Avenging Autumn: Seasons Change Book 1 of 4 (7 page)

“
Frank, can we take your car?”
Autumn asked.

The Old Man stopped, “All I have is my pickup
truck, and we won’t all fit.”

“
Are you serious?” Jack said,
exasperated “I never realized all three of us have pickups. If
anybody looked at this family from the outside they’d think we were
a bunch of goddamned hillbillies.”

“
We’ll just have to stick with the
hearse,” Benny stated.

They all piled into the old death cab (Benny
and Au-tumn climbing into the back) and hit the road. Frank took
over the driving chores and as he pulled out of the driveway, he
noticed Jack was shaking badly and Benny was even more pale than
usual, although before now, Frank wouldn’t have thought that
possible.

“
Are you guys okay?” he
asked.

“
That’s the first time I’ve ever
killed…anything,” Jack said in a daze. “I’ve never even shot a gun
before today.”

“
Well I tried to get you to come
target shooting with Benny and me when you were younger,” Frank
stated, “but, you always had other things to do. You know, smoking
weed isn’t the only recreational thing to do in life.”

“
Somehow, I don’t think shooting at
paper targets would have prepared me for slaying vampires. However,
I am glad you brought up weed, I could definitely use some right
about now,” with that Jack pulled a cigarette case from the inside
pocket of his jacket. He opened it revealing six neatly rolled
joints. Pulling one out, he looked at his father with a smile,
“See, you’re not the only one who’s always prepared.”

Frank gave him a comical smirk, and then
looked through the sliding window at Benny and Autumn, “How about
you two, are you doing alright?”

“
I’m fine,” Benny said
quietly.

“
Me too,” Autumn added, laying her
head down on Benny’s chest.

Frank turned his attention back to the road,
“Where are we heading, Autumn?”

“
North, toward Gary, when we get
closer I’ll be able to give you an exact location.”

Jack took a deep drag off of his joint, “So,
Dad, what happened at your office?” he asked through inhaled
lungs.

Frank gave them all a surprised look and then
re-membered Autumn would have been able to tell Odin was there. He
glanced back at the road, then turned to Jack and said; “Let me
have that thing.”

For a moment Jack wasn’t sure what the Old Man
was talking about, but then realized he wanted the joint. After
much hesitation he handed the loopy stick (as Autumn some-times
called them) to his father.

To everyone’s surprise, Frank stuck the joint
between his lips and took a large hit. He held it in his lungs a
moment, exhaled, and began to recount his night at the office
without explaining his sudden urge for weed. “In the seven years I
worked with these people, I’ve mostly dealt with a man named Odin
Sway. Tonight, he showed up at my office with four other vampires,
intent on killing me. I was able to eliminate the four goons,
however, Odin is a different matter altogether.

“
I’m sure you all have noticed,
vampires are quicker than regular people, but still within the
boundaries of physics,” The others nodded their agreement, “Odin is
much faster. I had a hard time even getting a bead on him and when
I finally did, I missed. He can dodge bullets for Christ sake. I
had him point blank, dead to rights, and he still managed to twist
his body out of the way, while he was in mid air. I pulled a second
pistol and started firing where I thought he might land next.
Eventually he gave up and flew out the window.”

“
He can fly?” Benny said, clearly
amazed by Frank’s story.

“
Yes, but I’m pretty sure all of
them can. The thing that worries me most is; he always mentioned he
had supe-riors. I’d hate to see the kind of power they
have.”

“
What does he look like?” Autumn
requested.

“
Tall, pale, handsome, long
blondish white hair, walks with a cane. Sound familiar?”

“
He’s the one that killed me,” she
replied in a horse voice. She could feel Benny tense up behind
her.

“
That’s right,” Frank continued,
“he admitted it to me before we fought.”

“
Then the other five must be his
superiors.” Benny added.

“
That would be my guess,” Frank
said, “These guys are going to be tough to kill while their awake.
I think our best plan would be to get in their home while they
sleep during the day and stake them in the heart.”

“
Sounds like a good plan to me,”
Benny said.

“
Well, if we time it right, we
should get to Gary by about sun up. We should have plenty of time
to stop for a bite. Is anybody else hungry?”

Without waiting for an answer, Frank pulled
into a Taco King drive through. He ordered a family pack (four
tacos and three burritos), two burritos without meat for Benny, and
three diet drinks. Jack tried to hand a taco to Autumn.

“
No thanks,” she said, waving it
away, “I don’t need to eat anymore.”

“
You don’t?” Benny asked biting
into a burrito.

“
No, all my beeps and whistles have
stopped work-ing,” she replied pointing to her stomach, “that’s
what happens when you die.”

As Frank pulled the car back on the road,
Benny reached out and shut the sliding window, so he could talk to
his wife in private. He only stared at her for a long moment, as he
tried to find the right way to ask his question.

“
What is it?” Autumn inquired with
some concern.

“
What did it feel like? Dying, I
mean.”

She looked down at her feet and thought back
to the night she was slain by the mysterious vampire, Odin Sway.
“When I realized there was no way for me to escape from our room, I
was terrified. But when I looked into his eyes, those beautiful,
dead eyes, all of my fear seemed to drop away. I was calm, relaxed,
I looked at his handsome, emotionless face and felt completely at
ease. Then he cut my throat and everything went black,” she looked
up at Benny as if she had just come out of a trance, “The next
thing I remember is being in the coffin, it was almost as if I had
just woke up from a deep sleep.”

“
Were you scared?”

“
No, I knew I was already dead and
in no danger of suffocating. I tore through the coffin and dug my
way out of the grave, which is where that super human strength
comes into play I guess.”

“
Do you still have this
strength?”

“
I don’t think so. As a matter of
fact, I’m beginning to feel weaker with each passing
hour.”

“
Are you sure we have as long as a
week?”

“
No, I’m not sure.”

Benny let out a defeated sigh.

“
Now let me ask you a question,”
Autumn said.

“
Okay.”

“
Will you be able to make love to
me again, knowing it would be with a dead woman?”

Benny looked away from her, “I,
um-”

They were suddenly interrupted by rapid
knocking on the sliding window. Benny pulled the window
aside.

“
You two need to be in on this,”
Frank said.

6. A Brief History

Jack was holding up his cell phone and Benny
could see it was on speaker.

“
We have James on the phone,” Jack
stated, “he’s about to fill us in on everything we need to know
about vam-pires.”

James’ distorted voice came over the phone, “I
have a pretty big file here, are you guys sure you got time to hear
it?”

“
We have a long drive ahead of us,”
Frank replied, “so go on and get started.”

“
Where should I begin?”

“
Give us some history; separate the
legends from the reality.”

“
Well, that’s a hard thing to do,
really, because most of the old stories are believed to be true by
most vampire ex-perts. There are many stories dating as far back as
ancient times that contribute to the vampire history.

“
There is a Hebrew legend that
tells of a woman named Lilith, who would lure men into her lair,
seduce them, and then feast on their blood. The Romans believed in
similar beings known as the Lamia. The Arabs and ancient Irish
spoke of blood eating spirits and demons.

“
Stories are told within the
vampire enthusiast circles of a woman claiming to be Lilith, the
queen of vampires as she put it, terrorizing rural areas of West
Virginia as recently as 1989. I know a couple of vampire hunters
who claim they tracked her down and killed her, but there is no
real evidence of her death.”

“
Do you have reason not to believe
these hunters?” Frank asked, as he pulled on to I-465, which would
take them half way around Indianapolis to I-65.

“
Well, in the five years I’ve known
them, they ha-ven’t killed anything. My guess is that this woman
was an ordinary vampire with delusions of grandeur. Most of the
evi-dence I’ve seen points to Lilith dying sometime in the early
15th century.

“
Now the more traditional vampires
first appeared in the 16th century when vampire activity increased
rapidly in Europe from the Balkans as far as Greece.

“
When Bram Stoker wrote his novel,
Dracula, it’s well known that he did a lot of research on vampires
and Vlad the Impaler. Some believe that he interviewed vampire
hunters and possibly even a vampire or two that knew Prince Vlad
who went by the name Dracula at times.

“
Vlad Tepes was born in 1431 and
was the prince of Walachia (one of three Romanian provinces) at
three different times, although his longest rule was from 1456 to
1462. It was then that most of the bad things happened.”

“
What sort of bad things?” Jack
asked.

“
Old Vlad was one sick and twisted
individual. He loved to impale people, no matter what the reason.
Almost anyone who broke the law would end up on a pike, and Vlad
loved to do it. He would even go out and eat breakfast among all
his victims as they squirmed and groaned to their agonizing
deaths.

“
There are a lot of stories
surrounding Vlad, but the most popular one is ‘The Night of
Terror’. See, the Sultan of Turkey, having heard the stories coming
out of Romania, de-cided to invade the country and remove Prince
Vlad from power. The Turks had set up a camp near Tirgoviste, which
was the Walachian capitol at the time. In a bold move Vlad led his
army on a nighttime sneak attack against the camp, in the hopes of
assassinating the Sultan. The attack caught the Turks off guard,
but they managed to regroup and defend the camp. Hundreds of men
were killed on both sides before Vlad realized he wasn’t going to
get to the sultan and called a retreat.

“
With Vlad’s army gone the road to
Tirgoviste lay open to the Turks and the army began marching with
the ulti-mate goal of reaching Vlad’s castle and terminating his
rule. When the Turks reached Tirgoviste, however, they found it
completely deserted. There were no people, no cattle, no food or
drink, the Walachian capitol was burned to the ground and many
Turkish soldiers found out the hard way that the wells had been
poisoned.

“
The Turks continued to the next
town, only to find the same horrific site. Town after town it
continued until final-ly they began to draw near Vlad’s castle.
With the soldiers dehydrated and starving now, the sultan brought
his army to a halt at a gorge near the castle and found the most
sickening site yet. There in the gorge were….”

The phone line suddenly went silent. Frank and
Jack looked at each other with concern.

“
James,” Frank said, “is everything
alright?”

At that moment a strange, deep, voice came on
the line; “The subscriber you have dialed is currently out of
ser-vice, or has left the service area.”

“
Fucking cell phones!” Jack
exclaimed with relief. He accessed the phone book and dialed James’
number. The phone rang once and then went to James’ voice mail.
“Damn it, he must be trying to call us back; I’ll just wait for
him.”

After a few minutes, Jack’s phone rang and he
pushed the speaker button.

“
Sorry about that,” James said,
“fucking cell phones, right?”

The Writemans all looked at each other and
grinned. Frank spoke up; “Anyway, you were saying the Turks came
upon a gorge with a horrific sight.”

“
Right,” James restarted, “what
they found was near-ly twenty thousand impaled bodies. The rotting
remains of men, women, and children from all of the villages the
Turkish army had just passed through.”

“
Jesus Christ,” Jack breathed in
amazement.

“
On a much higher pike were the
bodies of two as-sassins sent by the Turks to kill Vlad before the
hostilities began. The Sultan knew he could not defeat a man who
could be capable of such insanity, so he and his army
retreated.”

“
So, was Vlad a Vampire?” Benny
asked.

“
No one really knows for sure,”
James answered.