5.

My cell phone is the thing that wakes me up.  Buzzing at the side of my hip, it knocks me back into consciousness.  Groggy, I pull myself up to sitting position.  The first thing I notice is the enormous pile of half-charred zombie bodies in front of me.  The second thing I notice is my enormous headache.  And the third thing I notice is that one of our motorcycles is missing.  Goddammit.  They escaped after all.

I reach down, grab my cell phone and flip it open.  It’s Misha.  By this point she’s most likely starving and confused and wondering how the hell to find someone and bite them.  I push the ignore button.  She’ll have to wait.

Besides, the time on the phone’s front says it’s an hour until sunlight, and the last place I want to be when day comes is not in my own comfy bed.

I slowly walk over to my kinsmen, legs rubbery, mouth strangely drier than usual.  They are still unconscious, and it takes a while to rouse them up.

As he wakes, Greg says, “What the hell just happened?”

“Not sure,” I say.  “I think the kid was involved, though.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” says Greg, and he slowly stands up and stretches his limbs.

Stacey and Lucie wake up shortly after, Stacey swearing up a storm because her napalm gun broke (I think she still has some pent up anger about us), Lucie just frustrated because she lost her target.  Lucie’s one of those people – dedicated toward one goal and one goal only, and if she doesn’t get it, she mopes around for a week.  Fortunately children don’t just dissipate into the air (unless they’re vampires), so she may curse under her breath, but the game is still out there.

“So now what do we do?”  Stacey asks, walking to the motorcycles.  “We’re short a bike, we’ve got nothing to show HQ.  Daylight is in an hour.  I’m fucking thirsty, and someone broke my goddamn napalm.”

“I think you broke your napalm when you fell on it, Stacey,” I say, picking up the random pieces of her broken napalm.

“Fuck you,” she delightfully replies.

“We’ve got blue on the horizon,” Greg curtly reminds us.  We all glance over at the beginnings of the dawn, which is apparently coming faster than any of us thought.  Typical weathermen for you; think they know when the sun will rise, but they’re never right.

“Stacey, you ride with Greg,” I say as I start walking to my bike.  The one that was stolen was Stacey’s, and she doesn’t look happy about it either.

“I don’t want to ride with Greg!  Where’s my fucking bike?”

“The werewolf and the kid stole it, dumbass,” says Kacie, usually reserved but seemingly impatient tonight.  She grabs her helmet from the bike’s seat.  “You’re a twig, Greg won’t notice at all.”

“She’s right, I won’t notice,” says Greg as he fits the helmet onto his head.

My hip vibrates again.  Misha must be in agony.  I hope she hasn’t run off.

“I don’t have a fucking helmet!” Stacey cries, and her voice has just the right amount of childlike color to it that it instantly makes the three of us laugh, which only pisses Stacey off more.  “Don’t fucking laugh at me!  What if we crash?  What if Greg skids the bike or something and my head goes crashing into the ground?  Do you not think about these things?”  She’s looking directly at me with this last line.

“I think about them all the time, sweetie.  Now get on the bike.”

Stacey swears under her breath as she gets behind Greg on his motorcycle.  Kacie has flipped open her cell phone and is making a very important call to the cleanup crew of human apprenti who will be cleaning this mess up.  Good thing it’s in vampire territory – humans would have a lot more explaining to do about this than we do.  The fire is out, the smell of burnt flesh is fading.  The sky is lightening.  We take off.

++

When I open the door to my apartment, Misha is curled up in the fetal position next to the door.  I can’t tell if she’s in torpor or if she’s just lost her mind.  Her eyes are closed, and judging from the faint scratch marks on the walls and door, I can tell she was aching to get out.  I gingerly step over her nubile body and head to the windows, sliding the heavy dark curtains over the pane before sunlight breaks.  My body aches and I’m exhausted.  I remove my leather jacket and my belt with various anti-zombie and werewolf weaponry attached.

My eyes move back to Misha.  She is draped in a white slip, the spaghetti straps dangling at her arms.  Her head rests heavily on the floor.  She looks lost, even in sleep.

Despite my extreme desire to sleep, I crouch down, crawling to her.  When I am close I can feel her breath on my skin.  Involuntary habits are hard to break.  A vampire’s breath is stale and cold.  It’ll take her a few years for her body to fully adjust.  I know mine hasn’t yet.

I crawl over her body, until I’m somewhat behind her.  Wrapping my arm under her head for support, I gently lift her up into my arms, her head resting against my chest.  She is cold.  The wounds from my fangs are healing quickly.  Blood still stains her skin, though her slip is clean – she put it on after the bite.

I take a deep breath – then laugh immediately.  Habits really are hard to break.  Bracing for the pain, I bear my teeth, roll up my sleeve and bite into my wrist.  Just a small bite, don’t want my life fluids gushing out.  Then I place the open wound on Misha’s lips.  She, already roused by the smell of fresh blood, suckles on the wound instantly, and all tension in her body ceases to be.  The sucking is sloppy at first, but then it’s gentle and soothing.  Misha mewls like a kitten, and I smile.

Making a vampire is easy.  You just find someone you want to feed off of and bite them.  Three things happen after that – most of the time, they turn into vampires.  Occasionally they die, mostly when you’re starving and you suck all the blood right out of them.  And some don’t become vampires.  They just lose some blood and wake up the next morning like nothing happened except a minor flesh wound.  No one really knows why this is.  Most of the people in that third category are snatched up by the human government for testing.  Most never come back.

So making a vampire is easy.  But siring a vampire ... that take work.  And sacrifice.  Diligence.  Loyalty.

My sire was a six-hundred year old Native American man from the plains of the Midwest.  He was also my third true love.  His blood tastes like the sweetest agave nectar.

Misha’s sire will be a former 26-year-old, current 3-year-old vampire who still forgets to not breathe.

 I hope my blood tastes as good.

++

“Where are you now?”

I glance up at the flickering neon sign.  “The Sunshine Inn.  In a town called Avery.  Listen, Eddie and I are exhausted.  It’s been a long night.  We’re both fine, we didn’t get bitten by anything.  We just need sleep.”

“Sam, I want to see my son,” says Kacey, her voice quivering.

“You’ll see him.  I swear to you, we’re going to take a nap and then I’ll be on my way.  We’re on a motorcycle and I’m beat.  If my eyes glaze over while I’m driving we could be hamburger on the freeway.  Just trust me, okay?  We got out alive, and it’s daylight, so there won’t be any vamps following us.  Or zombies, I hope.”

I hope is right.  Someone had to tell those z’s where we were going.  The smarties may have some kind of loose hive mind with Jason, but they don’t all have that, do they?  Jason is the central hub of a large conduit of “smart” zombies, who in turn control the unnatural mass of “dumb” zombies as best they can.  This means if there is a mole, then Jason knows who it is.

“You really think there’s someone on the inside?” Kacey asks, as if reading my thoughts.

“I don’t know.  How else would z’s get there?  And vamps?  They were both looking for Eddie, and ... and for whatever was inside Patrick.”

There is a brief silence, and suddenly I feel like Kacey knows more about this.  “What was inside Patrick?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“You’re lying,” I press.

“Whether or not I’m lying is irrelevant right now,” she says, “because I’m not going to discuss politics while my son is not within my sight.”

“He’s sleeping, Kac, do you want me to wake him?”

“No,” she concedes.

“He’s snoring?  Do you want to hear him snore?”

She chuckles.  A pause.  Then,

“Maybe.”

I walk over to Eddie’s bedside, sitting on the bed opposite him.  I hold the phone to his face.  His snoring is light and childlike.  I can hear Kacey burst into tears on the other end, and I quickly pull the phone away, so that her sobbing doesn’t wake up Eddie.

“You see?” I say.

“Thank you,” she replies, in between sobs.

“Now I hate to be a party pooper but I’m going to sleep.  I’ll call you in a couple of hours, guaranteed.  If I’m still out of it by then I’ll sleep more, but I should be okay.  Okay?”

“Okay,” says Kacey.  “Thank you.”

“No problem.  I’m just sorry I couldn’t get him to a safehouse sooner.”

We say goodbye and I hang up, quickly punching in a time two hours from now when my phone’s alarm will wake me up so that I can give a status update to Kacey.  She was, in fact, worried sick, as was everyone else in our clan.  They were minutes away from issuing an Amber Alert when I called, thinking that if Eddie or me or Patrick hadn’t shown up by daylight that we were probably kidnapped by vampires.  Which would’ve been the case had we not been swamped by zombies.

Throwing my shoes off, I lay on top of the covers, still in my clothes which smell of sweat and zombie stink.  Eddie’s snoring has faded, leaving me to my own thoughts, which suddenly cascade into being like a flash flood.  Where did the zombies come from?  Where did the vampires come from?  And why two different sets of vampires?  The first set were likely Rohrsachs, and the second were confirmed Teresinis ... those two families are always fighting for turf, but never for objects – or people.  The Rohrsachs are a notoriously Luddite family – no phones, no computer, nothing.  Once they are vampires they rely solely on their vamp abilities to make it in the world.  If there were castles in America they would surely live in them.

Teresinis, on the other hand, are slightly more technologically inclined.  Obviously if they were riding motorcycles instead of turning into bats or cats or whatever it is they want to become.  So they both have nothing in common when it comes to items.  Why, then, did those vamps rip into Patrick to get that pendant?  Why didn’t they just come after Eddie?  Apparently everyone knows about Eddie now except me, and that’s a little frustrating.

I look at Eddie.  Just what is your deal, kid?

And that’s the last thing I remember before I fall asleep.