Published: 31 Oct 2025

Darkest Hour

September 14, 2017
Coleson Sanitarium ( Closed )
Outside of Branson, Missouri

I woke up feeling a sense of dread. Considering the place I had chosen to sleep this day, that just seemed to be baked into the sauce. This old abandoned hospital had all the Gothic charm of a crumbling old castle in Europe someplace. Which is weird for it being in the heart of Missouri. At least the graffiti hastily spray-painted on the walls was a reminder that the structure was uninhabited.

You see, I’ve been running away for so long, I just know what the next town is, where the last town was. It’s been a strange eight years of running and I just needed a place to lay low, let the day pass so I can get out and feed. Then hit the road and move away, hide. Just hide.

I’m not what you see when you look at me. Guess I should have started with that. I’m a vampire. It’s simply that. Yeah, I know I look 14, but I’m older than that. I was kidnapped and ravaged… might get into that later, but for now, I’ve been running to get away from the vampire family that turned me. Family, yah, that’s a laugh. More like the people that physically, mentally and emotionally tortured me for years, without teaching me much about being a vampire. To make it simple, I’ve been a vampire since just before Michael Jackson died.

Fuck, I wish I had just been allowed to die, as well, sometimes. Most times.

I managed to break away from that herd of lunatics and escaped. Been running ever since. Eight years, man. And I still can’t find someplace safe. There’s religious fanatics, witch and vampire hunters, wild supernatural creatures of all kinds and even friggin’ werewolves out there all trying to kick my ass. AND I’m trying to avoid my old herd’s long reach. Twice before, they almost caught me. Had to double back behind where they were searching and move on. Three times I’ve had to hide on an air plane’s landing gear to escape, and that wasn’t easy.

Anyhow. Creepy old hospital, abandoned back in the 1940’s. Tons of graffiti on the walls, open to the weather in many places but the structure is strong and safe, and the cellar morgue is nice and dark. That’s one thing that the normal human’s got right about us vampires. We do have a rather annoyingly strong allergy to sunlight.

So, I woke up suddenly, during broad daylight. That usually means something dangerous is prowling around. I don’t know how to describe it, but a vampire just knows these things. I sat up from the couch left in the coroner’s office and cast around with my senses. It is the only way I can still see daylight and not panic. I could sort of look around outside while still safe in the shadows.

I took a long time looking around out there, probably an hour. Part of it was that I had loved the sun as a normal person. I was a beach kid. California sunshine was like meat and milk to me. Nearly killed me not being able to walk around outside during the day. But then again, it wasn’t my choice, either.

I’m stalling, because I don’t like admitting weakness. I’m a vampire, yes, but I’m not a strong one. And I’ll never grow up. Which sucks enormously.

Anyways, I thought I saw something moving in the woods but it was just some animal. Not a supernatural threat. Although, you can never be too careful about werewolves out here in the countryside. I went to go back to sleep, yawning deeply, and turned off my remote senses. I shuffled back to the couch when I heard it.

A low, guttural growl. Deep, with the resonating sound of wet, salty teeth. I inhaled in order to smell. Vampires don’t normally breathe, so smelling is not usually natural. I can remember to breathe sometimes, in order to pass as human, but I don’t do it when alone. The scent rolled over my nasal passages and I swore. The air in the place was filled with the scent of werewolf. That musty, sweaty, blood tinged feel to the air.

This was it’s lair. And like cockroaches and ants, you rarely ever see only one wolf. Or one werewolf.

Fuck, I was so screwed. Can’t go outside, can’t fight this furry fucker. I remember thinking, “I’m gonna have to outrun these bastards until nightfall.” I began to panic.

The hit came so fast I don’t even know where it came from. I stepped into the hallway of the cellar, past the autopsy room, and was pushed back until I heard my spine hit the table in the middle of the room, making the solid table almost ring. I fell forward and slammed my face into the floor, caught it on my chin. I rolled over onto my back, almost going fetal. Everything hurt.

The beast landed on my chest, driving the air from my lungs. Fortunately, I don’t need them the same way I used to. I saw the face, twisted in rage and fury, growling, coming down on me. The wild werewolf reached back with one set of hand claws, his fist opening and closing, as if uncertain on how to strike.

“I’m sorry!” I screamed. A change came over his face, then. Like the rage was replaced with confusion. He clutched his fist a few more times, his other paw full of my t-shirt. I hung there under him, and closed my eyes, waiting for the blow to fall.

“I’m sorry, imsorry, imsorry,” I kept repeating, feeling him or her breathing hard, their fist twisted in my collar. I was totally at their mercy, and their hand holding me in the air kept going up and down, raising my back off the cold, tiled floor. Finally he dropped me, kind of flinging me to the ground and he got off me. I channeled my blood to heal me and felt my back snap back into place. I sat up gingerly, keeping my movements slow and short.

He paced at the entrance to the room. Which sort of trapped me in there with him. Fuck.

“I didn’t know this was your home,” I said, gradually sitting up. I moved my hand up to the autopsy table to push on to stand and he growled, subtly. I held up my other hand and then slowly pulled my hand back off the table. “Alright, alright. I’m not going to attack, okay. I’m just a kid.” And I tried to pull the ole Jedi Mind Trick, putting an impression into his head to see me as something other than a blood drinker. His growl grew softer. I sat back on the floor there, resting against the leg of the table and we both just stared at each other.

“I was just passing through. Soon as it’s dark, I’ll leave and never come back,” I said, one hand still out. “I just need to rest.”

The pacing slowed. His breathing relaxed. The tension through his body lessened, although I’ve seen werewolves in action, so I had no doubt that he was still capable of phenomenal speed. He could rip me apart without much difficulty. So I relied on an old vampire tactic: when you can’t win with force, negotiate. And even if I had been adult when Embraced, I still would be no match for this nine foot tall mass of fur and fangs and claws, muscle and bone.

He stopped pacing, leaving a corner of the door visible to me and then… he transformed, shifting from the big Hollywood werewolf shape into some really fucking huge wolf. The thing stalked forward, pushing it’s nose to my foot. I started to scramble to my feet and it looked up and growled a warning. I paused and our eyes met, a large amount of distrust showing in those eyes. It’s lips had pulled back showing the large canine teeth and mouth that looked big enough to chomp through a whole watermelon.

He sniffed at me. Then sniffed again, his nose diving forward to push the cuff of my jeans, near my exposed ankle. When you spend years on the run, you learn to keep your shoes on in a new place. He face twisted with a grimace, which I didn’t understand. I had a shower like two weeks previously at this point, and there are some things that vampire bodies don’t do anymore. One of them is make body odor.

He sniffed one more time, deeply closing his eyes. As he breathed out, I could feel the air from his nostrils snaking up my pant leg and across my undies. I have to admit, as scared as I was, it was a weird thrill feeling that.

He snorted, opening his eyes and looking up to me. That blew a second burst of air up. Loose jeans can hide much, and when a breeze stirs you from below, you learn to appreciate the room. He backed away, moving like I’d stabbed him in the nose. He sat back on his haunches, observing me with that universal expression of canine confuddlement on his face. I slowly pulled my leg up, his eyes tracking me.

“I really mean it. If you let me go…”

He growled and rose to all fours, tail going out stiffly. The growl switched to more of a whine. And then he sat down and seemed to shrink. Still in a wolf form, and still blocking the doorway. He had the anxiousness of a German shepherd puppy. He barked at me and looked away. Our eyes met again and he barked at me twice, then looked away, which seemed to be a clue that I should do the same. So I did.

We sat there, unmoving, for the better part of an hour. Neither passing an eye near the other. Eventually I grew tired and dozed off. Hey, I’m a vampire. I sleep during sun up. More hours passed, until sun down. Don’t ask how we always can tell when it goes down. Maybe it’s just some kind of vampiric defense mechanism.

I stood and his head swung my way, expectantly. I looked at him warily, knowing that he could become enraged at any moment and strike. As his eyes followed me, I went around the end of the autopsy table and made my way towards the actual coroner’s office. The beast stood then, and I stepped through the door, closing it softly.

Now, he could still see my every move. This place was built with glass walls, at least partway up from a knee wall. Don’t ask me why. I closed the door and gathered my things. Not a lot, just my pack with a few clothes, some cash, just the essentials. I grabbed that and a hoody, slung it over my shoulder and turned back.

He had jumped up onto the table, and reverted to his larger, still four-footed form. I can still see that massive jaw hanging down like a steam shovel ready to rip me in half with one chomp. I met his eyes, but saw no fury. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t still scared.

Between me and the door to freedom lay a space of twenty-five feet, with the long end of the table in between. Going around it meant another six or seven steps. Going over it would be about impossible with a slavering giant werewolf blocking my path. So again, vampire tricks would have to work. And soon, because I was beginning to get… thirsty. And when vampires get thirsty, they get desperate, reckless.

I opened the door. His eyes glowed a dull yellow in reflected light. His stare was, in a word, baleful.

“We had a deal.” I took a step outside the door. His whole body tensed. “I will leave your place, no strings. Okay?” I took another step. His head lowered towards the ground, his body perched over the side of the table, ready to spring.

“Look, I don’t want to fight you. I don’t even want to be a vampire. Just let me go, so I don’t have to turn into one of them completely.” He growled and it went into that high pitched whine again. “Please, I promise I wont ever return.” I took another three steps towards the door, turning to move, faster.

Bad move on my part. He leapt. I tried to get the door in the way, but he was too close to me. His body hit me in the midsection, dropped me like a bad habit. I landed back on the couch after falling sideways on the table, the bulk of his body covering me. I tried to shift him off but he had weight, leverage and strength on me. Plus I was at an odd angle, pressed over onto my back with my pack shifting the shape of my spine.

My hands were out of position to stop him from biting me, so I tried to squeeze his body. It was the only thing I could do. I put my strength to it. I’m no match for even the weakest werewolf in the strength department, but up close I can do some significant damage.

Not like I had much choice in the matter. This prehistoric fur ball was about to shred me. I looked up and… stopped squeezing. He looked down on me, his chest pressing on me, those eyes shining in the darkness.

But he wasn’t angry. He wasn’t growling or slavering at the jaws. Somehow he looked… protective?

“Do it!” I shouted. “DO IT! Make it quick, killer!”

He sat back, mostly covering my legs. Still kept me immobile, but he was off my chest now. My hands were free.

And then he changed. Not into that giant wolf. He turned into… a boy. Thin, wiry, scrawny, but a boy nonetheless. He was tanned, had dark hair, dark eyes. He wore a long baseball shirt, the kind that buttons down the front. Couldn’t see any socks of anything, but it looked like the baseball uniform type of shirt, like from a team instead of the simple stuff you can but from walmart.

His eyes, while very dark, were glowing and depthless. It was like staring into a dark cloudless night sky, without a moon to make the star light seem jealous, no clouds to keep getting in the way. I stared back at him and he looked on me, hungrily.

“Uhm,” he said, his hand going up behind his head. “I uhm,” he said, his eyes going away to a corner of the room.

“Why did you tackle me?” I shouted back. That seemed to catch him off guard.

“Dunno,” he whined. He actually dropped his head like dogs do when they get yelled at.

“I said I’d leave your place here and never come back. You should have just let me go.”

“But…”

“But what, ya dumb mutt?”

“Hey! I not dumb!”

“Get off!” I commanded and exercised some strength to move him. I shoved and heaved and he fell over. I was able to sit up and shook my head. When I rebooted from my shake, I looked down at him. He sat on the floor where I’d knocked him, hands between his knees, his shirt pooled around his hips. Strangely, it didn’t seem like he was wearing any pants. Or shoes.

Then again, what did I know about shape changers? Other than they were lethal to my kind. Or your kind. Or literally any kind they come into contact with, generally speaking.

“I’m leaving now. Okay?” I got up and adjusted my pack. “So see ya.” And I started for the door.

“Uhm, where you go?” he asked. But it wasn’t like he was trying to stop me. It was a genuine question. Like he really wanted to know.

“I don’t know. Anywhere. Just out of here. Goodbye!”

“Wait. Uhm… I uhm, show you path. Or something.”

“You tried to kill me and kept me stuck here for hours. Now you wanna be a tour guide.”

“Well, uhm… I mean, you couldn’t go out.”

I looked back at him, head tilted with my best melting ice stare. I’m told it doesn’t look all that intimidating on a 14 year old.

“You blocked the only exit with your big wolf ass.”

“I uhm…” he started, still sitting on the ground with his legs kind of frog squatting. “Not want you to go.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. I… uhm, I liked… way you smelled.”

I pondered him for a bit. “Look, I’m leaving. I can’t stay.”

“Uhm, where will you… you know?”

“It’s better if you don’t know.”

“It is?” he said, head twisted.

“It’s better for me if you don’t know. Shit! Why am I even still talking about this. So long, wolf boy,” I said, heading out the door. I shuffled my pack on my shoulder and started to leave. I heard a whine from him and then a growl. ‘So fast!’ I thought, realizing he had shifted again. And the next moment I was pressed onto my face, with his body, enormous, slamming into me from behind.

He held me down, but there was only enough force to keep me from moving. I rolled over under him, stuck between the bulk of his giant wolf form and the door frame. Just enough room.

“Get off! Ya big moron! Get off of me or fuckin’ kill me! Make up my mind!”

The growl that came from him sounded conflicted. Like a growl and a whine rolled into one very loud utterance. His paw became heavy on my shoulder, pushing me back into the room, under him. I was getting pissed off, but his strength was undeniable. I wriggled to get under him, sliding back into the autopsy room. I quickly got back to my feet ready to confront him.

But just in that time, he had shifted again. I was about to start berating him when I was met with his bare butt. I could see more of him this time. That baseball shirt hung on his frame like a wet blanket, barely one button holding it in place, but his hips and legs were on display. He was still on all fours, but looking back over his shoulder. His balls hung down with how he was crouching, I guess you’d say.

“Why?” I screamed at him, the cold room echoing back my words. He seemed to shrink from my voice and he stood up, all the way. I got my first good look at him. He was about my height, a little taller, but very thin. I guess when you run everywhere, it leans you up.

The baseball uniform came down to his hips, maybe a bit lower. With the front open, I could see his junk. He hung down, uncut, about four inches soft. His balls huddled behind his shaft, which was wider than I would have guessed, ending with a narrowed arrowhead tip, hidden under his foreskin.

It seemed like he didn’t know what to do with his hands but he made no attempt to cover his boy bits. He kept nervously looking at me and then around to the corners of the room. My mood seemed to affect him, how he held his shoulders. I just stared and he couldn’t keep still.

I admit, I was kind of turned on, but I was more angry and getting angrier. And that little tickle in the bottom of my stomach was starting to clench. I had healed earlier and that use of power was starting to cost me. I had not fed in several days. It was becoming a problem. The thirst is real, and that was beginning to become a need.

So I stared him down. He was probably about as old as I was when I was Embraced. Still, he was acting so weird. I should be torn to shreds, several times over by now. Yet he was acting confused, emotional, distracted and possessive. None of which made sense.

Unless… No, it couldn’t be. I mean, we just met, rather violently. Was he… was he in love? At first sight?

“What do you want?” I said, arms going forwards and spreading out for emphasis.

“I don’t know,” he responded. His arms came to a rest by his sides, shoulders slumped. “Don’t know what want. Don’t know what doing.”

His speech became more broken the more he spoke, leaving out pronouns. Very simple concepts. Something to keep in mind. “Just because you sniffed me?”

He nodded, dark eyes hooded by his shaggy mane. All of this confused the hell out of me.

“He smell like you,” he said, slowly.

“He? He who?”

“Moor Gann.”

“Moor Gann?”

“Mooor-Gaaann,” he nodded, saying it slowly but also with a bit of a howl. Like a mourning sound to his voice.

“Moor Gaan?” I said, feeling out the word and then realized that human speech must not be his native tongue. As I put that together in my mind, so much more fell into place. “Morgan!”

“Moor Gaan,” he agreed, solemnly.

My hand went to my mouth. “Morgan. He was, your boy?” He nodded. “And you were the family pet?” I asked. I took a moment to focus and I remembered him being down on all fours, the name on the back of his jersey was clearly M. Canfield. “That’s his jersey you’re wearing.”

He nodded sadly, and he risked raising his eyes to me. “You smell like him.”

“How… how long since your first change?”

“Four moons.” Wow, the scenario built in my mind. I made several logical leaps, considering what I now knew.

“Where are they now?” I asked. “Your family?” He shifted about uncomfortably, as if the memory alone made his flesh itchy. “Something happened, didn’t it?” He nodded, keeping those pretty dark eyes down. “Something bad.” Again, that nod was the only reply. “I’m very sorry. But I’m not that boy. I’m not even technically a living boy.”

He whined, still in human form. I put it together from what little I knew about shape changers and this kid in particular. He had been born as a wolf, one that looked enough like a dog that he was taken in as one. Either as a pup lost to whoever his tribe were or just a throw back to the ancient werewolf DNA, he was somehow mistaken as just a normal dog. He was somehow adopted into a human family and had a close relationship with a boy in that family. That’s where things take a supernatural twist.

Something had gone wrong with his first change. It could be any number of things, but the jist of it is that he survived something bad and it didn’t go well for the rest of his family. He had likely run or been chased, been forced to do some really questionable things. And it did not take a vampire’s keen hunter’s senses to tell that blood had been shed. So he ran, lost, uncertain of what to do, not knowing where to go. He had denned here. He’d probably been on his own for the last four or five months.

Imagine, having to go from the pampered, middle class family pet to a loner without any of the contacts you used to know to support you. Worse still, becoming a supernatural creature of immense physical and magical power and having no one to guide you through something as fundamentally life changing as shape shifting. Add to that whatever had probably happened to him and his people when he had changed.

“Did… did you hurt them?”

“No.” He looked up at me and I could see tears in his eyes. “No hurt Moor Gaan.”

“Someone else hurt them, then. When you changed, the first time you changed. Someone else came and hurt them.”

“In the car. I sick. Going to healing place. My pack trying to help me. Moor Gaan holding me,” he said, a tear filling up the bottom edge of his eyes and slipping out of the left one. “Moor Gaan always touch. Big things hit car. Roll over car. Buster try to help pack. Even bone hurtsing, Buster growl and fight. Buster hurt two the big things. Big things too fast. Already kill-hurt Da-dee. Mom kill-hurt when car ripped.”

I could see it as he described. It was horrible. An ambush while the family was taking him to the vet, unsure about why he was in pain, probably feeling the first change.

“Moor Gaan… kill-hurted when big things came for Buster. He cub-protect. Big things shake his head and kill-hurt. Buster alone, scared, body changed. Buster run-run.” He sat down, his arms going in front of his body, his knees spreading wide to make space. He wasn’t a boy, at least not as much as any wolf born shape shifter wasn’t, so he reverted to his “dog habits.”

“So, that’s your name. Buster?” He nodded. “And Morgan was your boy. And the big things broke his neck.”

“Shaked Moor Gaan.”

“Where did you get his shirt?”

“Buster run-run. Went to home-place. Found it. Was his favorite fur.”

“You poor boy,” I said. “So, I smelled like Morgan did?” He nodded again, twisting his head to look up at me under his bangs. “And you couldn’t figure out the part of my scent that was like Morgan and the part of my scent that has you angry.” He shifted his shoulders.

“Buster scared. Buster scared many moons.”

“Buster,” I said and he looked up, eyes expectant. “I’m not Morgan. I can’t be your boy. Do you understand?” His lips twisted, frowning. “There are people like me… Christ how to explain this… there are others like me that are chasing me. Like the big things were chasing you. Chasing Morgan.”

I mean, he wasn’t an idiot. I know I was trying to explain things to him like he was a child. I know I looked like a child, and in some ways always would be. But I had a full understanding of the reality of the situation. Seems he only understood part of what was going on.

“Chasing you?”

“Yes, chasing me. And if they catch up with me, they will kill me and anyone with me. So you have to go and find your own kind.”

He got perplexed. “Moor Gaan gone. No other kind.”

“There are other werewolves,” I said.

“Werewoofs?”

“Yes, doofus, you are a werewolf. There are other werewolves out there who can help you figure it out.”

“What is doofus?” he asked, kind of confused. I turned away from him, moaning in frustration. I stared at the wall, looking at him sideways.

“You need to let me pass, Buster. You’ll be safe here. I have to go. Don’t force me to hurt you. Let me go. Now.”

He whined. “No. Stay! Play!”

“Play? Don’t you understand? They will kill you as soon as look at you if they find you with me. They’ll make a sport of it. They will torture you.”

“Buster protect! Buster strong!”

“That’s a nice sentiment, Buster. But what is one untrained lost cub of a werewolf gonna do against a mad clan of deranged vampires. Now you have to let me go and you have to find your own kind. Go bark at the moon or something naturey like that. Piss on rocks, leave claw marks on trees. Stuff like that. Someone will find you.”

“Find me?” he whined.

“Look, I appreciate the help. Honestly, it’s cute that you want to. But let’s be honest man. You own kind can help you a lot more than I can, and staying with me it just gonna paint a target on your back.” I looked at him while talking at him and the light just didn’t go off in his mind. “You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?”

“Heard all words. Buster not knowing.”

Sigh. I had no choice but to at least take him along for now. Maybe I could ditch him while he slept. It seems selfish, but it was the kindest thing I could think of that got us both out of this mess.

“Okay, you can come with me, at least until we find your own kind. But then you have to go with them, okay?”

He nodded his head vigorously before saying “Yes, good boy.” And his tail thumped the ground a few times. Strangely, he kept his tail when he transformed. At least he’d be able to pick out of a crowd.

Which left at least one other problem, staring me right in the face. He wasn’t clothed from the waist down. I’d have to explain what and how to wear clothing to him, and acquire some. I mean, his erection, while perfectly normal looking for a boy his age, would definitely stand out plain as daylight. I looked down at it, throbbing with his heartbeat and realized maybe he was a bit bigger in that department that normal. But who knew what a werewolf’s dick was like. All that shape changing sure burned a lot of calories, if his six pack was any clue. Good genetics, I guess.

“Okay, Buster. We need to make a deal. I’m in charge, got it?”

“Okay.”

“If I say do something, you do whatever it is.”

“Buster do.” Was he actually panting?

“At first dark each night, we get up and get moving. Never stay in the same place twice. And you have to save your pee for places we can hide the scent. At least for now.”

“But you say to pee on rocks.”

“Yeah,” I said, realizing that I had told him to do that. “That was before you became my…” and I closed my eyes, shaking my head sadly at what I was about to say. “My field trip buddy.”

His grin was nearly infectious. Nearly split his head in half. He was plain, but there were moments of cute. Still I had to stay on point if this was going to work out. I still couldn’t believe I was letting a werewolf bully me into coming with me, and me taking over.

We got out onto the main road past the sanitarium gates, me being cautious, him being wolfish and sniffing every thing in sight. Eventually we got a few miles down the road to a truck stop. I figured it was a good place for him to get some food and me to catch a much needed drink. As we pulled up to the truck stop, I quickly inventoried my cash. I’d need to tap up that resource as well.

I have to say, as travel buddies, we made a curious pair. As a wolf-dog, he stood fairly tall and I was pretty short for my advanced years. I know I still looked like a kid, but it’s not the years, it’s the mileage. I knew how to blend in with humans. I understood their more baser motivations. And I knew how to exploit them. Survival of the fittest often means survival of the smartest.

I walked into the convenience store part of the truck stop, telling Buster to stay by the front door and not bite anyone. He sat and complied, his tail thumping the ground. He whined a bit as I went inside, but I told him I’d be back. He cast his gaze around, watching as a truck turned nearby, it’s headlights washing over us briefly.

The cashier asked me if I was lost. I turned on the charm, telling her that my dad’s truck was fueling up and he wanted me to get some snacks and some dog food while he dealt with the “rig” and such. She was an elderly Latina with type A positive blood. I could smell from a recent wound on her elbow, covered with a bandage. I could see the pulse of her carotid artery and my mouth started to water. But I knew right away that she wouldn’t be a suitable donor. She smiled and pointed me down a couple aisles to were the dog chow was. I simply smiled and turned away, feeling that thirst beginning to rise.

I needed blood, and soon. I had to feed before we left this place. Fortunately, truck stops are famous for a few other, less than legal, mostly immoral activities that someone in my situation can take advantage of.

It is amazing how much stuff a truck stop has on hand. Everything from high and CB radios, truck parts, hardware and amenities, to some of the ugliest chatskis known to man, often with like a tribal or local flair. I pocketed a few items that I could easily stash, grabbed a couple of bags of beef jerky and a medium bag of kibble for Buster. I managed to get a pack of men’s small undies, a pair of jeans, and some cheap sneakers, just guessing at the sizes. Buster was a little taller and thicker through the chest than I was in his human shape. I grabbed some trucker tee shirts and a “Visit Branson” hat as well, knowing at some point he’d have to ditch Morgan’s baseball shirt. Wasn’t sure how I was going to pull that off. Didn’t swell my pack all that much, but I knew we’d not have many opportunities to pack in the rations.

As I walked past the lady, I pushed my charm at her and said “Thanks for ringing me up. You’re very helpful.” Still not sure why it works, but that old vampire magic put enough of a suggestion into her head that she suddenly believed she had already cashed me out. So much so that she offered me a bag for the kibble.

“You’re very welcome young man. Is that your dog?”

“Yeah. His name’s Buster. He’s kind of new to life on the road.”

“Well, he’s a beautiful animal. And very well behaved,” she said, her smile a little too wide. I may have pushed a bit harder than I needed to.

Once outside again, I rounded a corner, putting the Latino lady out of eyeshot and I put the smaller bag of dog food into my pack, along with the other things I’d pilfered. Naturally, Buster had to check out everything with his nose, plunging his muzzle into my backpack.

“Well, a boy and his dog. Ain’t that just cute,” a big beefy man said, coming up from the gas pumps. “Where’s your daddy, son?” he overemphasized the last bit. Perfect. He was a bit on the chunky side, which meant to me that he had a little more to give. I smiled coyly, suddenly taking on an air of innocence. But just in body. My voice I hitched up a couple of notes to sound higher pitched, just not too high.

“You could be my daddy,” I said, affecting a bit of California twang into my voice, just enough to get that “gay sound” going that people associate with young twinks on the prowl. His grin turned lecherous enough that I knew I had one on the hook.

“Really. You hitchin’ down the line?”

“Maybe. But not tonight. Just lookin’ for a warm cab and a place for Buster here to sleep.”

“Buster?” he asked, looking at my “dog” more than my ass for the first time. Buster looked up from his exploring my back pack. He sat down and regarded the man, his eyes narrowing.

“He’s a really good puppy,” I said, turning up the cute. “And he always obeys my commands.” At this point, I reached out and petted his fur, keeping my smile in place. I needed this situation to go smoothly, and I had been reluctant to touch Buster, much less pet him thus far. Now, he was in an odd social environment which included thousands of new smells, a brokered deal with a vampire and the approach of a tall, fat human he didn’t know. And now I’m touching him with what I and he knew was forced familiarity. I could feel his tension rising, like the fur on the back of his neck.

“Plenty of room in my cab. That is, if you need space to… sleep.” Oh yeah, he was definitely one of those kind of truckers. Probably had a wife and kids about my age at home, but on the road he could be himself around “lot lizards,” which he assumed I was. A lot lizard is a term for a truck stop whore, in case you didn’t know. And they can be any sex.

“Sure. But we can put Buster in the back of the truck. Wouldn’t want him to tear up your upholstery. Puppy’s got to bite things, ya know?” I said, letting my head roll to the right as I looked up at him.

“Not a problem, son. We can put him in now. I’ve got a bowl for him.”

Crap, how did I forget to get him a bowl. Fuck, should have remembered that. I was a kid once. I had a dog of my own.

No, no, not now. Don’t got chasing memories down the rabbit hole. Just stick with the plan and get this jerk on his back and naked. Everything else is gravy. You can throw a personal pity party later.

Wasn’t easy convincing Buster to jump into the back of the semi. As I filled a bowl with kibble I whispered that I wanted him to wait for me here, I’d be back to fetch him soon. His tail thumped my back with side to side swipes as he put his head low over the bowl and began to munch away. I smiled and couldn’t resist running my hand down his back, giving him a nice scratch before turning to the trucker. That, and the prospect of a full belly seemed to calm him, and he drifted into the familiarity of being a fed dog again.

The trucker helped me down from the back of his rig and then up inside the cab. Both times his hands on my hips like he owned them. The back area was set up like a bed, but it was clear by the smell inside that he wasn’t the tidiest housekeeper. My senses were all active now, alert to my surroundings. I’m glad that Buster wasn’t here for this part. This was about to be my predator side unleashed. Other predators can tell when a hunting vampire is near, and it kind of freaks them out. But damnit, I hadn’t taken blood in a while, and my recent tussle with Buster had drained me some more.

I needed to feed. And this overweight secret pedo was about to be my juice box.

“What’s your name, sweetie? I’ll gitcha a’ burger.”

“Oh, I’m not hungry. I’m more thirsty than anything,” I said, suggestively. “Water is just fine.”

“I see,” he said, clearly misinterpreting my meanings. “Kinda anxious, huh?”

“You have no idea. Why don’t you lock the doors and take your pants off… Daddy?” I said, turning on my hip to show off my tight little rump. I gave him a wink and a grin. He turned and locked up.

In the time it took him to turn around, I had taken off my hoody, with no tee shirt under it. My forever frozen in time, 14 year old scrawny bod showed clear white skin, almost too pale, so that it nearly glowed in the dimly lit gloom of the cab. He smiled and rubbed a rough hand over his three days of on-the-road stubble. I could smell a bit of stale beer scent on his breath, and that gave me all kinds of information about him. Type O neg blood, thick with lipids. He was just a few weeks away from serious heart trouble, high blood pressure, mild case of edema. Not the purest and healthiest of blood bags, but for the moment he’d do. The good thing about having such a small body was it didn’t take a lot of blood to fill me up. I was practically doing this guy a favor.

He grinned and moved, unhooking the belt around his middle. His baggy jeans dropped and he stepped out of the pool of fabric around his feet. His undies had seen better days, days closer to the inside of a washing machine. Still, he had some hefty balls in those tighty whities. Not bad a bad dick for an older guy, if the lump in his pouch was any indicator. Would probably look better if he lost about forty or so pounds. If I needed to actually sleep with the guy, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

He reached for me, his eyes and hands going in different directions. I reached out and grasped his chin, even as he came into contact with my hips. He pulled at the front of my jeans and got them opened rather quickly. I just let him, giggling a bit.

“Let’s see that sweet body of yours,” he said. I turned his eyes up towards mine and stared deeply. With his eyes hungrily devouring me, I pushed and felt his will break almost instantly. He was pretty much entranced before he even got inside my pants, but when I went to mentally dominate him, he just crumbled like old crackers.

I turned his body, laying him down, still looking him in the eyes. He allowed it, happily, as if it were his idea. I leaned down over his hips and took down his grubby undies. He smiled down at me as his hard cock came into view. Not a bad piece of meat, I must say, if it smelled a bit like he’d been too many days on the road without a shower. But still, it was hard and warm and full of what I really needed.

Blood.

I stroked him a bit, keeping my mental domination on him. He groaned in pleasure. I smiled at him. “Is all this for me?” I asked, keeping things light. “Daddy?” I was practically and literally salivating at this point. He just smiled at me and I leaned my face down, pushihg on his belly enough to keep him laying back. When I put my mouth on that pecker, I felt my whole body vibrate. Not with need of a good fucking, but with an overpowering desire to drain the blood out of him.

I took a steadying breath through the nose and closed me lips around his circumcised dick head, covering about half of his maleness. It felt comfortable and warm and pulsing and salty in my mouth and I nearly ravaged him in a really bad way. Took some real willpower to keep from just latching on and draining him completely dry. I had to suppress the urge to just suck him down to a desiccated corpse.

I moved my head up and down, feeling him getting off on my motions. He was incredibly excited. If he were younger, in better shape, I might actually enjoy sex with him. But… that’s not what I was after. Licking his cock like a lollipop, I gently extended my fangs and took a playful nip at his glans. His head was thrown back, enjoying the sensations.

“Easy, son. Daddy likes it a little rough but not too much biting.”

“It’s okay, Daddy. I got this,” I said and shook his cock against the roof of my mouth. He groaned and his legs shifted position a bit. He was really getting into it and actually rubbed his left hand through my blonde hair. Which felt kind of nice.

So, I bit into his cock, about an inch behind his glans.

He moaned and gasped. I started sucking, getting a mouth full of blood from him. He moaned in pleasure as the enzymes in my saliva went to work. I remembered how it felt, that first time. The blood moving backwards in my veins causing a rush of pleasure at almost the cellular level. This was a feeding bite, not a killing one. The tingles ran through his body, radiating along every blood vessel in his body as my suctioning force reached out to every part of him.

Most adults have nearly 5 pints of blood, larger adults have slightly more. I was banking on him having more. That rich flavor of iron, of hemoglobin, washed into me and pooled in my stomach. I could feel it instantly empowering me. I sucked hard, feeling my energy restored. The flavor and thickness was intoxicating. Almost instantly he lost his hard on as I drained the fluid out of his penis. I took more, feeling his arteries acting like a straw, pulsing with a second thrust of blood. His penis spasmed and I felt him give up a full load of semen as well, his seed mixing with his vitae, his life’s blood and I felt him pass out. I continued to suck and had to shudder, feeling his orgasm pass through me as well as him.

Literally, he came in my mouth and fed me his blood at the same time. The sensation was way too much for him and he lost consciousness. I sucked a little bit more, still writhing with the feelings from his body coursing through me. It took another act of will to pull off his penis. I had enough to get me down the road. I gently licked at his penis wound, from my fangs, the enzymes in my spit sealing and healing those puncture marks. When I was done, he was perhaps a pint low, but still alive, still breathing. He’d wake up a bit weak, have a greasy meal at the truck stops greasy spoon, feel like a billion volts of blowjob had been fed into this system, but still alive.

I dressed, raided his wallet for cash, and grabbed the keys. I quickly made myself presentable and got Buster out of the back of the truck. It was still dark and a bit overcast out. I tossed the keys back into the front and locked his truck up. And in short order, we found a truck hauling really large culvert pipes that was pulling out. It wasn’t difficult to climb into one of the culverts and catch a ride out.

Buster could sense there was something different about me. Werewolves are like Mother Nature’s guard dogs. Vampires are unnaturally existing at the expense of living beings… most of the time. I try, very hard, not to kill anyone I feed off of. It doesn’t make me happy to have to feed on the living, but unless I can help it, or unless the target really deserves death, I try to keep from draining them away.

You actually suck away someone’s soul when you feed to desiccation. That’s what other vampires will tell you. My life was ended and revived into this existence against my will. I really don’t want to steal someone’s soul, consume it, destroy it. Maybe that’s a weakness in me. But it’s not in me to just kill guys, despite them being sometimes sexually attracted to kids. In a way, I give them their fantasy, an unattainable sexual experience, I get blood, no one is permanently hurt. And I keep my freedom. One more night away from those bastards that made me what I am.

All things considered, it’s the best solution. At least the best I can manage right now. After all, being a teenage vampire has a lot of advantages as well as problems. Just got to make it to one more sunrise, one long day, and one more sunset to keep moving.

Only now I had a tag-along. A potentially lethal to me tag-along. An untrained lost cub werewolf who thinks he’s a beloved house pet who outlived a terrible event that killed his boy, his pack. Yeah, I’m traveling with him into a dark world with dangers he isn’t ready to deal with yet.

What could go wrong with that?

September 23, 2017
Near the Mississippi River
Just outside Cairo, Mississippi

We had been traveling about a week. We had doubled back on our path a few times, not always part of the plan. We don’t always have control over where the truckers go. I fed a few times, regaining my strength. Buster was comfortable being a dog most of the time, so he pretty much stayed like that. I got him a collar that was loose enough it wouldn’t affect his transformations. It was a bit spikey, like something a punk rocker would wear in the 80’s. He liked it, and it offered him some protection to his throat. I actually thought he just missed having a collar, something to indicate he belonged to someone.

We didn’t have lot of personal time to just sit and talk. I sensed that he was uneasy about my feedings, but he kept it to himself. This night we went walking along the river. I’d fed a few nights back and we took this time to get off the grid. We’d cross the river several miles upstream from the last place we could be tracked to. I still wasn’t sure how close behind us my former “family” might be. Just had to keep moving.

I’d managed to talk Buster into wearing human clothing. He sort of chaffed at it, but he picked up the basics rather quickly. I couldn’t talk him into wearing socks, for some reason. He understood shoes, but socks just baffled him. He preferred to be like me most of the time, wearing loose clothing that gave him greatest freedom of movement. And he refused to ever be far from Morgan’s baseball “skin”, still missing his boy.

I did manage to get him to take a bath, both as a dog and as a boy. That was… awkward. But he got the hang of it. And he figured out how to change completely so his tail didn’t poke out behind him.

So, we were walking north along the river’s west bank. Heading for the Tennessee border. I hoped to make up my mind on which way to go by the time we reached a bigger city. Lots of people around us, easier to hide.

“Why you smell blood?” he asked me as we traveled around the muddy river bank.

“I told you. I’m a vampire. I have to feed on blood. My stomach wont take regular food anymore.” True enough. My stomach is no longer a digestive tract. I just vomit back up the things I “eat” normally. It’s kind of painful, actually.

“But, no hunt-kill?”

“I try not to hurt anyone. You know that, Buster.”

“Feels wrong.”

“Yeah. I know. If there were some other way, believe me, I’d do it. I don’t like… well that’s not true. There is something addictive about drinking blood.” I shifted my back pack a bit and he followed suit, adjusting his back pack as well. When he asked me why I carried his food around, I explained that his cover story as a dog required me to carry his food. He quickly offered to carry his own stuff, claiming he was strong. We found him a doggy style backpack at Pet Smart near Star City, Arkansas. The pack was also designed for human use as well. Since then he started mimicking my behaviors.

“Dick-ted?” he said. He still had a canine rising whine when he was confused.

“I like the feel of blood when it’s hot and rich and salty. It is soo good that I almost forget myself. I lose myself to the power of it. Thick and sweet. That’s what addicted is. When you need something more than you probably should. When it… seems more important to you than is probably good for you.”

He stopped walking and got a kind of confused look, actually turned his head. I sighed loudly and turned back his way. Time to simplify. “Okay, addicted is wanting something more than is smart for you.”

He nodded his head sagely. “Like you,” he said resuming our walk.

“What?”

“Like what the bad ones feel about you. A dick-ted! Wanting more than is smart.”

“Well, that’s not the same. They want to kill me before…”

“Dick-ted. They want you more than is smart.”

“Ya know, Buster, in a very simple sort of way, you’re right.”

“Buster smartest!” he said.

“Yeah, I know, buddy.” I said, catching back up to him. Despite how my feasting on living human blood seemed to kick up his ire, he kind of grew on me. I guess it happens when you live with someone twenty-four seven, traveling.

“Not Buddy. Buster. Buddy is yippy small dog. Always bark-bark at Buster. Angry dog.”

“He probably could smell that you are a werewolf. Even I can smell that you are.”

Again, that understanding nod, and a sense that something was going on behind his eyes. We walked on in silence for a while, making our way through back yards and industrial properties. It was about two hours until daylight and I was getting anxious to find a place to sleep the day away. I had learned early in my running away days not to chance it with sunlight. We vampires have an excessive and violent allergic reaction to solar radiation. Cuts right through most of our powers, ignites our skin. I was exposed to a single sliver-like sunbeam as part of the cruel tortures my family tormented me with. That burning, leeching, soul eroding experience was one I didn’t want to repeat, ever. So I made it my habit to find shelter well before the eastern skies started turning pink with dawn.

We found a water tower. Typical of such structures, it had a pump house at it’s base. Might be loud in there, but the structure was white washed cinder block and had no windows. Also, it had an 8 foot security fence surrounding the tower, topped with three layers of angled barbed wire. The grass around the tower, where poured concrete didn’t rule, seemed to be growing rather high. All good signs to me that this automated facility didn’t see much human interaction in at least a week. Functional neglect, it’s the American way!

The door wasn’t even locked, if you can believe it! We hopped the fence, easy enough for those with supernatural strength. And while I’m no where near the level of my werewolf companion, I do alright in that department. He’s at a level a few floors above what I can do, and for him it’s so casual. So it was nothing for me to pick the lock and get us inside. No cameras on the outside, no security system on the inside. The pump house had one long room with the actual water pump and all the pipes necessary to do what it does, and a separate office space of concrete blocks inside and to the left of the front entrance. There was some kind of access port to the right side that looked to be some kind of roll up door, metal sections partitioned to pull to the side rather than overhead. Thankfully, that port faced north, so there was not a lot of chance of daylight penetrating the office area.

Inside the office was a desk, a functional rolling office chair, some type of computer and a 60’s style long, square, leather covered couch that might have seen better days but was still in reasonably good shape. We set up inside for the day. I threw down a small blanket we’d picked up in a Walmart bin a few towns back. Buster knew that was his bed for the day. He’d get to be watchdog guarding the door as well as daylight stopper sleeping on that blanket. I took the couch.

We slept, I dreamed. I made sure to take Buster outside in canine form before we settled in. He wouldn’t be able to take a leak until sundown, so it’s best to get it done early. Slept through the day, uninterrupted.

The dreams are difficult to explain. When I fed, my body isn’t the only thing that gets nourishment. I unconsciously tap into the mind of the person I’m feeding from. So after a meal, I have to deal with the stuff they leave behind in my head. Like with the trucker, I got a sense of his family, all four of his daughters, and how it’s almost a relief to him to be on the road, away from his miserable wife. Those two did not belong together. I’m amazed they actually had sex enough to have four girls. His was a sad life, kind of a miserable life as well, considering his predilection for playing Daddy to hitchhiking teenage boys on the highways. But through that small contact, residual urges and thoughts not my own got left behind. And what are dreams if not your mind dealing with the trash data it accumulates during the day and filtering it out.

I should say, I don’t remember much of those “after dinner” dreams. Mostly I get the sense that it’s just left over bits of fantasies, odd impressions and thoughts crammed together randomly. I don’t ascribe to the notion that “Dreams have meaning.” But I do remember the feelings of being violent in these dreams. Or more like wanting to be violent. Reliving past trauma, washing over me, mashing my psyche with things I’ve remembered only vaguely, but didn’t really happen to me. The feelings fade with the coming of nightfall.

Like I said many times, being a vampire sucks.

So, we passed the day without incident. No human intervention. Not even a call on the antiquated office phone. It was nearly sun down and I was reluctantly feeling a need to rise from my sleep. As is my habit, I cast about my senses, searching outside the structure for movement of any kind. Just birds chasing bugs, a small family of deer pausing at the river’s edge to take a drink, the flutter of leaves that marks the passing of a squirrel at the base of the large live oak to the south. All seemed calm.

Buster lay on his blanket, fully curled up like a proper door stop, licking himself. You’d think that would be a normal dog behavior, but he was licking himself in human form. Damn, but he was very flexible. And oblivious to the rest of the world. I closed my eyes to give him some privacy.

Then something heavy and large slammed the building. It got noticeably hotter in the structure and I risked a breath to inhale. Smoke, some kind of burning fuel oil like kerosene or diesel fuel. We were under attack!

Buster forgot about licking his boi bits for a moment and got to all four feet. He growled low, looking around. His gaze passed to me with that unspoken question: what do we do?

“Grab your backpack!” I shouted, sliding my feet back into my sneakers. I slung my own pack on my slim shoulders and closed my eyes, concentrating my senses outside. “Okay, I count five, all coming from the river. They crashed some boat through the fence and it’s started a fire outside, so we’ll be walking straight into the blaze on the way out.” He pushed his pack onto his back, transformed into that traditional werewolf shape that movies actually got right. “They got us.”

“Not yet!” he growled and he pointed up.

“Oh, good idea. Damnit, I wish I’d stolen a gun from that cop in Little Rock!” I walked over to Buster and pulled him over to the desk, climbing up. This put the acoustic ceiling tiles just inches above my head. Buster would be fully able to rip through it there. He chaffed at his collar a bit. I knelt down to the desk surface and picked up the phone. I dialed 911, but left the handle off the cradle. Hopefully that would send some help to scatter whoever was onto us.

“Okay, Buster. Time to show who’s the strongest,” I said. I had no doubts it wasn’t us, but I had to keep his anger up, get him mad enough to forget about his fear. His breathing was loud in my ears, my senses going into high gear.

We broke through the roof from inside. I should say Buster broke out. He simply balled up his fist and jumped, doing a superhero style punch that crushed a hole clean through. Gotta love werewolf muscle! He climbed out like a furry avenger, his back pack looking tiny as it sat high over his shoulders. I leapt through the hole and landed just outside the building’s eastern facing, to the southern side. We both scanned the direction of the river, hearing some persons moving in the darkness.

I spread out my senses, looking for the five beings I had seen coming on shore. They melted out of the river, silent and menacing as alligators, hunched over long guns. I saw no tanks on their backs, but in the supernatural world, that didn’t mean much. Like I said, vampires don’t breathe. And for the lack of heat radiating off of them, I had to assume they were vampires.

Fuck, they’ve found me!

Buster howled a challenge, the sound of his lungs echoing loudly against the roaring of the fire. That boat would never be the same. But his scream of rage was enough to make the fire actually flicker away from him. Back lit by the fire, he looked awesome. ‘If only I had five of him,’ I thought.

The shot came from the river and it pierced right through him, spraying me with werewolf blood. He made a sound like a kicked puppy and fell, like a stone in a dropped into a pond. My face was wet and I had to blink before I realized what was happening. I don’t remember screaming his name as he fell, but I do remember rushing to his side. He lay on the ground, crumpled over, bleeding profusely. I felt a multitude of emotions crash over me, stinging my cheeks. And then the bullet struck the ground near me. Maybe it hit me. I’m not real sure.

I got really pissed and felt my blood flowing through my body. I channeled my anger into speed, putting everything I had into going fast. Faster than I’d ever gone before. I grabbed a burning part of the boat. Something made of wood, soaked in the petroleum and burning. Then I moved.

I ran right at the first vampire and dodged suddenly, moving past him so fast that he probably never felt the burning board in my hand as I moved through him. He fell to the ground in two neat pieces, the places that used to join up on him slightly charred. From where I stood, another was nearby, so I continued my sweep with the flaming board and took his head off, immediately reversing my swing to slice through his soft middle.

The board snapped with that third hit and I screamed in rage. I saw movement out the corner of my eye and jumped, still going at impossible speed. From the leap, I flung my arms wide and raked both sets of hands through the soft stomach as I came down. She fell over from the impact of my hit and I… just… lost it!

I was on her before she could bounce twice on the ground and I sank my fangs into her neck. I sucked her down, still pummeling her body with claw strikes. She called out in pain, seeming to be in slow motion, at least to my perceptions. Her blood was dark, and rich; spicy with a hint of basil and rosemary. I sucked her neck, blood gushing from my killing bite and I felt her soul starting to drain away. I shook my head, ravishing her at high speed, just shaking her body like a rag doll, taking all of her essence into myself. As her soul cried out and dwindled, I felt a black veil swimming before my eyes as her power rushed into me.

Vampires may not be the most powerful supernaturals, but as I claimed her soul, I could feel her strength join with mine. Her blood became my blood. Her mind, her thoughts, all her powers, her strength… it all flowed into me and the world slowed down even more.

“So, you have claimed one of the hunters, then?” a voice said, almost echoing in my mind, sounding oddly flat. “Goooooood!” the voice said again. “It will make you stronger, little one. Make you into the killer I always knew you to be.”

“Who are you?!” I screamed.

“You may know of who I was, but you can still refer to me as Father.” I turned my head up from diablerizing one of my attackers, searching. “Oh, the time is not right for us to meet, my pet. Just know I’m watching you. And I approve, my little chess pawn. By the way, watch on your left.”

“Huh?” I said, feeling her blood chilling and soaking into my hoody, practically drenching my chin and chest. Time suddenly sped up and two very pissed off vampire agents turned their long guns towards where their female team mate suddenly winked out of existence. Both long weapons tracked my way. I snarled, angrily.

I was about to move, ready to blow back into speed, when another growl overtook mine. The vampire dudes turned to look back towards the fiery remains of the boat, seeing the angry red flames back lighting a huge hulking mass of fur and muscle. Buster hunched over and charged. The vamps turned to drill shots into him and he suddenly burst into impossible speed. The nearer one’s body bucked from this own rifle kicking and then lifted into the air, speared on Buster’s claw. The impact carried the vampire up into the air, hurled off into the night’s inky, bloody blackness, screaming.

The last vampire decided to try and run, but Buster was still moving, dropping his massive paw on the last vampire agent’s head, squishing his head in Buster’s massive fist. The werewolf twisted the paw and rotated the vampire’s neck around like a bobble head on a roller coaster. I clearly heard several cracking sounds before the vampire’s head came off with a snap-crackle-pop.

My growl was still coming from me when Buster turned my way and howled in fury. We both crouched over, still ready to fight, ready to swing on anything that moved. And at the moment the only things moving were each other. And I had that dark angry energy still charging me up. I bared my fangs at him and leapt at his throat, my claws dripping with blood. He swatted me and knocked me down, hard. I hit the ground and shook my head, clearing my vision and making my jaw ache from the hit.

“Moor Gahn!” he growled at me, squatting down. “Moor Gahn!”

“I’m not fuckin’ Morgan!” I shouted at him, still feeling a bit of the anger rushing through me. Behind us, the boat exploded. Well, at least what was left of it exploded. It wasn’t huge, but the sudden heat of the fireball that rose from the shattered boat was enough to wash over me, bathing the entire area in orange light. It shocked me back to myself.

“Grab you back pack,” I said, realizing I was drenched in blood and guts. “We’re leaving.” I shucked my hoody and wandered into the river, knee deep. I tried to wash the blood off of me as much as possible, still feeling that power boost surging behind my eyes. Moments later he returned, holding both of our packs. He looked at me with a strange expression on his muzzle. I strode to shore and I could see his nose wrinkle.

“Smell different,” he said, handing me my pack.

“I feel different.” I took the backpack and slung it on my naked back. I went over to the one vampire that I had diablerizied, reached into the ruin of her body, now swiftly decomposing. I took her weapons. A Barretta 9mm parabellum, and collected the three spare clips for it. I grabbed her small punch knife at her shoulder and the long Bowie style knife and sheath off her hip. I jammed them in my back pack and zipped it up across my shoulder.

“You okay?” he asked, still in werewolf form.

“I’m good. I’m calm again,” I lied. “I’m good.”

His body was suddenly against mine. His fur felt good with the firelight and the drying fabric of my pants. I turned into his chest and buried my face in his fur, scratching my face against his pelt. A million different smells flooded my senses as I cried and he held me. Those big, dumb arms just clung to me and I could feel his muzzle drift over the back of my neck.

“I’m okay, Buster.”

“Good. Go now?”

“Yes. Go now.”

He transformed into that giant wolf shape and pushed his muzzle between my legs. I got the message and allowed him to put me onto his back. The doggy pack made for a poor saddle, but it gave me something to hang onto. As soon as I was up on him, he charged off into the night. Minutes later, we heard the human authority figures and fire department personnel arrive at the sight of the ruined water tower pump house. But by the time they arrived, we were galloping off into the bloody night.

I cried until near dawn. Buster found us an abandoned house in a rural neighborhood. He took me into an internal walk-in style closet, and closed the door to keep out the light. I slept fitfully as my body adjusted to the new power flowing through me. I slept on his chest, him staying in big werewolf form, feeling like a much littler kid than I looked like.

I always try to avoid drinking vampire blood, these days. I certainly had no intention to ever absorb someone’s soul, no matter how bad of a person that might be. But now I had literally swallowed the undead life force of another vampire. I was so pissed at myself for losing control like that. I guess I should say that I rested, but I never really slept.

“I thought I lost you, Doofus,” I said, absently swirling a finger in his chest fur.

“Fast fang went through chest. All the ways. Burned.”

“Looked like it had killed you.”

“Buster felt hurt-killed. Then heard you scream and fight. Buster got up, watching you make shake-shake on bad girl.” He sniffed, and I realized he was crying.

“And then you proved who was the strongest,” I said, smiling at him. He looked down, his wolf face unreadable. “We will stay still for a few days. Let them search for us where we’re not.”

“Buster understand. Will you learn use the little long claw?”

“Long… oh, the gun?” He nodded. “I think I already know. The bad girl, I took things from her. I know how to work the weapons I took from her.”

“Okay. Buster happy you not dead again, Moor Gahn.”

“I’m not Morgan,” I said gently.

“I know,” he replied, looking over me and tucking his big wolf muzzle over my head.

“My name is…” I started to say and then realized I hadn’t told him my name. We’d been traveling over a week and I never told him. “Spencer.”

“Spenc-serr?”

“Yes. My name is Spencer Carson.”

“Spenc-serr Cahr-sohn,” he said, tasting my name.

“Yeah. That’s me.”

“Spencer an’ Buster. Buddies.”

I let that hang in the air, considering so many things. I rested, adjusting to how my body felt now that I’d consumed a fellow vampire. I had much to think about.

October 2, 2017
The Cluckin’ Chicken Wings and Barbecue Restaurant
Outskirts of Memphis, Tennessee

Been a week now with my expanded powers. I still feel strange being around people. I feel like any vampire that spots me will be aware of my crime. It was difficult staying in one place for a few nights while my soul adjusted to the new power level. I’m certainly stronger now. Still not a physical match for Buster. Probably never will be. Werewolves are evolution’s perfect answer to survival of the fittest as far as strength, endurance and raw unbelievable speed are concerned.

I still feel like all eyes are on us in social situations. But, dog’s gotta eat. And I need to feed, tonight. So we walked into Memphis, him actually transformed into his human boy form. It is strange, but he has this transitional form that makes him look a bit brutish, almost like a cultured Neanderthal, sort of half way between his boy shape and full on prehistoric war machine form. It looks good on him, but certainly makes him look a good deal older, taller and has more muscle.

Always a plus to have more muscle.

I give him some money and he practices being human for a while. His accenting and vocabulary aren’t what you’d call pristine, but here in the western part of the city, that seems almost the norm. He orders enough boneless chicken wings for a high school soccer team and we sit together at a table with clear views of the restaurant and the door. He’s hungry, but I’m more than a little paranoid, so I keep watch while he stuffs his face.

I wish I could eat, though. The scent of the smoked barbecue, the crispness of the coleslaw, that intoxicating salty lift from the French fries almost has me salivating. At least since my transformation I can drink other liquids without throwing up. It’s helped with my feeding that I can take in nutrients from liquids other than blood. The thick chocolate shake is a reminder to me that I’m a bit different now.

Her name was Dorothy Lewiston, formerly Dorothea Louisa Branche of Gascon, born in 1543 France, embraced as a vampire in 1560 at the tender age of 17. She served her clan for all that intervening time until the night she and her pack of Black Hand assassins came for me and she suffered the final death at my hands. Warrior, spy, assassin, she’d worn all those roles, comfortably. Now she was part of me, and part of those skills translated to me as well. I hadn’t developed the physical dexterity to do all she could do, but the blue prints of how to do it was in my head. The trade craft of a spy who’d survived for decades, through three world wars (because Napoleon was just as ruthless as the Kaiser and Hitler) and the rise and subsequent fall of the Soviet Union. All her years as a vampire, all that training and experience was mine now.

The emotion of taking her soul had me crying like a babe for four nights. Blood stained my checks from how much blood I cried out, reliving her emotions, feelings. It had taken me that long to get it under control. Living in that abandoned house had me wishing for something more stable in my undead existence. I wasted no time in cleaning out her bank accounts and setting up my own, splitting her money over many digital caches. She didn’t have massive wealth, but to two lost souls on the supernatural Highway 66 of rural America, trying to live on the periphery of the grid, it was a fortune.

Buster even asked me to buy him new clothes. Not that I didn’t appreciate him walking around nude from the waist down most of the time. But we were getting to be too visible. I convinced him that he needed to burn and bury Morgan’s baseball jersey. It just stood out too much, and we had to blend into the background. His speech patterns were enough of a sore thumb, so while we walked from town to town, we practiced trying to sound more human.

It’s a work in progress.

As we sat there, him filling his face and me slurping on that sweet, chocolatey goodness, I felt a change in the wind. Not an alarming one, but a sense that someone had entered the room, someone with something special about them. I kept my hat low over my blonde hair, and cast about me with my auspex vision, seeking out this newness. Spotted him right away.

An older boy, perhaps 17 or 18 had walked in, lifting his baseball hat to push his hair back. He was lean, but not in that waifish sort of way that many late teens like to think is cool. No, this was a guy on the cusp of manhood, and his body showed a dedication to hard work. The thin tank top lifted from the top of his jeans by enough that I could see a respectable six pack forming there. Toned, I think is the right word for it.

I could smell his blood from across the room. An intoxicating mix of type AB positive with a healthy dose of male hormones and vitamins. He was horny but not so much that it made the lump in his jeans into a mountain peak. Just a healthy guy looking for a little action. Why he came to this place is beyond me.

Beside me, Buster’s nose twitched. He stared down at me like an older brother to a younger brother and made a face. Like a partly jealous, partly angry face.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I warned him without turning to face him.

“Spencer hungry.”

“I know. And I know you don’t like it. But we both know I must feed.” His answer was to drop a plastic fork in front of me and spread his hand at the excessive amount of food he was chomping on with lousy table manners. “You know it doesn’t work that way.”

“Can others smell when you get hungry?”

“God, I hope not,” I mumbled. And then the tall boy scanned the restaurant and my eyes passed over him again. My heightened senses picked it up again. A sort of duality that came across visually like a weird jump in a movie, where one second he stood there as a perfectly normal, fine as hell human, and for a brief shutter flash, as if seeing him between the blinking of my eyes, he looked suddenly taller. And more massively built. And blue, oddly enough.

I didn’t have much education from those who had abducted me, turned me against my will and then tortured me for years. And there was not some pamphlet about the changes you might go through as a young vampire who never would get to complete puberty. But in Dorothea’s experience, she had a name for such beings that lived in two places yet the same body. Changeling. And I got the feeling I hit the jackpot with this one.

“Buster?”

“Yeah, Spence?”

“Stay here. Good boy,” I said, keeping my tone light. “I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” he said and happily slurped down another wing dripping with half baked on barbecue sauce. Thankfully, I’d taught him to keep his tail inside his body while a human, otherwise the booth would be making awkward thumping noises.

I got up and moved right in front of the older boy, his attention drawn by something on his phone. I gathered my wits and pushed a bit at his mind, feeling that old vampire entrancement magic coming into play. He slowly lowered the phone and looked into my eyes. I knew I had him.

“Why don’t we go back to your car?” I suggested and he hornily agreed. Outside, we found his truck, a custom job with a lift kit that put it almost four feet off the ground. I swung the door in and pushed at his mind again, to cement my control. Oh he wasn’t as easy as this sounds, but vampire domination is one of the specialties I had gained from consuming Dorothea. Centuries of practice at it had given her an almost casual level of control. And I have to admit, I liked being in control.

To make a long story short, the tall boy’s blood was especially sweet. It practically sang in my head as I went down on him. I had to exercise extreme control not to drain off more than necessary. He smelled so good, that I almost went back for seconds of just sucking his cock. But I left him alive and passed out in ecstasy, even making sure to lick the little scars from my fangs off of his beautiful penis and lock the doors of his truck for his safely. He had been a bigger meal than I had hoped for, both in blood and semen. And I felt a bit dizzy at his powerful energies filling me up. I nearly floated down from his truck as I got out.

I went back into the restaurant and made sure that Buster was still enjoying his feast. A wave of dizziness passed through me, again. Ducking into the bathroom, I straightened myself up a bit. Contrary to popular belief, not all vampires cast no reflection in mirrors. If you ever do see someone not casting a reflection, you’d better run. Just trust me on this one, it wont be pretty. I made sure there was no blood showing on my face, no cum streaks in my hair or on my chin. I was about to leave the bathroom when I heard a commotion out in the dinning area.

I rounded the doorjamb from the bathroom and scanned the room. There were three big dudes standing at the table near Buster, looking down on him. These were adults and huge ones. I put my body to the wall to make a lesser target of myself and felt a weird pulse wash over my senses. I noticed that the bigger guys were dressed in leathers like a motorcycle club, and each of them was easily over six feet tall. What had Buster gotten us into now, I wondered.

That pulse of energy washed over me again, feeling strange but good. It must be that Changeling blood, messing with my senses, because I could see sort of beneath the surface on the bigger guys surrounding Buster. And they were not normal humans, but other vampires. And they were threatening my mutt!

Where this confidence came from, I can only guess. Perhaps it was from Dorothy’s experience and powers coursing through me. Maybe some noble strain from the Changeling Troll I’d just sucked off and taken some blood from was influencing my actions. Hell, maybe it was just because I felt stronger and wanted to show off a little. Whatever it was, I suddenly felt in a mood to kick some ass.

And those three vamps were messing with MY werewolf boy!

Buster saw me walk up, but didn’t betray my position. Just a simple flick of the eyes as the leader bent over to intimidate the young werewolf. With stealth in my heart, I walked up behind him and snapped out the blade I kept hidden under my hoody. The big Bowie style blade felt comfortable in my hand. Buster caught the flash of steel in my hand and picked up another wing in his hand, sucking the sauce off his fingers. It was like he was unconcerned with anything, not the vamps in his face nor the blade in my hand. He just wanted to slurp on the barbecue boneless wings.

“What you smiling at, punk ass bitch?!” I heard the vampire getting indignant.

“You in trouble now,” was all Buster said, darkly and his expression changed. “No call me bitch, leech!”

“Wha’-da-fuck ‘re you…” but he never finished the thought. I easily dropped into vampire speed mode and struck.

As I approached, my hand swooped out at the two vampires standing behind their leader. One took the knife in a deep gash through his very dirty blue jeans, puncturing right through his massive thigh muscle from behind. I stepped on that leg, bending his calf inwards and down on his collapsing knee, then stepped up again on the swell of his butt, forcing him to fall over, striking his head on a nearby table. This elevated me and I put the knife through the second guys neck, sort of angling up into his skull.

Both dropped, like iron weights, one gurgling, the other crying out in pain. Three moves, two goons out of the fight. Not bad for a little teenage vamp boy. That left the leader biker guy wondering what was happening.

Buster stood up with his hands suddenly full of the vampire’s nuts. Like he had grabbed the guy low and raised his hand as he stood, causing the vampire to surge to his tippy toes in his Doc Martins. He leaned over, trying to get a grip on Buster’s forearm. But my personal werewolf protector had his grip crushing the vamp’s family jewels. That werewolf strength was just undeniable in that situation.

“You make Buster have to give up food, leech. Now you learn how to fly,” he growled and he ripped that arm up, still holding the vampire’s nuts. There was a horrific ripping noise and the vampire screamed like a little girl.

Seems Buster had overestimated how much muscle he’d need to send the vampire goon flying, how fast he himself could move when angered and just the fact that werewolf claws cause some pretty freakin’ horrendous damage. Instead of sending the vamp crashing into the plate glass windows that passed for walls in this place, he had ripped up and removed the vampires testicles from contact with his person in the most violent of ways.

In short, it was the vampire’s whole unit that got slung against the window, balls, dick and some of the parts attached to both from the inside. It made a sick sort of splat sound on the window, leaving a spot on the glass similar to a hurricane symbol on a weather chart, and then sort of pinwheeling down the glass sloppily. Blood gushed down and the vampire spun about, clutching his groin in agony. Buster put him out of his misery with a twist of the neck. The three of them lay twitching in an ever spreading pool of viscera on the ground.

I gave Buster a kind of dazed but confused look at the pile, and he sheepishly shrugged his shoulders. I just shook my head and he bowed his. But explanations would have to wait. We’d just wasted three vampire biker gang guys in about four seconds and the crowd at the restaurant was just waking up to that fact. We needed to get gone.

“Let’s move!” I said, grabbing my backpack from the booth. The table had become dislodged from the floor during this incident and Buster simply stood, his pack still being on his back, and he waded through the eviscerated guts spilling from the leaders lower torso. We made for the door and swept outside, into a definite airflow change that was shocking to my skin, for some reason.

As we ran, things outside took a trip to the sparkly side. !00 year old oak trees suddenly had faces, and choirs of birdlike beings singing acapella blues songs. Weird things like from a child’s coloring book seemed to paint the air in places with crayon like texture. A young dinosaur padded down the street on velociraptor legs, that big toe claw tapping the pavement with ominous clarity. Further down the street, I saw a cartoon grizzly bear playing chess with a cartoon wolf while a little girl swirled and danced about with apple blossom cheeks shining out from her bright red bandanna.

I got all of three steps when the feeling hit me like a gunshot and my head swam. I held out my arm and put a hand to my head to regain some balance. It was then I realized I’d left my knife in that one vamp’s neck and cursed myself for not pulling it out. My perception of time and reality got loopy, and I felt myself staggering about, over correcting my balance. Strangely, kind of pleasant buzz filled my body.

“Spence!” I looked up and saw that Buster was in boy form again, his clothes seeming a bit baggier. “We leave now!” I could only look up and nod as the strange visions and a sense of vertigo washed over me again. I was reminded of my early torture days, when those that made me kept me on the edge of savagery by denying me blood. Those were some weird times, kept on the boundary of death and pain, yet forced to feel sensations through their debauchery.

Buster went to pick me up as the crowd in the restaurant realized there were dead biker gang guys among them and ran out in panic. The screams and terror overtook them, playing like a sick symphony in my ears. I opened my eyes to Buster standing over me, half carrying me. What strange magic could so overpower me. The lights grew lighter, the darks grew darker and the whole world seemed to spin with clarity and cheerfulness and at the same time, there was that crowd panicking behind us.

Buster got us into an alleyway and set me against a wall. I remember thinking that it was “a good wall,” and the bricks felt cool against my face. I even pet the wall as I slid down it’s surface to the pavement of the alley. Shortly after that, I passed out of consciousness and let the bright lights take me on a roller coaster ride.

October 5, 2017
Inside a hotel room
Location Unknown

I awoke the next night just as the sun was going down. My head felt like I’d been bashed repeatedly into a solid oak coffee table, back of the skull first. That’s a tale for another time, but believe me, it doesn’t turn the early wake up experience into joy and roses. All the blood in my body was pooled in my back and I took a moment to swirl it round, rousing my other kinsethetic senses. Such is pretty common for vampires waking up at night.

I allowed my mind to reset, going over what I could remember of the night before. My body felt warm, good and stronger, even as my head screamed for relief from the too bright light. I remembered feeding off the Changeling boy, feeling instantly dizzy and invincible afterwards. I remember picking that fight with the vampires, striking first, striking hard, no mercy SIR!

I had to shake my head to get that mantra out of my brain. Clearly that Changeling blood had done something to me. I remembered how his cock had felt in my mouth, how the energy from him was more than just youth and male and sexy and blood gasm and…

Wow.

I looked around, trying to see where Buster was. For that matter, where we were. Last thing I remember is laying down in a warm bathtub and Buster washing me with the shower wand. Someone had put me in clean underwear, laid me in a freshly made bed and had turned a mattress over beside the bed I was in, effectively casting the bed I was snuggled down in with shadows. Apparently it was a hotel room. And a nice one at that. I know that Buster had access to some of Dorothy’s money, but I didn’t know if he understood how credit cards worked. So… that was kind of a mystery.

I went to the bathroom to splash some water on my face. Typical, the faucet of the sink had a fairly strong drip. Must cost them a fortune in the water bill.

I looked up in the mirror and saw Buster passed out on the floor. He looked so cute laying on the carpet like that, wearing only his undies. He must have been having a good time because despite the undies covering his human butt, his junk was flopped over the waistband on full display. Damn lucky werewolves!

“Ah good,” a calm, adult voice said from the other side of the mattress barrier protecting me from thermonuclear annihilation. “You are awake. We can talk about the situation you find yourself in.”

I spun around, looking for any weapon. I remember leaving my knife stuck in one of the vampire biker dudes. So my pistol was my next weapon of choice, but it was no where to be seen. Neither were my clothes. And dressed as I was, it was pretty apparent that I didn’t have it concealed anyplace. These boxer briefs left very little to the imagination.

“Who’s there?” I said, trying to make my voice sound gruffer, meaner… taller somehow. Then I realized I shouldn’t even have tried that tactic. Chances are they had already seen me passed out, possible naked. Another thought entered my mind as I realized that. If this other person had wanted me dead, I’d already be down in hell and poor Buster would likely either be dead or hunted. Not sure which sounds like a worse fate for him.

Finding no weapons readily at hand, I readied myself to go full speed again. I rubbed my face, trying to get my mind focused. My body still felt weird, tingly. I think there was something funny with that Changeling. Next time I’ll be more careful with who I juicebox. I rolled back my shoulders and quietly grabbed a towel off the rack. I draped it over my shoulders and walked around the mattress, appearing to be nothing more than a simple 15 year old boy, keeping one hand scratching at my abs. This kept my boxer briefs on display. Might give me a momentary distraction if I need one to be showing some skin.

I’m a vampire: my best defensive stance is to be unpredictable and rely on distraction and speed. It’s kind of what has kept me alive. Or un-alive, you know?

I rounded the edge of the mattress, ready to move, but was stopped in my tracks. I noticed that Buster seemed to wake up, shifting around to face me but staying on his hands and knees, kind of “double ewe” sitting as if he were still in dog form. I passed him a look and a pet to his cheek as I examined our guest in the hotel room.

He was a teen but older. Probably near enough to 18 that he could fake being adult-ish, but he had that scent of a younger male. And a bad case of overusing Ax body spray. Could almost knock me over with the weight of the scent alone. Dark hair, but shockingly blue eyes. His body was strong and tall, he definitely worked out. I looked at how he wore what he wore, and couldn’t see any obvious weapons hidden on his person. And let’s be brutally honest here, even as challenged as Buster’s upbringing was, if he smelled anything that I needed to be worried about, he’d have torn this guy apart.

Oh, and his clothing spoke of money. Name brand styles, clean, crisp and sharp colors on his dark blue jeans and the light green polo shirt. And leather shoes. Italian style. Like I said, money.

He, for his part, smirked when I came around the corner. I let the towel drop and he didn’t follow the motion. Which let me know he was focused, not easily distracted. I made a note of it. I also noticed that the other double bed in the room was still fully intact, even still made. So where the heck did the solar shield come from?

“Are you well, young Kindred?” he said, the rest of his form motionless, relaxed, calm. A casual formality spiked his words. Which meant he was either extremely well trained, or much older than he looked.

“I am. For now. Who are you, stranger?” My eyes darted around the room, finding my back pack on the low, wide bureau with the long mirror over it, and the TV. But it was at the further end from where I stood. So the best bet to get hands on my gun was at least three steps and a turn, following a path that would put me completely at a disadvantage. I had to play it cool.

“I am not here to harm you, or your Garou companion. I’m amazed how you pulled that off, by the way.”

“It’s a temporary alliance until I can find his people. Once he has a home, a family, I’ll go my own way. Who are you?” I said, tilting my eyes to look at him through my bangs. I had heard of werewolves being called Garou before. So someone was up on their supernatural truths. Not sure why he called me Kindred, but it sounded very formal. Again, that got my attention.

“Peace,” he said, holding up his hands. “If I wanted to harm you, I’m sure you have realized that I could have, quite easily, well before now. I don’t mean to anger or threaten you. I don’t ask for your trust, just your forbearance.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“Call me Tris.”

“Tris?”

“Short for Tristan, if you like.” The way he gave a slight bow as he said that probably should have told me something. I wasn’t sure what, though.

“Okay, Tristan,” I said, leaning on the edge of the bureau, positioning myself so that my legs were open, bending one so I’d have some ability to shove off the furniture and gain some aerial advantage if necessary. He might mean me no harm, but he clearly wanted something. This put my goods on display inside my boxer briefs. These weren’t my clothes from before. I had to guess these were one size too small with how closely they hugged me. Once again, making an effort to put on a show to distract, should the need arise.

“You’re next question is, ‘why am I here?’”

“I’ll correct you when you’re wrong,” I said, coldly, trying to take social control of the situation. But he seemed unfazed. I felt Buster move closer to my leg, changing his orientation to face Tris, more.

“I ran into you and Buster in that alley back in Memphis. You made swift work of three Brujah vampires. I am quite impressed.”

More details. Clearly he expected me to know such details. I tilted my head, letting a few seconds stretch between us. Buster actually did a tennis stare as I processed. “From the way you said that, I take it we’re not in Memphis anymore.” It was grammatically a question, but voiced as a fact for him to acknowledged.

“Full marks for that. Yes, you and Buster have moved a fair distance east. We are not far from Philadelphia. A hotel I like to use when I’m in town. They have remarkable breakfasts here.”

“I’ll take you at your word for that,” I said calmly. In my head, though I tried to do the math. Memphis to Philadelphia was probably the better part of a thousand miles, with a mountain range in between. Even at my best walking speed, that would take nights, a week of nights. Maybe I could get lucky and hitch a ride to Philly but I’d never do it in one night and still have enough time to find shelter. How the fuck long was I out?

“You’ve been out for three days,” he said, smoothly. My face must have betrayed my internal processes. Or it was just an educated guess. Either way, he clearly had resources to move us. He sat on the other bed, hands folded in his lap. “And you’ve been here for those three days, if that helps you realize your situation.” Which means he somehow moved us a thousand miles across the continent in less than one night and kept me safe while I “slept.”

Definitely something funny in that Troll I drank from.

“No one likes a smart ass,” I said, throwing snark into the conversation. “But we appreciate your actions getting us out of Memphis. Why would you do that, though?”

He shrugged. “I was feeling generous.”

“You’ll forgive me, but according to a favorite author, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”

“You cut right to the core,” he said, smirking and nodding. “Good to know.”

“I don’t believe in wasting time.”

“Spence-errr,” Buster whined. I reached out and petted his hair, which he leaned into, as any good boy should.

“Thank you for watching out for Buster. And me,” I said, my eyes flicking to the mattress. But it was gone! Just not there! “Uhm, I’m guessing that you are some kind of magic person?”

“That would be a safe bet,” he gave a little bow. “And you have questions. What do I want. What has happened. Why do I care.”

“Have to admit to some curiosity there. And with my clothing.”

“I am sorry if it’s not to you liking. Buster picked it out, I merely brought it here. He handled the rest,” he said, casually shifting one leg over the other as he leaned back. I turned my hand on Buster’s head and continued stroking him. We’d have to talk once this situation was over and we were free again. Still, my adolescent apparatus was snugly contained and allowed for ease of motion.

I turned my attention to our host and with my eyes alone, let him know that it was time for him to get to talking.

“I first noticed you around Denver,” Tris started, “Almost four years ago. You got yourself out of a rough scrape then and managed to escape.” I crossed my arms at that. In Denver I ran into a team of Hunters. I don’t think they expected to find me specifically, because they didn’t have vampire specific weapons ready to go. But they were largely immune to my mind control powers. I barely escaped and hid on a train that went all the way to Lincoln, Nebraska. Took me four feedings to recover, and several nights of healing.

“I’m guessing,” I said, “that you had nothing to do with that cluster fuck?”

“Oh, quite the contrary. That Hunter party was looking for me. I found your distraction very timely. I was able to complete my mission.”

“So, now we are even?” Yeah, I let the icicles hang on that statement. I was getting… angered.

“Not quite. I feel I still owe you for helping me back there. I know you took injuries during that dust up.”

“Dust up?” I said, getting a bit irate. “I had to remove 6 bullets with my bare hands after that crew got their feet under them. And one of them managed to slice my neck. I think that counts for more than a simple dust up!”

“I had no idea,” he said, betraying some emotion. “I am sorry for your injuries.”

The air hung heavy between us for a bit. A storm was brewing in my mind. We vampires are known for holding grudges for a long time. And for bringing retribution, majorly.

“As I said, I have been tracking your travels after events in Denver. But more closely since you acquired Buster, here. When I realized you were traveling together, I thought there might be a chance here. So I did some research.”

“Let me correct you there, friend,” I said. “I didn’t acquire him. He’s not a slave. He’s been a true companion on the road.” His tail thumping on the carpet let me know that Buster approved of this. I kind of wondered why his tail was hanging out while he was in human form again. Or how that tail hung out of his underwear. I risked a look down and his human shaped phallus was peaking out over the waistband of his undies by about two inches. Damned lucky werewolves.

“I meant no offense. Normally, Garou don’t hang out with Kindred.”

“You mean vampires,” I corrected. “And yes, the novelty is not lost on me. Look, it’s really simple. Soon as we find where he belongs, I’m gone.”

Buster looked up to me and whined. “That was the deal we made, Buster. And I intend to see you safely with your own kind.”

“Spence,” he groaned. “You Buster’s kind.”

“Other,” and I looked at Tris as I pronounced the word, “Garou would be better for you. Your own people can train you about how to be a werewolf. I can’t. It’s just that simple.”

“But… you my boy.”

“Buster, you’re life is in danger because of me. You should have a fighting chance. Once my old family finds me, they’ll kill me, and anyone near me. I told you about them. They’re relentless.”

He shifted straight to that giant prehistoric, monstrous wolf form, his chest and head huge, bigger than my whole body, his rear legs spreading and ripping up the carpet as they moved across the floor, digging in to grip the floor. His underwear stretched, ripped and snapped like a rubber band, hitting the wall nearest the bathroom. This put his head practically into my whole torso, his muzzle grazing over my nuts. He growled low in his throat, the vibrations rattling my chest.

“We agreed, Buster.” He only growled again. “Look, can we talk about this once we’re on the road again?” I whispered to him. His growling continued and he pushed forwards, lowering his muzzle to push into my hips with his broad head. I looked up to Tris, who observed with a mild sense of mirth. “He’s normally not like this,” I said, dismissively, resting my hand between his ears. Buster took a breath and continued to growl low, although his tone seemed to shift up a bit, almost into a howl. He moved his muzzle a bit, pushing against my junk through my undies.

“Okay. Buster stop! Sit!” I commanded. His rear legs tracked under and he sat, but he kept his forehead pressed into my belly. “Stay!” I commanded and slid off the bureau. He remained in place and made low “groo rooo” noises at me. I nut checked myself and stared back sternly at him. He lowered his eyes and turned his muzzle away, still making those noises, punctuated with whines. He shifted forms again, going to the normal sized wolf form, refusing to meet my eyes.

“If I may.”

“If you may what?” I said, keeping my eyes locked on Buster’s face, even though he would not bring his eyes to mine. I know the werewolf boy could feel my gaze, and I was not about to lose that contest of wills.

“I may have a solution to this and the other predicament, all in one.” That got my attention. Both me and Buster looked to Tris at the same time, getting him to raise his hands from his lap. “What if there were a way to get Buster into a proper Garou pack, end the trio of elder vampires chasing you and break you of their bond forever, possibly restoring you to life.”

“Don’t dick with me!” I said, getting defensive. “There’s no way to go back. The things I’ve done, the power in me is unnatural. I’ve spilled too much blood to be saved,” I said, hooking a thumb at my own chest. “And I’m surprised he,” and I nodded towards Buster, “hasn’t realized it yet and tried to kill me.”

“Moor Gahn!” Buster howled.

“And I told you, I’m NOT fucking Morgan!” I shouted, turning on the werewolf. He stood up and growled at me, ending it in a high pitched whine. Again, he made a point not to get into a stare down with me.

For long seconds, things in that room simply stood still. The dripping of the sink in the bathroom pounded four long, deep reverberating booms before anyone who needed to breathe took a breath. Slowly, time seemed to click back to normal.

“Okay, okay. Hear me out. Please,” Tris said, standing between the both of us, with hands extended. “Once I’ve said what I have to say, you can continue your argument all you like. But hear me out.” Buster sat back down, his growl going to a low sound, barely out of his throat. I sat on the recently available bed, and crossed my arms across my chest.

“Go on,” I said. Best to keep my anger at Buster’s petulance under cold control.

“Like I said, I’ve been following you for years. I noticed when you fought against that Black Hand assault team at the water tower.”

“Is that who they were?”

“Yes. And they had solid intel on your movements and where you were at the time of the attack.” That surprised me, even if the knowledge of my movements was under surveillance somehow. But to know that there was actually, like, military level preparations against me, and a professional hit team of vampires was sent against me.

I mean, I had soul sucked one member of that team, so I knew that. I shivered as I relived those moments, visibly twisting my head. I could see Buster relived that moment as well, shifting his front limbs, nervously.

“I know, for example, that when you went into nearly impossible to follow levels of Celerity, you did so while splashed with Garou blood. Which is why you felt incredibly fast going in to diablerize one of the Black Hands. You absorbed some of Buster’s Garou essence through the blood you inadvertently consumed as you used vampiric speed against your aggressors.”

I felt like I had done something wrong. Like a chastised child, I went into defense mode. “It was a survival instinct. I suddenly felt so drained. I needed to feed. Buster was hurt, possibly dead. And… and if felt… amazing. I couldn’t stop.” I looked away, wrapping my arms around my narrow middle. “I couldn’t stop,” I said, my voice going very soft.

“I know. I could see the events. I was up on the water tower.” That got both of us to look at him, a bit shocked. “It all happened so fast, I wasn’t sure what was going on. Who sets a boat on fire and rams it into a building 100 feet on shore?”

“It was survival. There wasn’t anything else I could do.” I had used Buster’s blood. That made me cringe in shame.

Buster put his head in my lap, and unconsciously I petted between his eyes, across his head, which earned me a closed eyes look of pleasure to lighten his expression.

“Look, I’m not going to call you on the diablerie. I’m not a Kindred. So it’s not a crime to me. If one vampire destroys a stronger vampire, that’s probably not such a bad thing. Especially since you haven’t committed other, far worse crimes, in my book.”

“Then why bring it up?”

“Because I know how you were created. I know about your Uncles.”

If the blood could drain from my features, it would have. The memories flooded my mind. The kidnapping off the street. Literally how you might imagine it. A van pulled up beside me and I was grabbed, thrown in back and brutalized. Months of being abused in just about every way. Burned, sliced, beaten, pummeled and sexually assaulted over and over again. And that was BEFORE they turned me into what I am now.

They kept me chained, naked, often restrained to the bed or stood up in an iron rack. There were three of them, rotating for entire nights. They’d occasionally be nice, feeding me, telling me I’d be going home soon. Only to let me heal up some and regenerate some blood. Then the brutality, the mental torture and killing my sense of self, my hope, would start all over again.

And sadly, to my utter disgrace, I loved it. The sensations of the Embrace, the actual act of draining my blood was as powerful as an orgasm in me. The feel of my blood vessels giving up vitae, the life’s blood, was so pleasurable that I let them drain me. I grew to enjoy all the pain and punishment and emotional abuse they put me through, just to feel that intense physical pleasure. I became addicted to my abuse.

And there’s that word again. Addicted.

Eventually, they all three attacked, latched onto me and drained what little blood I had left as a threesome. It was some kind of special night, or so the three of them said. I was too far gone in the pleasure to resist, too weakened from blood loss and denial of food. My mind dwindled in the lust, feeling my heart trying so hard to find some fluid to pump, hammering in my ears. I blacked out and this time, with all three of them caressing my body, trying to get every drop out of me, they then pumped blood from their own bodies down my throat as I died. My heart shifted, surged, swelled with their power all focused into me and they still kept drinking. My blood surged and I started to fight back, only to feel nearly drained again by the three of them.

The cycle started anew. They would give me just enough blood to sustain myself. Expose me to reflected sunlight, then give me blood sustenance. Just enough to heal the injuries they’d inflicted the night before, and then abused me again. Sometimes it would be purely emotional, like they would gag me up and call my parent’s, demanding money for my release. They’d make my parents listen as they called, viciously abusing me physically and sexually while they did it, just to hear my parents screaming. It is still an echoing memory that will wake me out of a day’s sleep, crying out in grief and guilt.

Their cruelty knew no boundaries. And all this time, they’d drain me, talking about how sweet my blood was, leaving me squealing in pleasure only to crash back into pain and thirst. Ohmigod, the thirst was always with me, never slacked. They would tease me by dripping blood near me, letting my awakened hunter senses wrack my mind with that sweet, intoxicating smell that I’d do anything to drink down. Pay any price just to wash my tongue in that gooey red fluid, so rich in my nostrils, yet always denied.

They would take me to public parks, wearing only a jockstrap that was way too small for me. Maddened by thirst, nearly dead and desiccated because I hadn’t drank blood in days, they’d lead me down dark paths at night and release me near some innocent. Most often, street kids and runaways, kids selling themselves on the corners and at over grown playgrounds. Places where men would frequent to watch teenage and younger boys alone, with depravity on their minds. I did unspeakable things at their direction. I drained off innocents, only to be set upon and drained back down to the minimum. They’d feed me just enough to get by, from their own blood. Just enough to make me half crazy. Maybe a little more than half.

And in so doing, made me their slave. I loved them, in a very sick and twisted way. I’d have done anything, killed entire kindergartens, slaughtered entire little league ball parks, even dropped into dance halls and movie theaters on date nights and slaughtered everyone, just to feel that pleasure, that emotional connection to the three masters. Anything.

Years of this abuse went by, and I was nearly mindless. Wake up at sun down. Get a brief feeding off one of their wrists. Then get drained down to bare sustenance, and sent to kill. I was… a savage. I felt powerful, and I hunted those they wanted, only to have them feed off of me.

That was how I thought it was supposed to be. And for nearly three decades, my mind was lost. I was only a puppet, controlled by them, to fuel their debauchery of my body and soul. And I learned, many years later, that I had actually been sent out one night, barely conscious and running on fumes, to kill my own parents. And as screwed up as I was, full of their blood, I submitted myself to my Uncles, for a group feeding. Which meant that my parents’ deaths fed my tormentors.

And in that shame, I still loved the bastards. I still lusted for being drained. I still gladly enslaved myself.

All of this washed over me and I actually cried tears of blood, the only fluid that my body regularly contained anymore. I was still, unable to break out of the memories. And then I felt Buster jump on the bed next to me, laying his head on my lap.

“Yes,” Tris spoke. “I am aware of what your Creators did to you. And what they made you do. Sadly, you are not the first that they and others have enslaved this way. I’m very sorry that they did that to you.”

“I couldn’t fight them,” I said, fully feeling the guilt and shame, still feeling the pleasure of drinking blood and the maddness they forced on me like a tremor in the ground and air. I would have walked through a football field of fire for them. I’d have killed anyone they commanded me to. I’d have stared into the sun, just to know their touch, that bite. If they were still a factor in my life, I’d gladly kill and brutalize Buster to please them, to get my reward.

It was bare luck that I escaped. I was sent on a mission one evening, with dawn soon. A cop was getting too close to one of my Uncle’s operations. I was supposed to take him out.

My target got lucky and he shot me first. I was wounded, incapacitated, yet he tried to resuscitate me. He worked on me long enough for me to get taken by ambulance to a hospital. My Uncle for the night was wounded and recovering and lost track of me. I was brought to a hospital and given a transfusion of blood. It revived me. But I was still mostly in a coma. Kept “alive” by machines and transfusions. If only they knew the things I was forced to do. Perhaps they’d let me die if they knew.

I tried to leave and found I couldn’t. The sun was up and by this point I was too weak to resist. I waited two days and one night, absorbing blood. I left and got away, tried to find my masters. But they had moved. I didn’t know where the place we were living was, either. I tried to find someone from my past, but too much time had passed. To many of my memories were corrupted with incompleteness. I started to run, and eventually found a place to sleep.

In time, that blood bondage began to fade, and I had learned how to not take all the blood from my victims. I began acting morally again, staying far away from any vampires I ran across. Until the night I came across one of my Uncles, apparently with a new “hound” out hunting. I got so jealous, so pissed that I was so easily replaced. I hunted them for a while and figured out where all three slept during the day. The next time their hound was sent out to get them a snack, I intercepted him. He didn’t stand a chance. I drained him, diablerized him and left his corpse someplace very public.

I knew they’d come for me. So I ran. Fucking ran. That night, I got on a bus and made it to Vegas by sundown. Spent the day in a seedy motel after giving the night manager a blow job. He barely had a chance to pull up his pants to give me a key before the sun rose. I’ve been running ever since, never staying in the same place longer than a few days. Feed on the scum of humanity, move a little down the line, hide by day, run by night.

Wash, rinse, repeat. The secret to breaking a blood bond, an addiction, is consistency. And fear of the beast you once were, and might be again.

It’s been years of this, staying one step ahead of any chance of them finding me. And they have been undead for nearly 3000 years, each. So no matter how good I think I get at hiding, they usually do find evidence of me. They’ve nearly caught me several times.

And now, Tris, whoever he really was, has managed to corner me. I felt the guilt, the shame, and I felt trapped. And I had Buster to think about. I was well and truly fucked.

“Do you need a minute?” Tris asked.

I looked him over, feeling my eyes sort of shift over. I could see the flutter of his pulse in his temple. I heard the soft shush-shush-shush of the blood gently surging in his wrists. I felt the thirst starting to come on, starting to fuel me, gnaw at me. Awaken my hunting senses. I blinked and saw the pattern of his blood moving in his body, a rich tapestry of gentle lines, steadily flowing through him. But I also saw something else, lying on top of that blood pattern. I saw sparkles of golden white light moving along with his blood.

I’m not sure what it was, but it gave me pause. I shook my head and my vision returned to normal. I looked up to him, with a sense of awe.

“What are you?” I breathed out.

“I have a proposition for you. But, I could use a steak. Buster, you hungry?” The fuzzy traitor’s answer was a thump-thump-thump on the bed and my back. I looked at him daggers and the thumping slowed. Didn’t stop, though.

“I thought we just established that I don’t need food.”

“If you humor me, all will be made clear.” Well, that wan’t cryptic at all.

“I was just seconds away from killing you,” I said simply. He pursed his lips and nodded to the right side.

“I think you’ll enjoy a night out. And there may be some happy surprises.” And then that grin. Perfect white teeth, perfect amount of showing them. Perfect shape to his smile. I am beginning to hate magic people.

We convinced Buster that if he wanted steak, he had to wear clothes. I still wasn’t sure about accepting the kindness of a stranger, especially one that had knowledge and unknown powers over me. But at the least it got us out from the hotel room. We could plan our next move without walls to block us in.

Not for the first time, I considered ditching Buster. This person’s motives weren’t entirely clear to me, yet, but it was a good bet that he would be a better travel companion for the werewolf boy than for me. People were hunting me. At least with Tris, who seemed to know a lot more about supernatural matters than I did, could help the lost cub a lot better than I could.

It would be easy. Just say I needed to go the bathroom and slip out the back of some hole in the wall restaurant, go just barely sub-sonic between cities and find a place to hole up for a few days. I’d be a shadow, a whisper. Untracable. I could just run and they’d never find me. Maybe I could double back on my trail, change directions. Or be seen buying a bus ticket and get off somewhere other than my paid for destination. I mean, what was money to a creature like me. I could get it off the next dude I fed off of. Been doing that for years now.

Despite this clever and fool proof plan, I stuck with Tris and Buster, put on clean clothes from where Buster acquired my underwear from. My old familiar hoody had been too blood stained to continue using, so I put on the new baby blue one on and quietly slipped my pistol into my underwear up front. If I got the opportunity and desire to make a break for it, I could leave the back pack behind. Keep moving, keep light, nothing to tie me down. Most of the stuff in my pack was for Buster’s benefit anyways. That dog could eat!

I have to say, Buster looked good when he wanted to. I don’t think he completely got the human concept of clothing down, but he cleaned up real nice. We must have looked good together as we came out of the bathroom, because Tris nodded and smiled, toothy and full of sparkles. Like a hygienic shark in slacks and a polo shirt. He looked sharp as well, and probably fit the profile of older, college aged brother taking his younger sibs out to dinner. He called for an Uber and we waited in front of the hotel.

The steak house he choose was one of those very classy places with a family name up front and the scent of Italian food flowing in the air like a river. Very spicy, likely very pricey. Not exactly where you’d expect a magician to take a half-grown flea-bitten werewolf and a pint sized blood drinker to in order to show off. Buster wasn’t complaining though. His whole butt practically shook at all the new smells tempting his teen wolf boy nose.

But the ambiance was lost on me. Although I could pick out a hundred tempting aromas from the kitchen, I’d long since gotten out of the habit of eating anything that didn’t have a pulse. And regurgitating mostly dry food back up hours after eating it wasn’t high on my to-do list. Not very appealing to look at either.

He ordered for us, getting the steak tips in mushroom gravy and baked potato for himself, a double entree of boneless chicken breasts and 16 oz steak, medium rare, for Buster, and a salad plate and some veggies for me. It would likely go into a doggie bag. How appropriate.

I toyed with the salad, just getting the taste of the dressing and then discretely chewing out the side of my mouth into a napkin. The soft saxophone muzak was pleasantly distracting. I began to see the appeal of the place. Even then, though, I picked out a few likely targets for a quick snack in the bathroom. Most of the restaurant patrons seemed a bit padded and others were “gym” fit. Weren’t many missed meals for this crowd. Rich in more ways than one.

“You’re smiling,” Tristan said, while cutting a hole in the top of his potato. “It looks good on you.”

“Just memories from long, long ago. My parent’s made it a point to take me out to a place like this once a month. Said it was good to see how the other half lived.”

“Ah, so you remember them?”

“Only bits and pieces. My memory is kind of fragmented after I was Embraced. And my youth was a long, long time ago.”

“I see.” He took a bite and seemed lost in the sensations of the warm gooey potato sliding around in his mouth. For a brief moment, I considered throwing caution to the wind and trying to drain him on the spot. But that would really confuse Buster, and I didn’t have the heart to be all vampiric in front of him.

Besides, he was actually using silverware for once. Properly. There was hope yet!

“So, since we owe you for getting us out of Memphis and all and hiding us in your hotel room, I would like to apologize for my behavior, and sincerely thank you for all the trouble you have gone through on our behalf.”

“Think nothing of it. But since we are on the subject,” he said, wiping his mouth. “My proposal for you boys.”

“I couldn’t possibly accept a proposal this early in the season,” I said, batting my eyes at him.

“Uhm. Cute,” he grunted. “As interesting as that may be, one day, I think I’ll settle for giving you another option.” He renewed sawing on his steak tips, swirling them around in that dark, thick, musky mushroom gravy with a hint of rosemary and basil. “What if I could get Buster to a pack of nearby Garou that are willing to accept a lost cub, could permanently get your Uncles off your track and possibly cure you of your… thirsty condition?”

“I’d say for someone who can alter reality, you certainly do know how to sling the bullshit when you have to. Do you practice law, too?”

“Aha, funny! But it’s true; I can arrange it. All of it. But you have to decide if you want to do it.”

“Even if it were possible to… cure me, as you put it, my Uncles are blood thirsty bastards with thousands of years of experience and powers I can’t even begin to develop. And even then, I’ve done so many evil things in my life… I can’t go back to being a regular human even if I wanted to. I just can’t. Too much blood has spilled through me.”

“See, that’s just the thing. The three of them are part of a larger group of similarly minded vampires that operate across the continent. And they’ve been doing this for hundreds of years. You aren’t the first, just the first to go rogue on them.” Tristan suddenly looked down at my hand where it was holding the fork I’d been idly dragging through the salad.

“Uhm, Spencer? You probably ought to stop doing that,” he said, indicating my hand with his eyes. I looked down and saw that I’d been clutching so hard at the stainless steel that the fork was obscenely warped beyond recognition as tableware. My fingers had twisted around the stem of the fork and it was bent so badly that I thought I might have punctured the plate as well. The tines were all cockeyed, at strange angles. The handle was twisted and bent around, forced out of fork shape and more into worm-on-a-hook shape.

I hid my hand under the tablecloth and pried my fingers free from where they’d twisted the metal about. I stared at the salad plate, my eyes locked onto a section of lettuce and radish with a lot of thousand island dressing on it. I closed my eyes, again wracked by the memory.

They had played games with me. They tortured me and forced me to do horrible things. And not only was I disposable to them, but I wasn’t the only one. I wasn’t the only hunter. I wasn’t the only play toy that they sent out to basically steal blood and exact retribution.

I was suddenly furious, but in ways you can’t possibly comprehend. I had given my entire being, body and soul to these… these master manipulators. For over three decades I did their bidding. The obedient little lap dog. The loyal blood bag. Oh I was so angry. All that pain and pleasure, all that sacrifice, all the torture and conditioning that I endured…

All the people I had killed.

And it was all for nothing. It meant nothing to them. I meant nothing to them. Just some sick sadistic game. They never even looked for me, until I killed another of their slaves and left him to be found, publicly.

“Spence,” Buster growled low, but his vocal impression was one of a rising tone. Like he wasn’t sure if I was angry or not. And he had every right to be worried. This sort of cold anger is much more dangerous than the mad, frenzied anger. This was pure methodical malevolence. I was hurt and angry and betrayed and someone was going to pay.

“Spencer!” Tristan hissed at me, trying to keep his tonality from alerting others at the restaurant from looking my way. “Wipe your eyes, kid. You’re showing blood.” He offered me his cloth napkin, partly holding it up to block my face from casual inspection. I grabbed the napkin and ducked under the table cloth. It was an act of sheer will power to not just let my vampiric nature show and go on a holy tear through the place.

When I had control again, and my blood tears had been dealt with, I sat up.

“There are only so many things that can affect vampire magics directly. What do you propose?” I asked, all business. Channeling my inner Wednesday Addams. I wasn’t even sure that first sentence was true. But I had to know what he truly meant.

“What do you know about the Salem witch trials?” Tristan asked, his expression going more stoic, serious. Noted.

“This was a big topic of discussion in my school. It was before the internet and the Wicca revival that it inspired. Two, possibly three young girls basically faked acts of possession and witchcraft played upon them, using the terror that such supposed attacks generated within the community to implicate people that they didn’t like.”

“Very good.”

“Spence, ya gonna eat that?” Buster said, suddenly. I looked over and he had a worried look on his face. I just pushed my plate over to the mess he had on his side of the table. Nothing remained of his chicken and only a red residue was left behind to show the steak had ever existed. He grinned and dove in. Under the table I rubbed the edge of his knee, which he seemed to like because he leaned his entire thigh towards me.

“It is literally the definition of a witch hunt,” I continued. “If you are accused, you have no way to prove you aren’t, and the only way that is accepted to end your supposed crime is to either confess to any and everything, or suffer torture to gain your confession. And you are expected to not only admit your guilt but pass on the names of other confederates. Literally a no-win situation unless you can prove your accusers are lying.”

“I see you get the concept,” Tris said, folding his hands above his plate.

“So what are you getting at?”

“You, my friend, are not the monster you believe you are.”

“No shit,” I said, deadpan delivery. “Well, my actions in the past seem to disagree with that.”

“As you said, you were driven to those actions. And while we can debate the various morals of that, the underlying fact is that you were practically starving, blood bound, one could say you were basically brain washed and acting on instinct. Instincts that your Uncles carefully manipulated you to maximum effect.”

“You think I don’t understand that?”

“Oh, I know you understand that much. You lived it. But,” he said, steepling his fingers out, “what you don’t really understand is the nature of your body.”

“My… body?”

“Think about it. Your Uncles kept you on the verge of starvation, yet in all the times they sent you out, you had the strength and speed to survive. And then they fed off of you, keeping you weakened so they could control you.”

“You may be on to something about me not understanding,” I said, dryly. “I don’t understand a word of what you just said.”

“Okay, let me break it down for you. What your Uncles did to you is use your body to filter their blood. Many, many times. This broke them of their blood bond to their elders. So they were free to do anything they wanted without the vampire hierarchy being able to stop them short of destroying them ought right. They also used your ‘filter’, if you will, to enhance their own powers and blood’s strength. This also means that your blood is a lot stronger than you think, but you haven’t been trained in vampiric disciplines.”

My mind raced. If they made me stronger, and thereby made themselves stronger, why wouldn’t they train me? Wouldn’t that serve to make me a better pawn for them. And then I realized, continuing that analogy, that pawns can become stronger through promotion. Perhaps stronger than kings. And in promotion, a pawn can become uncontrollable, unrestrained. Free… and a threat.

I looked at Tristan, who could obviously see my wheels turning. For once he didn’t have that smug smile on his face. I knew, since my freedom, that the Uncles had used me. I knew that they took the love I had for them from all the pleasure and blood sharing and sex, and they turned me into a willing servant, capable of doing horrendous things in their service. But to realize that I was used to make them stronger, too, and kept on the very verge of madness and starvation, on purpose.

That drove my anger into a very, very cold place. So cold it burned. So cold that steel turned brittle. Fucking USED ME!

“Spence?” Buster almost barked in panic. I closed my eyes and counted to ten, opening my vision to stare through him. Poor Buster backed up from me so fast he fell out of his seat and nearly switched straight to wolf form. Across from me, Tristan held up a hand.

“Hey, easy there, big guy. Tone it down. Get control before you freak the whole place out.”

“Why?” I said, feeling a change in my voice. My vision had gone all red. I risked a look across from our booth at one of the many mirrors around the dining area. My eyes were glowing a pale red. Not just reflected light, but full on fucking lit from behind through a filter red. My face looked ashen, sunken cheeks, showing my true vampiric nature.

I closed my eyes and focused my face on my lap so my eyes wouldn’t show. I tried to calm down. I compartmentalize my anger, let my will take over from my rage.

I opened my eyes and felt the red clear, the other colors wiggled a bit and snapped back into their regular patterns. Tristan seemed to be brighter for a second. But he smiled, nervously, and nodded. I reached over and offered Buster a hand. He reluctantly took my offer, looking at me sideways.

“I’m okay, buddy,” I said, apologetically. He sat back in his seat, but kept a slight distance. I turned over my wrist to him, palm up. “Sniff me. I’m in control. I’m sorry I scared you.”

He rarely can shock me, or catch me off guard, other than his impossible werewolf speed. But this time he did. He reached out and pulled me to his chest, wrapping his limbs around me in a very protective hug. I couldn’t help but hug back. His body felt strong, and warm. And solid. He stank a little, but he was very comfortingly warm.

“I’m okay. I swear.” He released me from the hug but kept his paws on me a moment longer.

“You no change,” he growled, leaning down to look up through his unruly bangs at me. “No not be you.”

“I promise,” I told him, lying of course, but it made him feel better. I don’t know what happened, which power I might have triggered that caused such a reaction. Still, his hug felt comforting, reassuring. It was totally honest and emotional. Two things I hadn’t really been with him. And that was a shame to me.

“I think dinner is over,” I said, quietly. “In light of certain situations, perhaps this conversation is best had elsewhere.”

“Check, please,” Tristan said, turning slightly and raising a hand. We scooped things into a take home box, ostensibly for Buster. Tristan paid for the bill in cash, and over-tipped by about 60%.

As we left the restaurant, I still felt angry and my senses expanded into the night. It was still relatively early. I could go into how I felt this, but it’s not important. But my other senses seemed magnified. I could hear crickets in the autumn air. I could see as if it were a bright noontime day under a searing sun. I could sense that the temperature outside was dropping but the humidity was rising, rich with the promise of dew for the grasses, come the dawn.

And more. I could sense eyes on me. They weren’t close, but still I could feel them like pinpricks boring into wax covered wood. I maintained my cool though and refused to look in that direction, to give up my edge in knowing I was under watch. Let ‘em watch, I thought at that time.

The cab took us to a different hotel. I’m not sure how, but walking in that hotel’s door brought us back to the original hotel. I looked at Tristan and he just smiled as Buster looked around in confusion. Mage shenanigans.

“Sorry. I think you felt them, too.”

“What is your plan?” I said, getting straight down to business.

“I’ve been watching you. For all your flaws, and there are many, you’re not a bad person. And I know you weren’t put into this existence willfully.”

“What does that have to do with any of this? I’ve killed many, many times. I’ve even enjoyed killing.” Buster made a sound halfway between a whine and a growl. Clearly he had issues.

“I’m offering you a second chance. Perhaps not for redemption but, to break the cycle. To end your Uncle’s bloodline and maybe get a path to redemption.”

“Redemption?” I said, getting irritated. “Look, the only path I can see for that is to get to some big city and disappear or find some bigger vampire to take me out.”

“There is another path.”

“And what might that be? I’m washed in the blood. Literally. I’m washed in so much blood that there is no redeeming my soul. My body is soaked in too much innocent and not so innocent blood to clear it.”

“That’s just the thing. What if there were a ritual…”

“Heh! A ritual,” I scoffed.

“…a ritual that could purify your blood enough to end the curse. End the Embrace. Make you, well, perhaps not entirely human, but no longer a blood drinker.”

“You mean, you can end the thirst? Make me alive again?” If I sound skeptical…

Buster’s tail thumps on the mattress signaled his interest in that. I hadn’t realized he’d shifted to his doggy shape. I unconsciously scratched his head as I sat beside him.

“It would have to take a lot of things falling into place, perfectly,” Tristan said, emphatically, with his fingers former circles with his thumbs. I took my hand off Buster and put my palms together, elbows on knees, listening intently. “As it happens, very soon there will be a celestial convergence which will amplify the energies we need.” Buster put a paw over my arm, trying to draw it back to his head. I scratched him lightly between the ears and brought my hands back.

“So, the convergence is enough?” I don’t know many mages but they seem to be long on promises and short on results, Tristan’s whisking us halfway across the continent not withstanding. It felt like something too good to be true. What’s the catch?

Buster looked at me and brought his paw over my arm again, tugging two times. I looked at him with some annoyance but settled back on my elbows, scratching at that spot in the middle of his back between whatever matched human shoulder blades. That seemed to calm him and he stretched under my hand.

“No, it’s not. The ritual will only work during the convergence, but it needs fuel. And a catalyst.”

“This is the part I’m not going to like.”

“Yeah…” he sighed. “There is a slight hitch in the equation. One fly in the ointment. To make it work, we need the blood of the sire.”

I sat forward so suddenly that Tristan was startled, as much by motion as my whispered, “What?” Buster reacted a moment after, pushing his muzzle under my arm. Without thinking about it, I put my arm and elbow over the back of his neck, scratching his head right between his eyes. Nothing more needy of demanding than a werewolf needing scritches.

“You heard right.”

“Then, it is not possible.”

“Why not?”

“I wasn’t made by only one,” I explained. “Instead of one sire, I had three. My Uncles… I was drained and forced to drink a combination of their bloods, the three of them. That’s how I was blood bonded to all of them at once. They kept draining me. Kept me weakened.”

“Yes, but,” Tristan dramatically raised his hand, pointer finger up, “if we had the actual vampires that made you, but using all of their blood for the ritual, that would be more than enough to fix you and destroy any others like you they might have made since then.”

The implications of that set in, slowly filtering into every crevice of my mind. Destroying the Uncles would be fine by me. Making me free of the blood drinking curse would also be more than fine by me. It was the last bit that kind of gave me pause. Destroying any other’s that they had made. So basically killing any other blood slaves as well. No shot at redemption for them. No chance for freedom.

And what kind of existence is there beyond the blood drinker’s curse? Would that make me human again, despite the evil I have done?

“Who the fuck are you?” I asked, in disbelief. “If there are others like me, they’d be destroyed by this as well? How the fuck?!”

“It’s because of the blood. If we do this, we’ll be burning the entire blood lines out. Anyone with the same blood would be eradicated.”

“No warning? No chance to express remorse?”

“I can protect exactly one. Well, that’s not true. According to the ritual I can protect any within my ritual circle. Any outside it will be affected by the negative effect.”

“Meaning you burn them from the inside out and obliterate their souls.” That cold anger returned to me. Beside me, Buster tensed, his breathing going shallow.

“Meaning I burn them from the inside out and obliterate their souls,” the mage repeated. “And the world is out about two dozen fuckin’ vampires. And you,” he said, raising a hand my way, expressively, “are free and clean again.”

“How?” I said, almost indignantly.

He drew in a deep breath, leaning forward over his knees and looked up. “Golcanda.”

“Gol-can-what? What the fuck is Golcanda?”

He looked down, beginning his speech, but looking up as he began talking. “Golcanda is a state that your kind can reach when they are purified in the blood. It signifies a release of latent vampiric tensions and it basically resets your blood.” He gestures and the air became alive with symbols and colors. Buster’s head swiveled and he poked his nose into several of he symbols. They moved around his head like projections on a screen and he sneezed, wetly. “The ritual utilizes the moon, reflected daylight, and causes an energy back flow through the target’s blood.”

“And somehow my state of mind will just end that?”

“No. Don’t be silly, boy,” he spoke darkly. I let that slide, but still narrowed my eyes in his direction. “Oh, don’t worry. I have no doubt you could end me in an instant. But this little opportunity is too much for even you to overlook.”

“Go on.”

“The magic will neutralize your blood’s potency. Thus it will protect you as long as you are in the right spot on my pentagram. The magic reads your blood and will see anything similar…”

“And wipe them out with no chance at redemption? How will that put me into Gol-whatchamacallit?”

“Because at the same time it will take your blood out of this reality.”

“What?”

“Look, I can explain how this magic works until I’m blue in the face. If we do this ritual, if we use your blood to prime it and one of your Uncles to fuel it, we get them all. Each Uncle, any other brethren slaves like you, and any legitimate children your Uncles might have. Other vampires.”

“Is that all that you need? My body to give them the pattern and one of my Uncles to provide the fuel?”

“It will take me a bit to set up for the ritual, and it must be done at a specific location, at a specific time.”

“Naturally,” I said, sarcastically. “So where and when?”

“The irony is sort of delightful, if you think about it.” The images stopped floating in the air, leaving Buster to look about in canine confusion. “Salem, Massachusetts on October 31^st. As if right on cue.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” I replied drolly.

“No, it’s sad but true.”

“It’s sad alright,” I said with plenty of sarcastic backspin. “The original witch hunt.” He took a breath to launch into a likely lengthy explanation of the process, but I just held up a hand. “Okay, hold it. Just… hold it, ‘kay? I need to think about this.”

“I understand.”

“If we do this… we end their eternal blood hunt for me? And you know of some werewolf pack who can take in Buster?”

He nodded sagaciously. “That’s the deal.”

“And the down side?”

“Aside from making yourself kind of a moving target for a few days to lure them out?” he asked. He sort of gestured, making a weird face. “Not many.”

“It’s not your hide that will be on the hook. We will have to be out in the wind until ritual time.”

“Well, I didn’t say it would be easy. And you have to resist going into blood lust during that time. For this sort of forced Golconda, I need you in your current state. No backsliding towards more vampirism.”

“Great.”

“All cards on the table, taking your Uncles off the board is a big coup for me and my kind. Taking you off the board is too, but from one old dude to another, you deserve a second chance.”

“How old are you, mage?”

“Let’s just say that I originally spoke Latin, like a Roman. And leave it at that.”

Fuck, that’s old. If he’s truthful. Which is still in some doubt. Fucking magic people.

“So, your people? Who are they?”

He inhaled sharply and put his hands together. “I am not permitted to tell you.”

“You aren’t permitted? Oh, now I want to know even more.”

“Sorry, Spence. Maybe one day. Can’t let you into the circle, just yet.”

“But you need me to help take my Uncles and their ilk off the board, do ya?”

“it sucks, I agree,” Tristan said, rotating his folded hands out. His pulse throbbed in my ears as he did that and he looked up to me, slowly rotating his wrists back. I felt a pull towards him, but resisted it. “And now you know why,” he said. “The thirst is still a powerful force in you. It’s instinct for you at this point. And until that is either under control or eradicated, I have to keep you in the dark.”

“Yeah whatever.”

“It’s nothing personal. Just got a lot of irons in the fire. Lot of situations that might get upset if you know about them.” I glared at him, and he just smiled at me, as if at a slightly upset child. Didn’t need to breathe, but I simply sighed to let him known my displeasure.

“So it looks like we’re heading to Salem,” I said, laying back on the bed, my hand running down Buster’s back. His tail thumped me, gently and I grabbed it. Didn’t stop the wagging, but it limited the impacts some.

“Great! Just one catch.”

“Oh, my fuckin’ gawd, what now?”

“We need you to make them believe you aren’t running to Salem. Give us a chance to set up without vampiric resistance. And we need to maybe contact others of your kind that aren’t like your Uncles.”

I poked my head up from the bed, my chin going to my chest. “Are you smokin’ crack?!”

“Look, they have to think you’re running scared, else they will suspect a trap.”

“Do they even know about you?”

“They think they killed me a long time before you came around, Kiddo.”

“I am not,” I said, sitting up, clicking my tongue against my fangs, “a kid.” A second later, Buster moved up beside me and growled in solidarity.

“Okay, you two. Chill a moment. We have a plan. And if we follow the plan, we get your Uncles and all their ilk, you get freedom and you, pup, get a new pack that can help you. What more could you ask for?”

“A winning lottery ticket and a wilderness fortress in Alaska sounds about right.”

“Look, okay… I need to know if your are in, or should I just open a portal to the light side of the planet and let the sun shine in. Cuz you know too much for me to just let you go now.” He folded his long arms over his chest. “So, choose.”

I stared across the intervening space and Buster started slow thumping with his tail. I shot him a withering glance and the thump thump thump increased in tempo. My shoulders sank and I groaned dramatically.

“Okay, fine! Set up the meeting.”

“Great, you’ll barely regret it.”

“Don’t you mean I wont regret it.”

He chuckled and pulled a phone from his pocket. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I only promise what I can deliver.”

October 17, 2017 10:44 PM
The top of the Washington Monument
Washington DC

The wind was whipping fiercely up at the top of the Monument. The tip is an aluminum capstone, like a little pyramid. In full daylight, I’m sure it was radiant, reflecting the sunlight in all it’s glory. The tallest spot in the capitol. When this giant obelisk was commissioned back around 1848 they had no idea the many problems it would see before reaching its ultimate 555 foot height. Construction was halted three times, twice for monetary reason and once for the American Civil War. When this aluminum apex and lightning rod was laid in, it was officially the largest and most expensive chunk of the metal ever made, being worth more than it’s weight in silver. But that was 1884.

Now there are aircraft warning lights that adorn the outside of the monument and a thin ring of lightning rods to prevent sparks from rending the great stone spire. And no one gets to see the 100 ounces of cast aluminum that once gleamed like a point off the sun itself. The point of gleaming metal is only about 9 inches tall. It was once on display in New York, where people were allowed to walk over it, as a novelty. “Look Ma, I’m walking over the top of the Washington Monument.” Now, it’s a lonely view from the top, but breathtaking. A monument to engineering and a testament to squabbling politicians who couldn’t get shit right for thirty-six freakin’ years. I mean the Catholic Church and the Ottoman Empire both contributed to the Monument. Yep, I remembered all this from my high school days.

Which in no way excuses why Buster and I sat at the top after hours, waiting for our contact. The elevator ride was kinda cool, I got to admit. Going nearly 500 feet straight up in 70 seconds doesn’t sound all that fast, but that’s until you’re actually up that high. Doing so in the darkened interior spaces was kind of reverent for me. I knew what my country really could be at times, but I knew the aspirations of it too. The dreams. Dreams I once had. Dreams this building once inspired, despite its troubled history.

And now, to top it all off, we had broken into the place to meet up with some strange vampire. Had to be the weirdest place for a neutral ground meeting spot. At least the internal cameras were turned off.

“Spence Grrr worried?” Buster asked, in his wereform. A mostly silent shadow, save for his breathing and heartbeat and the occasional whisper. He was as comfortable in dark places as I was. I could see the scant security lighting below us reflected in his eyes.

“Spencer ticked off that our contact is late.”

“No trust Tristan?”

“No further than I can throw him.” I resisted the urge to pace. Again. I briefly though back to how we got into this particular situation.

Tristan said he would reach out to one of his “trusted underworld contacts,” and set up a meeting with us and another vampire, part of something called the Nosforatu clan. Said that we needed them to get a message through to my Uncles. Also said that I might get some information off of them. The Nos were good at information. I was skeptical, but Tristan had been spot on so far. Last night, just before daybreak, someone slipped a note under the door. Whoever wrote the note, they were very specific, and the calligraphy would have won awards at my high school.

The note said just two lines. “Top of the Washington Monument, observation deck. Come alone, just the two of you.’

Naturally, I suspected a trap. And since we were in Arlington, it was a quick hop across the river and into the capitol to make the meeting. I’d never been here. I wanted to go, you know. Make the traditional high school pilgrimage into DC. See the sights, listen to the boring tours, get the picture on the steps of the supreme court and go chasing around the hallways of the Smithsonian. So being in this town while it was quiet, empty, was kind of a let down. And now we’d broken into this tower that I’d so idealized as a teenager and I felt nothing but depressed.

“I’d imagine that throwing him would be counter-productive,” a whispery voice spoke from near the elevator. It startled me. Buster too. Nothing had been able to sneak up on me like that for a long time. I slowly turned my head, hoping to catch some sound or vision of the speaker, but she remained mostly concealed. And the voice sounded entirely female.

“I take it you are the one who wrote that exquisite note?”

“Yes, young Spencer.”

“I’m afraid we are not acquainted,” I said, catching Buster’s eyes. He was starring around, trying to catch a glimpse of our mysterious speaker. “You seem to know us, my dear. Who might you be?”

“Oh, just someone interested in seeing some wrongs righted.” Her voice was smoky, raspy, reminiscent of that actress that did Jessica Rabbit. Can’t think of her name right now. It was a voice that spoke of experience and time’s passage, yet still had this dark, languorousness to it. Sultry, deep.

“I’ve done several wrongs myself. I’m no innocent. I hope that wont be held against me.”

“Perhaps,” the voice said, with the briefest sparkle of a giggle. “I’m sorry to have to meet you under these circumstances. But we had to know for certain you were worthy.”

“Worthy?”

“Yes. Second chances are rare. And for those of us afflicted with not only the curse but the thirst, there can be no doubt about who we spend resources on.”

“Which implies you have scarce resources to spend.”

“You are a delight, young one. I’ll give you that. I could spar with your sugary words all night and consider the time well spent. But, we both have a limited window. Let us get down to business.”

“Let’s.”

“We are aware of your plan, and to that end we have warned our allies. Salem will be Kindred free for the night in question. We have kept this knowledge from the general run of other vampires. We gratefully will accept the gift of clearing your bloodline from the board. Are you still planning to go through with the ritual?”

“It is why we are here,” I said. “Hopefully this will be all over shortly after midnight, and you can resume doing… whatever it is that you do.”

“Very good,” her voice spoke, this time from an entirely different part of the room. My head swiveled, wondering how she did that. “You are very brave. Our own mages have determined that there is a 67% chance that your ritual will succeed.”

“Not great odds,” I admitted tilting my head. Buster walked around the elevator lobby, his eyes going around, still suspicious. I have to admit, despite her light tone and seductively dark voice, I was a bit freaked out. “And I’m grateful for your assistance.”

“Please. It is you who are helping us. By removing this scourge from the continent, we can fade further into the shadows. We do ask that if you pass through the ritual and survive it, that we are allowed to examine you.”

A soft growl erupted from Buster at that. I narrowed my eyes at him, but I shared the sentiment.

“We mean no disrespect,” she spoke, quickly. Again, I got the sense that the voice was moving around the room. Buster and I had walked a crossing pattern, hoping to triangulate and track her. “If this succeeds, it will be the first time in over 700 years that such a thing has worked. If such an attack against a rogue bloodline can work and yield positive results, it may change the fate of the war.”

I should say something here. A brief explanation. There are two major factions of vampires. Not going to go into which one is better than the other. But for the sake of completeness, these Kindred, as they refer to themselves, are the ones helping me, and the others are technically linked with the few that created me. Full stop. This wasn’t a personal “screw you” to the faction that was responsible for my twisted existence, but if I had to get their enemies to help out to end my personal curse, why the fuck not?

Oh, and for the record, I never knew or cared that there were factions and wars happening between vampires. I didn’t even know that I was used as a weapon in that war.

“Yeah, well… as long as it ends things, all around. I just want this thing finished.”

“Then we wish you luck. Do you require any further assistance?”

I turned, feeling that I was looking directly where the voice was coming from this time. “Just keep your people out of my way,” I said, “and everything will be copacetic.”

“Very well then,” her voice sounded from across the lobby from me, right near where Buster stood, looking confused.

“Is there anything you need from me, Miss…” I said, turning again, leaving the question hanging in the air.

“You may refer to me as the Advocate,” her voice broke into a sprinkle of mirth. “And nice try.”

“Just curious.”

“Curiosity had detrimental effects upon the feline,” she spoke. “There’s a lesson in that.” And then the voice suddenly shifted across the room, near the stairwell. “I look forward to your success, Spencer. And for your sake, I hope that you survive this event.”

And then the room suddenly felt emptier. I cast about, hoping that my extended senses might catch a glimpse. But whoever she was, the Advocate had slipped away with out a trace. Even Buster’s keen nose couldn’t pick up anything.

“She good,” Buster said.

“I’m withholding my judgment on that. Come on, buddy, we need to get gone.”

According to Tristan, we had an hour and a half window during which the security systems around the inside of the monument would be going through a routine power down. The meeting with the Advocate took less than twenty minutes. We should have plenty of time during that maintenance window.

We headed towards the elevator only to find it starting down the shaft. Buster shifted down from his war form into more of the Captain Cave Kid version of him, looking around. I just shrugged.

“I guess she’s using it. We can walk down the stairs.”

“Okay,” agreed.

“At least we wont have to walk UP the stairs,” I said, sliding my hands into the pockets of my cargo shorts. Buster sort of copied my slumped shouldered attitude and followed, literally a step behind and to my left. As we started down, I could feel Buster’s eyes upon me. It was strange but he was copying just about ever little movement, even when I started to slink down some. Just to test this, I brought up one hand and rubbed under my nose. True to form, he followed my motion, complete with the little motion I took pulling my finger from under my nose to look at it, searching for a picked booger.

And as we should have guessed by now, vampires don’t have boogers. You need mucus membranes for that, and I simply don’t generate mucus anymore.

I was considering talking to him about it as we reached the next level down. This was kind of a resting spot, with a few displays and posters about the Monument’s construction and history. Patriotic leaning stuff, to be sure, but factual. As soon as we were halfway across the floor the lights flickered and dimmed. And then went out. Buster stopped, looking around.

“Should just be the power cut that Tristan warned us about. He said that the lights might go out.”

“Okay.” We started walking again and then I felt a sudden need to stop. Buster grabbed my hood and pulled down, seating me on the floor as something swiped through the area where my head had been. Just been. I rolled backwards and came to a three point stance. I looked forward with my hunter’s senses, scanning, even as Buster was engaged with at least one. I heard a sound behind me and knew we had trouble.

I turned and spread my senses out, my right hand already swinging in a punch. Yeah, I know. Shouldn’t punch until you actually spot your target, but this was instinct, not training. Thankfully Dorothea had a lot of training.

My fist was swung in a wide arc and connected, just not with someone’s jaw. My fist made a meaty smack into his palm, where his fingers rapidly grasped me and twisted to the outside. Couldn’t help it, I literally yelped in pain as my arm was yanked kind of hard. I stepped back, still grabbed onto, and then as I felt my attacker stepping forward to maintain control, I stepped into him, putting my shoulder into his gut, stomping on his foot and then I backed out and tried to smash him in the face.

I hit him with my left and felt his jaw not move at all. Like punching rock! I shook my hand out, crying out in pain and saw him lean down. Fuck, I wasn’t even to this thing’s hips. Behind me, I heard Buster barking in pain, but I also heard him biting, his massive jaw chomping down on something. A guttural snarl behind me sounded and echoed in the corridor. Buster was succeeding going ultra low tech, so I should try that too.

My eyes caught sight of what I was fighting. And I kind of felt this real need to run. It was tall. I say it because I couldn’t tell if it was a he or she. I could barely tell what it was. And that was the stuff of nightmares.

The closest thing I can compare it to is a giant mantis. Elongated more than tall, but still it was standing head and shoulders above me. The thing had layers of spines like long razor blades lining its arms, back, crowning it’s head. It looked to be an odd green color, like the color of copper that has fallen to patina. Its sides were covered in sliding plates. The whole thing had a very Michael Bay feel about it. And it had my fist.

I reconsidered going for a bite. I needed to break this thing as soon as possible but it was metallic or stone. So I grabbed it’s wrist holding my fist and place and twisted under it… as fast as I could. My blood speed exploded around me. The tiny room shook in my vision as I ran around in an even tinier circle. My grip slipped and my captured wrist screamed in pain, but the move worked. I was able to spin so many times under that mantis thing’s arm that it snapped off. I lost my footing and went sailing into a historic display.

I got up and had to dodge out of the way as Buster came sailing at the same display in big bad werewolf form. He banked off the wall and shook his way back to his feet. I looked over at him and looked to what he was fighting. It was smaller, and looked more like a four armed man dressed like a pro wrestler, of all things. I looked back and forth between the wrestler and Buster. The wrestler was more my size than Buster’s war form.

“Trade dance partners?” I asked. He looked down at me and snorted, angrily. I tossed him the creature’s arm. He snagged it out of the air and grinned, turning his attention towards the monster. He leapt at the thing, brandishing the severed limb overhead as he let out his war cry. I turned my attention to the wrestler thing, that was running my way.

As it got closer, I saw it was thicker and more muscular than me. I barely got to my feet when it tried to slam me into the wall, two of its arms doubled over to hit me with its, uhm, I guess shoulders. I side slipped at speed and tried to land a kick to it’s midsection. And believe it or not, the kick landed.

And it grabbed my leg. My eyes flew open and I had no time to say anything before I was flung across the room. My back slammed into one of the posts forming the elevator shaft. I crumpled and felt my hips stretch with the hit. Fuck that hurt. But I had no time to heal, as the wrestler came running at me. He swept his arms at me, yelling as he did. I ducked under the doubled punch and took another step towards the steps. As he swung through the punch, he turned and tried to grapple me. I felt his hands reaching my back.

So I turned and snapped my teeth onto his arm. I felt my fangs sink into his skin and he howled in rage. On instinct, I began to drain him, reaching out with my hands to push his head out of the way and my other arm came up to defend my head. Oddly the wrestler dropped to his side, two of his arms trapped under him. I sucked hard on his arm and dark energy flooded my mouth. He had a dark, spicy, almost peppery flavor that nearly caused me to release him. Despite the fire in my throat, I kept on sucking. He began to get desperate and managed to hurl me off of him.

We rolled apart and his wound bleed freely. I came to my feet, crouched, feeling my hunter nature singing in my ears. I wiped a chunk of his flesh off of my mouth. I caught a reflection of myself in some shiny object nearby, and was shocked by my image. My eyes glowed, my cheeks looked sunken and my fangs were bared, dripping with whatever passed for this things blood.

I surged, and the wrestler surged to match me, apparently able to match my blood powered speed. As we closed, his arms speared out and suddenly I faced four appendages. My arms were spread wide like I was going to grapple with him, his spread wider, seeking to wrap me up and do, idunno, something wrestler-y with me. Some high energy grip and throw attack I guess.

But I had other ideas. As his arms moved to grip me, I dropped and spun under his arms, my leg shooting out to sweep his legs. They were thick as small tree trunks, but anyone hit on the side of the knees knows that hurts a lot, and is a weak point. He crumpled to the side, his face going into a grimace worthy of a WWE star. I pounced at once, going for his back with the point of my elbow, which I learned in middle school, that really hurts too.

The point of my elbow missed, as he rolled over. But that put me directly on top of him, with my face near his neck. Don’t need to tell me twice. I surged to his throat and latched on, my fangs sinking in deep. I sucked a bit and the effect on his entire body was almost immediate, his arms, all four of them, going slack as he shook with pleasure. He tried to push me off, but I renewed my sucking, changing angle up over his massive chest and sucked harder.

The sense of him washed up over me, into me, through me. Some creature called the Wyrm somehow empowered him, and that power filled me as I inhaled him. He had been born in some strange backwater town, literally from an inbred family, deep in Appalachia, and plucked from there at a young age. Trained as a fighter, all of his darkest impulses offered up and supported. Every dark lust was fed, every depravity foisted on him and then drawn from him. He grew rapidly, but his intellect was neglected.

You ain’t need schooling, boy, you’se just a warrior for de Wyrm.

I felt weird. The blood was weird in my body, but at the same time that it drew me in. The dark power in the blood started to infuse into me. It terrified me and thrilled me and I wanted it but at the same time everything in me rejected it. I ripped my mouth off of his neck and had to crawl several steps away. The blood moved in me, surged against my stomach and I just… just… vomited. Like for a solid minute, I puked out that evil brownish blood, feeling a need to scrape out my insides from the corruption trying to wiggle and wriggle and worm its way into me.

Buster was by my side, pounding on my back to help me throw up. I knelt in a pool of the vile blood. I looked up at Buster and he looked at me with undisguised horror, even on his werewolf face. What the fuck was happening to me? I concentrated for a second and took an unnecessary breath.

“I’m okay,” I breathed out, more for the benefit of hearing it myself than to tell him. He helped me to stand, the blood still clinging to his fur, his own. His injuries were already healing. I felt kind of woozy.

His opponent lay on the ground in one corner of the room, his head in the other side, several meters of neck guts strung out between them.

“The wrestler?”

“He empty. Spence took most. Bad blood?”

“Ogh, very bad blood,” I said, and burped. “We need to get out of here, now.” I started to move and nearly fell over. “Fuck… got to wash it all out. It burns.”

“Burns?”

“The wrestler’s blood.”

“Spence… need blood?” he said, bunching up his nose.

“Get us out of here, buddy. Ohhh, my gut hurts…” And the wave of pain washed over me. The elevator dinged and the door opened. Buster loaded me up on his shoulder in boy form and he lugged me over the wrestler. The blood had stopped pouring out of the neck wound and he was pretty much done. Still, my whole body lurched with the want to get some of that spicy yet nasty blood back in my mouth, and the feeling of wanting to regurgitate again at the smell of his vile body fluids. The images of what his life was like echoed like a bad memory on repeat in my brain. This guy was one sick fuck!

Buster kept me on his shoulders, and he pressed the down button. I closed my eyes as the lift started down. The further I got away from that blood, the better I started to feel. Or it could just be that I was recovering after ingesting that stuff. I got Buster to set me on my feet and while I was unsteady in the altering gravity of the elevator car, I got slowly better.

At the bottom of the monument, I was steady enough to be on my feet fully. We got outside the building just as lights began coming on. We started to walk off when a cab turned on its lights. Buster looked to me and I just nodded. He ran over, leaving me to look back up to the ivory spire. I felt that someone was watching me, perhaps all the way atop the structure. There was a familiar sense of amusement. I stared back in annoyance.

“Spencer! Car has blood for you!”

“What?”

“Come, come!” I turned and looked up at the top of the monument and then back to the cab. I ran down and looked in the cab, a yellow SUV with DC Cab in bright plastic on top.

“Either of you boys seen a vampire around here,” Tristan said from the driver’s seat.

“How did you know?” I asked, not talking about being a vampire, but about him knowing what I’d need.

“I was preparing for the ritual, knew you were in the area and…”

“Yeah, yeah, okay shut up and drive,” I said, getting in the SUV. As I got in, the lights of the cab flashed a bit brighter than I liked.

“Jesus, Spencer. You look like you died decades ago.”

“Ha ha. Just drive asshole,” I said. Buster sat sideways and offered me a unit of O positive.

“Spence good?”

“I will be. That was some bad blood.” I bit into the blood pouch and drained it off quickly. I curled up for a second and faded off to sleep for a moment. My body just felt so… so… wasted.

I passed out, my vision spreading, gut clenching. Yeah, it was bad.

October 20, 2017 3:00 AM
Near Exit 7 on the New Jersey Turnpike
North Bound Lanes
Just outside Bordentown, New Jersey

After our debacle in DC, we’d chosen to travel by bus. Took a while to explain to Buster that Greyhound was a bus line and not an actual dog. He even looked skeptically at me upon seeing that stretched canine form pained on the side of the bus. He even pointed out the iconic silver symbol before we go on, looking at me with a stomp and touching the side of the bus.

Yeah, that was fun for a few hundred miles.

We were making ourselves an obvious target. After events at the Monument, I felt it was better to make things very public for a while. Most vampires adhere to a policy called “the Masquerade.” All things being equal, vampires are mostly indistinguishable from normal humans. So much so that they frequently take part in human society. I could prove it to you, but it’s much easier to just accept this fact. Unless you catch someone not breathing or not eating, in most other ways, it is really hard to notice who is a vampire and whom is not.

The Masquerade is based on the idea that all vampires thrive by keeping the secret that vampires are real. Which means that if some kind of proof of someone being a vampire exists, then that person has to disappear. Either willingly or forcibly so. That means that any incindent that might threaten that vampiric existence must be immediately discredited, covered up or changed to throw the humans off the scent. Human’s have one key, powerful advantage over vampires: they can operate in the day time. A smart vampire will find ways to confuse or control human authorities. A really smart one would not do stuff out in the open.

And despite how much humans these days revere and are fascinated by the vampire mystique, if the truth were known, we’d all be scrambling for cover. Like the cock roaches we are.

So, long story short, after things in DC we spent the day in a conveniently dark and temperature controlled storage unit, outside of Baltimore. I went through a couple of days of blood detox, crammed into 24 hours. Literally had all my blood drained away and replaced, twice. That’s a lot of blood for one little vein sucker like me. While I was going through the physical detox of changing out my blood, Tris also healed my damage, the hard way. When we were done, we burned the bad blood and the machines I used for the transfusion.

My drinking problem aside, we made some very obvious moves, to keep Buster in the public eye. He was pissed at having to go away from me. I assured him that I wasn’t going anywhere. So he was seen at a Baltimore area CVS, a local food market, and time at a convenience store not far from where we were laid out. He couldn’t have been more obvious about being in the area if he had been running around photo bombing local TV news crews.

Was it working? Hard to tell, unless another Black Hand squad showed up on our very recently put out welcome mat. But they seemed to be at least tracking our location a few days behind. Which was the plan, basically. Keep them on the hook and not get caught ourselves.

Tristan was at least supporting us on this. He was the Q to our 007. He seemed to have his finger right on the pulse of what we needed, including showing up after the meeting with a snack to tide me over until we could effect more holistic therapies.

Oh, and about that little wrestler with four arms. I was to learn that he was something called a Formori. As such, he was more of a werewolf opponent. Heavily inbred servants of some supernatural force known as the Wyrm. Sounds very Lovecraftian to me. They were regular beings gifted, or some might say cursed, with supernatural powers, often viewed as aberrations in genetics. Born, raised and fed on hatred, they were effective warriors, if not disposable. And that copper clad, spiny mantis this was a spirit made flesh known as a Psychomachinea. I tried to imagine what that name might mean, but it basically was just homicide given raw form, wrapped in a big bag of angry.

Never hoped to see either of them again. That Formori’s blood was about ten percent hydro sulfuic acid, and I’m not even kidding or being ironic in saying that. It literally was toxic, acidic. Lethal blood. How he was alive at all at that point, much left moving around was beyond me.

Anyways, the bus. We purchased tickets online with burner phones and got on the bus near Trenton, NJ. Took the bus north to near NYC and then back south before the sun came up. Found another place to bed down for the day. Buster paid cash at a “pay by the hour” kind of no-tell motel. He tried out the “bed massager” thing and when it started shaking, he nearly jumped three feet up and came down growling at it. He didn’t trust it from then on, giving the bed a wide berth.

We were just laying back in the buses reclining seat, Buster watching an old episode of “Animaniacs” on another burner phone. I was on the aisle seat. No real reason for it, I just prefered not to look at the cars and homes and lights that went by out the window.

“So, are you traveling home?” an old lady asked across the aisle from me. She seemed to be in good health. She had a minor circulatory issue and I could smell her A positive blood from where I sat, despite how much perfume she wore. I smiled at here and cocked my head, as if I hadn’t heard her completely. “I said, are you traveling home?”

“Oh, yes ma’am. Me and my brother. I don’t think he’s feeling well.” I leaned across the aisle to whisper “bad steak,” and patted my stomach. The older lady nodded in a knowing way, her hand going up to her mouth briefly.

“Oh, that happens to me sometimes. My weakness is for Mexican food. I just love those chimichangas, but they are way to spicy for me these days.”

“I’m sorry if his rumbling stomach is bothering you.”

“Oh don’t fret over me. Would take far more to upset me than a sour stomach on the bus. I do so love to travel by bus or train. In a plane, you never get to see anything. And it all whooshes by way to quickly anyway.”

“This was what we could afford.” Small talk is easy enough, and it keeps my mind off of wanting to grab some random stranger and lunch boxing them. Besides, she was pleasant enough company. The miles get boring and you look for something to do just to take away the plodding of he bus.

We shared a nice conversation, something I hadn’t had in quite a while. It was a quiet talk, across the aisles, interspersed with giggles and hand gestures. She reminded me of a great aunt from my former life, full of mirth and wisdom. I could have listened to her stories all day. Simply a delight.

There were only 6 other heartbeats on the bus aside from Buster and me, so the passenger space was quiet in that soft blanket sort of way. I was relaxed, even though I kept checking every couple of minutes. I felt fairly safe though. I mean, only a deranged idiot would attack a bus moving at highway speeds, right.

Cue the idiot!

I don’t know who he was, what he was thinking or what drugs he was on, but someone jumped onto the bus from an overpass, while bearing some kind of flaming object, and he landed right in front of the driver. There was a large thump on the front of the bus and the whole vehicle wiggled and swerved. I saw the guy, stuck on the front windshield like a bug, and realized we were under attack.

“Buster!” I shouted, as three more bangs sounded on the roof of the bus. Apparently, we were passing through a neighborhood with lots of overpasses. This was bad, and not just for me and my werewolf extra baggage. As I stood to go confront the menace at the front of the bus, I noticed that at the places where the roof landings sounded, spikes were sticking down through the metal of the roof. These weren’t just normal folk that had taken an interest in the bus. This was a targeted attack.

“Oh no,” the old lady said, with the weariness of a thousand battles under her belt. “Not these ruffians again.”

“You know these jerks?”

“Young one, you don’t get to be my age without knowing what’s what. If these fools aren’t here for me, then they are most certainly here for you and your Garou companion. What say we table this conversation until after we scrape these ticks off our backs, hum?”

“Uh, okay. I’m open to suggestions.”

And then the glass window at the front of the bus went spiderwebby. The driver, already trying to pull over, clearly not sure what was going on, moved his head back and forth, trying to find a clear view. He slammed on the breaks, causing the bus to shudder and shake. Beside me, Buster looked up, clearly annoyed that he couldn’t look out the window and now the driver was acting strange. Then he saw why and ripped the ear buds out of his head and looked at me frantically.

“Buster, we got company!” I shouted. He shifted right to werewolf form, stretching out his loose fitting clothing. On the other side, the lady got out a long, slender pointed stick, well polished. Not exactly straight, but with the kind of light carving and attention to detail that told me she valued it above all things.

“I’ll try to slow he bus,” she said, beginning to wave the stick about in a complicated pattern. Tiny sparkles of pale yellow light followed the tip of what I assumed must be a magic wand. “Deal with the firebug!”

Okay, plan set. I moved into the aisle and broke out my pistol from my hoody. As I cocked it, Buster literally climbed up on the seats and moved across them like a cat on a wooden fence. I was about to shout a warning when three crashes erupted into the cab of the bus.

Three men in store bought tactical gear entered the cab almost at the same time, crashing through the windows, two on the left, one on the right side, showering sprays of glass inside. They landed in places that had emergency exits, making their landings easier. You know, no seats in the way. Which put one of them near the front and two back near me and the lady. Which also separated us from Buster, who had crossed the midway point on the bus. Fortunately, his position placed him in the path of the glass flying about, so that it didn’t rain down on the mom and her three small children towards the front of he cab.

That got me mad. I’m a killer and a blood drinker. When I have to, I’m a fighter. But when I see innocents attacked, children and mothers put in harms way, that makes my cold blood boil.

Okay so I had two coming in and they quickly realized I was the threat. They turned their guns my way. Nope, not having it today.

I sprang, devoting three shots from my clip towards the right side gunman. I wasn’t about to let any stray bullets go flying towards the family. I saw two of the bullets spark off the metal of the bus, but the one that connected seemed to not affect him all that much. Again, body armor. Cheap body armor, but nonetheless, strong enough to withstand my Glock’s punch.

I seriously needed to invest in some kind of supernatural firepower.

I took advantage of my height disadvantage and charged down the aisle, ducking below the headrest of the seating. They opened fire with Uzi’s. Like, really? Who the fuck uses Uzi’s anymore? Was this some Arnold Schwarzenegger flick instead of an armed robbery/assault? Padding flew as they sprayed, even more sparks flew from the walls, but none hit me. I poked my hand up and fired once into the ceiling as a distraction and then pounced.

I jumped mouth first and bit the guy nearer the children, latched on to his arm holding the Uzi (still can’t believe it, a fuckin’ Uzi), and just chomped down hard with my fangs, right through the thick part of the forearm with all the muscles. I let my weight surge down and he sort of tumbled with me between the seats. A spray of bullets overhead showed his partner was still spooked.

To his credit, the gunman tried to fight me off. And then I sucked in some of his blood and he was flooded with pleasure and pain. My Glock swept up under his arm, at a weak point in the armor and I let him have a two-shot blast, right into the upper rib cage. I both heard and felt his heart stop beating. Releasing him from my mouth, I quickly swallowed his blood and turned my attention to his trigger happy companion.

I tucked away the Glock for a moment and hefted his Uzi. Thankfully, Dorothea had been trained in the Schwarzenegger era and had a sense of these weapons. Still have more than half a clip of ammo in it. Disposable weapon, check! As another short burst rang out into the defenseless seating, I was presented with a problem. Namely that I couldn’t roll under the seats. It’s not just the nature of the seating supports, but I had this dead and defecating body in the space with me and it was pretty cramped. Time to think creatively.

While all this is going on, I still hear the kids crying out in panic and fear. I still can make out the sounds of the bus driver trying to regain control of his wagon. I still hear more spiky bit landing on the roof. The windshield takes another massive hit and then there is a surge of cold wind flooding the compartment. Things are getting worse… I must do better.

Well a shitting dead body is only good for two things. One is compost, which doesn’t suit the situation at all. The other is as a meat shield. So I get under the guy and boost him upright with my legs. True to form, his buddy riddles him with bullets, nearly cutting him in half as I launch him across the aisle. I burst into speed mode and dart out into the aisle, and into the adjacent seat to the gunman. I unload the Uzi into him at close range, hitting with about half my shots cuz the damn thing jumps around a lot and I barely weigh 120 pounds.

Yeah, okay, shut up!

So two dead. Not bad. As I turn to help Buster, two more come in the same way the two I just dealt with did. Fuck, at least they were consistent. The one guy on my side of the bus actually got a knee into me and knocked me across the aisle and on my side. Which left me completely opened to his assault. But some smart chuckle monkey chose this moment to drop a smoke grenade. The thing bounced around and spun, shooting out a thick, shroud-like mist around at the seat support level. And it came right by me. Like passed between the rows right before my startled eyes.

I’m a vampire. I’ve said it many time before. I don’t need to breath. But in that moment, I was inspired. I grabbed that canister of gas as it sailed by and grinned, oh so evilly grinned, at what I had in mind.

Gunfire opened up over my head and I rushed under it. More innocent chairs were blasted away, sending sparks and padding flying. As I slipped past one of the gunmen reported on the condition of his compatriots. I’ll give them this, they were professional, using numbers instead of names. Calling out how many targets. Just plainly not prepared for this level of speed.

The bus lurched again and the driver had to slam breaks. The whole vehicle shimmied and I held on to the seating for balance as we took a HARD turn to the right. I felt for a moment like we might flip. And in imagining that scenario, I also realized that meant we were crossing more than one lane of one of the nations fastest multi-lane highways. We were now a wide target, possibly for semi-truck drivers who had no idea what might lay ahead. We slid to a stop and the whole bus lurched

This disaster just keeps getting better, don’t it? I’d love to shake the hand of whom ever green lit this little action.

I heard a squinching sound from the front and heard Buster roar. Oh yea, he was angry at someone. I turned to the gunman looking my way and leapt. The one on the further side from me was cocking his Uzi (still can’t believe I’m saying that) and I moved quickly. I ran low across at him, right up by his body and stood up, inside the scope of his arms. His eyes bugged out inside his gas mask. It was one of those with two filters on either side of mouth/nose parts.

I grabbed one of the filters and wrenched it off, put my lips onto the open hole and blew in… all the gas I’d sucked in from the smoke grenade. His whole body reacted, jerking away from me and spilling out of the open wound in the side of the bus. I was just turning to go after the second one when a burst of bullets flew towards my head. I dove for cover, feeling three shots stitch into my back. They were more painful than actually harmful to me. Scratches, really. But the impact sent me flying. Again, I don’t weigh a whole lot and those bullets pack a punch.

Okay, maybe Uzi’s are bad ass after all. They sure fuckin’ hurt!

He unhooked his tether to the roof, which allowed him to swing into the bus as he had. He took two steps and I was still trying to find my way up from the floor. The mostly destroyed wall kind of helped, but I was going in slow motion, still trying to shake the injuries. My hand slipped on the blood staining my hand, landing me in one of the seats. The guy stalked forwards keeping me under his weapon.

“Hey, dip shit!” came a voice from my right. The gunman’s head swiveled. I did, too, kinda interested in who spoke. It was the older lady, who stood in a defiant stance, wand held out like a musketeer holding a rapier. “You looked!” she spoke, and her wand shook the air, which pulsed out and shot a blast of some kind. It was like the air just “lensed” outward to strike the gunman. But instead of knocking him down, it seemed to pull things inwards on him. His gun seemed to get magnetic and drew in every bit of metal on him. Including several pins of the hand grenades on his chest. I leapt up and with vampiric strength, I judo rolled him out the wide hole in the side of the bus. He made a satisfying crunch on the pavement below.

And as the older gal came walking up beside me, she said “Humph, I would have thought he’d have…”

And then all his grenades went off at once. She flicked her wand and blocked much of the blast from coming our way. Yeah, I flinched, but it was magnificent.

“Good workin’ with ya, kid,” she said. “Uhm, I think your buddy could use a hand.”

“Much obliged, ma’am,” I said, affecting a western accent and charged forward. I thought perhaps that Buster would be up to his claws in blood and gore. Instead, he was… surrounded by kids laying on his big ass prehistoric wolf shape, getting hugs. I had started running towards him with my pistol out. He looked at me, and with that big ass mouth he has in the form… he smiled.

The bus driver was holding on his neck, where some of the glass had cut his neck. Nothing serious, but I could smell his blood from where I was. Type O, loaded with caffeine.

“Everyone okay?”

“What the hell were those guys?” the driver asked.

“I got no clue, but we have to get off this bus now.”

“Why?” one of the kids asked. Big eyes. Type B blood. So very pure.

“Because, sweetie, the bus is turned the wrong way and we might get hit any minute. So grab your stuff and let’s play fire drill and wait for the police, okay?”

“Damn brakes failed. We should be dead,” the driver said. “There goes my perfect record. Damn, my wife’s gonna kill me.”

“Buster,” I said. He looked at me with happy puppy dog eyes, which was really out of place on that gigantic head. “Maybe not so much?” He nodded and shifted to normal looking wolf form. I don’t think the kids noticed. We marched everyone off the bus and found a place beside the highway to rest, despite the cold. I looked back at the path of destruction behind us. The bus was pretty much wrecked.

“Thank you so much,” the young mother said as she stepped off the bus. “If not for you and your dog…”

“It’s okay,” I said.

As the older lady helped the driver and the kids settled in around their mother, I looked back at the bus, some twenty feet from us. Cars were slowly moving around it, since it blocked two lanes. The effect was kind of calming in the moments after that running battle. Smoke still spewed from the sides of the wrecked vehicle. The remains of the one gunman who had succumbed to his own grenades were still burning in the muck of the road side.

The older lady looked at me and I felt my eyes drawn to her. Hard to explain. She waved me over to her and patted the driver on the hand. He sat their kind of bewildered, holding a piece of cloth to his neck like a bandage. She took to steps towards Buster and me.

“Look, I think it’s probably for the best if you two made yourself scarce. If another attack comes, you don’t want these civilians to get in the way.”

“Will you be okay?” I asked. Stupidly.

“Oh, young man, I’ve handled worse than this with less time to prepare. I got the bus stopped despite them cutting the brake lines,” she grinned with her wand off her hip. “You guys get going, I’ll handle this mess. And tell Tristan that he owes me one.”

I tried to keep the shock off my face. “How do you know Tristan?”

“That, my friend is a story for another day. Maybe I’ll tell you, Spencer, once this whole thing is over.” I was aghast. I don’t think I told her my name. “My name is Rachel. He’ll know who I am. Now, both of you, go my loves.” And she bent over and hugged Buster and then hugged me. “Go, I can hear police getting closer.” We reluctantly turned and started running. And as if on cue both of us burst into speed and were almost instantly about six miles away.

We slowed down, found a train that was running north and we hopped onto the middle car. It took a bit of doing, but we managed to get into the train. One of the Amtrack ones that go very, very fast. We slumped into a bench seat and rested.

The fact that Rachel was a mage and knew of our mission and knew Tristan… it was awkward to say the least. And I still had three 9 mil slugs in my shoulder. I flexed a bit of blood and pushed them out, healing after the fact. Buster looked very tired. Too much werewolf speed mode, I guess.

“Spencer,” he spoke shifting from wolf to boy form. No matter how many time’s I’ve seen him switch it still makes me feel like every bone in his body must be screaming in agony from it. Some transitions were better but, yeah, really freaky.

“Yeah, bud?”

“Buster happy.”

“I’m glad,” I said. It hurts nothing to lie as long as it makes people feel better. Even though it wasn’t a lie. I really was glad he was happy. Didn’t much care what it was he was happy about.

“Spence?”

“Spit it out,” I said, getting a bit annoyed at him.

“Uhm… nothing. You rest now. You need blood-meal?”

“I’m good for now. Let’s just find a place to sleep the day off once we get where we’re going.”

“Okay.” The silence dragged on and inevitably… “Spencer?”

“Yes, Buster,” I said, letting the tiredness creep into my voice.

“You need warming?” That was his phrase for when he’d crawl up beside me to sleep. Apparently it was how he described sleeping in a pile with his litter mates as a pup.

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Okay.”

I should have seen it coming, but my mind was awash with all that had happened. I reflected on the plan, on my Fathers and on my own selfish insecurities.

We hopped off the train as it neared Brooklyn and made our way above ground. It had rained recently, and in the early morning mists, things smelled cleaner, fresher. Not to say that the town didn’t have a heavy scent of grease on the air from all the factories and cars and people. But is was a sense of things being clearer after that fight. And we were miles away. We could rest for a minute, take our bearings. Even practice fighting, if possible.

Time to plan.

October 24, 2017 9:12 PM
Brooklyn Heights
Brooklyn, New York

I woke up to the sounds of Buster listening to the radio. We’d taken up a place to sleep for the day in an abandoned storage facility away from the houses in Brooklyn. The truck docked building was nestled into other buildings of similar type and thus well shielded from the sun. Lots of empty space not burdened by a confluence of windows. Why spaces like these are abandoned and left to rot, I’ll never know. I guess an unimaginative real estate tycoon from New York City might see such things as a waste. Then again, a deranged one might throw gold trinkets all over it and claim it was worth far more than it really was.

I woke and he was staring at this little radio we had picked up at a street market, nights ago. Powered by C-cells, the radio was just that, radio only. But to Buster it seemed somehow magical. He would turn it on to some station and stare at it, shifting to wolf form, letting the programs just speak, and staring with this entirely contemplative look on his face. I prepared myself for the many questions that would come.

It was as though through this simple collection of circuit boards and speakers he had found a profound connect to the world that in his “doggy life” before the change hadn’t existed. Suddenly, the sounds coming through the box had meaning to him. And that blossomed in his soul. And he wasn’t a prude about it either, he embraced many forms of music on the radio, without prejudice about the source. Which I guess makes sense, since to him all of us that started out walking on two legs were the same race.

So, yeah, dayfall, when I woke up, he was nose down, listening to the music. In this case a local rock station playing a “yacht rock” selection. There was some shift in the selection, I think it was an Air Supply song that had very theatrical overtones. I just shook my head and got my clothes on.

Behind me, I heard him shift to boy form, and was unsurprised to turn and find him naked, again. In his defense, if I was covered in fur all the time, I wouldn’t want clothes on either. “Spencer,” he called out softly as the song was going through its end movements. “What is?”

“We’ve been over this,” I said, pulling my shoes on. “You can’t just ask ‘what is’ without explaining what is it you want me to explain.”

He cast his eyes back down. “Sorry.”

Prolonging the explanation would only make him more insistent. “It’s okay, Buster. So, what is it you want to know about?”

“This song. What is making love out of nothing at all?”

“Get some pants on, we’re leaving as soon as the western sky loses all color.”

He rummaged through the pile designated as his clothes and found some ratty jeans that for some reason he liked more than the nice ones we’d risked a trip to Wal-Mart for the other day. Mostly that trip was for a few essentials, but more importantly it put us on the map. Geographically. I know how many cameras operate in a given big box super center like that. It was bound to send up blood red flags to my Uncles. Normally, I would never take such a chance. But we were on the clock now. I had to be seen making mistakes so that my fiendish former family would too.

“But song?” he asked, sliding his pants up over his butt, remembering to pull his tail in.

“Making love is one of the different ways that humans describe mating. You understand mating?”

“Yes, Buster understand. No has done mating.”

“They call it making love because the human’s doing the mating often feel very strongly for each other. More than pack bond.” Keep it simple, stupid.

As he slid into a hoody, his head came out nodding. “So, they like making love?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

“What is it like to do this?”

Well, didn’t expect this question. And my own experiences in this regard were kind of skewed towards the macabre. I mean, how can I tell him that for me, there were only three types of sexual experiences since my Embrace. Personal time jerking off as a kid human, that one time as a kid human, and then all the weird shit that happened to me after getting turned into an immortal undead child pawn kept on the edge of true death, ecstasy and violent murderous frenzy.

In short, I was not the best person to ask about “making love.” But if I didn’t at least give him an answer he could think about, he’d keep asking. Better to get this part of his education over with.

“It is… complicated.”

“Oh,” he said simply, realizing that he’d have to stay in boy form to think this one out. He’d learned that complicated meant “more than one question.” and he’d have to think on his feet.

“There is mating urge, which makes your dick get hard. You understand that, right,” I said, pulling on my own hoody and zipping it up over my shirt. He nodded. He’d need a hair cut soon, I realized. “So that’s the physical part of making love.”

“More parts?” his brow furrowed.

I grinned and stood up, packing my other clothes and for lack of a better term, my body bag away for the night. “Well, there can be.”

“Buster not dumb, but not understand.”

“I know you’re not dumb,” I said, pushing the bag into my backpack. It was just a simple black cloth that I pulled over my body when I wasn’t completely sure I was protected from the sun. It had a drawstring at the top and kind of overlapped my body.

“Is making love difficult?” That was his big word shortly after we started traveling together, difficult. He tried to use it often.

“The physical part, no. And it can go very fast or very slowly. It all depends on how the people involved like it, and each other.” He twisted his head in canine confusion. And then his stomach lurched. Had to find him some grub soon. Easy enough. If there’s one thing that Brooklyn had, it was food.

“Okay, do you know when you lick your own penis?” He nodded. No shame. Damn lucky werewolves. “And do you know when you are getting that nice feeling?” Again a nod and this time an open mouthed grin. “Are there times you like to get the feeling very quickly, or times you like to get close to the feeling but make it last longer?”

“Ooooh. So making love is like the feeling? Sometimes fast, sometimes slow?”

“Yes, exactly like that.”

“Okay.” He thought about it a moment and stood up with his pack on. “So how is know which type other person make love with want?”

“I guess you have to ask the other person. Or just read their mood.”

He nodded again, looking away a bit. His lost in thoughts looks change but it’s clear he’s thinking. And it’s kind of endearing to see him in that way. There was hope that if I had to ditch him, someone else would find him cute and take him in.

I kind of soured to that thought.

He picked up his little transistor radio and turned it off, pocketing it in his hoody. “Is commooon-ication,” he said at length, as we started making our way to the exit. This building had been a suitable home for two days. It was well past time we moved on.

“I guess you have a point, there.” He grinned and smiled. He’d been keeping track of the “points” he made. What a goofball.

He reached out and hauled on the huge sliding door to the truck dock, looking back at me as if to say something, when the first shot rang out and lanced into his thigh. Fuck, they’d found us early!

I grabbed his body as he fell backwards into the empty warehouse. A trail of blood marked the doorpost and floor as I dragged him into the shadows of the place. I got him around a corner and put his back to the wall. He looked up at me and I could see the injury wasn’t bad. He had a hurt kind of look to his eyes, but I could see that was turning into anger. He shifted forms slightly, going caveman, or in this case cave boyish.

“No silver,” he said. And almost instantly, just sitting there, his wound seemed to stitch itself closed.

“Well, we can’t go out that way,” I said, looking up and around. “They’ll have the doors and any windows covered.”

“Roof?”

“Maybe. But once we’re out, we’ll be exposed. Think, Spencer!”

“Spence… what about that?”

In the back corner of the main warehouse floor, sat an old forklift. We hadn’t bothered to see if it still worked, since we had no use for it. I swapped him a look and grinned. He sort of grinned back.

In less time than it takes to write about, we managed to get the fork truck activated, some bricks laying about set up on the pedals and set it loose. It burst out the roll up door and smashed off the loading dock, somehow still standing on it’s three wheels and kept going.

Immediately, the fork truck started taking hits from at least five snipers lining up on it. Sparks flew as the bullets, rapidly fired, pierced the protective cage around the steering column. It got attention from at least four hand guns at ground level as we watched. One of the bullets creased the pressurized tank on the back of the vehicle and the night lit up in brilliant orange light. The tank shot off of the back of the forklift and banged against a wall in the concrete canyon.

But Buster and I were already moving. It would take them several seconds to figure out we weren’t out there in the chaos we’d caused. We slipped out through a break in one wall, barely big enough for two scrawny teenagers to wedge their way through and circled around.

We’d seen their ambush. Now they were trying to figure out if they killed us before the local police and fire departments arrived. We’d taken their first, best hit. Now it was our turn.

Buster switched to his werewolf shape, stretching out his brand new hoody and absolutely wrecking his jeans. I pulled out my pistol and chambered a round, ready for what we had to do. With a boost from Buster’s springy legs and a firm grip on his backpack, we went up. He made three hops, banking off of fire escapes, and got all the way to the top of the ring of buildings surrounding our most recent den for the day. Above, behind and silent, with all their attention focused below, we made our advance.

Buster opened our assault, setting me down and blurring into that impossible to follow werewolf speed. He just was next to me one moment and was suddenly eight steps away, ripping the head off of one sniper, and then just as fast, his blur dashed to the side and his jaws clamped around the neck of another. Silent but deadly, as they say.

I rushed to the edge of the building, beside the still spraying corpse of one of the snipers and picked up his weapon before it hit the ground. I’d never fired anything like this kind of long arm, but fortunately, Dorothea had. I popped it up to my shoulder and chambered a round into the bolt action breach. I looked down on the company below. There were seven of them, and another couple of snipers. I trusted Buster to handle them, though. My job was to clear these assholes.

As the ground fighters moved in to check on the forklift, shielding their eyes from the fire, I aimed carefully and shot. My first target lost his head in a spray of blood and brains. The next one didn’t even realize his partner was dead when I perforated his neck. The bolt action slide, popped cleanly, dropping another bullet into ready position as I surveyed the scene below. They still weren’t aware I was dropping them, despite the sniper rifle’s loud report. I guess the fire below was kind of noisy, and this thing did have some kind of silencer thingee on the end.

I lined up the third shot and put the man closest to the blazing forklift down with a shot that speared into his underarm. That shot kind of sparked in my optics, which told me these were professionals, wearing body armor. My concern for Buster briefly flared until I realized that the others down below now knew I was hunting them instead of the other way around.

“My, how you’ve grown, my childe!” I looked around wildly, trying to distinguish where the voice had come from. “And yet still so uneducated on the powers of our kind. A mistake, but one easily corrected.”

A bullet rang off the casement of the roof and I jumped back, still trying to figure out who was speaking. It seemed so familiar, and filled with so much casual confidence. It scared me how much of a physical reaction my body had to that voice.

Another bullet whizzed by my head and I instinctively burst into fleetness, dodging behind a raised roof access. I turned my attention back to the guys, blind firing in my direction. I waited until their shooting stopped and flushed from cover. I reloaded the bolt action, raised it up and sent one more to his ultimate demise with a bullet lodged in his throat.

The kick of the rifle knocked me on my ass, though, because I wasn’t braced for it. It sucks being so light. Had the benefit of dropping me out of sight, I guess. Recoil camo.

“Very good,” the voice rang out again, haunting me with it’s familiarity and calmness, despite the chaos surrounding me.

I looked left across the rooftops and saw Buster battling with some indeterminate horror, his huge claws going like a mini tornado, ripping flesh with ease. Something equally horrific was moving in on his blind side. I snapped the rifle to my shoulder and clack-clacked another round into the barrel. I fired the rifle and the kick was enough that my weight and the angle of the shot threw me to the ground, but I knew with Dorothea’s experience that I had drilled that shot right through the creature’s head.

And then I realized I had company. Three from below had somehow climbed to the roof and were actively hunting me. One sniffed at the corpse that Buster had decapitated, looking around. One of his buddies, clearly a vampire of some kind, cast about with his senses, looking away from the scene, as if trying to determine if I’d rabbited. The last one, got up, wiggling his arm as if it might drop off any minute. Apparently, when the pressurized gas tank went off like a crazy bottle rocket, it had found something soft to bounce off of before exploding.

The long gun would do me no good here. Besides, I wasn’t sure it had any ammo left. Had to work with what I knew, and that meant my pistol was about to get a workout. As a distraction, I tossed the rifle aside. No mean feat, that thing would have been heavy for mortal me. Not so much for vampire me though.

The distraction worked for a moment. The three vampire assassins looked off in the direction of the thrown weapon. I stood up from the ground and plastered by body to the wall of the roof access. I counted to three and turned the corner.

I guess they had heard something because they were heading my way. In that moment of discovery, I brought up my gun and fired three times, really fast. Two of the three shots landed on the lead vamp, one of them taking off his head about nose level. I was about to shift my focus when the other two returned fire. I ducked back behind the roof access. Chunks of wood and cinder block flew as they kept up the attack. I knew I didn’t have much time, or much cover for that matter.

I grabbed the roof access, which was one of those stairway covers, basically a door that opened out on the roof but left you standing up as you got to the top of the stairs. Yeah, so I grabbed on to that and pulled myself up on top, trying to stay flat to the short roof, you know, before it bent down into the building. I counted to two and moved forwards, rolling my body over the change of plane and came set near the headless body of my last victim.

My two attackers had split up around the access and had both turned and fired on the spot I had just been at. This was my chance, and I took it.

“Where the fuck did he go?” one spoke, I don’t know which. It was the last thing either would say. I burst into vampiric speed and got behind the first one, grabbing her neck from behind and pumping two shots into her abdomen. As she shook with the hits, I raised my weapon to face level and blew the other one to eternity across from me. His face melted under the shot.

The one I held tried to turn her elbow into my face only to find I’d dropped below her arm. As she twisted about, obviously wounded, I pushed my weapon up and shot her in the chin, blowing her whole head off in geyser of gristle and blood.

“Most dramatic,” the voice said again, and I whirled around with my pistol, desperately searching for a target.

“Who are you?” I called out, stepping away from the spilling blood fountaining onto the roof.

“I’m shocked you don’t know our name. We were so intimate once, Spencer.”

My blood is, for lack of a better term, cold. My body generates no heat other than friction. I have no heart pumping blood, no digestive tract to burn sugar into energy, I barely even have a measurable electromagnetic field activating any muscles to movement. Essentially, I’m cold blooded.

So when I say that this voice made my blood run cold, it is a chilling beyond mere temperature. I actually started a chattering in my teeth at the thought of who this voice might be.

“Uncle?”

“Where there were three, now there are but one of us. And yet all of us. The three are now… we! Thanks to you, we have merged form, merged our blood and flesh.” The voice seemed to echo in my head. “And for that we thank you, childe. But this disturbance must end.”

“Come on out and show yourself, I’ll end you!”

There was a fluttering, as if a curtain had peeled back in the wind, and there he stood, about sixty feet from me. He was across the chasm in the rooftops. Separate, but not so far that I couldn’t make the leap. And I considered it for a moment.

Let me explain that. When I saw him, and realized that it was suddenly all three of my Uncles, somehow become one being, I felt a stirring in my body. Every ounce of my blood, my vitae, surged with a desire to be with them again. To feel acceptance, to be dominated, to give up my blood to their desires and be drank down to nothing. To feel that ecstasy of belonging, of being their thing again. It was emotional and powerful and sexual and all of these things. All of them and more. I just wanted to surrender and give myself over to them completely.

I considered all of this. I was in the thrall of their power again and I wanted to be. I wanted to be back in that state of near death, near pleasure and near insanity.

And then something slammed me in the back of the head hard enough to nearly break me.

“Sad to say you aren’t necessary anymore,” the voice said. I remember craning my head around to see some monstrosity that looked like merged corpses somehow wriggling to unlife, parts of the ones I’d sent to oblivion gathered together and hooked up in unnatural ways. It looked at me, without a head, which was it’s own kind of horrific, and smiled, hungrilly.

“This is your last night, Spencer, my love. You were the best of them all, but your time on this mortal coil has come to an end. Go to whichever hell awaits lesser beings. Good bye.”

The curtain seemed to flutter and winked away, leaving me with the beast behind me. I tried to stand, but my leg didn’t seem to work properly. I looked down and saw it was broken, bent in an unusual way so that my femur seemed to twist to the outside of my body. How odd, I remember thinking at the time. No pain, just, odd.

The thing was gathering its arms overhead, preparing to do the classic Hulk Smash thing to my, well, my me. Like it was big enough to smash all of me. I put up my pistol, braced as best as I could do and fired away, emptying the magazine. Every shot smashed into its form, casting away chunks of flesh. But it wasn’t enough.

And then someone whipped a metallic light post into the thing. It WANGed off with a hollow metal ringing. Buster jumped in next to the thing, looking three times smaller than it did, and just rammed his body against it. Off balance, the weirdly distorting thing separated unnaturally, like a bowling ball smashing pins.

I concentrated and my leg snapped back into proper position. About then the pain returned to me and my senses were flooded with agony. Buster turned to look at me just as the first police and fire trucks started to arrive. The night was awash in red and blue flickers.

“Spence good?”

“Ungh… Spence working, but not good… not yet. Let’s get out of here!” I said. He looked a bit singed around the fur, had some blood or… well, let’s just call it blood and leave it at that. Yeah, he had some ichor on him but it didn’t seem to be coming out of him. He picked me up and ran across the rooftops. And some point he put me down and changed into his wolf shape. We rested.

“Buster do good?”

“Yeah, Buster. You did great.” His tail began thumping. Then I realized he had spoken human words with his wolf tongue. “How did you do that?”

“Do which? Spencer must remember to ask what asking,” he said twisting his head.

“Et tu, Buster?” I said, reminded of me reminding… you know, that’s getting repetitive.

We sat and recovered for a moment, until Buster’s stomach growled again. Far in the distance, the firefighters and police officers were still working the crime scene. I reloaded my pistol and stuck it behind my back, under my hoody. Buster looked angry as he resumed boy form.

“What’s got you upset? I figured after a fight like that you’d be all happy we won.”

“Buster happy for fight. Just mad.”

“Oh?”

He held up the smashed remains of his transistor radio. “Moose icks is all broken.”

“I think we might could find you another one.” I suddenly looked off into the distance, seeing that fluttery sort of curtain in the wind effect again. It was him… Father, now, since all the Uncles were one. He seemed to be observing without passion, and then quietly closed the window again. But he wasn’t looking down on me, when he had been looking. And that hurt, but also served to strengthen my resolve.

“I stood upon the mountain top, and watched the world go by.”

“What say?”

“Nothing, Buster. Just… something like a song.”

I still felt that gnawing, draining need for attachment, to be rejoined, my blood to Theirs. My flesh given over to Theirs. But now it was tempered with resentment, anger, even a bit of hate. Which makes sense in a way. The greatest hatred springs forth from the greatest love, turned on itself.

“Spencer?”

“Yeah, bud?”

“Something wrong?”

I stood up and pressed my hands over my face, wiping down. “Nope. Everything’s copacetic.”

“Oh, okay. Uhm, what is co-pah-se-tic?”

“It means everything is gonna be alright. Now let’s find you some food, garbage gut.”

“Humph! Me no garbage gut! Dat was one time, Spence!”

October 29, 2017 8:06 PM
Holiday Inn Suites Hotel
Red Hook, New Jersey

Woke up for the night in the hotel. Buster had gotten the hang of handling Dorothea’s money enough to understand debit cards, but not credit cars. So we had broken into one of the upper floors and set the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door knob. As low tech as it sounds, it still keeps the cleaning ladies out. I planned to hit up my contacts and score some more blood for the road. With everything that was about to go down, I liked to have some around, just in case. Wouldn’t do to run out of vitae just before I enacted a ritual designed to destroy every vampire I was related to, everywhere all at once.

I still had my doubts about all this. But Tristan had proved that he was a fairly competent magic guy. This plan was hurting, but it was working. I had their attention. As long as Tristan and his mysterious “people” kept up their end of the bargain, if I wanted to end Father and all their minions, this was certainly one heck of a way to do it. Besides, what else did I have to exist for? Vengeance seemed to be the only human emotion I still had going for me. My black soul certainly didn’t find much humor in life.

Tristan checked in with me as I drained off another O Neg from the cooler. The blood was flavored with a bit of rosemary and thyme, giving it almost an Italian marinara sauce flavor. And plastic, because modern life makes everything taste like plastic. I found it oddly disturbing that if we were successful that my taste buds would be shifting back to food instead of blood. Buster had stepped out. He went to find food for himself, leaving me to take supper how I must.

“So,” Tristan said, walking to the table. He took out a package out of his jacket as he walked and produced a bottle of amber liquid. I barely noticed. “Just about all the preparations are made. You feeling better after that row in Brooklyn?”

“I’ll survive.” I was still feeling that broken femur. By tomorrow night it would be a memory, nothing more. For now it was a slight annoyance. A memory of pain. I smiled, darkly. “At least we know we have their attention.”

“Yes, well, my intelligence says that those were more Black Hand vampires. Mostly Brujah clan, a few others thrown in for flavor. I’m surprised you and Buster managed that squad by yourselves.” He took a glass from the collection on the counter top and poured himself three fingers of prime scotch, neat. “Here’s to werewolves and that rapid healing ability,” he said, saluting me. I simply returned the salute with the half drained unit of blood in my hand.

“He’s gotten much better at hunting them. And not making himself a target,” I said, evaluating his prowess. “We have another issue, that maybe something that you need to consider. My Uncles are now one.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t know how, but somehow they are one being now. I could feel it. Their blood is all contained in one body now. One body, three souls. Very, very strong.”

“Hum,” he hummed. “That explains much.”

“It does?”

“Yeah I figured they were trying to purify and strengthen the blood, but for what purpose I did not know. Now, it kind of makes sense. They were going to try become more like a god.”

“You know I’m really not interested in all this mage mumbo jumbo stuff.”

“Let’s just say there are some who seek even further paths into the power of vampirism than just drinking blood. Some seek solace in rituals of sacrifice and… and I’ve already lost you.”

“I leave the world ending, sacrificing and magic stuff I don’t understand to you,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “If it makes this ritual easier, I’m all for it. But we know we have Their attention, or His, and after Washington, we wont be interfered with in Salem. The Advocate made it clear that all of their kind of vampires wont be in town that night.”

“I’ll have to do some research, but I think that little change will make it easier on us.” He looked over to me and I could feel his eyes burning with questions. Yet he asked none, which suited me fine. The technical side of this business never really clicked with me, and explaining it to Tristan and then having him lecture me about it was not exactly high on my to-do list.

Outside the highway sighed distantly, people going from place to place, not concerned about the lives of one little vampire kid and one little werewolf boy. “It’s just as well that this is all over in two nights. One way or another.”

Tristan swirled his glass, looking for wisdom in its amber depths. “You do know that Buster is in love with you, right?”

“He’s not,” I said emptily. Automatically.

“Oh contraire, mes amis,” Tristan said, affecting a French accent. For all I knew he could very well be French, even though he said he was like, Roman. Always a dodge with him. No Chevy’s allowed.

“Even if he is, when this curse ends, when he has a family that can take care of him, I’m gone. And win, lose or draw, I’ll be out of his life and he can get on with being what werewolves were meant to be.”

“Wow. You really do have a cold heart not beating in that narrow chest.”

“I can’t think of a time where I can be anything but a drag on his existence. And he’s sure put a crimp in mine. The sooner I can rid myself of him, the better off he’ll be. The better off we’ll all be.”

“You don’t honestly believe that,” he said. I’m not sure if he meant it as a rebuke, a question or a challenge. Or all three.

“He’s better off without me.”

“Don’t you think he’d like to have some say in that. Clearly, the two of you are good for each other.’

“It’s not like I don’t appreciate what he’s done for me. Many times on this sad sick little trip he’s saved my bacon. And he’s been good company on the road, which is like three times more dangerous for me than it is for him, what with my daylight allergy and all. But let’s face the facts. Living on my schedule is not good for a growing meat sack. And let’s be real here, I’m not going to get older, or healthier for him.”

“Still, you realize you’re forming an attachment to him. Maybe even something like love.”

“Huh! Love!” I snorted. “There is nothing in me that can feel the kind of emotion you are referring to. Vampires don’t have love for anything. They just have intense physical sensations and loads of regrets.”

“Bullshit, but okay.”

I turned to look at him, actually setting down my mostly drained packet of blood. “What the fuck do you know about this? You think that observing me for a few weeks with him is somehow supposed to open some world changing secret of how to not be a vampire to me? Is that what this whole Golconda mess is? I have no doubts that when we do this ritual, I might very well come out the other side dead! Either as a corpse or a pile of ashes or… or some pile of vaguely reddish goop on the floor. I don’t care! As long as I can take Them out at the same time, I’m good with it all just fuckin’ ending!”

Geeze, where did he get off lecturing me like this?

“You don’t believe that,” he said again, with that mild accusing tone. “And the sooner you get it into your head that this will make things a lot better for everyone, you can start thinking of a life with Buster instead of one apart from him. It may be a weird existence but…” And I was so angry that I stood up, causing him to pause, mid speech.

“Look, I don’t know what kind of mage crap you’re smoking, buddy. The sooner I can get rid of Buster, the better.”

And that’s when I heard the door draw back closed behind him. Buster stood there, in oddly dressed, hair cut needing boy form. I turned to glance his way, wondering how much he’d heard. I probably shouldn’t have bothered; it was clear he’d heard enough.

“Buster,” I started to say, but with ridiculous werewolf speed, he turned in place and left, nearly tearing the door off the wall, and he was gone. I turned back to Tristan with a cold stare. “You knew he would be there and goaded the conversation,” I said, my eyes narrowing. “Clever.”

Tristan put down his empty cup, sucking air in through his teeth at the liquor’s burn, and looked me over with calculating eyes, but still had an ironic cast to them.

“It is like you said. Once this business is done, you will be out of his life. If you will not show mercy or love to him, you at least should make his wound less painful, get it over with so he can move on. However, I think you are making a terrible mistake in not seeing him for what he truly is to you.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. Really and truly,” he said, running his fingers around the top of the cup.

“And just what do you think that is?”

He fixed me with a stare and shifted his entire posture in my direction.

“That boy represents everything you lost when you were brought into this world of darkness. He represents all the hopes and dreams that Young Spencer once had. A boy and his dog. Now that you are this jaded, recalcitrant, miscreant, scoundrel of a person who expects to die with every sunrise and is disappointed when he doesn’t, you see him as a burden. An obligation. An anchor dragging you down in this quest to end your own pathetic un-life. And you want to know the truly tragic thing about all that? What makes it all the worse? He sees you as his personal savior. The boy who gave his life meaning again, despite how badly you want to nobly throw your own life away in some giant screw-you to your Uncles,” he said, raising his hand in front of his chest and looking loftily past me.

I was stunned, having not seen things in this way. Especially with him dragging my nose in it, like a pet being scolded for soiling the carpet. Part of me really wanted to rail against this personal attack, but for some reason, I was beginning to admit to the truth of it.

“And another thing. He’s trying like fuck-all to save your worthless existence. You don’t give him enough credit, Spencer, but he is trying to do more for you than you ever do for yourself. All he could talk about while you were recovering after Memphis, was you. His whole being was devoted to protecting you. He wouldn’t eat, even slept right beside you those three days. Never went farther from your comatose side than the bathroom. If that is not total love and devotion, I don’t know what is.” He wiped a hand over his eyes, clearly affected by his own words.

“I don’t know why,” he continued, poking at the air, “but that boy loves you, ya dumb son of a bitch. He loves you with everything in him. He doesn’t know exactly why. Probably couldn’t put it into words if you asked him to. That boy loves you, Spencer. So either be a man and tell him you don’t love him back, or be his boy and admit that you have feelings for him, too. Because if a callous old fucker like me can see that you have strong feelings for Buster, a scrawny 14 year old vampire boy should be able to see it, too.”

I sat, unable to completely process everything. But it made sense. How often had I just buried my feelings? How much had I come to rely on his steady, gentle wisdom, his casual support? The way he seemed to pull it together and tough it out for me. I felt myself starting to cry. The sobs came out of me, unslowed. And as the droplets fell from my eyes, I noticed something… something kind of amazing.

Instead of drops of blood, which would normally leak from my tear ducts, I cried actual tears. For the first time in far too many decades, actual salt and water tears fell from my face. I marveled at the same time I felt like a total heel. What did I really feel about Buster? And how had I not noticed these many weeks how he felt?

“Okay… that’s all I’m going to say on that,” Tristan said, standing up. He too was shedding tears and quickly moved to wipe them away. “You can take what you want from what I said. Either way, you need to make up your mind soon. Ritual is two days from now. I have some things to take care of.” He started to move past me and stopped, facing the doorway. “Will you be okay, Spence?” I couldn’t speak, just nodded and let more tears fall. “I’ll call you tomorrow night from Salem,” he said, and left.

Fuck, being a vampire sucks.

October 31, 2017 11:30 PM
The Stone Circle Farm
North of Salem, Massachusetts

I was a west coast kid, growing up. At least as much growing up as I did before becoming a vampire. The sun, skateboarding, the beach, playing soccer with my buddies. I remember all of it, fondly. In the decades since I was that happy go lucky kid, I have often wondered what my life would be like. Would I find happiness? Was that even possible, with my own understanding of my sexuality. Would my parents, so tormented by my kidnapping, have accepted who I was?

It is a song that often plays in my head, especially when I’m alone, as I prefer to be. Not one that has a direct tie in to real songs on the radio. But still its just… fuck, I don’t know where I’m going with this.

We were on the cusp of the ritual and to be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Other than something brutal and bloody. We had traveled the night before into Salem and set up camp one last time. Buster wasn’t talking to me. Which I guessed I’d earned the silent treatment after Tristan had gotten me all worked up. For once he slept in the bathroom after my revelation, knowing I wouldn’t come in there.

To say that I felt like lower than dog shit would be to expect dog shit to have a sub basement full of regrets.

The travel that night had been arranged. I really didn’t know how, but we moved during the day on the 30^th by hearse in a coffin, ironically. Well, at least I was in a coffin. How Buster got to ride up into Boston and then on to Salem, I don’t know. Like I said, he wasn’t talking to me. Which was, at the time, cool with me. I had a lot of other things on my mind.

Salem was awash with the holiday crowds. As you might expect, New England and Halloween mesh really well. The leaves were just past the peak of their yearly turning, although some could still boast an amazing array of oranges and yellows in daylight. The skeletal remains of the trees at night and the few whistling leaves that managed to hang on were a fitting backdrop for what was to come.

Kids ran in the streets. The local government had declared some areas off limits to car travel, even sponsoring trolleys only on some streets to support the massive crowds of tourists and trick-or-treaters. I guess if I’d been a kid out here, it would have been a really cool place. Spooky city and all that. The high school really does look odd, which only adds to the effect.

It seems so odd to me now. When this mad dash east started, my only goal was to find some place on the coast where I could either lose my pursuers or find someone powerful enough to take me out. Now, I’ve faced off against some of the horrors this world of darkness can come up with and survived. Now I was on the verge of taking out the major supernatural threat that is my Fathers. Suddenly, I was nervous.

But it all would end tonight. One way or another. I’d either be free of Father and their ilk, or be one more dead boy, a victim decades after his heart stopped beating.

As for Buster… He’d be better served forgetting about me after this ritual. He’d be… safe. And after coming to know him all this time, these few short weeks, that was all I really cared about anymore. Nothing else mattered, even my revenge.

Okay, so the revenge bit mattered to me too, but not as much as Buster getting out of this with a new pack and a fighting chance. There, I said it. Fuck you.

We waited outside, near an old treeline, on an old stone wall like many throughout the region. The actual venue was a large barn structure set just off the road to the northwest of town. The late corn crop was still up, which was unusual for this time of year, but it gave a gentle, swaying shuffle to the sea breezes which wafted this far inland, despite the ocean being nearly a mile off.

The moon hung in the sky, nearly full, casting it’s pale light onto any surface it could reach. Shadows played heavy tricks on the eye, and not a cloud obscured the night. It was as pristine and evening as could be expected. You wouldn’t know that a day before cold rain had descended in thick obscuring sheets.

I sat on the stone wall, hands stuffed into my pockets, a small family graveyard behind me. It felt fitting somehow. Buster stood against the wall a couple of feet away from me, wearing his cave boy form. It made him look taller, thicker through the chest, more muscular and masculine. His hair hung before his eyes and his hands were likewise in the pockets of his baggy jeans. He would catch me looking at him and shrug deeper into his hoody, as if trying to avoid my gaze.

“Buster,” I began, not really sure what to say to him. “In a couple of hours, I might be dead.” Okay, probably not what he’d want to hear. He eyed me cautiously, the moonlight spilling onto his face yet still obscuring his mouth by the shadows of the hood. His eyes said it all, though. He was still feeling the hurt of what I’d said in Red Hook.

“And I know it seemed like I was really angry. I wasn’t angry with you.”

“Who then?”

“I was pissed off that Tristan kept needling me,” I said. He wasn’t buying it, though. “And I was scared about this whole thing here tonight.” Okay, honesty. He turned and looked down at the ground in front of him. I pushed off from the wall and allowed my body to flow through the arc of my legs. I got in front of him, which only caused him to look to the side.

“Okay, look. We don’t really have time for this emotional crap. The ritual will begin soon and I have to try and get this whole crazy business settled, once and for all. So I need you to know something, before this all goes south and I’m too dead to tell you.”

“Tell Buster what?”

“That I don’t want to send you off,” I said, emphatically. That earned me a side-eye. “I told you all along that being with me was dangerous for you. That following my path was probably going to get you killed. Remember? I said that you could stay with me until you met your own kind and were safe.”

“Spence is my kind,” he spoke softly, but with conviction. Still staring away, not meeting my eyes in a wolf like challenge. “Spencer Buster’s kind.”

“I know you think that,” I said, trying to take his feelings into consideration. “And I must admit you’ve been a great pal during this whole thing.” He closed his eyes at that, looking crushed. “But you have to know, you will be better off with other werewolves. Not with some degenerate, blood sucking eternal teenager that will always be bite bait for other vampires.” He turned and looked at me and then flicked his eyes away. “You have to know… I’m no good for you.”

There, I fucking said it.

He turned back to me, with his pretty blue eyes and said just this, just this way.

“Spencer my boy. No other. Even Morgan. Just Buster’s Spencer.”

And that hurt me like nothing ever else has. He spelled it out and spilled his guts all in the same simple message.

Fuck, what was I going to do with that.

Then I felt a familiar tingle in the base of my skull, where the hairs prickled and lifted and seemed to wiggle a warning.

He was here!

Shapes started melting out of the surrounding corn fields. The late corn crop giving them the perfect cover to bleed out of. As I turned, I counted them. Nearly thirty other young turned vampires, like me. Buster’s growl started low in his throat, and he quickly shifted all the way to the big werewolf form, his hoody stretching wide around his impressive shoulders. Oddly, I notice it was a red hoody he wore tonight. Several “little red riding hood” ideas competed in my head for a moment, but the terror of being half surrounded kept me focused.

I’d come too far to turn back now. We both had.

“Ah, my beloved Spencer,” Their voice rang into the open air. “I have you at last.”

“Father,” I replied. “Took you fucking long enough.”

“Oh, once we had ascended it was only a matter of time before I sought you out. Your little stunts at resistance across this continent have caused us no end of embarrassment. Why, you’d thing that our kind might have thought they could take us out. Surely you know you cannot do so yourself… despite your harvesting an elder’s soul.”

I didn’t blink, but was cursing myself.

“Oh my, you didn’t think we’d notice? Dorothea was quite the dedicated soldier, and was very careful about hiding her money. When all of a sudden, she disappears, and her accounts go blank, it caught our attention. And when we saw that you had drained her soul, oh,” and he tsk-tsk-tsked me. “Very sloppy, Spencer. Then again, we never really saw you as more than just a kill beast.”

“So what now,” I said, hoping to buy more time. His forces had moved in around me, but were held back by the fact that I had Father monologuing. Well that and the 10 foot tall vampire wrecker I had beside me. “You just gonna welcome me back into the fold, after all the guy’s I’ve killed? Or do you plan to drain me one last time, until I’m gone?”

“Such defiance can only be forgiven so much. I’m afraid you’ve past that point a long time ago.”

“In a galaxy far, far away,” Spencer muttered.

“Oh, you trained it to speak! How delightful. Then it will understand when I torture it for a whole month. That is if Our babies don’t eat him alive.”

Several of the ones nearest me began snapping their jaws, making grabby hands. I could smell they were about half loaded with blood. By which I mean I could smell how much blood they contained, as a group, and it should have been much more, per unit volume. They were seconds from being in blood frenzy, and there were a lot of them.

A whole lot.

“No, Spencer. We wont be draining you. We have left that up them. We have instructed them that you are not to survive this night, and we don’t care if you just die from your wounds, or get sucked down oblivion, like Dorothea was. Either way, you and your little pet get taken off the board of the grand game tonight.”

“I’ll fuckin’ rip your throat out,” I said, loudly but calm, taking my hands out of my pockets. My left hand held a knife, sort of backwards wielded. A suitable replacement for the Bowie I’d left in that one vampire back in Memphis. In the other, my trusty Glock, a dull sheen casting from it in the moonlight. Beside me, Buster crouched, his arms spread wide, claws gleaming, his teeth bared.

“Children, take him.” And at Father’s word they rushed us. That was our cue. Buster and I immediately turned tail and ran, hopping over the graveyard wall. We ran a few feet and I turned blasting the first three vampires to hop the wall following us. Each shot struck its mark, perforating the bodies of the vamps, who stopped and writhed in agony.

You see, while the weapon wasn’t altered, I had some special new ammo, thanks to Tristan. Nothing overly powerful, but the rounds themselves were a combination of hardened olive wood soaked in white phosphorous. Which as you all know from your high school science classes, ignites when it comes into contact with air. Plus some magnesium metal powder in the jacketed rounds meant that I was putting mini fire balls of tiny wooden spikes into their flesh.

Bang, de la bang!

Buster went left and I lost track of him. But he knew the plan. We had to get them following us and direct them to the barn. That’s where the main event would take place.

I lost track of how many I’d shot, but it came to close hand to hand scuffles a few times. One of them got lucky and tore a patch out of my thigh, just ripping his claws through my jeans just below the pocket. That one met a quick end from my Glock at close range. Another tried to go up into the trees and come down on me, only to get the business end of my Bowie knife into his neck. I don’t know how many pieces he fell in, I just know that it was a solid kill. Or at least a debilitating wound that he’d take a while to recover from.

I crossed the back of the farm and fired two more painful shots into one girl’s abdomen. She screamed and howled at me, trying to tear the flaming bullets from her body. It occurred to me that there were quite a number of teenagers among all these fiends. My Fathers tricks never seemed to change. As she moved in, still scratching at her own flesh, I put one right into her left eye socket, ending her torment for good.

Buster charged across my path, spin-ripping his way through his most recent dance partner. He still had one guy biting his leg, despite the fact that the rest of that vampire was now entirely disconnected. He was bleeding from about a dozen smaller cuts, as was I. He looked at me and I simply nodded. He blew out aggressively, his breath billowing forth in the cold New England autumn air.

We ran to the barn, Buster realizing he still had a passenger and ripping the head out of his flesh. That had to hurt. I hauled open a human sized door on the side and Buster ducked in. I fired the rest of my clip off in seemingly random directions and slammed the door shut behind me.

Inside the barn, everything was set up. The reason that it was called the Stone Circle Farm was kind of a mystery, until you got into the barn. Apparently, a circle of local field stones had been laid into the floor of the barn. The entire floor was stone, but the circle stood out. It formed the middle area, some twenty feet across, marked here and there with what the tourists were lead to believe were arcane symbology.

Which in fact, they were. All that was needed was some salt and other elements for a magic circle to be laid out. Which in fact was the case.

Buster shifted back to cave boy form, his wounds already sealing up. Damn lucky werewolves! I stood guard by the door and he went over to a truck parked nearby. It was a big one, outfitted with a cat-back exhaust system and no muffler to make the sound a lot louder.

It was all a cover for what was really happening. I reloaded the clip and willed a few of my more serious injuries to heal. Then I gorged on blood. We had set up a ten gallon water cooler, like you’d use on a camping trip, and put it at lip level for me. I walked up to it and drank directly from the tap, letting the blood flow into me. I sucked hard, needing to be at full strength for what was about to come.

True to form, Fathers’ babies came calling, and began beating on the larger door of the barn. They were going to break in soon. We’d made sure that was easy enough. It was just a matter of time. Tristan came into the area behind me, tapping his forehead with the large crystal that was his Foci for this ritual. He sort of saluted me with the crystal, grinning briefly and went to one of the points of his pentagram, drawn in salt.

I stood beside the now drained blood cooler and recovered my strength. I looked around and other magic people seemed to step from the shadows, their wands held at the ready. Their cloaks hid their identities, but I recognized Rachel by her wand. The began to chant and wave wands about, leaving tracings of multicolored light in their wakes.

I felt… funny. All of a sudden the blood in my body seemed to be rebelling. It writhed within me. I felt… my heart… beating!

The door shattered, coming down in pieces. The various vampires seeking entrance ripped the doors, or what was left of them, away. Clearing the path for Father, who seemed to glide into the barn. He seemed to be confused by what he saw in the barn, as flames suddenly sprouted from candles at the pentagram’s ten corners. Tristan spoke some word, but in my state I couldn’t make it out. It just sounded abnormally loud.

I was feeling weird and distracted and had vampires running my way with blood thirsty eyes, yellow with rage. I was out of place. I had to get to the spot at the bottom of he pentagram, but my legs refused to move. One vampire got within five feet of me and was suddenly met with a sideswiping tornado of Garou claws. Two more ran over towards me and I managed to lift my Glock and fire, missing both times. The shots hit the walls of the barn and caught flame.

Fuck, what was happening to me?!

Buster was saying something, but I wasn’t hearing it. The chanting seemed to be affecting me. He picked me up even as another vampire struck his back. He howled in pain, but it seemed distant to me. I could barely move. He however was in full werewolf speed mode and spun in place. The vampire behind him was slashed down in a diagonal sort of way, his body rippeing apart under Buster’s claws. His eyes were livid.

I felt more than knew that Buster was moving. It all felt strange to me. But even as I was lost in this weird sensation of slowed motion, I could see Father directing his minions to get me, to kill them all. It was looking like the vampires would catch up with the magic people, even though more magic people were slashing into the rushing Children with blasts of red and white light, rays of icicles and gusts of competing winds from the wide open barn entrance.

Buster placed me in the right spot in the pentagram, making sure not to break the lines. I collapsed to my knees, barely able to sit up. He knelt before me and looked in my eyes, desperate. I stared back, realizing how much he cared for me. And in my weakened state, I felt a strange ray of hope. If this was affecting me this much, how much would it affect my Father.

Oh, here’s father now. Standing behind Buster. Fingers… fingers piercing Buster’s chest from behind…

I don’t know how long I stared into Buster’s eyes as he looked at me with a look of pain crossing his face. I know he shifted straight to wolf form as Father shook his body off, shaking Buster’s blood from his hand. With his face shifted into a grimace of hate, He tried to reach me through the pentagram and had His hand burned by some unseen force. It was then that Father realized His own danger and started to run.

And then the effect took effect. All of the remaining Children began to writhe and shake, bright light shining brilliantly from within them, fire bursting from their mouths and eyes. One tried to run away, crumpling and falling as it went. Another pitched backwards, enraptured by the energy burning him from the inside out.

In my mind, I knew that these were irredeemable. That they were willing participants in Fathers’ crimes. They even loved the fiends that they killed for, willfully, merrily. I still felt a bit sorry for them. For the lives they might have lived if they too had not been changed against their wills.

And then there was Father. Their body was rigid, floating above the ground as if bound by several different lines fish hooked into his flesh. The pentagram shape was mirrored behind and through him, with multiple lines of energy streaking in from the sides of my vision. They were pulling him apart, I realized, quivering in my spot. A strange energy was surging in me, aside from my re-beating heart. A tingling that reached out from the stone circle to all the other vampires around me. I realized that there was a line of force leaving my body, piercing Father.

“Noooooooo!” he screamed and then exploded, like a star, rivaling the moon for brilliance but up close. I felt as his essence was consumed by the magic and it lifted me as well. My body felt warm and shaky and flooded with something other then the blood normally would have. I shook and trembled and felt ill.

And then… it was over.

The silence after the ritual ended was deafening. Only the sound of distant leaves and corn stalks gently blowing in the wind sounded all around me. I heard footsteps and realized I had fallen. I strained to look over where Buster was, and saw him laying in a pool of his own blood. He looked so still.

So, so still.

“Tristan! Buster’s hurt!” I remember shouting only to have strong matronly hands draw my shoulders to the side.

“Easy now, Love,” I heard Rachel say, waving her wand over my head. “Sleep now. You’ve had a hell of a transformation.”

“But… Buster…”

I don’t really remember much after that.

November 1^st Day One
Stone Circle Farm
North of Salem, Massachusetts

The first thing I remember, I was lying in my bed, the world still spinning from the events I’d just survived. Yes, I survived. Then I sat up suddenly, feeling my head ache and my body ache and…

And my heart was beating! My hand flew to my chest as if to determine if I was dreaming or not, but the rhythmic pumping in my chest continued. I looked at my hands and saw them with a rosy cast to them. I looked around and saw an open window, facing out over the ocean and… the pinking of sunlight starting to come across the sea.

I panicked, yelled and dove for the far side of the bed, clutching the duvet to me and rolling in it. Any protection was better than none. I remembered the crueler tortures my Uncles had done, letting stray rays of the setting sun pierce into my flesh, burning, searing pain, the light of the sun actually roasting my eyes away at one point. My heartbeat pounded as I tried to find a way to hide.

The door flung open and I strained to see who it was. Rachel stood there, looking down on me, wand drawn. “Well, good morning to you, too,” she said bending down beside me. “You had a hell of a night, buddy boy. You okay?”

“No I’m not bloody okay!” I said, nearly manic. “Hide me! I’ll burn!”

“Silly boy, only vampires burn in the sunlight.”

“I know! Just hide me!”

She stood and put her hand on her hip. “Now why would I want to do a silly thing like that, Spencer. You’re not a vampire anymore.”

“What?!”

She bent at the waist and pulled the duvet cover off me, with me struggling against her, and losing. I cringed, fearing the light. She simply sighed and pointed her wand at the dresser in the corner. The mirror on the back of he dresser shifted and pivoted and cast a beam of pure sunlight right onto me.

I froze, expecting pure burning agony to engulf me. The reflected beam was so intense that I had to put my hand up over my eyes to block them. Several second passed. Nothing happened. I opened my eyes. I wasn’t on fire. I stared at my hands and felt the soft sursh-sursh-sursh of blood in my ears as nothing continued to happen.

I sat up, looking down my body. I was dressed only in my boxer briefs and socks. And oddly enough, I had morning wood. Far from being embarrassed by it, I lifted the waistband and looked. Instead of the shriveled little vine of flesh that it had been for over thirty years, my penis looked alive and well and flush with blood.

I let the waistband snap back to my taught belly and heard my stomach growl with hunger. I looked up at Rachel, who observed all this with near sadistic glee. “I’m… I’m…”

“Not a vampire? Yeah, I noticed.”

“I’m alive?”

“Figured that out, huh?”

“But… but how?”

“The ritual was a success,” Tristan said from the doorway. “You ought to put some pants on. You’ll take someone’s eye out with that thing,” he smirked, looking down at my lap.

And then I remembered. The last minute of my consciousness before waking came flooding back to my memory. Father exploding in light, the other vampires around me consumed by fire and…

“Buster!”

“We did what we could for him,” Tristan said, his eyes turning downward. But Rachel turned and punched him in the arm. “What, we did do what we could for him.”

“You didn’t have to say it like that,” Rachel scolded. “Little brother, I swear, you have all the sense and tact of a dead roach. There were other ways to say it.”

“Yeah, but none would get a rise out of him like that.”

I was confused. And then I realized they weren’t sad, more playing with words. With each other.

“Where is he?”

“Oh, so you want to see him. That’s unfortunate. Hey ow! Rae, that hurts, I’m sore from last night.”

Rachel gave him a stern finger then looked back at me. “He’s down in the kitchen, Spencer. But be gentle with him, okay?” I moved to go past them, not even concerned that I was just in my underwear.

Buster was alive!

I ran down the stair and oriented myself. Hallway, living room beyond. The sound of a spoon hitting a bowl to the right. I dashed into the kitchen and saw him, in boy form, sitting with his back to me.

His back… which had a large, pale patch of skin where Father had punctured his chest from behind. Like a surgical scar. I walked up slowly behind him and touched the scar, fascinated by it. He didn’t seem to jump at the touch, raising his bowl to his lips. I looked up to see him with his head slightly turned, looking down on me, still slurping the milk from his cereal bowl.

“Uhm, hey Buster.”

He put the bowl down, and with great slowness put his arms around me. He was warm, his skin flush with strength and vitality. The sunlight poured through the window and he just held me against his body, his beating heart beating against mine. Savagely. Unashamedly. Just… Buster.

“Spencer okay now?”

“Spencer very okay now, buddy.” My arms went up under his arms, holding him with a strength I couldn’t explain.

“Buster, not buddy,” he chided.

“Spencer very okay now, Buster.”

“Good. Happy.”

I tried to release his hug, but he pulled me tighter to him.

“So… what now?”

“Buster don’t care. Just want Spence be happy.” And he released me. “Buster have new pack. Will be come get Buster tomorrow.”

“That… that’s great, pal.” I was at a loss. I was suddenly so happy to be with him that I forgot part of the agreement was for him to be with his own kind. “I’m sure you’ll be happy with them.”

“Will Spence be happy?”

Fuck, that was kind of a loaded question.

“I don’t’ know, Buster. I’m not sure what the rules are now. I’m not a vampire, at least… I don’t think I am. So what does that make me? I mean, I can see the sun again.” And I looked out the kitchen window and was just… dazzled. The Sun! The motherfuckin SUN shown right through the window and onto my face. And I wasn’t burning. I simply stared back as the disc climbed the early morning sky. I felt tears streaking down my cheeks.

A pair of arms embraced us both from behind and I looked up to Rachel.

“We have to talk.”

“Okay,” and my stomach gurgled.

“But first you need to fuel up, young mage.”

“Wait, what?”

“When the ritual was finished, we noticed that your body, while living again, had somehow converted all that energy you absorbed from the circle and converted the blood power into something else. Quintessense. And since you are basically starting over, we decided to take you into the family.”

She poured out two fresh bowls of cereal plus reloaded a grateful Buster.

“So what does that mean?”

“It means, we’ll draw up papers to make you and Buster my nephews, and have it so you are adopted.” Her grin was genuine. “Then you can learn to be a mage with me here, and Buster can learn what it means to be a werewolf with a nearby sept I’m on good terms with.” She looked back and forth between Buster and me. “And perhaps you too can explore this little love thing I see developing, yes?”

Buster and I shared a look and he smiled. And no joke, his tail had popped out and was wagging the barstool back and forth. I felt a genuine blush coming to my face and it felt friggin’ amazing.

“But, I’m going to be a mage?” I asked, around a wet spoonful.

“If you can handle it,” she challenged back. “Not all who are called to serve survive. But, I have a good feeling about you, Spencer. With a couple of decades of being a vampire, you have a bit of an edge on other trainees. You made it through hell. Now you have to start living for the daylight as well as the night.”

“And you’ll be my aunt Rachel.”

“I’ll let you in on a little family secret,” she said, spooning over her food. “I always was. We lost you for so long, Spencer. I’m so very happy to have you back.”

I felt the tears come to my eyes. Real tears.

That was the best fuckin’ corn flakes, ever.

TRICK OR TREAT – Happy Halloween!!

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