The recorded programming aired an hour ago, so the accident had to be in the last stages of being cleaned up and traffic probably had been rerouted to move around the last remnants. Most likely the police had identified her body and were probably looking for her next of kin to notify. I had the honor of being her only kin. The only problem is I don't exist. No birth records, no social security number, no driver's license, absolutely no legal documentation were on file anywhere. I wouldn't inherit the house or anything in it. I found myself waist deep in crap. Not only had I lost my aunt, but I had lost my home, my sanctuary, and my only means of sustenance.
Lost in my own thoughts, I wandered the halls of my home. From kitchen, to living room, to my aunt’s bedroom I roamed. I found myself sitting on my aunt’s bed and staring at her four cream colored walls and familiar furniture. I knew I had to leave, but I didn't want to go. For seventeen years, this place had not only been my home, it had been my world. Sometimes I would wander around our little neighborhood in the very early hours of the morning. I had always been careful never to be seen or heard by anyone in the surrounding homes. Superior senses had made it almost easy, but other than those little forays, I had never been anywhere. Not the mall, not the movies, nowhere, and now I had to find my place somewhere in the rest of the world.
I stood and made my way to my aunt’s dresser and fingered the top to her mahogany jewelry box. Everything of fiscal and sentimental value I knew she kept locked it its many doors and cubbies. She had given me a key on my tenth birthday, “Just in case,” she had said. I didn't know what she meant until this very moment. I ran to my room and grabbed the key from my little chest in my nightstand and found myself back before the case in my aunt’s room in less than a moment. I had little time left. If the Chicago Police Department had one item that made them shine, it was their efficiency. I expected officers at the front door at any time to check for relatives. I had to be gone before they arrived.
I fumbled with the lock and lifted the top of the case. I rifled through the mish mash of jewelry and trinkets but found nothing specifically meant for me. The first drawer I opened caught my breath. The necklace my mother had always worn lay there with a tiny envelope with my name on it. I left the necklace in its place and gingerly picked out the envelope. I tore off the outer edge like I had seen my aunt do so many times and dumped the contents into my palm. A heavy key and an identification card with my picture on it perched precariously on my shaking palm. The identification card bore the seal of the State of Illinois and had my likeness on it, but bore the name of Margaret Thorn. How my aunt had gotten the identification card forged I couldn’t even begin to imagine. It just wasn't something doctors did from what I had garnered from television. I cast a last glance in my envelope and spied an address scrawled in my aunt's hardly legible writing on a post-it note. I put two and two together and figured the key must have been for her safety deposit box, and the address would lead me to her bank. I had a place to start, and a problem to solve. While I could actually go out in the sunlight, the experience would be quite painful.
I stuffed the key and I.D. card into my front pocket and removed my mother's necklace from the box. It had the honor of being the only keepsake of a mother I never knew and an aunt I would never see again. I knew I had little time left, so I ran to my room and stuffed my clothes into the one back pack I owned, and left through the front door into the night.
Chapter 2
It had been three days since I left my home. On my first day I had armored myself against the sun and gone to the bank where I retrieved the contents of my aunt’s safety deposit box. She knew she wouldn't be able to leave me her savings or her house, but she had left me ten-thousand in cash as a start for my new life. I wept when I saw the contents, and knew I would trade it in a heartbeat to have her back. I missed her dearly.
I had used my fortune to check into a nearby motel. In Chicago, even the cheapest of nightly accommodations had rooms specifically designed for use by vampires. I could have checked into a regular room and just drawn the shades, but even the tiniest rays of light would have bothered my eyes while I slept. I had another reason as well. I looked like a vampire and had many similar traits of vampires, and yet had no answers as to why. I had a brilliant notion to pretend to be a vampire, so I might as well start playing the part.
The first night I spent in my room flipping through the meager channels of my motel TV. The second night I rolled around on the bed writhing against the pain hunger had created in my abdomen. Today it gnawed at my insides a thousand times worse than yesterday. It had been almost five days since I had last fed. I had no idea what to do. When I checked into the hotel, I had used all my senses to notice those persons around me, and not one appealed to my appetite. I know I'm kind of a picky eater, but I don't think my taste buds mattered. Something special about my aunts blood made it nutritional to me. I had no idea what it could be. Maybe it could be something in her DNA perhaps? Maybe a mineral most people lack? Neither she nor I had come up with any answers. If I didn't find a suitable match soon, I would most likely shut down and go comatose. I might even die.
I knew I wasn't going to find a solution to my problem lying in my bed, so I got up and headed to the bathroom to clean up. I tossed my clothes in a laundry bag, turned on the shower, and turned around to the mirror in the bathroom. My red hair looked like a frazzled mess, and my eyes sank into their depths sporting dark rings under them. My ribs became visible beneath my skin and I didn't look healthy. I closed my eyes and made my way into the shower.
I had turned the knob for cold water, and yet it still burned my skin. It warmed me from within as I stood under the gentle spray. I grabbed the little bottle of hotel shampoo, and lathered my hair thoroughly. I rinsed and resisted repeating against the directional use labeled on the tiny bottle. After conditioning and washing with the little bar of green soap I had unwrapped in the shower, I climbed out and dried off. I threw my hair back into its usual pony tail and dressed.
I pulled a warm shirt over my bare torso (I skipped the bra, small A-cup anyway), and slid into my jeans. My tennis shoes followed and I found myself ready. I rode the elevator down and waltzed through the lobby into the cool night. This is what got scary. I don't remember anything after the sliding glass doors closed behind me. I must have wandered through the downtown area of Arlington Heights, and climbed aboard the train, because the next coherent thought I had, I found myself gone from the suburbs and in the city proper. Bars and clubs lined the street I stood in the middle of. Cars honked from both directions waking me from the trance I had found myself in. I leapt from the middle of the street onto the crowded sidewalk. I heard a couple of muffled "fucking vampires" as the crowd around me parted to give me a wide berth.
When I sat in my room, bored at home, sometimes I would walk through my neighborhood in the predawn hours. Sometimes I would run, and sometimes I would leap through the air. I had never really tested my abilities, but as I stood from the crouch I had landed in I gasped with amazement. I knew the strength I possessed, and I knew I could be fast, but this shocked the hell out of me. I looked around at the ring of faces staring at me with both fear and awe and I smiled. I turned and walked away up the avenue until I came across a street sign proclaiming my location at Milwaukee Ave. I looked around at the surrounding neon and regularly illuminated marquees and wondered where to go. At that moment, the hunger struck.
I smelled blood and the promise of quelling my hunger. It smelled just like my aunt only a thousand times more potent. Like the difference between a cube steak and filet mignon. I had once told my aunt she smelled like spice. One Thanksgiving she had made a full dinner. She made a turkey, and potatoes, and even baked a pumpkin pie. Of course, I couldn't share the bounty with her, but to me she smelled like cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and everything good all mixed together. She laughed at me and told me her perfume smelled like lilacs and that must have been what I smelled. I tested her perfume, and I even stopped to smell some lilacs once, but to me she smelled of spices. Now I smelled it again, but the vastness of it reminded me of what an apothecary would smell like. A thousand different varieties assaulted my senses. I didn't just smell them. I could see them and taste them, hear them and touch them. I felt their essence curl around my body like a lover I had never met before, and I became drunk with their intoxicating aroma.
When I had been but a year or two old, I had watched cartoons. I remember a specific one about an adorable mouse and a cat of questionable virtue, but I would always laugh when they smelled something delicious. The smell itself would curl a finger at them, beckoning them to follow. Sometimes the smell would pick them up and carry them along. I felt just like the cat standing there on the cold wet sidewalk.
The smell pulled me to a set of double doors of tinted glass. Normally at night even tinted glass has the ability to be seen through if it is illuminated from within. Not this tint. It looked as if someone had taken a giant tub of black ink and used it as paint on the inside of the windows. I looked around and saw no brilliantly illuminated sign welcoming patrons, just a simple gold embossed lettering on the door labeled, "Fangloria's". Personally
,
I didn't care if the place bore a skull and crossbones adorned sign labeling the establishment, "Condemned," I had to get in there.
I pulled on the door handle and it opened easily. The spice smell became strong enough to make my mouth start watering. I stepped inside and found myself in a brick hallway divided lengthwise by a red velvet covered rope. People, and I do mean of the human variety, were corralled within its confines waiting to gain access into Fangloria's. A mountainous man of African descent stood behind the entrance to the velvet waiting pen. His attire ran black from head to toe. Black polo shirt, black pants, black belt and shoes gave him the impression of an immovable mountain of onyx. The Fangloria's logo embroidered on his chest in scarlet being the only splash of color.
"Identification," he grumbled in a voice three octaves lower than bass.
"Um, I don't have one," I said meekly to the man-mountain.
He sniffed the air and hissed. I swear to gods, he hissed, so I hissed back. I didn't plan on doing it; it just came naturally leaving me with the strangest feeling. It lasted only for a moment and he stopped. He bowed and made a sweeping gesture to his right ushering me past the cordoned off area and down the length of the hallway. As I walked past him, I caught his scent. He reeked of cinnamon and vanilla, and he smelled good enough to eat. Oh shit.
I stared at him wide eyed as I walked past, and my entire body began vibrating with the urge to pounce and sink my fangs into him, but I figured attacking him probably wouldn't be a good idea. I may be strong but he, a six foot eight mountain of vampire would probably mop the floor with my red head. The question of why he smelled tasty made its way across my addled brain.
My aunt certainly wasn't a vampire so what could the connection be?
I walked down the hallway pondering when it made a sudden turn to the right. The velvet ropes followed and about six feet down the line of people ended at another bouncer. This one topped the last by at least three inches. Where did these people shop for employees?
There wasn't anything stopping me from entering the club, nor did the second bouncer even glance my way, and in case you wondered, he smelled of nutmeg. I walked into a smoke filled room with a bar encompassing the entire length of the back wall. Booths and couches lined the remaining walls and a dance floor occupied the remaining real estate. I would normally expect techno or trance music to be pumped into a club with a mile long waiting list, but classical music pumped in over speakers from around the room at a tolerable level. Thank gods. Nothing tweaked my sensitive eardrums more than loud music. I gasped in surprise to see people dancing intricate waltzes and other similar bygone dances and they seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely.
I, however, found myself at a loss at what to do. I couldn't wander up to the bar and have an alcoholic beverage, nor did I have a dance partner. I had to eat and soon. I couldn't even smell the cigar and cigarette smoke anymore. Spices invaded my sense of smell from every direction. I had hit the proverbial jackpot; I just couldn't claim my prize.
I looked around to see if I could find an empty couch or booth, but no such luck. Even the bar had patrons stacked three people deep, so I settled for standing by one of the columns surrounding the dance floor.
After getting a good look at the occupants of Fangloria's, I felt a little underdressed. Most wore intricate evening gowns, and even the guys dressed in a minimum of slacks and button down shirts. I had to be the only person in sight wearing anything of the denim persuasion. Even my long sleeved T-shirt marked me as being out of place. I probably looked like I had shambled my way here from a rock concert.
I heard a tentative, "Madam?" I turned around. A youngish man stood behind me with one hand clasped over his wrist. His entire body screamed nerd, but the myriad of bite marks on his neck caught my eye. I fed from my aunt on a regular basis, and always from her wrist. Every time I finished from her I could watch the wound I had made close before my eyes and leave nothing behind. I had read master vampires held similar powers and it had something to do with enzymes in the saliva which sped the healing process to an almost magical rate. People were even talking about trying to reproduce this enzyme for use in medicinal applications. So far they had little success.
I considered ignoring the little man, but my aunt had raised me never to be rude. I turned toward him and gave a tentative sniff. He smelled of spice, but unfortunately it belonged to the cheap aftershave variety. "Can I help you?" I tried for polite, but I sounded bitchy even to me.