as wide as Smitty. His dark eyes were almost completely hidden beneath the low brim of his Pittsburgh Penguins hat. “Don’t get upset, dude. I think there’s a charity for it. Maybe someday they’ll find a cure.”
Matt and Bobby laughed.
“Hey, Scott, knock it off,” Hitch said from the driver’s seat. “That goes for the rest of you assholes, too. We’re not too far now. Stay focused.”
Like kids getting yelled at by their parents on a long road trip, the four were quiet for a moment before they began talking again.
“Hello, sweetheart. Hungry?” Bobby said to me.
I was. I wanted nothing more to drain him like a juice box. His friends too. But I was still so weak, and the chains held me fast.
“How many people have you eaten, sweet thing?” asked Scott, a grin on his face. “Maybe it’ll make Smitty feel better when we have to kill you if we know your number.”
I’d been quiet, not wanting to provoke them. There comes a point, though, when the ego is sufficiently bruised that you don’t give a damn about the body.
“I lost my diet notebook, so haven’t really been keeping track,” I said.
That shut them up for a moment before Smitty spoke up, finding his courage. “Keep talking, girl. After we get your friend, won’t be any reason to keep you around.”
“After my friend finds you,” I corrected, “you’ll be buried in a shallow grave.”
It sounded appropriately menacing in my most syrupy Southern accent, but I didn’t think it was true. After all, Jackson had wanted to spare them. Save everyone, he’d said.
It was an open question if he’d even show up to try to save me. He cared about the living. He even identified with these hunters—weren’t they fighting evil, after all? The difference was, they were doing it honestly. None of the lying and pretending that Jackson hated.
The more I thought about
Jackson, the emptier my threat felt. I was just an asset that aided his mission. One he, when it came down to it, despised. Really, it wasn’t hard to imagine him walking away from all this. Hell, it wasn’t hard to imagine that if he showed up at all, it would be to ask if he could join them.
“Wow, so scary,” Bobby said. “Last time we ran into him, all he had was a pistol. It was impressive at the time seeing as that was the first we’d ever seen vampires. Now? We’re primed for war. He’s got less of a chance than Mimi or you had.”
“You don’t know my friend’s viciousness. If you provoke him, you won’t be able to match it.” No threat there. A simple observation.
They didn’t take it that way, though.
“After we kill off your friend,” Matt said, “we’re going to take a cross, and shove it up your slit. Then we’ll see who’s vicious.” The others, staring down at me, nodded in agreement.
Eventually, the van stopped. Grabbing shovels, they left me inside. Even so, I heard them digging. After a while, Hitch said, “That’s good enough. I texted him the picture.”
“Will he be able to find his way out here? We’re pretty far deep in the woods,” Smitty said, probably hopeful Jackson wouldn’t be able to find them.
“I included coordinates. If vampires can use smart phones, I figure they can use GPS,” Hitch said.
“GPS is one thing,” Scott said. “Open question whether he’ll actually come, though.”
“He hasn’t replied yet. I gave him an hour, and it’s only two hours until sunrise. If he doesn’t show, we’ll just leave her out to bake,” Hitch said. “Now, get her out and get in position.”
They took me out of the van, and I saw we were in a thick forest. The ground was flat, and extended as far as I could see, meaning we weren’t in the mountains ringing Echo Valley. Probably just outside them, in the empty expanse of state forest that buffered Echo Valley from the rest of Pennsylvania. No houses out here, and the cold sky was so free of light pollution I could see the Milky Way reaching across the heavens. We were close enough for Jackson to get here in an hour, but far enough out that local law enforcement wouldn’t be attracted by the sound of gunfire.
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