Scarlet stood there and smiled back, feeling vindicated.
“You little witch,” Vivian said threateningly.
She approached, but now, Scarlet was completely unafraid. On the contrary, she felt a power unlike any she’d ever known, and welcomed the confrontation.
Vivian lunged at Scarlet, claws out, aiming right for her face. But before she could get close, several of her friends grabbed her from behind, pulling her back.
“Vivian, it’s not worth it,” her friend said.
More girls got between them, and slowly, reluctantly, Vivian backed away.
“You’re dead,” Vivian yelled, pointing at her.
Scarlet looked over to the sidelines, and saw Sage still there, watching her. Now, he had a small smile on his face.
The coach blew the whistle, and again the ball was put into play. One of Vivian’s friends managed to get it, and instead of moving it downfield, she passed it to Vivian, setting her up.
Vivian turned away from the goal and instead prepared to kick it directly at Scarlet.
But Scarlet, with her new reflexes, sensed it coming. As Vivian geared up to kick it at her, about ten yards away, Scarlet burst into action. With lightning speed, she raced for the ball and reached it before Vivian could even finish winding back her leg. She stole it right out from under her and ran with it downfield. Vivian kicked at nothing but air, and her leg went flying up and she fell right on her butt, humiliated.
By then, Scarlet was already far downfield. There was no one who could get within ten yards of her as she zigzagged between everyone deftly. Soon, it was just her and the goalie—and the goalie didn’t stand a chance. Scarlet wound up and kicked the ball so hard, it went past the goalie and into the net with force enough to lift the entire goal and send it crashing back, it’s metal frame crashing to the ground.
Everyone stood there frozen, hardly believing what they just witnessed.
“OMG, Scarlet?” Maria said as she came running up to her. “That was like—amazing. Like unreal. How did you do that?”
Scarlet stood there, hardly registering what had just happened. She’d been so caught up in the moment, she hardly understood it herself.
The coach blew the whistle and screamed out. “Gym is over! Everyone back to class!” The other girls filtered off the field slowly, giving Scarlet amazed looks.
“Nice kick, Scarlet,” a girl said admiringly.
“Yeah, nice kick weirdo freak,” came a snotty comment from one of the popular girls, as the group of them brushed passed her.
But Vivian now looked at Scarlet with something like fear, and she kept her distance, clustering with her friends. She glared at her, but this time she didn’t dare come anywhere near her. Scarlet realized, with satisfaction, that she must have shook them. Finally, she felt vindicated. Even if they did think she was a freak.
“OMG, he’s staring at me again,” came Maria’s voice.
Scarlet turned and followed Maria’s glance to the sidelines. There stood Sage, hands still in his pockets, a smile on his face, staring right at Scarlet.
“Am I imagining it, or is he really looking at me?” Maria asked.
Scarlet hardly knew what to say. As she stared back into his eyes, she found herself mesmerized, unable to look away.
“OMG, he’s coming over here!” Maria announced, and turned away, blushing. “Like, what do I say?”
Scarlet noticed it, too. He began to walk in their direction, and as he did, staring right at her all the while, she felt her heart begin to pound.
“Hey, nice goal!” suddenly came a voice from behind her.
Scarlet turned to see Blake standing there, holding a football, with two of his buddies, cheeks flushed.
Scarlet was overwhelmed—it was too much going on at once. She hardly knew which direction to turn. She looked back, over her shoulder, for Sage.
But when she turned, he was gone.
She was amazed. She didn’t know how it was possible. How could Sage have disappeared like that? There were nothing but open fields all around them, and nowhere to hide. How could he have just vanished?
Scarlet was mad at Blake for scaring him away.
Damn it, why had it all have to happen at once?
“Um…thanks,” she said, flustered.
“Anyway, like, a few us thought we’d cut for the day. Head down to the lake. You guys like, want to join?”
Scarlet was taken aback. She hadn’t expected this. She didn’t really know Blake’s friends well, and doubted Maria would want to go, since she never missed class. She was nervous at the idea of missing class, and of going herself—but she was more worried that if she said no, it would be like rejecting Blake. Wouldn’t that seal her fate for the dance?
“You mean cut class?” Maria asked, disapprovingly. “Like the rest of the day?”
“It’s no big deal,” one of Blake’s friend said. “There’s only a few classes left.”
“Well, I have a quiz next period,” Maria said. “I can’t. And we don’t cut class.”
“Whoa,” Blake’s friend said back, mocking her. “Excuse me. Goody-goody.”
“Come on Scarlet, let’s go,” Maria said, grabbing her wrist.
“I think it’s a great idea,” came a voice over Scarlet’s shoulder. “We’d love to go.” Scarlet cringed. She looked and saw Vivian standing there, with two of her popular friends, grinning back at Blake. Blake’s friends lit up at the sight of them.
“Awesome,” two of them said.
Blake himself looked unsure. After all, he’d invited Scarlet, hadn’t he? How dare Vivian come over and pretend like she was the one invited.
“Let’s go, Scarlet,” Maria said.
Scarlet stood there, torn. She didn’t want to cut class. That wasn’t her. At the same time, the thought of Blake hanging out with Vivian made her sick. This was her chance. After all, the dance was Friday. And if there was any chance of Blake’s asking her, she felt she had to do this.
“I’ll come,” she said to Blake.
Blake broke into a smile.
“Scarlet, seriously?” Maria said. “Your parents would kill you.” Scarlet turned to her.
“It’ll be fine. Like they said, the day’s basically over anyway. Come with me.” But Maria shook her head and stormed off without another word, clearly pissed.
Scarlet watched Maria leave. That left Scarlet all alone, with Blake and his friends—and Vivian, and these popular girls. The thought of it churned her stomach. But she felt like she had no choice.
She had to do what she had to do.
When Scarlet turned back around, the group was already several feet away, their backs to her, walking quickly across the fields, down towards the woods. Vivian, she noticed, had already stepped-up and locked Blake’s arms in one of hers, yanking him close to her, as they strutted off.
Scarlet swallowed hard. This was not going to be easy.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Caitlin sat in her office in the university library, elbow on her desk, head in her palm, poring over the book before her. She had spent all morning pulling rare books from the stacks, and now her desk was covered with them.
But these were not the usual books she worked on. When she’d arrived this morning, the first thing she had done was clear her desk of all her work books—and made room for a whole new set of books. She had walked into work today determined, obsessed with finding out exactly what was happening to her daughter and figuring out how to help her.
After her horrible argument with Scarlet the night before—the first argument she could ever remember the two of them having—Caitlin had a terrible night, tossing and turning with little sleep.
She kept thinking of Father McMullen, of their meeting. She recalled the look her husband and daughter had given her when she’d asked Scarlet to come to church. Caitlin couldn’t help feeling that her own family now hated and distrusted her.
Caitlin felt increasingly alone, and more and more she wondered if she was
losing her mind, imagining the whole thing. She desperately needed to find proof that she was right. That she was not crazy.
Caitlin had awakened determined to take action, and had figured the perfect plan, had realized at least one thing that she could do. She could use her expertise. She could go back to work and use all the library’s resources, read up on anything and everything related to vampirism. She could learn about its history, its origins, its rituals, and anything and everything even peripherally related to it, including all forms of magic and sorcery and occultism.
Caitlin had entered the library at seven AM, an hour before it opened, and had let herself in. She had walked down the empty lobby with a newfound energy, determined to use all her skills to understand and decode what was happening to Scarlet. Whether it was myth or fact, civilization had been recording vampire legends and stories for thousands of years, and surely, all the collective knowledge and wisdom of thousands of years had to contain something that could be of help to her.
Caitlin had crossed the corridors of the university’s ultra-modern library, the walls a sleek modern white, her shoes echoing on the marble floor beneath her. She’d felt a bit creepy walking through this huge empty structure, the only one in the building, but had put it out of her mind as she’d hurried up the steps, her shoes clicking as she went, and quickly lost herself in the stacks.
Luckily her library had a reputation for its vast collection of rare volumes, which is what had lured her to accept a job here. They also had a constant traveling exhibit, books on loan from other universities and collections; as fate would have it, October was “Occult Month,” and they had several additional volumes on loan that they normally didn’t—some of the rarest in the world, in fact.
Before Caitlin hit the stacks, she’d used their online catalogue system, doing her research, using her brilliant mind to immediately get an overview of the rarest and most important volumes in the field. Once she immersed herself in a topic like this, she could take it all in with dazzling speed, process and analyze it faster than just about anyone. As she expected, there were a lot of dubious and skeptical books in the occult genre—books that sounded hokey or were dismissed by scholars.
But there were a handful of titles that seemed to persist throughout the centuries, embraced by one generation after the next, and which even scholars could not dismiss so easily. Within an hour, she felt confident she had an overview of the dozen or so most important books in the field that she had to read.
As she searched the catalog, she was thrilled to see her library had, on hand, editions of most of them
Caitlin grabbed a cart and had dove into the stacks, looking up each book by its call number, and slowly adding them to her stack. Some of the books were harder to find than others, and she’d had to use a ladder and go to the top, dusty shelf, deeper in the stacks than she’d ever been. One book she found stuck between two books, and literally had to pry it out. Another book she couldn’t find anywhere—until she realized that it was on display in the front window, for the Occult Exhibit; she guiltily unlocked the glass, slid it back, reached in, and removed it, making a mental note to replace it as soon as possible, before anybody noticed.
She was beginning to feel a little better, a little more in control, as she filled her cart to overflowing, with 15 leather-bound books on the subject. Satisfied, she’d wheeled it back to her desk, cleared her other books, and covered it with these.
That was hours ago. It was after lunchtime, now, and Caitlin had not stopped reading for a second. Her back and joints were stiff, her eyes were hurting from the non-stop reading, and she had already sneezed way too many times from the dust.
The book she was reading now was a huge, oversized volume with thick leather binding, cracked along the spine. It probably weighed ten pounds, and was at least twelve inches wide and long. She had it opened to the middle of the book, and each page she turned crackled with age. The pages were thick, so much thicker than those of modern books, and yellow with age. It was a physically gorgeous volume, published in 1661, interspersed with hand-drawn illustrations, some of them in color. Caitlin turned the pages with the utmost care as she went, not wanting to deface it in any way.
Thus far her marathon reading session had been interesting, but she hadn’t found anything compelling enough to convince her. She read volumes on vampirism and occultism and witches and magic and spells, and now, she was deep into a treatise on demonology. It amazed her that for thousands of years, myths and legends of vampires had persisted, in every language, and every country. Amazingly, the entire world had its own vampire tales.
How was it possible? she wondered. Dozens of cultures and languages and countries, all with their own, independent, vampire stories? From the remotest corners of Africa, to the far corners of Russia—places and times where people had no way of communicating with each other—yet still, documenting the same exact stories. She was starting to feel convinced that vampirism was real.
Otherwise, how else could one explain it? It would have to be a huge coincidence.
Many of the vampire legends seemed to have a common theme: a vampire was created when someone died in a disturbing way, for example by murder, suicide, or disease—or when someone died a sudden, unexpected death. This was especially the case if the person was a low soul, such as a murderer or thief. Many of the stories had the vampire buried by the local villagers, only to have them visit the grave the next day and see it disrupted, the soil freshly overturned, the body still intact, not decomposing. In some stories, the corpse rose from the grave and attacked people; in others it stayed put, but the spirit of the deceased visited family and friends at night and tormented them. In many stories, the only way to kill the vampire was to drive a stake through its heart. But in older stories they did not use stakes—rather, they killed vampires before they could arise by burying corpses with bricks in their mouth, since they believed that evil spirits could enter a corpse through an open mouth.
Caitlin found herself getting lost, deeper and deeper in the world of vampire mythology and fables. It was becoming harder and harder for her to separate what was real from fantasy.
Nonetheless, the more she read, the more she felt validated, certain that there was something real to all this. She felt connected to history, to the centuries. Other people had experienced this before. It was not just her.
But she did not find what she was looking for. She didn’t know exactly what it was she needed to find, but she imagined that maybe it was some sort of ritual, or remedy, or ceremony, or service—something tangible and concrete that could help Scarlet. Transform her back to human.
Something in the literature that explicitly stated that there was a way to cure vampirism. To bring the afflicted back to normal.
But so far, she found nothing. The only thing close were the ways to stop a vampire for all time—to kill them for good. Sometimes, this was accompanied by an ancient funeral service. In fact, they would repeat the funeral service, three times, and that would put the vampire to rest for all time. Oddly, as Caitlin read that, she felt some sort of memory, some sort of connection to that. But she didn’t understand what.
But this was not what Caitlin wanted: she needed to heal Scarlet, not kill her.
As she finished yet another book and slid it aside, with still no mention of healing anywhere, she began to feel a sense of despair.
She lifted the final book on the stack, a small, leather-bound volume with a red spine, entitled De Fascino Libri Tres by Leonardo Vairo. Caitlin summoned her knowledge of Latin, and knew that translated to: Three Books of Charms, Spells and Sorceries.
Intrigued, she turned the cover, and saw that it was all in Latin. Luckily, her Latin was still good enough for her to translate in her head. The long title page read: “In which all the species and causes of spells are described and explained with the Philosophers and Theologians. With the ways to fight the illusions of Demons, and the refutation of the causes behind the power of Witchcraft. 1589.
>
Venice.”
Caitlin dove into the book, scanning through, turning the pages as fast as she could, looking for any mention of vampires, of how to heal or cure one, how to bring one back to normal life.
As she began to read, she suddenly slowed down. She went back and read it again. Then again.
Her heart started beating with hope. She could tell right away that this book was very different than the others. This, of all the books, felt the most real to her, the most scholarly, the most impartial. It wasn’t filled with hyperbole and myth and wild stories told by grandmothers. This one was written, paradoxically, by a bishop, in the 16th century. Also a doctor, he had seen dozens of inexplicable cases of corpses coming back to life—and of people transforming into vampires. He wrote with such medical detail, had documented every case so fastidiously, that Caitlin felt this volume was authentic.
As she kept reading, her hands trembling with excitement, she came across something that struck her as pure gold:
“It was not until the late spring, long after the ground had thawed, that I stumbled across something that put an end to our small village’s epidemic. It was a combination of certain herbs.
When used in conjunction with the ritual, it healed the vampire before my eyes. She went from hysterical, desperately seeking blood, hardly able to be chained to her bed, to the teenager we all once knew. As of this writing, many years later, she never returned to vampirism and remains in her perfect state. The remedy only works if the vampire in question has not yet fed, has not yet inflicted pain on a human being. Thus it is imperative that one catch the vampire in the early stages. To my knowledge, no such remedy is written or spoken of anywhere else. It is:
“Three pinches Rosemary; two pinches dill; one spoonful of crush lavender. Boil in one cup of water with black licorice for one hour, at a high boil. Leave it to cool overnight, then force the vampire in question to drink it in its entirety. Of course, this is useless without the ceremony that accompanies it. One must chant the ancient Latin script, used by the church used for thousands of years—”