Blood 4 Life Page 5

  It’s on the vampire society’s lifeline online, InfiniteVampire.com. The website hides in plain site as a “pimp-tub” manufacturer, but the site is actually a portal for vampires to communicate, stay on top of important news, and buy products specifically for vampires. The Infinite Vampire company itself is a nonprofit co-op run by a board of directors, and it pays dividends from its generated revenue back to its registered users.

  Eddy’s username on X-Y-V is “TheRealVampireEddy” which finally won him over from his other idea, “I_DontSparkle.” Eddy has been logged in and has been speculating with his friends about an announcement the High Council had sent out to the House of Elders. There’s a banner on every page alerting visitors, although some elders, like Sadie, are always given advance notice.

  Eddy sees that another message has popped up on his friend’s group chat.

  MrBigFangz: Yeah Real-E, what’s the news?

  Eddy sighs. Quincy, can’t you read? He types a response.

  TheRealVampireEddy: Bigz, I’m in the dark here. I don’t think moms has checked yet.

  MrBigFangz: Well get her readin yo!

  TheRealVampireEddy: Yeah, I’ll tell her to stop what she’s doing and read it now because my friends want to hear the news. Spoiler: she won’t be impressed.

  V-locityRaptor: Real-E, fill us in! :P

  TheRealVampireEddy: As soon as I know something, I’ll send a note, but until then, I want to keep my head attached to my shoulders, aight? O_o

  TheRealVampireEddy: Listen, I gotta go. Later.

  Eddy has something else on his mind right now: June. She’s his best friend, and their relationship used to be easy. But keeping the family secret from her has been getting a lot more challenging. He feels odd around her when he can’t be himself. He feels odd about her in general.

  He’s heard horror stories of vampires who tried to date a normal human—how frequently that ends with death and blood—and he’s no dummy. He picks up his phone and pulls up a picture of her from the fall. Her soccer team had just won a big game, and she’s got grass stains and dirt covering her legs and a giant smile covering her face.

  Eddy takes a soft breath. Whether he’ll admit it or not, he loves her. He loves being around her, but he hates having to hide who he really is from her.

  I need to tell her.

  Frustrated, he leaves the website and switches over to a streaming music site. He puts on a station of Calvin Harris-style music and turns it up LOUD.

  In some ways, Eddy and Charlie are more alike than either would like to admit.

  The first skill Charlie trained Eddy in was calligraphy—back when Eddy first started attending public school—in junior high. Once Eddy’s mind could be focused, Charlie started teaching him kung fu and tai chi. As part of that training, Charlie introduced the “grandfather weapons” to Eddy: the seven-foot bo staff and the short sticks—a pair of weapons each about two feet long.

  Eddy is a skilled but inexperienced fighter; he has years of kung fu training under his belt, but he has no actual fighting experience. He prefers short sticks to the bo staff, and he is FAST with them.

  Eddy is proficient enough with the sticks to progress to other short techniques like wielding double swords or whip chains, but much to Charlie’s chagrin, Eddy showed interest in ranged weapons—an area in which Charlie isn’t very skilled.

  Luckily, Skip was a competitive archer in college, and he agreed to take Eddy under his wing to teach him. Eddy has practiced under his tutelage for about a year now, and thanks to Eddy’s ever-increasing vampire abilities, he has quickly become a very good archer in his own right. Every time he practices, he improves, and he shows great control while releasing the arrow. Eddy can see his target much more clearly now, he can feel the slightest wind, and he can execute all the movements with precision and speed. To an outside viewer, he’s a natural.

  Eddy loves it because he doesn’t need to hide his skill; he can be himself and excel.

  Charlie knocks on his son’s door. He half wonders if Eddy can even hear him knocking over the volume of the music, but not really. He is a vampire.

  Eddy turns down the volume. “Come in.”

  “Hey, how’s it goin’?” Charlie walks in and leans against the dresser.

  Eddy hops onto his bed, alongside a book, The Philosopher Monk. “Good. What’s up?”

  “Nothing. I just dropped Skip off. Let him know if you want some more practice time with him.”

  “I will. How’s June?”

  Charlie moves over to the computer desk and sits down in the warm chair. “Actually, she is having a bad night, called up Skip crying. I think something happened with her friend’s dog.” Charlie sees the concern on Eddy’s face. “June is fine, though.”

  “I wonder what happened.” He shifts on the bed.

  It’s clear that June means a lot to him. Charlie waits.

  Eddy stares off, and then looks at his dad. “So, I was thinking… I want to tell her our secret.”

  Charlie shakes his head. “Not yet. We need to get through to Skip first. I know this is hard for you, but—”

  “Don’t pretend you know!” All other sounds in the house go silent. Sadie and Minnie are certainly listening to them now.

  Charlie blinks.

  “You don’t know… It was different for you when you were a kid, back with the dinosaurs.”

  Charlie rolls his eyes. “Listen, you can’t tell her yet. I’ve been trying to get through to Skip, but he’s so thick—”

  “Well, how about I tell her, and then she tells Skip?”

  “No, that won’t work, trust me. Skip will need some time to accept it, then after he’s comfortable with it, then we can talk about telling June.”

  Eddy shakes his head. “You don’t get it.” His face is red.

  “C’mon, Eddy, you have to understand that this is a really dicey situation, and a misstep here could be very dangerous. You have to trust me.”

  Eddy’s eyes are getting watery. “So you’re saying to wait and trust you, but Dad, I need to tell her!”

  Charlie stands. “Eddy, you can’t. Remember that this is the family’s secret you want to tell. This isn’t about you; it’s about all of us.”

  “Whatever.”

  Charlie’s eye twitches, and he lets out a small groan at the comment, but he tries to keep his cool. He reminds himself that Eddy is probably just being a little emotional. He remembers how Eddy has tried to protect June in the past, but she’s not his family, and there are others who need protecting.

  “Need to tell me anything else?” Eddy stares at Charlie.

  Charlie frowns and furrows his brow. “Try to think about somebody else for a change. Min—”

  Eddy jumps out of bed and faces Charlie. “I’m NOT thinking about myself, DAD. I’m thinking about JUNE!” Eddy’s fists are clenched, and his eyes are wild.

  Charlie recognizes the rush that’s happening inside Eddy right now—that fire that begs to explode, a thirst for destruction.

  Charlie lifts his palms up to his son in a show of appeasement, but his voice is raised, and he speaks with more power than usual. “Hey. Calm down. I was talking about Minnie and how she needs you more than June does. Minnie needs more protection than any of us.” Charlie steps lightly past Eddy and out of the door, pausing then turning back. “You have a duty to your family.”

  Eddy hears his dad, but he doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t move; he’s frozen by emotions. He shakes his head and clenches his teeth.

  In their household, the word of either parent has always been final and uncontested—a firmness born out of admiration, respect, and fear. Eddy inhales, closes his eyes, and then tightens every muscle in his body until he shakes.

  He definitely isn’t feeling any fear.

  Charlie finds Sadie in the kitchen.

  She pulls a large pan of lasagna out of the oven. She flashes her eyebrows up at him and shakes her head. “Dinner is ready.”

  Charlie nods. “It smel
ls great.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Think we can hold off on the family meeting? Eddy needs some time to cool off.”

  “Fine. There was an announcement from the House today, but I haven’t read it yet. I’m sure we’ll want to talk about it.” She takes a stack of plates and spoons some steaming lasagna onto them, one by one. “We can hold off on the talk with Minnie for now, but we’ll definitely want Eddy’s help when we do talk to her.”

  “Okay. Hey…can I have a hug?”

  Sadie hugs him while holding the spoon away from his back. “Will you have dinner with Minnie? I’ll take a plate up to Eddy. I’ll eat in the office while I read the announcement.”

  “Sure. I’ll fix her plate.”

  Upstairs in her office, Sadie turns on her laptop, launches a VPN internet traffic mixer, verifies that her IP is anonymous, then launches her email client. The emails from the House are encrypted and digitally signed, and she can only access them on machines that are secure. Extreme precaution has helped vampires survive—since the beginning—and now, along with the convenience of instant digital communication comes serious security concerns that could expose the vampire community to the public.

  Something that almost all vampires are anxious about.

  There have been rumors of the House approving a public awareness campaign, but there’s nothing to them. World governments are aware of the existence of vampires, but they agree with the wisdom of keeping the vampires’ existence a secret. They always have, at least—for good reason.

  World mythologies and popular cultures illustrate vampires as being bloodsucking monsters that feed primarily on innocent humans in order to sustain their unholy existence. For the most part, those beliefs and notions are false.

  Vampires learned quickly that feeding on animals was the easiest way to sustain themselves. The earliest of their bloodline had to hunt for their prey, and they were usually the greatest and most skilled hunters in their community. The domestication of cattle and sheep was the first big leap forward for vampires, and the oldest families developed large estates with herds to sustain their need for blood. Those landowning families supported the growth and expansion of the societies around them, and they frequently served in pivotal roles in their communities.

  Vampires have been just as responsible for the advancement of the human race as regular humans have been.

  Sadie is a very old vampire from a very old family—one that has maintained a seat in the House of Elders since its inception. The influence an elder wields is significant; they are the most respected and revered members of the Vampire Order.

  The Costanzas’ seat is one of the oldest seats in the House. Constantine, who reigned as emperor of the Roman Empire from 306 to 337, sat in the family’s seat for almost a century. And for the past fifty years, the family’s seat has been Sadie’s.

  She authenticates one more layer of security, opens the confidential letter, and raises her fork for another bite of lasagna, but she pauses with her mouth open.

  Shit.

  Charlie is putting Minnie to bed—later than usual—when he hears Sadie finally leaving the office. He had delayed her bedtime in case he and Sadie could play a game with her, but Sadie had been in the office for hours.

  He continues Minnie’s favorite bedtime story. “And then Red Riding Hood said, ‘What big teeth you have, Grandma.’” Charlie assumes a monstrous pose and changes his voice to be much deeper and rawer. “THE BETTER TO EAT YOU WITH!” Charlie pours himself onto Minnie, pretending to eat her up like the Big Bad Wolf would.

  Minnie squeals with glee. Amid laughter she cries out, “Don’t eat me! Don’t eat me!”

  “NOM NOM NOM NOM. Oh, such a tasty little girl! NOM NOM NOM!”

  Sadie enters Minnie’s room, immediately jumps on the bed, and pulls Charlie off the laughing little girl. “You cannot eat her, Big Bad Wolf, for she is the princess that will save the forest.”

  Charlie, having practiced with a Kabuki theater troupe in Japan—although it has been a while—puts on a face of extreme surprise crossed with constipation. “This is the Princess of the Woods?” Charlie looks at Minnie. “Is this true, you tasty morsel? Are you the Princess of the Woods?”

  Minnie is laughing so hard that it takes her a moment. “YES! I am a princess, and you are banished forever into the sunlight!”

  Sadie gasps. “To the sunlight? But, your highness, he’s a wolf; he needs the darkness to live. Perhaps he can be your bodyguard and live in the forest and protect you.”

  “Will you protect me, Mr. Wolf?”

  Charlie gets down on one knee. “Your majesty, I’m sorry I started to eat you. If you allow me, let me serve as your bodyguard. Let me protect you, forever.”

  “Okay!” Minnie laughs and sits up, shooting her arms out to collect hugs.

  Sadie is first to fill her small arms. Charlie wraps his big arms around them both.

  Sadie looks at Charlie, sees his smile, and allows her smile to fade away. Oh, Charlie, things are about to get really hard.

  Charlie feels her worry. He squeezes her and Minnie harder. Whatever it is, it’ll be alright, my love.

  They put Minnie to bed, then head downstairs to the kitchen.

  -Clink, clink- -splash, splash- -dash, dash, dash, dash, dash-

  Charlie stirs his health tonic with his pinkie. “Sadie, what’s going on?”

  “Well, first, Mary is traveling through town and wants to come by and stay tomorrow. We could all have dinner.”

  Charlie shrugs. Mary is one of Sadie’s oldest friends. “Sounds good; haven’t seen her in a couple years. So what’s the news?”

  Sadie grabs a bottle from the fridge and takes a sip. “It’s the war. It’s worse than people think. The government wants our help—they want the vampires to help.”

  -Crrrick-

  Sadie and Charlie both look up to the source of the sound and see Rusty. He’s sitting on top of the cupboards, near the ceiling. He wags his tail at them.

  Charlie looks back down at Sadie, a little dumbfounded. “Umm, NO.”

  “The idea is that if we help them win back the country, then they can help us go public and show the world that we’re not really the evil monsters like in the movies.”

  Charlie slurps some hot sauce off the top of his drink. “I will not fight for anyone, ever again. You know this.”

  “If the vampires go out and save the day, then humans will know we’re on their side and hopefully then they’ll realize that we’re not going to go all Jeffrey Dahmer on them.”

  “I don’t care. I’m fine remaining a secret.” He takes a breath. “Sadie, this is a bad idea.”

  “Both the House of Elders and the Order of Knights have been called to meet in DC. They want to take a vote at the end of the week and do some preliminary strategizing with the Pentagon.”

  Charlie stares at Sadie and takes another large sip of his drink. “I’m not going. I’m not a knight anymore. Those years—centuries—are over.”

  Sadie looks at Charlie and thinks about all the wounds and scars he has to show from fighting other people’s battles. He’s been nearly killed a half dozen times, had been so mutilated once that it had taken him months to heal, and had his loved ones brutally slain in retaliation for his “assistance.”

  She blinks and looks at him now as her husband. The man that has walked with her, peacefully, the past one hundred and twenty-five years and helped her raise over a dozen children. Before they fell in love, Charlie was a Knight of the Order. He was one of the instruments that she and other elders had commanded into battles over and over again for the betterment of the vampire kind.

  She subdues an urge to shudder. She finds it ironic and disgusting now, that this man has bled…and healed, and bled, and healed for her, but not for her as her husband. He did it as a duty to the House of Elders. Charlie’s service helped ensure that vampires could live peacefully among the humans—so that vampires today can drink blood-based products from recyclable d
rink bottles.

  She sees the man who changed her life. She leans against the counter and looks away to the ground. “You don’t have to go, Charlie, but I do.”

  “I don’t want you to go. Our family needs you. Eddy and Minnie need you, here.” He takes a step toward her and lays his hand on her hip. “This is a bad idea, on all the levels. I—”

  -Ggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-

  Rusty, still perched high on the cupboards, is growling.

  Sadie leans off the counter, and Charlie takes a step back, looking up. “Rusty, what is it?”

  Rusty continues to growl.

  Sadie and Charlie listen. They hear rustling outside, and then a bump sound against the house.

  Charlie pushes a flash of adrenaline into his veins—a trick he picked up a long time ago. “Sadie, make sure the kids don’t go outside. I’ll check it out.” In a blur, he’s in the garage, has the long red-and-black Muramasa katana in his hand—still sheathed—then he’s out the back door to the yard.

  It’s late and dark outside, and Charlie’s eyes take time to adjust. The sounds they heard were close by, though, right next to the house. Charlie scans to the right and left, straining to see anything at all.

  Nothing?

  He freezes, closes his eyes, and listens. He’s perfectly still for almost a minute until he hears a rustling again, this time from behind him.

  In the time it takes him to open his eyes, he’s turned around with his sword drawn, and there’s nothing there but his house.

  Huh?

  Charlie looks up. Ughhhh, you’ve got to be kidding me!

  Charlie walks back in the garage and sticks his head into open doorway to the kitchen. “Sadie, false alarm.”

  “What is it?”

  Charlie sighs. “There’s humans on the roof.”

  Sadie grunts. “Well get them off!”

  “Oh, what a good idea,” Charlie murmurs as he walks back outside.

  There’s two young people on the roof. From their appearance, they seem to be in their early twenties. Charlie can’t tell if they’re siblings, friends, or lovers, but he also doesn’t care.