by C. T. Phipps
“Hey, are you just going to abandon your post?” Steve said as I walked past him.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I am.”
“Well, consider yourself fired!” Steve called back after me.
“Can you imagine someone else actually giving a shit about working here?” I called back, reaching the bathroom door. The newly reborn vampire inside hadn't ripped the door off the hinges, so that was a good sign.
Steve paused. “Shit, right, you're rehired.”
“Yeah, well, I'm going to need the night off,” I muttered. “I'll make it up, though.”
“If you say so.” Steve had already started eating another candy bar.
As I started to unlock the door, it occurred to me it was very strange Steve knew about a dead woman being reborn in the bathroom. The thought abandoned me as soon as I had it, though, because I could hear sounds of feminine agony and torment from the other side.
It was a sound that reminded me of a roadside bomb that had gone off while a bus full of mothers bringing their children home from a soccer game had been passing us. That had been another reason why I'd been glad to become a vampire.
Vampires didn't dream.
Opening the door, I peered inside the room and saw that water was starting to pool on the white tile floor where the newly created vampire had ripped out a sink and tossed it to the side. The mirrors were smashed and had little bits of blood from where her fists hadn't fully transitioned into the rock-hard granite they would later become.
The Qwik & Shop women's restroom had three green stalls and a scent of haphazardly applied bleach and disinfectant coming from everything. It didn't entirely eliminate the smells of humans going about their business, but weirdly, vampire nostrils didn't register that sort of thing as innately bad. It wasn't good, mind you, but our entire brain chemistry was rewired to smell and hear things differently.
The newly reborn vampire was currently on the ground in the fetal position with her arms around her legs. She was a pretty, frizzy-haired Black woman who reminded me a bit of Nathalie Emmanuelle, the actress who played Daenerys’s assistant on Game of Thrones. The woman was dressed far too nicely for this place with an expensive leather coat and business suit dress. Both of which were getting drenched now.
Steve hadn't been lying. It was obvious she was going through the beginnings of the rebirth. I still remembered my experience with it and how utterly painful it had been. That had been when I'd had my creator with me to suppress the agony of my transformation as well as feed me fresh blood. Without your creator or enough blood to make the transformation go smoothly, it was damned near impossible to survive the event with your sanity intact.
The worst cases became draugr, what most people thought zombies were. They were mindless creatures that craved the flesh of the living. The few cases of families getting ripped to shreds and eaten had done wonders for the undeads’ reputation in America, I can tell you that. Whoever had abandoned her like this was a monster.
Lifting my hands, I approached her slowly. “OK, I don't know how to do this, but I'm going to do my best. Don't be afraid, you're just becoming a vam … OK, that's terrible. Listen, I'm going to get you some blood and it's going to be A-OK. Just stay calm and try to—”
I was interrupted in my speech by her screaming as her fangs burst through from where her canines had been.
“Ouch, I hate that part,” I said, taking a moment to think about where I could take her.
The hospital was a horrible choice, as many people had found out when they'd taken hungry vampires to places filled with vulnerable prey that triggered all of their predatory instincts.
An idea hit me.
“OK,” I said, reaching down to take her arm. “We're going to go for a ride. I'm going to—”
The woman interrupted me by leaping up and sinking her fangs into my shoulder, tearing into my flesh to drink my blood.
Ah hell.
Chapter Two
Having my shoulder torn out was pleasant. No, scratch that—it was a mind-blowingly awesome experience, like getting the best high you could imagine combined with your first girlfriend showing you what it's like to get a blow job. That's another part of being a vampire that is both cool and horrifying. When you bite a human being or another vampire, it's always sexual.
I hadn't been entirely truthful to David regarding what vampire feeding was like. While your sexuality didn't change, the simple fact was blood was blood and anytime you took it, it was amazing. That was all sorts of confusing for me and why I preferred feeding on women. Well, had preferred feeding on women. Lately, I was feeding exclusively on the vampire equivalent of protein shakes and rice cakes to avoid thinking about the last time I’d fed on a human.
Sarah …
The thought of the dead girl in my arms shook me out of the buzz being fed on was giving me. Placing my hands on her face, I tried to push back but found she was already every bit as strong as me. The awareness I was possibly going to die with a goofy grin on my face allowed me to clear my head enough to think.
An idea occurred to me. She'd drunk my blood like David and was still in the process of changing. “Back off!”
Immediately, the woman pulled away and looked confused.
“Yes!” I said, holding my shoulder. “It worked.”
Closing my eyes, I felt my shoulder seal up. It wasn't without cost, as I started feeling ravenously hungry almost immediately thereafter, but I wasn't bleeding out anymore either—not that we vampires bleed very much. We’re more like bottles of syrup in that our contents do pour out, but very slowly. Random Vampire Factoid #11 there.
Looking at my healed shoulder, I shook my head. “Dammit, girl, this jacket was a gift!”
“Where am I?” the woman said, looking around, confused. “What's happened to me? How did I—”
I sighed and started counting on my fingers. “You're in the bathroom of the Qwik & Go, you're a vampire now, and I have no idea who but someone created you without trying to see you through the change. That's a big no-no and now I'm going to have to take you to see the voivode.”
“The what now?” the woman said, suddenly doubling over in pain.
“Old Slavic word for warlord,” I said, shrugging. “Shockingly, a lot of vampires are old white Eastern European types and keep the language. It's OK. As voivodes go, she's actually pretty reasonable.” Which meant she'd only stake you and leave you out for the sun if you pissed her off.
Not just for kicks.
Usually.
“Oh God,” the woman said. “This isn't happening.”
I flinched at her use of God's name even though she didn't seem discomforted by saying it.
Strange.
“What's your name?” I asked, deciding now would be as good a time as any to ask.
“Melissa,” the woman said, trying to take a breath but failing. “Melissa Morris.”
Morris. Like Quincey Morris, the guy who killed Dracula?
Huh, that was an ironic name.
“What's yours?” Melissa asked, blinking a few times as if to adjust to how her sight was working.
“Peter Stone,” I said, shrugging. “There's a whole bunch of ritual greetings vampires are supposed to exchange when meeting for the first time as well as a secret handshake, but I'm no good at this shit. Besides, what you really need to do is tell me who created you.”
“You didn't?” Melissa said, confused.
I felt my face. “No, I didn't do it.”
“Oh,” Melissa said, frowning. “Then I have no idea who changed me. Who … damned me.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Please don't tell me you're a Jes … J-guy freak.”
“J-guy freak?”
“Vampires have issues with organized religion,” I said, not adding that isn’t ours. “Groups like the Human Rights League, Mothers against Vampires, and so on really don't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.”
Melissa took a defensive tone. “You don't think vampires are—”
Melissa looked embarrassed. “I'm not like a fanatic. I just think it's important for humans to protect themselves.”
“It's that kind of racist language that—”
That was when David stupidly chose to walk in and Melissa's eyes bulged out before she leapt for his throat.
“Stop!” I shouted.
Almost as if an invisible hand had grabbed her in midair and pulled her down, Melissa hit the ground with a thud.
David took a deep breath. “Wow, that was awesome!”
“You almost got killed!” I snapped at my servant. “Give me a heads-up when you're approaching a hungry newborn vampire.”
“So …” Melissa struggled over her next words. “Hungry. No, I don't want to drink blood, but … I do.”
David frowned and looked down. “Okay, now you're just cheating me.”
“What?” I asked, looking at him.
“You’re telling me the fact she's a beautiful woman has nothing to do with the fact she was made before me?”
“I found her here!” I snapped. “Also, bluntly, you've been serving me for three weeks!”
“The longest three weeks of my life! You're not the easiest guy to work with.”
I stared. “That's it, you can find some other vampire to turn you.”
“What?” David said, opening his mouth in horror. “You can't do that! We had a deal!”
“One you have royally—”
Melissa screamed in a mixture of rage and anguish.
I helped her up. “It's OK, we're going to get you some blood now.”
Melissa hissed at David.
“Not his,” I said. “You wouldn't want it anyway. He's Irish.”
“Funny.” David immediately straightened up, her hungry stare finally impressing on him the danger of the situation. “Oh, right, well, there's nobody on the security camera except her.”
“Wait, what do you mean, nobody?”
“I'm saying they didn't show up,” David said. “Someone came in and paid for some stuff but they didn't show up on film.”
Well, crap. That added a whole new layer of wrong to the situation. Vampires not showing up in mirrors was another partially true bit of folklore. We did show up in mirrors, for the first century or two of life, before our images gradually faded away. If this vampire really didn't cast a reflection, then that meant he was old.
Old One old.
The Vampire Nation was a meritocracy, which was another reason why I had issues with the way things were run. It didn't matter if you were the smartest, most charismatic, most talented guy who had a brain that wasn't stuck in the Middle Ages.
You took a backseat to some old-as-dirt Orlock-looking thing that tended to think of America as a place filled with natives assaulting covered wagons, if they thought of it at all. Frankly, even the Old Ones here were getting sick of how the Ancients were treating them. This would only rile them up, as theoretically they were supposed to know better, and my bringing this girl to them would possibly get us both killed.
I needed my creator.
“Shit,” I whispered, processing that. “You stay here, David. I'm going to go deal with this.”
“Hell no,” David said. “This is the most interesting thing that's happened in months. I'm not hanging around here to clean up the broken toilet.”
“Sink,” I corrected, looking down at the now huge puddle of water on the ground. “Someone should really turn that off.”
David didn't take the hint.
“Fine. Call Thoth and tell him I'm coming.”
I hadn't parted with my creator on good terms, what with the whole complicated cutting me off, spying on my girlfriend, and exile thing, but I still trusted him. Contrary to almost every piece of vampire lore in media history, I liked the person who made me a vampire and wanted him to succeed in his plan to make New Detroit a haven for our kind. He was a cold-blooded sonofabitch, but I could trust him with this.
Probably.
I leaned down and picked up Melissa, putting her arm around my neck while my arm was around her waist, and started to lead her past David. She snapped at him a bit, but my control over her was strong enough to keep her from doing anything stupid. Vampires who drank each other's blood tended to have a strong psychic connection, and she'd imbibed mine during her rebirth. That would give me some control for the next few days.
Possibly longer.
I really wish I'd paid more attention during Thoth's lessons.
“Okay, we're going to get you some blood. Just hang on.”
The two of us headed out into the Qwik & Shop only for Steve to walk up toward us, looking pissed.
“You had better have cleaned up that water,” Steve said, heedless of the fact I had a half-insane newborn in my arms. “Otherwise, it's coming out of your paycheck.”
Melissa looked ready to tear his throat out before she sniffed the air, then got a disgusted look on her face as if she wanted to vomit. “What the hell is wrong with him?”
“We don't have that much time,” I said dryly.
“Hey!” Steve said. “I'm cutting you a lot of slack here.”
“Yes, you're just Boss of the Year. Now let me take care of this before her family sues the shit out of us.”
Steve blinked rapidly. “Oh crap, get her out of here.”
“Yeah. As for the sink, Betty Crocker can take care of it,” I muttered, heading out through the front door and around the back.
The Qwik & Shop, as I mentioned, was thirty miles off the highway to New Detroit and well into a wooded part of Michigan where absolutely no self-respecting non-furry supernatural would venture. Being close to the woods, though, had its advantages for a vampire like me, and while it didn't have the same glamour as being able to attract the most beautiful starlets or models, it got the job done.
“Where are we going? A blood bank?” Melissa asked.
“Not quite.”
“I won't feed on a person,” Melissa said, then grimaced. “No matter how much I want to.”
Most newborns, at least the ones who hadn't been prepped yet, didn't intend to feed on humans. The thing was, vampires could and would feed on anyone from their closest relatives to the Queen of England if they were hungry enough. The only way to keep a vampire from becoming a monster was to make sure they were adequately fed all the time. Those who starved themselves, either out of guilt or some weird form of self-control, were ironically the most dangerous vampires.
“Just stand still,” I said, letting go of her. “Don't kill anyone.”
Melissa stood still and looked away from the highway, practically jumping every time a car passed by on the lonely road leading back to the highway. Enhanced senses were another part of being a newborn vampire that sucked. I had to learn to keep my television down painfully low and wear sunglasses at night for months until my body adjusted to its new limits.
“Okay.” I took a deep but pointless breath. “Prepare to be astounded!”
I stretched out my hand to the woods and concentrated. I attempted to reach out with the psychic powers inherent to my condition and bring forth prey to feed this abandoned daughter of vampiredom. Nothing happened. I concentrated harder and did the Chevy Chase “na-na-na-na” chant from Caddyshack, waving my hand a bit.
“Oh yes, I'm astounded. Oooooh,” Melissa said, staring forward.
“At least your sarcasm is returning,” I said, actually glad of that.
That was when my psychic lure got a little tugging and I increased my use of it until a beautiful brown deer came out between two trees, wiggling its ears as it looked around our location. It wasn't exactly controlling a massive horde of rats or wolves, but my gift with animals was probably my most advanced one.
“Oooooh,” Melissa said, sweetly. “How cute.”
This was going to be awkward. “Yeah, now kill it.”
“What!” Melissa said, shocked. “You can't be serious.”
“What, you
want to rip out some poor bastard's throat?” I said, pausing before gesturing to my neck. “You know, aside from me?”
“That was the shoulder, not the neck!” Melissa said, looking aside as she clearly struggled with her hunger. “Besides, it's not very appetizing.”
“No, animals are the worst,” I said, frowning. “They don't have any of the pleasure of human or vampire feeding, which is probably a good thing given how sexual that is, and they only numb the hunger. You'll still have to drink small amounts of human blood even if you own a cattle yard. Still, it's all we've got so far and you're going to need to drink if you want to be taken anywhere in public.”
The deer, no longer being called by my power, turned around and started to leap away.
I extended my power again. “You, come back here! Stay!”
The deer reluctantly did so.
“I'm not touching her,” Melissa said, crossing her arms. “I'm a vegetarian.”
I snorted at that. “Well, prepare to be carnivored.”
I walked up to the door and proceeded to lift my right hand. The ends of my fingernails grew and became razor-like claws. Many vampires could shapeshift into animals, but this was all I could manage. “Sorry about this.”
I then slashed across the poor deer's throat.
Seconds later, utterly breaking my control over her, Melissa zipped from her position and tackled the deer before drinking up the blood pouring from the animal. It was an uncomfortable scene to watch since she was a messy eater and videos of those were sold as the vampire equivalent of porn. Well, alongside actual porn.
Minutes later, Melissa was licking her hands like an animal then seemed to cover her face in horror. “Oh God, what have I done?”
“Survived,” I said, simply.
The allure of the deer's blood was intoxicating to me too. Healing that wound had taken a lot out of me and I wasn't at my best. If I was going to confront my creator about this, I needed to be in top form.
Melissa grimaced. “I'm still hungry.”
“Yeah,” I said, sighing. “It never ends.”