The Blood Talisman (28 page)

A man groaning out for help echoed
from the monitor room. She rolled her eyes, expecting Ram to be
feeding on the lone survivor of the hospital. A gunshot sounded and
Ram came walking out of the room wiping blood from his chin and
mouth.

Selene scurried to get up from the
floor and trotted behind him. He stopped and turned back to
her.

“
Where’s Alex?” he
asked.

“
Gone,” she
whispered.

“
You didn’t go with
him?”

“
No… he didn’t want me
to.”

Selene looked down at her father’s
temporary urn as it peeked out through the top of the book bag. She
stroked the side of the canister with her fingers and thought about
the many unanswered questions that her father had left her with,
number one being how to stop the dead from rising.

“
Good. Come with me then,”
he said.

She looked back up at him as he was
walking away. She followed him back through the empty stairwell and
into the front main lobby of the hospital.

“
Damn it!” Ram yelled
out.

“
What’s wrong?” she said,
with minimal worry.

In the blink of an eye, he was within
inches of her face. She didn’t flinch, standing her ground. She
wasn’t about to let some no-name vampire intimidate her. He had a
bloodthirsty look in his eye and she almost begged for a bite from
him to end his constant selfish actions. They stood there staring
at each other, eye to eye, until a groan came from behind Ram. It
was a group of meandering zombies. They had unknowingly surrounded
them both.

Ram started to unload his gun into
those by the door. One of them dropped but he missed the others’
heads. He and Selene ran back to the stairwell and headed back down
into the basement. There were no zombies there, just silence and
the rank smell of death. They got to the employee exit when Ram
stopped suddenly. They were both breathing heavily from running so
fast to get out of the place. He knelt down next to a head that lay
a few feet over from the body it came from.

“
Damn it, Cami. Why were
you still here?”

“
Who’s that?” Selene
asked.

“
Cami was a member of
Administration. It’s a small group that ran the hospital and helped
new vampires enter into our world. We were growing an army and Cami
had been turned on her eighteenth birthday. She was one of the good
ones. Young, but a good vampire. Not like…” Ram said before
stopping suddenly, lost in his thoughts.

“
You mean, not ruthless
like you?” Selene said.

He didn’t answer her immediately. He
just stared at Cami’s head for a moment. Selene fought to find
words to speak but couldn’t bear to give Ram an ounce of
comfort.

“
I have to burn it down,”
he said suddenly.

“
What do you mean? We don’t
have time. Let’s go,” she urged.

He shook his head no and
said, “I normally wouldn’t care what happens to the human race but,
they
are
my food
source now. I gain strength from their blood. Wouldn’t that mean
that I would die without it? I mean, without your powers and your
strength, you’d die, right?”

“
Only my brother can kill
me and take my powers, so yes, I guess that’s logical
thinking.”

“
Of course it is. Come with
me.”

She followed him, clutching her book
bag tightly. He led her back down the hallway and down through
several corridors. They came to a door that had bars where a window
should be. It was skewed open and barely hanging onto the door
frame.

Ram ripped the door the rest of the
way off of its hinges and they walked in. Ram checked every room as
he passed each one. Cell by cell, they were all empty.

“
Anyone here?” he yelled
out.

Nobody answered. The silence was
deafening. He stopped and looked back down the hall of open prison
doors. He looked briefly sentimental for a moment and strode down
the hallway before turning a corner.

“
What was the prison for?”
Selene asked gently.

“
You don’t want to know,”
he answered gruffly.

She didn’t press any further as he
seemed quite upset by it. They were in a room with huge tanks. Some
were labeled ‘oxygen’ and some ‘nitrous oxide’. Ram was frantically
placing hospital bed sheets and pillows in a pile close to the
tanks.

“
Isn’t that stuff
explosive?” she asked.

“
That’s the idea,” he
snapped.

“
Are you okay with
this?”

He didn’t answer. He kept piling the
stark white sheets and pillows up until they were as tall as
Selene. He pulled a can of lighter fluid off of one of the shelves
and began pouring it onto the large pile.

“
Why would a hospital carry
lighter fluid, especially here with all this oxygen?” she
asked.

“
Once again, you don’t want
to know,” he answered.

His repeated answer began to make her
nervous. She knew that he was a shallow hole of a man, but he was
bordering evil now with the prison cells and the lighter fluid. He
pushed her back towards the entryway into the stock area and lit a
flame with a lighter he pulled from his pocket.

Ram turned to her and said, “When I
light this, we will need to run.”

Selene shook her head that she
understood and he dropped the lighter onto the grey hospital floor.
The lighter bounced once and ignited the lighter fluid leading to
the pile of sheets and pillows. They turned and ran as fast as they
could past the open prison doors and down two hallways to the back
door.

Ram flung the back door open and they
ran out into the employee parking area. They raced all the way to
the edge of the forest surrounding the hospital and turned to watch
it burn. Selene looked over to Ram. He looked upset but would never
let anyone know how much as he held his head high and waited to see
the flames and explosion that would surely come.

She sat her book bag down onto the
ground and pulled out her father’s Book of Shadows. She rummaged
through the bag a couple of times then gasped, “Where are my
father’s ashes?”

“
I thought they were in the
bag.”

Selene kept searching through to the
bottom of the bag. “They aren’t here. They must have come out when
we were running. You have to get them. I have to return them to the
blood talisman, just like my father did with Rose’s ashes, or his
powers will be lost forever.”

“
SHIT!” Ram yelled out as
he took off into a sprint towards the hospital which was about to
explode any second.

He ran around to the front of the
hospital. He turned the corner to go into the front lobby and was
out of Selene’s sight. She stood there, feeling helpless. She paced
at the edge of the forest waiting for him to return. What was mere
seconds seemed more like agonizing hours. She could see a bright
flame from the fire within the basement of the hospital. It was
dancing furiously.

“
C’mon Ram, hurry,” she
whispered to herself.

The fire crackled twice and a large
explosion occurred beneath the hospital. It caved the first floor
in, and the second and third floors followed quickly. Selene stood
there in shock. Tears welled up into her eyes thinking of her
father’s ashes. She waited for Ram to return but after minutes of
futile waiting she figured that he had perished within. She felt
horrible having sent him into his death although she knew Alex
would be pleased.

She feared how she would defeat her
brother Sol without those ashes and those powers. She never felt
more alone than in that moment. Even her enemies had deserted her.
She couldn’t call her father for advice and her sister could no
longer comfort her. Death had consumed everyone she loved except
for Alex.

The fight for the talisman was ahead
of her and she needed to figure out how to stop the immortality
curse that her father had warned her about. She needed someone whom
she trusted to watch her back under every circumstance. But Alex
had left to go and find himself. She needed to go and find him. He
would have the strength to help her get through the impending war
with her brother, and would provide the support that she would need
to deal with the curse.

She heard sirens sounding in the
distance. The police had undoubtedly heard the large explosion from
the hospital. She decided to slip into the forest. She clutched her
father’s Book of Shadows tightly and disappeared amongst the
trees.

ABOUT THE
AUTHOR

Kim Culpepper was born and
raised in Columbus, MS. She still resides there with her husband, 2
kids, and 2 cats. Check out her other writings on her website
at
www.kjculpepper.net

Keep an eye out as to when the second
installment of The Blood Talisman series will be
released.

A Note from the Author

Thank you for buying this book. I
would personally like to thank all of my supporters. You know who
you are and I would have never made it this far without y’all. I
would also like to thank all of those that said I would never do
anything productive in my life. You gave me the anger to prove you
wrong.