The Blood that Flows
Rain splashed on the cracked cement under my feet as I traversed my way to the backdoor of the apartment complex Dudley showed me. The building was made of slimy gray cinder blocks and looked no less than a hundred years old. Actually, it looked close to demolition. I expected to see a ‘danger’ sign around each corner, but one never came. Finally, a ‘proceed at your own risk’ sign hung over doors taped in bright orange caution tape. I was satisfied that no one lived here, or rather; no one was supposed to be here.
I tried opening the door. It didn’t budge.
Dudley came up behind me, took a look at the lock, the tape, and the yellow battered door. He turned to me and asked for the last time, “Are you sure you want to do this? What you see in there may scar you for life.”
“I have to save her,” I explained desperately. As if I wasn’t traumatized already.
Keeping his eyes on me, he took out his gun and blew a hole through the window of the door. A cat screeched and bolted.
I gave him a disapproving look.
“You thought we were going to get in without them noticing?” Dudley scoffed. “You need to learn a thing or two about vampire hunting. They always know you’re coming.”
“We’re not vampire hunting!” I exclaimed.
Dudley reached into the hole and undid the lock. He pulled on the handle and asked seriously, “Didn’t you come here to hunt Garth?”
I tilted my head back in annoyance. Why did he keep questioning me? I couldn’t think about what I had to do. I just had to do it. If I hesitated, London would die. No thinking! Just moving!
“Yeah! I guess so,” I said noisily and I took out my gun.
He looked at me suspiciously. Then, shaking his head drearily, he twisted his wrist and dropped one of his long knives out of his sleeve. “Then you’re going to need this.” Handing it to me, he advised, “You don’t have to hide it. They’re coming.”
“Who’s coming?” I asked, jerking my head past him to see through the apartment doors and down a ruined hallway. He was right. A figure moved toward us. The lights in the building were off and I could only see him as a shadow against the light cast against the back wall. It was a man, but I couldn’t tell if it was Garth.
“Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want any,” the shadow called through the doors.
Dudley adjusted the hat on his head politely with his free hand. His other hand held his gun. “We came to visit London. Could you tell us which floor she’s living on?”
The shadow was at the door now, and it wasn’t Garth. It was a vampire with gray hair and black eyes. The anorexic bloodsucker wore a leather vest with the zipper done halfway up his chest and a dribble of red was running down his chin. Wet hair clung to his face in sticky strands.
I recoiled slightly.
Dudley stood his ground without a trace of discomfort. “Finished your transformation like what, five minutes ago? Three minutes ago? You look like shit.”
“Have we met?” the vampire sneered. Clearly, he had expected his appearance alone to scare off any intruders and he was annoyed it had so little effect.
“Did London change you because you monsters tied her up again, or are you her new lover? Or maybe you were sucking from Garth?”
The vampire was so offended by what Dudley said that for a moment he was rendered speechless.
“I repeat, what floor is London on?” Dudley pointed his gun at the vampire’s head.
“Shoot him already!” the vampire in front of Dudley shrieked, calling to someone else.
Another one of them was perched on a balcony. He had a shotgun in his arms, but it didn’t look like he knew how to use it and he was fumbling with loading it until the vampire on the ground shouted. The sniper grasped the gun and threw himself over the railing where he sprang like a monkey to another balcony railing, then to the tiny roof sheltering the door, and then to the ground in front of us. He wound up to strike Dudley with the gun, but Dudley ducked under the arc and discarded his hat in a nearby shrub.
Dudley slid out his sheathed sword and planted a hit on the sniper’s gun arm, making him drop the gun.
Then without warning, the shadow vampire came at me from behind and clasped his arms around my middle, pinning my arms to my sides. Off guard, I accidentally dropped my knife. I tried to break away by moving my arms, but he was too strong and he was maneuvering his new fangs toward my neck. I had the gun in my hand, but I wasn’t sure if I could shoot him. When you killed a vampire, you had to move beyond violence and into the realms of gore only seen in zombie-slasher video games. I wasn’t ready to do it until I felt his teeth scratch my skin. Putting my gun in my armpit, I aimed the barrel at his rib cage, and I pulled the trigger.
He blew off me and slammed against one of the cinder block walls. I saw him flail for a moment before getting his bearings. “You thought that would kill me?”
Touching my neck, I felt that he had sunk his teeth in and there was a small amount of blood oozing out two tiny puncture wounds. I screamed, “Schroder was harder to kill than you’ll be.”
“You’re bluffing. You’re shaking in your boots, princess.” He came at me again.
Suddenly, a vision of pulling Schroder’s bullets out of his head gave me purpose and conviction. I aimed for the vampire’s head and pulled the trigger. I missed. Then I jumped out of his way and smacked right into Dudley who was busy enough with the sniper.
“These are the last two humans we didn’t arrest from the coven,” Dudley explained as he suddenly grabbed me and shoved me out of the way of the shadow vampire, who was reaching for me. In one swift movement, he unsheathed his sword and cut across my vampire’s chest. Dudley didn’t even watch where he fell before he turned back to the sniper.
The whole thing reminded me of something Dudley had said, back at Marshall’s. He said I would be the kind of woman who wouldn’t have a problem slaughtering a pig. That’s exactly what this was. I could fight this vampire and risk him seriously injuring me, or I could just kill him. Schroder told me how to do it. I had a license to do it. I had come here believing I was prepared.
I took two steps in front of the vampire Dudley sent sprawling on the ground, and pointing my gun properly, shot him in the head. Oddly enough, the bullet went exactly where Dudley had shot Schroder.
The vampire was completely unconscious, just as Schroder had been. I walked up and did the dirty work I had made Dudley do when I was fifteen. I put my knife to his throat and cut, but it was harder work than it seemed. I had cut hams apart before and this was harder and bloodier.
Dudley came and stopped me. “I’ll finish,” he said, touching my shoulder tenderly.
I noticed he wasn’t caked in blood—not like me. I looked like I’d been doing dishes in blood with red smeared up to my elbows. The sniper was unconscious and handcuffed to a nearby fence.
“What stopped you from ending his legacy?” I asked gruffly.
“I’m not sure if he’s a vampire.”
“Oh? Does he have a pulse?”
Dudley smirked and took my knife away from me. “There’s no doubt that he’s consumed a lot of vampire blood. The fact is some of them have pretty slow pulses before they’re transformed. I don’t want my record blackened over something like this. He won’t be bothering anyone and I can get the police to check him out when you’ve finished here. Don’t worry—this guy had definitely finished transforming.”
I noticed that he didn’t say, ‘When you’ve saved London’. He said, ‘when you’ve finished here’. Then he brought the knife over his head like he was about to behead the vampire for me.
“Stop!”
“Why?” he said, quitting his stroke in mid-swing.
“I want to do it,” I insisted as I reached to take the handle from him.
Dudley weakly handed over the knife and showed me what to do. The spinal column snapped and I picked up the head by the hair and headed into the building. “Schroder told me we have to take the head as far away from the body as we can. We don’t want his body to be able to pick it up again.”
“Actually, you have to deliver it to the police and tell them where the body is, to prove you’re not a murderer or a vampire blood trafficker. Even after you present your license, they have to be able to account for all of the vampire’s blood, but they’re okay with it spilling all over the place.”
Dudley and I checked out the first floor and found nothing. Then we checked the second floor, even though Garth and London were probably on the third floor where the second vampire had appeared.
Inside, the cinder blocks were painted a hideous yellow, but the paint stopped when you got to the third floor. Up there, the walls were plain gray, like the color of sixty-year-old tombstones. Darkness and light came in patches—here—there—as if to remind us of a world outside. It was the world inside that was hidden. Though hidden by the prevailing shadow, I had to find the one thing that made coming to this place explicable.
I had to find her.
The air was thick with moisture. I could hear a tap running. I could hear a fan whirring. I could hear London breathing.
I pointed down to a room with gray sunlight streaming through vertical blinds. There was a pattern on the floor where the light hit.
Dudley and I paused outside the door and listened.
I could hear a man’s voice. “We have to get out of here.”
Then I heard London, her voice trembled like she was afraid. “What do you think happened to Five and Jerome?”
“I don’t know. We can’t worry about them. We kept our deal with them as best we could. We’re done.”
“I think Jerome needed more,” London whispered.
“Really?” the male voice said sarcastically. “I think Five went too far.”
“Why was he called Five again?”
I heard an exasperated sigh. “Because it took him five vampires’ blood to get him changed.”
“Does that mean we should call you Two?”
I set down the severed vampire head and used my free hand to steady myself against the door frame. Then I put one eye around the corner of the door, but I didn’t see anything except a fan moving at an impossibly slow speed. Then I looked in the crack between the door and the frame. There was a bed, and Garth was lifting London off the blood sprayed sheets.
London was wearing a black tank top and long silky white pajama pants. Garth was putting her in a wheelchair and pushing her toward Dudley and me. I glanced at Dudley. He wasn’t moving. I jerked my chin toward them in an effort to get him to come out at the same time as me.
He shook his head and put his gun back in its holster. Then he mouthed the words, “I’m only following you.”
I was vexed and confused. Dudley was a vampire hunter, wasn’t he? And here was a perfect example of vampire sleaze. Garth had actually used my sister to change himself and two other people into vampires. Why wouldn’t Dudley help me kill him?
Peering around the door, I saw Garth cover London with a blanket. Then he grabbed a bag that bore a resemblance to luggage and got behind the wheelchair to push her out of the room—toward us.
Okay. I had to do this myself. I put my gun in the back of my pants. I didn’t want London to see me with a gun. It was already bad enough I was caked in dead blood and didn’t have the time to wash it. Then I came into the room with my hands up.
The impact of my appearance was monumental.
Garth saw my bloodstains and looked like he was going to faint or throw up. London looked like she didn’t understand what Garth did. I had killed one of their friends.
“London,” I said, my voice full of relief. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”
Her lips were hideously dry. They were cracking and she eyed the cuts on my neck rather than looking at my face. “Sweeper?” she asked like she hardly knew who I was. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to bring you home,” I explained, taking a few slow steps toward her. She was white as a ghost from the roots of her hair to her lips to her fingertips. Any sudden movements might scare her.
“You came to help me?” she asked, rephrasing my sentence to suit her.
“I came to bring you home,” I corrected.
She stood up in the wheelchair. Her movement was so fluid it was like she was a puppet on a string that was suddenly jerked up. Her eyes stared straight in front of her—at my neck. She was parched. She needed blood.
Dudley grabbed my wrist and pulled me backward. Clutching me to his chest, he put his hand over my puncture wounds and whispered in my ear, “Let’s go. It’s not safe. She doesn’t have enough blood to resist drinking yours.”
“We can’t leave. We have to take her with us.” I rooted around in my mind for a way to take her safely and the only answer I could think of was to shoot her in the head and tie her up. Then we could take the bullet out and everything would be fine. I’d even shoot her under her hairline so no one would be able to see it.
“No,” Dudley said, manhandling me toward the door and keeping one eye on London whose head was now cocked to the side and turning strangely. She took a couple of steps forward. She wasn’t going to let Dudley and me leave. Good, she was going to come with us. I disentangled myself from him and, standing alone, held my hand out to her.
Dudley went to grab me a second time when suddenly, a fifth person entered the room, via the balcony the sniper had jumped down from. His head was bare as he was sans a ridiculous costume. It was Schroder. He walked with bold strides to where Dudley and I were standing, but he too kept his eyes on London. He planted his feet behind me, but spoke to London smoothly, “Do you remember me?”
She looked confused but interested in identifying him through whatever fog blood deprivation created.
Meanwhile, Schroder put one of his hands into the back pocket of my capris and squeezed. I jumped and was about to pipe up when he pulled the gun out of the back of my pants. Kissing the top of my head he threw London the gun.
Miraculously, she caught it, though she still moved like a marionette.
Then Schroder took a syringe out of the inside pocket of his coat and removed the protective cap. Then he pricked his index finger and one tiny drop of blood surfaced. Then he rubbed it between his fingers and said, “You remember that, don’t you?”
Suddenly, London’s face filled with color, and her eyes shone brighter than the stars. Her confusion vanished and she became a being full of vitality and understanding. “Schroder! I thought you were dead!”
He inclined his head toward Dudley and me. Then he said, “Those two only thought they killed me. Well, do you like my new look?”
Her whole face was full of wonder and possibility, like the horror story she had just endured didn’t matter anymore. It was gone.
Garth was crumpled up on the floor and held his stomach like he was nursing a terrible digestive problem.
Then I realized something horrible. Schroder had pieced it together. He knew Dudley was Tate Crosswood. I glanced at Dudley’s face. His jaw was set tight, but he wasn’t running away.
“Darling London, listen to me carefully,” Schroder said, his voice turning to milk and butter. “You know how jealous I get. I’ll forgive you, but you have to shoot that little plaything of yours.”
London turned around and without a breath of indecision shot Garth who was crouched on the floor. The bullet hit his temple and within seconds his eyes filled with red tears that fell on the cement flooring.
London didn’t even look bothered by the sight.
“Good girl,” Schroder praised. “Now tell our guests goodbye. You need to drain him and they don't need to watch.”
London turned and pointed the gun at Dudley and me.
“London, you don’t want to do this,” I said, trying to get her to understand.
London didn’t say anything but shot the floor in front of us. Dudley backed away and tried to pull me along with him, but I wouldn’t move.
“London!” I screeched.
She pointed the gun at my head and pulled the trigger.
Dudley jerked me out of the way and the bullet hit the wall behind me.
Schroder laughed as I tried to make my way toward my sister. Was it funny to him? Was making my sister act like this hilarious for him? If he hadn’t taken away my gun I would have put a sixth bullet in his head. For groping me, too!
“Enough,” Dudley shouted. Grabbing me by my waist like he was tackling me, he hauled me out of the room bodily as I kicked and screamed. “You can’t do this!” he told me. “You don’t understand. She’s a vampire. She’ll kill you. Stop fighting me!”
“Let me go!” I screamed.
Schroder’s laugh was ringing between my ears, disturbing my thinking.
Once we were around the corner, Dudley set me down and I slapped him across the face as hard as I could.
He stopped for one second and looked at me gravely. “I don’t care.”
“You’ll let me go back?” I huffed, still standing in one place. I couldn't move. His fist was still clenched around my wrist.
He rubbed his cheek where I'd struck him with his gun hand. “No. I don’t care if you hate me, but you are giving this up right now even if you hunt me for what I’m about to do. You don’t understand what’s happened. She doesn’t love you. She doesn’t want to be with you. The only thing she cares about is her lover and— you saw it. A drop of Schroder’s blood was enough to make her forget Garth. How much do you think you mean to her?”
In my anguish, my bottom lip shriveled up and my eyes were as hot as blisters. I closed them, shook my head, and tried to shut him out. But I couldn’t block out his words, because I was nothing more than food to her now.
Dudley pushed me to the stairwell and led me down the steps.
It was like a replay of that terrible day where Dudley burst in and helped me kill Schroder, except this time, he didn't help. This time, he put his arms around me, pulled me from the house, and told me I had to let the vampire kill my sister. Schroder and London would figure out between them who would live and who would die. I convulsed slightly as I realized, as I never had before, that London didn’t want to be saved. She wanted to let him kill her if that was what he wanted.
Her future fate had nothing to do with me.
I was like a straight-jacketed mental patient as Dudley took me outside, just in time to run into Pierce and The Scissor Man. Dudley leaned my despondent frame against the apartment complex wall and spoke to Pierce. Everything was like a foggy nightmare, but I saw Kelly take out a pair of scissors and jam them into the leg of the vampire corpse I had beheaded, letting a fresh stream of blood flow. Dudley was telling him about the head I had left in the hallway, the guy handcuffed to the fence, London, Schroder, and Garth.
Then I was maneuvered into the backseat of a car. I heard the rumbling of an engine igniting and then I suppose I felt what hell must feel like.