“I just need to break off a little piece...” he whimpered. “I have got to have some.” He jerked her over on her back and stepped back. Again, she appeared thirty or more years younger. Her beauty trapped him in a hypnotic state and he couldn’t move.
She smiled up at him and slowly opened her legs, inviting him in.
“Wipe that fucking smile off your face, bitch—” he pulled his pistol,
“—or I’ll fucking shoot you here and now and take it anyway before you go cold,” Roland snapped in desperation. The trance pulled at him, even as his will to flee screamed in his head.
“I thought you wanted me,” Steliana seductively moaned. “I want you. I want to do you. I want to taste you.” She smiled, then purred while asking, “Don’t you want me?”
Breaking from his struggle, he screamed and raised the pistol and mere seconds before he could pull the trigger he felt something behind him.
He spun and fired but there was nothing there. Then he bounded back, startled, as if something had brushed by him. He jerked to his right and fired another shot that disappeared into an antique highboy. He felt it again and jerked left, and fired another shot that slammed into the wall.
Behind him, Steliana continued in her purr-like fashion, “Come on, baby, take me, take me. I want to feel you, do you, taste you...” Roland spun back around and Steliana was standing on the bed, naked, but now she was golden tan, the perfect vision of wont.
He screamed out and fired the remaining bullets into the ceiling as something bit the back of his neck and shoulder.
The basement door creaked and Jack bolted up the steps. He stumbled and fell a couple of times before he reached the door but then hit the door full force. The door was open, and he banged through, slamming into the adjacent wall, and nearly stumbled back down the steps. He dropped to his knees, stunned from the impact.
He looked at his arm and screamed when he saw the big chunk missing. The pain flared and burned, jerking tears to his eyes. Blood ran the length of his arm and dripped from his fingertips. He reached back to his neck and winced from the pain, and when he looked at his hand it was drenched in blood. He mumbled, “What the fuck...”
He crawled up the wall and stood looking at the basement door, waiting for a large animal or something to come bounding through and finish him off.
Then the breath from fluttering wings swept his face and when he turned toward it, something bit a large chunk out of his cheek. He cried and, flailing his arms, he ran down the hallway for the front door.
Upstairs, he heard Roland scream out but he ran as hard as he could to the front door and within a foot or so from the door he flipped over backwards as if clotheslined and slammed down on his shoulder with a menacing crunch of broken bones.
He screamed out Roland’s name all the while Roland was screaming out his name. He then heard Steliana call out, “Come on, baby, take me, take me. I want to feel you, do you, taste you...”
He slowly rolled onto his stomach and pulled his knees beneath him, and when he looked up Nicolae was looking down at him. Like Steliana, Nicolae looked to be thirty years old.
Nicolae looked down at Jack with a menacing grin that sent new chills through Jack’s body.
“Ro killed you, man. I saw it. I saw you take two to the chest.” Nicolae reached down, grasped Jack’s arm and pulled him to his knees. “No. He shot a helpless old man—” he chuckled, “—mere bullets can’t stop us...”
“What the! Who are you?” Jack shrieked. “What are you?”
“Did I hear your friend say you were a Ranger?” Jack didn’t answer.
“I hope not, because you can’t even take on an old man.” Nicolae lifted Jack off the floor and threw him against the wall. As Jack was sliding down, Nicolae took another nasty bite out of Jack’s neck and then bolted up the steps. Midway up, Nicolae disappeared in a puff of red mist.
Lying on the floor, Jack screamed out. The pain was excruciating. He could barely move but drained every bit of energy he had and crawled toward the door, and when his hand plopped down in Nicolae’s blood, Jack screamed out and jerked his hand up as if he had put his hand in acid. He looks at his hand and there was smoke steaming from the burn. The pain and tears blurred his vision and he dropped down face down. “Roland!” Then he saw the pillowcase, its booty calling out to him, and crawled across the floor, all the while thinking of his crack pipe. I can do this, he thought, I can do this...
Roland was lying on the floor, crying. His body was covered with bites as if Steliana tried to dine on him but couldn’t finish. When Roland looked up, he saw Nicolai and Steliana looking down at him, smiling.
“Trick or treat”, Steliana quipped and Roland pushed back, pulling the trigger of his empty pistol. For a brief moment he saw something he had never seen in his life. A creature that looked half-human, half-feline. The head was bald with small pointy ears. The eyes, red and lash-less, and with no eyebrows. The mouth had long thick fangs that dipped of drool and blood beneath a small cat-like snout. He cried out to God, but God didn’t answer.
“He must not like your costume, darling,” Nicolae joked.
Still trying to scoot across the floor, Roland shouted out, “What the fuck are you, vampires?”
“Don’t be a silly boy. There is no such thing as vampires,” Steliana answered as she slowly moved toward him. Blood dripped from beneath her chin. She licked her lips as an animal would do after a feast. She purred as she took another step closer. “Mmmm. You taste absolutely delicious.”
“Damn Bram. He has caused our people trouble throughout the world with his silly stories of vampires,” Nicolae joked. He then turned into the beast for one brief moment only to watch the fear take over the helpless man. “A vampire doesn’t toy with its prey.”
“We’re Strigoi’s,” Steliana continued. “We never settle for just blood.”
“Nothing is ever wasted in this house,” Nicolae said as he crept closer and closer.
Roland pulled the trigger of his empty pistol as if willing the thing full.
Stranded in the corner, Roland wet himself, and Steliana laughed.
“Bad, boy, look at the mess you just made.”
“Fuck you,” Roland replied in deep fear and anger.
“Oh, you wanted to, yes you did. You wanted it so badly you’d forgotten why you came here.”
“Humans are like that,” Nicolae said with a growl. “Short attention spans. Short term goals.” He growled and stepped closer.
Roland clutched at his chest, murmuring, “Fuck you,” over and over as Nicolae crept even closer. The drool from Nicolae’s mouth sent a new shiver to Roland’s loins and he wet himself again.
Like their cousins, the cat, they toyed with their prey.
“Uh-oh,” Steliana looked to the door. “You should go downstairs and do that Ranger thing.” She looked back to Roland and explained, “Some folks say Strigoi’s are troubled souls of the dead rising from the grave.
However, some of us can be living people with, as you can see, certain magical properties. Some of the characteristics of the Strigoi include the ability to transform into an animal, invisibility, and the propensity to drain the vitality of victims by drinking their blood.”
“Or, as I like to say, the loss of limb,” Nicolae continued with his menacing grin. He turned to Steliana and said, “You’re looking beautiful, my dear.”
“Thank you, dear. Do you think we should explain that Bram got his idea of the vampire from your grandfather?” She turned back to Roland as she continued talking to Nicolae, “You have to try him, dear. Marinated in alcohol for years, he’s simply delicious.”