Vampires possess many unique talents. Yet, living with these gifts for as long as I have, it remains difficult to see them as special abilities. It is simply normal, routine. It is like when a child learns how to walk or talk; after some time passes, the act no longer holds any wonder in the eyes of the wearer. I am sure, in the eyes of the beholder, these abilities inspire remarkable wonder.
I can see the darkness as if it were a soft gray dusk. I can hear the delicate friction of a whisper miles away. I also have a heightened intuition, a second sense that hums with certainty. I have the ability to float and hover for some time. This can look like I am flying, but it is only avoiding the magnetic pull the Earth has to balance matter. The same way a small pebble that can float on water will sink when you throw it in; it will not stay down, but it looks like it sinks at first.
My greatest gifts are the ability to heal quickly and the ability to move quickly. Those have saved my life more times than I care to count. The one ability I do not have, and desperately wish I did, is the ability to predict the future, considering the precarious position my family is in at the moment.
After we wake up once the sun has set, my first thought is to call Johnny. I have to see if anything out of the ordinary happened while we were sleeping. He was not hard to find. He is a smart kid, after all, and knew that one of us, if not all of us, would want a status report. Johnny was waiting in the guest area at the bottom of the stairs when I awoke.
"Johnny," I said, my voice cutting through the quiet. "What is the word for the daylight?"
His face had no expression whatsoever. He replies, "Nothing at all happened during the day, sir."
I nodded my head and then asked, "What is the status of the house?"
He handed me an invoice that read "Vlogsrvorgver Heating and Cooling." I looked at him with a question on my face.
He quickly explained, "You wanted Chad to get a vent system set up, but he could not finish it before sunrise himself. This was the only company that was able to do it quickly and quietly on such short notice."
"You were the right man to put in charge, my boy. Anything else I need to know?" I asked him.
He chuckled and said, "Oh yes. That system is in. They acted a little worried that the orders were wrong, but I assured them that the plan they have is exactly what you had ordered. Also, the Molotov cocktails that Sonya had put together are on the roof, under a camo tarp. Not only that, but the new cremator that was on back order is being moved in as we speak."
I think I actually had butterflies. I told him, "I want the roof heavily fortified. I want you to get as much iron as you can. It should be usable as a weapon—pipes, rods, spear tips, even plates that can double as a shield. This could be an all-nighter for you, pal."
He grins, grit settling in his jaw, and says, "Sure thing, boss."
I had the delivery guys move the cremator onto the bottom level of the funeral home and told Chad to connect it up with the plans I had given him. I told my girls to wear as much iron as they could and still remain light enough to move fast.
I thought that they would try to attack, if not during the day then minutes after sunrise when we were still at our weakest. I wondered why they waited. Then my mind started to race up and down with theories: Maybe they were scared off. Maybe this, maybe that. I had to stay out of my head.
I had shut the club down for the past few nights, putting a sign on the door, but most of the regulars are close with all the family. I am sure they all know what is going on, and they will wait until they hear something on the news before they return. Potentially that was the plan—to starve me out. If I keep the club shut down for too long, I will have to open or go broke. If they attack when the club is open, many innocent lives will be lost in the crossfire, and that would also mean more ammo for the witches, now apparently necromancers.
About four hours after the sun had gone down, the night swallowed all sound. Everything fell quiet, a silence so profound it felt like a physical pressure. I had ordered everyone outside, their bodies taut with readiness. I figured that this was it. This had to be the attack I had been tasting on the wind—the moment we had prepared to die for.
Then came the sound of a low, chaotic trudge on the asphalt, an overwhelming chorus of mismatched footfalls that promised cold, inevitable violence, but not in unison. As the sound gave way to sight, I could see figures on the street way down the road. They had torches and swords. As they got even closer, I could see that they were all wearing sunglasses! It was the Glams and the remaining street soldiers. They had come to help us fight off the witches. Most of the street thugs, along with some of the Glams, filed in the front of the club. The rest made their way up to the roof by me.
"Joe-ell!" I said, genuinely surprised to see him with his crew.
He replies, "You have got to know, Sexy Rex, there is no creature on earth that is going to break the seal on that pooper before I do!"
I chuckle and shake my head. "I am surely glad to have you here, no matter the motivation." Everyone that had shown up grabbed something that they thought they could use.
A thought jumped in and out of my mind: I would feel like a real dick if nobody came here tonight. Just as that thought was leaving, there was a faint glow to the north. Another thought passed through my head: Now I think I would rather look like a dick.
Chad came over to me and handed me a wireless remote. I smiled and gave him the same nod he gives me every day. The green glow was accompanied by chanting, a ragged, guttural sound that scratched at the edge of hearing, a rhythm of ancient, joyless power. I could not make out the words; it must have been in another language.
Kara began chanting in what sounded like Latin, her voice strained and sharp, weaving a tapestry of sound that shimmered with nascent power. I assume this was some kind of protection spell. As the army got closer, I saw everyone ready themselves. The metallic click-clack of guns checking chambers and magazines cut through the tense quiet, a stark, visceral counterpoint to the distant, ragged chanting of the enemy.
I say to everyone who seemed to be within earshot, "Make sure nobody makes a move until they do! Be on the defense. Do NOT attack first!" Some looked at me with confusion, others with clear obedience.
The approaching mob, consisting of Elves, Witches, and zombies, stopped on the other side of the street. In the back, about three blocks from where the mob had stopped, I saw Kyle break away, walk over to a light post and clutch onto it as if gravity were about to fail and he wanted to make sure he was able to cling to Earth as everyone else floated away.
The green witch, Lady Sohona (or Priya to some), floats up to match my level. Her green iridescence lighting up half the block, she starts in: "Your kind have never let us progress with our craft unmolested. Since I first came to this country I had to hide who I was so that loathsome things like you would not crawl out of the sewers and try to take away everything I have. Now you have taken my daughter from me! It is time I return that favor back to you!"
Raising her arms, she fires an orb of green and purple energy at me. I do not move a single inch. The blast misses me by about two feet to my right.
As soon as the blast left her body, the beings below us charged the building and our people began to fire back in kind. About six inches (0.15 m) from the soldiers, the witch army hit a pink wall that Kara had cast before the fight started. The entire street thundered with the impact, and the pink light screamed, momentarily blinding. Somehow, the witch's green energy was able to penetrate the shield that Kara had held up for us.
The witch lunges herself at us, her green glow allowing her to pass straight through our shields. I run and vault into the air to meet her. I grab her wrist with one hand. I am unable to make contact with her actual skin; my hand is repelled by the aggressive, pulsing glow of the totem she has around her neck. With my free hand, I grab at the totem, but the energy that flows from it is stronger at the source. I get about three inches (ca. 8 cm) from it where the force stops me. After only seconds, the ambient energy begins to feel like garlic or pure salt searing my vampire skin.
In one last ditch effort to put a hurt on the assailant, I thrust at her with my fangs. For some strange reason, my skin is kept back, but my fangs—the very essence of my predatory nature—breach the shimmering green covering, and I draw a small, vital amount of blood from her neck. She flinches violently from the shock of what I have done, her protection drops for a critical second. The shield she has up instantly dissipates, and many of the creatures on her side are struck by the sudden, focused bombardment from our position.
She returns to her place in the sky and moves back to her army's front line to assist in the attempt to take down the pink wall that Kara had up. As she sends balls of energy at the barrier, the impacts cause damage to the building, but her attempts to breach the pink wall are in vain as the balls pass straight through without diminishing the shield itself. Meanwhile, slow zombies make their way to the pink wall and claw desperately at the barrier in a futile attempt to get past.
The green witch, recognizing the source of the defense, passes through our wall and focuses her attack directly on Kara. Sensing her lethal intent, I move swiftly to intercept. With Kara's free hand, she sends blinding rays of her own energy from her fingers at the witch. Obviously, the Green Witch is struggling with the disruptive effect that Kara is having on her. The green witch, still suspended in the air, contracts to a fetal position. Drawing all her light and power inward before her limbs extend violently before detonation.
The color that surrounds Kara and the witch instantly meet, and the energies appear to neutralize each other in a deafening crackling to silence.
All at once, from the catastrophic neutralization of their power, all things conjured by Kara and the witch—the shields, the glow, the ambient power—drop. All the streetlights go black at the exact same moment. The zombies storm the club, a hungry, crawling mass surging over each other like ants stuck in honey.
Across the street, I see the sewer grates, those running the length of the opposite curb, slide open with a sickening, metallic grind. I think to myself, "What fresh hell is this now?"
Celeste shifts into a fierce human-cat hybrid, keeping her powerful back, long, low tail, digitigrade feet, and sharp ears feline. Her mob crawls from the darkness below as she raises her head to speak, her voice a loud, throaty promise: "There is no way I will let you die without finding out what you taste like, Brax! There is no way Joe-ell is going to beat me to it either!" She runs her hands along the edges of her form, bottom to top, pushing her breasts together in a single, provocative motion to punctuate her challenge.
The elves start to crawl over the zombies like roaches over the ants, attempting to maintain the forward momentum of the assault.
Kara and the Green Witch recover at the same moment. The witch gets a shot off in Kara's direction. The blast sends Sonya tumbling off the side of the building. Kara instantly sends pink rays into the mountain of flesh that is climbing the front wall of the club.
I pull out the wireless remote that Chad had given me earlier. I push the little flashing red light, half expecting one of our cars to make a beep-beep sound as if arming the alarm. Instead, from under the storm gutter that runs the top of the building, a monsoon of lava water comes flooding out onto the elves and zombies. The searing deluge slowly melts the flesh and muscle off the bone, removing nearly seventy-five percent of the army she had assembled. Seeing the turn of the tide, The vampires focus their effort on the remaining army.
The Green Witch smiles—a chilling, knowing expression—and lowers herself down to ground level by Sonya, who had been cheering on the efforts of her family, who were still atop the roof.
With Sonya's focus broken, the witch drops behind her and drives her hand through Sonya's back, the red right hand emerging wetly between Sonya's giant breasts.
The death rattle from Sonya draws the immediate, horrified attention of Kara, who rushes to the side to see what happened. Watching Sonya's dead body fall to the ground, Kara snaps. Moving so fast that I could not tell if she ran or merely fractured the air with teleportation, she now stood in the exact place where Kyle had been standing only a fraction of a second before.
Kara was covered head to toe in hot blood. Pieces of Kyle were still mid-air, moving away from Kara by the sheer, instantaneous force of her occupation of the space Kyle had been using to live.
The Green Witch, spinning to look at the noise that Kara had made from the complete removal of Kyle from our realm, screams—a sound of raw, desperate anguish—as her last ties to her daughter are ripped and spread across the battlefield.
With the attention of the witch completely drawn, I drop to the ground level, my fangs extended into sharp, vengeful points. I grab the witch and penetrate her field just enough to rip the binding cord that held her totem around her neck. The cursed object drops to the hard concrete and makes a hollow clack as it bounces into the gutter. With the same blurring speed that Kara had used, I remove the witch's trachea from its resting place. My hand executes a vicious, wrenching tear that sprays hot arterial blood, laying the spine visible from the front. The resulting cavity at the base of her neck immediately wells and pools with dark crimson.
The witch drops instantly to her knees. Her arms snap rigid at her sides, fingers curled into helpless claws. Blood at the top of her chest pulls down and spurts violently out as she tries to gasp for air which is now useless to her. Small red spurts fire out from the exposed cavity at the crown of her chest like little crimson geysers every half second. Watching her mind come to terms with her own sudden end, her eyes dart back and forth as if there is a way she can still cling to life long enough to finish this war on top. Her eyes finally roll into the back of her head as her limp, lifeless body falls to the concrete.
Kara's voice echoes so violently the words she speaks are distorted by its own reverberation. Her arms raise as if forcing God's own hand to intervene. Pink and red lightning arch down—flashes of abolition—then shoot back up to the sky from her position in the street. Feeling as if it were her voice alone, the street in front of the club begins to shake as if some demonic force took control to stop the fight. The cats back up to the place they emerged from.
When the shaking reached its climax, the ground split as if two giant children were playing tug of war with the earth's crust. Deep orange and red colors leapt from the opening. Steam shot out, as if I had hit another button, calling the lava water back for a second helping. What remains of the witches' army began to fall, groups at a time. It was almost as if something were pushing them, or perhaps even pulling them in, from inside the churning fissure. Once the earth had swallowed up everything that posed a threat, the ground slowly settled itself, but the jagged rip in our neighborhood, and our lives, would remain.
I drop to one knee as I slowly lift the body of the still beautiful Sonya. Putting her chin on my shoulder, I instinctively wait for the familiar pressure of her arms to return my embrace. Blood begins to stream down my face as my eyes fill with blood from sheer, crushing emotion. I find it hard to see how Sonya's heart could feel any worse than mine does right now. Kara flashes by my side, her body convulsing with silent sorrow. That fucking bitch might not have beaten us here today, but she was able to take something priceless that will never be replaced.
About an hour before sunrise, Chad gathers us all atop the roof of the lair. He has constructed a solemn pyre of dark, consecrated wood, built not just as a fire, but as a throne for her final journey. In memory and respect for Sonya, one of the greatest creatures that has ever moved across the surface of this realm. Kara, her face streaked and stained by the dark crimson tracks of her tears in the dim light, raises a shaking hand and ignites the circle of sticks, forcing a final, fiery separation of Sonya's essence from the constraints of the mortal world. Chad gently pushed me forward, his silent presence insisting that the burden of this moment required my voice.
"I do not really have the words," I began, my voice raw. "How can I possibly describe the force of nature she was? She was a vital member of our clan that will never be replaced, and she was the irreplaceable corner foundation that made our triangle a perfect square! I feel like I have to tear the very world apart with my hands to find a place where she is still breathing. I would trade this victory, the lives of every witch and elf we killed, if it meant I could see Sonya one last time."
My throat constricted, fighting back the catch in my throat, as blood began falling from my eyes.
"We all had a different understanding of who Sonya was. The relationship that I had, and the connection that Kara, Jade, and I have with her will forever be a shattered, aching void. All we can do is remember her essence and feel the vibration she left behind for us. Know that one day our energy will merge with her, and the four of us will again become one. Jade is my mind, Kara is my heart, Sonya was my compass, my gut. The very thing I use to navigate myself and my family through this afterlife. I do not look forward to living without my direction, my instinct that I have lived with for so long. I love you, Sonya, my dear, I always will."
Like a hot poker plunged into my ribcage, I accepted the impalement—a pain I would willingly embrace if it meant keeping every memory we shared. Hot blood streamed down my face as I fought to force the tidal surge of grief back into my gut and throat, making it nearly impossible to draw breath, let alone speak another word.
I remembered that Jade and Kara were still with us, unharmed, for the most part. Ever loyal, Chad was at our side, and we had the addition of Johnny to look forward to in just under a couple weeks.
As the fire begins to die down, a crack of thunder echoes across the wounded sky. I look at the remaining members of my family and say to them, "We need to rebuild the damage that was done. We need to rebuild stronger. Every time this kind of thing would happen to me, I would run before, or after the fight. This is my home, my castle. I will not move from this location NOW or ever. This is our home, our home FOREVER. We will turn this place into a fortified death machine. Next time something comes sniffing around, we are going to be ready!"