You Better Run
There was a certain prestige that came with dating the son of the most powerful vampire in the city. The other humans looked up to me. Okay, maybe not all the humans but definitely all of the human girls in my eleventh grade class at Stormbrook High School. Once word had gotten out, thanks to a strategically leaked email, I was thrust to the top of the popularity totem pole. And it was nice to be doted on with the chivalry and charm that only an eighteenth century vamp can bestow on a girl.
I liked Alexander – perhaps I could have loved him someday as well had it not been for the threatening way that he sometimes looked at me, at my neck, with longing such as I’d never seen, let alone felt. There’s an intense allure that creeps inside the better judgment of a woman when a man needs her the way that Alex needed me. It was easy for my youthful mind to believe that he loved me, that he would protect me until the end of time, even from himself.
The sun had just dipped behind the trees on Fourth Avenue and Alex and I were walking hand in hand towards an abandoned storage shed by the old millhouse. There was to be a very rowdy, and very dangerous vampire party there that night which likely wouldn’t really get going for another four or five hours, but Alex wanted to get there early to spend some time alone with me. It always worried me when he wanted us to be alone together and yet, the fear in itself kept me saying yes. I was seventeen and therefore, invincible.
The hinge creaked loudly on the old metal door and it made a rumbling vibrational sound as Alex easily pulled it open. The storage shed was dark inside, being lit only by a number of candles at the far end. It looked much bigger inside than I had imagined, likely forty feet long, maybe more. Aside from a sizable hay stack close to the middle, the shed appeared empty. The scent of the fresh hay became stronger as we approached it. It was an earthy smell, not at all unpleasant, but there was something else in the air too.
At Alex’s persuasion, we laid over the heap of hay as he curled one arm around my waist, pushing his body against mine. I could feel his cool breath on my cheek as he gently pushed the fine blonde hairs from my face. He looked at me with starved intensity in his eyes. The intimacy was overwhelming. I could feel him caressing my very soul. I nearly cried as his lips met mine. Their coolness checked my passion – this was a vampire, not a teenaged boy trying to get in my pants.
I felt his tongue flick across the skin of my neck sending shivers through me in anticipation of things that I knew I could not let happen. His hand slid from my hair to my shoulder and in an instant my fiercely beating heart was emptied of passion and punched with adrenaline.
Alex pulled my arms roughly above my head, his weight pinning me to the prickly hay beneath. I swear his eye actually sparkled as a smile flitted across his face just before he gave a sharp, high-pitched whistle and dozens of bodies came sauntering out of the shadows towards us. A scream lodged itself in my windpipe as I struggled to make sense of what was happening. I began to recognize some of the faces. Vampires, all of them. Alex bared his glistening fangs and a glimmer of regret flashed before his eyes, but then it was gone – he was gone.
My scream finally dislodged itself just as the first prick of sharp incisors pierced my skin painfully, devoid of the euphoric sensation that I had always expected. Instinctively my knee came up and met his groin with enough force to momentarily buck his weight from me. I scrambled, heading for the heavy door we had come in but in an instant my path was blocked and I was forced to change direction. I leapt towards the back and the light of the candles and no one stopped me. They were playing with me! Even if they had been humans, I’d have been outnumbered and helpless but these were vamps in party mode on a Friday night with fresh human meat pumping them more and more full of blood lust with every adrenaline laced beat of my heart!
I picked up three candles and waved them in front of me like a pathetic torch. Immediately the fire burned out and the shed became just that much darker. I could hear snickers from the right.
“Get away from me! Everyone knows where I am tonight! You’re not going to get away with this!” I warned, but it was useless. No one knew where I was because at Alex’s suggestion I had lied to my parents about where I was going. By the time anyone realized that I was not at Lisa’s place, I’d be bled dry and probably eaten, by the looks of the bunch that surrounded me.
I started to cry. It was stupid and pointless but the tears flowed like liquid hope from my eyes, leaving me weak and defeated. I turned to look at Alex who was still creeping slowly towards me, now just three feet away. I could smell his cologne.
“Please Alex, don’t do this,” I sobbed. “I trusted you. I thought you loved me.”
Alex said nothing, though his eyes betrayed a twinge of emotion. In an instant he had pushed me up against the far wall of the shed, the sound of reverberating metal rang through my bones and I shivered. Again, I felt his needled teeth scrap over my skin before plunging into my neck, drawing out my life’s blood. My knees began to buckle and I shuddered behind the pain. Several more hands picked up my limp arms and ripped away the fabric that had been my favorite Gap shirt. I felt their teeth sink into my skin and the fresh wave of pain jolted me but there was not enough strength left in me to fight.
Alex sounded like a hurt animal, whining as he licked the wound that he had inflicted. He held me tight, not letting me slump down the wall as new vamps changed places with the first batch, taking their places at my ravaged arms. I could feel fangs bite savagely into the muscle of my calf and my eyes flew open in searing pain as I felt a chunk of flesh ripping away. The sound that escaped me was grotesque and I knew I was dying – only a dying person could produce a sound that genuinely full of sorrow, fear and agony.
Suddenly Alex’s hand flew into the air and all present stopped dead in their track, their noses rapidly sniffing the air. They looked crazed and more inhuman than I’d ever believed they could be. My arms had fallen to my sides when the vampires had let go and now Alex’s were the only cool hands holding me up.
“Go!” I heard him whisper urgently to the others and they immediately began moving quickly towards the exit. Through the blur of my tears I saw him look at me again and I was sure that the final blow was coming. As his teeth found my artery once again I knew that this time it was as much to end my suffering as it was to satiate his desire. It no longer hurt. I was numb and my breath was leaving me. He lowered me to the dirt-covered ground gently and once again pushed the hair back from my face with blood soaked fingers. Blood ran from the corners of his mouth, over his chin and dripped onto his white dress shirt looking like a perverse trophy of the night’s win.
My eyes were heavy, my body having given up the will to live. I strained to move my head just enough to see the damage that had been inflicted on my arms, both now just bloody torn vestiges of what was once young, soft and beautiful. A last tear slid down my dead pale cheek and I closed my eyes and began to anticipate the unknowns of death.
An explosion rocked my senses and light crashed behind my eye lids, gripping my last thread of consciousness. My head hit the ground with a cruel thud and forced one eye open long enough to see stars in the open sky above me. Screams could be heard in the distance and the sound of Alex’s voice shrieking in protest teased the back of my mind. I had to be imagining things.
A green haze settled over me and a feeling a cool blood rushing through my torn veins ignited my senses. I looked up again and saw Marleana Bast standing over me. Her appearance was that of a Goddess in my semi-conscious state. Waves of energy emanated from her entire body and flowed into me. I was alive. The most powerful Witch that Stormbrook had ever known was standing over me, healing me. I saw her motion to someone close by just before I fell into a deep sleep. It was nearly an entire day before I awoke to find myself in the safety of the Glowing Ember, a women’s shelter downtown run by my saviour, the Witch Ms. Bast.
Somehow I had expected to hear soothing words of support and concern from her when she noticed I was awake and came to sit on the edge of my bed. Cleary, I was a bad judge of character.
“I’m glad that you’re alive; I wasn’t sure that you could be saved. I’m not in the habit of saving the lives of moronic teenaged floosies like yourself but in this case, I just happened to be passing by and I smelled blood,” Marleana averted her eyes from mine and began briskly filing her nails. “I’ve been looking for a way to piss off the vamps for a while now. A girl’s got to have fun after all,” She said, a smile creeping into her cold expression. “After I annihilated the shed, I realized that you were still alive and I couldn’t just leave you there to die, although believe me, I thought about it.” Looking stern again, she gave me a piercing stare that scared me as much as any of the vampires of the night before.
“In a few days time, we’ll know if you’re a vamp. If it turns out that you are, then that makes you a threat to my territory and I’ll have to kill you. If you’re not, you can go on to live your life like none of this ever happened.”
I was cold, not just from her words but from blood loss. My head felt foggy while I tried to think of something to say. Ms. Bast got up from my bed and crossed the open expanse of the shelter towards her office. I struggled to make sense of my situation and within minutes, it all became painfully clear.
I sniffed the air and could easily detect at least a dozen different brands of perfume lingering in the air along with the scents of various foods, each scent more nauseating than the next. I looked at my arms and noticed that they were healing quite nicely and that I surprisingly had full motion of all my fingers. In the shed, I had wondered if I even still had all my fingers.
The light that shone down from the florescent fixtures above felt impossibly hot on my cold skin and I cowered under the white cotton sheet. I ran my tongue over my teeth. They needed brushing badly but as of yet, I wasn’t sporting any new fangs. I felt my neck. The wound was still there but it felt more like a scar than a scab. Thinking that I was probably well enough to leave on my own, I tossed off the sheet, slipped on my shoes and grabbed my purse that I was surprised to see sitting on the nightstand beside me. Someone had dressed me in a blue nightshirt and horrible grey track pants. I didn’t care, I was just thankful to not be donning a blood soaked pair of Levi’s and a not so fashionably ripped top. I turned around to head for the door and stopped short when Ms. Bast was standing just inches from me.
“Feeling better?” She asked snidely.
“Uh, yeah, I really am. I’m just gonna go now so, uh, thanks and I guess I’ll see you later then,” I said, sounding lame.
“I can smell him on you,” Marleana smiled. Her green eyes were glowing behind long dark lashes. “He’s dead you know. I killed him in order to give you back your blood; it had to come from somewhere,” She sounded almost defensive although the gleam in her eye showed that she was having fun.
“He didn’t turn me, I’m fine.” I replied, seeing where this was heading.
“In a few days, we’ll see. Remember, if you start biting people in my territory, you’ll be joining your beloved in the great ever-after. I’m giving you a head start,” Marleana began a slow count down from one hundred, sounding fiendishly playful. “Ninety-two, ninety-one, ninety.”
I turned so quickly that I nearly fell and I leaped for the door, reaching it as Ms. Bast reached eighty-eight. I could hear her laughing from the inside of the building as the door closed behind me. For a moment it seemed that her laughter lingered inside my head, tormenting me, frightening me. It was obvious to me as my feet hit the pavement with incredible speed that I was no longer human. I was turning into a vampire. In three days time the transformation would be complete and my nightmare would come true.
As I rounded the corner at the end of the street I could have sworn that I heard Marleana Bast reach the number one. I took off in a full out sprint with a fresh wave of fear and adrenaline to spur me on. I had just been savagely attacked by most of the city’s vampires, bled to the point of death, dragged back into the world of the living, only to find myself dead among them and being hunted by history’s most powerful Witch in some sadistic game of tag.
I had no teacher, only three days to learn what I was capable of and how to survive. For the last time I slowed, briefly allowing my mind to explore what this would mean to my reputation at school. Shrugging off the last remnant of my childish indulgence, I pushed into a full tilt run at speeds that I’d never known were possible. I didn’t stop until sunup.