Zombies Unleashed (The Vampire from Hell Part 6) (9 page)

The concept of online friends isn’t foreign to me.  I have a lot of friends I consider great friends who I have never met.  We know each other only online.  I thought Rayea could easily have the same situation.

BEELZEBUB

We meet Beelzebub in the Change of Plan chapter and the Epilogue of Part 3 - A Vampire On Vacation.  He is a demon, a soul searcher/stealer to be exact, and one of the seven princes of Hell who was overthrown by Satan, Rayea’s father.  Beelzebub and his brothers enjoyed stealing souls, and want to reclaim Hell as their own.  After making a deal with Beelzebub (Part 3’s Epilogue), we learn in Part 5 - Blood of the Gods that Beelzebub has come to collect what he wants, Rayea’s soul.

Why Was the Beelzebub Character Created?

When I first started working on the Vampire from Hell series, I thought if I had seven archangels, then I would also need seven alternative evil characters to balance the equation out.  Of the seven princes of Hell, so far only Beelzebub has made an appearance in the series.

NATHAN

Nathan is Grace’s ex-boyfriend who refuses to give her up even after she makes it perfectly clear to him that she no longer wants him in her life.  Nathan seeks power and knowledge and is interested in vampirism and bloodletting, a journey that will lead him into crossing paths with Stephanie and Satan.  Read more about Nathan in Fanged Love: The Prequel or Part 6 – Zombies Unleashed.

Why Was the Nathan Character Created?

Nathan was created as a bad influence for Grace.  He’s a guy who confused her and tried to dominate her, a type of person you would not want to hang out with.

ASMODEUS

At the end of Part 6 – Zombies Unleashed, we learn that Satan has contacted Asmodeus, one of the seven princes of Hell and Beelzebub’s closest brother.  Asmodeus wants revenge on Rayea after she killed Beelzebub in Part 5 – Blood of the Gods.  He debates if he should involve the remaining princes of Hell: Santero, Abaddon, Mammon, and Belphegor.

MEHEN

Mehen is an evil goddess who decides to seek revenge on Rayea, the person who has killed her lover (Satan, Rayea’s father) and her prodigy, Stephanie (Rayea’s sister).  She is also the youngest daughter of the first blood god, Typhean.  She is referred to many times in Parts 1-4, but has not been revealed yet in the series.  Learn more about her beginning life in the chapter, A Walk on the Beach in Part 3 - A Vampire On Vacation.

Why Was the Mehen Character Created?

I thought if Rayea had a mother then Stephanie needed one too.  Mehen seemed to be a good choice for becoming her surrogate mother.

MAIA

Maia is the older daughter of Typhean, the first blood god and sister to Mehen (although they do not get along).  Maia is also a good friend and mentor to Rayea’s mother.  She taught her how to become a healer and an expert in the ways of white magic.  Maia is referred to a few times in Parts 1-4, but has not been revealed yet in the series.  Learn more about the sisters in the chapter, A Walk on the Beach in Part 3 - A Vampire On Vacation.

T

T is a devoted friend and henchman of Nathan and the person who constantly finds Grace to remind her how much Nathan misses her.  T is first mentioned in Fanged Love: The Prequel.  We learn more about him in Part 6 – Zombies Unleashed.

Why Was the T Character Created?

Being a sidekick and follower of Nathan, I decided to cast T as his friend.  His one friend who will do anything for Nathan.

TYPHEAN

At first, Rayea knows Typhean, a blood god, simply as the voice inside her head.  He guides her and comments jokingly on her actions and behaviors.  Typhean begins Part 3 - A Vampire On Vacation with ‘A Foreword from the Blood Realm,’ and assists her in saving Blick.  He is the first blood god and an Egyptian.  When he grew bored, he created two daughters, Maia and Mehen simply by speaking their names.

Why Was the Typhean Character Created?

I thought having a voice inside Rayea’s head to add commentary to my heroine’s journey would be interesting.  Typhean is first friend to betray Rayea.  His destiny may have ended with his death at Rayea’s hand, and it may not have.

THANATOS

Thanatos is Demetri’s father and known commonly as the Grim Reaper.  He enters the story in Part 5 - Blood of the Gods when Demetri decides to ask his parents to intervene on Rayea’s judgment day and grant her a reprieve.

EOS

Eos is the goddess of Immortality, Demetri’s mother, and wife to Thanatos.  She discovers Blick’s copy of Rayea’s published online journals,
The Vampire from Hell
.  She too enters the story in Part 5 - Blood of the Gods at which time she asks Rayea to explain her relationship to Typhean, a blood god who has already declared Rayea a vampire god, thus a celestial being who cannot be judged by Zeus.

ZEUS

Hiding in Valeria instead of Mount Olympus, Zeus takes it upon himself to become judge and jury for Rayea’s Judgment Day in Part 5 – Blood of the Gods.  He is overruled by evidence Eos reveals in Rayea’s published online journals,
The Vampire from Hell
.  This angers Zeus and he declares his revenge on Rayea and all the parties involved in setting her free of a judgment he think she rightfully deserves.

(Generation Z, #1)

3015 A.D.

“We’re not killing her.”  I stood between my team and this girl I had just saved from an existence worse than death.  The coffee shop was demolished and we were knee-deep in dead ex-zombies.  It had been a normal seek and destroy mission on Earth until this had happened.  But I wasn’t backing down, not until I knew who she was, and more importantly why did she have the same mark I had been born with.  She was a werewolf too, or at least I was determined to find out what she was before she died.

“Call it in,” I growled to Rex.

“No,” he shouted at me, knowing better than to mess with me as he pushed against the other two guys on my team who held him back.  Zombie Wolf was not just a nickname I had gotten for being a werewolf who had killed massive amounts of zombies over the twenty-four years of my life.  It was part of my blood.  Literally.  I could not be killed by them and I could not be infected.

“Maybe we can talk about this,” McCormick offered.

Simon nodded, tugging on Rex’s dark green shirt.  Neither of them moved forward one inch.  They all had seen my transformation a time or two before, when the fighting got really bad.  I had saved all of them more times than I could count.  But Rex was the asshole of my team, and the Earth representative.  I regretted having made him my point of contact when I visited Earth.  I had never used my weapons on any of them, but that could change very quickly.

“Call it in,” I repeated.  Slowly and very deliberately, I popped my neck.  My eyes flashed gold.  I held one hand on the girl’s shirt, trying to keep her still.

Exasperated, Rex conceded to my command and placed his index and middle fingers to his right temple.  “This is a mistake.” He mouthed back to me as he made the connection with the Containment facility on our planet.  With our implants installed soon after we were born, cell phones weren’t needed for work.  They weren’t really needed at all in the year 3015 A.D., but we still had them for personal use because it looked cool.  Unnecessary, but cool.  And for jobs like this one on Earth, we had to blend in as best we could until the zombie killing started.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw McCormick hit Simon in the shoulder.  “Look man.”

“What?” Simon asked.

“She has the same mark Z has.  Look.”

I ignored that they were now staring at my neck and the girl’s neck.  I knew she had the same birthmark.  That had to mean something. 
Was she like me?  Was she truly like me?

I heard Rex verify the location and coordinates.  The room immediately filled with a blue mist that I knew would do two things: clean up the zombie mess and make a big enough distraction for me to vanish.  I grabbed the girl by the elbow, probably rougher than I should have, and pulled her into my arms.  She fit perfectly against my body.  I sighed. 
Wouldn’t you know it?  I’d meet my mate and she was dead, or soon to be dead?  No one could survive the new virus I had been getting reports about.  Luckily, I already had it.  I had been born with it.  No blood virus affected me.  I was immune to everything.  That’s what made me ‘unique’ as my mother phrased it.

“We’re getting out of here and you’re not going to leave my side.”  I whispered to the girl, letting my lips brush past the top of her head.  She was a few inches shorter than me at six feet.  My height I had acquired from my dad’s side of the family.  Werewolf descendants of his ancestry were extremely tall.  I wasn’t seven-feet-tall like him but when I wore my ‘zombie killing’ hiking boots I came close.

“Or what?” the girl snapped back.

“Or you die.  My friends are ready to kill you.”  I grabbed her shoulders, facing her toward the team I had been assigned while on Earth for my mission.  “Humans have itchy trigger fingers.”  I shook her a little, hopefully to drive my point home.  I had about thirty more seconds as they bungled around in the fog before they realized I was gone.  “You want to stay here with them?” I asked.

“I’m as good as dead.  I know that.”

“Not necessarily,” I replied.

“You have a cure,” she whispered.

I heard the astonishment in her voice.  I did not have to see the shocked expression on her angelic face.  I had heard that voice before.  It was about time I tested the cure I had been working on.  Rex and the guys thought I was nuts.  But Rex and the guys did not understand a lot of things when it came to me and who I really was.

“Possibly,” I said, wrapping her arms around my waist.  “I’ve got you.  Don’t let go.”

***

“Where are we?”  She asked me that question when we surfaced in the familiar surroundings of my room on my planet.

I already loved the sound of her light, whimsical voice.  Pointing at my favorite chair, I offered it to her, grumbling to myself as I considered my options.  I did not really want to tell her just how far from home she currently was. 
Space travel was very difficult the first time.  What could I tell her?  ‘Fancy this, I zapped you to Kepler 1.  Welcome.’  Ugh.  Hopefully she knew about the outlining planets that had been cleared for human habitation in 2063 A.D.  It amazed me that some humans still did not know they could leave Earth and travel to other planet, ones not infected with zombies.  It was still an option for any of us, werewolves, humans, vampires, whoever.  It never occurred to the humans to consider space travel in the face of ongoing outbreaks.

I shoved off my boots and tossed them in the corner.  I ran my fingers through my shortly cropped black hair, thankful I had recently gotten a haircut.  For obvious reasons, zombie killing and space travel made me sweat. 
Get to the point,
I thought.
  You don’t have time for that.  You don’t know how long she has!

“You’re in my room.  That’s all you need to know,” I uttered, turning away to quickly change my t-shirts.  I’d have to forego the shower.  I hoped the tone I used with her made me sound like a bad ass and an individual not to be questioned.

She glared back at me.  It melted my heart.  I gritted my teeth. 
Fucking fate.
 
This is why I don’t date,
especially on Earth,
I said to myself as I tried to ignore her beauty.  Her small frame made her look like a petite doll resting in my chair.  I thought of my charming self that I changed into when I needed a huge favor from my mother.  It never worked on my dad because I was too much like him.  He could always see through my crazy schemes.  ‘You get that from your mother I’m afraid,’ he told me often.  Watching the girl try to assimilate where she was, I elected to present my charming self to her.

“How do you feel?”

She swished her big blue eyes side to side, analyzing my room, and rubbed her hands along the bite wound on her right wrist, examining it.  “I feel okay.  Is that normal?”

“I don’t know really.  The virus works fast on humans.  You were born on Earth?”

From my favorite large lounge chair, she smiled at me and flipped her legs out from under herself.  She could not sit still.  The virus was working on her.

I knew what she was.  I wanted to know if she knew.  The ‘w’ word did not come up with unless the person brought it up.

Crossing her legs again - left knee over right and then right knee over left - she could not get comfortable.  “I am not human.”

“What are you then?” I asked.

“I’m were.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whatever, dude.  Werewolf, you know.”  She flicked her long blond hair over her shoulder and then gathered it up into a ponytail and started playing with it.

I wanted to bury my head in her thick hair.  I’d never seen such a honey blond hair color, except maybe on some of the fledglings of the vampire angel, Michael.  All my kind had the ‘dark look’ as we call it.  Both my mom and dad, a vampire and a werewolf had black hair and dark features.

“That’s not what my family calls it,” she retaliated.  “It’s just being ‘were’.  I haven’t gone through the change yet, so technically I’m not…”

Before she could finish her sentence, she started convulsing.  Her blue eyes rolled up in her head.  This was not going to be easy…at all.

I rushed to her side.  Of course, she was oblivious to my movements, but I knew I had to keep her from getting away from me or leaving my room.  It was my only chance.  It was her only chance.

I wrestled with her, finally pinning her into the large recliner.  “Hold still,” I shouted. 
Christ, I don’t even know your name,
I thought.
The realization stabbed into my heart. 
How fucking sad,
I said to myself.

“How fucking sad, is this?” I asked her as she thrashed about.  At times, her long hair covered her face.

She growled at me.  Viciously.  Sadistically.  When she threw her head upwards, I saw the demon virus surface in her white eyes.  She struggled against me, biting, snapping, heaving her head, the only part of her body she could move, at me.  A faint smell of roses hit me. 
Strawberry shampoo
, I wondered. 
I’ve got to at least know your name.

Suddenly visions of my demonic aunt flashed before my eyes.  The stories my mom and dad had told me.  The images I had seen myself, in my nightmares.  The snakes.  The hounds.  The pits.  The pain.  The torture.  The sacrifices.  It was the origin of the new virus, the one I had feared my entire life would finally arrive, the one passed on to me when my demonic aunt had bitten my mother when she was pregnant with me.  Succumbing to it and becoming one of them was Hell for human, werewolf, vampire, or zombie.  The virus did not play any favorites.  Somehow my mother survived and I was born mostly normal.  It did not affect me.  Well…sort of.

Even with the countless transfusions I had been given since birth, the blood virus did not leave me.  It was a part of me.  It was in my DNA.  It was the reason I was a different type of werewolf.  It did not matter if most people I met did not ‘get me’ or understand what I was.  I knew I’d never be rid of the virus, and I’d probably never be understood by another. 
One day I want to meet my aunt and show her what I am,
I thought. 
I knew on a new level why my mother despised her sister now.  She was the reason this girl before me was fighting for her life.

A pain surfaced on the side of my neck.  My birthmark burned again, same as it had when I had seen the zombie bite the girl.  Amid the chaos in the coffee shop, the tingling sensation had gotten my attention. 
Was it a call to another creature like me?

Now in my room, the girl slammed her head into the back of the chair, whisking her golden locks over her shoulders.  I got a glimpse of her neck.  The mark on her neck was glowing as well.  I knew I had a chance to try something insane.

Maybe my cure would work.  If not, the girl would be dead quick enough like the others infected who did not make it.  But I had to figure out something.  A cure had to exist for this new virus that was jumping species.  Werewolves, vampires, humans were all at risk now.  We had been getting reports about instances of such cases.

Afterwards I would not have time to send a seek and destroy distress signal to my dad or my team.  I did not want to be destroyed or have this girl destroyed, but we’d need to be if this did not work.

I repositioned my body on the girl again, this time straddling her.  I growled at her, baring my teeth.  The Zombie Wolf was always in me.  I did not have to work at it anymore.  He was only a moment’s notice away, always waiting, always ready.  All I had to do was visual the Zombie Wolf and I’d turn into him.  To what degree I transformed, sometimes did matter.  I could control how far ‘zombie’ I’d go.

When my long claws came forth, elongating and extending from my fingertips, I felt the zinging sensation. 
Fuck,
I thought. 
I hate that feeling. 
But I did not will them to retreat again into my hands again.  There was no turning back now.

I watched as they grew longer, some twenty-four inches – one inch per year of my werewolf age.  My claws were as strong as steel.  I slammed my hands down into the rungs of the recliner chair.  They dug in further than I had intended.  My claws ripped through the soft pillow fabric, slamming into, and then pass, the metal frame.  My muscles filled out, the upper portion first followed by my thighs and legs.  I stopped changing any further in front of the girl.  My sunken skull face I could save for another day.  She did not need to see the complete Zombie Wolf just yet.