Caleb - chapter 16

Part 5

The rain had driven them into the gardener’s shed. It pattered softly on the roof as he lit the stove. The place was small, smelling of mold, grasses, and stale sweat. It had once been a home, small as it was, in the days when the manor house belonged to a lord and the fields were not owned by the farmers who worked them. It was subtle, but he could smell the remnants of wood smoke and roasted meat that still clung to the walls, as well as the scent of clean air and forest leaves that had buried themselves in the growth of the wood, too deeply entrenched for human senses.

The floor was dirt that had grown uneven and hard over years of wear. He imagined it raked and swept, worked with the same care with which the servants of the manor home now polished and cleaned its wooden floors. He had never known such a time. In the time since his birth the world had been gas-lit, heated by coal, with steam engine powered boats transporting passengers across the sea. He had never known a time when there were not cities, packed full with people, a time when the land was run by lords, not politicians, and success was ruled by strength, not wealth. He had heard of it in the tales his grandfather told and saw it as a time of romance, not so cold and hard as this, the age of reason.

Anna came to stand beside him, her scent as sweet as the air caught in the wood, and his mouth began to water. He would not drink from her, certainly, until he had taken her maidenhood. They were always sweeter than. But he wanted her now. He should have eaten before he arrived at the garden gate, their secret rendezvous’ unbeknownst to her father, but it had been just past sunset then, and hunting during the day was dangerous at best. He tried, instead, to focus on the shape, the texture of the little room, to imagine what it had looked like as a home, rather than the storage shed it now found itself to be. Anything to distract his mind from her scent, from the beating of her heart, while she stood so close in so small a space.

A stone fireplace filled one wall, no longer used for heat, but as the frame for racks of hoes, shears, and tools for tilling. Despoiled as it was by its current usage, it still stood as the primary support for the structure, partnered by the broad wooden beams that stood to the front and the rear of the iron stove. He tired to see in his mind’s eye what the place must have been like, when it had sheltered families over soiled tools. He imagined the roped beds his grandfather had described, set about the room, divided by worn fabric curtains. He could almost see the string of clothes hanging before the fire, smell the stew from an iron pot, boiling over the flame. He was lost in a time he had never known. Then her hand encircled his, and his hunger dragged him back.

Could he convince her to let him take her now, here, in this once peasants’ cottage? He doubted it. He had yet to convince her to welcome him to her bedchamber, though her father had been absent from the house no less than three times in the barely two months since his pursuit began. Nor could he persuade her to join him in his home, as he had already gained quite the reputation for entertaining members of the fairer sex. In this case, his reputation had worked against him. He would overcome it, of course, but not this night. His stomach growled in complaint.

He could drink her now, while she was still a maid. It would not be difficult to disguise it as a kiss. It never was. She may protest against the intimacy, but she would not protest for long. And the warm liquid that flowed through his fangs when he bit her would make the remainder of his task far easier.

Of course, it would also be consider a cheat and that would lose him his house, which he had grown rather fond of in the scant two years that he had held his current identity. He would lose the bet, he would lose his house, and he would lose the sweetness of the victory at the end of the chase.

His hunger could wait.

“Are you alright?” Anna asked him as he bit back his desire with clenched teeth.

She was quite perceptive for a wealthy man’s daughter. Intelligent as well. She was well-read, not in the romantic novels most women of her age indulged in, but in prose and plays and even works of science, that few women knew existed let alone read. She spoke to him of Mary Shelley and Marie Curie, of a time when women would be held as equal to men, where their visions, talents, and expertise could shape the world. She believed Queen Victoria would carry them there, though as aged as the Queen now grew, he doubted greatly Anna’s dream. In all truth, he doubted greatly such a world could ever exist, though not for any lack of strength, any who had witnessed childbirth could not doubt a woman’s strength. But they consistently surrendered this to their husbands or those who would be. They accepted, at times encouraged, a subordinate position out of need for care or fear of reprisal. As may have been justified, for a raged man could be a dangerous thing, frightening to those of lesser strength. And as rage often came to men from fear of loss of position, perhaps there was some degree of logic to a woman’s willing repression.

But Anna seemed to fear nothing. She was not outwardly rebellious, as she believed society could be better changed from within, in a peaceful manner, than from without, which could only be done through arms. She had told him as much in the most descriptive of terms. Yet she never consented to, or condoned, the proper place that a woman of breeding should take. This was unusual, compelling, and it heightened the chase.

Yes, his hunger could wait.

“I am fine,” he replied to her concern. “A bit chilled from the rain is all.”

“Your hands are cold.” She took his in hers, wrapping them in her touch, to hold them above the stove. “Your hands are always cold, as if you lived only in the winter, even when the air is warm.”

“An ailment I inherited,” he was so practiced at the lie, it sounded like truth, even to his ears. “My entire family is so cursed.”

“There are no such thing as curses,” Anna replied, still holding his hands. The fire within the stove was beginning to radiate heat to warm the small room. “There are only the trials of life that either become strengths or weaknesses, depending on how we choose to respond.”

He smiled, and his smile was sincere, from within him, not the forced but handsome smile he used to lure in his prey. She was compelling. This was not the cat and mouse chase for which he had grown accustomed. She was equal to his pursuit. My friend, you have outdone yourself. He would have to remember to thank Antonio, once he had claimed his prize.

He nodded to Anna. “You speak with a philosopher’s tongue, my lady.”

“Does that dissuade you from keeping company with me?” she asked in return, with a smile as cautious as it was inviting.

“Quite the opposite,” he replied honestly. “I find you fascinating.”

This time her smile seemed sincere, lit as it was from somewhere deep within. “May I show you something?”

His mouth watered again, and he could taste the thick, sweet fluid that made the skin of his prey numb, and the bite go unnoticed. My hunger can wait. “Anything you would wish to show me, most lovely lady, I would be delighted to see.”

She smiled again. Twisting around so that the fullness of her skirt rustled against the fabric of his trousers. She slid her hands from around his, taking one hand in hers. Holding his hand, she led him from the shed, back out into the rain.

The downpour that had driven them to find shelter had lessened to a gentle padding of droplets through the trees. Anna kept their path at the edge of the forest, using the broad limbs of the ancient oaks and firs to shield them from the rain. He observed how at home she seemed to be, here at the edge of the wilds, though her skirt was spotted with mud and her shoes sunk to the heals in the moist earth. What an odd contradiction she was, dressed in fine linen and covered in filth. That she seemed to find pleasure in such things over the glamorous balls most women of her station craved only served to encourage the dichotomy, and his fascination.

She led him down a non-existent path to a wooden framed building, over-grown and concealed by the forest surrounding it. Drawing a key from its provocative location beneath her bodice, she unlocked the door. There she hesitated, holding the door closed with her hand.

“Now you must be quiet and calm,” she whispered, instructing him as one instructs a child in their studies. “He can sense your fear.”

He can sense your fear. What, precisely, was she keeping, locked away, in this wooden prison?

He knew instantly, the moment she opened the door. The scent of the wolf flowed out of the enclosed space, into the rain soaked air. The wolf caught his as well, and growled.

“It is alright,” Anna whispered, cooing to the wolf. “You remember me. I will not hurt you.” The wolf continued to growl.

The animal was not bound or held in anyway, save for the closed and locked door. It had backed well away from them, to the farthest corner of the building, its hindquarters backed against the corner wall.

Anna continued to move forward, speaking softly. She lowered her body as close to the ground as the strength of her legs would allow, while still moving closer to the growling wolf.

It senses me. It senses me and knows the threat I pose. Hunters always knew another hunter, whether or not they had met it before. It knows the threat I pose and it will attack. Though the animal showed every sign of doing just that, still, Anna seemed unafraid. He could feel the long, sharp teeth slide from their hiding place, prepared to defend.

Protectively, he moved forward, placing himself between Anna and the wolf. “It is alright,” she protested. “He will not hurt me.”

It will. Because I am here. He stepped slowly towards his fellow hunter. She would see it as caution, but the wolf would know the truth. His eyes met the eyes of the wolf and a low growl escaped his throat that only the wolf’s ears could hear.

The wolf growled again, bearing its teeth. Anna pulled on his arm, but he did not turn. He could not turn now. Pulling back his own lips, he bared his fangs at the wolf, with another growl that was below human hearing. The wolf edged against one side of the wall, moving away from the corner, and he allowed this, letting the animal know he was stronger, but meant not to attack. The wolf tucked under its hunches, lowering its head, and he growled again, though his lips now covered his teeth.

Of course, Anna could neither see nor hear any of this, as he meant it to be. Well away from the corner, no longer trapped, the wolf lowered its head. Whimpering slightly, it rolled onto the straw covered floor, onto its back, exposing its belly in submission.

He knelt, moving closer to the wolf. Moving his hand slowly, he stretched it out toward the furred hunter, laying it in a tender way across the exposed area of weakness. “Good boy,” he said softly, rubbing the wolf’s underside. “It is alright now.”

Anna came to kneel beside him, completely unafraid of the animal that could tear off her hand with one bite of its thick jaw. “He likes you,” she said, as if speaking of a childhood friend. With her hand, dwarfed beneath the wolf’s thick coat, she stroked the animal’s side. “It took months before he would let me so close.”

“Months? You have kept this animal, penned here, for months?” He was uncertain if he felt admiration or offense at her actions. Perhaps both.

“He was hurt,” she replied, almost defensively. It was then that he noticed the short fur on the front left leg, and the scars beneath it. “Caught in a hunter’s trap.”

“And you set it free?” There was only admiration now. “The hunter that would kill the neighboring herd of sheep, and you set it free?”

“It has as much right to these lands as we do,” she replied, with no doubt of defensiveness to her tone this time. “More so for having held right to this place long before any man settled here.”

He stared at her, caught quite off guard, that she would defend a hunter most of her kind would kill on sight. Suddenly she seemed less like the prey he had been stalking only moments before and more like, what, an equal? “You are an amazing woman, lady Anna.” And for a moment, for the briefest of moments, he forgot his hunger entirely. “Most amazing, indeed.”

Adam - Chapter 6

Five murders in the stink-hole he had just come from. Five murders. “Grizzly,” the local reporter had called them. One man with his neck snapped, another shot, another stabbed, and two with their throats cut across the jugular. Throats cut across the jugular. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

He had not made a habit of backtracking. Appearing to, perhaps, but not actually going back to the same place twice. Not for safety’s sake, he did not give a damn about that, but because it was dull, boring to see the same dribble a second time around. Not that it was not all dribble. All but the hunt, that was. The hunt and the chase. On either side of it. He smiled to himself with the thought of it. Smiled as he had when he had read the article beneath the headline on website for that local’s news. He always made a point of following the local news, headlines, and various blog sites for whatever area he had recently departed. It helped to track his hunter. Made it ever the more enjoyable. And this time, Oh this time…

He had had to return. Had to. It may have been dangerous, greater than the usual danger, though he doubted it. With a scene like that, one that had not been expertly covered up, the way it should have been, Caleb would have fled the place. Run. Now you run. He had laughed much of the way. Laughed in the cars of the unsuspecting who had so kindly picked him up, hitchhiking the roads. They were all dead by then, of course.

He drove around the town as he waited for darkness to descend. He had crossed the boarder just after dawn, arriving deep into New York’s ‘upstate’ by mid-morning. He had reached the stink-hole by mid-afternoon. He had had to change cars on the way and had decided to leave its owners in their vehicle when he left it behind. One of them was already in the trunk, the other sat in the passenger seat. He did not want to leave them behind here, in the place he was certain Caleb had killed. It would cheapen the irony. He would wait until he abandoned the car on the road outside of town. He usually left them with the car, when he planned on changing cars, otherwise he left them somewhere off the road, where they would not be found right away. He wanted to leave a trail, but not one humans could follow easily. Occasionally he kept them as passengers, but that depended upon his mood. “It can be pleasant to have company,” he said, to the one he kept now. Of course, the woman did not answer. She had been dead for over and hour.

When finally it was dark, well after dark, he went to inspect the crime scene. He wanted be certain he could take his time…

Blood. Ah the smell of it. Even stale. There was a fair amount of it the police had left behind. Dried pools of it in places. Between the blood and the news reports, combined with what he knew of the killer, he could trace the scene. The snapped neck would have been the first victim. That one happened just east of the alley, on the little walk behind the buildings that flanked the sight of the primary battle. That would have left it behind, more accurately to the side of, the primary local. The police would not think this way, but he knew that it meant that killing had to come first. Never leave an opponent alive while you went to face others, if you could help it. The first rule of combat. Never be outflanked.

He walked the scene, inhaling the blood. The stabbing had to have come next. The blood pool was smeared and deleted in places. This one had fallen into its own blood to die. And it had died there, but not instantly. The smears told that tale. The wound, however, had been certainly fatal, made to be certainly fatal. Never leave an opponent alive behind you. Oh, this was certainly worth the return trip.

The second had to have been the gunshot. They bled differently than knife wounds, so he knew it by its remnants. The scent of gunpowder was there too, but it was… confused… and spattered. There had been more than one shot fired. The blood pool from the gun lay between the stabbing and the slashed throats. The stabbing was clean, and further back in the alley. That meant it had been a trap. You laid a trap. The throats were further up the alley, closer to the street. Sloppier. They had had to have been the last, likely the clean up kills.

He walked the outer edge of the gunshot sight, then paced the distance back and forth between the stabbing and the gun. Caleb hated guns. Far too uncivilized. The gunshot would not have been his. That meant it probably came from the throats, by the direction. So the first man had not been alone, there had been two, one with a knife, the other the victim of it. Then the knife had been the victim of the gun. Could it have been a fight between the dealers, as the police, incompetent as they were, had thought, and his hunter had, for some reason, stepped into the center of it? He doubted that. Caleb was arrogant, but never so crass. No, this had to be his. Entirely his. The neck that had been snapped outside the alley and the pacing of the first two victims here told him that. The stab wound had come from the gunshot’s companion. The hunter had turned one man’s knife against the other man and then had… what? …used that man then as a shield? Likely. The position of the final victims, the distance between that, the gunshot, and the stabbing suggested it. So one man tried to stab you, another to shoot you. But the first you set a trap for. So you are the killer of humans now. Oh, yes, this was well worth the trip.

So there were four of them in the alley, one on the way to it. And here, in the alley, there had been a fight. A decent fight, by the looks of it. A fight with four humans. Why would you find yourself in a fight against humans? Hunters perhaps? Doubtful. That had gone out of fashion well before he had been born. Oh, there had been reports, here and there, but in this age, the age of computers and science, the idea was absurd. Well, absurd in America, certainly. Even here, in the middle of nowhere, life was faced strictly on quantifiable facts, and myths and legends were not quantifiable. Not yet at least. So not hunters… Then what?

He followed the blood to the site of where the throats had been cut. He sniffed the air. Two males. All of the blood spilled on the pavement belonged to human males. But then… there was something faint… something the police would not have known to look for…

Sanguineous blood.

Another species altogether. Homo sanguineous. The blood man. The vampire.

So you bled. Now it was getting interesting. You bleed. He laughed quietly to himself. So you can make mistakes. Potentially fatal mistakes. This was lovely. But why were you in this alley? Hunting? Have you grown so confounded as to have made such a mistake while searching for food? He hoped not. That would be disappointing indeed. Then why were you here?

He paced the alley, scanning the walls, sniffing the air. There it was, a fair distance from the killings, a bloodstain on a wall. There was less blood there than at the killing sights. Perhaps one of the men had been hit before he fell? He examined it closer, smelling it, tasting the remains against the brick. Female. Now he laughed aloud, unconcerned for who might hear. So that is why you were in this alley, and that is why you killed those men. It was a woman, a human woman. Your weakness. He tasted the blood again, breathed it in deeply. I find her and I find you.

He tried to catch the scent again in the alley, on the walls or pavement, to follow it, hoping it had not gone cold…

Why vampires?

Why am I so into vampires?  I've always been into horror.  When I was a kid and other kids were watching cartoons, I'd watch this thing called Shock Theater which was all old horror movies.  See my father was a real ass (still is).  Now I can stop speaking to him, not answer the phone, avoid him when he's in one of his pissy moods, but as a kid, it was hard to get away from.  But, like most bullies, he was really a coward.  Anything scary would have him running for cover.  So when I'd put on the old horror movies, he'd leave the room and would leave me alone for hours.   I'd seen all the old classics, Bela Lugosi, the original Frankenstein, and such, all before I was 10.  Monsters were my heroes, my rescuers, because they drove the real monster away for a while.  That's how I got into Poe, watching Vincent Price in the Pit and the Pendulum and The Fall of the House of Usher.  The scarier it was, the safer it made me feel.  Twisted that.  And I tended to side with the monsters, because there were never as bad as the bullies in real life.

Guess that was where it started.  And vampires are certainly cool on the monster list.  They're invulnerable.  There's not much can hurt them.  And, with few exceptions, they're portrayed as beautiful, even if the original myths don't always match that, so its easy to side with the vampires.  Especially in Dracula.  The older Van Helsing's were never as handsome as the vampire.  And as I got older, vampires got sexier.  That whole biting the neck thing - Bram Stoker we no fool there, substituting that for sex.  How could I not be hooked?

Snippet

His hand was still on her cheek, her tears running through his fingers.  Time to stop running.  She took his hand from her cheek and placed it on her neck.  That was where he’d gone for the men, she figured that was the preferred spot.  She thought she felt his fingers tremble, but it must have been her hand shaking.  “I’ve made my choice,” she said, determined.  Finish it.  

He didn’t move right away, just looked at her.  She thought he might try to argue again, though she wasn’t entirely sure why he would.  If he did, if he hesitated, she was fairly certain she would lose her nerve.

But he didn’t give her the chance.  Taking the hand from her neck, he ran it up, over the side of her face, cupping it behind her head.  Moving in close, he slid his cheek beside hers and she trembled slightly, though this time not from fear.  Then he ran his tongue along the side of her neck, and she closed her eyes.  This is it, this is the last thing I ever feel.  And she hoped it wasn’t going to be pain. 

Synopsis

[Should probably have put this up before chapter 1 but oh well....]

There is a commonly held belief that every myth has, at its center, some manner of truth.  The truth upon which the myth was built is often warped, misunderstood, and twisted by fear, until illness becomes demonic possession and dinosaurs were great daemons that ruled the earth before God cast them out.  Yet, still, beneath it all, there is an element of truth, deeply concealed within the fear of the deadly and what we don’t understand.  Ancient cultures across the globe all share the myth of the vampire.  Though the myths vary widely, the common thread of a sinister, seductive, often beautiful predatory creature that feeds off the life force of humans to maintain its inhuman powers and its unnaturally long existence still remain.  Most of these myths can now be dispelled as a fear of death and disease coupled with a lack of understanding of how disease is spread and what occurs to the body after death.  But what if the answer were not so simple?  What if evolution had taken an altered course?  What if humans were not at the top of the food chain?  Panthers were often thought to be daemons by the native people that were terrorized by that predator’s deadly skills.  What if an even deadly predator had evolved, parallel to man, to stalk them beneath a human skin?

 

Sunshine has led a dismally unremarkable life.  One that seems all the more dismal for the reality of her aging.  But on the day that she thinks the worst fact she must confront is her own graying hair, she stumbles into hidden world that changes her life into anything but unremarkable.  After a wrong turn takes her deep into gang territory, she is saved from a brutal attempted rape by a vampire, a vampire who must then keep her with him in order to protect his secret.

 

But unlike the traditional myth, this vampire, Caleb, is not of the Undead.  He is an evolved primate, a predatory species, one of many that have been living among men, preying on them, for eons.  Caleb’s existence poses the question, what if human evolution had progressed differently?  With all that we do not know that exists in the universe, what if we are not at the top of the food chain?

 

Follow Caleb and Sunshine as they travel together, hunting one of Caleb’s own who, out of madness, kills for sport.  See the story through their eyes as they hunt, not only this bloodthirsty daemon that preys on humans, but also those daemons of memory, loss, and regret that live within their own souls.  

The PET - Chapter 1

Sunshine

It was unmistakable. . Clear, there in the mirror, reflecting the harsh bathroom light; hidden beneath a sea of auburn, only to be revealed with the unforgiving sweep of the comb.

A single white hair.

Twisting the offender around her finger, she yanked, tearing it out at the root. Holding it there, her finger suspended purposely over the sink, she examined this morning’s herald of things to come. There were, of course, many ways to die. Quick. Slow. Painful. Blissfully forgiving. But none so desperately bleak as the deliberate march of time stealing away, piece by piece, all vitality, strength, and hope. To this point, her life had been wholly unremarkable. There had been marks of tragedy, yes. Some, perhaps, worthy of poetry or prose had she been anything more than one of the ranks of the unseen masses, just another face on the street. But she had been born, and raised, in the common man’s blight of obscurity. There had always been in youth the hope of escape, the bright and expectant dream of rising above one’s circumstances to a form of greatness, dependant upon the desire of the day. Not that that made her unusual. America was, after all, built on the notion of the common man’s dream. Built by uncommon men, yet, still, an inspiration. Though such things seldom came to pass, by the odds in most lives, so long as youth prevailed, so did hope. This one white hair, however, marked the end to all that. The end to that hope for the future that was reserved for the young. It was the proclamation of doom. 

Unwinding the strand from her finger, she drew out its length, pinching it between thumb and forefinger to hold, like a miniature tightrope, between her hands. It was a thin line with invisible arrows pointing back toward a lost and withered past and on toward a cold and bitter future. Staring at its translucence that blinked in and out of clarity over the white of the sink, she could almost feel herself walking the length of time before her, like a sentenced prisoner, released from a cell she had denied before this moment, to stumble the path to the execution chamber, sentenced for the crime of having been born.

All in one white hair.

Sighing, she dropped the strand into the bowl, washing it down the drain with the cold rush of the faucet. This was, surely, enough of a reason to go back to bed, turning off the ringer on the phone and covering her head with the blanket. There had been many such reasons lately, leading to the unemployment line for the third time this year. But the rent would be due in a week and all that was left in the fridge was half a loaf of soggy bread, three quarters of a jar of mustard, and a brick of some orange colored cheese that was turning white on one end. That and the crucial case of Dr Pepper, but that too would only last so long. With another sigh, she ran the comb through her hair once more, refusing, this time, to look too closely.

The street outside was peppered with rain. The showers had stopped just after dawn, but the morning was still too cool to dry the pavement. The clouds above threatened another downpour as she made her way to the aluminum and Plexiglas enclosure to wait for the bus, slightly more comfortably than on the rain-wet streets. Of course the over-sized tin can that doubled as a people mover was late. She sighed another hollow sigh. Could this day get any worse?

As usual, the local haven of the unemployed was packed within minutes of opening. It wasn’t even 10am yet and the line was already near the door. She breathed another long sigh.

The line moved forward by inches and she tried not to fall asleep on her feet. The surroundings were too familiar and the people too much the same to provide much entertainment. There was a slight bit of interest at the front of the line though, enough to pass some of the time. The man currently at the counter was having some unheard argument with the clerk. She could feel the anger flowing off of him despite his being out of her range of sight. It rolled in waves only she could feel, running the length of the line, crashing over and around the various stalks of boredom and discontent that were the waiting, scattered about the room. She didn’t try to tune it out. Not that she knew how. It was automatic. Stronger when she was tired or stressed. Or bored out of anything sane left in her mind. She sensed emotion. Likely some remnant of a violent past, like a protective guard. If you knew what was coming, you could get out of the way. But that was a long time ago. Now it was a useful tool at best, a mild preoccupation at worst.

Then there was the man who arrived to stand behind her. She caught sense of him as the man at the counter stomped away. She could be fairly certain from the instant he was close enough to feel, the same way the man at the counter had been close enough to ‘feel,’ that he had been ‘checking her out’ since he opened the door. Not that she thought her ass was much worth a second look. But it happened often enough that she had gotten used to the attention. Well, not used to it exactly….

Of course, there was only one thing he wanted. She shifted in line, trying to hold down her own wave of contempt. It was always what all men wanted. That could be an advantage, when it was possible to get something out of it without giving anything in return. Usually with the strays she took in, the men she occasionally felt sorry for, whose prospects were less than nothing. The geeks, the slow, the damaged. The damaged particularly. Whoever said opposites attract had no conception of human psychology. Opposites didn’t attract. Not once you bore past the surface. The well-adjusted, if they even existed, stuck together. In some cave somewhere, certainly, well protected from the rest of the less than angelic human condition. The damaged, to their various degrees, grouped as well. And the ‘strays’ she usually brought home were most often damaged beyond repair….

But that was the problem with men. The whole attraction thing had its moments of flattery. Certainly that should be the case today, after the horrifying white hair. But there was with it the haunting of the danger of the memories of horrors best left buried. And these drifted past, dangerously close, with this man’s insistent and unwanted desires.

“Slow day,” he said from behind. The slight drawl to his voice reminded her of Deliverance….

“Isn’t it always?” she said without turning. Yes, the unemployment office was clearly the best place to ‘pick up chicks.’  She was fairly certain that, if she turned around, the word ‘loser’ would be etched across the man’s forehead. Not that she wasn’t in the same line. But that was a thought better left unexplored. Particularly on the day of the white hair. The morning had been depressing enough so far and it would likely be hours before the line reached the desired point.

And it was. It was well past noon when she finally signed the ‘Ok, give me money now’ papers. Then it was off to find some way to fill the fridge. With $25 to her name that wouldn’t be easy. But she had friends that usually took pity on her. Not that she didn’t return the favor, when she could. Not that she hadn’t earned it.

Skipping the bus, now that the sun had burned off the rain, she walked the blocks to Harvey’s restaurant. Harvey could be a real bastard when he wanted to be, which was most of the time, so waitresses didn’t last long. As a result, there was always work to be had at Harvey’s. And he usually paid cash.

“Hey Sunshine,” he bellowed as she entered. Ironic that; some cruel sense of humor her parents had had. Well, cruel…. “You’re late.”

“I don’t actually work here,” she replied, her automatic smile pretending to have a sense of ease she never actually felt. Stepping around the counter, she grabbed a stained apron off the shelf underneath. “Who quit today?”

Harvey huffed. “Not even two weeks notice. The bitch.”

“Easy big fellow.”  Harvey was close enough to five foot nothing to be below it. “Maybe if you had any manners, you could keep someone more than an hour.”

Another huff. “Just don’t mix the tables.”

Not that that was so hard. Of the dozen or so tables, two were occupied, and the counter was empty. Still, it was work. She headed off to the first table, Harvey whacking her behind as she passed. Anyone else would have had a knee to the groin for that but, despite his surly disposition, Harvey was harmless. Thank God for gay men.

The afternoon passed with a forgiving dullness. The unemployment office had eaten the morning away to well past the lunch hour. While that meant missing the height of tips, before dinner, she really wasn’t in the mood for socialization, smiles and faked pleasantries, so she didn’t miss the money that much. And dinner made up for it with a decent crowd, for a cheep greasy spoon. Mostly families with children in the early part of the evening and cheep or largely out of work men, likely on their way to the local bar, once the sun had set. It was still summer, though this far north it was hard to tell by the temperature, and so the sun set late. Harvey closed up shop around nine but she offered to help with clean-up, for an extra few bucks, and utter darkness awaited her when, finally, she left after ten.

Street lamps were not a priority in the fairly small middle of nowhere place she called home. She had come here when she had some money, but not enough (never enough), to stay with some distant relative she didn’t see anymore. But without money, as seemed to be the one consistency in her life, she was stuck. Trapped. Well, at least she had a little money now to buy food.

Well, at most she had a little money now to buy food. The buses didn’t run past 10:30pm and the closest grocery store was not close. As she lived in a less than attractive neighborhood it was better to stay off the streets after dark as much as possible. Of course she knew the place well enough to know where to avoid. But it was better not to take chances. The prison, about ten miles outside the city limits, took all the rejects from New York City and spit them out here when their time was through. That, plus the occasionally amusing corruption of the local politicians, made this a haven for low-level drug dealers and gangs. Half the city, if you could call it that, had a night-fall curfew. That meant the under-age drug dealers had to do their business during the day. It didn’t stop anything, just made it into shifts. Nice of the local bureaucrats, really, to give the hung-over adult low-life’s the chance to sleep in.

The route she followed to her home was the long way, but the short way passed right through the most… colorful part of town. Where the pizza delivery people no longer delivered. Even the cops avoided the place when they could. The neighborhood watch there was pretty much equivalent to ‘distant early warning’ and ‘duck and cover.’  Not that the long way was really that long. The whole city, at least the urbanized section, was maybe twenty miles, from end to end. Not pleasant to walk the entire distance, but possible. She walked a lot. It kept her thin. Not that she really needed anything other than poverty to keep her thin. But it made up for the Dr Pepper breakfast and late night snack. It was how she justified the high-octane version. Which was necessary considering her gag-reflex to the diet kind.

She was about to reach her personal detour point when it hit her, a prickling on the back of her neck and that unsettling feeling that she was not alone. She had learned long ago to trust such instincts. It had saved her once in her car, when she had had a car, when it warned her of an accident that hadn’t happened yet. She’d put on her seatbelt then, not her normal habit, and came out of the car totaling experience with nothing more than a bruise. She knew what was coming before it happened, saw it nearly detail for detail. Of course, she didn’t entirely believe it at the time, or she would have taken an alternate route and saved her car. But she believed it now. It told her when to move, thus avoiding two area crippling natural disasters, and it told her who not to trust, though she was still working on heeding that one, and it told her, now, that something… someone dangerous was behind her. Following her.

Her heart thumped uncomfortably against her ribcage. She’d met monsters before. She knew some personally. Too personally. Women who were angry enough to take it out, constantly, on the weak, usually their children, and men who were uninterested in the word ‘No.’ The first she only knew at a distance, anymore. But the second swarmed this place. She picked up the pace.

It… he… couldn’t be close. She sensed no emotion. There was a range to it. Usually reasonable proximity, but strong emotions could reach her from across a room. So, what… who-ever it was had to be further than a few blocks back. She itched to look over her shoulder, but didn’t dare.

Still a block from her regular turn-off, she passed under a streetlight and risked a quick glance back. The light behind her should have illuminated anyone close enough to see her, but there was nothing. Ok, just an overactive imagination here. Be clam. Less than a mile from home. But something persistent inside her was screaming “run!”

Her feet moved faster, without her permission. Her heart was racing and her breathing working its way to a pant. This was not good. She was panicking. Panicking was not good. Panicking tended to rob one of reason, just blow it away, quickly. But this… whatever it was… was getting closer. The fear was unbridled and unexplainable. Instinctively, she turned down a cross street to try to shake this invisible tail. But the more she swerved, the closer the thing got, as if it was anticipating her movements before she made them.

Then all reason was abandoned. Reason left, the coward it was, about the time she realized, comprehended, that she didn’t think… feel… this threat as a ‘who’ but a ‘what.’  That should have been the point of argument to calm her foolish mind. This place was small, run-down, and utterly uncivilized, but it was urban enough to have driven out anything like the bears and occasional mountain lions that were sometimes seen by hikers in the distant mountains. There were men here who barely fit the term, but her invisible sense, if not her more rational mind, always characterized them as a ‘who’ not ‘what,’ and she could usually see them before she sensed them. That sense had kept her from getting in the wrong car or agreeing to let the wrong man buy her a drink. But it was never this strong, this urgent. Life or death urgent.

That urgency, too, should have been, to some degree, calming. She’d spent the last year, or was it two, generally obsessed by death. Her own mostly, though the Discovery Channel had enough programs on killer meteor strikes, pandemic viruses, super volcanoes, and the effects of global warming to keep her occupied. Most days she hated her life. Hated it. Hate to the point of thinking better of throwing it away. Though she was never that focused, about anything, she did have a habit of taking excessive risks. If she followed the trend, she should have turned into this whatever it was. But the fear she felt over-powered all the rest and destroyed any sense of reason. Maybe it was the darkness, the inability to see the threat and identify it, that sparked this primal urge. Whatever it was, her feet no longer obeyed her and her thoughts were blank but for the constant chant of “run.”

Instinctively weaving through the streets, randomly changing direction, she lost all awareness of where she was or where she was going. Getting away was where she was going, or at least where everything in her wanted to go. Reasoning that out was, of course, completely impossible by this point. She was so preoccupied with the unknown danger behind her, that she completely missed the danger ahead, until it was on her.

She’d made a wrong turn somewhere, placing her smack in the middle of drug turf. One of the many dealer hangouts, a broken down place that was supposed to be a bar, had its door open and a small cluster of men stood outside to escape the closed in heat.

As she saw them, reason came back like a freight train, hitting her from behind. Abruptly she slowed her steps, trying to race through options on where to turn or how to back track. If she reversed her path, she would head right into the whatever it was, and her body wasn’t about to let her do that. She thought about crossing the street, but the light there was out, and if the could barely be called men were intent enough, they’d have a better shot at her in the dark. There was a turn-off, maybe a block up. If she could make it that far…

Where to start?

So I'm obsessed with vampires, like much of the free world seems lately, and I decided to write a book.  At the risk of jumping on the vampire bandwagon I came up with this story that I don't think anyone else is doing or has done.  From what I've read (and I've read too much) the two main 'mythologies' used in writing vampires is the supernatural mythology, where they're undead, magical creatures, or the disease mythology, where is a blood disease that twists the genetic make-up of the host and so explains all the cool powers in something that somewhat resembles science.  Sort of like science fiction, it can be close enough to nearly be plausible so it becomes more believable.  Well, I'm all about believable, so i decided to take it a step further.

I'm all about sexy too, which, to me, the modern vampire should be.  The true myth, whether its the spirit feeding on human spirits or the walking corpse, isn't always sexy.  Rotting walking bloated corpses with seeping gases and drips of blood at the corners of their mouths have a long way to go to reach sexy.  But Dracula, he was sexy.  Hell, he's still sexy, and its been over a hundred years.  That's what I want.  I wanted more of that.  Believable and sexy - with still enough mystery to be fantasy.  Because if its not fantasy, what's the point?  So I wrote a story I wanted to read - and I hope others will too.