The survivors assembled onto the ground floor. They had grown so accustomed to the vampire drills that few of them expressed genuine concern over the Dusk Hunters successfully protecting them. When the alarm had been drilled by Joseph, they had known precisely what to do: stay calm and stick together. Such experiences had become a weekly occurrence in the Wastelands.
Despite the fact Vincent felt his entire world had been tossed into a blender, he had to remain calm. His fear would spread through the bunker like wildfire. Sending the shelter into an upheaval wasn’t what he needed prior to leading an attack.
“Close the doors as soon as we leave,” Vincent ordered, pulling on his bulletproof vest. He flitted through the armory rack nailed to the entrance door and slung a handful of weapons into his pockets and over his strong shoulders. “No one gets in or out of here unless they say the code. Got it?”
Joseph nodded, already prepared to leave. “I’ll make sure the civvies know the drill, Vin.”
“This might not just be a drill,” Vincent warned, grinding his teeth. “Just make sure nobody leaves. We don’t know how many are out there.”
Or why they were just…waiting for them.
“Vin…”
He swirled around and blinked at his wife, who stood immobilized beside him, her eyes large and glistening.
“Come back to me, you hear?”
“‘Course I will,” Vincent whispered, cupping the nape of her neck. He tilted her gaze upward and forced their eyes to meet. “You go on and sit real tight, Bumblebee. Take Noah with you. I won’t be long. Where’s Claire?”
“I’m here, Uncle Vin. Ms. Juna says I can has more cake!”
“You eat as much as you want, kiddo.” Vincent stroked a hand through her hair. He felt Noah press against his back, his small hands clutching his padded uniform. Vincent caressed his shoulder, giving him a squeeze that said everything will be all right. “I want you both to be good for Bella, okay? I’m just going on another hunting trip but I’ll be back before dawn.”
“We can play hide and seek,” Bella suggested, taking Claire’s hand. “Uncle Vin will be back soon, Claire Bear. How about we play a game until then?”
“We gets to hide anywhere?” Claire’s colorless eyes expanded into saucers. “Oh, yes! Yes, please!”
She practically dragged Bella and Noah away with her, waving her white cane frantically from side to side. Bella glanced over her shoulder and caught Vincent’s lingering gaze. Her eyebrows were knitted together, and a panicked look had taken her face.
I’ll keep my promise, Vincent thought, as he proceeded into the tunnel with the other Dusk Hunters. I’ll kill these monsters and keep our family safe.
“Emory. Your first day out in the field begins here. You ready?”
His nephew stood rigidly at the main entrance, a long poleaxe wielded in both hands. A good weapon of choice for his first hunt. He would be able to attack at close range without giving away their position.
“As I’ll ever be, sir.”
Vincent gave him the once-over. It was a shame Emory had grown to be smaller than the others. At nineteen, he was half the size of the average Dusk Hunter, and his padded, onyx uniform twice too long for his limbs. But his eyes blazed like Vincent’s had before his first hunt, and he even had the same red bandana tied around his mouth for protection from the sand. Bella had probably kept that as a souvenir and passed it down to him.
Soon, it would be Noah standing there, ready to save the world with his old man and brothers.
“Then let’s kill some leeches.” Vincent cocked his gun, loaded the silver bullets, and looked to the horizon. The shape had fortunately remained stagnant and a rush of goosebumps broke over his body. Vampires rarely stayed motionless for long.
“As if I’m gonna let you go without me.” Violet barged through the entrance, guns, bow, and twin-bladed sword at the ready. She had the same padded uniform on, except her bandana was as lilac as her hair, and she had a pair of infrared goggles slung over her head.
Vincent spared her a glance. “Negative. Get your ass back inside, Vy.” When his sister refused to budge, he eyed her husband dispassionately. “Well? Do something.”
“She won’t listen.”
“What if I get an injury again? What if I die?” Violet rolled her almond eyes at them, adjusting her holster. “Aren’t these questions we ask ourselves every darn day? Then just let me do what I do best. Now, if you ladies excuse me while I go kick some vampire butt. Thank you.”
She strutted by the other hunters, yanked up her bandana, and the entrance closed with the finality of a slammed coffin lid.
By the time the Dusk Hunters traipsed through the desert, Vincent sensed there was something amiss. The winds were strong, the sky painted blood-red, and tumbleweed drifted up and down like kites. But the figures did not move.
Vincent had claimed them to be vampires, yet the closer he and his hunters verged toward the invasion, the less activity Joseph’s scanner produced. If the lump was a group of bloodsuckers feeding like Vincent had suspected, then why weren’t they displaying on the scanner? Sure, the machine was temperamental at the best of times. However, Vincent had been convinced in his mind the creatures were vampires.
Out in the open plains of the desert, there was nowhere for the hunters to hide. It meant they were stripped of the element of surprise, making them work harder and faster at capturing their prey. In a way, it was like charging into battle. They couldn’t sneak up on their foe. They marched toward them, as they did then with the leeches.
The growling of a nearby creature roused Vincent’s attention. He turned guns at the ready, only to see a lone bobcat watching them from behind a cluster of thorny shrubs and cacti.
“Wow,” Emory said, then gave a low, drawn-out whistle. “They’re still alive? I’ve never seen one in real life before.”
The creature’s ears pricked forward, its large, black eyes switching between Vincent and Emory.
“Easy now,” Vincent murmured, lowering his gun. “We ain’t here to hurt you.”
The hunters, including his nephew, resumed their march. Vincent gazed at the cat for a moment longer, before he turned and rejoined his group.
They moved between the saguaros, their footfalls dragging through the sand until they had a steady distance from the scene ahead. Were they vampires? It was hard to decipher, especially with the way they were…stacked together, so to speak. And the dust-filled wind clouded his perception, making it difficult to see clearly.
After a moment of silence, Abraham shielded his eyes against the wind and let out a nervous laugh. “They ain’t vampires. They’re human bodies.”
“Joseph, what’s your scanner saying?” Vincent asked, voice muffled through his bandana.
“Still broke. It ain’t detecting no bloodsuckers.”
“What do you reckon it is, then?” Emory probed, his voice more chipper than the others.
“I don’t know. But standing here won’t figure it out.” Violet sheathed her sword and stepped forward. She was the fastest and most nimble of the hunters. While Violet investigated the cryptic lifeform, the hunters covered her and gradually closed in.
Behind Vincent’s shoulder, their footprints traced back to the shelter, and overheard, toward the horizon, the tall, rapier-like walls of Sanctuary Hope captured his line of sight. The city was a beacon of hope, so tempting and so utterly unthinkable.
“Vincent.”
Vincent started out of his reverie. “What is it, Vy?”
“Well, it is bodies but they aren’t vampires… At least, not yet, anyway.”
“What d’you mean?” Joseph approached her carefully, as did the others, their senses on full alert.
“See for yourself.” Violet jumped back and thrust her sword into the sand.
Vincent didn’t have to see for himself. He could smell them. Whatever humans the bodies had once been were now transforming into bloodsuckers.
“They’re…incubating,” Vincent said, his gaze tumbling over the pile of bodies. “Out in the sun?”
Not that the sun killed all vampires, but the situation was—
“Suicide,” his sister muttered, shaking her ponytail from side to side. “Whoever dumped them out here didn’t want them turned. They’re dying.”
“Then why bother dumping them at all?” Emory nudged a body with the base of his axe. The blade singed through its clothes and left a prominent, red streak. “Why not just…dispose of them?”
Feed on them and dump their bodies, more like.
“Maybe they wanted to send us a message.” Violet shrugged, though try as she might, Vincent could see her hands trembling, and they instinctively went to her stomach, where a vampire had fatally damaged her womb in a hunting trip last summer. Old Bill Waters, a retired surgeon, had treated the injury as best he could, but the emergency hysterectomy rendered Violet infertile.
Something in his sister had changed that day. She became less sympathetic to the suffering outside and rarely ever seemed to laugh or smile. Vincent knew her better than anyone—better than her husband—and she had never truthfully desired children. Not in their world. But there was a vast difference between not wanting children and having the right stolen from you.
If Vincent had just left the trailer park and gone home when Violet suggested, they wouldn’t have been ambushed while out scavenging for supplies. He’d never forgiven himself. As their leader, it was his job to protect them. And that day he hadn’t.
At any rate, the vampires using the incubators to deliver a message sickeningly made sense. But why now? If they knew of the group’s location, then why hadn’t they attacked instead of leaving damn breadcrumbs?
Vincent turned to Abraham, who had become uncharacteristically silent. “Abe?”
Abraham jolted. “Fewer sightings every week, then suddenly we get a stack of ‘em cooking out here like pancakes?” He pulled down his scarf and spat a piece of gum into the sand. “Something ain’t right.”
“I’ve been saying that shit for months!” Joseph barked. “While we’re out here cooking with these sad motherfuckers, our people are probably back there fearing for their lives. Let’s burn the bodies and go.”
“Hurry with it, then,” Vincent ordered, his focus glued to the bodies. He couldn’t peel his eyes away.
As soon as they burned the bloodsuckers, they could return to the shelter and then figure out exactly what had happened.
More importantly, why.
Vincent prayed to the Gods he hadn’t been lured into a trap. Surely, Vincent couldn’t have been so foolish? So blind to reality? He’d already mistaken the bodies as vampires. Now, he had dragged his hunters onto the desert and left his family alone at the shelter. Of course, they were far safer than the hunters were about to be, but they were alone.
What if the bodies had been a decoy?
Vincent’s stomach heaved and churned. He grabbed the tank of gasoline from Emory’s backpack and poured the contents over the bodies. Without hesitation, he struck a match and threw the flame onto the ground. The bodies combusted into a gorging fire, the flames licking and devouring every ounce of flesh.
With the fire raging into the heavens, Vincent turned and continued his trek across the desert.
“Get back to base. Now,” he growled over his shoulder.
His heart pounded against his ribcage, and the desire to run back to the shelter pervaded his every thought. Stay calm. Focus. You’re the leader of the group, for chrissakes. Hold your shit together.
As they traipsed back home, the hunters were silent for some time, each lost in their own contemplation. Violet and Joseph had ventured farther ahead, leaving Abraham, Emory, and Vincent within close proximity. It wasn’t until the shelter swelled into sight that the silence broke.
“Well, my first hunt could have been much worse,” Emory began, grinning up at Vincent. His features were so like Xavier’s in his youth. “We could’ve actually found a coven of vampires.”
“Oh, there is still time yet,” someone replied, and it didn’t come from one of the hunters. “Though, I must say, a government shelter? How utterly mortal of you.”
Vincent’s lips slapped together, and he was unable to draw a single breath. His lungs clenched, constricting his airways, and an icy sweat broke out over him.
What kind of sorcery is this?
His limbs turned heavy as if filled with lead, and he stood stagnant, unable to move.
Emory and Abraham dropped to their knees, hands shielding their eyes and ears.
“Aaaargh!” Emory hunched into himself, the veins popping from his temple and hands. Black, spidery lines, a serpentine substance, moved through him, writhing and thickening.
Vincent moved his lips, tried to utter his name, to comfort him, but no words came. Abraham rolled onto his back, his bloodied hands clenched over his ears, and black tears trickled from his eyes. The same fell from Emory’s.
The same evil polluted their bloodstreams.
“What…kind of vampire…is this?”
A First Born.
Vincent tried to answer Abraham, pained, yet again, to discover he could not. He could do nothing but watch his group succumb to agony.
He had never encountered a First Born before but he had heard tales from Cadmus about the powers an ancient vampire possessed. They were the oldest of their kind. If the bloodsucker was a First Born, the hunters were truly and utterly fucked.
In the far distance, Violet and Joseph screamed into the dunes, and Vincent bet they endured the same torment as the others. He had to find a way to help them. Escape. But his muscles hardened again, snaking under his skin like worms through a pile of dirt.
If he could…just…move…
“Fear not,” the monster breathed into his ear, so close he could feel its warmth. “They cannot see nor hear me, Vincent. Only you.”
Ghostly hands snaked up his spine and paused at the base of Vincent’s throat. As soon as the vampire touched him, his bones slackened and he could breathe again. But not enough to fight back. His bones felt detached from his being.
His hunters continued to scream, paralysed by the vampire’s excruciating influence.
“Fight me like a man, you bloodsucker… Let me see you so I can cut off that fucking head!”
The vampire clicked his tongue. “I have worked up quite the appetite watching you destroy my men dusk after dusk. Mmm… I can hear your heartbeat speeding up, precious meat. It smells so delicious.”
As the creature’s tongue lapped at Vincent’s neck, instincts took hold of him. His bones stiffened, his heartbeat elevated, and his mind screamed for him to attack. His desire for vengeance freed him of the paralysis. He pivoted on his heel, forcing the sword into whatever awaited him.
The vampire restrained the blade as though it were a string of rope. Blood trickled between his long fingers and down his wrist, soaking into an ivory cloak. Vincent glared into those merciless, crimson depths.
“What do you want?”
A smile crept onto the vampire’s face. “I want you to suffer.”
“Then kill me already.”
“That would bring me no pleasure. You took something important to me, hunter. Now, look ahead. Do you see them? It is only fair I return the favor.”
The vampire pressed Vincent’s body against his chest. With the creature latched on to him, he was forced to stare ahead. Then he saw them, outside the shelter, his wife and child.
Kneeling at the mercy of a pack of vampires, a gun held to their skulls.
“No!”
“Yes,” the vampire chuckled. “Resist me. I find it amusing. Futile but amusing.”
“You touch them, and I will fucking destroy you!”
“What if I want you to destroy me?” He slid a hand down Vincent’s chest, his clawed nails slicing through his padded vest. “Or what if I want you to feel the same pain as I?”
What the hell? The sick fucker was getting off on holding Vincent against him. The whoosh of hot breath fanning down his cheeks, the slight tickle of fangs on heated flesh, and the hardened cock were a dead giveaway. If he had wanted Vincent to suffer, he would have tried harder.
“Three generations at my fingertips. Do you not wish to save them?” He blew into Vincent’s ear. Sharp fangs grazed the side of his neck. “Do you not want them to remain alive?”
Vincent’s heart raced so wildly its thrashing drowned out everything else. Fragments of the vampire’s words registered in his head.
“Of course I do!”
“Then go.” The vampire’s hands withdrew, freeing him. “Save them. I will even give you a head start.”
Vincent ran.
Even if it was a sick ruse, a nightmare, or gut-wrenching reality, he forced his boots into the sand, kicked back and ran. He ran so fast his legs and arms trembled with exertion, and every breath he dragged inside clawed at his lungs and labored his breathing. Gusts of sand spat into his eyes, the wind tore at his clothes, but he pressed on through the storm. The one raging in his heart was far greater than any extremity descending upon him.
They were only thirty metres away. “I’m nearly there, babies… Stay where I can see you…”
Panting, Vincent withdrew his sword and charged forward.
A flash of varicolored fire spewed out from the top of the shelter.
The impact of the explosion sent Vincent spiralling onto his back, and the world around him turned black.
Splayed across the sand, Vincent covered his eyes from the shrapnel spitting through the air. His ears felt like someone had taken an ice pick to them, and a sledgehammer to his bones. For a while, he could see or hear nothing.
Pain shredded him when he attempted to sit up. His pants had been torn below the knees, and a large chunk of metal pierced his shin. Hissing, Vincent yanked out the object and used parts of his ripped clothing as a bandage.
He straightened, looked ahead, and gazed at the shelter as though he were in a dream.
There remained but a pile of wreckage and strong gusts of ash billowing into his eyes.
“Bella!”
No answer.
No sight of her.
His panic rose, sending his mind into overdrive.
Was he dreaming? He had to be. They had been right there.
“Answer me! Noah… Claire… Now!”
“The survivors are trapped inside.” Violet clawed at the bricks blocking the entrance, sending puffs of dust wheezing in the air. “We must get them out and to Sanctuary Hope. They’ll need aid, food, supplies, any help we can get. Joseph, start digging with me. What the devil are you waiting for?”
Joseph pointed to the rubble at the side of the entrance—where Noah and Bella had stood.
Vincent’s world came to a standstill. Beneath the layers of debris and scraps of seared flesh, a mane of blonde hair streamed through the cracks. Vincent’s body no longer felt attached to him. His legs sprinted on their own, his hands clawed at the bricks until his fingers bled and tears blackened his vision. Then he heard it. The word had given him his world the moment first uttered, and now destroyed it.
“D-dad…”
Vincent plunged into the wreckage, tossing brick after brick over his shoulder. He wedged but a single gap in which he saw his son, mangled beneath the rubble.
“Over here!” Vincent scrambled for more bricks, his broken plea alien even to him. “Somebody help me get them out!”
He vaguely registered Violet coming to his aid. Time ran differently the moment he saw Bella crushed under the chaos, then when he heard Noah… He could see only them and getting them to safety. His life had always been about protecting them.
His family.
He had to get them out…
He had to keep going…
Couldn’t stop…
Wouldn’t stop until he saw them…till his last breath…almost there…
“Vincent, stop it. They’re out! Stop digging, brother, we’ve got them.”
Violet, and a badly wounded Abraham, placed a hand on Vincent’s shoulder and pulled him back. He hadn’t realized Bella and Noah had been pried to safety and laid on the sand. Bella, resting peacefully, with her beautiful complexion now charred and her soft, wavy hair covered in blood, and their son beside her, his hand clenched in hers.
Her wedding ring caught the sun and the light reflected in Vincent’s eyes, blinding him.
Knowing his wife had already been killed, Vincent dropped onto the ground beside Noah. Violet offered him a sip from her canteen, but Noah choked, and the water rushed aimlessly down his chin. Blood gushed down his small body, turning his hair into crisps and his teeth black.
“S-sorry…everyone…” His eyes grew large, glistened, and the wind blew sand into them.
Vincent wiped the dust away, stroked a thumb down his dimpled cheeks, and gently hushed him.
“I tried to…stop them, Dad…but th-they—”
“Shh, son, shh.” Vincent cradled Noah’s body to his chest and kissed his forehead. When he pulled away, droplets of blood painted his trembling lips. “Don’t speak. Hold on for me, all right, but don’t speak.” Had Vincent really uttered those words? His voice came out small, so weak, so unlike him. “I need you to stay strong for me, okay? We’re gonna get you somewhere safe. Just hold on for me.”
“I’m sorry, Dad…”
“Baby boy, it’s okay. You’re going to be okay. Hush now. Stop apologizing.”
“But, mother… I… I didn’t—”
Noah’s last breath hitched in his throat. His hand slowly drifted from his mother’s, and his body fell limp in Vincent’s arms. His sweet, innocent, brave little eyes widened into unblinking orbs, and a solitary drop of blood dripped from his chin.
His body still felt warm in Vincent’s arms.
He couldn’t possibly be dead?
“Don’t you fall asleep on me, boy! You hear me now? Stay awake for me, son, for God’s sake…stay awake.”