Vampires of the Sun (13 page)

              Cheering internally, Norah grabbed up one of the hidden weapons she’d stored, glancing back through the glass in time to see one of the flood lights go out. Darkness greeted her eyes and heart. A second later the second and third flood lights stopped working as well. Before she could go outside to see what she could do in order to get them back on, all of the glass on the back of the house shattered at once. “Norah, what’s happening?” Jack’s voice came weakly from the bedroom door. He had it cracked slightly but he couldn’t exit with the lights.

              The safest place in the room seemed to be in the middle of the floodlights. Norah moved there quickly, noticing more figures climbing onto the porch and moving towards the broken glass. “Jack, stay there. Don’t let them take you. I need to know that you’re going to stay safe.” Norah warned him, afraid for both of their lives. Her ideas had been good but she hadn’t thought through them very well.

              Five figures crawled through the wooden frames of the destroyed windows to come into the living room and stand around her in a half-circle. The sounds coming from their mouths weren’t exactly hisses but sounded eerily similar. They were waiting for something, keeping her trapped in the circle of light. The wait wasn’t drawn out when Norah noticed two figures coming up the length of the porch leisurely. As they stepped into the fluorescent lights, Norah realized the vampires that had her trapped were waiting on her parents. They were waiting on Mara and Claude.

              “Norah, we’re very happy to see you again. Walking in daylight must be a magnificent thing. You’re scientific contribution will be the start of an entirely new race of vampires. One that will most likely make us older vampires worry about what power struggles may lay ahead of us. Oh well, I guess the excitement it will bring will keep us busy.” While Claude spoke, Mara jerked the cables out of the back of each floodlight left, leaving Norah defenseless.

              “I’m not going with you. This is my home. Get out!” Norah yelled, fully aware she sounded shrill and like a little girl.

              “You don’t have a choice in the matter, silly girl. We are your parents.” Mara laughed at her.

              “I’m an adult now. I don’t need you. I don’t need your money and I’m not going to sit around and be some experiment for you to mess with. Go clone someone else to play your games.” Norah held the weapon she had in her hand against her thigh tightly. When the first vampire came forward within arm’s reach, Norah stabbed him in the heart before wrenching the weapon away. He fell like a bag of bricks and dramatically burst into a pile of ashes.

              Moving tactically to create a funnel, Norah made it so that anyone coming to grab for her arms was forced to do it one at a time due to the Feng Shui of the room. Her parents sat back and watched the scene in front of them without a smile or any other expression creeping across their faces.

              One by one, Norah dispatched all of her attackers with an anger propelling her forwards to fuel her fight. They came towards her empty handed. The last vampire looked afraid of her, like he wanted to run away but Norah came after him with a fury. Eventually, the only two that were left standing were Mara and Claude.

              “Why won’t you come with us? Just do as you’re told. Is it the boy? You don’t want to come because you’ve fallen in love? I hoped that we would not have to deal with such human tendencies from you.” Mara acted exasperated as she pulled out her phone. Hoping it wasn’t a call for backup, Norah knew she couldn’t take Mara and Claude plus an additional 10 people or however many they called for backup.

              “We can bring him along if it means you’ll come quietly. When we’re sure we can replicate the process without errors, you’ll even be free to go wherever you want. Since we dispatched that other fellow, I believe you’ve even come into some good money. You can spend eternity using it however you like. We only need you to sacrifice a year of your life. A year of your eternity.”

              “A year of my life is worth more to me than giving it up to you. I gave you eighteen years already and for what? To become a vampire against my will because you decided it would be so? I won’t go easily. You could have sacrificed some of your own time and been good parents to me. I’m not going to let you have any more of my time.” Norah wanted to be vile and contemptuous and shout curse words at them but she held herself steady and calm and stared them down. She was surprised with herself for managing to dust all of her attackers so far but she pretended she wasn’t in order to appear strong.

              A blur of activity caught her eyes and faster than she could see, Claude was behind her with his arm around her throat. While it didn’t restrict her inexistent breathing, it still put pressure on her throat and hurt. “Be a dear and pass me the serum Mara?” Claude was easily overpowering Norah, restricting her motions.

              A shiny vile full of a silver liquid was pulled from Mara’s purse. It was the same liquid that the goons had used on her months ago to take her into custody the first time. Waltzing across the room, Mara moved to stand next to them and grabbed hold of Norah’s arm with a vice-like grip. She jabbed it in with a force that made Norah cry out. Sweating, Norah watched the liquid flow into her arm. It went numb automatically and slowly the rest of her body became numb too. It was the facility all over again and she had no control over her fate. Right before her vision went completely, she saw a flash of metal and light before the darkness engulfed her entirely.

              Light sped towards the back of Norah’s head. It flashed and sparkled and her body rose up with a start, sitting up in an L shape from the completely prone shape she’d been laying in for what felt like days. It had only been 10 hours.

              When her eyes were fully open, Norah looked around the dark room wondering where the light could have come from. The whole room was black and it felt like she was on a bed. Blinking and trying to focus through the grogginess, Norah felt soft blankets around her. It felt familiar and as she searched with her hands, she found another person’s body.

              The body stirred as she touched it, shooting up just like her own. “Norah?” She felt hands all over her, confirming it was indeed her.

              “Jack, what happened? Are we at home?” Norah let him engulf her in his arms in relief as Jack began to recount the events of the previous night for her.

              “The blood you gave me helped immensely. I was trying to heal but I could hear everything going on outside. I decided I was healed enough when I heard you cry out. They ambushed me on the way back to Washington. It was right outside Las Vegas. I managed to escape and get back here. I wouldn’t have come but they already knew where you were. They got the information somehow.”

              “When I went out into the living room, I saw Mara shooting you up with something. I think it was just a drug to knock you out so you wouldn’t cause any problems. I saw this strange dagger-like tool hidden in the seat of the couch so I grabbed it up and managed to put it through Mara’s heart. She turned to dust and Claude screamed with rage. I thought he was going to kill us both. Instead he just disappeared.” Jack said in disbelief. “I don’t know if he will be back or what his game plan is. I imagine even if we did that it will change now because Mara is dead.”

              “They wanted me to volunteer for experimentation because of some pipe dream where they can create an entire race of vampires like me that can walk in the daylight. It’s a perverse dream. I don’t know how they could ever think that leaving themselves vulnerable would be a good idea.” Jack kissed Norah’s neck and her cheeks. He kissed her lips and snuggled against her body, never wanting to let go of her.

              Tip-Toe-ing around the house for three days, neither Jack nor Norah wanted to sound the alarm for all-clear. There wasn’t any trace of Claude returning but the paranoia and fear that remained in his wake left them scared to stay. Norah was scared out of her seat by Jack giving out a loud scream on the third evening.

              “I don’t want to worry anymore,” Jack said, trying to excuse himself for the ruckus. “Should we move? What can we do to get out from underneath this storm cloud?”

              “I want to stay. I like it here! I don’t want to just ignore the possibility of danger but I also don’t want to run away anymore. We can just deal with it when it happens. We dealt with it this time. It can be done. We can improve upon the measures I started to emplace.” Norah begged, not wanting to pick up and move again.

Jack looked like he didn’t want to agree but Norah knew he also liked their lifestyle. Things were comfortable in Washington. The newspapers never even reported the strange deaths or large numbers of unconscious people that would alert others to their presence. With a high percentage of drug overdoses in the state, most cases went uninvestigated and Jack was particularly good about choosing victims who had no family or were bad people.

              “Let’s stay then. We’ll stay until it becomes too unsafe for us to remain. I think we should travel though. I think travelling abroad would not only be good for us but also ideal in throwing anyone off of our trail. In a few years, when we know things have calmed down for sure, I’d like to try to reinvestigate where the facility you were kept at. It couldn’t hurt and by then, Claude should resurface somewhere. We need to keep a good watch on him, keeping his location on file.” Jack was a better planner with Norah and she couldn’t disagree.

              “We should go try to find Maxine too. I need to find out what happened to her. I also want to go to New York City. James left us property there and I have a friend I made on the internet who I promised to meet with one day.”

              Sitting back down on the couch, putting her body close to Jacks, Norah had the million dollar question of the night. “Where should we go first?”