Lary grimaced inspecting the raw flesh on his wrists. He tried in vain to force the bracelets over his hands as he stood on the bank of the river, his back to the turbulent water. The others, clustered together and faced him, encouraging him and making suggestions—except Galen, who was silent, watching everything, and Jo, who was too busy stealing glimpses of him to pay much attention to anything else, her mind and heart boggled and struggling to make sense of what just happened between them. Lary gave up on the shackles. “So, Galen, what’s your plan on—”
Galen grabbed Lary’s arm and yanked him into the huddle. His abrupt action surprised everyone. He was staring at something across the river. Jo followed his gaze.
Standing in the grey landscape on the opposite bank was a wraith-like man draped in black. His long arms pressed against the sides of his cylindrical body. Corn-colored hair streamed down the front of his black shirt and an old-fashioned black hat sat askew on his head. His face was as white as the bark of the aspen trees. Sunk deep into the flesh above his white cheek bones, were two black eyeballs.
“Reece,” Jo said out loud, thinking the blonde vampire had come back from the grave. “But it can’t be.”
“Who’s Reece?” Mike asked out of the side of his mouth, keeping his eyes on the figure.
“He’s the vampire we killed at the hunter’s cabin. We burned him and he exploded.”
Mike, Dove and Lary cut their eyes at her. Galen smirked, trying to mask the pride that flickered in his gaze.
The creature stood still, like a cardboard cutout or a carved statue.
“Ok, Mike,” Galen’s tone was low. “I guess we’re taking the trail.”
“Maybe it’s just some weird guy,” Dove said.
“No,” Galen said, “it’s one of them.”
“But—”
“Don’t argue,” Jo told her, placing a hand on her friend’s shoulder.
Galen stepped backwards, his eyes on the creature, his hand grasping the back of Jo’s arm. The group moved back with him, cautiously, stepping slowly, until he shouted, “Go!”
Like a spooked herd of cattle, they turned and took off. In Jo’s mind, the creature was right behind her with glowing eyes and slobbery fangs. Spindly fingers were reaching out to grab her—that freezing, unbreakable grip. She was sure it would latch onto her any second.
They broke out of the trees into the clearing and stopped dead.
Jo looked back, but nothing stirred, except the undulating breeze, weaving and whispering through the tree limbs. The trees towered imposingly, their leaves and needles shivering.
“Ready, guys?” Galen asked, preparing to make a dash across the meadow.
Dove held a hand up. “Just a sec.” She was standing behind Lary.
Lary had squatted down. He rubbed his hands over his peaked face, sliding them through the sweat. The chains swung back and forth.
“Lary, are you Ok?” Dove asked him, squeezing the back of his shoulders.
“Yeah, just give me a minute.” He glanced up at her, producing a weak grin.
Jo turned her eyes to Galen just in time to see his body stiffen and his mouth gape open.
“What the heck?” His eyes squinted.
She strained to see what he was glaring at: two figures ambling across the clearing. One was limping and one had an odd gait and was bobbing up and down. Their hands were in the air, waving back and forth.
“Great!” Galen kicked a rock and sent it bouncing through the grass.
“It’s Drew and April,” Jo announced. She was not excited to see them.
No one seemed glad to see them.
The two jogged to the group, in their lopsided fashion, as if they were meeting up with friends at a mall. April had subdued her curly hair by putting it in braids. She was clean and her leg bandaged properly. Drew had changed into another of his mismatched outfits, but he also looked fresh and scrubbed. Jo envied their cleanness.
“What’re you guys doing here?” Jo asked them, hugging April, breathing in her soapy aroma.
“We couldn’t wait any longer. We were so worried about you guys.”
“Where’s Ben?” Dove asked.
“If he’s smart, he stayed in the cabin,” Galen commented sourly, whipping the hair from his eye.
Mike and Lary looked at each other and said simultaneously, “He stayed in the cabin.”
“Are you guys crazy? You’re lucky you weren’t attacked,” Galen rebuked them. “We’ve got vampires—”
“Down, boy,” Drew said. “We brought a weapon.” He pulled a sling shot out of his back pocket. It was a crude homemade device built from a Y-shaped branch, duct tape and rubber bands.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Galen said sarcastically.
“Hey, I was slingshot champ of the Rocky Mountain YMCA—when I was a kid.”
Galen rolled his eyes. Drew struck a fighting pose, pulling back the rubber bands and taking aim at some unknown object across the clearing. Mike asked to see the slingshot.
Jo wasn’t interested in the weapon, but was looking up at the sky behind the hill. She sighed with tiredness, and great relief, as before her eyes the firmament turned a paler shade of blue. Dawn was coming. The answer to their prayers would be here soon. A sense of peace filled her. That one scrawny vampire wouldn’t be able to do much damage. They were all together, except for Ben—but he was safe. And Galen—she looked at him, keeping her face composed as her eyes beamed—he would protect them, because for some reason—and she didn’t care why—the creatures were afraid of him.
He was shaking his head at April and Drew, his lips twisted to one side. He took a few steps away from the group and turned his back to them, looking out across the open meadow.
April touched the rip in Jo’s shirt and frowned. “Jo, what happened?”
All eyes converged on Jo and instantly she was barraged with questions. They all had questions for each other and their voices tangled together. Among the gasps, there were even giggles.
“If we’re done with the happy reunion—we have company,” Galen’s cold voice sliced through the garble of talk.
Conversation stopped. The group turned and looked in the direction he was facing.
Drew nudged April. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”
“Ya think?” Galen snapped.
Jo counted seven creatures coming from the hill, headed into the clearing, five men and two women. They were dressed in various styles of dark clothing. One of the females wore a long flowing skirt that rippled behind her like a black flag. She was exactly how Jo had always pictured wicked witches, right down to her gaunt face and pointed chin. The other female had on a tight, blue dress that was very short, revealing knobby, dirt-blackened knees in the middle of her skeletal legs. She was barefoot. At first glance, she was pretty, but as she came closer, Jo could see the sallow skin and her filthy, brown hair, wild with clumps that stuck out everywhere. Bloodthirst was in her filmy eyes.
In the forefront of the group stood the man with the long, yellow hair, wearing the black hat. Jo gawked at him. She observed his wardrobe: black pants and a black shirt with long sleeves that had cuffs that covered his hands with frilly scallops. There were two rows of shiny gold islets at the top of the shirt. His chest was death-white behind a crisscross of black string that ran through the islets and partially closed-up the shirt. His hands were on his slim, bony hips. Fingernails, tapered like knives, stuck out of the black cuffs. They were red. He was almost a comical sight, dressed like a pirate wearing a hat from a later century. But Jo couldn’t laugh at him. The animosity in his black eyes chilled her to the bone.
The creatures stood close together, motionless, in the dusky light, like spectators at a funeral. They peered at Jo and her friends with dour faces and dead eyes. A thick quiet settled on the meadow. No one moved.
“Stay here,” Galen said.
“Wait.” Mike started to go with him.
Galen stuck out his hand. “It’s Ok. I’ll take care of it.” One sid
e of his mouth rose. He headed out.
The creature in the hat strode out to meet him. Jo’s chest grew tighter the closer the two came to each other.
“The sun’ll be up. Why are they doing this?” She asked in a whisper to no one in particular.
“They think they can get us before sunrise,” Mike answered.
“Why would they risk it?” April asked, with her shaky, squeaky voice.
“We know about them. They have to get rid of us now,” Lary answered her. His voice was solemn.
Jo searched the ground for a weapon—just in case.
Galen and the vampire walked to an imaginary line that left them a couple of feet apart. They stared coldly at each other. The creature glared at him through two inky slits in his upper face. He was as filthy as the others Jo had encountered and she was sure that Galen could smell the stink emanating from him.
“Get out of our way,” Galen commanded the vampire. His voice was deeper and colder than she had ever heard it.
The creature chuckled, way down in his throat, a sick and grating sound. “You have no power over us.”
“Try me,” Galen challenged him, squaring his body.
In less than a second, the creature backhanded Galen across the face. His body flew through the air in a grey-black blur and he landed on his side, rolling in the grass.
“Galen!” Jo cried. She ran to him. Mike and Lary were going with her.
Galen jumped up. “No!” He threw his palm up, while feeling his cheek with the back of his other hand.
They stopped in their tracks.
The blonde vampire pulled his thin lips back, displaying two rows of crooked, pointed teeth. A depraved grin on his face sent chills down Jo’s spine. The creatures behind him stirred, but stayed where they were, peering with deranged pleasure on the event, slurping and sniggering.
There wasn’t any cockiness on Galen’s face now. He looked bewildered and almost…betrayed. His arms hung limp from his slumped shoulders. He was frozen, staring at the vampire. Jo blinked in confusion. She had never seen him look like this when facing these demons: fearful, unsure. She was holding a stick of aspen in her sore, trembling hand. Mike had picked up a long branch. Lary was gripping his chains, ready to fight, though his face was blanched and moist.
Drew stood behind April and Dove with an arm on each ones’ shoulders. “Don’t worry girls,” he spoke with a quivering voice. All three were shaking. Terror widened their eyes.
The yellow-haired vampire leaned his head back. His mouth formed a circle of wrinkled, puckered flesh and he howled like a wolf. A sneer spread across his blood-less face. He lifted his arms out to his sides and curled and flexed his fingers to show off his crimson fingernails. The vampires behind him hissed.
“You see,” he said to Jo’s group, “your friend is useless—just like your faith. There’s no hope for you!” He cracked a strange, sharp laugh.
The hair on the back of Jo’s neck stood up. Dove and April jumped.
The creature cackled and pointed at Galen. “Failure!” He shouted. The words seem to land on Galen like a fallen tree. In his expression, Jo saw he was crushed.
She glared at the vampire, infuriated. She thought about the creature’s words: ‘no hope’. And she remembered something: Be strong and take heart, you who HOPE in the LORD. The words sprang from her heart where she had hidden them. Her jaw clinched. Her eyes flashed with honest anger as she eyed the creature, twisting the branch in her hands, oblivious to the pain.
The vampire smirked and gloated. The wicked laughter continued. Sardonic grins sat on the faces of the other creatures. A few of them smacked their lips, threads of drool leaching out of their mouths, onto their clothing, as they sized up the humans they were planning to devour.
She looked at Galen and his bruised, crestfallen face and back to the creature and his burning sneer. “Be strong and take heart, you who hope in the Lord,” she said under her breath. She whispered it over and over.
The vampire mystically singled her out. He set his snake-like eyes on hers. As if he could hear the scripture she was repeating, his eyes glowered at her, spewing hate. He ran his ragged red tongue across the spikes jutting from his gums. His lips moved, though he made no sound. ‘You’re dead’ they said to her. His eyes narrowed and he taunted her with his wicked laughter. Again, he pointed at Galen, still standing there like a lost child, and shrieked, “FAILURE!” Galen flinched and backed away.
Jo’s blood boiled. Adrenaline gushed through her veins like the wild river through the forest. She bolted from the group, straight at the vampire. Her friends cried out and Galen yelled for her to stop, but she couldn’t stop—she wouldn’t. She scooped a branch off the ground.
The vampire bared his mouthful of teeth. He opened his arms and waited for the attack. A sadistic scowl sat twisted on his horrific face.
The creatures behind him moved forward. Jo glimpsed them dispersing out of the corner of her eye, but she focused on the blonde one. She charged full speed at him, knowing he would jump at some point, and just as she reached him, he leapt into the sky. She launched the branch at him with all her might.
“Please, God!” She yelled out.
He snatched the stick out of the air with his hand and snapped it in two, flinging the pieces to the ground. He dropped back to the earth. Sparks flew from his eyes. As his feet touched the meadow, he lunged at Jo. She whipped an aspen stick from behind her back and plunged the jagged end into his chest. The stick ripped through his shirt and broke the skin underneath. He backpedaled. Jo went with him. He screamed a blood-curdling howl that shook her to her core, but she dared not let go—he would kill her. She cringed and yelled, but kept her hands around the stick, driving it forward with all the strength she had, pursuing the creature’s body as it stumbled backwards.
The vampire’s crazed, reddened eyes were bulging from their sockets. His fingernails slashed the top of her hands and forearms like razor blades, leaving thin cuts in her flesh that filled with blood, striping her arms. Jo ignored the stinging pain, clutching the stick, as the creature morphed into his true nature, his skin turning thin and bluish. He vomited mucous as he whipped his head back and forth in a frenzy to escape the impaling. He tore his shirt, ripping apart the black lacing, exposing a bony rib cage and an emaciated torso covered with slime. Cold blood gurgled out of the chest wound, from around the stake, covering Jo’s fingers. The sight of the blood and slime and the foul odor of the creature churned Jo’s stomach. Her muscles were fatigued; her hands cramped. The demon fell backwards to the ground and Jo fell with it, but she kept her grip on the stake in his chest. She squeezed her eyes shut as her body made contact with the vampire’s.
Jon’s attack—the sickening touch of his body on hers—flashed before her. Fury renewed her strength. She rammed the branch down harder. The creature howled. His arms flopped down into the dirt. His body shook savagely—and stopped. Jo scrambled away. His face contorted and twisted. There were burgundy-colored craters where his eyes had been. His flesh withered. In seconds, it disintegrated into a grey powder. The black cloth lay flat upon the ground, the frills of the sleeves flapping in the soft wind and the grey dust swirling like fog between the blades of grass.
Jo panted, staring at the empty clothing. She straightened her posture and tossed her hair behind her shoulder with a bloodied hand. “Now, tell me about hope.”
Chapter 37