Chapter 2

A Vampire's Strength and Speed

I expected pain, or at the very least grogginess. But there was no discomfort, and every feeling was crystal clear, the gritty tile, beneath my cheek, the musty, burning smell, the choking sensation of being smothered. But there was no real pain. That led me to one conclusion, and judging by lack of feather beds and angels singing, I didn't think it was heaven. I don't think it was fear that hit me right then, it was more of a "Damn it, Spit!" followed two seconds later by "I'm gonna KILL HIM!"

I was on my feet faster then I thought possible, all fear of Hell had vanished from my mind. I didn't realize exactly how furious I could get in two seconds, but there it was, that rage. 'It's his fault my life is over' I thought to myself, 'It's his fault we went there." I couldn't help myself. I thrust my fist against the concrete bricks, shaking the wall just a little. The loud bang got his attention, and Spit looked up at me from where he sat.

"Uh…" he started, showing his typical brilliant on the spot thinking, "Kyle, you're, um, awake."

There was no time for any comments in response; I was running at him faster than I had thought I was able to, and…

I overshot. By a lot. By which I mean I missed him by six inches and slammed into the concrete wall at bone shattering speeds. The breath was squeezed out of me and gasping for air I fell backward, feeling each and every little cut on the front of my body start bleeding and the blood soaking through my clothes. As my head turned to the side I looked around and noticed that no one was paying attention. Off to the far left a boy and girl were still trying to disentangle themselves from each others caressing embraces and were steadily undoing there progress by occasionally pecking each other whispering little sentiments in each others ears. One girl sat reading by the wall, with her head buried in a newspaper, evidently unsympathetic. Spit was still sitting openmouthed in his chair, staring hard at me. At the card table in the corner, a boy about my age was staring intent at the knives laid out before him, expertly weighting one on his index finger. The boy from last night was the only one to show even the least amount of interest, watching me with a distasteful look out of the corner of his eyes. Finally, the two lovebirds in the corner separated enough for the boy to look at me and shudder. The girl made a sort of sarcastic smile and half-laughed, half-gasped, "Ouch!"

"Oh, yeah. I remember your first try Melissa," interjected the reading girl making no effort to disguise her loathing. Honestly she was practically foaming at the mouth. But the rest of her face was much more alarming. It was almost entirely black, not in the normal way; it was the type of black that happens when you burn paper, almost ashy, except for two long strips of pallid, almost translucent skin on the right side. Her eyelids sagged a little, and her pupils were jagged and small and her irises were faded and watery. She had only half a head of hair, roughly combed out. There was a snort of derision from Melissa, and I saw the boy put his hand on his girlfriend's shoulder. She leaned back into him and kissed him again on the cheek, while the other girl slowly stood up and began to take a step toward them.

"Stop it you two," this was the boy from last night. He didn't seem too interested in getting physically involved, but at least he might draw some attention to me. You know, the dying kid on the floor! How did everyone forget that? "Kaela, sit down." He had an authoritative voice and the strange girl froze for a second, then took two or three deliberate steps in my direction. Kneeling down beside me and roughly gripping my shoulders, she hauled me to my feet. Instinctively, and "Ah!" came out before I realized the pain was gone. So was the blood. The skin had knitted itself back together. And it was really pale. Really. Like, pure white. I've never been that tan, but this was creepy.

"Come on," nudged Kaela, not sounding totally like she was ordering me, but still kind of angry, and when I didn't respond she roughly dragged me up. Holy crap, she was strong. Not every girl could drag a high school senior to his feet, even if I am kind of short. I didn't want to have to lean on the girl who was still several inches shorter than me, but now that rage wasn't fueling me anymore, I was surprisingly weak again, stumbling as I walked.

"What's your problem today, Kaela? Let the guy rest," the boy, now free from Melissa, said, accusingly.

"I am, Noam. Like he'll get any rest in here with you to going at each other."

Noam opened his mouth with some retort in mind, but a simultaneous glance from both the boy from last night and the knife balancing guy, shut him up then and there. There was a subtle smile creeping across Kaela's face as she walked away, and I wondered why she considered that a victory. The last thing I saw as I left the room was Spit finally waking up from his stupor.

"He tried to kill me…" were the last words I heard as I turned my back on them and left the room with Kaela.

I guess it looked like any hallway, white walls and a wooden floor. It was short, ten, fifteen feet at maximum, but three other doors. One was one of those ominous black ones, whose ambiance was slightly ruined by the sickly, cutesy, fluffy, pink heart pasted on it reading I love you!

"Noam's room," she gestured over her shoulder at the door. We took two or three more steps and she stopped at the other, rather normal looking door, nothing remotely sinister about it. "And mine." She opened the door and strutted in. It was the kind of room you'd expect any teenage girl to have, really absolutely nothing unusual, no voodoo dolls, no magic stuff. Just an old movie poster and some dirty clothes in the corner. "Home," she sighed and flopped backward onto the bed. Now at this point I'm confused about what to do. Here was this girl I don't know with some strange skin issues, inviting me into her room in a strange building that my backstabbing, pretend friend dragged me to and I almost died but now am somehow perfectly fine. It doesn't matter who you are, you'll never be able to handle this as maturely as I did, which is to say I stared for two seconds, then started slowly backing away into Noam's room, which it turns out has a lot more cutesy Melissa stuff.

"Hey!" Kaela called sounding offended, "Knock it off and get in here." There was something about this girl, she sounded like any high school student, nothing unusual, creepy, evil about her voice, that I trusted her and trotted in after her.

"Finally." She thrust her hands up into the air and leaned against the wall from her perch on the bed. "So then, I guess you're confused.

"Confused." I started, "You think I'm confused. I show up in this strange house and I almost die and no one notices! Then…"

"Yeah, yeah. I know. Creepy feeling isn't it, that skin regrowth thing. I never really did get used to it."

"What? How can you be so calm?" I don't know how I had gotten that angry, that fast, but looking back, I realize I got angry a lot in the next few months. And I think that at that particular time I deserved it.

"I guess six months of this have dulled my panic response," she shrugged and looked down for a moment. There was an awkward moment's silence, her still focusing on her hands, me shifting awkwardly trying to think of something to say, but she spoke first, "Don't worry, I've been through it, it passes." I didn't know what 'it' referred to exactly, and I didn't like that she was suddenly so serious, so there was another awkward silence with: read the sentence before this, then she brightened up. "So, you're Kyle, huh? I heard Spit didn't tell you about us," she laughed bitterly, "So have you figured it out yet?"

Pause.

"Come on. Think about it."

Pause

"Super strength and speed. Really pale."

Pause.

She was frustrated, "Fangs!" She peeled back her upper lip to show the extreme points in her teeth.

That shook me. I hadn't noticed them before (I wasn't exactly the Sherlock Holmes type), but now that she pointed them out, I ran my tongue over my upper teeth. Sure enough, at either side were the two, deadly points. My eyes widened and I froze. This wasn't real. This couldn't be happening. Could it?

No, of course not. This wasn't real. That's ridiculous, there's no such thing as vampires. There never was, never can be. They're just in movies and bad TV mini-series. Not in real life. Not in Philly. There had to be another reason. Hallucinations, or Spit laced the sandwich with something (is it even possible to lace peanut butter?). Maybe we had done something else that I just couldn't remember. Maybe I'll wake up in a minute, covered in drunk vomit, or with cops around, checking to see what I've been smoking. Anything, ANYTHING, but this.

"Hello? You there?" Kaela was leaning over me with her hands on my leg and head being the only thing that kept me from curling up into a fetal position.

"Vampires," I gasped, and stopped talking at that. Now that I thought about it, it was hard to speak without cutting my tongue on the new teeth.

"You still did better than me. I had to wait for Alexei's lecture to figure it out." She laughed again, totally out of place, and smiled hopefully. Her eyes glazed a bit looking at me, and I calmed down slightly, not much, but slightly. Still, it was totally unlike what happened last night, when the boy just whited out my mind. Her look was friendly, almost motherly, the kind of look that genuinely made you believe that it would be okay. And I hyperventilated slightly less. I realized the tears that had been forming in the corner of my eyes had stopped coming. I didn't know vampires could cry. But if they can panic, I suppose why not.

"Take a minute; it's a shock I know." Kaela stood up gracefully and moved to a pose just outside the door, I guess to give me space or something. Not that space is exactly what I needed then. I mean, I was thinking a little better and all, but no one just switches gears like that. I don't really know how long I sat there, just sort of dumbstruck, but eventually Kaela probably decided I wasn't about to restart the conversation.

"Kyle… right? Kyle? Um… I don't know what to say exactly…" She was trying to do something like stall, I guess.

"Alexei?" I asked, surprised that I was still speaking, not just standing there stuttering.

"The creepy one."

"That one that I met last night?"

"No, that's Dameon. Alexei's the other creepy one. The guy with the knives." She shuddered slightly and looked up, eyes laughing. "You can look forward to a few hours listening to him grill you. Don't take him seriously. If you do, you'll wind up just like him." She shuddered again.

"What do you mean?" I wasn't sure whether this was a serious comment and shudder or another joke, but as I thought about it, I pictured the intent look in his eyes and I barely refrained from shuddering as well. "You don't like him?"

"Let's just say he doesn't beat around the bush. Or even contemplate the bush. He probably won't even exchange pleasantries, before charging in. You'll understand. You get used to him. So come on. Let's get out of here before Dameon comes." She rolled off the bed and landed gracefully on her feet. Moving with a new fluidity, she pulled on my arm again.

"Wait, you mean leave, like, leave Philly?"

She paused suddenly, mid-stride, holding herself so still it seemed like she was dead.

"Kaela?" The panic came back again, just as it had started to fade.

"No. Not Philly," her voice was almost sad for a second before she snapped out of it. "There's a back room. A storage place. An old TV but awful reception. We can hang out there, there's a nice couch… oh don't give me that look, it's just to get avoid Dameon for a minute or two. Honestly…" she trailed off the way my detention chaperone had almost a week ago. Only a week.

"Come on, I don't want to drag you there." I stopped thinking and let her pull me to the other end of the hallway. I hadn't really noticed the third door on the way in, it was really inconspicuous. Just wood, not even interesting wood, it was just white. So I hadn't noticed it. Kaela sauntered quickly to the door and gestured me inside.

"Hurry up, Dameon won't wait forever." The room inside was almost bare, with only a small, hospital-type bed in the corner and one more door that probably led to a closet. And nothing else. At all.

"Nice, um, room." I said, checking to see if I missed something.

"It's Dameon's. He's not one for decorating. This way, keeping moving."

"We're going to hang out in Dameon's closet?"

"It's more of a storage area. But yes." Kaela loped across to the doors and thrust them opened. Just about then I realized that she didn't just walk, she ran. And she didn't just run, either, it was kind of a flow like some sort antelope or deer or one of those other creatures that jump and prance everywhere. It was weird.

I can't say that after the previous few rooms I was expecting much. Well I got 'much', just a little too much. I'm used to messy rooms, but this… well think of it this way. It was about a 10x10x7 space, and two steps in I was lost. Kaela was already sitting on a sagging, green couch, leaning back over the armrest, with her head against a stack of boxes labeled 'Lissa's stuffz!" How did she get there so fast? How did she even get there?

"Put your foot on that stool, and then just turn past the bookshelf."

"What?"

"I said-"

"I know, I just wasn't paying attention."

"Oh." She sounded disappointed. Couldn't figure out why. So I listened to her, and after some really awkward maneuvering and one book landing on my head I was within a few feet of her. She was lying across the entire couch and so I couldn't see her face from behind the armrest. The couch was worn and patchy, and it doesn't make any sense but she sort of fit with it, blended. "You don't have to stand, ya know," she started, not even righting herself enough to look at me.

Finding a place to sit wasn't easy. There was something that looked like a chair, maybe, but it was drowned in a couple of feet of debris, and I really wasn't in the mood to clean up, so I found an overturned bucket to sit on.

Kaela rolled to the side and looked me up and down a couple of times. "Um… okay, a bucket works, I guess… So, um… details," she said.

"Of what?" She looked down and gave me a funny sort of gaze that seemed to ask what else could she be talking about?

"You. What's your name, anyway?"

"Kyle."

"Well, I know that. Your last name." Her tone reminded me in some impossible way of Melissa. It was girlish. She didn't talk like that before. That was also weird, but then again, so were a lot of things. And it's kind of strange I was creeped out by that, considering the circumstances.

"Lansord, why?"

Her tone drained. Again. She was good at instant mood changes. "We have tracks to cover."

"What do you mean?"

"You got a family? Siblings?"

"Step-father, Paul."

"Ah, say no more. Abusive type right? Doesn't know you exist?" She laughed.

"No." Maybe I said it too sharply, because she patted me on the shoulder and nodded sympathetically. A guidance counselor move. She didn't believe me.

But she should have. There was nothing evil about my past, sure Paul could be a little on the stupid side, but, hell, he could cook. If you like pies, that is. That's about it. Pies and cobbler. Basically anything involving apples. But he was nice, I guess, and really he was my father. My parent's divorce went through when I was three months old, then my Mom left when I was two. So I don't really know why I call Paul my stepfather, I guess once I was old enough to know he's not my real Dad, the name just kind of stuck.

"Don't worry, we've all been there." She said it in such a way I wondered what happened to her. She noticed my silence and furrowed her brow, "Right? Isn't that why you ran away?"

"Well… what? I ran away?"

Awkward silence again as she worked through it. "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait… wait. If you didn't run away, then why were you here?"

"Spit didn't exactly tell me where we were going. And-"

"Well where did you think you were going?"

"Umm…" I guess she figured it out or something. Because she didn't ask again.

"Oh. So this double sucks for you."

Awkward pause. Then I decided I should say something.

"So, umm… where's the bathroom?"

Kaela looked up with an amused look. "You won't need one."

"Umm… ok." Well, what would you have said?

"Vampires don't need them. You're not a horror story reader?"

"Not really." I wasn't much of a reader at all, actually. I had better stuff to do.

"So what do you know?"

"They're the bloodsucker thingies." I paused, and Kaela didn't respond. Suddenly it felt like those classes where the teachers just wait for you to get to the right answer, and you have to come up with something else to say. So I just started talking stupidly. "You know, like, Dracula, and that movie with the guy that kills them and they explode or something, and um… and um…um… Say something!"

"Well, you're close. Bloodsuckers. Pretty much. And the sunlight thing. You know that, right?"

I nodded, of course I knew that, now if only I could have thought of it a moment ago.

"Hey, Kyle, how long do you think we've been in here for."

"I dunno, a few minutes. Why?"

"Dameon's probably coming by now. So ya wanna wait for him or try to hide from him for a few more minutes?"

"What good would it do to hide?"

"None, a few seconds, maybe. Waiting, it is." We sat in silence for a few seconds, looking around for Dameon. About half a minute passed and I was wondering if she had miscalculated or something when I realized he was standing there. Not walking there or calling to us, just standing like he'd been there for I don't know how long.

"Dameon." Kaela acknowledged his presence with no emotion, not even looking in his direction.

"Michaela," he said with a slight nod. "Kyle, your friend would like to talk with you."

"I'll kill him."

"In that endeavor, I wish you luck." The way he talked for some reason reminded me of a French guy. I don't know why, he didn't have that accent, but it's a feeling that's hard to shake.

I turned on my heels as best as I could considering the surrounding rubble and attempted to leave the room. It didn't work.

"Go back the way you came, Kyle." Kaela seemed slightly angry at me, and I didn't know why. Maybe it was a girl thing. Or a vampire thing. Either way, I followed through, and found myself maybe a little bruised but at the door.

"You know the way back." It wasn't a question from Kaela, it was a statement. And I did, it wasn't that far. So leaving her behind with a new mission on my mind and my anger flaring up once again, I half ran back to the other room, only slowing to a dignified walk about five paces from the open door.

Through the crack I saw most of the room had emptied, except for Spit and Alexei who were battling it out in some fast moving card game. It's hard to watch two vampires play like that, with hands flicking so rapidly that all you see is a blur. They were both so intent on their game they didn't even notice me as I walked in. Well, maybe Alexei did because his eyes shifted for just an instant, but he refused to really acknowledge me until the game ended, when suddenly Alexei slammed his hand onto one of two neat piles of cards. Spit stood up and flipped the table upside-down in one smooth, effortless motion. Cards flew out from under it in every direction and the room turned into a sort of paper-cut hell. Instinctively I shut my eyes from the flurries of little cardboard-paper squares. I didn't open them again until I heard a sort of squelchy-gasping noise. Spit was hanging in the air, with Alexei's hand at his throat.

"This… is… why… you… must… control… yourself!" Alexei choked out, the way that would make you think he was the one being choked.

It wasn't the lack of breathing that bothered Spit (vampires don't exactly need to breathe either) but apparently not having his feet on the ground messed with him, and he kicked wildly, but never once met his target. And with Spit still a foot off the ground, Alexei looked toward me.

"Dameon found you then. That girl needs a new hiding spot." The two of them, Dameon and Alexei, were really alike, I realized. Sure they all looked like teenage guys, but neither came close to being remotely normal. They were too… I don't know what the word is. But they were somewhat intimidating just to look at. I know how stupid that sounds but its true. Honest to god.

Alexei dropped Spit, who made unnecessarily dramatic gasping noises. "You have figured it out, no? The girl would have told you. And you know why I called you?"

I was watching Spit writhe continually on the floor, for no apparent reason. I didn't jerk that much when I ran into the wall. I guess he wanted attention or something. But either way, I didn't realize Alexei had asked a question until a few seconds of silence had passed.

"Oh, um… no."

"Then answer this. Were you aware of our existence before this afternoon?"

"No."

"Would you have been sympathetic?"

"Well…" I saw Spit writhing some more, he looked pathetic, but almost pitiful, "no, I guess not."

"Would you expose us?"

"No."

"Then shut up and listen. This is the only time you will here this, and this is perhaps the single most important lesson to learn. There are three rules. Only three." He paused to let this sink in. Spit had finally stopped jerking around and choking, and was slowly sitting up, evidently he hadn't heard these rules before.

"You lost control today, Kyle. You charged. You were lucky, you hit concrete. Had you hit the wood," he indicated the boarded up windows, "you would have cracked them. The noon sun would have killed us all." Kaela was right; he didn't beat around the bush. "That's rule number one, don't lose control." He looked at Spit, and barely flinching, he kicked him back down. "Remember that."

There was a silence hanging in the air for a few seconds. If it was possible, Alexei was even more violent by not moving, just standing there, with his foot on Spit's chest.

"The second rule, don't attack anyone more powerful than you. Humans are fair game, but other vampires will not hesitate to kill you. And you wouldn't stand a chance. That's rule two, don't do anything stupid." He stepped off Spit and Spit didn't waste a second. He scrambled to his feet and rushed a few yards away out of range.

"And the third rule," Alexei said, ignoring Spit, "is don't get hungry. Hunger can, will kill you. It will possess you and then we will destroy you. Did you eat before you came to us?"

I thought for a minute, and then remembered the peanut butter sandwich. "I… yes."

"Good, that will stave of the hunger for a few weeks. Real food is worth more than blood. You have time. In the meantime, don't leave the building. Explore, or something. When you do need to feed, we will work it out. You," he gestured at Spit, "will keep him under control. And watch yourself, too."

He walked out, without a goodbye, or a wave. He just left me and Spit standing there. There was another awkward silence as we turned to look at each other. The rage I expected didn't flood back into me. He still looked pitiful. He had that blank look again, but this time he was too pale, too shrunken to seem an enemy anymore. Then to my surprise, he smiled.

"Congratulations. I know, I attacked them too when I woke up. You took forever to get up, you know that? But that's behind us. And it's going to be sweet once we get the hang of it. So, come on, I sorted out your room last night. Okay it's a little cramped but it'll work. They weren't expecting two of us.

My first thought when he opened the door was broom closet, but it was a bit bigger than that. Then I realized it was half-decorated. With Spit's stuff.