Fading Darkness (Bloodmarked #1) (2 page)

I caught my reflection in the shower door as
I passed and saw the usual dark circles under my bright green eyes and
absolutely no signs of the punches I took about an hour earlier, but that was
nothing new. I was a fast healer,
abnormally
fast. The only sign of
fighting was my tussled dark brown ponytail that managed to work its way into
more of a loose ‘80s-style side ponytail. I pulled the hair tie out letting
what was left of the up-do fall down past my shoulders in crinkled dark waves
and made my way to my bed.

The exhaustion finally took hold of me, and
the rusted metal bed frame moaned as I plopped face first into the thread-bare
blankets and flat pillows. The last thing that registered before succumbing to
sleep was a strange feeling of being watched when I knew the blinds were already
closed.

†

I awoke to the mid-afternoon light streaming
in from the window on the west wall just above and to the right of my bed. It
felt like I was still in the recurring dream I was having. Every once in a
while, I would dream about a bright white light that blinds me. When I first
started having this dream, it felt so real I would wake up expecting to find
someone holding a flashlight to my eyes, but the light would then vanish with
the dream. The strange part was that the light was burned into my retinas as if
I did see it. It wasn’t like normal light that left spots burned into my
vision, but instead, it left colors so vivid burned into my sight, I questioned
my sanity, or sobriety. Everything would look so colorful and brilliant, I
thought I was hallucinating, but then it would fade back into normal vision.

Lifting my face off the pillow, I slit my
eyes and tilted my head up toward the light, noticing the blinds were partially
open. Damn. I forgot about that window. But the blinds on the other window were
definitely closed. Before I could stop it, my eyes automatically went to the
other window. Yes, those blinds were
definitely
closed. There was no
catwalk outside of my bedroom, but vampires had their ways with height
challenges. That could explain the whole being watched feeling but not the
being watched after sunrise part. I made a mental note to check out the vacant
office building right outside the window with the cracked blinds.

Slowly, I pushed myself up off the bed and
did a backward crawl until my feet reached the edge of the bed. I slid off the
rest of the way standing up to stretch my stiff muscles. For some reason, I
always felt extremely drained after patrolling. I guessed it was all the
fighting, but my body was always so strong and energized during a fight.

†

After showering, I investigated the old
office building next door and found no sign of squatters, neither human nor…
non
-human.
It must have just been my exhaustion getting the best of me this morning when I
sensed someone watching me. Great, now I had an imaginary peeping Tom.

I walked the eight blocks up to the
new-and-used music shop where I’ve worked for over a year now. I approached the
red brick building and saw the neon open sign shining in the dark green framed
picture window next to the big oak door with a matching dark green awning.
There was frosted lettering adhered to the window reading “Music Lovers Only.”

It was owned by a local 30-something guy
named Clint who swore that a town with such a musically-infused culture can
never have enough music stores. To that, I always responded with, “Tell that to
I-tunes.” Fortunately for me he was one of those bosses who appreciated brutal
honesty. Otherwise, I might have been fired a long time ago. He told me once
that he found my “prickly” demeanor refreshing and oddly endearing. I’ve been
called a bitch many times, but I appreciated his more creative, subtle
approach.

Clint works most of the time, but hired a
couple of people to give him breaks here and there. He moved into the apartment
space above the store when he opened it, so he not only takes his work home
with him, but his work is his home. I worked for a few hours, and Clint came
down to relieve me after making his eight year-old daughter dinner.

Traffic was backed up down every street as I
made my way back to my apartment. I made it back just before dark and grabbed a
quick meal composed of a ham and cheese sandwich, a handful of Cheetos, and a
can of Mountain Dew for a little sugar rush. Not feeling sufficiently satisfied,
I went back to finish off the bag of Cheetos. Finally stuffed to satisfaction,
I sprawled across the black, metal-framed futon in the living area as
comfortably as I could manage.

I lied there staring blankly at the local
weatherman doing a rundown of the weekly forecast. My eyes were unfocused and I
stopped hearing the highs and lows for the week as I slipped slowly inside
myself to that dark place that always seemed to surface no matter how hard I
tried to distract myself.

I couldn’t evade it forever. Sooner or later
my fear would catch up to me and the worst fear of all- myself. I’m terrified
of what I am or might be. What would you become if you lost everything but
never knew you had it from the beginning? The answer is simple- me. But what if
you had a more-than-intuitive feeling that you were responsible for that loss?
This was the part I’ve struggled with for so long, the question I’ve never
really wanted answered. A big part of me never wants to know what I am because
deep down, that more-than-intuitive part of me knows there’s something evil
within, something that feels almost primal and dangerous, like a monster. I
know I’m a part of this world of the undead, and the truth is, I already felt
dead inside myself.

Put it this way, for me, every day was a
lottery. Most people would consider winning the lottery a good thing, but I had
a slightly darker connotation for the word. I associated it with negative
thoughts and wake up every day thinking, “
Is today the lucky day? Is today
the day I die?”

I didn’t need anyone to tell me how cruel
and unkind the world can be. Some would try to convince me that there was
balance in everything. I have witnessed cruelty first-hand, and all I have ever
asked for is that so-called balance. Everyone that was ever a significant part
of my life was taken from me, so if there was any balance to the universe then
why hasn’t it taken me too? Oh, right, because the whole “balance” theory was
bull shit. I’ve seen too much evil in the world and have yet to find the good.

Why? Because I can’t die, literally. I have
always been this big freak of nature. I have bounced around from foster home to
foster home because no one could handle my strange abnormalities. They could
never understand why I developed physically and mentally ahead of all the other
kids and why I never got sick and why I healed instantly after getting hurt. I
didn’t blame them because I was more confused than anyone. It got even weirder
when the super senses started to kick in and it became increasingly difficult
to explain how I could overhear things I shouldn’t have heard and smelled
things that no one else picked up on. Once I realized these things weren’t
normal to everyone else, I shut up about my abilities. By that time though, I
had already been through countless homes and had been labeled a freak by all
the other kids my age, so I just accepted the label since I couldn’t argue it.

The foster care system tried endlessly to
track down any living relatives but always came up empty handed. The only thing
they could conclude was that my dad and then 18-month old brother died in a car
accident and my mother died giving birth to me.

I didn’t know why some people thought
offering up rational explanations for a person’s untimely death would help
others cope with that death, as if reasoning with it and knowing what happened
would explain why it happened. I had several people try to tell me my mother
was probably so stressed out and depressed about my father and brother that it
caused the premature labor and was ultimately responsible for her
complications.

I have always felt responsible for my
mother’s death and in some way for my whole family’s demise. It was just too
big of a coincidence that they all died, and I ended up being impossible to
kill, as far as I knew anyway. There have been plenty of close calls to
convince me of that.

I always tried searching for possible reasons
why I was such a freak, more of a way to prove myself wrong, that I wasn’t
responsible for their deaths. I came up with nothing that made sense until one
night walking home from the library when I was fifteen and saw something I
could never forget. I saw one of them for the first time that night, and
everything seemed to click. The day I stopped researching was the day I got my
first real dose of truth.

 I stopped researching because I had all the
answers I needed when I witnessed that vampire feeding on a woman in a dark
parking lot. Something in my stomach twisted at the sight, but it was more than
a reaction to the horror. I felt that innate alarm go off for the first time.
It was the first time I sensed a vampire and felt that unusual draw toward the
darkness. It wasn’t a yearning to be part of it but realization of the
connection I had to it. I didn’t question what I was seeing because something
inside me told me it was real.

I didn’t waste time trying to rationalize
it. Suddenly, all the confusion I felt about myself over the years just turned
into rage. I went straight into action at lightning speed and ripped the
vampire away from the endangered girl with a newfound strength. I slammed both
hands against his chest sending him 20 feet away into the nearest building
leaving him crumpled on the ground. Then, I dragged him up against the side of
the building by his neck. As he fought back, more instincts kicked in and I
punched and kicked him into a bloody pulp. Eventually I found a broken sheet of
glass from a window and picked it up with both hands knowing exactly what to do
with it. That night, all the uncertainty and unanswered questions had
manifested into a truth that I wasn’t ready for and have never really been able
to deal with.

Some loud obnoxious jingle on a commercial
snapped me back to the present, and I prepared to go out on my nightly patrol
through town. I entered the bedroom and grabbed the first thing off the floor I
could find to wear. I was definitely going to have to make laundry day sooner
than anticipated after coming up with only dirt-covered jeans and blood-stained
t-shirts. I have learned to only buy dark-colored shirts, but I could still
smell and barely make out the dark splatters on most of them. I opted for a
pair of black yoga pants and old violet tank top I found at the bottom of my
closet that I forgot I had. I topped it off with a black fleece jacket, and
pulled my mess of hair back in the usual knotted ponytail. I grabbed a couple
railroad spikes from the stockpile I collected and tucked them into the inside
pockets of my jacket. Oh yeah, that whole wooden stake thing was a myth too. It
didn’t matter what the material was as long as it hit the heart, the still
beating
heart.

I have encountered several vampires in the
past four years and it seemed that the hungrier they were the darker their eyes,
as if the inner demon was coming to the surface desperately fighting to
survive. The only way they can survive is with human blood. It keeps their
bodies functioning. From my observations, it seemed that vampires only retained
the functions of humans that they needed, except, they were somehow amplified
immensely, probably by the demon within them. They retained things such as, but
not limited to, the nervous system for amped up senses and motor function,
respiratory for taking in smells I assumed, and circulatory system for
distribution of the thing that keeps them going, their fuel- blood.

Their heart beats seem to slow with the
hunger, and I have heard that they can go into this coma-like state, and the
only thing that can wake them is the scent of blood. They don’t sleep, but sun
exposure kills them, so my guess is that the daytime weakens them so much they
have to go into that nearly comatose state until the night rejuvenates them. I’ve
actually seen this before, but that’s a story for another time.

Blood is still the only thing that can fully
strengthen them. They use what energy they have in them to get what they need
like animal instinct, or demon instinct, but without a heart to pump that fuel
the demon within can’t even keep the body functioning. Without a heart, the
dying body gets burned from the inside out by the dark demon energy. At least,
that has been my working theory from what I’ve gathered so far. I do have a
source for this type of information but he wasn’t always very forthcoming. I
know the myths about vampires, but even modern libraries aren’t equipped with
full knowledge about the kind of monsters I face, and I never let them live
long enough to get to know them that well either.

The next few days went by as another one of
those monotonous routine-induced blurs, and tonight was shaping up to be no
different than the last few nights. It was Thursday, not quite the weekend, but
there would normally be more people out and about, which usually meant a little
more activity for me. I was getting edgy waiting for some real action, so I
hoped tonight would be a more prosperous outing than the previous nights, but
it has already been a few hours and not a peep. Briefly, I wondered what
detectives did on stakeouts to stave the boredom. Then, I remembered, they had
partners. I’ve never really worked well with others. Turning a corner toward a
popular pub, I felt that familiar sick-to-my-stomach feeling.

Yes! Finally!

I broke into a sprint through the narrow
walking space in between the pub and neighboring business toward the tiny lot
in back where the feeling was strongest. There was a muffled scream from the
woman, and as I drew near under the cover of the shadows I saw her slumped
figure in the arms of a light-haired vampire as he tore into the thin flesh at
her neck. It took less than a second to sneak up behind him, stake him, and
watch his scattered ashes being carried away in the cool autumn breeze. At the
same time, I caught the woman’s limp form before it hit the ground and pulled
it a safe distance from the ball of flames.

Vampires should come with a warning label
that reads, “Warning, combustible when staked.” I have had a few close calls
when the victims were so out of it they would fall toward the fiery corpses.
There may have been a singed eyebrow or two but nothing serious. I, myself,
have ended up with a few second-degree burns on my hands and wrists but mine
have always had that freakish way of healing before forming scars. Lucky me.

I checked the woman’s vitals and determined
she was going to live. He nearly missed the major arteries. Now I just had to
stick around long enough to make sure she wouldn’t wake up as something other
than human. Imagine my shock the first time I was forced to kill the victim I
had just finished saving the night before because he ended up turning into a
vampire himself. I still had no clue how that worked, but sometimes it happened
and sometimes it didn’t.

I was already settling in for the wait when
a vamp came out of nowhere, or at least, came from somewhere behind me while I
had my guard down for possibly just a second. That has always been one of my
big rules- don’t let my guard down, and never trust an evil bloodsucker.

I was just about to sit on the curb when the
monster tackled me to the patch of lawn next to the lot. Before I could right
myself, she landed a punch across my jaw and continued in a rapid-fire
succession of jabs. I felt little explosions of pain all across my face and my
vision was trying to make sense of my surroundings in between the flashes of
fists. I tasted my own blood in my mouth, but I wasn’t about to take this
without any fight at all.

I blindly reached forward to grab a fistful
of jacket, shirt, whatever I could get my hands on and found a sleeve. I yanked
as hard as I could, dragging the bitch off me, rolling her over where I could
have my own turn. The eye that had swelled up and closed began to open as it
healed and soon the pain was gone.

I grabbed a handful of long platinum blond
hair and shoved her face into the parking curb nearest to us. While she was
dazed I reached for the stake in my boot and as I drew it back another vampire
snuck up on me and kicked it out of my hand. He knocked me back to the ground,
and now I had two of them staring down at me with those black hungry eyes. And
then, there were more movements in the distance. I looked around and saw at
least ten more coming toward me from the shadows. What the hell was going on? The
weird part was that they appeared to be working together.
Hmmm. So this was
a trap?

Vampires are completely self-serving. They
only work with other vamps if it benefits them. Sometimes they will hang back
from a potential victim if another vampire got there first, either hoping for
leftovers or not wanting to risk a fight that could get them killed. Vampires
are more vulnerable when they feed, so some vamps will poach humans from one another
while they are feeding, but taking fresh blood away from a feeding vampire
would be like taking salmon from a very large, starving grizzly. It’s not
recommended. I’ve seen things, and from what I’ve deduced, vampires only work
together to take down common threats or for personal gain.

Right now, that common threat seemed to be
me unless they were all just starving and I was the only person out tonight.
Not likely. I never thought I would have to worry about secrecy and staying
under the radar because vampires were so solitary, but apparently, they were on
to me and I have been marked for death. Perfect. I wondered if this meant the
whole St. Louis vampire community knew about me hunting their kind.

I was back on my feet in an instant ready
for the first attack. The first came from behind, and I whipped around in time
to throw a railroad spike. I turned back around to see three more vamps
illuminated in the flash of the combustion. They were coming at me fast and I
reacted with matched speed, kicking the first away, punching the second while
bringing my elbow back into the other one’s face. I grabbed the last spike out
of my jacket staking the second one then the third while simultaneously taking
down another with a backward kick. I saw one coming at me straight ahead, but I
felt a looming presence extremely close behind me, so I whirled around ready to
strike.

With a lightning speed I’ve never seen
before, he dodged the stake, knocking my arm to the side and shoving me to the
ground. I watched the blur of motion with strained eyes trying to keep up with
his moves but only catching moments like still shots during the fast forward
mode on a DVD. He moved past me and sent the approaching vampires flying
backward. He was kicking serious ass with the ease of a lion in a herd of
gazelles. But all I seemed to be able to concentrate on was the fact that he
was helping me, and maybe even just saved my life.

No. No, I could have taken care of myself,
and this was a vampire, one of them, the thing I hate most. I jumped back in
the fight even more pissed off than before. I had this funny way of changing
any confusing feelings into anger.

There were only two left by the time I
jumped back in, but I gripped my spike tight and tore into them with my
newfound rage. In seconds I was standing in a cloud of black ashes burning with
indignation.

I looked up into the eyes of my rescuer and
drew in a sharp breath as I took him in fully, all six feet and roughly three
inches of him. He was well-built, but not as bulky as a body builder, from what
I could tell under the dark washed jeans and black hooded coat he wore. His
face was perfectly symmetrical with a strong, squared jaw line and there was a
slight cleft in his chin. He had only a trace of a five ‘o clock shadow and his
light brown hair was cut so short it was almost a buzz cut. There was a tiny scar
above his left eyebrow.

When I looked back to his blue eyes the
light from the moon made them gleam like tiny shards of ice and all I could do
was stare. Vampires’ eyes were normal for the most part and only turned black
when they’re hungry so seeing his normal eyes wasn’t what took me off guard. I
had the strangest feeling of familiarity when I looked at him. I think I would
have remembered him though if I had seen him. I mean, he seemed to be the kind
of guy who made an impression on anyone who even glanced in his direction, so
there was no way we could have met. The moments of silence stretched out into a
long pause that was turning uncomfortable. He took on an air of patience as if
waiting for me to speak first.

I was annoyed with the still unanswered
questions like
what the hell was that all about? Who was he and why would a
vampire kill other vampires just to defend me?
And
what did he want from
me?
Okay, I needed to cut them off because the questions could go on all
night, and I was getting more annoyed with all the confusion, so when I finally
spoke I was a little defensive.

“Look, I don’t know who you are, but I
didn’t need saving. I could have taken them out on my own. Why the hell did you
step in anyway?” I bit down on my lip to control the anger bubbling up to the
surface.

“First of all, I’ll tell you who I’m
not
.
I’m
not
your enemy, so you can put the sharp pointy objects away,” he
responded simply in a light conversational tone, obviously not deterred by my
abrasiveness, which only pissed me off more to know he didn’t find me to be a
threat at all.

“Well, first of all, I’ll be the judge of
that,” I cut him off before he could continue. “And second of all, I’m not
interested in who you’re
not
,” I added.

“So you’re saying you’re interested in who I
am?” He gave me a moment to process what he said before a smile broke on his
face.

My cheeks flamed. “Hardly. Just interested
in whether or not I’ll be seeing you around again,” I was seething and
beginning to shake with indignation.

“So you want to see me again?”

“Ha. Just the opposite actually. I don’t
know why you felt the need to help me, but I don’t like owing anyone so to even
the score I won’t kill you now. But if I see you again, I can’t promise I’ll be
as generous.”

“Oh, my lucky night. So I should thank
you
after saving
your
life?” he said dryly.

Anger flared again. “You did not save me.
You got in my way and killed a few vampires that I would have dispatched easily
by myself. You may have saved me the trouble of doing my job, which brings me
to my original standpoint. It’s my fight, not yours. Stay away from me.”

He stared into my eyes a moment pondering
before he said, “Wow, well when you put it that way, thank you for sparing me.”

“You should go before I change my mind,
which I am dangerously close to doing.”

“I know. You fight so recklessly. You should
really be more careful. I’m not the one drawing attention to myself. Killing
vampires every night doesn’t exactly go unnoticed, especially in a small town,”
he said, confirming my theory about being a target. “I just thought you might
need a friend,” he said in an unusually deep, thoughtful tone that border-lined
on sympathetic. Then his tone became light again when he added, “you know, in
case there are more of them next time.”

“I’ll be just fine on my own. Like I said,
stay out of it.”

“Do you think you’re the only one with
something against vampires?”

“Ha! What could you possibly have against
them considering you are one?”

“They were trying to kill you,” he said
matter-of-factly.

That stunned me into silence. What the hell
was that supposed to mean? When he started moving away, I snapped out of it. “Who
are you, anyway?” I asked, my curiosity finally getting the best of me.

“I told you, Lucille, I’m a friend, not the
enemy,” he responded, as he began to turn away from me.

Wait. Lucille?
Before he could slip
into the darkness, I blurted, “How did you know my name?”

“Like I said, you’re drawing a lot of
unwanted attention to yourself. You’re lucky if I’m the only one who has
figured out that much about you, but after what I just witnessed tonight, it
wouldn’t seem so.” Clearly a fan of getting the last word, he, once again,
turned and began to slip into the shadows before I could respond.

He obviously didn’t know my stubbornness
knew no bounds. I shouted at his disappearing figure, “Just so we’re clear, I’m
still not asking for help!”

I thought I heard a very faint, “We’ll see.”
Damn, this guy was insufferable. Obviously. He had me using words like
insufferable
.
What a prick! An evil, bloodsucking prick. I wasn’t entirely sure what the hell
just happened. I started wondering why I didn’t just kill him right then and
there, but I figured that line of thought would just make my head hurt. Plus,
after seeing him in action I wasn’t completely sure I could take him. I have
never encountered a vampire that fast or strong.
Or gorgeous.
Wait, no!
More like annoying.

Before I broke into a sprint, one last fleeting
thought crossed my mind; I was glad he seemed to be on my side, at least for
tonight. I refused to trust a vampire though. That was always rule number one,
a rule I would never break.

I ran so fast and for so long just wanting
to feel that endorphin high and just needing to be far away from the events of
the night. I ended up in one of my favorite places in the city, the cemetery.

It has become almost laughable that my life
has begun to feel like one long, and as of lately, endless string of monster
movie clichés. Here I was, standing in what appeared to be a giant stone garden
of divine figures under the bright, full moon with gnarled old trees all around
baring their twisted and broken bones in preparation of the changing seasons.
The falling leaves were just another reminder of death, along with the shorter
days and bitter cold that accompanies the approach of winter. I just saw Count
Dracula, so I stood expectantly, still waiting for the sound of a distant howl
or the silhouette of a witch on her broomstick flying across the pale moon.
Nothing. Well, I guess it was good to know there were no other kinds of
monsters in my own horror story.

I walked through the maze of stone crosses
and angels and settled into my usual spot by the grieving angel. There was just
something about her figure slumped over the grave in complete despair and
anguish that drew me in and tugged at a tormented and very familiar string in
my heart. It was painfully and heartbreakingly beautiful, and for me, almost
comforting. This was my place, the place I felt most at ease, and as I lied
their letting the cold from the ground creep through my layers of clothing and
into my skin numbing it, I began to wind down.