True, he was here solely for Sarah. That didn’t mean he wasn’t curious about the city.
“Sire?”
Very new then, Wayne thought, rolling his eyes. “Who made you, girl? Who turned you into a vampire? Who destroyed this city? Who is behind all this?”
“I…” She pinched her eyes shut, clenching her teeth together hard enough to make a noise. “My sister and I sneaked out to go to Chad’s party. Mom didn’t want us to go.”
Wayne frowned. Looking at her now, looking past her teeth and hungry stare, Wayne could see a young teenager in the light of his fireball. Maybe even preteen.
“We were on our way home. Something… an explosion, I think. It scared Nancy. She started running, leaving me alone. A man came up behind me. Asked if I needed help. I said no and tried to leave–his smile scared me. And then… I woke up strapped to a chair.”
Wayne nodded along, filling in the blanks with his own knowledge and imagination. “And then that guy drank your blood for three days before feeding you something?”
“N-no. I was scared and struggled. And I was strong. I felt good, like I had woken up from a refreshing nap. Except… I was hungry. So hungry. So I struggled and broke the restraints. Eric and Bart were strapped up too. I helped them and we left.”
That brought a deep frown to Wayne’s face. She could have been fed on for three days while unconscious, but she would have needed to be awake to complete the vampire transformation. There was magic in intent and feeding on the vampire’s flesh was one of those things that had to be done willingly. Not necessarily knowingly, but willingly. Handing a kid a chunk of meat and saying it was pork worked, but shoving that same chunk down their throat did not.
Unless all the books were wrong. Wayne freely admitted to himself that he was not an expert in vampires beyond what he had been taught in school.
“So,” Wayne said, “you get out and decide that attacking a car is a good way to start off your new life?”
“I’m hungry. Still hungry.” She started to reach up. Her eyes flicked to the fireball glowing in Wayne’s hand and she let her arms flop to her side. “I tried to eat food. Bread and water tasted like vomit. Raw meat worked, but it wasn’t enough. I ate so much but it never was enough.”
Great, Wayne thought, now she is crying. Not literally; as far as Wayne knew, vampires couldn’t produce tears. Her face was sure going through the motions.
“Eric was the one who said we were vampires. The speed, the strength, the senses. And the teeth.” Her hands lifted up again.
For a moment, Wayne was about to drop another portion of the fire, maybe on her this time. But her hands went to her face, rubbing away imaginary tears.
“Then we found you, and now they’re dead and you’re going to kill me too.”
Wayne stood there, fireball in hand and monster underfoot. He stood there, stuck in indecision.
He hated life stories. Everyone had one. Everyone had some sob-story about how the world was cruel and they deserved sympathy for their woes. Some might actually deserve it. The kid on the ground was probably one of those that did.
Dropping the fireball would have been so much easier had she just said that she didn’t know what happened. He would have incinerated her without a second thought and not lost any sleep over it.
“Vampires live forever, kid. Trust me when I say that I will put every moment of your eternity through hell if you make me regret this.”
He leaned down, watching the girl for any sign of attack. He undid the buttons on his suit cuff after extinguishing the fireball. Pulling his sleeve all the way up to his elbow, he exposed his bare arm to the girl.
“You will lean forward. You will bite down a shallow bite. You will stop when I say stop or…” His fireball reignited in his hand with a woosh of air. “Or this will be going through your skull. Understand?”
Held as it was in the hand he was offering her, the fireball ended up next to her face. It didn’t burn a single hair on her head. Wayne was far too good for that to happen.
Eying the fireball warily, the girl nodded.
Using the book in his hand, Wayne kept her from rising too quickly.
Not that he needed to do so. She made no sudden movements.
Wayne was surprised. He didn’t let it show, but it was true nonetheless. There were always stories about how irresistible a vampire’s first feeding was. How they often killed entirely on accident their first time because they couldn’t control themselves.
But the girl touched her long fangs to his arm gingerly. Feeling them on his skin tickled to a degree. Even when she finally punctured, they barely went in at all. When she started drinking, she pressed in more, but it was still far from what Wayne had expected.
Guess a fireball next to your head is a pretty good incentive to maintain your senses. Good to know.
“Stop,” Wayne called out after about five minutes of her lapping up blood.
She unhooked her fangs immediately. Her tongue ran across his arm only once before she pulled away. Licking her lips, she quickly cleared off any traces of her meal from her face.
Wayne turned the fireball on himself, cauterizing the wound. He had potions in his backpack, but that would have required rummaging through it, potentially leaving himself vulnerable to her. Cauterizing it left a brief moment of pain and an ugly mark. Nothing he couldn’t fix later with the proper potions.
“Now,” he said, standing. “You can’t leave the city. The military has the entire place fenced off and they’re killing any vampires that try to escape. I don’t know what the plan is for the city. Maybe they leave it fenced off, maybe they nuke it.”
That is, if the Elysium Order doesn’t nuke it first, he thought with a frown.
He really needed to hurry.
She started to open her mouth, but Wayne cut her off.
“Whatever. Not my problem. If you survive, don’t let your hunger dominate you.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re–”
“You might as well just kill me now then. I can’t go home, I can’t see my sister. Not like this. And if they’re going to destroy the city, you might as well get it over with now.”
Wayne tried to pinch the bridge of his nose. His hand smacked against the mask. Sighing instead, Wayne shook his head. “Fine. Do whatever you want. But cross me and you’ll wish I would just kill you.”
He didn’t bother to mention that her sister was probably dead or turned as well.
Instead, Wayne ignored whatever the little vampire had started to say to find his car.
He found it right in the center of the second cone of fire he had ignited.
There wasn’t much left of it.
Wayne pinched his eyes shut, counted backwards from ten, before grumbling out, “I should have got a rental.”
Chapter 003
Walking through the streets of Lansing wasn’t that bad. Because of the smog, Wayne had been forced to drive at extremely slow speeds. As long as he kept up a brisk pace, walking would likely end up being faster in the end anyway.
There were a few drawbacks. Wayne considered himself far from the most athletic of people. Power walking the remaining mile or two to Sarah’s house wasn’t a huge issue, but he was starting to feel the strain in his legs. He had dropped his time dilation down several notches as well, which forced him to keep an even closer watch on his surroundings–doubly so without the protective shell of a car around him. Leaving his mental acceleration on would have made the walk take an agonizingly long time from his perspective.
At least he no longer had the rumble of the Impala’s engine drawing the attention of every vampire in the city.