B00724AICC EBOK (4 page)

Lauren’s white lace curtains flowed with the summer breeze, they pushed out and then slowed returned to touch the windowsill. He was more than a little frightened to inform Lauren of his feelings for her, though she would have had to have been a dunce not to know. He loved her as much as one could love another without knowing them. Michael smiled and shook his head at that thought. Was he really that pathetic? He had carried the heavy bench from the small park down the street, which would have been impossible for a human, and placed it near the sidewalk in front of the house. Someone went by the window so fast that he couldn’t tell who it was, but it did make him pay closer attention, less he miss his opportunity to see her.

“
I feel like a stalker,” he whispered to himself.

She was magazine cover beautiful, but at times had the temper of a wolverine. Lauren was a red sheriff with the reputation of a wicked defender for all who needed her talents. Her fighting ability was exceptional. She had been brought up with three rugged brothers that had always treated her as an equal. Over the years Lauren had dished out as many bruises as she had received from her brothers, but it was all in fun. They had died of natural causes long ago. Now at times there was a difficulty in remembering their faces, although in dreams they were perfectly clear.

She usually wore two twenty inch samurai swords on her back. Michael had observed her from a distance as she had split a vampire in two with one of her swords. She had turned him to dust and his skeleton had been cut into two perfectly equal parts. Michael had thought that vampires could only be killed by decapitation, but he supposed there were aberrations of which he was unaware. It wasn’t that the vampire hadn’t deserved it for attempting to feed on a man in a wheelchair with cerebral palsy. She offered the man in the wheelchair the opportunity to be turned and he accepted and actually walked away from the scene. So it had had a happy ending of sorts.

Lauren had the fury of a female Bruce Lee and she did alarm him at times. She was just a little over five feet two inches, but what she lacked in height she made up for in pure talent and ferociousness. The Master had commented to her at the ceremony where she had been turned into a red sheriff that she was a force to beware, as her aura had touched him even prior to her entering the building. She was ambidextrous and fought like a tornado, and because of it Dracula had imbued her with a little more energy than the others, even though perhaps it should have been a little less.

Lauren’s hair color was Nutrisse intense Blue Black, and her hair style was short and exquisite. She had luminescent gray-blue eyes with thick dark eyelashes and tiny black hearts tattooed under both eyebrows. She lay on her bed with her friend Samantha beside her. Samantha was an auburn redhead with green eyes and she was mortal. They were both reading the same novel, Koontz’s Watchers, and occasionally sharing comments and scenes. It was just something that they liked to do, to simultaneously read the same book. It was a way of sharing, two people watching the same movie, and Samantha was proud that she had come up with the idea.

Lauren had a poster of the Supernatural brothers on the wall, as well as a poster of Alexander and his German shepherd Tessy. She fantasized about having her own vampire dog, though she knew that it was unlikely to become a reality; she was determined to ask Dracula for one if she ever encountered him again. Not many frightened her but Dracula had such a presence. The Master radiated power and a simple look from him could make one want to flee. Approaching the Master was almost like getting too close to the sun.

Samantha turned the page and then so did Lauren. “I bet he’s still down there.”

Lauren laughed briefly. “I know he is. I can sense him.”

“
You can?”

“
Oh yeah. We shared a kiss and a little blood.”

Samantha got a little excited. She glared at Lauren, letting a deep breath out. She sat up in bed away from the feather pillow. “What? You have to share that info. Why, why, why didn’t you tell me? Thought you weren’t going to lead him on?”

“
It was just something that happened. Actually, I just walked up to him this morning in the park and kissed him, and bit him just a little. I’m not even sure why I did it. Guess I wanted to teach him a lesson for following me around like a lovesick puppy. You should have seen the look on his face.”

“
And?”

“
And he was literally tongue-tied. I mean he couldn’t say anything. He didn’t know whether to run away or faint. I read his mind and he was like a frightened rabbit. Maybe he thought I was giving him the kiss of death. His mind sure was a jumble of fragmented thoughts. I like my guys to be confident. You know, he’s actually scared of me.”

“
Get out.”

Lauren nodded. “I swear it’s true.”

“
That is kind of sad, but you are a red sheriff.”

“
Yes, and he wants to be one.”

“
He wants to be a sheriff?”

“
I pulled it from his mind. He doesn’t even carry a sword. What’s he gonna do, talk them to death?”

“
My little honey badger.” Michael mumbled to himself from the bench. He stared forlornly up at the window and then slid to the end of the wooden bench, and then back again. He knew he wasn’t being very smart but she had captured him.

Lauren sat up in her bed and looked at Samantha. She had an idea. Her smile was naughty as her pupils widened. “You know what?”

Samantha shook her pretty head as she was getting a vibe from her. “No, don’t do it.”

“
Samantha, come to the window with me, we’re gonna scare away the rabbit.”

“
Lauren, don’t be cruel. You don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Who knows, you two could end up together.”

Lauren took the remainder of her glass of B positive blood and sank it down, ignoring her comment. “Come to the window with me. If he loves me so much he won’t be a rabbit.”

“
Why do you want to scare him away?”

Lauren stood akimbo and showed some of her attitude. “Well, right now he’s not much more than a stalker. Why should I put up with that?” She took Samantha’s hand, pulling her towards the window. They stuck their heads out and looked down at Michael. “Hey, rabbit.”

Michael instantly blurred off into the night, but looking behind him as he fled, he inadvertently clipped a maple tree and tumbled to the ground. It was more than a little embarrassing as he knew the girls were watching. He got up, dusted himself, and then rushed off into the night.

CHAPTER FIVE

DRACULA THOUGHT THAT he might actually be more than four-thousand-years-old.

The reason that was considered was because he had an incident of ancient recall, a partial memory of a woolly mammoth, an animal of the extinct genus Mammuthus, a close relative of the modern elephant. Scientists had placed them extinct over four thousand years ago. The recollection had put the large animal, more than sixteen feet tall at the shoulder, feeding near a cliff in an unknown location when it accidentally fell to its death when another mammoth had playfully pushed at it. A part of the cliff had given away and he even remembered the sound of life being pushed out of it as it hit the ground below. The ground had been covered with a dusting of fresh white snow. There was no cloud covering and the day had been cold and crisp. His olfactory senses from that time so long ago had pulled up the freshness of the air. The heaviness of the mammoths had weakened the area around the cliff, and he remembered the scent of pollution-free air being quite a bit different than the toxic stew that currently existed.

He played the scene forward and backwards.

Dracula had been as surprised as the mammoth when it tumbled to its death off the three hundred foot cliff onto the beach below, where several ravens had fled the area with the deep thud as it hit the coastline. He reminisced of how the other three mammoths had backed away from the area as they also felt that they weren’t secure. The animal’s blood looked particularly red against the new snow. The red blood against the white snow was mesmerising to most vampires, such a delicious contrast.

Some parts of that ancient recall remained murky, as if trying to recall things from a drunken stupor. Had there been a cave on top of the cliff? Had he emerged from that bat-filled cavern covered in blood and bat guano? The echo inside that cavity appeared to be stuck somewhere inside his old brain. Were there peculiar sounds that had reverberated off those uneven walls? But that part of the remembrance seemed unreliable, as if he had awoken from a strange dream during that time and then observed the scene with the mammoths. He could not with certainty say for a fact that there had been a cave. It would be interesting to once again tour that place, if it did in fact exist.

It had been one of those after-the-snow day’s that was heartwarming and refreshing. He recollected a murder of cacophonous crows in a Giant sequoia tree. The birds were making such a racket that it annoyed him briefly, but then he had chased them off, observing the sky as they vanished. One of those days where it actually felt great to be alive, and he could remember those feelings even though they had long since departed him, and had occurred thousands of years earlier. A return to that innocent time was a wish that could not be attained, a place where humans had not yet learned to destroy the air and oceans; had not yet believed that they were more important than the planet itself.

He imagined that had the human race died out the world would now be a pristine place.

At that period in time he had only turned about a dozen others, the first one being during an accidental feeding when his hunger had overpowered him. Dracula had to no idea of who, what, or even how he himself had been created. Anything and everything before that period was non-existent to his memory. That period with the mammoths was spotty at best but somehow very interesting.

Dracula recalled standing on the edge of the cliff and looking down upon the death scene; his skin soaked up the rays like a battery being recharged. He visualized his breath materializing in the cool crisp air, and how he himself had almost tumbled off the cliff. Funny how some memories stuck when others didn’t, no matter how hard he tried to hold onto them.

When that particular night came to visit it was as if he had come home after a long journey away from his comfortable surroundings and familiar things. There were incredibly bright shooting starts that evening perhaps that had also helped to cement that memory. It had been a time of awe and of fascination with the world around him. But those days were long past and those happy feelings were lost in history as so many other things.

Dracula had also recalled running down the path that had been beaten into the side of the cliff by nature. How he had fed voraciously on the mammoth’s blood, on his hands and knees in the snow. But it was there the episode ended. He couldn’t remember a single thing before that and only certain fragments more than a millennium afterward. A little perplexing but he thought understandable with such an old brain. It was a bit of a miracle that he educed anything from that far back.

Dracula hung by his neck from a noose that he had attached to the 24 carat gold embellished Strass crystal chandelier that was made in Switzerland. He had paid just under twenty thousand dollars for the lighting fixture. A statement on life and his desire to have it over with was being made even though there was no one there to see it. The boss vampire was dangling from the ceiling in an old house on Martin Street in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. The almost century old house had been refurbished five years earlier when he had moved east from beautiful British Columbia. He had been hanging there for three days with his arms folded. The will to live had departed him almost a century ago when the first electric bus had become viable in New York City, though his reason for being had been waning some time before that.

The creator of all other vampires was grasped by a tedious existence. An ennui as no other in the history of the world had ever experienced, such a dissatisfaction of being alive that it tore at his consciousness. It felt as if he was trapped in a tiny room devoid of furniture with nothing to do for centuries, and no way out. All he could do was to stand and look. Seconds turned to minutes turned to hours turned to days turned to weeks turned to months turned to years turned to centuries and turned to a millennium. The sun rose and the sun set over and over. When his charismatic dark and stunning brown eyes opened to face another day it was most unpleasant. It was a period where each and every day was an unwelcome visitor. It was a time of waiting for the true sleep that never showed its beautiful face; it was always hidden from sight with its complexities of heaven far out of reach.

Dracula was bored and suicidal, but unfortunately had discovered that he was virtually indestructible. Although he knew of only one certain way to kill himself, that precious item was being kept from him. It was understandable, for to kill him was to destroy all vampires. He continued to try in the hope that something would work. A teenager being bored was one thing, but existing for thousands of years, having gone through history better than any history book, having gone through phases of just about every experience possible does something to a brain, especially such an ancient one. He hadn’t fed in almost a month and still no sign of death’s embrace. Even as the world evolved with new and wonderful gadgets, Dracula no longer had the will for new adventures. He wanted the peace of an everlasting sleep that nonexistence would bring. Or heaven or hell or whatever was out there beyond his plane of reality.