One Night Burns (The Vampires of Livix, #1) (16 page)

Without active attention the projector and crystal ball faded to black.

I departed, puzzled at how he knew those things and remembered so much.

Definitely a wizard.

I returned to my apartment and rummaged through the television channels. Nothing still so I turned it off. I pulled out my Kindle and read more about that hero thief, she found skeletons hidden under the monastery. I read into the late afternoon. Sometime after that I fell asleep.

I woke startled from a nightmare to a dark room. I realized I had fallen asleep on the couch when my Kindle bounded off the blanket and landed on the area rug with a thump. Too dark to see the wall clock. The glowing digits on the microwave too far away and too tiny to help. No traffic noise came from the street outside so probably two or three or four in the morning.

I heard scratching. Like a cat or a dog on a door. Something pushed weakly against my apartment door until it made a slight tap hitting the jamb. As much noise as the light breeze blowing against it when the building entry door at the bottom of the stairs opened and closed. But my door kept moving. I rubbed my eyes, watching and listening and remaining still.

More scratching and bumping. A moan.

I rolled quickly and quietly off the couch. I looked around for weapons near me. A heavy bowl with wood and ceramic decorative balls on the coffee table seemed the handiest. I took one of the ceramic balls. I padded toward the door and peered through the peep hole. Nothing. The scratching came from my door. Something an inch and a quarter away from me. Here.

Courage.

I squeezed my hand around the ceramic ball as I lifted it in the air. I reached for the deadbolt latch and slowly turned the metal handle. The door leaned heavily into me and I jumped back. A body slumped prone half in and half out of my room. Too dark for me to see any details. I looked into the hall and didn’t see anyone else. Moans came from the body. I fumbled for the light switch.

“No … offfsss.” urged the body.

I knew that voice. No! No! No! Raced through my head. I grabbed some cloth to pull him in. The coat or shirt in my fingers felt tattered and slick. But I found a way to drag him in. After the boots on his feet bumped over the aluminum threshold I closed and locked the door.

I pulled him into the kitchen. He slid easier on the tile than he had on the carpet. I found my small flashlight under the sink. The dead batteries left the flashlight useless. Damn! Damn! Damn! I remembered the stub of a candle and matches I kept on a utility shelf so I got those and set the candle on the tile and lit it. A tiny flame but enough I could see by. Above the counters and especially from outside the apartment windows the flame and its light would be invisible. A trail of blood dragged from the door into the kitchen.

Garin lay on his back on the kitchen tile bleeding from too many wounds. I didn’t know what to do! Cut to the bone in too many places and his flesh hung in tatters and chunks. His stomach and intestines spilled out of a giant gash across his belly, held by one nearly severed hand feebly trying to poke it back in. His legs lay at strange and crooked angles while his thigh muscles quivered uncontrollably. Raspy breath fluttered under broken and sliced ribs. The smell of death. Half his face hung off his skull like a rubber Halloween mask. One good eye looked at me.

My hands shook. “I don’t know what to do!” My mind flashed at the scene of rescue workers pushing Bethany’s sheet covered gurney. I couldn’t lose him too!

His mouth opened wide and his fangs reflected clear and sharp in the dim light. His eye sharp and urgent. I could see him failing – already weakening from his movements at the door. He said he could only die from a severed head. But look at him! My heart ached. What could I to do? Did the legends, the movies, and the books give myth or truth? Could he heal from fresh human blood? How much would it take?

Would I survive?

I looked at those wickedly curled fangs. I peered down the length of his destroyed body. I put one hand at the top of his head to steady it and took my other wrist and jammed it against those teeth. Oh it hurt! I didn’t know if the venom worked like a mosquito injects to stop blood from coagulating or what exactly. But it warmed me and expanded in pleasure throughout my body. I wanted to give and give and give. The pace of my heartbeat quickened pumping these strange urges around and around in my body and my mind as it squirted and pulsed my blood down Garin’s throat. The feeling compelled me like an orgasm. My abdomen and pelvis burned on fire. My heart pounded as if it could burst from my chest. I clearly understood the attraction to vampires. The possible addiction. And the ragged danger.

His damaged scalp under my fingers wiggled and jiggled. Like my fingers pressed against a pile of squirming maggots! My eyes snapped open and by the lurid candle light I saw how he knitted together. My initial revulsion transformed into curiosity at the magic of it.

He became stronger. His hand came to my wrist and pushed it deeper onto his fangs. I cried out at the pain. But the pain rolled into more of whatever drug made me feel like this. I could die here and not care. But I did care. I wanted to live!

Garin pulled my wrist away from his fangs and clamped my arm tight. The blood flow stopped and my arm seemed to heal under his fingers. My arms and legs still shook with such weakness that I doubted I could get off my hands and knees. But I whispered, “What happened?”

“You saved me.” He kissed my lips, “I’m not sure how much time we have.”

I swooned like a quickly discharged battery. I felt both hot and simultaneously bursting with a cold sweat. Must be an adrenaline rush. I slumped back against the refrigerator. Its calm hum and soft warmth reassuring. “Tell me what happened to you.”

“Selfishly, I wanted to keep an eye on you. I hid in a tree in the parking lot where I could see both entrances to this building and your apartment window. Then five vampires attacked me.”

“The ones from Traverse City?”

“At least the cowboy. The others I didn’t recognize, though possibly the same.”

My legs shook less, becoming a little sturdier. My fingers still vibrated so I twisted them in my hair to calm them.

“I killed three. The first one fast. I still had my dagger. But that got cut away,” he rubbed his fully restored wrist, “Worried about you I flipped two into the dumpster. As they fought out I slammed the lid. Their heads pinched and popped off between the lid and the sharp edge of the steel bin.” He put his hands to the sides of his face, “If not for that great luck, I would not have frightened and scattered the other two.”

“Including the cowboy?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know if they are after me,” he touched my arm, “Or after you because of me or something with Bethany.” He cocked his ear, listening, then went back to the events, “But at that point I’d already been cut up so badly I leaked like a sieve. Fighting on will alone and afraid for you. But by the time I got to your door I could only scratch at it. Fearing I couldn’t protect you if they came back. Scared something had happened to you while they distracted me in the fight,” his head dropped, “And I couldn’t get through that door to check on you. A thin panel but as sturdy as a castle wall in my weakness.”

“I’m not safe here am I?”

“Sorry … no.”

“Where am I to live?”

“Sorry … I screwed it up,” his eyes teared, “they know you’re important to me.”

“How do we find out who they are? How can we be safe?”

His melancholy dropped as his thoughts came fast and under focus now, “Get your stuff.”

He helped me pack in the dark. I likely wouldn’t match any colors. Most I remembered from the running inventory I kept in my head. An old boyfriend said once in amazement at my near photographic inventory memory. Common among my friends. Shop a lot and you keep this inventory of fashions and colors and fabrics and styles. I used the same system of short hand that he did with car parts. I found a couple of my largest hooded sweatshirts and sweatpants and had Garin change. Funny to see block letters for “Cushy” across his rear. I had never worn that gift. The clothes stretched around him tightly but a better appearance than his blood soaked ones.

We rushed from the hallway to the front door and I could see the wax still burning. I dropped my bag and reached down to lift the guttering candle. I’d have to scrape the wax off the tile that spilled out a hot spot another day.

The giant triple pane glass window filling practically the whole front wall of my apartment shattered. Pieces of glass shot over top of me to hit and rebound from the refrigerator and the back cabinets and onto the front counter and bang around in the stainless steel sink on the peninsula I crouched behind. Glass fell around me like ice in a sleet storm.

I moved in too-slow motion. I lifted my head and looked into my living room. Garin struck a youngish girl vampire dressed in a black jumpsuit while a second, in a matching jumpsuit, launched at me. She hit the wall cabinets smashing the wooden doors. Macaroni and rice flashed out in a rain like the glass shards. Instinctively, I reached for the best weapon I knew. I slipped my fingers around the broad handle of my chef’s knife and swung it at the vampire fangs stretching toward me. The knife seemed exceptionally heavy and I saw why as I swung it around. The wood block hooked behind the drop part of the knife blade. The solid maple block collided with that mascaraed face of fangs redirecting the surprised creature to the tile. The knives had been a gift from an Aunt that worked in Germany for a summer after college. I found the wood block at a garage sale and the knives never fit right.

Before I could swing the block around again the creature came up and smacked my arm back. The block pulled my arm but released itself from the knife. The incredible strength of the vampire bent my head away from my shoulder. It seemed to whip its head back to strike like a cobra and ensure deep penetration of its fangs into my exposed neck and collarbone. As if backed by an intent on slicing through me with a claymore from shoulder directly to my pulsating heart.

I plunged the sharp chef’s knife deep into the chest of the vampire. The knife stopped penetrating when my knuckles hit the hard line of the vampire’s jumpsuit zipper, indenting the snaking line into my fingers. The vampire’s blood gushed out as she stumbled back – mostly in surprise but quickly switching to an evil grin, “Only a flesh wound, my pretty girl.” Her next lunge came more cautiously but still quick.

Garin appeared, standing on the counter. His boot bashed the side of the vampire’s head lifting its body up and back. It crashed again into the cabinets. More rice cascaded through the air like a grisly wedding. I needed some different food shopping habits.

Garin dropped to the floor and snatched the serrated bread-knife off the tiles and slashed through the neck of the vampire. Blood sloshed the counter and filled the sink. Bits of glass and rice became white star points in the crimson wash. The vampire body lay dead. The head rolled to my feet. I stepped back, my shoes crunching on broken glass and blood soaked macaroni and rice.

I heard movement in the living room but then Garin flipped over the counter and dispatched the recovering first vampire with the bread-knife. Fortunately out of my sight.

“They are not the ones I fought in the parking lot nor the ones we escaped from at Traverse City.”

“These are dressed completely different.” I scanned the athletic body but not even a logo on the jumpsuit, black as night and invisible in the darkness, though running toward brown with the expanding blood seeping from its fatal wounds, “What’s going on?”

“No idea. But we need to go.”

We left after changing into new clothes. The sounds of police sirens and flashing lights pushed us out. This time Garin’s sweatpants blazed ‘Cheeky’. Garin put me on his back and he dropped from the rear fire escape and faded into the shadows. Garin had left the truck parked near another building. We quickly got in and sped away.

“I thought only a water blade could kill a vampire. Not my kitchen knives.”

“Where did you get the knives?”

“From my Aunt who visited Germany.”

“That explains it. The water image of the Damascus steel pattern is the classic and most easily identified. But it’s in the metallurgy. Carbon steel in a sufficient mix with careful heat treatments give an edge that stays sharp. Some knife manufacturers do it correctly. A few European knife makers crafted swords as far back as the Vikings. Luckily you have a set of knives sufficiently sharp.”

“I can’t go back to my apartment can I?” I pushed at my sweatpants leg, “With the police and the dead bodies?”

“I already pinged the vampire police while we changed clothes. They will respond first. They’ll have the scene cleaned up and quiet the neighbors,” he glanced at me, “and they’ll get maintenance to board over the windows until a proper fix can be made.”

I looked at him while the street lights and other traffic signals washed across his face.

“But I can’t have you there without me. And I can’t leave you anywhere. Not until we know who is behind this.”

“I better call Marilyn and let her know I’ll need a few more days away from work. And tell my professor that I have some issues to resolve.”

-:- Thirteen -:-

The sun rose. We drove in a direction unfamiliar to me along a mile road away from town and passed horses and corn fields and houses with spaces between them. Garin turned the truck into the short stub of a driveway off the road and to a stout ironwork gate. The gate stood tall, clenched tight by polished granite sentries streaked with bright red veins that silently guarded the drive. The iron and stone barrier protected the end of a small asphalt driveway that ran like a black ribbon away from the road. Plum trees flanked the sides of the ribbon with blue-black fruit dangling like bats amid the branches.