by Lissa Bilyk
LOST IN THE STORM
My boyfriend wants to kill me.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Someone who wants me dead? It’s not exactly show-stopping news. But how did someone so close to me change enough that he would want to kill me? Well, let me start at the beginning…
I had always thought I was nondescript enough to blend in. Not a very intelligent thing to presume when you have thick, straight, blue-black hair and eyes a weird cross between blue and purple. Storm eyes, so the family history tells us. The colouring comes from both my parents, who are so distantly related they are on opposite ends of the massive Storm family tree. I have a brother, Theodore, or Teddy. He’s younger than me, but he is growing into a respectable hunter himself. He prefers the research side to it more, though. I think the lightning frightens him.
Me? I revel in the power our Storm-inherited lightning vanquishes gives me. I love the control over something so strong. I love ridding the world of evil and dangerous creatures that would love to kill every human on the earth and roll in their entrails while doing so. I love it when my parents would pull us out of school to go on our ‘hiking trips’ – in this instance, ‘family time’ means hunting demons. I even love being able to switch from the exciting and dangerous world of demons to the normal and almost mediocre world of a typical teenage girl: school, fashion, and boys. I’ve come close to death several times: there was a soulstealer in the US that beat up my mother pretty good; there was a water demon in Indonesia that nearly drowned my baby brother; and there was a possession in Poland that shook me up pretty bad. But we’ve all come through – not without scars – and we’ve all learned from those experiences.
The needs of the many are greater than the needs of the few.
That’s how we run our lives. We’ll show mercy if a demon can prove that they will change, but primarily we’re protectors of the innocent, and it’s a rare demon that’s been on a killing rampage that will stop, apologise, and promise to change – and stick to it.
Apart from the lightning, we also have enhanced senses when demons or magic are near. It’s a trait bred into us. I know when a demon is around me. I might not be able to pinpoint exactly who it is in a crowd, but I know that one is there. Likewise I can tell if it is benevolent magic or magic intended to harm others.
At home we’d received news from the Council of Elders that a string of violent, animalistic attacks had begun in the city. They’d asked us to keep an eye on any demonic activity and investigate, and deal with the problem. They suspected it was a demon, a violent and unpredictable one, but wouldn’t tell us any more for fear of tainting our investigation. My father went out hunting at night, but didn’t find anything. The body count mounted to seven in our city alone.
Meanwhile, I was starting to experiment with Noah.
Not experiment as in drugs or anything – just to get more intimate. Skin touching. Hands going places that hands don’t normally go in civilised company. Exploring. Desiring. Devouring.
Noah wasn’t the handsomest boy in school, but I thought he was drop-dead gorgeous. He had dark eyes and dark longish hair and dressed all in black. We’d been going out for a couple of months and I was crazy about him. What was also pretty awesome is that he was crazy about me, too. My previous boyfriend, Micah, had been into me, but it was a very slow kind of interest. We’d taken ages to ‘hook up.’ Once Noah and I got past our initial shyness, we burned with an intense passion. It was this shyness that attracted me to him: outwardly he seemed very confident with himself, arrogant even. When we were alone, he was a completely different person: caring, quiet, gentle.
Then one night my father made it home battered and bloody from a fight worse than any he’d had before.
“It’s a vampire,” he managed to tell us after we’d come together as a family to take care of his wounds; bind his arm, bandage his torso and sterilise the cuts on his face. “He got away, but now he knows we’re on to him. There aren’t many Storm demon hunters in this part of the world, and lightning vanquishes won’t work on a vampire, so you’ll have to use a wooden or silver stake. If you come across the vampire, hit them in the heart as hard as you possibly can. You have to get through a lot of muscle and bones. It’s not easy to stake someone. You need to be very strong.”
My mother went into the kitchen and came back bearing small canisters of salt, which she handed to Teddy and I. “Keep these with you. Vampires won’t burn in sunlight, though they are allergic to its purity. They are also allergic to the purity in salt. Use it to defend yourself if you come across the blood demon. In the meantime, help me salt the boundaries of the house in case he followed your father home.”
Now knowing that the vampire had marked my family as demon hunters, I wore a jacket to school and kept the wooden stake hidden up my sleeve. It may have been pedantic of me, but I was listening with all my psychic guru-ness for any creepy vibes that made my neck tingle. There was nothing for days, and then another body was reported found, mauled by an animal.
My parents didn’t want me going out at night any more, because that’s when vampires are strongest, so Noah would drop me off at home after school or work and then hang out with me. I tried to explain that my parents were just being kind of strict, but he begged them to allow him to take me out after dark. They were adamant: he just thought they were being difficult, and resolved to try to make a better impression on them. Poor soul, he thought it was all his fault.
We wanted to spend more time together unsupervised so that we could go a little further in our experimentation, but we were never left alone for long enough. It bothered me greatly: I was seventeen, after all, and I wanted more than pecks on the cheek. So one night, I snuck out of my bedroom and jumped into his car parked down the street.
Maybe it wasn’t the best idea we’d had, but we were running high on teenage hormones. Noah’s dad had left his mum years ago, and she was a nurse working night shift, so he had the whole house to himself.
We took advantage of being alone.
I certainly don’t regret what happened, but I don’t condone losing my virginity so young. I was mad about him, and I wanted to be closer. Turns out he’s a biter. Maybe we should have waited. Personally, I think waiting any longer would have driven me mad. I’d made my decision and I stand by it. I don’t want to be a hypocrite and say no one else should have sex until they turn twenty, but still. It’s all a part of growing up and being a teenager, I suppose.
At two in the morning, he drove me back to my place and I snuck back in the window, careful not to disturb the salt boundary.
That day Noah didn’t turn up at school. Needless to say, I was a bit freaked. I immediately thought of all the movies and TV shows I’d ever seen where the bloke dumps the chick as soon as they sleep together. Deep in my heart I knew Noah wouldn’t do that, but the coincidence still worried me immensely.
He didn’t answer his phone. I didn’t have a car, and anyway I’d only been to his house once before when it was dark and I was too busy thinking about what we’d do once we got there to remember the way. I had no way of contacting him.
So I waited.
He didn’t come to school the next day, either. It was a Friday, and I really wanted to hang out with him at the weekend. I had a shift at the pet store after school so I didn’t get to do anything more than shoot off a worried text message.
R u ok? Why aren’t u @ school? Want to c u l8a. Movies mayb? Call me. Miss u.
After my shift I checked my phone again and to my delight he’d responded!
Xina, im a tad sick is all. Movie sounds great tho. Cinema 8pm 2morrow. My shout. Love you.
I went to sleep that night ecstatic at the thought of seeing my boyfriend the next night, and impatient I had to spend the whole of Saturday without him.
The next day, Mum had to travel north to investigate the rumour of a poltergeist haunting someone’s house, so Dad, Teddy and I decided to go vampire hunting.
We explored the town looking for evidence that the vampire was arou
nd, but to our dismay, there was a distinct lack of tingle. I was starting to feel that maybe my parents had been wrong about the vampire hunting the family, and when the whole day passed with only a tingle from the shapeshifter that lives downtown and runs the international foodstore, my dad was starting to think that perhaps someone other than a Storm had finished the vampire off. So I told him, rather bluntly, that I was going out that night with Noah for some private alone time at the cinema, and he begrudgingly acknowledged that maybe he and Mum had been a little harsh. He still insisted that we remain vigilant: after all, if a Storm hadn’t vanquished the vampire, we couldn’t know for sure that he was really gone.
We spent the afternoon practising lightning vanquishes, and Teddy retired to his room to study. In the evening I took a shower and dressed in a low-cut shirt and jeans with my favourite warm jacket. I put a silver stake up my sleeve out of habit. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and applied a little makeup to enhance my eyes and lips. Dad dropped me off at the cinema with the promise to start giving me driving lessons so that I could get myself around, and as he drove away, the familiar tingle started.
Arms wrapped around my waist and cool lips touched my neck while I was standing there looking like a dork trying to hear something indecipherable. Noah breathed deep my scent and I turned in his arms to greet him with a kiss.
And suddenly my heart hammered into gear as I noticed the subtle differences on him, and the hair on the back of my neck tingled. It’s not that his eyes or his skin or even his hair were a different colour; his cheekbones weren’t more hollow or sunken; his lips weren’t more red. I just suddenly knew, knew, that he wasn’t my Noah anymore.
He was a demon. And more impossibly, I was pretty sure he was a vampire.
Desperately trying not to freak out, I followed him as he took my hand and led me into the cinema. Noah the possible vampire bought the tickets and I bought some popcorn – extra salted. I noticed he didn’t eat any of it. Me? I love movie popcorn. In fact, I love it so much, I accidentally spilled some on his bare hand in my popcorn-munching frenzy. He yanked it away in a hurry. I pretended not to notice.
I didn’t notice much of the movie. I was too busy freaking out that my boyfriend had turned into an evil blood-sucking demon and that he had taken me out on a date and was sitting right next to me, and I was trying to nonchalantly hide the stake in my jacket in case he found it and tried to kill me or worse.
After the movie he slipped his non-salt-burned arm around me. “Is your dad picking you up or do you want a ride home?” he enquired
“I was going to catch the bus,” I answered.
“My car’s parked not far from here; I’ll take you, Chrissy,” he offered, and his tone of voice was so similar to how it had been. It was just missing something, but it took me a while to figure out. Emotion.
“Awesome,” I squeaked, hoping he’d lead me down a dark alleyway so I could stab him through the heart.
And just my luck, he drew me closer to him and led me around the back of the theatre.
“So are you all better now?” I asked to keep up the pretence of being completely ignorant that he was taking me someplace no one could see from the street. I began to inch the stake, which had been sitting in my sleeve all night, down the inside of my jacket.
“Now I have you, sure,” he replied in a low chuckle.
He stopped. We were there. The stake was in my hand.
He stepped closer to me and put his arms around me. He pulled tight against him and I could feel that his grip was no longer a game, as it used to be, but a prison I had no hope of breaking.
“Chris, you are a very beautiful girl. I have absolutely no regrets doing this.” And he pulled me closer and pressed his lips against mine.
His body was hard, but warm. It surprised me. I thought he might be cold – he was, after all, supposed to be undead. Maybe I had been wrong? Maybe the constant tingle that hadn’t left me all night was somehow broken?
My train of thought stopped when he pulled away and smiled down at me.
“This will only hurt for a moment,” he whispered in a husky voice.
“Hurt?” I squeaked, still playing the part of the ignorant, twisting in his arms to get a bit of distance between us and a clearer shot of his chest. “Wait, I can’t, I don’t want to do it in an alley…”
He chuckled, low and wicked. “I’m not going to rape you,” he murmured, running his tongue over my jugular. “Just a little trick, a little nip, and eternal bliss.”
“You are a vampire!” I blurted, still trying to get more room to aim for his heart.
He paused, and his arms loosened a bit. I pulled back.
“Yes, I am a vampire. But none of that matters now…”
“Of course it matters!” I said quickly, bringing my arm up closer to him. “When did you become a vampire?”
“The night we made love, my beauty. My sire broke into my house to turn me. He didn’t however, expect me to kill him once I was strong enough.”
“But… you want to bite me!”
“Of course. How else am I supposed to wreck havoc on the world without you, Christina? I want you by my side.”
“Why?” I squeaked shrilly. “Why me?”
He looked at me, and the predator in him grew bored. “Because I want you.” He bent his head towards my throat once more.
“Stop,” I pleaded, trying to give him one last chance. “Noah, no!”
“And why should I stop, my gorgeous little goth? Don’t you want to be a vampire with me? Eternal life, eternal strength, and no one to make the rules any more?”
“No!”
“Why not?’ he hissed dangerously.
I had to say something to distract him. “Because I know that in your own sick, twisted, demonic way, you love me the way that I am.”
Noah snorted, and I felt the breath on my throat. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. He was going to kill me. “You’ve been watching too much Twilight,” he rumbled as he opened his mouth wide and sank his fangs into my neck. It was unbearably painful for just one moment, and I cried out, before the adrenaline and endorphins kicked in.
“No,” I managed to gasp as the sweet ecstasy of the bite flooded my system. I only had scant seconds before he would pull me closer to him, get a better grip, and suck me dry. “I’ve been watching re-runs of Buffy.”
And with all the strength that I could muster, I shoved the stake into his chest, between the ribs, and angled up to bite into his heart. He jerked back, and his fangs leaving my throat were terribly painful – yet I longed for the feel of them once again. I shoved at the stake again, trying to get it deeper. His eyes widened as he took in the silver stake staring at him from his chest, and he looked at me again as his skin started to darken and peel, as if he’d spent too long in the sun – or an oven. His lips peeled back over his teeth, those lips that I had loved to kiss. He shrieked as his flesh rolled back and revealed his muscle and sinew underneath, and then that, too peeled back to expose raw bone.
I backed away from the horrible yet mesmerising spectacle. I wanted to throw up, yet I needed to watch this, to show him that I still loved him, that I wouldn’t turn away, that I would remember every gruesome second of it.
His bones began to shatter and fall away, crumbling to the floor, and his face was nothing but a skull staring unblinking at me – and then it, too, crumbled and fell and shrivelled into nothing.