The Vampires' Last Lover (Dying of the Dark Vampires Book 1) (15 page)

I scrambled to examine Tyreen. The right side of her parka glistened with crimson streaks. It must’ve happened in the instant I yanked her arm. Her eyes rolled up, and I could tell she was about to faint.

“Tyreen! Hold on!”

I sensed the bastard moving up closer to take another bite, only from me this time. There was no way I could fight the monster off if it caught me, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let it get Tyreen, who collapsed on the ground.

This was going to be where it ended. My life and hers, I just knew it. Both of us totally fucked.

A sudden spray of bullets pummeled the creature and two others that had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. More angry shrieks—even worse than the previous one—erupted all around us. I thought for sure we’d all be attacked. The police gazed anxiously into the darkness above and around them while I hovered over Tyreen’s motionless body.

The menace retreated, at least for the moment.

“Are you all right?” asked the cop closest to me. He looked to be a hardened veteran, roughly my father’s age. He gave me a quick once over with his steel blue eyes before turning his attention to Tyreen.

He didn’t wait for a response from me, perhaps noticing I was unharmed before he even asked. As the adrenalin rush faded, I noticed a slight pain in my ankle. All that running must have aggravated it again.

“Let’s get her inside, Jim!” he told another cop who came up to join him. “Bobby, I need you to call in another patrol for back-up, and tell ‘em to have the S.W.A.T. team ready in case we need it!”

“Got it, boss!” said another cop, taller than the rest.

Three more police officers came over to help carry Tyreen carefully into the lobby. I followed close behind them, fearing the worst while praying she’d be all right.

I looked outside to confirm our attackers had truly left, as they had the other night. I didn’t see anything, but the darkness beyond the security lights could easily hide a predator. Our pursuers were hiding out there someplace, biding their time before launching another attack. Meanwhile, the cops outside remained huddled together, peering toward the darkness with the same fearful look I’d seen on Tyreen’s face earlier.

Like us, they had no idea how to combat these lesser vampires effectively. They would be schooled soon.

However, at the moment it was the least of my concerns. I was beside myself thinking Tyreen might die from her injuries. She had lost a lot of blood and was losing more at a prodigious rate. The wound left a dripping crimson trail as they brought her inside.

One of the cops, Sorwell by the name on his badge, said that he had spent time as a paramedic. He assured me that she’d be fine. When I didn’t believe him, he showed me the wound to her shoulder, which was the main one. Deep tears in her flesh, but not so deep the bleeding couldn’t be stopped. When I worried about how an ambulance could reach the dorm with the menace still out there, he assured me Tyreen wouldn’t need one for now, and that they had enough medical supplies to get her through the night.

“We need to get her stable, and then she’ll be fine,” he said. His soft brown eyes reminded me of Peter’s. “You might want to take a seat by the TV while we get everything taken care of.” He smiled, revealing two perfect rows of veneers.

I soon realized he was just trying to get me out of the way so he could do his job.

“Okay.” I started walking toward the television. There were three other guys watching the game as well, and it shook me out of the shock that must have been setting in upon me.

“Oh God, Johnny…” I turned back to the officers. “I have to go upstairs and let her boyfriend know what’s happened. I’ll be right back!”

I ran to the elevator. One of the three guys sitting in front of the TV suddenly looked up, as if until that moment they had absolutely no clue what was going on. I pressed the call button and, luckily, the elevator door opened right away; I stepped inside.

I pushed the button for the fourth floor, and as the door began to close, an immense crash shook the building’s main floor.

There were shouts and gunshots. I heard shattering glass and terrible inhuman shrieks as the main entrance was breached.

Sometimes I’ve wondered if maybe I should’ve stayed and tried to lure the bastards away from Tyreen. I tell myself that maybe I thought Peter and Johnny could have helped me fight off those fiends. Yet, in reality, despite Johnny’s athleticism and Peter’s bravery, we surely all would have died that night.

When the elevator door opened on my floor, for an instant I thought I was still on the first floor. Those same inhuman shrieks punctuated by breaking glass were echoing throughout the hallways. The handful of girls who had either been unfortunate not to get out of town or foolish enough to choose to stay were running around in a panic. Their terrified screams were almost indistinguishable from their male companions.

I cautiously stepped out of the elevator. Elaine stood outside her room, just inside the entrance to our wing, holding an Ikea bed lamp as though it were a weapon.

“Txema—get back in the elevator!” She made a pushing motion to emphasize her words. I heard the sound of glass shattering in her room and Elaine snapped her head around. “Oh my God,
no
—”

A white form, little more than a blur slammed into Elaine from her room, knocking her into the wall. She started to slide down the wall, her blond hair quickly turning dark with blood. Before she even had time to hit the ground her attacker grabbed her in both of his arms and pulled her in tight. Time seemed to slow for me as the adrenaline spiked in my blood and I was able see her attacker clearly. My first impression was of a hideously deformed, hairless, pale-skinned man. He was very tall and naked except for a dark tunic around his waist. His elongated feet were bare, and sharp nails curled at the end of each toe.

But, that wasn’t what frightened me. The fiend leered at me with a pair of glowing yellow eyes and a mouthful of jagged sharp teeth, opened wide with dripping saliva. It held Elaine’s trembling body fast with one hand while it used the long sharp fingernails on its other hand to tear her throat open with cruel slowness. Her terrible screams became a tortured gurgle and I could only stare in horror. The thing’s nosferatu face went to her neck in horrible mockery of intimacy and its pale skin quickly turned crimson from my RA’s blood.

It all became too much for me… the terror and the horror. I burst into tears. I started to fall to my knees, and then the wooden door separating the guys’ wing of the dorm seemed to explode. An image raced toward me with such speed that it was little more than a blur.

I was caught up before my knees hit the floor, and there was the sensation of two small needle-like pinpricks upon the birthmarks on my neck. My body grew weak and the world swam around me. I couldn’t respond to anything—not even Peter and Johnny’s panicked screams as they ran toward me from further down the hall.

For the second time in four days, everything went black.

he last time I lost consciousness, I awoke in a huge cold room that at first seemed like a constrictive coffin. A cold hand with sharp fingernails grabbed my throat, and I remember hearing whispered voices decide my fate. The voices grew steadily more menacing until Peter’s voice broke through and pulled me back into the warm comfort of my dorm room. A safe and welcome place, my friends surrounded me—ready to do whatever they could to make things right.

It certainly wasn’t the case this time around.

“Welcome, Che-e-e-m-m-a-a!”

The voice was inhumanly deep, with a thick Eastern European accent. It rumbled throughout the dungeon-like room I found myself in. I tried to determine what nationality the voice represented. Was it Romanian? Turkish? Hungarian? Or, maybe it was the homeland of Dracula himself, Transylvania. Then I remembered that Transylvania had been devoured by one of those nations, Romania. That one brought a weak smile, given all the nonsense I’d endured for much of the past week.

But, the voice was without menace, at least so far. The exaggerated phonetic pronunciation of my name bore a touch of humor.

There was further warmth, too, and not just from a roaring fire that burned within a nearby fireplace. The thunderous male voice carried mellowness as it bounced off the stone walls, like a long lost uncle amused by his niece’s childish antics.

I sat in a large wooden chair with a tall back. The chair made me feel like a little girl; my feet barely touched the barren floor.

“Wh-who are you?” I was still nervous. Disoriented.

I looked around the room, hoping to get my bearings as to what and possibly where this place was. Obviously the ‘where’ would be most difficult to determine, but the ‘what’ was getting clearer for me. It wasn’t a dungeon, unless my mysterious host favored the bowels of an ancient castle. Ornate tapestries hung from a wall to my left, and to my right a row of three stained glass windows, featuring haloed figures in Byzantine dress. I recognized the style from a medieval history class I took in high school. Perhaps this place was some kind of church or cathedral.

The voice chuckled, and a hulking figure that had been sitting in a similar chair near the tall fireplace stood up. My ‘host’ was wearing a long dark cloak, and the material was heavy enough that it blocked out the light from the fireplace, casting a long deep shadow. As he moved from in front of the fire, I realized it was some sort of velvet. The edges shimmered as it reflected the firelight and soft rays of the moon streaming in through the windows.

“I am Ralu Izcacus,” said the owner of the voice. “I am the reigning king of the largest vampire nation, known in privileged circles as the
‘Vampire kan isyanı.’
Surely, you have not heard of us, although your world will soon know us very well. As the people in your country, are fond of saying, this past week has been our ‘coming out party.’”

The way he emphasized the word ‘vampire’ spoke to arrogance and deep pride. I thought about all of the needless killings I’d witnessed very recently while he laughed again. He stepped toward me and then leaned against a jeweled golden scepter, bringing his face within a few feet of mine until I gasped. He was taller than I would’ve initially guessed, nearly seven feet in height. But if he ever was an attractive man, comeliness was no longer part of the deal for him. Like the nosferatu-looking vampire I witnessed earlier devouring Elaine Johnson’s throat, his head was bald, and his ears pointed. His mouth was closed, but his fangs protruded from each side, making him look like a dangerous saber-tooth cat sizing up its prey.

I suddenly felt uneasy. It was mainly the eyes. Fiery crimson in their intensity, they bore the same luminance so prevalent among every preternatural creature I had encountered this past week. But, the difference here was Ralu’s eyes made him look worse than predatory. He looked frigging evil—like the damned devil himself!

“You have much to learn, Txema!” he chided, leering at me while he moved over to a long wooden desk that sat to the left of the fireplace. He struck a match and lit a thick white candle sitting on the desk’s top, and then stepped around to the other side.

“We are not the monsters you perceive…
and
we are not the ones who provoked the battle with your newfound friends.”