by Bera, Ilia
“Your class—you’re all pretty close, right?” Michael asked.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Brittany said.
“You knew that Andrew guy?” Michael said. “The Walker kid?”
“Yeah,” Brittany said. “Why?”
“Just wondering,” Michael said. He grabbed a chair and pulled it up to the table. “Mind if I sit for a minute?”
“Go ahead,” Brittany said.
“You see they arrested the Vampire Killer?” Michael asked.
“Yeah.”
“He didn’t do it. It just doesn’t add up,” Michael said.
Brittany and Hanna were both silent.
“There’s another guy in your class—not Connor—what’s that other guy’s name?” Michael asked.
Brittany was silent.
“He’s got a long pea coat—dark hair? Drives an old muscle car?”
“Kane,” Hanna said.
“I saw him earlier,” Michael said.
“Where?” Brittany asked.
“At The Winter’s Den. I don’t know—I don’t want to start gossip or make assumptions, but there’s something off with him.”
“He’s just like that,” Brittany said.
“You know him?” Michael asked.
Brittany was silent for a moment as she thought of the best way to answer the question. “Um, I don’t know—I guess I know him as well as you could know someone in a couple of weeks.”
“Just be careful around him—I saw him the other night too, outside of Connor’s place—over on Crescent. It was the middle of the night—the night my dad was killed.” Michael didn’t know that Brittany lived on the same street. Michael didn’t know that Crescent was where Andrew was killed.
“Yeah,” Brittany muttered. “I guess I really don’t know him all that well.”
“The police in this town…” Michael started. “I just want to see the right guy get put behind bars.” Michael stared out the window. Brittany and Hanna were silent.
Bzzz!
Michael’s phone vibrated. He looked down at it. “That’s the mechanic. I’ve got to go.”
Michael pushed himself away from the table and stood up.
“See you later, Michael,” Brittany said.
Michael smiled and then turned to leave. Before he reached the door, he stopped and turned back to the girls. “Oh,” he said. “If you guys see anything weird, let me know.”
Brittany smiled at Michael as he left the café.
“I should go and finish my assignment,” Hanna said after she took the final sip from her hot chocolate. She stood up from the table.
“Meet again tomorrow?” Brittany asked.
Hanna smiled. “Sure.” She turned to leave.
“And remember,” Brittany said. “Singles Ladies Club.” She smiled.
Hanna laughed, and then left the café.
CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN
BLOODY REVENGE
With her hands stuffed deep into her pockets, Hanna trudged through the snowy streets. Although still early in the evening, the streets were quieter than ever. None of the police cruisers were out—confident that they’d caught the Vampire Killer. Meanwhile, Snowbrooke’s public remained in their homes—unsure.
If you weren’t so sure, you could have easily mistaken Snowbrooke as a ghost town that night. Many of the local businesses remained closed, and their Christmas lights were off to conserve energy. Half of the town’s street lights were burnt out from being on for days straight.
Hanna stopped at the center of town and looked up at the clock tower, where her parents met long ago.
A sharp pain struck the side of Hanna’s head, sending her down to her knees. She raised her hand up to the pain. Her head was throbbing—and it felt wet. Hanna removed her hand and looked at it: she was bleeding. She looked down at the ground to see what had hit her: a rock. She looked up and scanned the quiet streets.
A group of young men—some of them familiar—were walking towards her from a nearby alleyway. Hanna recognized one of the men right away: the man she swiped outside of the bar just days earlier.
Hanna pulled herself up to her feet. Her vision was blurry and she was quickly overtaken by a sense of dizziness. Before she could reorient herself, two of the men grabbed her arms and held her tightly.
“Let me go!” Hanna yelled.
“Hold her still!” one of the men yelled.
“I’m holding her!”
Hanna kicked and squirmed, trying to break free, her heart rate quickly increasing, her thirst beginning to surface. She had to act fast—she could feel her fangs pushing into her gums. She didn’t want to kill anyone, no matter how evil they may be. “Let me go!” she yelled again as she kicked back with force.
The heel of her foot slammed into the calf of one of the men, eliciting a loud scream of pain. Hanna pushed the other man off and broke free. Before she could get far, a hand grabbed her by the ankle, taking her down hard into the icy pavement.
Hanna closed her eyes tight and took a deep breath. She could feel her vampirism pulsing through her veins. Through her closed eyelids, she could see the glowing pulsing of the blood of the aggressors. She could feel the tips of her sharp fangs piercing past her gums.
“Please, no…” she muttered.
She tried to pull herself up to her feet, but she was stopped as one of the men grabbed onto her head, and pulled it tightly into his chest. A cold, sharp blade pressed up against Hanna’s throat.
Could a slice to the throat kill her? She didn’t know, and she wasn’t hoping to find out. She went completely still.
“You think I won’t do it?” the man behind her asked. “You think I care that you’re a girl?”
“Please let me go,” Hanna pleaded, keeping her eyes shut to hide the redness.
“You’re not even a girl,” the man continued, ignoring Hanna’s plead. “You aren’t even human. You’re Hellspawn—the daughter of the devil—a demon.”
“Slit her open!” one of the men said as he sat on the cold pavement, holding his injured shin.
“Please don’t,” Hanna begged again.
“Your crazy prick of a father killed my dad,” the man with the knife said. “He ripped him to pieces like some animal!”
Tears began to stream down Hanna’s face. “My dad didn’t kill anyone,” Hanna said.
The man pushed his blade harder against Hanna’s throat. “It was either your sewer rat of a father, or it was you.” The man began to squeeze the back of Hanna’s neck with his hand.
“Please don’t kill me,” Hanna said.
The man held the knife tight and still for a moment as he considered his options. “This world would be better off without you’re dad’s genes.”
“Hey!” a voice yelled from across the street.
Hanna’s captor looked over. “Who is that?” he asked.
Running from the dark road, into the faint glow of the streetlight was Connor.
“What do you want?” the knife wielding man asked.
“Let her go!”
“Or you’ll do what?”
Hanna turned her mouth to her captor’s wrist and bit down hard, eliciting a loud cry of pain out of the man. He dropped the knife and quickly grabbed his bleeding wrist.
The red, delicious glow of the man’s blood glistened in Hanna’s eyes. It would be so easy to pounce and suck him dry—so easy to have one succulent sip of his blood.
Connor took action. With a quick swing, he punched one of the men in the side of the head and then quickly engaged the other.
“What the fuck!” the bleeding leader of the gang cried as his warm blood poured down onto the white sidewalk.
Hanna watched the blood—her fangs throbbing. She gently licked the blood from her lip. A pulse of unmatched euphoria surged through her body.
“You really are fucking crazy,” the man muttered.
Hanna crept up over the man. He tried to take a swing at her, but the violent man had missed his window. Hanna’s
body was fully charged with vampiric power. Her muscles throbbed with superhuman strength, and pain was no longer an obstacle. Hanna grabbed the man’s arms and pinned them down. She looked into his dilated eyes.
“W—What are you?” the man asked.
“Consider yourself lucky: If I didn’t feel a little bit bad for your dad, I would gut you like the pig you are. My father didn’t touch your dad. And if your dad was anything like you, then that says a lot about my dad.”
The man looked into Hanna’s blood-red eyes, and then down at her sharp fangs, which hovered just over her bottom lip. Hanna looked down at the throbbing artery in his neck.
Da-Dum! Da-Dum! Da-Dum!
It called to her. The delicious arterial blood begged for her.
“Ah!” Connor called out sharply.
Hanna looked over. One of the men held a blade deep in Connor’s gut. Connor’s muscles froze and he looked down at the wound. The colour quickly drained from his face.
“Connor!” Hanna cried.
“Let’s get out of here!” one of the gang members yelled nervously.
Connor dropped to his knees as the blade was pulled from his body. Blood quickly began to pour out of his stomach.
All of the men scrambled to their feet and began to scurry down the road. “What about my fucking wrist?” the bleeding man yelled as they ran down the road.
“We’ll deal with that shit later man. I don’t want to go to fucking prison!”
Hanna rushed over to Connor. “Connor!” she cried. She quickly pulled away his jacket to inspect the wound. It was deep—gushing large bouts of blood with every beat of his heart. “Oh God,” Hanna said as she pushed her hand against the deep abrasion—a feeble attempt to control the bleeding.
Hanna’s mind was racing. Her overwhelming vampiric instinct was telling her to drink the blood; It took every single ounce of herself not to.
“You—You’re going to be okay,” Hanna said as her hands trembled with fear.
Connor looked up into Hanna’s dark red eyes, which were fixated on his gushing blood. Her eyes followed the stream as it pooled down in the cold snow below. He was losing blood fast.
Connor’s eyes started to become heavy.
Hanna slid her hands underneath Connor and tried to lift him up. As she pulled her hand off of his wound, a large bout of blood gushed out.
Unable to look away from the gushing blood, Hanna’s arms began to tremble, and her muscles became weak. Just one little sip, her mind whispered. Without that blood, she was just a small, feeble girl. With it, she would become a monster. She dropped Connor, unable to lift him up. “I can’t do it,” Hanna said.
“I’m sorry,” Connor said as he began to drift into sleep.
“Stay with me, Connor. Stay awake. Please,” Hanna said, her red eyes filling with tears.
“Hanna?” Connor said, straining to lift his head up.
“What? What is it?” Hanna asked.
“I love you.”
“I love you too,” Hanna said.
“No. I really—really love you.”
Hanna forced a smile through her tears. “I know,” she said. She looked around. “Somebody help!” she screamed out.
Her scream was met with no reply, except for that of the cold, howling wind.
“Anyone!” she screamed out loud.
Hanna could feel the warmth of Connor’s blood in her hand.
The world around her was becoming dark—everything was turning black, except for the blood—the succulent smell of that delicious blood, wafting up her nostrils. Hanna looked back down at it with glowing eyes.
“You—You need to go,” Connor said as he began to cough. Blood crept out from his mouth—he had bad internal bleeding.
“I can’t,” Hanna said.
“They’ll kill you if they see you like this,” Connor said.
“I don’t care,” Hanna said. The tears began to pour down her cheeks.
“I do.”
Hanna stared into Connor’s eyes. He sacrificed his life for her—she couldn’t fathom leaving him alone, bleeding in the snow.
“Go!” Connor said.
Hanna reluctantly stumbled up to her feet.
“Please hold on,” Hanna said. “I’m going to get help!”
“I love you,” Connor said.
Hanna turned and began to run away, leaving Connor bleeding—dying on the sidewalk. She ran to every storefront and slammed on the door, praying that someone would be there—but Snowbrooke was a ghost town that night.
The hospital was five miles away. Regardless of the odds, she had to try. She started to run as fast as she could.
Connor fell backwards onto his back and stared up into the white and black speckled sky. He watched the infinite number of snowflakes float down. The pain in his stomach was starting to numb—from the cold and the dying shock. Even the crisp burn from the cold wind was numb. The world around him was fading fast.
Mere blocks from Connor, fatigue began to set in. Hanna stumbled as she continued to trudge through the deepening snow, gaining little ground with each exhausting stride. Muscles sore, breath short, she was beginning to slow down with each step. With each slowing push, hope was lost.
Hanna refused to give up.
“Do you really love him?” a ethereal, soft, feminine voice called out.
Hanna looked around, but she was alone.
“You need to go home, Hanna. You know that they will kill you like this,” the voice called. “He made his sacrifice so you would live.”
Hanna fell down to her knees, in tears. Instinct told her to feed. Her body told her to rest. Her heart told her to keep running.
“I don’t want him to die,” Hanna said into the wind.
“The boy won’t die,” the serene voice said. “I won’t let him die.”
Hanna looked around at the silent, empty street. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Go to your friend. The boy will be fine.”
Hanna was only a few blocks from Brittany’s house. Brittany had what Hanna needed—the means to fight away her insatiable thirst.
The snow falling around Hanna froze in place, and an impossible light beamed down on her, filling her with warmth and strength. Although she didn’t know why, Hanna trusted the voice. She changed the course of her journey towards Brittany’s house.
To die, to sleep—No more—and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation devoutly to be wished! To die, to sleep—To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause. There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET, ACT III
CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT
THE SLEEPLESS HERO
Connor began to close his eyes and the world began to turn black. Ready to give in, Connor was lifted up by an impressive strength.
They say that, under certain circumstances, the human body is capable of far beyond what is physically possible. Everyone’s heard the story of the mother who lifted the car with her bare hands in order to save her trapped son. In the realm of physics and human biology, such a feat is beyond impossible. When we hear the stories, like the one about the feeble mother and the half-tonne car, we immediately disregard them as mythology. Certainly, they can’t be possible.
Michael Fenner carried Connor five miles in his arms to the hospital. Carrying a one-hundred and sixty pound man five miles is an impressive accomplishment in its own right—but to do so through two feet of freshly fallen snow, with frozen muscles and numb joints, and without having slept in nearly a week—made the feat all the more impossible.
That night, Michael pushed the limits of human capacity—the limits of possibility.
And by some miracle—by some magic, Michael saved Connor’s life. As he walked through the emergency ward doors, he collapsed onto the ground. Nurses and pa
ramedics rushed to Connor’s unconscious body. The exhausted Michael waned between states of consciousness on the hospital floor.
Michael was a true hero, in every sense of the word.
Where his impossible strength and endurance came from—that was something he would never know for sure.
Tarun’s sentencing was short. He didn’t even get a change to speak one word, because he didn’t get a proper hearing—no jury, no courtroom—just a small boardroom with the town’s only aged judge, the police, and a decorated prosecution lawyer from the big city.
Before the sentencing, Tarun’s assigned lawyer made it very clear that Tarun was looking at the death sentence, and “there probably wasn’t anything he could do about it.” The lawyer was part of the whole scandal.
Tarun insisted on representing himself, and the lawyer was sent home.
The evidence against the young man was shaky, and a lot of it was fabricated. The prosecution was quick to point out the speed in which the Mumbars received their immigration papers. They were quick to inform the judge about Tarun’s fight with Andrew outside of the university, in descriptive, exaggerated detail.
And with time to spare before their dinner plans, they concluded: “Tarun obviously killed Andrew and it was evident that the Mumbar family blackmailed the Walker for immigration papers. By all reasonable accounts, Tarun was also responsible for the other thirteen murders.” It was a claim with no supporting evidence, aside from a few unfortunate coincidental occurrences and their fabricated documents.
The prosecution also theorized that the Mumbar’s rental business was an obvious cover—seeing as the Mumbars had been in the country for two years without any record of a single rental. The fortunate timing of Kane cleaning out his apartment before Tarun’s arrest was unfortunate for the Mumbars. Their claim that: “A man named Kane lives upstairs,” appeared to be a lie—there was no tax record, voting record, or employment record of any “Kane” in Snowbrooke, and the apartment was empty—spotless, even.
Even the university administrator made a statement at the hearing: “Tarun was enraged about the university application process, just before the death of university professor, Wade Fenner.”