Eight
The sound of her phone ringing jarred her out of a deep sleep. Erika groggily answered it with a grunt.
"Erika," said Adonis, "I'm sorry to wake you, but I need to come pick you up."
She blinked a few times and looked at the clock. "It's four in the morning," she mumbled. "What's so important that it couldn't wait until tonight?"
He paused, then said, "You aren't going to like it."
"I'm going to hang up," she said. "I think I'll like that."
She started to put the phone down when she heard him scream, "It's Mitch!"
Erika paused, then brought the phone back up. "What about him?" she asked, her voice neutral. In the weeks since her last conversation with Mitch, before his trip to his sister's wedding, she hadn't thought about him at all. Hearing his name made her realize how much she missed having someone other than Adonis around to talk to.
"It's better if I come pick you up. You have to see for yourself."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm assuming you're already at Papa's."
"Yeah. How soon before you can get here?"
"Ten minutes," she said, then hung up.
True to her word, ten minutes later she walked into the Papa's Pizza parking lot, slightly out of breath from having picked up her usual pace. Adonis was sitting in his beat up subcompact with the engine running, and she climbed into the relative warmth it offered. "This better be good," she said, lack of sleep and overall annoyance causing her words to lend their own heat to the car's atmosphere.
Adonis didn't say anything, he simply put the car into gear and started driving. Erika forced herself to calm down and look at him. Something about his demeanor was off. As if he'd gotten some really bad news, and had to be the one to break it to the world. "What's going on?" she asked.
"It's best if you see for yourself."
Panic raced through her mind. "Mitch isn't dead is he?"
Adonis shook his head. "No," he said, though the tone of his voice told her it wasn't much better. She slumped in her seat, and they rode the rest of the way to Mitch's house in silence.
Mitch lived in South Buffalo, in the upper half a two-story flat. The lights were off when they pulled up, which didn't necessarily ring any alarms in Erika's head since he was supposed to be out of town. Adonis turned the car off and said, "Let's go."
She reached out and grabbed his arm before he could leave. "It doesn't look like anyone's home," she said. "Are you sure he's not in Syracuse?"
"He's not," said Adonis grimly. "I don't think he ever left."
Erika let go of him, and got out of the car. The confusion remained as they walked to the front door and went inside. The landing area was as cold as it was outside, but even when they started creeping up the stairs to Mitch's flat, there wasn't any sense of a heater being on. She continued to see her breath in the dim light provided from the foyer. When they reached the landing, Adonis pushed on the door to the flat, and it opened without a sound.
Inside was the living room, cold and dark. "Are you sure he's here?" she whispered.
"He's right there," whispered Adonis. He pointed toward one of the corners shrouded in black, and Erika strained her eyes to see what he was seeing. After a moment, her eyes adjusted to the dim light coming from a street lamp outside the flat, and she could barely make out two figures on a love seat. At first she thought they were enjoying an intimate moment, and the thought of her voyeurism caused her to blush, but the more she saw the more she realized that wasn't the case.
The bottom figure was limp, and a lithe arm dangled lifelessly off the couch. The figure on top moved only slightly, embracing the figure beneath it as if it offered life itself. Despite her better sense, Erika stepped into the room and said, "Mitch?"
Adonis hissed at her but she ignored him. "Mitch," she said again when the figure didn't answer. The figure on top growled and turned to face her. She froze. It was Mitch. And his face was covered in blood. She took a step back, and an intense feeling of revulsion gripped her as she tried to fathom what she was seeing. "Mitch?" she squeaked.
The figure rose. "I guess the vampire is out of the coffin now," he said, a sadistic grin playing on his bloodstained lips. "Oh well. I enjoyed our time together Erika, but this supply," he gestured to the figure still lying limp on the love seat, "is running low, so I need a new source. I hope you don't mind."
Before she could speak, he rushed across the room, grabbed her arm, and threw her against the wall. The impact knocked the breath out of her, and she struggled to get to her knees as Mitch attacked again, this time kicking her into a cabinet against the far wall next to the love seat.
"Stop this Mitch," she heard Adonis say, "You don't know what she's capable of!"
Mitch stopped halfway across the room and turned to Adonis. "You stay out of this," he said with a growl. "I'll deal with you after I'm done with her." Then he turned his back on Adonis and went over to pick Erika off the floor. "See, all the vampires you've killed so far have made a mistake. They tried to feed off you before you were unconscious. Well, I know better." He tossed her into the dining room, where she landed with a thump on his table.
"Erika!" shouted Adonis. "Take him now! Now, now, now!"
Erika struggled to push the pain away so she could take his advice, but Mitch didn't give her a chance. He picked her up off the table, then slammed her back down into it. The wood split and it broke in two, dumping her to the floor in the process. Mitch laughed as he lorded over her. "Big, bad vampire killer," he taunted. "Not so big and bad when you're getting the crap beat out of you." He bent over to pick her up again, but Adonis came screaming into the room and tackled him.
"Now Erika!" he shouted before Mitch shut him up by slamming his head into the wall.
The break in Mitch's attack was enough though. Erik pushed the pain away, closed her eyes, focused her inner vision, and pushed a hand out at the oily figure in her mind. Mitch staggered, then growled and came at her again. As he reached her, she pushed out one last time, and the residue surrounding her mental image of Mitch disappeared. She opened her eyes to see a look of confused wonder on his face, before he crumpled to the ground in a heap.
She started to hyperventilate as she realize what she had done. She had killed the only person in the world whom she could have even deigned to call "friend". It wasn't some nameless stranger anymore. It was someone she knew. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she was too hurt, too tired, too numb to cry. Mitch was dead. She had killed him. And she couldn't even mourn the loss.
"It had to be done," said Adonis. Erika looked at him. He sat leaning against the wall next to the hole Mitch had created by ramming his head into it. Bits of drywall were stuck to Adonis' hair, but except for that he didn't look as if he had even gotten involved. His eyes darted from Mitch's body over to her and back again. "I never really bought his story about going to Syracuse, you see. But I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and hope my instincts were wrong. Earlier tonight I came over to find out for sure. That's when I saw him bringing his Feeder home." He flicked his chin at the motionless body on the love seat. "This is why it's important for you to use your ability," he said. "We have to kill them. We have to kill them all. They have to pay for what they've done."
Erika was still looking at him when the mistake occurred. It was subtle, and if she hadn't been looking she wouldn't have noticed. Adonis continued talking about the justice that needed to be doled out to the vampires of Buffalo, and as the rant grew he became increasingly agitated. The careful mask he had kept during his entire involvement with Erika, slipped.
Adonis' jaw unhinged.
It wasn't deliberate, and lasted all of a heartbeat, but Erika saw it, and immediately recognized what it meant.
"So how can you tell they're vampires if they don't attack you?" she had asked Mitch during their initial question and answer session concerning vampires.
"When the demon takes over, the only thing that changes physically is the jaw," he'd said during their fir
st training session. "It develops the ability to unhinge so that they can open their mouths wider when they feed. If you pay attention, you can catch it."
Her heart began to race as she glanced toward the living room. She knew she wouldn't be able to make it if she tried to escape. Adonis didn't know she knew, but he would if she bolted. So she forced her breathing back under control, and did what Adonis had been begging her to do for so long.
She used her ability.
She closed her eyes, and called up the mental image of Adonis. Unlike all the other vampires she had used her ability on, his image didn't come up as oily, but instead came up as a dark haze. She didn't know why she hadn't noticed it before, but then she recalled all her training sessions with Adonis. Every time he had coaxed her ability to greater lengths he had told her to focus on the vampire in front of him, all while standing a good distance behind her. Even if she had, she might not have noticed, but it was definitely different from the image of a normal human. The jaw told her he was a vampire, but he was nothing like them. She pushed at the image, and some of the haze retreated.
Adonis stopped talking. He'd felt her intrusion. "Erika," he said, undertones of fear lacing his voice, "what do you think you're doing."
"What you've always wanted me to do," she said. Her voice was calm. "Kill vampires."
"Wait!" he shouted, but it was too late. With a wave of her hand, the haze surrounding his image disappeared.
But when she opened her eyes to look at the body, she saw Adonis struggling to stand up. He was breathing heavily, as if he had just finished running a marathon, but it did little to diminish the look of hatred in his eyes. "You... you bitch!" he screamed. The exertion caused his knees to buckle, and he fell to the floor. "Do you know what you've done?"
Erika froze, fear and confusion causing her to hesitate. The mental image of Adonis was clean, but unlike all the other vampires she had killed, his host remained living. "What the hell are you?" she whispered.
Adonis still struggled to stand, but he said, "I was an outcast. All the others were dead when they turned. I wasn't. They made me, then discarded me like I was trash!"
She understood. His words helped her put it all together. Mitch's talk about how vampires were made had one addendum.
"Sometimes, if certain conditions are met, a vampire will be created without the host needing to die. Generally the person affected by this is corrupted to begin with, and with enough feedings it creates a live turn. They're weaker than normal vampires, and most of the normal ones will shun a living vampire since they don't measure up to the standards."
Adonis' Master had created him, and then pushed him out. Despite his condition, somehow he had managed to gain Mitch's trust, enough for him to tell Adonis about her. When Mitch had come to him looking for help, Adonis had seen his opening. The means to enact his revenge on every vampire to cross his path and treat him like the lowlife he was. It was all so very simple.
Erika pushed her fear away and used the wall to help her stand. She ached, the fight against Mitch had not been pleasant, but she had strength enough to get home and take care of herself. She leaned up against the wall and found her balance, then gingerly took a step toward the door.
"Where do you think you're going?" growled Adonis. He was standing too, though his breathing was still labored. "We're not done. You owe me for helping you."
"I'm not going to help you," she said. Her voice betrayed how exhausted she was, but she spoke with conviction. "You're the reason I have nightmares when I sleep. Your help has forced me to use and understand a power I don't want. Because of you, I had to kill the only person I ever considered a friend." She waved a hand at Mitch's body.
"Don't kid yourself," said Adonis, venom lacing his voice. "He was going to use you too. I was just more direct about how." His breathing was starting to get under control, so Erika knew she didn't have much time left.
"You would say that, wouldn't you? You're a very bad man Adonis. Mitch told me that only very bad men could ever be a part of a live turn. So it doesn't matter what your intentions are, I'm not going to help you." She turned to go, and winced when she put weight on her ankle.
"Then you're useless to me," he said. Then he rushed her.
Erika was ready though. When Adonis had started to make her nervous after his actions near the University, she had started putting bullets in the handgun Mitch had given her. Even after her feelings had shifted back to normal, she hadn't bothered to take it out of her coat. Mitch had told her early on that, "Everything happens for a reason." She had kept thinking about putting the gun away, but for some reason she had never gotten around to it. The moment Adonis moved, she knew what that reason was.
But while Adonis wasn't as fast as he would have been with vampire powers, he still managed to reach her before she could get the gun out. So as he bore her to the ground, she pushed her hand all the way in to her pocket, found the trigger, and pulled.
The closeness of their bodies muted the shots as Adonis bucked from the impact. One of the bullets found its way through his body and lodged itself into the ceiling. When they hit the ground, he rolled off her, clutching at the mess of blood and guts she had created. The gun Mitch had gotten her wasn't powerful, but the bullets were hollow point. At close range, they did a lot of damage. Her breathing was ragged as she backed up along the floor and watched Adonis die. It took a moment, but eventually his struggles ceased. Then she was the only living thing left in the flat.
For a moment, she stayed on the floor and wondered what she was going to do next. Buffalo cops were slow to respond, but eventually someone would be showing up to see what had happened. By then, she needed to be elsewhere. She pulled the gun out of her jacket and checked the magazine. One bullet left. She had an idea. There was even a chance it would work. She still had her gloves on. Her prints weren't going to show up when they inspected the scene. So the only thing she needed to do was offer a reason for the scene to exist. For one person to be shot to death, while another was relatively untouched.
She carefully made her way over to Mitch's body, mindful that some of Adonis' blood was on her jacket, and did her best to make sure none of it got on the floor. When she reached him, she said, "I'm sorry Mitch. For everything. I promise that I'll do my part. I'll fight the war. I wish I could have done more, I wish I could have helped you, because you deserve better." She paused, then added, "And you definitely don't deserve this." She sat Mitch up and put the gun in his hand, then maneuvered it so the barrel was in his mouth.
Then, with tears in her eyes that refused to fall, she pulled the trigger.
Nine
The vampire ran.
He tasted fear, perhaps for the first time since he had turned, and he didn't like it. So he ran. He'd heard the rumors, that vampires in Buffalo were disappearing at a rate never seen before. Even the ones who hid in plain sight. The ones who did their best to blend in with the humans, who only used their Feeders to sate their thirst. No one could explain it, and so Buffalo was fast becoming a ghost town where vampires were concerned.
The vampire ran.
He had ignored the warnings of his fellow demons and gone out to feed. He concentrated on the Kensington area, where if someone went missing it wouldn't raise a lot of eyebrows. He thought he had found someone, a girl walking on a side road, probably going home. He stalked her for a little while, even though she probably didn't know. The thrill of it gave his hunger an edge that would make his meal so much the better.
The vampire ran.
But when he went in for the kill, she turned around. Her face was painted. Half black, hidden in shadows, half white, gleaming eerily in the light of a nearby streetlamp. "I've been waiting for you," she said calmly. The vampire froze, and suddenly felt as if his world was falling apart. He stumbled back a few feet, and the feeling stopped, but all the stories surrounding the disappearance of vampires rose to the forefront of his mind. She took a step forward, her hand out, but he was already on the
move. He had always been a coward, even in life, so he didn't even hesitate as he reversed track and took off down the street.
"You run!" the girl shouted. "You run and tell all your friends to run too! Buffalo is my town now!"
The vampire ran, and didn't stop running until Buffalo was a distant memory.
THE END
About the Author
J. J. Westendarp lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex with his wife, two kids, and two basset hounds. He is an unapologetic Dallas Cowboys fan, loves to play games (video and board) when he gets a chance, and has an unhealthy obsession with Star Wars.
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