“I know, I know,” I said, taking her dressing-down. “I forgot. You know I’m swamped with casework… but I need you to analyze this.”
Allorah was already shaking her head. “I’ve already swabbed all your clothes and analyzed what I got off of them,” she said.
“But this,” I said. “This is special.”
“Why?” Allorah said, skepticism creeping into her voice.
It was now or never. I had to sell it. “When that creature had me trapped on the floor, crushed under it… this came out of a gland on the side of its throat. I think it might be some kind of venom, you know, like a poison sac.” I was bluffing. I had no idea if the damned creature even had a gland or sac like that, but I was also hoping Allorah had no idea either.
She took the vial from me and examined it, enraptured, twisting it around as she held it up to the light. She brushed past me and walked back over toward the laboratory end of the room. She set the vial in a rack of others next to a microscope. Already she was pulling on gloves, prepping a slide, and readying an eyedropper to take a sample.
“Your level of focus borders on really creepy when it comes to vampires,” I said. I slowly crossed the room as she pressed the specimen between two plates of glass and slid them under the microscope.
“What else do I have?” she said, her voice sounding distant as she concentrated, but there was a much darker and more bitter undertone to her words than I was used to seeing on her.
I put one of my hands on her shoulder. “What happened to you?” I asked, not really expecting an answer given how focused she was on the slide.
Allorah pulled back from the microscope, scooped her hair out of the way, and lifted the silver necklace she always wore from around her neck. On the end of it was palm-sized circle of polished silver filled with etched concentric circles. She held it out to me. I opened my hand and let the whole necklace run down into it.
“Here,” she said. “Keep yourself busy.”
When I pressed my psychometric powers into the medallion, I saw Allorah standing at the front of a small classroom. Judging from the ancient-looking lab equipment around the room it had to be at least twenty years ago. That, and Allorah looked totally different.
Yes, she looked younger, as I had expected she would, but what surprised me most was that she actually looked happy. The Allorah in my vision was vibrant, her eyes eager and wide, her smile practically giving off a cartoonish sparkle of sunshine.
Because this was Allorah’s memory, I already knew a lot about what I was seeing. Science was the subject that she taught, but it was after school that she loved almost as much because of her secret passions. Allorah was a Forensics League nerd, coaching a handful of the after-school kids for competitive speech team. There were six high school kids in the room with her, four girls and two boys, all of them diligently going over their scripts for a big regional meet.
Allorah heard a commotion off in the building and excused herself in order to check it out. Her classroom was at the back of the third floor of the four-story town house, and she went to the top of the stair landing to listen. Down below, the lights flickered off on the other two floors. Allorah knew there were several other people still here with after-school programs as well and wondered just what the hell they were doing. She wasn’t sure what the fall production was going to be for the drama club yet, but hoped all this had something to do with that and not with the creeping sensation she felt down her back.
It was the screams that convinced her it wasn’t the drama club. No kid could fake a sound like the one that tore into her ears. Shocked and shaking, Allorah turned and ran for her classroom. Her students had heard the scream and were already standing up by their seats.
“What’s going on?” a blond boy asked.
The sound of struggle was getting closer, coming up the stairs.
“I don’t know,” she said, “and right now, I don’t care. Move!”
Allorah ran to the far end of the room and threw up the window sash. Being a relatively new teacher, she felt almost powerless, but knew she had to be strong in front of her students. She grabbed one of the nearby girls and pushed her toward the open window. “Fire escape,” she said, pushing authority into her voice. “Now!”
No one had to be asked twice. All six of her students bolted toward the window, each of them clawing to be first one out. Allorah grabbed one of the boys, the dark-haired one this time. “Campbell, let the girls out first. Then you can go, in an orderly fashion.”
The boy Campbell nodded and held back, though I could see on his face it was killing him. The boy was terrified. While she waited on her students, Allorah took stock of the science room. Not much going on for equipment this early in the semester, but…
There was something not quite human standing in the doorway to the classroom. I knew what it was. The taut, leathery skin pulled back over its face, the exposed fangs. Vampires had taken over the school, but that didn’t compute to the innocent Allorah of twenty years ago. She merely went with instinct. She threw on two of the nozzles sticking out of one of the lab tables and backed herself toward the open window. The creature blurred into motion toward her and she freaked the hell out, almost dropping the lighter she was fumbling in her hand. Her arm thrust forward, her thumb rolled over the wheel, and flame jumped to life, igniting the two jets of gas. The vampire was caught in the stream and immediately burst into flames itself, howling with an inhuman pain. Allorah gave it a weak kick with one of her boots as the last of her students went out the window and she followed, slamming the window shut behind her.
The kids were hauling ass down to the school’s courtyard below with Allorah close behind. When she reached the bottom, Allorah jumped the last ten feet from the hanging ladder of the fire escape to the ground. She looked around. The only exit from behind the school was actually going straight through it and out the front. That was chancy, but there was also…
“Campbell!” she whispered. “Help me lift the others over the back wall here.”
“Isn’t that like a consulate over there?” he said. The school was near the United Nations.
“Do you want to wait and see what’s on this side of the wall for you?” she asked. “I promise you, you’re better off dealing with consulate security. Now, get lifting.”
Campbell nodded and ran to the wall. He and Allorah started once again with the girls.
“I’m scared,” the second one said as they lifted her.
“It’s okay,” Allorah said. “We all are.”
Feeling Allorah’s waves of emotion hit me hard. This was not the steady and even-keeled Enchancellor I was getting to know. This was a scared woman in her early twenties freaking the hell out as the supernatural thrust itself into her world. People either accepted it or their minds snapped. If Allorah didn’t have the kids to think of, I think her sanity would have already made a trip to the latter state.
Now it was just her and Campbell. She lowered her hands, fingers interlocked, ready for his foot. He planted his shoe in her hand. A second later, only his shoe remained as the boy seemed to disappear from in front of her. “What…?”
Allorah looked around. Two figures now stood in the center of the courtyard, both savagely gnawing the screaming boy’s neck. Allorah gasped, and put her hand on her chest… only to discover the cool of the silver chain around her neck. She looked down at the medallion hanging on it, which bore a concentric set of circles that resembled an eye carved into a good sized-metal disc.
Allorah had gotten the charm during spring break in Greece, the woman who sold it to her claiming it was a sixth-century BC apotropaic eye. Bizarre market trinket or not, it was meant to ward off evil spirits while drinking, and if something like these creatures didn’t qualify as evil, then what the hell did?