I’m one of 23 writers participating in a
Christmas blog tour put together by none other than the Icess Fernandez. She’s asked us to post a short story on our blogs for you holiday well-wishers to enjoy with your eggnog. Our stories are so diverse, that there’s something for everyone, whatever the taste. So sit back, grab that eggnog (put a lil drop of the good stuff in there), take a break from your day, and escape into “Bite Me”. You deserve it!
Without further ado, Natasha Oliver presents:
Bite Me, a Christmas short story
It’s been five years since I’ve been home and still I remember it like yesterday. That’s the funny thing about running from the past; it’s great at keeping up. To make matters worse, it’s Christmas. So you know what that means: an insane amount of good tidings for all.
Yes, vampyres celebrate Christmas, just not for the same reasons. We’ve long since given up on believing in a prophet who will return to save us. No, we’re a more cynical lot. We prefer to believe that the higher power is a couch potato and your life is the equivalent of Thursday night television.
I wouldn’t be going home at all if it wasn’t for the invitation. When you receive a letter with the Queen Matriarch’s personal seal, you come crawling. Even if that Queen Matriarch is your mother and the reason you left home in the first place.
That makes me a princess and next in line for the throne, but I won’t be taking it. I enjoy my life at the Criminal Ops Division of the Civil Relations Agency, a division of Interpol. It’s my job to locate and bring in strays who might risk the delicate balance that we’ve obtained with you humans. Okay, well technically, I’ve never actually brought “in” a stray per se, more like just ensured that the balance was kept. When we vampyres came out of the proverbial closet, all hell broke lose. A lot of lives were lost, mostly yours, but you can’t blame us for that. We tried to reveal ourselves peacefully, but you’ve got a lot of zealots playing for your team, and well, a chain’s only as strong as its weakest link—your saying, not ours! And when you came after us, we defended ourselves, blah, blah, blah. Now, small groups of vampyres no longer believe that a peaceful balance can be struck between us, and so they go about killing your kind. It’s my job to find them and “bring them in.”
A car breaks in front of me and I turn my attention back to the road just as I’m about to miss my exit. Without signaling, I switch lanes and squeeze between two cars to make the exit ramp. A driver blares his horn at me, but I know he will do little else so I ignore him. I’m still another ten hours from home, and all animals, regardless the species, require a pit stop every now and again.
Despite the hour, the rest stop is busy, holiday well-wishers on their way to visit family and friends. I take the first park I see. It’s a bit of a walk, but I don’t mind. I need to stretch my legs. I don’t worry about safety—I’ve got the queen’s blood running through my veins. Now don’t get carried away, I’m not invincible. Another Fang could kill me, but in my defense, he’d find it damn hard given my training. A Lypus could do the job, but our two species haven’t warred for thousands of centuries. (You didn’t seem to mind learning about their existence!) Our weakness, as I’m sure you’re aware, is sunlight. And the Lypus? Let’s just say they’re not winning any intellectual awards. It’s the inbreeding. Your weakness? Humanity. If there was another interspecies war, the last ones standing would probably be the Lochs (short for Warlochs). Trust me, it’s best we leave them in the closet.
“Hey,” someone shouts from behind me.
I turn around, and there is one of your kind approaching. He’s about six-foot-two, dressed in blue jeans, white t-shirt with some sickening logo covered up by a red and blue checkered jacket. His arms are solid bricks and he walks like he’s got chaffed balls or something. I smell the steroids in his veins.
“You almost ran me off the road back there,” he said, grabbing my arm.
I look down at his hand, and after a few tense seconds he lets go. I give him my unimpressed face, but unfortunately I have to look up so it loses most of its effect.
He snorts at my bravado and crosses his arms over his chest, stretching his jacket and invading my personal space.
Now, it’s not that I’m in the mood for a fight; it’s just that I have been driving for hours. Sure I could’ve flown, but cramped spaces with so many of your kind is just asking for a disaster. First lesson in interspecies relations: vampyres don’t do enclosed spaces well.
He blinks once before his legs buckle, and for a tense second I hold my breath as he crumbles to the ground. He misses my car by inches, and I breathe a sigh of relief. My knuckles sting from the contact, but I walk it off and surprisingly, I suddenly feel better.
The wind picks up, and I can smell snow in the air just before I enter the building. A family of four has witnessed the encounter and are following behind me at a safe distance.
“Merry Christmas,” I say as I hold the door for them.
I can see the trepidation on their faces, but they each walk through, one at a time.
“Thank you,” says the little boy, and I give him a smile (fangs and all).
Some days it really kicks ass being a vampyre.
***
My muscles are taut and my nerves are on edge by the time I arrive. My ten hour drive turned into thirteen due to the weather, and I spent the entire time wondering why I had been summoned home. The wind picks up the snow and blows it across my windshield as fallen branches scratch the side of my car. I drive through the gates and slam on the breaks when the main house comes into view.
The last time I saw our lawn covered in crimson candles was twenty years ago. I was attending a Condolence Ceremony for a fallen brethren. It was then that I first noticed the change in my mother. It was the way she wept. She didn’t care who saw her grief, and there was nothing my father could do to comfort her. If I had been smart, I would’ve used that experience as a warning.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but the memories surrounding my departure play loudly in my head. It was my mother’s recommendation that I join the Criminal Ops Division. My father’s brother, Bishop, was the Overseer and would train me. In other words he’d keep me out of anymore trouble.
Crimson candles meant that a brethren had fallen. We take the death of a brethren seriously, especially when one falls protecting our interests. According to the The First Archives, our kinds have always existed. We vampyres lived in caves, Lypus on the plains, your kind in the forests, and the Lochs wherever they damn-well pleased. But when you left the woodlands, you crossed the territorial divide and war broke out among us upright.
It’s written that one of your tribes went hunting in our territory. Most of them were dead within seconds, but our queen stopped us from slaughtering all of them. She saw an opportunity for peace, and you were warned to stay off our lands. But a circle of Lochs attacked that same tribe many years later and only nine families escaped. Among them was one of the men we freed. He led those families across the plains in search of other tribes, but each settlement they found had been destroyed. He knew it wouldn’t be long before they met the same fate, and so he led them to us.
It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, but the archives don’t explain why you never returned to your kind. The queen allowed you to remain with us, and in return you vowed to protect us during the day when we are at our weakest.
Losing a brethren is like losing a vampyre.
Snow crunches under a servant’s feet as he walks across the lawn and taps on my window. I jump even though I saw him approach, and my fangs grow to full length. I can see the sympathy on his face, and that makes my heart beat faster. He says something to me, but all I can hear is the blood pumping through my veins. I walk past him into the main house. I should go to my old room to shower and change before I enter the Condolence Ceremony, but my legs take me in a different direction.
Old sights and smells fill my senses as I suck in air, searching. The servants bow as I pass, and only one of them has the courage to address me.
“Princess Keira,” Jarvus says. “Shall I prepare a shower for you before you grace the Ceremony?”
I was about to reply when the scent of the one I’m looking for catches my attention. My body responds, and I stumble. It’s been years since I last tasted his blood and yet…
“Princess—”
“Keira, we’ve been waiting for you. What took you so long?” Lynette, my younger sister asks as she appears from the shadows and squeezes my hand.
She wrinkles her nose and looks me over. “You need to shower.” Lynette turns to Jarvus and begins to give him instructions for my bath.
Another breeze blows through the hall, and I don’t realize that I’m running until it’s too late. Lynette calls out, but I can barely hear her above the sounds of my pulse racing. I reach the great hall and a row of silence spreads throughout the room. All my senses search the crowd of mourners. I can hear them starting to whisper about me, but the murmurs soon die and the crowd parts to let a woman through.
Connor’s mother looks like she has witnessed death. Her eyes are red and her face unnaturally pale. A tear runs down her cheek when she sees me, and the crowd’s whispers grow. I can hear my mother asking what’s going on from somewhere in the back, but I ignore her and search for Connor one last time. That’s when I see him. He is making his way toward me.
I exhale and swallow back the tears I had been fighting. Lynette tugs at my arm, but I can’t look away from him. His scent is growing stronger, and my lips turn into a smile just as a woman steps from the crowd to stop his advance.
Lynette’s hand tightens around mine. “Keira, I’m sorry but Connor’s brother, Jayson has fallen.”
The silence in the hall returns.
“How?” I ask when my voice finally returns.
“He was murdered,” Connor answers.
Those were the first words he has spoken to me in five years. I can see the pain on his face, and it’s Lynette’s firm grip that stops me from going to him.
I suddenly remember the man at the rest stop. He hadn’t seen it coming either. Connor and I never thought about the repercussion of our relationship. We both knew that it was forbidden for vampyres and brethren to have intimate relationships, but we believed our love would make everything alright.
They came for me in the middle of the day and pumped me full of chemicals that left me incapacitated. If the drugs hadn’t killed any fetus I might have been carrying, then the regular beatings would have. They held me for a week without food, in the light.
“We’ve vowed to find those responsible,” my brother Thierry calls out interrupting my memories.
He and Jayson had been close. I can see the anger etched on his face. It’s the way he held his chin. He’s grinding his teeth—bad habit for a vampyre. I use his anger to help fuel my own and it washes over me like the shower I should have taken. My heart slows and with each heartbeat I regain control.
“I’m owed some time from Ops, count me in,” I say.
Thierry holds my gaze for a moment. We are both remembering the state I was in when he broke me out of the Enforcement Camp. It took him three days to nurse me back to coherency. He was silently asking if I was okay. I raise an eyebrow in response, and a slow grin spreads across his face. We are the closest of our siblings. From the time I was able to walk, Thierry and I were always getting in some sort of trouble.
The crowd parts again and this time it’s my mother who emerges. For a brief moment I thought she was happy to see me. But her eyes narrow and whatever I thought I glimpsed is replaced by her usual disappointment.
“Your quarters are ready,” Jarvus whispers.
I smile at my mother and leave before she can reach me. I block out her voice as I follow Jarvus and Lynette to my room.
Connor is alive. That’s all that matters. He looks different. His eyes are older, and selfishly I hope it’s because of me. After Thierry nursed me back to health he told me that Connor was given a choice of joining Criminal Ops in Southeast Asia or marrying one of the daughters from the brethren royal family.
“Do you still love him?” Lynette asks as she follows me into my old bathroom.
My voice sounds as if it belongs to someone older.
“I grew up with him. When I look back on my life, there isn’t a time that I can’t remember him being there, being a part of who I am.”
Lynette inhales sharply, and I wonder why she cares. She and I have never been close.
“Will you go to him?” she asks.
I look at her, and I realize she isn’t the same naive Lynette I remember. She’s grown. Her hair is different, her make-up more adult-like, her questions more direct. Her face is filled with concern, but her voice betrays her. I don’t trust this new sibling, but then again I’d given up on trust a long time ago.
“No.”
***
Bishop told me that you never forget your first kill. He’s right. It was a stray who was working his way through a small town in Costa Rica. The town’s few survivors were cowering in a church when we arrived. We found him just as he was about to climb the roof and enter through the attic. It was the look in his eyes right before I killed him that I’ll never forget. He didn’t beg for his life like I expected, like I had done. Instead he simply smiled at me and said, “Get it over with.” When I pulled the trigger it was as if his anger had passed on to me. I thought about letting it go, but his rage erased the numbness that I have been feeling ever since Connor and I were separated.
A black silk dress is lying on the bed when I step from the shower, but I walk past it and reach for a pair of jeans and a sweater in the back of my closet.
There’s a knock at the door. It’s Thierry.
“Ready?” he asks.
I tell myself that this isn’t about Connor; this is about justice for a fallen brother. But who am I kidding? I have something to prove. To everyone… especially to Connor.
An angry smile crosses my face as I follow Thierry. Wherever we’re going, we’re bringing trouble with us.
