Exsanguinate (8 page)

I
never knew
what honest-to-God
fear
meant until right now. I fumbled my way through the sickness flowing under my feet. Broken bones, blood smeared extremities, I didn’t care anymore. Overwhelmed, hysteria settled in me like a chicken next in line for the butchering table. Not able to focus, I couldn’t figure out what to do.

What do I do now? How do I get out of here? Take deep breaths. Calm down. Think dammit! You can get out of this mess. You’re gonna give yourself a damn heart attack.

With the hand still clutching the phone in defiance, I yanked the phone out of its death grip, swiped the screen to open the menu page, swallowed hard, and pressed 911. The dismembered hand fell to the floor with a splat onto my foot. Bile crawled up my esophagus. A silent prayer crossed my lips. It was Halloween. Worst night of the year to prank the police department.

Pick up! Pick Up! PICK UP!

When the operator came on the line, I whispered, “Help us. We’re at Screepy Caverns haunted house at Global Studios. Something has gone terribly wrong. People have been killed in here.”

“Please hold, Ma’am, I’ll transfer you to the complaint department. It is a federal crime, punishable by $50,000 penalty to prank call the 911 Emergency Response System.”

“No. No! Wait – please don’t put me on hold.”

Muzak filled my ear.

Are they serious? Did they just put me on hold?

Another voice came over the phone. I talked as fast as I could until I realized it was a recording. “Your call is very important to us. Please hold and the next available assistant will help you. Please do not hang up and call again, this will only delay your wait time. The current wait time is twenty-two minutes.”

Get back to the wall. Breathe. Keep the light down. Find the wall. Find the door.
Breathe.

Scooting my feet along the ground, I thought I wouldn’t fall again if I took smaller steps. I sloshed in a thick puddle of ooze, and my foot shot out from under me. Sharp pain shot up my leg as my sprained ankle snapped sideways. I fell again hitting my head against the hard, wooden wall. The world became fuzzy for a moment.

I found the damn wall! My heart leapt at the chance of hope.

I reached up to follow the wall, and prayed to find a door handle. Managing to stand and limp along it for a few feet, I realized the room had grown unsettling quiet. The hair on the back of my neck clued me to the fact something other than the obvious had gone terribly wrong. I limped another step. It was my last.

My body wrenched violently around and landed face-to-face with the hideous creature I saw on the stage. The cell phone in my hand gave just enough light through the haze for me to see my attacker was a man. How could a mere mortal do this? Could he have been whacked out on bath salts or some other hallucinogenic drug?

He held me against his nakedness, his erection posed for conquest. I’d never seen eyes filled with such intensity, such lust. His face, hair, and skin were caked in blood. He was the Red Man who had haunted my dreams since childhood. It was this creature, covered in blood and ready to consume me.

I tried to escape, get free from his clutch, thrashing against him, but my hands slid off his slimy skin. He growled at me. This was it, I was going to die. My breath wheezed in and out of me.

Get away! Dammit, Cheyenne, you are not going to die like this!

I shoved the phone into my bra. A trick I hoped to thank Dakota for later. My eighth grade PE self-defense lessons flooded back into my mind.

Kick – Knee – Run!

The monster dropped me. I scampered back desperate to find that elusive door.

I banged on the walls and screamed. “Help us! Somebody – let us out. Call the police!”

Where is the feckin’ door handle? Why didn’t I bring my keys with pepper spray?

The crippling pain in my ankle shot shards of agony hindering my escape. Endorphins flooded me. I buried the anguish deep inside the recesses of my mind to keep going. My ankle was most likely broken, but I didn’t dare let it stop me. I had to escape or I was dead.

I checked the phone again for anybody to help me. “Thank you for holding. Your call is very important to the Orlando Police Department. Your wait time is now fifteen minutes.”

Fifteen minutes? Dammit People, I’ll be dead in one.

I turned searching through the haze. Had anyone else found a way out? I shoved the phone back into my shirt and squatted, praying my attacker’s vision was also hindered by the fog. The creature’s hideous, maniacal laugh stopped me cold. I didn’t flinch nor move another muscle. The laughter, hauntingly familiar, sent a frigid, wet, dead finger up my spine. I held my hands to my mouth to stop the nervous chatter of my teeth.

The creature fell upon me in an instant. He grabbed me by the shreds of my costume and within seconds flung me up to his face once again.

The beast bit into my cheek and chin. He forced his hand around my jaw and smashed my lips with his fingers. The pain sent my head into a tailspin. I kicked, screamed, thrashed, and struggled in vain to get away from his vice-like grip. His hand clamped on my face and sent shattering fractures of pain through my jaw. I knew this was it — flight or fight. Self-preservation time. Since I couldn’t find a way out, I had to fight.

A guttural wail escaped my throat. I pulled my hands free and gouged at his eyes with my fingernails, trying desperately to dig into his eye sockets to blind him. The cretin’s hands felt as if he wanted to rip my jaw off my face. He shoved his fingers into my mouth for a better hold while demonically laughing at my feeble attempts to harm him. I must’ve have been the silly little goat to the fierce boa constrictor in his mind.

I grabbed his hand at my mouth and shoved his fingers further in. My back molars crunched hard like a nut cracker to bite off his fingers. I ground my jaw back and forth
,
stripping off flesh between my teeth. His blood gushed into my mouth filling it with hot, coppery spurts. The beast relinquished his hold with a grunt of pain and let go of my face. I fell backwards away from him.

In an instant he grabbed me up by the arms and shook me until I became a rag doll in front of him.

He held me there, panting. Face-to-face. Time stopped. My eyes tried to focus. Light shined up through my gauzy straps. For a split moment of time, milliseconds of reality, his eyes softened. Spider web creases around his eyes made him look almost human. He looked at me with an intense fire in his eyes as they glowed red. He glanced around us and put me gently on the floor.

RUN!

I froze, cemented to the ground. My legs refused to budge. My body failed me. Utterly paralyzed, I couldn’t move. Then I realized my back was pressed up against the stage. When his eyes met mine once again, they were wide and conscious. In that moment, I emblazoned his image forever on my soul.

Two words escaped him enveloping me in rotten breath. “Help me.”

I wasn’t sure if what I saw, and what I heard were the same thing. My head throbbed with the rush of blood pounding in my ears. He crushed me closer to his chest, knocking the wind out of me again. His voice whispered into my ear, “Please, help me.”

Are you fecking kidding me?

Anger flooded my brain synapses, and dumped adrenaline into my bloodstream. My heart pumped new vitality throughout my body. I gained clarity and a sense of peace when he released his grip on my arms. I stepped back with caution and grabbed a shoe not far from my hand on the stage.

Breathe, Cheyenne.

I looked at his face once again. My exterior remained calm while the raging torrent inside overtook my entire body. In an instant, I spit into his eyes and swung the shoe at his face. This stunt gave me just enough time to ram my foot into the inside of his knee, bending him over as I slammed my fisted hands down against his shoulder.

Knowing there was nowhere left to go, my verbal assault spewed forth. “Asshat. Ask me for help? What the hell, you whacked out jerk wad!”

He grabbed me by the hair and yanked me back towards him. His hands stretched my neck in an unnatural arc to the left. He pressed against pressure points in my shoulder, and I became an instant rag-doll once again. Knowing he was going to snap my vertebrae like a green bean, I was no longer able to defend myself.

Anger coursed through me. All I could do is watch him in paralytic horror as my heart pounded out of my chest. Black dots clouded my vision. He held my neck on display, his bountiful feast awaiting him. I watched as he licked his lips as he watched the rhythm of my carotid. The stench of his fetid breath, heaved vomit up into my mouth. He tenderly lavished my neck, stroking it, kissing it, and sucked on the throbbing artery pulsing viciously under my skin.

“911 is this an emergency?” The voice from my bra came just in time to hear the devil sink his teeth deep into my neck and suck out my life force.

A million thoughts, memories, and emotions flooded through me in an instant.

Beano. Dakota. Sunburned weekends at the beach. Daddy. The smell of burning orange peels. Sheridan. Why didn’t I ever get around to making a will? Cuban sandwiches from Larry’s Deli. Roxas. Why didn’t I go sit by the waterfalls? Was this how my life ended? Why didn’t I pay attention to my dream this morning? Quest Failed.

My eyes saw a flicker of emergency lights or it could have been the white light everyone talked about when they die. Somewhere off in the distance police sirens wailed.

Dreamily the sirens accompanied the screams, and the horrors of my insane dream. I blew dandelion seeds across the lawn and watched Dakota in the tire swing. Mom baking banana bread. Sheridan pouring glasses of lemonade. I fell to the floor and crashed in a heap. Beano running in the water trying to catch the waves. Sobs faded further away. The painful bliss of my recurring nightmare finally ended. After all these years, it was over. The Red Man finally got me.

As I laid there shivering, in the numbing cold, I prayed that with any stroke of fate from the Norns, and I lived through this, I would never, ever be the dumb bimbo who ventured into a haunted house again.

L
ord Stovall
, the Nauclerus Vampire of the Caedis Vampyric Coven, called an emergency gathering on the bow of his ship. His dark skin glimmered in the reflection off the lamps hanging from the marina’s dock. The night sky offered nothing but blinking stars and the warm whispers of wind through the cat tails over the lake. The coven met in response to reported attacks after the Halloween massacre.

“I’ve gathered you here tonight because we have reported sightings and bizarre events growing on Twitter and throughout the instant news sources. Humans are talking about the unexplained attacks on both animals and humans all across the city. Police are baffled. But that isn’t a surprise.”

Quiet titters of laughter funneled through the group.

“Of course, we know it is most likely from a rogue vampire or another supernatural blood demon which is openly killing,” Stovall continued.

“What about the Weres? They’ve had a lot of Central American packs recently come through here. Made a damn mess of things,.” a voice cried out from one of the irritated coven members.

“How do we know it wasn’t one of them?” came another voice.

“I understand your concerns.” Stovall raised his hands to quiet the questions. “However, reports from the area werewolf clans state that all pack members are accounted for and had not been in a known fugue on All Hallows Eve. Since we don’t know exactly what type of creature has committed the attacks, all supernatural beings are being tasked to find it and bring it to justice in front of the Queen. We need to move fast. The bitten neonate transformations are waking up and they need to be assimilated or eliminated. We are setting up a team now.”

Amicula Darkrose, the coven’s leading member of the IHR team was called upon to lead the Interspecies Human Relations unit. Lord Stovall knew she would most likely be the best choice to hunt and find the newly turned vampires from the horror massacre, but he also wished to give her something to do to get her out of his hair. Amicula, the niece of the Vampyre Queen Civetateo, knew the power she held in her position and wasn’t afraid to use it. Stunningly beautiful with a rare, exotic beauty, she also knew no man could ever resist her.

Khaldon Seters, the coven’s best technology cleaner, was called upon by the elders to flesh out any fledglings still in the hospital. He needed to scrub their dossiers, and coordinate the absterger teams of the victims. From Egypt, the direct descendant of Sekhmet, the Egyptian Warrior Goddess, Khaldon stood six feet tall with long black pharaoh hair he held back with a beaded tieback. Dark silken skin combined with a technological mind brilliant enough to make the heads of the geeks at Microsoft swim, made Khaldon a force to be reckoned with.

Lord Stovall walked to the edge of the yacht where Amicula and Khaldon stood, and addressed them both. “We need you to align yourselves earnestly with the sucklings to teach them what they’ve become. Darkrose, you must enact the EST – Emergency Suckling Termination – procedures of either induction or elimination. Educate the victims about how to embrace the vampire within and execute control of their thirst. For if they do not, we must terminate their threats of exposure. If they are unable to accept the new existence, then coordinate with Khaldon to eradicate the nuisance and put it down.”

Amicula, acknowledging her assignment, bowed deeply to her Lord.

Stovall turned to Khaldon. “Seters, infiltrate the hospital computer networks and erase any patient records Darkrose identifies. Get a tally as to how many need erasing. We will gather the resources needed for decontamination. Clean up all traces and complete a thorough dossier on each suckling. Family, friends, employment. Cross reference common denominators. Leave no evidence of the patients who must be destroyed. Wipe the minds of the humans who have interacted with these patients. They must be forgotten.”

Stovall turned to address the rest of the coven council. “I am working closely with Queen Civetateo to determine if this is a rogue vampire. Where has it gone and why did it attack in a public place? There are unanswered questions about this unauthorized human attack, and we’ll need assistance from all area covens to reel in these neonates. At this point, if we don’t get these sucklings and their appetites under control, we could easily have a vampire apocalypse on our hands.”

Khaldon dutifully bowed his head in obedience to Lord Stovall while he shot a wry smile to Amicula.