Blood of the Gods (The Vampire from Hell Part 5) (4 page)

Communication (Grace & Lynn)

***

“
Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me.
” ~ Sarah Bernhardt

***

When I made it to the coffee shop, I got a text.  Half expecting it to be Demetri, my heart dropped when I saw Lynn’s name pop up.  I waved to Sasha, the waitress.

“The usual?”

I nodded and headed to the back of the sitting area.  It was my morning ritual.  Most days after I arrived at the coffee shop, I’d ordered a black coffee with two creams.  Today, I politely thanked the waitress as she handed me my drink.  Instead of having our usual quick chat, I opened my laptop and searched for an internet connection.  Other people were lounging in comfy chairs.  Oblivious that a vampire had sat down beside them.  I still could not get over that realization. I greedily gulped down my coffee and thought about ordering an espresso for round two.  Yeah, I was a vampire, but I had been human at one point and caffeine is caffeine.  I still adored it.  It did not matter that blood satisfied my soul.  Caffeine ignited my brain.  If I tried to cut back on blood, like I often did, then my intake of caffeine increased.  And that was that.  As you may expect too, the hot liquid did not burn going down my throat.  I had blood boiling in my veins already.  What was a bit of hot coffee going to do to me?

“You’ve read that?  It’s really good.  But the chic dies in the end.”

I did not bat an eye when I heard the person’s comment.  I carried the paperback version of Rayea’s book, The Vampire from Hell like I had a bible in my possession.  The worn copy always remained in my backpack.  I had heard the punch line before and of course, I knew how the story ended.  But it wasn’t the end, I thought to myself as I looked up at the person spouting his drivel.

“Oh Grace, hello, how are you?”

I grimaced when I saw who it was.  T, one of Nathan’s best friends and one of my mortal enemies.  I elected not to let T get under my skin today as he has in the past.  I was done with the lot of them.  I was not that scared, innocent girl who clung to them anymore.  I had bigger friends; I had a real man who loved me, so what if he was an Angel of Death?  He still loved me.  He still wanted me.  He still valued my opinions and he was kind to me.  Nathan and his friends like T here?  Waste of space.  I wanted to drain every drop of blood from their drug-infected bodies, but I wanted Rayea by my side when I did it.  Revenge would be mine and hers.  Instead, I refrained from freaking out on T.  I smiled and nodded to him.

“T, you are looking well.  What’s new?”

“You know I can’t figure it out.  You don’t look the same.  You don’t act the same.  Nathan really misses you.  It’s been months.  Do you know that?”

“That’s adorable, but I’m not interested.  Why don’t you go order your coffee and forget you saw me here?”

“Forget you?  Hardly!  Nathan will want to know I saw you.  He will want to know everything!”

Fuck me,
I thought.  “I get that.”  I decided that it would be in T’s best interest and mine if he did not remember this moment in his life.  It was a decision of working a little magic on him or showing him into the bathroom and crushing his windpipe beneath my fangs.  I voted for the first option while I knew my fangs hoped I’d change my mind and go for the jugular with the second suggestion.

“Here,” I said to T.  “Let me show you this.  Have you seen this?”  I pointed to my laptop screen with every ounce my former human side could offer.  Fourteen months as a vampire was taking its toll on me.  As far as I was concerned I had been a vampire my entire life.  I did not need a transformation to tell me I was at home with my new self.  I knew and I loved the blood more than I’d care to admit.

“You have some interesting artifacts on that screen?  What’s so grand about it?” T asked as he moved in close to me.  The early afternoon sun shone on his face through the window and I felt his heart skip a beat as he leaned in near me.  I knew when the prey was frightened.  I felt it in my bones.  I did not have to learn it.  It was instinctual.  My entire vampire life was one sensory impulse after the other.  I had no regrets for my actions at all.  But the question if my maker would approve did float through my mind now and then.  Was I a ‘good’ vampire?

When I wrapped my long fingers around T’s hand, I felt his fear surface.  His eyes glistened and a few tears formed around the edges.  The fiery effect of my deadly vampire nature on this cool morning took control of his lukewarm blood.  It drilled its heat into his essence, right down to his beating heart.

“I would like to think that Nathan has forgotten me.  You know?”

He nodded.  He grimaced in freakish amazement as the sensation spread across his chest and up to his face.  A sickening fear of unimaginable horror clutched his hand in broad daylight and T did not understand it.  I did not understand it, but I knew with mortals I got my way.  I controlled any being in my grasp and T was in my clutches.

“Don’t speak to Nathan about me.  Don’t remember this.  Instead, recall a waiter spilling hot coffee on the floor, nearly hitting you in the face with a flying spoon or something.  Leave it alone, T.  Leave it be.”

As he fled the shop, I watched him go.  He’d probably call Nathan and explain to him some incoherent spew of insanity.  He’d mention my name and remember nothing about the encounter, giving Nathan nothing he could use to find me.”

I did not want to come across Nathan, not now or ever.  I was not afraid of him.  Instead, I was afraid of what I’d do to him if I had my hands around his neck.

In Rayea fashion, I cracked my neck, stretched my jawbone, low and proud, and unlocked my smartphone.  I read Lynn’s text.

“
Talk?
”

I wanted to go over a few notes I had made the night before.  I wanted to ignore the thirst rising in me and I wanted to text Lynn and tell her I was in traffic, a comment she would not believe.  Against all hope, I prayed she had a lead.  She was Rayea’s best friend, a human, but a very cool person who got things done.  We had become friends in the last months.  When I could not get Demetri or Blick to hear me, she’d listen to me and I really enjoyed that.  I needed someone to listen to me, especially these days.  And yeah, Lynn knew I was a vampire.  She knew Rayea was a vampire. 
Is
a vampire, I should say.  It was a secret Rayea had kept from all of her friends on Earth for a long time until Lynn and Ashton were kidnapped by Stephanie, Rayea’s sister, and taken to Hell.  After Rayea rescued them, I had confirmed what they had suspected. Granted, they had seemed pretty cool about the outlandish ordeal and thought having a friend, who was a vampire, was amazing.  Having two vampire friends was a bonus!  I was surprised by this because the events they retold to me, and then reading it in Rayea’s journal later, still freaked me out.  Rayea had almost killed Stephanie and had destroyed the blood god,
Typhean
.  Yeah, you read that right.  I really wish it had been the other way around, but I knew we’d find Stephanie again, if she was still alive.  I hoped Rayea was by my side when we did.  Anyways…as I was saying…

I motioned to Sasha for a refill and dialed Lynn’s number.

“You’re at it early.”

The sizzle in her voice never amazed me.  Lynn was intense, a hard-core personality who if you were lucky enough to be her friend you were on the ‘good list’ for the day.  If not, watch out.  I had been through more of Lynn’s rants at the universe than I wanted to recall.  “Couldn’t sleep.”

“I bet I know why.  Look, I may have something.  You online?” Lynn asked.

Like any respectable 21
st
century kid, I replied, “Always.”

“Cool.  I have a link to send you.  I think it’s from Rayea.  It’s a posting on a website called Deadit.”

I crushed my paper coffee cup and glared at my iPhone in disbelief.  I ended the call and clinched the phone as I waited for Lynn’s text message to come through.  When I did not see the text, I sent her a message instead.  I watched my fingers as they composed my next text and I attempted to remain cool and cool.

“Is the posting by her or about her?
  Is she alive?
”

“I think she is!  ALIVE!”

This time it was me who pulled a ‘Blick.’  I crunched my iPhone in my hands and saw the plastic, electronics, and glass fall on the table.
Fuck. 
I paid for my coffees and asked Sasha for a phone.  “It’s an emergency and my phone is broken.”  A true statement, I thought.

“Sure, hun.  Boyfriend troubles?  I see that all the time.  Smashed a few phones myself.  No worries.”  She smiled and pointed to the back where a landline phone hung on the wall.

“Can you meet me?  I’m at the coffee shop on Beach Street, Hyde and Beach Street.”  I did not start with any pleasantries to Lynn as I made my demands through the phone.

“You bet,” she said, then paused for a moment.  “The one by Macy’s and Saks’, across from Union Square?

“That’s it.  Can you be here in thirty minutes?”

“Fifteen!”

“Done.”

Deadness (Posting by Rayea)

***

“
Life is but a dream for the dead.
” ~ Gerard Way

***

Posting on Deadit.com

Title: Deadness

User Name: FirenFangs11

The best way to begin this posting is probably by starting with the first day I woke up which was a few days ago.  Being dead is a lot like sitting all by yourself, inside your own head.  No light.  No noises.  No interaction with others.  Nothing except blackness before your eyes.  Silence.  It is a far greater hell than I would ever want to wish on anyone, even my enemies.

Now as I gain access to this discussion board on the Internet, I can put my thoughts together.  I can share them with anyone who is out there.  I can make sense of what’s happening to me and what will become of me.  Officially, and unfortunately, all I know now is that I’m dead.  I still seem to be a vampire.  Not sure what is up with that.  Oh and I am going to have to pay for my sins.  More on that later.  For now I am awake, so I think that’s a good thing.

As I was saying, the deadness.  Probably the one thing that kept me going during my prison in darkness was the dreams.  The images of my being with a man I hope to meet someday.  Maybe I have met him before.  I don’t know.  In my dreams, he was taller than me by several inches.  I’d enjoy staring up into his gleaming gold eyes and tan complexion.  His black hair framed his face nicely, and I’d giggle to myself when his long bangs fell into his eyes because his hair seemed to annoy him, but not enough to cut it.  His voice was deep.  A sound I dare say comforted me.  When I dreamed of him, I felt safe in the darkness.  I’d spend hours staring off into my black abyss, and when sleep finally took me, he was there, holding me in his arms, or sitting with me, or listening to me talk.

He rarely spoke.  Sometimes he did, but I could not understand him.  Mostly he’d whisper in my ear or along the inside of my neck.  I did not really see him speak.  It was more like an awareness.  I heard his thoughts.  His touch was soft and warm, very inviting.  He was always so near to me when I dreamed of him.  Even though I did not know his name, I knew I could trust him.  I did not recognize him and that disappointed him.  I wish I did know him.  I enjoyed that feeling of contentment.  In my hole of despairing death, I clung to that one feeling.  Dare I say, I survived because of that one decision I had made, to trust the man in my dreams, for absolutely no reason except that I felt I could.  When you’re in a situation like this, isn’t going with your gut feeling the best course of action you have?

I stayed like that for months, or years, I suppose.  I don't really know how long it was.  I just know I woke up like this a few days ago.  I woke up to new challenges.  New realizations.  New situations.  A whole lot of questions, and a room filled with walking and talking skeletons.

The kicker?

I don’t know who I am.  I have no memory of anything before that first day.  I woke up in a dead void, a wasteland of skeletal people or creatures of every description that surrounded me.  Humans, wolves, dragons, lions, dogs, cats, large and small whose faces surfaced before my eyes, popping up in front of me like they were all, one at a time, trying to get a better view of a movie show being played.  I was the main attraction when I finally became alert and conscious.

“Now we can get some answers.”

“I'm not sure she'll know right off where they are.  How could she?”

“Where who is?” I asked a man who seemed to have the most authority in the group.  His face wasn’t completely bare of skin, but it was close.  Only half of the bottom part of it seemed covered with skin.  The remaining was a dull gray skull.  His skin was slowly decaying, dropping off to leave a bone structure of his empty face.  Staring through his vacant eye socket, I could see the darkness in the back of his head.  I struggled to remain calm and focus on the ‘good’ side of his face.  The one eye that remained in place, for now.  How many people wake up to a crowd of walking and talking skeletons eyeballing you? I felt a tightness in my throat.  I wondered if a bony hand held me in its grasp.  The feeling deepened.  Pressure surfaced behind my eyes and traveled down the front of my face to my shoulders.  I reached out for anything, anyone to keep me from falling.  My head swayed.  My mind whirled.  I collapsed on the floor.  I had no idea what was happening.

Finally, when I saw the crowd of skeletons leaning in closer, they screamed and pointed at me.  I realized that I had yelled at them.  I did not hear my own scream because I saw fire rush up into the air before me. 
Had I just breathed fire?

Clattering and clapping deafened my ears.  The crowd was cheering, rallying themselves into some kind of frenzy.  I still was the main attraction. 
This is worse than the blackness
, I thought.

“The vampire with the fire and fangs.  Just breathe.  You’re fine.” the man with half a face said.

"What is happening to me?" I examined my shoulders and face. 
Was I burning alive? Was I in Hell? What was going on?
I stopped asking questions when I finally felt vampire fangs, my very long vampire fangs, drop and fall over my lips. 
I was a vampire?

The man did not answer.  The crowd continued to enjoy my despair and confusion.  Voices reached out to me and invaded my brain.  After an extended period of silence, the noise was almost too much.

“She’s the one!”

“Finally a real way out!”

“Revenge will be ours!”

“Resurrection for the dead!”

I raised my hands in defiance and again flames shot forth.  "Oh my god! I'm so sorry!"

A few skeletons laughed and cackled as a few others stomped out the flames.  One small skeletal dog, on fire, ran in circles, chasing his tail in fright.  Really I could not tell if he was a dog or a wolf.  His bony body dismissed that distinction.

“Put him out please,” I begged the group.

They did not pay any attention to me until the man with the half face stood up.  He seemed much taller than the others, maybe seven-feet and dressed in a long faded black trench coat, black jeans, clunky black boots, and a faded cowboy hat.  He waved his hat over the crowd.  A rush of ice cold air filled the area and extinguished my flames.

I scrambled over to the dog that I had set on fire.  “Are you okay?” I did not think for a minute that the dog likely wouldn't be able to answer me.  I spoke to him as I would any human.  I never questioned this fact for a moment.

To my surprise, he did respond.  But first, he lavished me with kisses.  I didn't think I deserved that type of response because I had damaged his bone structure.  Now he was several colors darker and covered in soot.  Remaining fragments of skin hanging on his skeletal body had been burned away.  I had cleared away those decayed shreds of hanging flesh with the fire, a purification of sorts.  But the half faced man had saved him, not me.  He had put out the flames.

I tried to understand the dog’s rapid speech, but I could not.  Either my brain wasn't awake yet or I was close to panicking myself because I did not know where I was.  I resolved that it was probably a combination of both.

“Me too.  Me too.  Pure.  You good.  You too.  Good.  Yes.  Yes.  Lovely.  We.  You.  We to be.  Free.  You.  Help.  Woo hoo!”

I attempted to calm the dog down. I pulled him to my face, wrapping my hands around his lower jaw and the dome of his skeletal head.  “Shhhh,” I began.  “I didn’t mean to hurt you.  I'm so sorry I did that.”

A hush fell over the crowd.  All the walking skeletons stopped celebrating.  Their bony heads swiveled in my direction until their bodies turned too.  That affect made my skin crawl a bit.  The man stood nearby.  “Now everyone, let us stay calm.  Yes, after twelve months, she is finally awake and yes, we are all anxious to see what this means, but we have a long way to go.  This is only the beginning.”

“She speaks concern,” one skeleton replied.

“She is kind!”

“She is nice.  Nice, I tell you!” another one said.

The dog broke our embrace.  He stood up on his bony back legs, punched his paws in the air at me as if he was a giant grizzly bear.  “You cleanse.  You nice.  Thank you!  Much thanks!”  He returned to standing on his four legs and proceeded to race around my legs.

“Will he be okay?” I asked the man.

I felt his presence as he stood near us.  He put his hand on my shoulder, as a long lost friend would do.  I felt his icy energy radiate down my arm.

“Fire burns away the dead flesh,” the man said.  We watched on as the dog ran through the crowd of skeletons.  When the man wrapped his arm around me and pulled me into a half sort of hug, I felt like I had been thrown into a freezer.  The icy sensations of his touch seeped into my flesh.  I tried my best to not shiver in his embrace, but his closeness creeped me out.

“The decaying flesh itches and annoys them, especially the young ones.  Unfortunately, I do not possess your gift.  I cannot burn their discomfort away as you just did.

As the dog flew to my side again, the man stepped away from me.  “You made a friend for life,” he chuckled.

Trying to ignore how strange the man’s icy touch had felt, I leaned over and placed my hand on the dog’s forehead.  I wanted to soothe his rising excitement.  I could tell he was starting to freak out, and the excitement was about to overload his system.  I feared he'd spontaneously combust or something.  Comforting him seemed a natural thing to do.

“You my friend!  We get out of here.  You see!  Jax your friend.”

A few more dogs, large and dragging decayed flesh beneath their paws, slowly approached me.

I sat down on the floor and crossed my legs.  This way, I thought, I could make the group of dogs understand that I was a friend.

The small dog whose bones I had just “polished” snuggled up beside me.  He lifted his head up and barked at the approaching larger dogs.

“Tell me your name again.” I rubbed his bony head over and over, fast at first, then slower when I began to relax and felt his body do the same.

"J-j-j-jah-jah-ack."

"Jax?  Jack or Jax?" I asked.

I glanced up to seeing him wagging his bony tale.  The digits rattled like a rattlesnake's tail as he moved it.  As the large dogs encircled us, he growled at them with a warning.  He whirled around to me and yelled his name.  “Jax!”

Finally understanding what he meant, I repeated his name.  “Jax, I’m their friend too.  Let’s all be friends.  Okay?  Behave yourself.”  I invited the other skeleton dogs to join us.  They too wanted to be ‘cleansed’ so I thought caressing them would solve the problem.  As I gave each one of them some attention, rubbing them as if they all had the normal appearance of a canine, a gleaming white light began radiating from my hands, encircling them.  The decayed flesh evaporated or sizzled away in a fury of bright light and smoke, followed by a rapid blue colored electricity that swarmed around them.  As I rubbed the dogs, the energy surging in my hands grew hotter than fire, a white hot of immense power.  It poured from my hands and encircled the dogs.  Both lights of power fought each other, whirling around their bodies and faces until every trace of dead flesh was stripped away.  Jax barked and ran around me in a circle.  The other skeletons looked on in amazement as I too tried to understand what I had just done.  Each animal stood before us, their skeletal bodies gleaming as white as snow.

I glanced at the man with half a face as I stood up.  I fidgeted with my clothes, acting like I was dusting myself off, but I knew a wave of awesome power was about to hit me from the inside.  I noticed my attire wasn’t too glamorous.  A pair of black boots, faded jeans, a fitted grey t-shirt.  Nothing to write home about.  On the inside, my body was fueling itself of what I had just consumed through my hands. 
What kind of vampire am I?
I wondered.  My legs felt like jelly for a moment.  Then a wave of intense warmth rushed through my entire body, starting at the center of my stomach and washing over me.  I thought about sitting down again.  Surely I wouldn’t be able to hold the power in.  I gritted my teeth, refusing to let my fangs plunge forth.  The energy I had just consumed from the skeletal dogs was astounding.  Flesh and matter, and bits of deadness.  My hands had taken it in.  Evaporated any remaining decay from them.  Glancing down at my hands again, I wondered if any flesh remained on them. 
What kind of a vampire am I really?
  Flames one minute.  White hot electricity the next?  My skin glowed a bit.  Swirls of bluish waves still whirled around my hands and up my arms.  I remained still, closing my eyes for a moment, hoping I could disappear. 
Please let this stop.

“She the one.  Look!”

My eyes flew open when I heard Jax’s words.  The wave of intense power had lessened and I felt normal again.

Just as I had cleansed the dogs free of their decayed prison of flesh, it also had unlocked some other transformation.  The man with half a face stood over the dogs.  He pulled out antique revolver from the inside pocket of his long worn-out coat, tipped his cowboy hat backwards with the barrel, and then touched each animal’s back gently with it three times.  The name ‘Icy Western Godfather’ filtered into my head and I choked down the giggle. 
Where did that come from?
  I expected the man to shoot each animal in the back of the head with his gun.  Luckily he did not.