INTERLUDE

"Do you smell that?" The pack leader snorted in breath, his nose lifted high in the air.

His second gave a growl of laughter. "Yes, we are close. It is vampire blood, a silly vampire at that."

The rest of the pack laughed. They were on the hunt and knew that they were closing in.

"Soon we will feast on vampire flesh. We shall pick our teeth with their bones and howl through the rest of the night in an ecstasy of vampire blood. Lianndra, Lianndra, Lianndra!"

They all took up the chant, their voices different from each other’s, some high and some low, but they all held that same madness and bloodlust.

"Lianndra, Lianndra, Lianndra!"

DEZI

Lianndra moved so fast that she had trouble keeping up, but she tried. How he was tracking Chris was a mystery to her; she couldn’t understand how he did it. Then again, Lianndra had always been a more powerful vampire. Maybe that gave him a power she didn’t have?

Suddenly, as they were leaping from one building to the next, he swerved in mid-air to fall a hundred feet and land lightly on top of a parked car.

Dezi cursed and followed suit--only she landed a lot harder than he did. He had landed so lightly there wasn’t a mark on the car. When she landed, there was a mark. A big one.

The whole roof of the car was dented in. It was bent so far that the roof was resting on the seats inside.

"Oops," she laughed, feeling silly. She hadn’t done anything that stupid for so long that she had to laugh at her mistake. It was either that or cry.

Lianndra paused and looked back at her. He made a disgusted face and came to help her out of the car.

With one hand on one side of the hole and the other on the other side of the hole, he pulled. With a shriek of tortured metal, the roof parted to allow her to wriggle free.

"Sorry about that," Dezi apologized.

He gave her a flat look and turned to continue on the trail of Chris.

She sighed. Lianndra was like that sometimes. It was as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders and knew that there would never be a reprieve for him. It was sad really.

Lianndra had been at it for so long that it was almost as though he had lost his ability to have fun. All he could do was worry about the things around him. Even as she thought that, he suddenly threw back his head and gave a loud howl that rang from building to building. It was an unearthly sound, a sound people living in the mountains and woods would have recognized as something to fear.

She felt a chill. She hadn’t heard anything like that since that time in Siberia when she had run into the well-known wolf everyone called One-Eyed Demon. He hadn’t lived through it, but it had been a terrible thing nonetheless, especially when he tried to call on his pack. He had the kind of call that made even vampires shake in their boots.

Lianndra turned to look at her and Dezi saw with horror that he had given over to his vampire side.

Some vampires had been known to do it. They set aside the last scraps of their humanity to fully become the killers that all vampires are deep down inside. They accepted the darkness within them and the magic that their vampire sides offered.

When a vampire took on his or her full power they became true beings out of nightmare, something for all creatures to fear, mortal and immortal alike. Their fangs stayed fully visible and they Hungered always. Their eyes became wild and insane as the smells of the world constantly assaulted their heightened senses. They were inhuman killing machines with no care for the consequences of their actions. They would kill anything that got in their way, even other vampires.

They were known as the Forsaken because once they let their vampire sides take over, there was no going back. They were stuck like that forever, horrible beings killing and Feeding with no thought, their personalities burned away by their insane Hunger.

She had never imagined that such a thing could happen to Lianndra, yet here he was, his eyes wild in his moon-pale face, his teeth sparking in the light. He had given over to his vampire self so that they could find Chris, but after that she knew what had to be done. She would have to gather together some backup and destroy him. She would have to kill Lianndra.

INTERLUDE

"Are you sure that this is the way?" the pack leader asked his second.

The second snickered. He was small compared to all of the others, had in fact been the runt of his litter. The only thing that had allowed him to rise so high in the hierarchical structure of the pack was his intelligence. He was smarter than every other member of the pack was, the only problem was that he knew he was and lorded it over the others. Only the need to keep him alive to come up with fresh ideas had kept the others from killing him long ago.

He snorted one more laugh. "Of course this is the way. The instructions we received were very good. They made it clear that these are the directions we must take to reach the place where the vampires mass together."

"Will we be enough to take care of them all?"

"Of course," the runt said with a cocky grin. "We are many and they are few. They are so self-confident of their mastery of the lower species that they no longer even bother to guard against them, which means they won’t be ready for us when we get there."

The pack leader snorted in a breath. "You better be right or you shall never see another moonrise."

The runt slit his eyes. "Do not worry, I never make mistakes, never. Lianndra will die and we shall have what we search for."

The rest of the pack had been snuffling at the air, trying to catch the sweet fragrance of vampires. Mortals were good to eat, but vampires were tastier and they smelled better.

DEZI

After her initial fear of Lianndra ending up as one of the Forsaken, she saw that he hadn’t given himself over completely. He was still in there, lurking in the shadows of his own mind. It was almost as if he had taken over the aspect of the Forsaken on purpose, as if he knew that no matter how far he went, he could always come back. But that was impossible, not even Tispith had that kind of power and control.

It was well known that anyone that gave up his or her humanity could never get it back again. It was gone forever. They were Forsaken forever after, no matter how strong and sure they had been. They were lost and would never find their way back. Lianndra couldn’t return to the way he was before, he couldn’t.

But even as Dezi watched, he held a hand out to her, a regular hand, not the monstrous claw of one that had given over completely. His hands were still the long fingered ones that she remembered. His fingernails were still clear and delicate, shining as if they were wet.

The only things about him different from before was the way his eyes kept focusing and unfocusing as he looked around. They were the eyes of a wild animal, not the cultured person he was. Also, his fangs gleamed from between his slightly parted lips.

With only a momentary pause for consideration, she took his hand, cool flesh against cool flesh. His fingers squeezed hers tightly as he did something impossible. He shimmered and dematerialized, his skin becoming transparent like some kind of modern day movie ghost. Looking down at her free hand, she saw that she was as transparent as he was. She could see through her own bones.

Dezi opened her mouth to speak but closed it when he raised his hand. All she could do was follow him silently as he led her along the suddenly still street, their feet not touching the ground.

As she watched, he stepped through a parked car as if it wasn’t there, their joined hands making her follow him through it. It was as if she was walking through a delicate mist that prickled against her skin. It even passed through her clothes. It was as if she were nude, which, when she looked down, she saw that she was. Lianndra was too.

Looking back over her shoulder, she saw that both of their clothes were heaped in two piles on the sidewalk. They hadn’t changed with them. Looking back at Lianndra she felt as she had so many years ago when she had first met him. He was the most beautiful being in this world or any other. He was like some precious gift given to the world and it was her duty to protect him.

Dezi was not used to thinking such strange things, but in her state of disembodiment it felt right. For along with her clothes she had left behind all of the prejudices and petty dislikes. All there was, was a feeling of cleanliness, as if she had been reborn in a two hundred-year-old body already filled with knowledge and life.

She laughed and pirouetted around Lianndra’s hand, feeling like the carefree child she once had been so long ago. It felt as if she had been given a second chance to enjoy her life to the fullest, and she planned to take it.

"Where are we going?" she asked in a voice like rain.

"I have no idea, but we are close behind Chris, I can feel him just up ahead," he answered in a voice like nothing she had ever heard before. It was like snow falling, moonlight, the stars shining down, it was quiet and peaceful, serene. It was everything wonderful in the world mixed together to fill one person.

Laughing, she began to run, her hand melded to his. He followed with a laugh of his own.

For the moment they were the innocent children they might have been if they had been allowed to grow up like regular mortals. Their cares were still there, but they didn’t seem so all-powerful and all consuming. As everyone knows, anything is manageable if you take it in stride. Anything can be handled.

They ran through the city streets, laughing and calling out to the innocent and unnoticing mortals. Their words were spoken in the way of all ghosts, ethereal and unrealized by regular beings.

And so they journeyed through the city, a vague flicker out of the corner of the eye, moving so quickly as to be like a breeze. As in breezes, they moved so fast that they looked to be standing still. A breeze may look slow and lazy, but in reality it might be moving so fast and strong that it can pick up something as light as a feather or hat, or as heavy as a house.

Somehow Lianndra kept track of the trail they were following, even as they moved so fast that they could barely see themselves. When he made decisions about which way to turn, she automatically knew. They were connected through their joined hands, mind to mind, heart to heart and soul to soul.

Even though they were connected, she kept out of his mind, knowing that to delve into the depths of his consciousness would be wrong, most likely resulting in either a loss of self or Lianndra’s personality being washed away under hers. If something like that happened, one of them might be gone at its end, either that or both would be one person, either Dezi or Lianndra, with the same person in both bodies. Somehow she knew that it wouldn’t be her that was left. Lianndra was too powerful to let something like that happen to himself.

So all she did was listen carefully for the things he sent and followed the sub-vocal commands he gave. There weren’t many, but she followed each one to the letter, even going so far as to follow the commands he just thought about sending, like when they passed through an office building.

She had never felt so free and complete as now, it was as though Lianndra was the final component to her own perfection, it was amazing.

Even though she made sure not to go too far into his psyche, she discovered many things. She found that because of his early change--his youth at the time--he had never developed the hormonal rush that most teenagers went through. In a sense, he was completely asexual. He saw no need to be with anyone, either for physical or emotional release. Also, in his mind, it was like he was both male and female, neither one farther along than the other, both about equal in the stabilizing of his personality.

He was also the most merciless killer she had ever known, and she had met quite a few. Was one herself.

After awhile, every vampire found that they liked the hunt and the kill, thinking of the mortals as nothing more than bugs to be squashed. Eventually, it became nothing in their heads, just something to do as they waited for more excitement to come along.

Lianndra was different. He felt no need to kill, but he did it anyway. He recognized mortals as living breathing beings that felt pain and torment, and yet he didn’t care. He recognized the beauty that filled them, the intelligence that suffused them, the hungers that powered their need to survive, and yet he still killed them by the dozens. He felt guilt and remorse, but still didn’t care. He didn’t like to kill them, but he did it just the same.

It was as if she had been splashed with cold water. She had always thought Lianndra was like the others, not caring if something was alive or not, but now she knew that he was worse. He knew the very thoughts and feelings that drove men, but he killed them simply for the reason that they were there to be killed. He didn’t feel guilt that he killed them, but at the simple fact that they didn’t get to finish their tasks.

It was a horrible thing to see in another thinking mind. It was like the person that glances down at a helpless bunny rabbit and thinks about the many children that love the bunny when they see it busily hopping by, but that still step on it. The heel of their boot crunching on the fragile body, listening to the squeal of death approaching. Then, when the bunny is dead and the deed is done, they wipe off their boot and think about what they have done and feel bad. Then they go after another bunny or other harmless creature, always to feel that same guilt, but still not caring and stopping.

Yet at the same time she got the information out of Lianndra’s mind, she didn’t feel disgust or disillusionment. In her state of disembodiment, she had no care for the things he had done, they were all things that had taken place in the past and so did not matter.

Besides, there was the horror of the things she herself had done, the things that she didn’t like to think about. Like that little fling she had when she was in Rio and went a little too wild with the drugs. The hotel room would never be the same. The bodies had kind of changed the whole environment from welcoming to terrifying for any mortals that came to stay there. Thirty-six young men and women, all dead, completely drained of their blood and life.

In her disembodied state, she truly realized for the first time that what she had done was wrong. Yet there was something about it that had the ring of truth to it.

Lianndra turned his head to her and smiled his beautiful smile. "You have finally discovered the secret of life: everything is planned. The beginnings of life… and the end. We vampires are tools of destruction."

A chill shivered through her.

When Lianndra finally stopped their run through the city, they stood in front of a crumbling building in a bad part of town. Gangs moved the streets, druggies slumped in doorways, prostitutes and the homeless walked the sidewalks freely, cops flashed by in police cars and unmarked cars that never stopped or paused, and then there were the vampires.

To those that looked up at that moment, it appeared as if two children, a boy and a girl, just stepped out of the nothingness, their faces glowing palely and the street visible through their bodies. Not a few watchers went a little bit crazy. Things like insubstantial children appearing out of the air just didn’t happen.

Lianndra looked at the building for a moment then turned to her, raising an eyebrow.

"Fang Walkers?" she said/asked. It had been awhile since she had been in this part of town, and as anyone knows, times change.

She gave him a questioning look and he nodded that she was right. The Fang Walkers had Chris.

The Fang Walkers are a gang, a gang totally held by vampires. On the street they are known as death. They are one of the most brutal gangs in the city, willing to kill anyone in any manner available, even going so far as to rip the still beating hearts out of a few of their victims. They were said to use the hearts in some weird sacrificial ceremony to unnamed pagan gods.

They killed mortals on a regular basis, but they also tormented the Brethren. Being caught by them was a terrible thing. They would do anything short of a wooden stake and sunlight, and nothing could be done to stop them because they didn’t kill any of the Brethren, only tormented them until they begged for death and release from the agony.

There was no way to stop the Fang Walkers, they could do almost anything with complete autonomy, there were so many of them. They had the bodies of teenagers or people in their early twenties, but they had the intelligence and skills of adults combined with their practically indestructible and ageless bodies. They were what they thought they were--one of the toughest things to ever walk the modern world.

Now they were going to face one of those other tough things. Lianndra.

"Are you sure we have to go in there?" Dezi asked.

Lianndra shook his head. "You have got to be kidding. What are we going to do, phone them from across town? Don’t be silly. We have to go in there and let it be known that Chris is one of ours and that they have to keep their hands off him."

Dezi frowned and turned to ask him another question, but it was too late. His head was thrown back and his eyes were closed. His mouth was open in a fang showing grimace as he concentrated. His body seemed to shimmer and sparks that looked like little lightning bolts flew around his head.

With a startled curse, she made to reach out to him, but couldn’t. There was some sort of invisible wall around him. All she could do was watch as the lightning became brighter and brighter until she could see the bones under his skin with each flash. It was strange and awful.

That was when she felt it. A little spark jumped from him to hit her. She could feel power running up and down over her flesh and into her very bones. She threw her head back in a silent scream it hurt so bad.

It seemed to go on forever, and when it stopped, the relief was akin to orgasm. She shuddered and gasped in breath, an old habit she had never been able to break. Breathing was just something that a person couldn’t let go of, not even after years of not really needing to do it.

For the moment however, she had to focus on what had happened to her body. She was no longer an insubstantial wraith, but had her regular vampire body back.

Somehow, Lianndra had managed to give her body back to her, something he shouldn’t have been able to do. The power he had used must have been tremendous to do such an impossible thing.

She shuddered one more time and pulled herself together with a superhuman effort. A mortal that went through what she had, just now, would have been dead from the shock to the system it entailed. It was times like these that she was glad to be a vampire, virtually indestructible with a body that never got tired or stooped with that horror of horrors, age.

With a little shoulder shrug/ripple, she settled herself back into the familiarity of her body, feeling the well-known feeling of substantiality as if it were all new. She hadn’t felt this good in a long time. She had been healthy, but just hadn’t really known it. Now she did.

With another look at Lianndra, she saw that he was his usual self, calm and in control. There was only one thing that let her see that he was feeling the same as she was. He kept running a hand through his hair. To some it would have seemed as if he were just straightening the perfect lengths, but she knew what he was really doing. He was getting reacquainted with having form and mass and the possibility of living breath.

He caught her eyes on him and twitched his shoulders, his hand automatically going back down to his side. "Are you ready to go in?" he asked, trying to change the subject.

Dezi knew what he was trying to do, but was willing to go along with it in the name of peace. "All right, let’s go in," she said. "What are we going to do when we get inside?"

He smiled with a feral glint in his eyes. "Oh, I have a few ideas. What’s important is that you follow along and watch carefully, can you do that?"

She nodded slowly. It really wasn’t fun to be treated like a small child. It made her feel like she had an IQ of about three. But she would pay attention. This was Lianndra after all.

CHRIS

He sat as calmly as he could with the growing fear that filled him. How had he gotten here?

One moment he had been stepping off the bus in front of the Public Library, the closest he could come to his old hangout since the bus wouldn’t go that far--and the next he was waking up in this cramped, light-less little room. All that was in it was a small wooden chair and a dingy old Army cot. It reminded him of his stay with the evil Queen Tispith. There was an upside to this though: Tispith’s cabin didn’t have a bed and he’d had to sit tied to a chair for days. Here at least he could lie down. Plus, he wasn’t mortal now.

He sat in the chair though, his eyes alertly trained on the steel door that kept him in this prison. Even in the darkness he could see clearly. If the door and walls had been made out of wood, he would have been out in a second. Instead they were made out of reinforced steel with an inch thick layer of titanium alloy that kept him inside no matter what he wanted.

For the first hour he had screamed and yelled, kicking the door so much that he had left a dent near the bottom. It had been a weak place in the metal, but he hadn’t been able to turn it into a hole. It was just too strong. The titanium alloy made it so that it dented, but did not break.

He sighed and slumped down in the chair as comfortably as possible. He would just have to wait for whoever had captured him to come and either let him out, or explain why he had been brought here and locked away.

He crossed his arms over his stomach and closed his eyes, tipping his head back to rest it on the back of the chair. He had all the patience in the world, or looked like he did.

He was beginning to feel Hunger. Pretty soon he was going to have to Feed. It was like something was gnawing at his whole body, trying to eat him up. When he Fed, he gave the something, the Hunger, something else to eat other than himself.

He clutched his stomach and tried to quiet the Hunger with promises of what he would do later, all the blood that he would Feed it, the way that he would engorge it to the point of bursting, as long as it was quiet now. The Hunger didn’t listen. It just kept grinding away at him, trying to wear him down.

He groaned and hugged himself tight. The Hunger was growing with every passing second. He needed to Feed and he needed to now.

That was when he heard the sound. A slight scraping sound on the floor followed by a soft "chittering."

Chris’ eyes opened wide and his head turned in the direction that the sound had come from--the floor near the door. There! A flash of white.

His eyes narrowed and he licked his lips. With one smooth motion he flowed off the chair and onto the floor. With feline quietness and grace, he moved across the floor and stopped two feet in front of where the sound had come from.

He heard it again and saw the vague white shape of the mouse leave its corner and inch its way along the length of the wall. It stopped and looked around, its nose twitching and its ears swiveling on its small head. It couldn’t see him, it was too dark for even its sharp eyesight, yet something in its tiny brain shouted "Watch out!"

Part of him felt sorry for the poor little creature. It was in danger and didn’t even know it. That sorrow didn’t last long however, not in the face of his Hunger.

With one smooth motion, he reached out and caught the small animal. It hadn’t even seen it coming. His motion had been too fast for it. In its mind, it had been sitting there quietly, and then it had been gripped hard around the middle and was hanging in the air in front of a pair of enormous and terrifying eyes. No transition time in-between.

It squeaked once before he got it in his mouth and attached his teeth to it. He sucked out the pulsing blood--the life--then sat there for a few minutes just staring at the little husk of what had once been a living, breathing creature.

It hadn’t been a very filling meal, but it had taken the edge off his Hunger and given his sanity back to him.

He stared at the little body and felt sad that he had had to kill it. If he could have, he would have brought it back to life and wiped all memory of his deed out of its mind and maybe out of his own. What he had done had been terrible. He deserved to die for killing a poor innocent creature. He really was a monster.

It was strange that he would feel worse for the killing of a mouse than the killing of a normal human, but that was the way he felt. There were no explanations he could honestly offer.

He sat back on his heels and rocked the still twitching little body back and forth in his hands. It was dead and yet it moved as if it were alive. That’s when he got an idea.

He looked back and forth around the room, then used his right fang to nick the tip of his left forefinger. Blood welled up--life welled up.

With a little prayer, he leaned over the twitching little body and blew into the open mouth. He was going to do something he had no right to do. He blew again, a slight trickle of air.

The little body stilled and the animal blinked its eyes sluggishly; he had resuscitated it. He had brought it back to life and if he didn’t move fast, it would die again.

He squeezed his finger over that gasping little mouth and watched as the blood dripped onto the small little muzzle. The creature quivered and swallowed, its little eyes rolling back and forth in its head. It had absolutely no idea what was going on.

Cradling it in his cupped hands, Chris watched as it shivered then began to convulse. Stuff came out of its mouth to stain his hands, but he didn’t care. In the past months he had seen and done much worse.

Long minutes ticked by after the mouse had finished then fallen still. Now it shivered again and turned over. Its little eyes seemed to glow in the dark. There had been a black spot on its fur; the spot was already disappearing to be replaced by an unearthly white color. The rest of its fur began to match the color. It was no longer a mortal mouse, but a vampire. A vampire mouse, ludicrous.

Carefully, Chris flipped back the upper lip and peered into the mouth to see that the fangs that all animals had had lengthened into vampire fangs in miniature.

He set the little animal on the floor and stroked its fur with two fingers. The mouse shivered then began to move around the room, its little eyes shifting around as if it were seeing the room differently than it had before. It probably was.

~wha’?~

Chris sat straight up when he heard that stumbling little voice in his mind. He looked hard at the mouse and concentrated. ~was that you?~

The mouse looked up at him. ~papa?~

"Oh my God, the mouse is talking. I’ve finally lost my mind." But he knew that he had not. The little vampire mouse had made a great leap in mouse evolution and found the ways of human speech, copying all of the voices that it had heard talking around it. It finally understood all of the things that it had heard humans say during its short life.

~god? are you god, papa? is that why you were able to do this? able to bring me back to life? to change me?~

Chris shook his head. ~no, i’m not god. i’m just a boy, though i will live forever, just as you will. we are vampires. we need blood to survive.~

~blood?~ that piping little voice asked. It was innocent and sweet, a questioning treble that made him think of a little kid.

Just thinking of that mouse as a child sent a chill through him. Lianndra had been a little kid too, and look at him, taking down fully-grown men as if they were nothing.

Just the thought of this little mouse Feeding on things not just bigger, but giant sized compared to itself, was a kind of terrifying prospect. Someday this one little mouse would have a whole army of little vampire mice and they would be taking down cats, dogs and… humans.

He shuddered at the thought of a whole horde of rodents attacking one mortal man or woman, or even a kid. He couldn’t believe that he could have done something like this. By all rights, he should have just let the little creature die.

The thought of the little mouse in the throes of blood deprivation was just too sad though. He couldn’t let something like that happen to such a sweet little creature, it was just too horrible.

He had Made this mouse into a vampire. He was responsible for it.

~go, search out life and drink the blood with your new fangs. make sure you stop before they die, but go ahead, enjoy yourself and do not fear, you cannot die unless you step into the sun or are decapitated, which means you get your head chopped off.~

The mouse looked at him out of those suddenly intelligent eyes, eyes that did not belong in the head of any mouse. ~then i won’t be hungry anymore?~

Chris shook his head. ~no, you won’t be hungry anymore. go, enjoy.~

The little mouse chittered. ~thank you, papa. i’ll be back soon.~ With that, the little mouse skittered across to the door to disappear through the small little hole Chris had put in the door without even noticing. It was a crack of a hole caused by the way the metal had been bent outward.

Chris watched as the little mouse squirmed through the hole and disappeared into the darkness beyond. His eyes narrowed in thought.

He crawled across the floor to lower himself onto his stomach and peer through the hole. All he could see was a dark hallway with black tiled floors and dark green walls with white spray paint markings all over them.

From what he could read from where he lay, most of the tagging involved the words "Fang Walkers" with a name and a year underneath. Sort of like an autograph book of past memories.

One slightly faded one read: "Fang Walkers, 1919. Rick Vaughn Jameson."

He stared at it in fascination. Rick Vaughn Jameson wrote that? It was practically a holy benediction that the great man would sign his name to such a thing, but 1919?

Rick Vaughn Jameson was a well-known man that ran one of the most popular clubs in the city, The Hole in the Wall. He also owned a couple of hotels, clubs, the Jameson Estates and the three million dollar a year Jameson Construction Company. He was worth close to two billion dollars, yet here he was a member of some street gang? It was really weird. Twilight Zone like even.

Chris stood and went back to the chair to wait for the mouse to come back, and to think.

Just as he was beginning to go crazy from all of the waiting, he heard a sound from outside the door, a kind of dragging, stepping sound. Someone was coming. Something was coming.

He drew in a breath and stood up, his eyes locked on the door and the first real view of what was beyond that large wall of steel.

The handle of the door turned as the many locks he had felt while he was pounding on the door, were unlocked. His muscles automatically tensed, but he could smell even under the metal-smell of the door that whoever was coming was a vampire, a vampire that had just Fed and was at full strength. He, on the other hand, had Fed on a small mouse but had given it all back to Make the mouse into a vampire. He was not up to fighting strength, that was for sure.

The door opened and he caught his first view of his captors.

A tall, emaciated looking guy of at least seventeen with hair so long it was pulled back in a ponytail that hung down his back. He was wearing a green shirt and jeans. His posture was kind of slouchy and relaxed, his face was not.

His eyes were deep-set and dark gray with little flecks of some indescribable green. His mouth was large and generous, not matching the rest of him at all. It was the kind of mouth that belonged to someone that smiled a lot, not this cold faced, chilly looking guy with his dangerous expression and expensive shoes.

"Come on out Chris, we want to talk to you. No one will hurt you," the guy’s voice was the kind that drew attention, made people stop and listen, expecting to see some amazingly vivacious and handsome man, not this skinny bag of bones.

"How do you know my name?" Chris demanded. His jaw was set in determination.

The thin guy just looked at him for a moment. "How do you think, retard? We’re vampires. We got the great mujuju spirits on our side."

"What?" Crazy guy.

"Mujuju spirits. You know, black magic, demonology, evil powers," he pronounced "evil" like "ee-val."

Chris looked at him in stunned disbelief, evil powers? After a few seconds he mentally scoffed, he didn’t believe in all that crap about evil demons… or did he?

He hadn’t believed in vampires, not until he started to hang out with Lianndra and became one. So why not demons? He gulped for no good reason. What would he do if what the guy was telling him was true? How far could he get if he had a head start?

He was just tensing his muscles for the run when the guy snorted derisively. "Stupid, don’t you know nothing? I was just joking. I made that mujuju spirit crap up. What’s wrong with you, you get dropped on your head or something?" The guy rolled his eyes, disgust at Chris’ gullibility written all over him. "We knew who you was by the simple fact that you have your name on the back of your shirt. You really shouldn’t do that, you know. A stranger could pick you up by calling you by your name and saying they know you. Don’t you watch Saturday morning cartoons when they have those commercials and talk about what to do in case of a ‘mergency or if a stranger is totally accostin’ you? Jeesh, kids today, not a brain cell between ten of ‘em.

"My name’s Sonny Bolegro. I’m the leader of the Fang Walkers. Come with me. Let’s get out of this little room and head on down to the parlor." The guy turned and headed down the hall.

Chris just stood there for a few heartbeats, wondering if he should follow or if he should wait. Then he realized that if he waited, they would probably re-lock the door and he would be trapped in the dark again. He figured he had a better chance of escaping if he was out of the room.

He ran after the rail thin figure of Sonny Bolegro, who he knew to be truly old. No one talked with that kind of accent anymore, it was upper-upper class. The only thing that marred its beauty were the words he spoke, a mixture of slang, gutturals and some strange street language that had probably died out hundreds of years ago.

Chris wondered where the leader of the Fang Walkers had been born and raised and when, but he knew better than to ask. That was one of the first things Lianndra had taught him. It was considered rude to ask about a vampire’s background. If they didn’t like it, you could end up dead or wishing that you were.