Urban Fantasy 2x04 "A House of Lost Boys part 2"

Here's the next chapter of my vampire sequel novel. The first book is on amazon, or available in the subscription on my patreon page for only a dollar. The other chapters are below. Each chapter is like an epiosde of a TV show, or at least that's the hope. enjoy!

Previously on a Suburban Fantasy and Urban Fantasy (Book 1 and 2 respectively)

Rachel Lin Smith was just a quiet shy teenage girl, until a serial killing vampire turned her into a monster like him against her will. Getting away, she was able to cope with the changes in her life thanks to the help of her geeky friends Ian, Andrew, Bilal, and Jason. They shared adventures pitted against time traveling mayors and Toronto gangs before finally stopping Rachel's Ex from ever hurting anyone ever again.

A new kid, Jon, has moved into town with his seeming bodyguard Erika. They're both more than they seem and Erika got in a fight with Rachel after both women came to the aid of a mother in need. It turns out there's a new vampire infestation in town, and a lot of secrets that need to come out. They came out. Erika and Jon are both hunted by the government, escaped experiments with a type of Synesthesia, a real world mental condition. There isn't much time to linger on that however, as Rachel's brother finds himself in the very den of child vampires that Rachel has tasked herself with stopping.

CHAPTER FOUR
“A House of Lost Boys Part 2”

Released on www.patreon.com/99geek (August 2017)

Hana yawned, covering her mouth in embarrassment as she stepped back from the large corkboard she had been rearranging. She looked over her shoulder at Detective Daniels, afraid the small young woman would judge her for getting tired working on such a high priority case, but the detective only gave out a larger yawn of her own.

“Sorry,” Dae Daniels said to Hana, taking a swig of her hours old coffee. The look on her face implied it mustn’t have been very warm. “I’ve been up since one AM,” she explained not for the first time after begrudgingly swallowing her gulp, and dumping her cup in the trash. A look at the clock told Hana it was now a little after five pm.

Detective Daniels seemed more than capable at her job, a stark contrast to the number of other officers Hana had met during her time spent at Oakville’s precinct that day. Daniels had worked under cover for teenage gangs, often helped by her incredibly youthful appearance. She described the experience as being a little 21 Jumpstreet, but Hana had no idea what she was talking about.

Still, she’d worked multiple cases with missing children, and dealing with children who ran away, or were otherwise trouble, and that made her the key person for the case. “Every other cop in this damned precinct only knows how to write a parking ticket,” Dae had told Hana.

Hana had never been tall, but even compared to her this woman was short, and tiny. She had an adorable little face, and the prettiest eyes. It was no wonder she was so good at undercover work, she looked no older than fourteen. The only hint at an older age was a lip ring on her lip, something Hana hoped no mom would allow a fourteen year old to get. Also when she spoke it was with a wisdom no fourteen year old could possess. When other officers came by, it was often with coffee and donuts, older men and women showing nothing but respect and support to the case even though they all had nothing useful to add.

It wasn’t just the officers that were inadequate for the job. Spending the whole afternoon there had been enough for Hana to realize the entire Oakville precinct was impractical. Like the city hall, the walls were all glass and built to the design of an open concept that was more focused on looking good than it was at being practical. Work space was hard to come by, computers were all set up at standing desks with no chairs, and the meeting room they were using to spread out the evidence of their case was built with state of the art tech like projectors and holograms, but none of it worked so Detective Daniels had wheeled in an old corkboard from storage.

“So we’re sure she’s the first?” Hana asked pointing to a sweet young brown skinned girl she’d placed at the top of the pyramid. For all of Dae Daniel’s wisdom and experience, she didn’t seem to have much in the way of organizational skills and that was something Hana had no problem bringing to the table. Anything to be helpful.

Detective Daniels nodded, sitting up on the desk she was leaning against. Her legs dangled off the edge. “Twenty four months prior from her disappearance,” Dae told Hana, “There were three missing child cases in Oakville. They were all resolved.” She lifted a stapler off the table near her and passed the folder underneath towards Hana.

Hana grabbed it, and looked inside. It was detailed notes on the three children, kept likely just in case they were somehow connected. The one girl had been reported with her sister by the mother, found later that night to have been out with a large group of boys found in a van by the Bronte Harbour.

“And that was the last kid,” Dae said, looking at the kid at the very bottom of the pyramid. “Billy. Reported missing a little over a day ago.” All the pictures of the kids filled the corkboard, there were so many, and the disappearances weren’t showing any sign of slowing down.

“Went to the same school as my son,” Hana said, reading the boy’s portfolio. “You know I think I remember Jacob mentioning something about a Billy in his class.” This was starting to get a little too close to her family.

Dae yawned again. She’d been woken up that morning to a disturbance downtown. Some sort of fight had broken out in an abandoned building. Dae had been called down by the officer on duty that night when a child’s footprint had been found in the ash and rubble of the now burnt down building. She’d told Hana that there was little more she could get from the rubble besides that kids had been there. Possibly the missing ones, possibly any children.

“More kids will go missing,” Dae told Hana. “And then we’re going to need more corkboard.”

Hana shook her head. “We should have people out there.”

“Where?” Dae asked. “Covering the entire town? Oakville is large, sprawled out. We don’t have the resources and we don’t even know where to start.”

“Well then,” Hana said, having a sudden idea, “perhaps our next goal should be marking the locations of each disappearance on a map and see if we can narrow down our search parameters.” It was something the detective should have thought about long ago, but seeing as she was the only person on the case, how could Hana blame her? She was in way over her head.

Dae nodded an agreement with her. “I’ll get us a map,” she said, raising a finger quickly. “Tomorrow. I’ve had four hours sleep in three days. I’m gonna catch a few more hours before the sun goes down and everything goes all Stranger Things around here again.”

“Right,” Hana said to the detective as she slid off the desk to leave. “I’ll just stay here a little longer and go home as well. You’ll wake me if you have to go out tonight?”

“Best to sleep by the phone then, Mrs. Lin,” She said heading to the door. “It was a pleasure meeting you. And your help is more than welcome. Damned needed even.”

“Well the mayor’s office wants to show you that we have our full support behind you,” Hana lied to her, unable to say the words with any enthusiasm.

The detective stopped at the door, and Hana turned from the corkboard to see a third woman blocking Dae’s way. This woman was tall with long black hair tied up in an untidy bun. She was pale with slightly Asian features, almost looked like an older version of Hana’s own daughter.

“Can I quote you on that?” the woman said in a deep voice, leaning against the doorway, and looking past Dae’s shoulder at Hana. “Isobel Teung, Voice news.” Her accent had the hint of British but it wasn’t overwhelming. Hana could tell this woman was very well travelled.

“Damn. I hate reporters,” Detective Dae Daniels muttered, trying to slide herself past the young lady, but Isobel refused to move.

“I haven’t heard of you guys,” Hana admitted sheepishly.

“We get that a lot,” Isobel told the both of them. “But we’re not like the others. We’re a largely liberal news outlet trying to bring people unbiased journalism.”

“Unbiased liberal journalism?” Hana asked, as Dae slipped under Isobel’s arm and gave her a triumphant look from outside the room. “Isn’t that an oxymoron.”

“We’d like to think conservatism is an oxymoron,” Isobel said sharply. Hana pursed her lips.

“You sure you’re not my daughter from the future?” she asked, that defiant tone sounding awfully familiar.

“Pretty sure,” Isobel said quickly. “I’m here about all the missing children. I’ve already been by the protests outside city hall. I wanted to report on the efforts being done to find these children and return them safely to their families.”

“You have to understand Oakville has never dealt with any sort of tragedy on this scale before,” Hana told the reporter, looking back at the corkboard. Every one of those faces that she tried to look in the eyes only gave her a sinking feeling in her stomach.

“Is that on the record?” Isobel asked, joining Hana at the corkboard. “My god, this many kids? Who’s taking them all?”

“We don’t even know they are getting taken,” Dae said from the doorway, having still not left yet. “They could all be running away.”

“All these kids?” Isobel said in disbelief, looking at the corkboard.

“There might be a ring leader, someone with the power to motivate these other kids to leave their families and join him,” Dae explained.

“Some pervert?” Isobel asked with disgust.

“Maybe,” Dae said. “But for this many kids I feel it would have to be someone like them. He or she makes them feel like they are the same somehow. Provides for them some bond of family that’s stronger than the bond they have to their actual families.”

“Some of the families have been found dead,” Isobel said, leafing through pages of her note pad.

“Yes,” Dae said, nodding her head. “But not all.”

“Some brutally,” Isobel continued. “Most with all the blood drained from their bodies.”

“But yet in almost all cases of bodies being bled dry, I could find no signs of them being strung up in anyway.” Dae said. “I examined many of the bodies personally. The fact I don’t have time to sleep much anymore is more a blessing now than a curse.”

“But she has to go out tonight on patrol,” Hana said, nodding at Dae to finally take her leave. “She was hoping to catch a little sleep before then.”

“Seems fair to me,” Isobel said, crossing her arms, still exploring the cork board with her eyes, and taking pictures of it with her phone. “Seems like you guys could use more hands.”

“As I said,” Hana repeated, “Oakville has never dealt with anything like this. It’s a small rich town that’s never had to worry about any serious crimes. What we need to do is start looking outside our police force for someone with strong investigation and deduction skills.”

“Where are you going to find someone like that outside the police force?” Isobel asked, and Hana looked at her with a raised eyebrow. The mayor’s assistant had someone in mind.

*      *     *

“And the tagline for the movie would be ‘What if Hitler was wrong, and the Aryan race wasn’t human at all.” Andrew was trying to sell Mike on his new horror movie idea, even as they were carrying the large screen TV from Mike’s back seat to the door of Jon’s townhouse. He released the TV with one hand to knock, balancing the device precariously against his knee. The door opened before his knuckles could even hit the frame, and it was Gordon.

“He has a terrible new idea for a movie,” Mike told Gordon, as Gordon stepped aside to let them in.

“It’s not terrible!” Andrew insisted. “You know how the third Reich came from Germany?”

“Oh god,” Gordon groaned.

“Well what if the Fourth Reich comes from the stars!”

Gordon facepalmed into his dark skinned hand. “That’s so offensive.”

Andrew wasn’t going to deny that. “But scary,” he said. “I’m telling you, a movie about invading space Nazis would make all the money.”

Gordon leaned in on the TV they were carrying, and pushed some sort of dongle into one of the ports. He stretched a small cord from the device to another port. One seemed to be USB, the other was HDMI.

“What is that?” Andrew asked as Gordon led them into the living room and had them put the TV down to be the main TV for the room.

“I’m fitting one on every screen that comes in,” Gordon said, and behind him Andrew could see Bilal and Ian carrying computer screens into the basement. “Wireless display adapters. We’ll be able to send feed from our computers to any screen in the house.” He moved to add more dongles to the screens the other boys were bringing in before they went downstairs. Andrew knew Gordon was planning to turn that place into his new tech den, after his mother had gone on a rampage through his last one.

Andrew didn’t yet know exactly what Gordon had planned for down there, as the genius had been keeping his designs in his head. But Andrew appreciated that he was generously spreading the tech out through the rest of their new HQ and not hoarding it all himself.

“This is gonna be the coolest hangout spot ever,” Andrew said out loud to no one in particular. Jon was just coming downstairs from where Andrew presumed his room was.

“Coolest hangout spot?” Jon repeated with a raise of his reddish eyebrow from the stairs.

“Sorry,” Andrew corrected himself. “This is gonna be the best headquarters ever to launch our fight against the supernatural.”

“The most important thing,” Ian said, rejoining them from the basement, “Is that there’s no adult supervision.”

“You’ll have to forgive Ian here,” Gordon said, heading for the stairs Ian had just come from. “He doesn’t get out much. Better have put those screens where I said, though.”

Ian looked around, as if for somewhere to sit, and then gave up and flopped himself onto the floor.

“I’ve seen a lot of things the past few years,” Jon said, coming down the rest of the stairs to join them in the living room. “But every weird thing I’ve seen has been explainable with science. I’ve never met anything supernatural.”

“You’ve met Rachel,” Ian said, from his crosslegged seat on the floor.

Jon laughed. “But she’s not really a vampire, right?”

Andrew, Ian, and Mike all raised their eyebrows at him. Mike was crouched behind the TV trying to figure out where to plug in the old Xbox 360 they’d grabbed from Andrew’s place.

“Here,” Andrew said to Mike, not even bothering to quantify Jon’s question with a response. “I got that.” He slid in and found the needed port no problem. If only part of fighting the supernatural was setting up techy equipment, Andrew would be their heavy hitter.

“Trust me,” Erika’s voice said from the back door, as she came in carrying a microwave they’d grabbed from Andrew’s basement. “Rachel is absolutely a vampire.” She set the Microwave down in the kitchen, to which the living room shared space with. They all had a lot of junk in the respective basements their parents wouldn’t miss that would work perfect at the HQ.

“I fought her,” Erika continued. “She moved like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Either she’s a vampire, or we live in the Matrix and she’s the one.” Erika’s eyes glazed over in recollection. “She wasn’t just fast, but strong too. I bet she could lift my car.”

“She could,” Andrew told her from behind the TV, in a matter of fact tone. “It would take a bit of effort. She couldn’t lift it onto her shoulder with one hand. But she could totally lift a car. Probably throw it about ten feet too, if she really tried.”

Everyone looked at him with a mixture of surprise and worry.

“We did tests,” Andrew defended himself. “I’m just approximating.”

“She was turned by a real creeper,” Ian tried to explain to Erika and Jon. “A total psycho killer. He tried to play mind games with her, and make her his wife even though he was forty years older than her.”

“Sounds gross,” Erika said with disgust.

“It wasn’t pretty,” Mike said, going quiet as he seemed lost in his memories.

“We all worked together to take him out once and for all,” Andrew finished their story.

Erika crossed her arms. “I have to imagine Rachel did most the work.”

“We all helped,” Ian insisted.

“I seem to remember you spent most of it upside down,” Andrew told his friend. “At least Jason and Mike hit the guy with a wrecking ball.”

“What was that?” Jason said, carrying a large comfortable looking leather chair in from Erika’s SUV behind the building.

“My chair!” Gordon said, joining Jason at the top of the stairs to take the seat on wheels off his hands.

Erika smiled at Jason. “Your friends were just regaling me with the story of how you defeated a vampire with a wrecking ball.”

“Rachel did most the work,” Jason admitted, and Erika nodded triumphantly, already having suspected as much.

“Hey I had to fight a bloodthirsty child vampire outside,” Bilal complained to the group, “While you were all taking care of the creepster inside.”

“Tanya and Bilal apparently pitched the thing into the bay,” Ian told Erika.

“And that’s why we’re in this mess now,” Erika finished Ian’s thought, and Andrew remembered that Rachel and Tanya were out there right now trying to find the gang of child vampires that one vampire had now grown into. “Good job,” she told Bilal.

“Speaking of that mess,” Gordon said, still holding the large chair in his arms, “did you see the reply someone gave to your post on Reddit?” Andrew assumed Gordon was talking about his post, asking if anyone knew anything about a cure to vampirism.

“I’ve been kind of busy,” Andrew admitted begrudgingly, “carrying all this heavy crap. What have you been doing?”

Gordon hefted the chair that was in his arms. “What it look like I’m doin’? You wanna come take a look or not?”

“I could just read the post on my phone,” Andrew muttered, but he got up to join the man anyway. “You just want me to see what you’ve done with the place.”

“Yeah,” Gordon admitted, leading the way to the basement. “Pretty much.”

Andrew followed him down the narrow stairs even as Erika called after them. “We ever getting a couch in here?”

“Oh I’m sorry,” Andrew yelled up the stairs at her. “Is all our free stuff not the free stuff you were looking for?”

“I got a couch in my basement,” He heard Mike’s voice upstairs. “But it ain’t gonna fit in my brother’s car.”

Andrew stepped into the unfinished basement, as Gordon set his chair down in the center of the room. The hard cement floor would be perfect for the wheels, and it was clear Gordon intended to do a lot of wheeling around. His set up this time wasn’t going to look nearly as cluttered as his last set up.

This time he had all his screens arranged around the room in a semi-circle against the walls.

“Won’t be all screens,” Gordon told Andrew, clearly watching the pale white geek as he took in the room. “I’m gonna have a work bench there, probably put in a 3D printer. Some wood working tools, soldering iron. I gots some ideas n’ plans. I wanna do more than just computer stuff down here. I wanna build. I wanna invent.” Gordon sat in his chair and spread his arms wide. “Welcome to my new den,” he said, spinning around in place.

“It’s good to enjoy what you do,” Andrew reasoned, and Gordon wheeled over to the only working computer screen in the room. Andrew followed behind him, and leaned over his shoulder.

Gordon pulled up Andrew’s reddit post, asking a Vampire sub-reddit if they knew anything about a cure to vampirism.

“There’s no such thing as vampires dumbass,” Andrew read one of the comments aloud. “Informative.”

“Yeah,” Gordon said. “There’s a bunch like dat.”

Another read There’s always the Shanshu prophecies in Angel. Or the ring the makes Spike human.

Further down a post read What about a Genie in a bottle

“We’ll have to get right on looking for one of those,” Andrew commented sarcastically.

“You know if you ever found one,” Gordon said, correctly guessing the post Andrew had just read, “The first thing you gotta try ta wish for is more wishes.”

“Well of course.”

“Here,” Gordon said, nearing the bottom of the reddit replies. “This is the one I wanted you to see.”

Dear Wingcommander

“That’s four,” Andrew corrected. “WingcommanderIV. It was the best game in the franchise.”

I happen to be well studied in the art of alchemy, and was previously tasked by a friend to cure a vampiric affliction. I believe I came upon a cure, and would like to share a bottle of it with you. This says you are in Oakville? I happen to live in a nearby district. There is an abandoned mineshaft between our two towns. A potential meeting spot? Tonight after sundown?

“Alchemy,” Gordon explained, “Is the mystical art of brewing different chemicals to potentially turn water into wine, metals into gold, and even create the elixir of life from a legendary Philosophers stone.”

“It’s was in Harry Potter,” Andrew told Gordon. “Trust me, I know all about it.”

Gordon gave him a look.

“I also read The Alchemist in grade nine,” Andrew insisted to his friend. “It wouldn’t be the craziest fairy tale to turn out to be real.”

“But it has been consistently debunked by scientists,” Gordon warned him. “And this meeting place is a little weird.”

“What?” Andrew asked. “Sad he didn’t choose a Tim Hortons? Maybe he’s anti-social. Maybe he’s a vampire himself.” Andrew was convinced. He had to go check this out. “Respond to him and tell him we’re good on the meet. After sundown?” Andrew looked at his watch, “That’s in like an hour.”

“You’re not worried it might be a trap?” Gordon said, but Andrew waved his concern away.

“I’m not afraid of some dweeby geek who brews potions in his basement,” Andrew said to the larger man as he took the stairs two at a time to the main floor. “Mike! Wanna come with me to an abandoned mineshaft to grab something from some geek off reddit?”

“That doesn’t sound like fun,” Mike told Andrew from his spot on the floor by Ian. “I’ll only go if she’s going.” He looked to Erika, who seemed to be trying to microwave some macaroni and cheese for Jon.

“That usually goes in a pot with some boiling water,” Andrew told her. “So you wanna come?”

“Go with them,” Gordon said, joining them on the main floor. “We don’t know what’s going to be waiting for you there.”

“So I’ll come armed,” Erika told him, looking a lot more excited for their little field trip.

“Armed with what?” Mike asked.

“These Bluetooth headsets for one,” Gordon said, handing around small wireless earbuds for them to put in their ears. “With these connected to your phone you’ll be able to keep in contact with us here. On top of that, I extended the range on the mics so we can pick up ambient noise too; keep an ear on you even when you’re preoccupied.”

Andrew looked down at the little earbud in his hand. “Wow,” He told Gordon. “You’ve really put work into this.”

“You sure we’ll be safe?” Mike asked, taking an earbud from Gordon.

Erika pulled open a kitchen cupboard and reached up on her tippy toes to grab a few spare pistol clips from the top shelf. Pulling out a pistol from her belt, she slapped the spare cartridge into place. “Don’t worry,” she told Mike, pocketing the spare clips in her leather jacket and hiding the pistol back in her belt.

“Well,” Mike said with growing concern on his face. “I’m worried NOW.”

*      *     *

Tanya pulled her car up onto Rachel’s driveway, and the vampire got out quickly to run up the stairs to their house, her umbrella barely having time to open before she closed it again on the porch.

“Hey!” Tanya said, yelling after her beautiful vampire friend. “Wait up.” They’d gone by the building Rachel had last fought the child vampires, only to find that cops were all over it now, and there was little evidence left anyway after the whole thing caved in on itself. That said, they couldn’t even get close enough to sift through the wreckage.

Rachel was understandably frustrated. “When I was fighting those vampires, a little boy bit me,” Rachel told Tanya as the taller woman joined her on the porch. Rachel was pacing back and forth, trying to put in words her frustration.

“That sounds horrible,” Tanya told her friend.

“You don’t understand,” Rachel said. “While his teeth were sunk in my shoulder, I could have sworn I heard his thoughts in my head. I could literally feel their fear. They don’t know what they’re doing Shawna. They’re in over their heads and a lot more people will have to die before someone gets smart and takes them down. We’re the only ones who can intercede.”

Tanya understood what Rachel was trying to say, but thought she was overreacting a little. “You gotta be patient,” Tanya said. “We’ll find them.” She presented the vampire her neck. “You sure you don’t wanna feed? You seem a little antsy.”

“Yeah,” Rachel said, ignoring Tanya’s neck and sliding her key into the front door. “I DO wanna feed. I always wanna feed. I’m a god damned vampire.”

“So then why wont you?” Tanya asked, and Rachel closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as if to center herself.

“I’m stronger than that.”

She opened the door, and her father came out of his office to greet her. “Rachel!” he said excitedly. “Is your brother with you?”

Rachel quickly checked her apple watch. “Shouldn’t he be out from school by now?”

“I was kind of hoping he was with you,” Rachel’s father said. Well there went their plans, scrapped. Rachel was at the end of her rope. Without any leads or plans, she’d been hoping to catch her brother at home and ask him if he’d heard anything. A number of the kids were far closer to his age after all.

But the look Rachel gave Tanya suggested she had far darker thoughts on her mind.

“You don’t think he’s been taken too?” Then Tanya remembered what Rachel had said of her dream. The vampire disappeared from between Tanya and her dad, presumably to get some things from her room.

“Been taken?” Rachel’s dad asked with concern. He was a tall man, with a ‘dad bod’ and thick glasses. He took those glasses off now to clean them in his shirt.

“You’ve heard about all the missing children, right?” Tanya asked Mr. Smith.

He nodded. “I thought my vampire daughter would have it taken care of,” he admitted to her. Last year they’d come to his rescue and, upon finding out his daughter was a vampire, Mr. Smith had been nothing but supportive.

“Well,” Tanya admitted, “we’re trying.”

Mr. Smith seemed to consider saying something to her, but stopped himself multiple times.

“What?” Tanya asked.

“So you’re dating my daughter?” He asked, and Tanya remembered the underwear incident from earlier.

“Yeah,” Tanya said, seeing no point in denying it. “Kind of. I don’t know.” She smiled sheepishly at the older man. “Sorry I turned your daughter gay.”

“No,” Mr. Smith said quickly. “It’s fine. It’s good!” Rachel’s father quickly corrected himself. “You’re a lot better than her last boyfriend.” Tanya assumed he was referring to Eckhart, and had to agree.

There was a moment of silence between them.

“Tell me,” Rachel’s father said at last. “Is she still my little girl?” His voice cracked a little.

“Yes,” Tanya told him reassuringly. “That and so much more.” She wondered if she sould have stopped at yes, as his face seemed to frown a little.

“You done talking about me yet?” Rachel asked from the stairs, where she’d reappeared in all her rollerblade pads. It was obvious she’d heard everything they’d said while upstairs. Pesky vampire hearing.

“Wow,” her father said, seeing her battle gear for the first time. “You look like a superhero.”

“Well,” Tanya said. “More like Katniss from the last Hunger Games.”

“You just need a mask,” Mr. Smith said, gesturing to his eyes. Rachel gave him a dark look as she descended the stairs. She had combat boots, knee pads over black jeans, a padded vest over her black hoodie, arm pads, wrist pads that also bulked up her fists, fingerless gloves, and she grabbed her sword from beside Tanya to slide it into place behind her back.

“I searched his room,” she told Tanya, ignoring her father. “I couldn’t find any evidence of where they went.”

“So there’s a chance he wasn’t taken like the other kids,” Mr. Smith proposed hopefully.

It was clear from Rachel’s expression that she wasn’t holding out for that hope. “Do you remember that project we helped Jacob with?” she asked Tanya. “What was the name of the kid? Billy? From his class. My brother said the kid was being bullied.”

“Billy,” Rachel’s father repeated the name. “That’s the latest kid that went missing.” Both Rachel and Tanya looked at him with surprise. “I told you that I watch the news.” He went on to explain, “I’m constantly looking for new ideas for my writing.”

“You ready to go?” Rachel asked Tanya, again ignoring her father.

“I’ve just been waiting on you,” Tanya said, wondering if there was something she was supposed to be doing to get ready. Rachel made for the door.

“Sorry,” Tanya said quickly to Rachel’s father, following the vampire outside. Rachel didn’t even bother pulling out her umbrella, instead just pulling her hood over her head. “She’s not much of a talker,” Tanya admitted to Mr. Smith.

“That’s my girl,” her father muttered. “Rachel!” He called after her. “Whatever happens, it’s not your fault your brother’s gone. Just cause you’re so much stronger now, or whatever else, doesn’t make you solely responsible for everything that happens to the people in your life.”

Tanya understood what Mr. Smith was trying to say, even as he sighed in frustration at trying to figure out how to say it. “Just don’t forget you’re still my sixteen year old girl.”

The only sign Rachel gave that she heard what he said was a slight cock of her head.

“Let’s just get her brother back first,” Tanya told Mr. Smith. “Then we can worry about the kid stuff.”

“We taking the car?” Tanya asked Rachel, heading for the driver’s seat but the vampire walked right past. “Okay, or we could walk.” She quickly lifted the trunk, and pulled out her baseball bat. Better to be safe than dead.

“Do you know where Billy lives?” Rachel asked Tanya.

“Are you asking me if I know where some random kid in your brother’s class lives?”

Tanya pulled out her cellphone. “I’ll call Andrew,” she reassured Rachel. “See what he can do for us.”

She hit her speed dial, putting him on the list begrudgingly when she realized how important he was to Rachel’s life. The phone rang only once before he picked up.

“It’s Tanya,” she told him, following Rachel towards Jacob’s school. “We just left her house. The trail’s gone cold.”

“You’re with Rachel?” Andrew asked. It sounded like he was on the road, and the radio was blaring in the background.

“Yeah I’m with Rachel,” Tanya said as if it should have been obvious. “Can you turn down your radio or something?”

“Listen,” Andrew said into Tanya’s ear. “We’ve got a lead on a vampire cure. I can’t help you right now, but you should totally call Gordon. He’s got a whole thing going.” With that Andrew hung up on her.

“Okay,” Tanya muttered. “That was useless.”

“Call Gordon,” Rachel repeated Andrew’s words back to her, clearly having heard everything even though Tanya was dragging a good ten paces behind.

“Alright,” Tanya said, searching her contacts. “Pretty sure I got his number in here somewhere.” She found it easily enough, having got it likely before ever even considering putting Andrew’s number in her phone. But she’d never had to call Gordon before.

“This is Gordon,” his voice said over the phone.

“It’s Tanya,” she told him, and his tone immediately changed.

“Oh Totes,” he said, putting her on speaker, presumably so he could set his phone down. “Ya should tell Rachel that Andrew and I believe we mighta found a potential cure for vampirism. Andrew’s en-route to retrieve the potion in question.”

“Potion?” Tanya repeated Gordon’s word. There wasn’t time for that. “Our lead has gone cold,” she told the coolest geek she’d ever known. “More than that, her brother is missing.”

There was a moment of silence on the phone. “What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to look up one of Jacob’s classmates. Billy? Maybe you can find where he lives.”

Tanya was so busy with the phone that she almost walked right into Rachel. They were outside Jacob’s school.

“He would have set out from here,” Tanya reasoned aloud, though she figured Rachel was already three steps ahead of her. “Can you smell him?” she asked her vampire lover.

Rachel didn’t say anything, but she stood perfectly still and took a deep breath through her nose as if centering herself. Her eyes were closed, her mind lost in her senses.

“Rachel’s doing like a thing,” Tanya narrated into her phone. “Look if Billy’s parents don’t turn up results, can you try to do a search in Oakville for abandoned properties. Places where vampire children might be able to hide.”

“Sure,” Gordon said through the phone. “First I’ll find Billy’s address, without a last name or any kinda useful information besides that he shares a class wid one Jacob Lin Smith.”

“I wish I had more to give you,” Tanya told him.

“Then,” Gordon continued, “Ya want me to search the entire city of Oakville for every abandoned property? And how exactly would I narrow dat down?”

Rachel set off in a direction without saying a word.

“Try properties east of Third Line,” Tanya said, following behind Rachel. “Does that help?”

“Sure,” Gordon said, his voice no longer holding to his previously sarcastic tone. “I’ll also pull up da statistics on the missing children and try ta compile a map of where they’ve been taken. Maybe I’ll find some kinda correlation.”

“Rachel,” Tanya said loudly, jogging to catch up with her. “Jacob is a smart kid. I’m sure wherever he is, he’s okay.”

*     *     *

Jacob was not okay.

“You killed her!” Jacob yelled at Billy, leaning over Stacy to feel her chest for a heartbeat. Nothing. He checked her mouth for breath. Again he couldn’t feel anything. In the movies they’d check the wrist. He tried that, but he’d never been good at that sort of thing.

“Relax,” Billy said, his squeaky voice more confident than Jacob had ever heard it. “I gave her my blood. She’ll rise again. Strong. Like us.”

“You’re insane,” Jacob said, rising from Stacy’s body to grab at Sabrina and hold her protectively in his arms. She leaned her brown haired head against his chest, trembling nearly as much as he was.

“Insane?” Billy repeated. “Could an insane person do this?” He roared at the top of his lungs, stretching out his arms and baring his pointed teeth. All the other children around him lift their heads to roar with him, shaking the very foundations of the rotting abandoned wooden house.

“Yeah,” Jacob admitted, and he could feel Sabrina nodding against his shoulder. “I don’t see why not.” The clock behind Jacob chimed letting him know it was seven. That was if the clock was still right.

“You two have always been supportive to me,” Billy told them. “I really thought you’d understand. More than anyone else.”

“I’ve generally felt,” Jacob told their once friend, “that murder trumps bullying.”

“I got my revenge on him too,” Billy said, and it took a moment for Jacob to understand who he meant. Hassan.

“Come out here Hassan,” Billy called into the shadows. “Have you recovered yet?”

A short slender trembling form creeped out from the shadows, the brown skinned face unmistakably that of Hassan.

“What did Billy do to you?” Jacob asked with disgust. Hassan’s clothes were covered in blood and his face had scars that were only just fading.

“Listen to him,” Hassan said, ignoring Jacob and looking at the floor. “Billy is wise.”

“I am,” Billy said with a grin. “Aren’t I.” He shoved Hassan back with one hand, and Hassan fell to the floor in a whimpering mess of a man. “I didn’t let Hassan’s transition go as smoothly as Stacy’s will,” he told Jacob and Sabrina. “But the result is the same. We are stronger and better than ever before. And we’ll never age. And we’ll never die. We’re fucking vampires.”

Hassan crawled along the floor to hug Billy’s leg. “Look at him,” Billy said to them. “Look at the bond we share now. That’s what this does for you. It increases the bond,” He gestured between himself and them, “between us. Between you two. They say at school that you two are the unstoppable couple. I’m giving you a chance for even more. A chance for your love to live on forever.”

Jacob laughed an awkward laugh, sharing a look with Sabrina. “We’re actually choosing to take it slow,” He told Billy, trying to distract him. “We haven’t actually said the L word to each other yet.”

“It’s alright,” Billy said in what Jacob was sure he thought was a reassuring voice. “Soon you’ll have all the time in the world to go as slow as you want.”

“Don’t suppose we get a say in any of this,” Sabrina asked, and Jacob hoped she wasn’t expecting a favourable response.

“I would love to let the two of you leave alive,” Billy told them, and Jacob started to lead Sabrina toward the front door. “But I’m afraid my children are so hungry.”

“Your children?” Jacob repeated.

“Eat the girl first,” Billy said, and kids from all around the room pounced at them, ripping Sabrina from Jacob’s arms, and biting her in the neck, arms, legs, anywhere they could. She was swarmed, overwhelmed. Jacob moved to try to help her, but Billy grabbed him and held him back.

“Let go of me!” Jacob yelled, struggling against the far stronger kid.

“Stop fighting it,” Billy insisted. “Give in. It’s inevitable. The two of you will be together forever. But first you have to feed us. Give us every drop of your blood and we will give you power like you’ve never known.”

“That hardly seems fair,” Jacob said, looking Billy in the eyes. “You got to turn Stacy. Don’t I have the right to turn Sabrina myself? I mean we’re the same right. We both love someone. That’s why you’re treating me different than the others.” He didn’t know how confident he was in the things he was saying, but he had to try something.

There was a long moment where Billy didn’t move. Finally he uttered, “Stop,” and all the children let go of Sabrina, climbing off her to leave her pale limp form lying bleeding on the ground. She stirred slightly, lost somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness.

“Where are my manners,” Billy said to Jacob, a wide smile growing on his lips. “You’re absolutely right.” The vampire leader clasped Jacob by the shoulders. “I almost made a terrible mistake.”

“Thank you,” Jacob told Billy, as the boy released him and stepped away.

“Kill him,” Billy told his child horde, and Jacob immediately regretted thanking that monster. He ran for the front door as the legion of kids chased after him. Grabbing a dusty wooden chair he passed, he swung it with all his might behind him and took out a child vampire in mid lunge.

Two child vampires jumped in front of him, blocking Jacob’s access to the front door, but he didn’t let that slow him down. Turning quickly, he ran for the stairs.

“Better not delay too long,” Jacob heard Billy’s voice from downstairs as he ascended to the second floor. “Your girlfriend isn’t looking so good.”

Jacob disappeared into the darkness of the second floor hallway, fifty or more hungry vampire children clambering on his tail to get at his blood.

*     *     *

The headlights from Mike’s car cut through the darkness surrounding the abandoned mineshaft, doing little to dissipate the goosebumps going down Andrew’s spine. The mineshaft was every bit as creepy as he imagined an abandoned mineshaft would be.

“I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this,” Mike said what the rest of them were thinking.

“Relax,” Gordon’s voice said into Andrew’s ear. The other’s reacted in such a way that he could tell they heard it too. “The shaft used to be mined for coal, but it was deemed unsafe and the dig was abandoned long ago.”

“It’s unsafe and we shouldn’t worry?” Mike complained. “Why did I let you talk me into this, Andrew.”

“Here’s something I don’t get,” Andrew said, leaning forward. “How come I’m in the back seat?”

“I don’t do back seats,” Erika said, shaking her head so that her dark hair fell over her face.

Mike lifted his hands from the steering wheel. “Is that really a priority right now?”

“Yes.”

Mike turned around. “Would you like to drive?”

“Yes.”

“Well you can’t, so shut the hell up.”

As if to make his point, Mike revved his engine and gave the car a burst of speed towards the large industrial elevator that led into the shaft. It looked big enough that Mike’s car could potentially fit on it.

“Alright,” Andrew said, as Mike pulled up to the entrance of the elevator and put his care into park. “Do we leave the car out here? Or bring it in with us?”

“I’m not abandoning my car out here for someone to steal,” Mike said, looking around at the rusted drilling equipment in the darkness behind which anyone could be hiding in wait. “If you guys wanna leave my car up here, I’m staying with it.”

Erika reached over and pushed his transmission back into drive.

“Alright,” Mike said, driving into the industrial elevator. “Here goes nothing.”

He parked the car again, and Andrew got out of the back seat to examine a console. It looked like there were two important buttons, and then a bunch of indicator lights he didn’t care much about. The two buttons, he assumed, were for up and down.

“How do we even know this place will have power?” Mike asked Andrew.

Andrew hit the down button and the elevator hummed to life.

“Any other things you wanna make happen out of pure dramatic irony?” Andrew asked Mike with a smile in his direction. The elevator jolted up instead of down. Andrew released the button. They were reversed. That was awkward.

Andrew hit the up button, and they started to descend, If the controls were reversed, it was possible someone had been here before them, jury rigging everything to work. If they had put the casing back upside down…

The elevator dropped below the surface. “Remember,” Gordon’s voice said in their ear. “Though the mine was deemed unsafe, that was from the intensive drilling practices. Since they stopped aggressively mining, there has been no further incidents.”

“Now he tells us,” Mike said from the driver’s seat of his car. Andrew leaned against the door as the elevator continued its descent.

“Sorry,” Gordon said in their ear. “I’m kinda running multiple ops at once over here.”

The elevator continued to clack on and on, a rocky wall rumbling past before Andrew’s eyes.

“How deep does this thing go?” Andrew asked the disembodied voice in his head.

“That elevator only goes down to the first sublevel,” Gordon told them. “Hopefully he won’t expect ya to go deeper than that.” Sure enough the rock walls around them gave way to a deep and wide entry cavern, with similar rusted equipment like they saw upstairs.

“Anyone else think it’s weird they’re having us meet them inside this abandoned shaft?” Mike pointed out to the group.

“Since I’ve met you guys,” Erika said, “Everything’s been weird. I thought this was just normal in Canada.”

“Not this,” Mike confirmed for her.

“Maybe he was worried people might be watching on the surface?” Andrew suggested, though he knew it was equally likely that someone was simply trying to kill them. But why? That was almost just as interesting.

“What people?” Mike asked, blowing a hole in Andrew’s already flimsy alternate narrative.

“I dunno,” Andrew said in frustration. “The government.” The elevator reached the sublevel floor, and clanked to a stop.

Andrew grabbed the rusted gate that blocked their access to the sublevel, and lifted it by hand. There seemed to be a notch on the side where he could clip the arm in place. “Thank you for flying creepy ass airlines,” Andrew said as Mike started his engine again, and inched his car forward. “Hope you book another flight with us soon.”

“Real soon,” Mike said from his car.

“God I hope you don’t give us carbon monoxide poisoning,” Erika muttered from the passenger seat.

Mike hit the highbeams and his car flooded the cavern with light, filling in all the shadows and making it clear that the area was abandoned. In the center of the cavern was a small potion bottle, just sitting non-descript on the ground, the contents within glowing a strange molten yellow.

“Okay,” Andrew said, approaching the potion slowly. “Maybe it’s not a trap.”

“Really?” Mike said in a squeaky voice a little reminiscent of John Travolta or Ron Weasley talking about spiders. “This doesn’t scream trap to you right now?” Mike killed the engine but kept the highbeams on.

“Hello?” Andrew called into the cavern, so close to the potion bottle now that he could reach down and pick it up.

“Hold on,” Erika said, getting out of the car and joining Andrew. “There’s something under the bottle. I can sense it.”

Andrew crouched down and tried to brush aside some of the dirt surrounding the bottle. Sure enough it seemed to be sitting on some sort of metal plate.

“That thing is glowing red to me,” Erika warned Andrew.

“Let me guess,” Andrew said, trying to dig out around the machine a little. “Red is bad.” It looked like some kind of pressure plate, connected to a small explosive charge. “It’s not big,” Andrew told Erika. “But I bet if this thing went off it would take down the whole cavern.”

He reached under the device, recognizing the trigger.

“You sure you should be playing with that?” Erika asked, looking ready to return to the car.

“I was going to say I couldn’t disarm this thing,” Andrew told her. “But it actually looks sorta easy.” He unlatched the trigger from the pin, and lifted the plate out of the makeshift grenade. “The explosive is improvised, but the mechanism was basic consumer level. It was only ever meant to fool an animal.”

Andrew pulled out the explosives from the ground and dropped the bundled plastique into his satchel. He then lifted up the potion.

“Sorry to ruin your moment,” Erika warned him, pulling out her pistol. “But someone is aiming a gun at you.”

Andrew looked up. “Where?” he asked, scanning the cavern. He could see in every crevasse and it all looked clear to him.

“Hiding behind that mine cart,” She looked to their right, and aimed the gun precisely where she’d implied. There was a track that led deeper into the mine. Andrew had to suppose the man had an alternative exit in mind had they set off the trap.

“Let me do the talking,” Andrew told Erika, not that she’d made any efforts to the contrary. “Hello?”

“Cause I couldn’t have thought a that?” Erika muttered.

“You might as well come out,” Andrew called into the cavern. “We know you’re there.”

The man stepped out from behind the mine cart, wearing flourishing red robes and a large red hat. He had a large ornate pistol pointed at them, looking like no pistol Andrew had ever seen before. Not that he’d seen every kind of pistol, but he was pretty sure that one was custom made. It was long and silver, with etchings on the sides.

“I gotta admit,” Andrew said with a bit of a laugh, even as he dropped the potion bottle in his satchel and raised his hands. “I wasn’t expecting the Spanish inquisition. Mike what about you?” He looked back at his friend in the car who shook his head. “Nope, Mike wasn’t expecting that either. Erika?”

“Enough of your babble,” the man said. “I will end your desecration on this world.” That hadn’t been the first time someone had referred to his ‘babble’ as a desecration on the world.

“Watch out,” Erika yelled, and she grabbed Andrew, dragging him to the ground as a shot rang out and ricocheted off the wall behind them. As it hit the wall, Andrew noticed a momentary flash of bluish white light. Like a lens flare in a JJ Abrams movie.

Erika rolled into a kneeling position, and fired off shots at the man in red. The man scrambled for cover, and Andrew was pretty sure one of Erika’s shots went through his robe but clearly missed the mark. Erica grabbed Andrew and pulled him behind Mike’s car. Bullets hit the ground around them, each shot flashing with a blinding light. Andrew managed to grab one of the bullet casings and hold it tight in his hand as Erika pressed him against the driver side of the car.

Mike got out to join them, cowering with them as the man unloaded in their direction.

“My car!” Mike complained to Andrew.

“They’re soft bullets,” Andrew said, examining the casing in his hand. It appeared to be some kind of contraption that compressed on impact and released some kind of UV light, like a momentary flash glow stick. Or a flash bang grenade.

Mike’s passenger window shattered. “Well,” Andrew warned his friend. “They’re not like that soft.”

“Tell me again why I let you do the talking?” Erika asked, reloading her one gun.

“I’m really good at the talking,” Andrew insisted, a little insulted. More shots impacted against Mike’s car, and he cringed with the ping of each dent.

“Trust me,” Erika told him. “You’re not.” She aimed over the car to fire off a couple shots, then dropped down again. “This gun’s out.” She told Andrew, “I don’t have any spare clips.” She handed him the gun in question, presumably to place in his satchel. He did so, hoping it wouldn’t impact with the other items in there in such a way to blow them all to smithereens.

Andrew showed his two friends the bullet he’d grabbed. “This guy is firing some kind of special UV rounds,” he explained to them. “I think this guy thinks we’re vampires.”

“Have you tried telling him we’re not vampires?” Mike suggested.

“Just get this car back on the elevator,” Erika growled at him.

Mike opened the driver’s door again and reached in to turn back on the engine.

“I clearly said in my ad that I was a friend of a vampire,” Andrew insisted to Mike.

“And you just thought he’d believe you?” Mike asked.

“A friend of a vampire is as bad as a vampire itself,” the man in red said from above them, and Andrew looked up to see that he was standing on top of Mike’s car looking down on them with a dagger in one hand and a pistol in the other.

The man in red threw the dagger at Andrew’s head, moving so fast the teen couldn’t possibly hope to react. But Erika did, catching the dagger easily with her spare hand.

“Holy shit,” Mike screamed, clamouring into the driver’s seat. The man in red atop the car looked about to shoot at Erika, when suddenly Mike hit the reverse and pulled his car out from under the attacker. The man fell, smacking Mike’s hood hard, but Mike didn’t stop until his car was back in the elevator.

“How’d she do that?” Mike asked Andrew who struggled to keep up with the car while Erika engaged their attacker with his own dagger.

“She’s got Synesthesia,” Andrew explained.

“What the hell is that?” Mike asked, clearly still just as lost.

Andrew rolled his eyes in frustration. “Well maybe if you showed up to the meetings, Mike.”

Mike got out of the car and shook Andrew hysterically. “Why would I, when every time I go to the meetings something like this happens!”

*     *     *

Hana hadn’t even gotten to her car when she received a text from Detective Daniels. By the time she arrived at the specified location across town, the sun had already set and the roads were getting dark. She pulled up to a poor income house in a low income residential area, and cut the engine.

“You don’t have your own vehicle?” Dae asked through the open window at Isobel who had ridden with her.

“I prefer transit,” Isobel admitted with a smile, pushing Dae back with her door, and getting out to survey the neighbourhood.

Hana got out as well, and leaned against her door. “I thought she could help. She has more experience with deduction and investigation than most the people on our payroll.”

“So what are we even doing here?” Isobel asked, quick to get to business. “Was another child reported missing?”

Dae’s mouth narrowed. “If only it was that cut and dry,” she said, beckoning for them to follow her into the house. The house was a small one floor building, kept in dirty condition. “A single father lived here with his kid,” Dae explained to them as she led them inside. It was a mess, like Hana expected any household run by men would be.

“I hope you don’t get nauseous easily,” Dae said, leading them into the master bedroom. “I know the first time someone sees a dead body can be pretty jarring.” Sure enough, in the center of the room was the pale dead form of the father. Hana covered her mouth to avoid the smell, and quickly looked away, keeping her eyes on Detective Daniels.

“It’s not my first time,” Hana told the detective, her mind flashing back to images of the excavation site, and all the cult members being mowed down by helicopter machine gun fire.

Hana thought she was gonna be sick.

“It’s not my first time either,” Isobel told the two other girls, far better able to keep her composure as she proceeded to examine the body. Hana was comforted to see she was at least not touching the body.

“He’s been bled dry,” Dae told the women. “Again, without any signs of being strung up.”

“Again?” repeated Isobel.

“How do you bleed someone without stringing them up?” Hana asked, trying to understand.

“You can’t,” Isobel answered Hana’s question.

“I’m no butcher,” Dae elaborated. “But that’s what I’ve been told too.” She crossed her arms and sighed. “The kid wasn’t reported missing or anything. But he’s sure missing now.”

Isobel got up from the body, and Hana followed her into the child’s room. Instead of posters on the wall the boy had simple pages cut out from magazines. He didn’t have much in the way of furniture, or toys.

Something had happened in that room. There was a large blood stain on the bedspread, something Isobel leaned over to examine. Reaching out, she even touched it.

“Eew,” Hana exclaimed.

“It’s dry,” Isobel told the mayor’s assistant. “Based on the size of this blood stain, it should be a massive pool of blood. And given the time since yesterday, that blood stain shouldn’t have had time to dry.”

“So this happened before the dead body?” Hana asked, trying, once more, to figure out why nothing made any sense.

“Either that,” Isobel said, crossing her arms with a different theory. “Or someone slurped it all up.”

“Someone what?” Hana asked.

“Or vacuumed it all up,” Isobel suggested. “I don’t know.”

“Why would someone do that?”

Isobel tried to think for a second. “So none will go to waste?” Hana hoped that was a joke.

What was happening with those kids? Would they even find any of them still alive?

*     *     *

One of the child vampires jumped on Jacob’s back, biting into his neck with a sharp pain. Jacob screamed, slamming his back into the wall, trying to get the child vampire off him while the other vampires swarmed after them into the bedroom. Jacob stumbled past them out into the hall, hitting every doorway and wall he could, trying to shake the beast that was drinking hungrily from his neck.

As he approached the stairs, pain coursing through his body as he struggled under the weight, another little monster grabbed his feet and he fell forward, hitting the stairs hard as he rolled to the ground floor, finally getting the one hungry kid off his back.

Landing by the front door, Jacob groaned in pain. He hurt all over, but tried to shove it from his mind as he reached up and squeezed the front door handle with both hands. The door creaked open.

“Help!” He yelled out into the night. “Somebody help me!”

A hand grabbed his leg and pulled him away from the door to lie beside Sabrina. It was Billy.

“Stop struggling,” Billy complained, letting go of Jacob and climbing on top of him. Other child vampires swarmed around to hold Jacob down. “Can’t you see I’m giving you a gift?” Billy cut his own hand, and brought the gash towards Jacob’s lips. “Drink from me and be like we are. You really have no other choice. There’s no one here to save you.”

There was a bizarre flash of motion and suddenly seemingly out of nowhere a gloved hand reached out and stopped Billy’s arm just in front of Jacob’s face. Jacob tried to look up to see who had come to his rescue. It was a young girl who looked a lot like his sister. And when she spoke, she sounded like his sister too. But she moved like some kind of action hero bad ass.

“There’s me,” She said, twisting Billy’s arm until they all heard the snap of his bone. He screamed, only for her to punch him in the face and throw him into the wall. Turning, she kicked one of the vampires off Jacob’s leg. Another vampire at his arm tried to lunge at her but she caught the little monster in midair and slammed the young girls face into the floor.

Rachel let out a roar, one far more impressive than the roar Billy had given earlier, and all the children in the house surrounded them, everyone but Jacob it seemed baring large pointy teeth.

“You found us again,” Billy said, getting up slowly, and stepping into the protective swarm of his followers. “And you’re dressed like a power ranger this time.”

“You really,” Rachel muttered slowly under her breath, “shouldn’t have brought my brother into this.” She unsheathed a sword from her back. It was all Jacob could do to watch in awe.

Billy grabbed loose pieces of debris, large wooden boards, pots, pans, and started handing out all the make shift weapons to the other children in his gang. “Get her!” he yelled to his child monsters. “Don’t let her escape again!”

The kids came in at her, one swinging a metal pipe that she blocked with her sword. They connected weapons a couple times, and instead of trying to best the child at swordfighting, she connected her boot with the child’s chest, sending the kid across the room to crash into the wall.

Two more children came at her with two by fours. She blocked one with or sword, but the other little monster broke his board over her arm. It seemed like the pads took the brunt of the hit. She slashed at the kid, taking the kid down with a streak of blood, and then impaled the other kid like a shishkabob.

Rachel spun past her last target, pulling her sword out as she went and bringing it down on another kid. One child grabbed at her left arm, trying to drag her to the ground, but Rachel pulled her arm free and smacked the kid across the jaw. The kid went down but Rachel was still standing.

She was being overwhelmed, and one kid smacked her knee with a pan, bringing her to kneel. She continued blocking a kid’s mop that they were jabbing at her like a spear, knocking it aside with her sword even as she used her other arm to elbow a child about to bite her.

A child vampire near Jacob got up, and coiled tightly as if about to spring out at Rachel when suddenly a large bat fell on her head. It was Rachel’s friend Tanya. Swinging a baseball bat. She seemed very out of breath.

“How did you guys find me?” Jacob asked her, not necessarily complaining.

“We were about two streets down,” Tanya said, helping Jacob to his feet. “When she suddenly heard your scream and disappeared. I followed right behind, but man. She’s a lot faster than me.”

“My sister’s a vampire,” Jacob said, watching her sister move and fight.

“Pretty awesome,” Tanya said to Jacob. “Isn’t it?” Rachel grabbed one child vamp, and lifted herself back to her feet to kick the poor kid in the groin and throw him into a couch. She then spun into a flurry of action, sending out fists and elbows in every direction, smacking away one kid after another.

“Yeah,” Jacob said. “Pretty awesome.”

Tanya pulled Jacob toward the door. “We should get out of here,” she said. “Come on.”

“Wait,” Jacob insisted, shaking free of her. “Sabrina. She’s hurt.” He ran to her side, still pale white and unconscious if not dead. He tried to lift her, straining with all his might. She was too heavy for him.

“Here,” Tanya said, lifting the girl easily into her arms. She slung Sabrina onto her shoulder, holding her in place with one hand. With the other hand she picked up her bat, holding it with a firm grip in the center instead of at the handle. “Lets go.”

They were almost to the door when Billy blocked their path. “You’re not going anywhere,” the once bullied kid said viciously. Tanya bunted him in the nose with her bat, the wood making a satisfying crunch as it met his cartilage. Billy opened his mouth to give some sort of complaint, but Tanya didn’t even let him get another word out, smacking him across the jaw so hard with her bat that he went down.

Jacob looked across the floor at Stacy, wishing he could help her as well. To his surprise, her eyes were open. She seemed to be watching everything, and noticed him notice her. She mouthed something, it seemed like ‘no’. Or ‘GO’.

Jacob looked up from the floor at Rachel. She was certainly holding her own, blocking the blows from the children with her pads. But they weren’t slowing down. They could keep coming, it seemed, forever. Was she going to be okay?

“She’ll be fine,” Tanya answered his unasked question, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and pulling him out the front door.

*     *     *

Erika blocked a jab from the man in red, blocking the blade with her free hand. He’d already disarmed her of the blade he’d thrown at her, and he was now bringing his gun to bare on her head.

She pushed his gun aside with her gun, and he squeezed the trigger. The shot impacted harmlessly into the wall of the cavern, giving off a small wash of bluish white light. His gun clicked as he pulled the trigger again.

“You’re out,” Erika gloated at him. He tossed the gun aside and backed away from her, pulling apart his jacket to show the inside was lined with numerous blades of varying lengths. They all glowed so red to her danger vision, she almost hadn’t noticed them against the bright red of his outfit.

“I’ve got more where that came from.”

“Holy shit,” Erika said. The man in red pulled two long blades from his jacket and swung them around him threateningly.

“You fight inhumanly well,” he told her.

“Thanks.”

“But you’re not a vampire.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’m something else,” she told him, and he came at her, swinging his swords in a flurry. She fired two shots at him with a pistol she’d stolen from his jacket, but he seemed to block the bullets easily with his sword. He feinted with one sword, but her danger vision saw the feint coming, and warned her to focus on the other blade that he sent straight for her jugular.

Erika leaned back, just avoiding the blade, and continued through with her momentum to somersault backwards and cartwheel onto the elevator.

“Hit it,” She said to Andrew who slapped the down button on the console. Erika was going to say something, but it seemed Andrew knew what he was doing for the elevator started going up.

The man in a flowing red jacket and large red hat charged for them, swinging his swords viciously and bringing them to down on Erika before the elevator had even raised half an inch. Lowering the metal arm of the gate, Erika blocked both his swords, and then kicked out at him with her foot. He fell back away from the elevator as it raised out of his reach.

Dropping his swords, he tried to leap for the elevator and grab it and for the moment Erika thought he might. But he fell just short.

Erika laughed out loud, then dodged quickly as both the man’s swords came really close to impaling her shoulder. Instead they embedded into the rock wall. The man’s throw was quite impressive.

Erika laughed again at him. “What,” she taunted him. “Don’t have a jetpack under there with all your toys?”

“Our chief weapons are,” Andrew said in a faux British accent. “Fear, surprise, a fanatical devotion to the pope, and bright red uniforms.”

“What the hell are you talking about,” Mike asked Andrew in mixture of fear and confusion.

“He’s quoting Monty Python,” Erika explained to Mike. Old pop culture references she got, it was just the new ones that threw her for a loop.

The man in red didn’t seem done with them, however. Jumping onto the metal framework he began to pull himself up.

“He’s figured out how to climb,” Andrew yelled. “Soon he’s gonna learn how to open doors.” Another pop culture reference Erika got. She kinda appreciated his humor in the face of danger. Not that she’d tell him.

The elevator wasn’t lifting particularly fast, perhaps hindered by the weight of Mike’s car. The man in red had to give little exertion to get above them, and while still hanging from the metal crisscrossing frame of the elevator, he pulled out another pistol.

“He’s got more guns!” Erika yelled at the two boys, and they all took cover behind Mike’s car once more as the man in red lit up the elevator with his light bullets.

The elevator screeched to a stop. “You have to keep hold of that button,” Erika yelled to him. Understanding that she was asking a lot.

“Yeah okay,” Andrew said. “But it’s over there and we’re here.”

Mike’s sunroof shattered on his car as the rain of bullets continued from above. Again the man’s pistol went out. Instead of trying to reload it, he threw it away and jumped from the metal frame to land on top of Mike’s car once more.

Erika wasn’t gonna go through this shit show again. She reached to sweep out his legs but he jumped over her to land behind them. Instead of turning right away, she grabbed the driver side door handle and opened the car door to smack him with it. He sidestepped the door coolly and kicked her into the driver’s seat.

The man in red reached through the doorway to grab at her, and she backed away from him, cutting her arms on the broken glass upon the armrest. She lifted herself through the broken sunroof as he continued to pursue her, pulling her leg around to hook into the driver side door window. She clenched with her legs, pinning the man with the car door so that he was stuck half in and half out of the car.

“Hit the goddamn button!” Erika yelled at Andrew, feeling strangely more alive and herself in that moment than she had in years.

Andrew did as he was told, and the elevator lurched into motion even as Erika punched the man in red repeatedly in the face through the sun roof. She made sure to break his nose and give him a black eye, and her next goal was to knock out some teeth when he grabbed her fist and pulled her through the sunroof into the car with him.

He threw her against the back seat, punching her more than once in the face with equal glee, but she managed to grab hold of his seat belt and wrap it around his neck.

“I don’t do backseats,” Erika growled angrily, headbutting him and planting her boot in his face as she pulled hard on the seat belt to choke him out. He gagged and tried to push against her, but her years of military school training coupled with her years spent in captivity with little more to do than push ups gave her muscles a normal girl her age didn’t have.

Reaching into his red jacket, the man pulled out a small blade, and managed to get it under the seatbelt, cutting himself loose, and taking in a deep breath. Not about to let him stab her with his knife, Erika reached forward and pulled on the clasp of the armrest, lifting it to pin his arm. She’d forgotten about the glass on the armrest which crunched against his arm and encouraged from him a satisfying scream of pain.

Grabbing a fistful of the glass, Erika palmed the glass into the man’s face, cutting up her hand but hurting him a whole lot more.

Opening the back door behind her, she climbed out of the car even as he pulled himself out from the driver’s side, glass shards protruding from his cheek and arm. Andrew and Mike cowered away from him, but it was like he could no longer see them. He was only seeing red for Erika. He came around the front of the car to get at her, but she jumped up on top of the car and did a forward somersault off the car to kick him in the face. His face collided first with her boot, and then straight down into the hood of Mike’s car, where Erika landed on her butt moments later as the man in red slumped to the floor truly dazed.

“Here,” Andrew said, fishing around in his satchel as he gestured for Mike to take over holding the button. “Let’s test out some of his vampire cure on him,” Andrew suggested to Erika. “See how he likes it.”

Erika held the man down he was shaking his head and trying to fight Erika off. “No!” he exclaimed. “Get that shit away from me.”

“Come on,” Andrew said, unscrewing the top of the bottle, and lifting it off. The lid doubled as a dropper. “Oh that’s convenient,” He said, careful to draw just a bit of the molten yellow potion. “What’s the panic. We’ll only give you a drop. What is it, like a kind of toggle? If you’re not a vampire you become one?”

Andrew held the dropper over the man’s head, and the man strained away from it as hard as he could.

“Open wide,” Andrew said, but the drop missed the man’s lips entirely and landed instead on his chin. Where the liquid drop landed, the man began to disintegrate, his skin melting away into muscle and bone, the acid like substance spreading over his face.

Erika let go of the man as his screams were horrendous and ungodly. The liquid spread quickly from his head to his neck, and slowly dissolved over his chest, even his red robes burning away to ash. By this point the man was no longer screaming.

“I don’t think anyone should drink that,” Erika suggested to Andrew with disgust, as she kicked the body off the elevator. She was afraid if it ate through him, it might continue to eat through the very floor they were standing on.

“I’ll agree with you there,” Andrew said, fastening the top tight to the bottle and sliding it back in his satchel. He tapped the earbud in his ear and waited for a moment, presumably while his call connected. Erika hadn’t even noticed when they had disconnected from Gordon, everything had gotten so crazy during the fight.

“Gordon,” Andrew said. “It was a trap, but we got the package.” He quickly added before Gordon could say anything, “The cake was a lie. I repeat. The cake was a lie.”

*     *     *

Rachel was shoved by a couple children into the kitchen where she collided with the sink. As the tap ripped off, a fountain of water sprayed high into the air. Grabbing a child that was lunging for her, Rachel slammed the child’s face into the stream of water, drowning it as she batted away another child that lunged for her. And another.

She threw the child she was drowning into the kitchen fridge and then used her vampire speed ability to slip out of the kitchen back into the living room where Billy was watching smugly. Grabbing her sword from the floor where she’d lost it during the fight, she slipped to in front of him and raised the sword over her head.

“We have to come to some kind of understanding,” she told him, trying to give him a chance, “or this will go on forever.” Suddenly the children that had all piled into the kitchen were on her again, grabbing at her, and pulling her away from their leader to pin her against the wall.

A couple kids tried to pry open her fingers to take her sword from her, and Billy moved to help them.

“I’ll take that,” Billy told her, Taking her sword from her and impaling her through the chest to hang from the wall. She could feel the cool metal of her blade slide neatly through her flesh, her stomach erupting in unimaginable agony, not too unlike the agony she’d felt when Eckhart had done something very similar to her last year.

“What was that you said?” Billy asked her. “An understanding? I was thinking we could just kill you.” He grabbed a broken piece of wooden debris from the ground, one that had a particularly pointy edge. “And then we’ll have the run on this town.”

He went to thrust the makeshift stake into Rachel’s heart, but Tanya knocked the stake out of his hand with her bat, and smacked him across the room into the adjacent wall. “That’s not gonna happen,” Tanya said to Billy, flashing Rachel a smile. “You didn’t think I was just gonna leave you behind.”

Rachel pulled the sword from her belly, the pain enough to make her swoon. Focusing herself on her opponent, she slipped across the floor to Billy’s stake. Picking it up, she slipped to Billy and impaled both his hands into the wall with her sword and his stake. He screamed, roared even like a vampire, but it was futile as he hung crucified from the rotting wood of the building.

“You’re in time out,” Rachel roared at him. The kids that followed under him surrounded them, but all kept their distance.

“Uh Rachel,” Tanya said, and Rachel frowned with frustration. She wanted to try to reason with these vampires on their level, but she kept getting held back by the humans she had to protect. Grabbing her sword from Billy’s hand she grabbed Tanya with her other arm and slipped from the building to join her brother outside.

“Whew!” Tanya said with excitement. “That’s kinda fun if you know to hold your breath.”

“What were you thinking?” Rachel chastised her angrily. “Why did you come back for me?”

“They were gonna kill you…” Tanya reasoned as if it was obvious.

“I can handle myself,” Rachel muttered, drawing Tanya into a stunned embrace.

Tanya hugged her back. “We’re a team,” she muffled into Rachel’s shoulder. Rachel drew away, then drew Tanya in for a kiss.

“We’re more than just a team.”

“Can you two make out later?” Jacob called from where he knelt by his friend. “I really think she needs a hospital.”

Rachel ran to Jacob, and drew him into a hug. “I was so worried about you,” she told him.

“So you’re a vampire?” he asked her, while soaking in her embrace.

“I’m one of the good ones,” Rachel said, squeezing her brother tight. “I swear.”

“You were so cool,” he told her. “When you came swooping in to my rescue it was like the T-rex in Jurassic Park! I heard the music in my head and everything.”

Rachel released her brother, a thought suddenly coming to her head. “I’m going to take Sabrina to the hospital,” she told them. “There’s one not far from there.”

“We’ll see you there,” Tanya assured her.

“I think I have an idea,” Rachel said, repeating something Jacob had said. “Jurassic Park.” With that she disappeared into the dark of the night.

*

“After her!” Billy screamed at his non-functioning minions. “Don’t you hear me?” he continued to yell at them. Why weren’t they listening to him? “She’s getting away!”

It was only then that he noticed Stacy. Her eyes were open, and she seemed to be moving.

“You’re awake,” Billy said to Stacy in surprise, struggling against the stake that still pinned his hand to the wall. “How much of that did you see?”

Stacy got up slowly. “I saw all of it,” she said as she got to her feet. She approached Billy and reached out to touch his face. “You’re so weak,” she told him, grabbing the stake in the wall and pulling it out. He roared in pain and dropped to his knees beneath her.

“Thank you,” he sputtered at her, grabbing at his hand that was slow to heal. He needed to feed.

Stacy touched his face again. “You’re unfit to lead these kids,” she told him, seeming to give pity on him. Suddenly she jammed the stake into his chest, and his whole body went numb. He screamed loud as he could, and electricity began to pulse from his wound, striking out like lightning to shatter the grandfather clock behind all the children. The little vampires scattered in fear, running as the power erupted from Billy and exploded the furniture all around them.

Energy pulsated from Billy, striking at Stacy who was the only vampire to have not moved. She took the energy, laughing as she went.

You killed me Billy said, but the words didn’t come out of his mouth. It was as if they were echoing in Stacy’s head.

“I’ll lead your kids,” Stacy promised him out loud, convulsing again as more energy surged from his body into hers. “Into a new world free of fear!”

*     *     *

Cory Spencer didn’t return to his apartment until very late that day. The sun had long since gone down, and even the late night TV had given way to infomercials by then.

Cory wasn’t too bothered about his long hours, however. He’d had a most successful day, and had in fact hoped it would go on forever. He was afraid, if he allowed himself to sleep, he’d wake up tomorrow to find all his luck had gone.

Switching on the lights in his condo apartment, he threw his jacket on a stool in the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge.

“Xbox on!” He yelled at the living room which turned on his TV and entire home theatre system. The light from the TV illuminated a dark skinned man in a fine suit sitting silent and still on his couch.

“How’d you get in here?” Cory asked, his heart leaping into his chest.

The man got up slowly. “I go wherever I wish,” the man said in his deep voice, and Cory instantly recognized the figure as the man who’d approached him that morning.

Cory decided to let the matter slide. After all, the man had just made him a fortune.

“I don’t know how you did it,” Cory told the man, taking a swig from his beer and throwing out some left over pizza he’d accidentally left on the counter, “but every one of the stocks you suggested panned out in a big way.”

“So everything was exactly as I said it would be,” the man said confidently.

“What was your name again?” Cory asked. “Nathaniel? We’re both millionaires now, man. Soak in the wealth.”

“That’s just the beginning,” Nathaniel said, taking the beer from Cory’s hand and swigging it down. Cory reached into the fridge to grab another. “Tomorrow I want you to take everything we earned, and put it all into these stocks.” He handed Cory yet another slip of paper.

“You sure you don’t want to keep some for yourself?” Cory asked the man. “One point five million would make a nice nest egg.”

“A million dollars will be pocket change for us by the time we’re done,” Nathaniel told Cory.

Cory pocketed the slip of paper. “Alright,” he told Nathaniel. “You got a place to stay? You wanna take the couch?”

Nathaniel looked at the couch with bemusement. “You’ll take the couch,” Nathaniel said. It wasn’t a suggestion. “I’ll take the bed.”

Cory Spencer was fine with that. For the amount of money Cory was making off the man, he’d just as soon sleep on the floor.

Hope you liked what you read, and will continue reading more, and maybe even comment below or via my twitter  @AndrewGeczy it would take you but moments and mean the world to me. Remember you can read more chapters below on this blog, or subscribe on www.patreon.com/99geek for only a dollar a month and download everything in easy to read PDF format. Not like here. These PDFs can open on your phone or tablet or PC. And you can always subscribe, download everything, and then unsubscribe. Cost yourself just a dollar. Over a thousand pages of content for a dollar can't be that bad.