Down the Shrinking Hole

by Jamie Ott

  She ordered a bloody Grey Goose martini with a couple snake hearts on a toothpick and sat on a divan and watched the people mingle.

  Just when she thought she’d die from her boredom and was thinking about retiring to her room for the evening, she felt the presence of someone familiar to her. It wasn’t anyone she’d just met, but it was someone who smelled like home, a fresh sea salt scent.

  She perked up her head and looked around a bit. It wasn’t long before she discovered the source, for he stood, his skin gleaming brighter than anyone else, under the dim light of the chandelier, about ten times paler than any other vampire, and the only one wearing sunglasses. His was Kris; he was a German albino, a friend to Levi and Lucenzo.

  “Starr,” he said in his soft voice without removing his dark glasses on, for even as a vampire, his lavender eyes were sensitive. He kissed her on both cheeks, “I’d heard you had come.”

  She was surprised to see him act friendly, for it was only a few weeks since Levi had died because of her.

  “What do these mean?” she looked, closely, at the beautiful blue sapphire he, too, had attached to his jacked lapel.

  “That is to show I am a member of the Order of Negru. We are the guests of honor tonight. How are you enjoying Romania?”

  “I can’t wait to go home.”

  Fernand joined them, exuberantly, hands flailing, and the same cane, from the other party, in his hand.

  “How is my brother?”

  “He sends you this,” and Kris pulled a little parcel wrapped with a white handkerchief from his pocket.

  He opened it up and it was a pin like the one they were both wearing.

  “It is for you, Starr. It is one of a kind, from Lucenzo. You cannot get these anywhere. Here, put it on.”

  “But I am not a member.”

  “Tonight you are,” he smiled. “May I?”

  Starr nodded and he put the pin on her.

  While Kris and Fernand played catch up, Starr wandered into the back and onto the Ferris wheel. From up high, in the distance she saw bright lights like at a baseball field at an evening game.

  The light glared at her from between the trees. She knew it was the grand labyrinth. Though hard to see in the darkness, there were couples who walked arm-in-arm toward it.

  Curious about what sort of games were happening there, she decided to follow suit.

  She stepped off the Ferris wheel and continued through the back, along the cement path, taking a right and continuing straight until she reached the ten foot walls that were lined by trees.

  At the gate, there were two men in tuxedos. One bent over to examine Starr’s pin. When the man nodded, the other opened the gate, allowing her entrance.

  She squinted in the bright lights. Up in the stands, lots of people were seated as they watched games and drank blood.

  From inside the labyrinth, Starr smelled fear, and lots of it; even more fragrant then the fresh human blood that clouded her mind, making her heady.

  As she walked up the stairs, someone tapped her on the shoulder; it was Madam Balaji.

  “Starr,” she said angrily, “what are you doing here? You will turn around and leave. Where did you get that pin?”

  But Starr was already distracted by what was taking place inside the maze.

  Naked people were running through the paths: some of them were bitten and cut up as well as covered in blood.

  They had collars around their necks.

  One lady was sitting on a stone bench, crying and praying to god while, just a few paths over, a vampire in a tuxedo heavily sniffed the air, tasting it and then choosing a path that led him straight to her.

  Looking to the right upper corner, a heavily muscled naked man was running zig zag, up and down, along various paths. He thought he was going forward, but he wound up right back where he started.

  Only a few hedges below him, a vampire stood, with arms crossed, just waiting for the man to get ahead: he was trying to extend his game time in the labyrinth.

  Then over in the left lower corner, a vampire chased a middle aged man around a hedge. The vampire leapt at him, but landed flat on his stomach. He managed to grab the man’s ankle, in which, he sunk his teeth into his Achilles heel and sucked a moment before the man turned over and kicked him in the face, forcing the vampire to relinquish his grip.

  The man stood and limped – ran further around the hedge, his blood leaving a path behind him.

  In the center of the labyrinth was where most of the people, in the stands, attention were: A vampire was on all fours, on a large stone table, ripping out the guts of a man, with blood all over his face and clothes.

  When the crowd gasped, she looked left. A man made it out of the maze, but one of the tuxedoed security men grabbed him, and escorted him to the entrance where they made him start all over again. When he wouldn’t enter willingly, they used a cattle prod on his back and he screamed.

  Starr was horrified, but, mostly, she was disappointed with herself for being so stupid as to think that other people’s problems weren’t hers. She, herself, told Lily, once, that just because they were who they were, didn’t mean they could behave badly, and her choice to ignore signs of brutality was behaving badly.

  She felt shame heat the surface of her skin, almost as if there were blood boiling in her veins.

  Starr looked at Madam Balaji and hated her for misleading her into thinking that she, and her order, was good.

  But there was nothing she could do, she thought to herself as she looked around: there were hundreds of vampires there, in the stands, cheering.

  Now, looking back, it should have occurred to her; she should have made the connection. Screaming in, what appeared to be, a dungeon, Parker and his tell-all about rites, pagans, war, and The Council.

  She just didn’t want to see it; didn’t want to get involved; she was selfish and only cared about being left alone.

  And the Order was no better than the man who kidnapped her sister, forced her to do things she didn’t want, and then killed her. Her sister died because of people like Madam Balaji and her Negru followers.

  In a zone, Starr walked back down the stand steps, and past Madam Balaji who was saying something to her, but she simply couldn’t hear, at the moment.

  She was betrayed, she thought to herself and, for the first time since being turned, she cared about that. Madama Balaji and the people of Castel de Negru let her down. She thought she’d found reasonable people, but all they were, was monsters.

  Starr walked out of the gate, and continued through the dark, along the path.

  When she returned to her room in the castle, she took off her dress and put on her leathers, packed her loose items, and walked out of the party, and out of the castle, without a word, without a goodbye to anyone.

  Starr walked into the dark, east, toward the mountains behind Castel de Negru.

  “’A hundred miles east,’” she quoted Madam Balaji to herself, as she pulled out her phone and set the GPS. “’Follow the voices in your head,’” she remember her say.

  From behind, someone called her name, but she continued into the darkness, without looking back. She continued on toward her original mission: finding The Council, but, this time, with a new attitude.

  Road to Heaven

  Vampin Book Series #12

  By Jamie Ott

  Copyright © 2012 Jamie Ott.

  All rights reserved. For permissions or information, please contact ladysonoma@americamail.com

  Publication: 6/7/2012

  No parts of this book may be used without permission.

  Snow Mountains

  Chapter 1

  Too tired to care about being seen, she descended from the sky.

  Softly, she landed a few feet from the entrance. The thick layer of snow crunched under her heels, as she walked, quickly, to the door of the shack.

  From the air, she sensed that it was a café the locals visited, even though it looked like an old conde
mned building.

  She kicked off caked-on snow from her boots, and pulled back the door.

  The patrons all looked up, as she walked to the bar. She could see why, too: She stuck out greatly with her jet black hair and clothes.

  In the rural parts of Scandinavia, many people were fair haired, not to mention dressed very plainly.

  She slipped off her black faux shearling coat, and hung it on the back of a bar stool, and scooted in.

  Her sunglasses had practically frozen to her face. Despite knowing that she should keep them on, she removed them.

  Keeping her eyes down, she asked the bartender for a beer, stew, and sandwich.

  She rubbed her cold hands on her face.

  It had been several months since she’d left Lake George. The decision wasn’t hard to make because she thought the images an old vampire planted in her mind would be enough to guide her to Valhol, but she was wrong.

  Instead, she’d been searching for months, trying to tell her inner demon to use its instinct to find the old peak. Her senses continued to lead her between the half dozen countries; one day she’d fly to Norway, then to Finland, and the next: Sweden, or some other place.

  As it was, she didn’t even know what country she sat in, at the moment.

  She was simply exhausted.

  The only thing that kept her going was the knowledge that Credenza would come for her, in the end; after she’d done massacring all the ‘barbarian vampires of the world.’ However, Starr, now, knew better, even the Order of Black had gone into hiding.

  She just didn’t understand it.

  Valhol was on a Scandinavian mountain peak. Sestin, the old vampire, showed it to her before she killed him.

  But why did she sense the city of Valhol in nearly every Scandinavian country?

  “Here you go, Miss,” said the man.

  “Thank you,” said Starr, as she greedily started drinking down the hot liquid.

  Never in her life had she appreciated the taste and feel of hot soup so much. Not that her kind ever felt cold anymore – or at least not in the human aggravating sense, but it did suck to be wet and moist all the time; not to mention stiff jointed.

  Since she’d died, her sense of hot and cold had become skewed, somewhat. The only way she knew when temperature was a problem was when her joints and muscles got extremely stiff. For a human, this would be called advanced hypothermia.

  Thankfully, the stew helped considerably. She sighed as the warm liquid bled down her throat, and into her stomach. From there, like coals in a fire, the warmth spread to her heart and traveled up and down her back.

  “Anything else, Miss?” asked the barkeep.

  “A room?” she asked plainly.

  “Yeah, you’re gonna go down the road a bit, and, hey Miss, you’re gonna wanna look at me.”

  Starr put her sunglasses on and looked up.

  The man stared at her, like she was weird, and then proceeded to use his hands to point and charade.

  She tried to pay the man with the little prepaid card she’d picked up before she left the United States. After all, she was only seventeen.

  Not that she could get a credit card even if she was older, for most of the banks in the world still weren’t working. This meant the half million dollars she owned was stuck. As it was, the money she had, she’d stolen from the penthouse of a rich dead man in NYC.

  “We don’t take that. We’re just a small establishment.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” she said annoyed. “I only have U.S. dollars.”

  She slapped a ten dollar bill onto the counter.

  The man bitched about her to his buddy in some language.

  As a vampire, her kind inherited a certain form of telepathy; one that enabled them to understand people who spoke other languages. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean they knew how to respond.

  Starr was too tired to care, anyway.

  Just as she was about to walk out of the door, the man said to her, “Hey, Miss! This won’t cover the exchange fees. We need another five.”

  But Starr could tell the man was manipulating her. He was simply annoyed at having to deal with a foreigner. However, Starr was in no mood to humor him. In fact, when she was groggy and tired, she, her self, became feistier.

  She turned around and said, “You think I don’t know that you’re messing with me. You don’t need another five dollars, and you’re certainly not gonna get it. But, if you’d like, you can come and try.”

  “You watch your mouth, Miss, or I just might,” the man said, as he threw his pencil down on the counter.

  “Come on, then!” she said, beckoning him with her fingers. “I’ve had a crappy past couple of days. Kicking your ass might just be the sort of release I need.”

  When he just stood there, silently, she shrugged her shoulders and opened the door.

  “Don’t come back,” he shouted.

  She turned her head back and said, “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  As she made to exit the bar, a man in a grey baseball cap said, “Hello, Miss.”

  Starr ignored him and walked on.

  She stood for a moment and stared over the miles of snowy plain. The sun glared down, crisply, making her skin tingle.

  Normally, she was okay in the city or at the Lake. The sun didn’t bother her, much, there; perhaps because of all the shadows of the buildings, trees, and mountains that obscured the sun’s direct rays.

  When it did bother her, a little sunscreen was all she needed, but ever since she’d arrived in Scandinavia, like a 3rd degree burn, her skin constantly, painfully, tingled.

  The fables would have you believe that vampires just simply went poof because of ultra violet, but it wasn’t so. When one dies, so does the body’s natural ability to produce secretions.

  It was the skin’s production of natural vitamins’, melanin and sweat that kept the living protected, and when they died, so did those defenses which took eons to evolve.

  She pulled a small bottle from her pocket and smeared the sun protectant all over her face, neck and hands.

  Starr walked left, down the road. Several trucks drove by, blowing up brown slushy-snow around her.

  She turned left at the sign and walked under a short over pass.

  The small hotel was a few miles down, in the center of a tiny strip. It was wedged between another restaurant and a large building.

  Behind the hotel counter, a white haired lady checked her in without much fuss.

  She set her bag on the lumpy bed. Immediately, she pulled her clothes off and hung them about the room to dry.

  Into the hot shower she went. Her muscles and joints relaxed and expanded as they thawed.

  As she toweled her skin dry, she couldn’t help but notice the way her eyes showed up on the cloudy mirror, when even her blue-black hair couldn’t hold up against the steam.

  The redness was the result of the Primordial blood she drank, several months ago. That was the reason she kept her glasses on at all times.

  She did try contact lenses, but flying through the air at those temperatures kept freezing them. Several times, she’d already peel them from her eye ball, as they broke down into little tiny shards in her socket.

  Eagerly, she climbed onto the bed and dug in her bag.

  Her cell phone still didn’t get reception there. It was nice to know that there were still places in the world not connected to the so-called grid. She just hoped the kids, and her friends, were okay.

  She flipped on the television. Not that there were any good channels that far away from major cities; just a few news and information channels. Sometimes, there were shows from other parts of Europe though.

  She settled back on the mattress and closed her eyes.

  Cry Out

  Chapter 2

  For months, she’d been getting these visions, but she didn’t know what to make of them. The only thing she was certain of was Credenza needed to be stopped.

  This was also the
reason she’d set out to find Valhol, and hence Lucenzo. He was the only person who would answer her questions, like if Credenza really was the one behind the attempted vampire apocalypse? Or if she really told Lucenzo to move into the clinic so as to keep tabs on her?

  She sat on the edge of her bed, rubbing her aching head.

  Normally, visions weren’t painful. Plenty of vampires had them, but this was different. This was a psychic cry out; a connection to all the unliving: It was a warning of danger.

  That night, her vision was of some town in Italy.

  Credenza meandered through the streets of an entirely vampire town. People dropped dead, one by one, as she walked by.

  She’s coming! was the message, over and over, through the psychic wave lengths.

  Vampires were scared, and they were going into hiding anywhere they could. Shane, Marla, and Mica – her best friends and fellow vampires, begged her not to leave the Lake.

  She did anyway, because she was the only one who could possibly stop Credenza. Sestin knew that when he chose her to end his life, and take his power into herself.

  Besides, Starr was certain that Credenza wouldn’t go after her friends, or, at least, not yet.

  In her mind, she saw Credenza walking through a dark neighborhood. Her amber eyes danced in the light of the fires that people had set, in the streets, in their attempts to kill her.

  She was too strong to be contained. Like walking through a sand storm, she simply covered her face with her hands, as she walked through rings of fire.

  Wondering if any of this had hit the news, she turned the television back on.

  The only newscast was a woman in a bright white shirt, who talked of some up and coming Danish holiday.

  Starr flinched.

  Did she just say Danish?

  After months of so much flying around, and following the scent of Valhol, she began to forget to keep track of the countries she’d landed in, from day to day.

  Not once, did Starr consider that she should have searched Denmark. She just assumed Valhol was further north.

  She picked up her room phone and dialed Shane’s cell number.