Vampire Boys Of Summer (revamped) Ep. 78

Vampire Boys Of Summer

78: Into The Fray

Ryo stood, dark and terrible. He looked down at his nakedness, then at a new vampire who lay injured and moaning at his feet. He reached down and grabbed the man, hauling him to his feet, lifting him by one hand so he was level to his eyes.

“Next time you wish to sink a man to the bottom of a lake, make sure he cannot chew through the chain.”

He dropped the man back down, and took a step forward. There were still some pockets of fighting through the cavern. Ryo’s arrival hadn’t disrupted everything. Chi was being held down by a group that were finding it hard to keep a hold on her. So they began breaking her fingers one by one. Luhan was having a hard time keeping his attackers at bay himself, and at least one of them had a stake in his hand. Ryo looked to the stage where Haru was swinging back and forth on his noose trying to break free of his bonds. Then his eyes lit on mine, and for a moment I thought something passed between Ryo and I. Call it an understanding, if you will. An understanding that said I would be Haru’s queen and none other. As if sharing that look with us, Colin resumed his mad screaming. “Kill them all!”

This was all the army needed to hear. Four of them grabbed the naked Ryo, pulling him as fast as they could into the shadows, snapping their hungry jaws at him. There was the sound of rending flesh and screams of terror from the darkness and then silence. When Ryo emerged from the shadows, he was wearing one of their pants and licking blood off his fingers.

He was surveying the room as six more came at him, three on either side. If they thought their numbers would overwhelm him, they were mistaken. Using one body as a shield, he worked his way through them one by one until the remaining five lay in the floor. Not one of them had a cut. He had simply rendered them immobile and unconscious. He discarded his vampire shield into the fray and headed to where Luhan was under siege.

While I was standing there watching, someone grabbed my arm. Members of the army had mounted the stage and now one of them had me in his grip. I grabbed him and spun, pushing him in Haru’s direction. Haru, in mid swing from his hangman’s rope, wrapped his legs around the man’s neck and twisted. There was a loud snap and the attacker went down. Another reached for me. I ducked under his arms and punched him as hard as I could in the ribs. I’ve never been a fighter, but desperate times are cause for unladylike behavior.

The air escaped my attacker, and I spun behind him, shoving him in Haru’s direction as well. Snap! He put another down with a twist of his legs. If I could keep shoving guys Haru’s way maybe we could hold them off awhile.

When the next attack came it was unexpected. A board left behind by the labyrinth builders hit me in the side of my head. It wasn’t me who spun this time, but the world. Darkness threatened to overcome me as I collapsed to the stage. Colin stood over me, that mad grin searing into my brain.

“Sometimes the Queen needs to know her place,” he cackled. Dancing around my prone form like Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he tossed his head back, singing at the top of his voice, “Ding Dong, you’re all going to die! All going to die! Going to die! To die!…ack!”

He had gotten too close to Haru. My lover’s legs wrapped around his neck and hauled him into the air. He couldn’t quite choke him as he’d done the others, but he held him place long enough for me to get to my feet. I picked up the board Colin had hit me with and moved towards them.

I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Ryo had made it to Luhan and was dispatching his attackers as fast they came. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be distracted, and it cost me the fight. Three girls grabbed me and pinned me to the ground, liberating me of my weapon. They didn’t attack me any further but just held me there so I couldn’t help anyone.

“Get off of me,” I screamed, as I saw two vampire boys run across the stage and pull Colin out of Haru’s clutches. Our fight was over. More and more of the vamp army were mounting the stage and forming a protective barrier. From my spot on the ground, I saw why. Luhan and Ryo had decimated all their attackers. They lay in heaps around them, as if the two were Samurai warriors of old who had just defended a village from a marauding band of bandits. Ryo, wearing the blood of others, bowed on one knee before Luhan. And though I couldn’t hear it said from that far away, I read his lips as they uttered solemnly, “Master.”

More and more of the vampire army abandoned their positions and took up new ones in front of the stage, creating a wall of bloodlust and hunger. I was yanked to my feet just in time to see Ryo and Luhan rescue Chi from those that had been torturing her. She looked like a mess and I noticed her fingers were all twisted at odd angles as if each one had been broken. Most of her attackers had fled the fury and onslaught of Luhan and Ryo, but a few brave ones decided to get some more action in. Chi shook her hands as if she were trying to fling dust off or shake them awake. She held her hands up so they could see. Her fingers now looked normal, unbroken. She balled her hands into fists and launched herself at them. They didn’t have a chance. Within seconds, and in a flurry of almost poetic movement, the ones who had opted to stay were now meeting the ground close and personal.

The three of them, Chi, Luhan, and Ryo, turned their attention to the stage and the regrouped army that protected it. This line of defense was larger than it seemed when it was spread out in the cavern. Now it looked to be fifty or more. Not all of them were vampires. Some were servants who were still human, but under mental control of either Colin or his as yet unseen master, I wasn’t sure.

Haru had stopped swinging on the end of his noose. No longer gagging from the tight rope around his neck, his body had now gotten used to the discomfort, but he still hung there helpless. No one got close to him. They knew better.

The girls who had pinned me to the ground had been relieved of that duty and were now posted at Colin’s side for added protection. But I didn’t stand alone. I was guarded and held at knifepoint by Miss Thomas, who wasn’t very pleased that her dogs had not returned from the labyrinth.

And Angela, poor Angela, was still under the watchful eyes of the two vampire girls who supported her between them. One of them had even begun to drink blood out of my friend’s arm. Angela showed no reaction. She was gone, lost somewhere in her own head.

Luhan, standing in front of the vampire wall, cleared his throat to be heard. “Let our friends go, “ he demanded, then looked to either side of the hall. “Let them go, too.” I had forgotten, but when we arrived from the labyrinth, there had been two lines of humans, apparently ready for turning, and awaiting their place along the wall.

Colin looked at our leader, an incredulous look on his face. “That’s a tall order for one so short.” He let out a laugh and his vampire minions joined in as if on cue.

“One shouldn’t laugh at their own jokes, young man,” Luhan replied.

Colin grew serious. “Okay, well how about this? No.” He took a tentative step forward. “You and your clan have lost. I have this fool of a vampire, Haru. I have his helpless yet achingly beautiful lover, Nora. I have this sweet tasty blood vessel called Angela. I have…”

“You have fifteen seconds to release her,” Ryo interrupted.

“Excuse me? I don’t think anyone was…”

“Fifteen…fourteen…”

“You have to be kidding me. Angela? You want her? Oh man, this is rich!”

“Thirteen…twelve…”

“I mean, I understand you and Haru are rivals, and Nora doesn’t like you much, but to choose this pitiful, pitiful excuse for a teenager…”

“Eleven….Ten…”

“Wait, wait,” Colin laughed, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “She’s ours now. Nobody wanted her. So we took her. I took her. She’s mine.”

Ryo quit counting. “Wrong. She’s mine.”

Colin looked at Angela, leaning in close as if inspecting her, and shook his head. “Nope, she’s not marked. There’s no claim on her. If you wanted her so bad, you certainly didn’t mark her so.”

“She marked me. In her secret thoughts, she lay claim to me.”

I looked over at Angela. For a moment, I thought saw something on her face. A teardrop joined by another. A trace of emotion in her eyes. Ryo had noticed her after all. She wasn’t a bothersome lovesick girl chasing a boy who would never want her. All this time, despite his previous actions and words, he had wanted her, too.

Continue to Ep. 79

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“Vampire Boys Of Summer” 2018 Paul D Aronson. All Rights Reserved

Vampire Boys Of Summer (revamped) Ep. 77

Vampire Boys Of Summer

77: Kill The Master!

“Colin, please! I’ll be your queen. Just let Haru down.”

I couldn’t help but turn my eyes to my lover, dangling from a noose and gagging in his throat. He kicked his legs to keep up the momentum of the swing and though Colin assured me it wouldn’t kill Haru, I hated to see my love suffer in this continual agony. For though it wasn’t a death blow, it was still torture without relief.

“You’ll never be the dutiful queen, Nora,” Colin said. “You and I both know that. Not as a human anyway.” He looked around the room. “There’s plenty of Alphas in this group. Perhaps we’ll just turn you. See how you comply then.”

I was tired of begging. This wasn’t doing me any good. Luhan wasn’t doing anything. Chi wasn’t doing anything. Haru was on an endless cycle of being hung. Ryo was somewhere at the bottom of the lake drowning over and over again. I was now alone. No one was going to save me. I was going to have to save myself. I punched Colin right in the face.

His head snapped back and his nose opened up with a spray of blood. I was going for punch number two when he blocked me with an open handed slap. The slap was so hard my head reeled to one side and I went down.

That’s when Chi finally launched her attack. She bounded across the stage and with a swift kick to his knee took Colin down. He didn’t make much noise, just a grunt, and then he was facing her. Rage was on his face, but he knew he couldn’t take her. She was too powerful for him to take alone. He had goons for that.

They bounded across the stage, half the high school football team. It was ironic, for they were known to have picked on him too in the past. Now they were doing his bidding. And doing it well. Each one grabbed a limb. Two of them had Chi’s legs, another two had her by her arms. They swung her back and forth several times and then let her go. She sailed off the stage and into the crowd of vampires, who started pummeling her with their fists. There were too many of them. She did her best to protect her face and ribs, and they started stomping and kicking at her.

There was a loud howl, and I thought it was coming from her, but it wasn’t. It was Luhan making his own attempt to end this mad game. He was airborne, pouncing on Chi’s attackers. At first, they didn’t seem worried, but as he began to go from person to person like a whirling dervish, breaking a wrist here, snapping a leg there, they tried to regroup to take him down. But he was too fast. His movements reminded me of Taz on the old Bugs Bunny Cartoon, a spinning devil kicking up dirt as he disabled everything in his path.

Colin hauled me to his feet. “You know what? I have changed my fickle mind again. I think I will make you my queen after all.” He leered at Haru, who had stopped struggling and was just hanging there from the rope. He was right about one thing. It wasn’t killing him. But it was sapping his strength and will. Colin looked back to me, a lecherous smile on his lips . “I think we’ll consummate our union first.”

I gritted my teeth. “You touch me and you’ll wish you hadn’t,” I promised.

“You and me, Nora. We both have found our fire. I love it!” He grabbed my face in his hands like he was going to kiss me. But instead he spun me around to face Haru. “Look at him. What makes him so special? You wouldn’t like him so much if he wasn’t a vampire. You didn’t like any other boys at school before he showed up. I think you just wanted a boy who was somebody. That everyone looked up to or worshipped. Well hey, I’m somebody now. Others look up to me. They will fear me by summer’s end when all of Chelsea Valley will bow before me.”

“They wont bow before you Colin. You are just a tool of your master. Nothing more. You are nothing. I wouldn’t waste one kiss on you.”

Something came across his face. Maybe he saw my words as a challenge, a dare. He looked out at the vampire crowd. Chi was down, under their weight. They had managed to grab Luhan, and though he kept taking some of them down, a few of them were getting their licks in too.

Colin smiled in triumph. “The master will be pleased. Whether you are my queen or not.” He shoved me away from him and I reached in my pocket for a weapon. I’d lost the stake in one of the dogs back in the labyrinth. But my fingers touched on the other item I’d brought from my dad’s kit. The vial of Holy Water.

Colin turned to Angela. The two vampire girls were still holding her up. Her legs were bent at the knees, and if they let her go, it was apparent she would collapse to the ground from weakness. He put his hand under her chin and lifted her head to look at him.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, Ang. You was my first choice anyway.” He turned to the crowd and bellowed. “Kill their master!”

It seemed like every vampire in the place converged on the spot where Luhan was. He disappeared under all the bodies.

I pulled the vial from my pocket. I fumbled with it a few moments before managing to unscrew the top. “Colin?”

He looked at me and I flung the contents into his face. Haru had told me these things didn’t have an effect on the vamps of the Far East, but for those in the Christian world, Crosses, bibles, and holy water still worked. He was right.

It splashed first across his neck, and then his face. Where the holy water landed on his skin, it sizzled and burnt the flesh to the bone. He screamed, trying to wipe it off with his hands, but where his hands touched, that burnt also, for the water had wet his fingers. He spun away, screaming, “Kill them, Kill them all! Master! Master!”

And then we heard it, like an answer to his call. It came from inside the labyrinth. The horrible beating of huge leathery wings, accompanied by the screech of a monster so terrible the labyrinth couldn’t contain it. A scraping sound like that of talons against the maze wall, grew in pitch and intensity until the screaming beast came bursting out the tunnel.

“Yes, Master! Master! Show us your glory…show us your majesty!”

The winged creature was a grotesque form of a bat. Huge and ugly, a furious beast with talons so long it slashed several vampires to shreds at it entered the cavern. It looked as if it were dripping wet embryonic fluid off its nearly hairless form, as it set down in the midst of the vampire army.

They all raised their hands in the air, trying to touch their master, to feel his power upon their own fingers. It must have freaked the beast out because it lashed out at them with claws and teeth. Hands went missing. Fingers were devoured. And for some, it clamped down with its fangs and took huge gulps of blood and tissue into its maw. The praise turned into bewildered screams as the huge bat started to use its wings to fling the army in all directions. Dust and dirt arose from the cavern floor as its long legs shuffled across it.

Legs, I thought. Long legs. Since when did Bats have long legs? So much dust was in the air I could no longer see the creature. Colin was cackling madly, yelling that his master give him his reward. I could only assume the worse. The reward would cost lives.

The dust began to clear. The sound of the huge beating wings had stopped. Had the army somehow killed the fearsome beast? As the dust settled, we all lay witness to the astonishing truth. A Man, naked as the day he was born, crouched in the dust on one knee. Muscles rippled across his back where the bat wings had been. Arms dripping wet with water and blood, he pushed himself to his feet and stretched to his full height. The talons of the beast were gone, but long sharp fingernails remained. And where the beast had had a chest of thin fur to protect its hide, this man had only bare skin and a tattoo of a moon with bloody vines that read, “Loveless.”

Continue to Ep. 78

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“Vampire Boys Of Summer” 2018 Paul D Aronson. All Rights Reserved.

Vampire Boys Of Summer (revamped) Ep. 74

Vampire Boys Of Summer

74: Masters Revealed

As we ran across the top of the labyrinth, I couldn’t help but wonder what its purpose had been. Was it designed to test us? To imprison us in its maze forever? Or seeing how exhausted I was, perhaps it was just meant to tire us out and wear us down, so that when we reached the place where Angela was being held we wouldn’t be able to rescue anybody, even ourselves.

My vampire friends seemed tireless. Haru, Chi, and Luhan ran without much effort, but I slowed them all down. I was the weak link in this rescue operation. I should have stayed home and left this up to them. But I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing while my best friend, and indeed the entire town of Chelsea Valley, was in danger of being…well, I didn’t know what the Vampire Master of this labyrinth wanted. All I knew was I was wanted as a bride of some sort, and for what purpose I couldn’t discern. Why would a vampire leader want me? He could have anyone. Any girl out there was his for the taking. But Nora Williams was what he wanted. It didn’t make sense. I was a nobody. But maybe, and if the master was Ryo, it was all because Haru had me. Someone didn’t want Haru to be happy…ever. With that way of thinking, it had to be Ryo. But hadn’t Ryo been there when the vampire king called? Wait, the caller never said he was the vampire master. I asked him if he was, but he had answered that he would be my master. This doesn’t necessarily make him the Vampire master. So with that in mind, who could it be, and do I even know them? It was apparent my friends had suspicions of who it was, and they had been looking for him awhile when they came to Chelsea Valley, but what had Haru done that it warranted losing me, the whole town, or even his life?

Lost in my thought I didn’t realize when the roof stopped. Haru had to stop me from running right out onto open air. The structure of the labyrinth hadn’t come to an end though. It was just the roof that had stopped, as if the builders ran out of materials. There was no way across to the other side now, except back down into the labyrinth which was now deathly quiet. Where had the newly created vampire army gone?

We stood there a moment wondering what to do. We could see the way down into the labyrinth now, the twists and turns that the maze made on its way to an exit. But we couldn’t see the exit. If we dropped down there again we would be like lab rats in a researcher’s experiment, having to work our way through the passages in search of a way out.

Haru looked to Chi and Luhan for answers. “What do you want to do,” he asked.

“If we were all alphas…” Chi replied, but Luhan interrupted her.

“…We’re not,” he said, looking at Haru, who we all knew was a Beta. “No more if’s. We have to get to the end of this labyrinth. The hour is growing late, and deeper into the night it gets, the more powerful these western vampires will get.”

“Are you saying,” I asked, “ these guys get stronger than they are now?”

Haru looked at me. “Vampires of the western world were created differently than those of the Far East. We were created for a different purpose, and as such have different strengths and weaknesses. The Christian cross has no effect on us. We do not need to sleep in coffins or graves. Garlic is useless. The main common denominator is a stake through the heart, of course.”

“Enough prattle, “ Luhan said. “We can go into vampire history later. Let’s move.”

And with that he jumped down into the labyrinth. Chi looked at us, and with a shrug of her shoulders, followed him.

Haru looked at me, concern on his face. “I’m sorry. I should never have brought you here. I fear….”

I jumped down into the labyrinth.I hit the hard floor in a roll, in an attempt to break the harshness of my landing. It helped, and thankfully I didn’t break anything, but I felt my leg give a little. When I stood up and went to join the waiting Chi and Luhan, I did so with a new painful limp.

Haru was the last one down, and when he saw me limping, he frowned. “Baby, why did you do that? I can carry you.”

“I can’t expect you to baby me all the time, Haru. I’m tired of being the weakest link. I will earn my place.”

“You don’t need to earn anything, love. It is all freely given to…”

“This is no place, nor time for a lovebird squabble, “ Luhan said, examining the section of maze we were in. One section was closed off with a massive gate, so you could not go back the way we had originally came. The way ahead was open but we didn’t know how far. “Come on,” he added, heading that way.

There wasn’t much choice, so we all moved forward into the maze like Dorothy and her companions on the way to see Oz, the Great and Powerful. At first, the walk was uneventful. My ankle was killing me and I assumed I had sprained it on the jump. I could understand Haru being upset at me, but he hadn’t been mortal for almost a thousand years. He didn’t have to worry too much about human weakness. I felt like I needed to prove myself. If not to my vampire friends, then to myself.

We turned a corridor and were confronted with three separate branches of tunnels. I guess this was what Miss Thomas meant by puzzles to solve. We stood there at this crossroads for a moment. Then that moment grew longer as each of us offered our suggestions of the path to take. Luhan was the last to state his opinion and it surprised me.

“They are all the same. Each one leads to the exit. This is not a puzzle. It is a mere distraction. Holding us up and buying them more time to prepare for us.” He looked back the way we’d come, and then heavenward. There was no roof over the labyrinth now, but the cavern ceiling could be discerned high above us. He sighed. “This is a trap, after all.”

“A trap?!”

Luhan looked at me and nodded. A grim look was upon his face. Worry resided in his eyes. “Yes. Up until this moment, we have done exactly as they wanted us to. This has been meticulously planned. For what purpose I do not know. But it is a trap nonetheless. They have been testing our strengths and weaknesses. Lucky for us, we haven’t shown much strength to them, so we have that to our advantage.”

“But if it’s Ryo, he already knows that.”

“It’s not Ryo,” Haru replied.

This was both a relief and surprise to hear. My suspicions about him being the master were just the workings of my own confused human mind, trying to see the worst of everyone. I had had all these signs that I thought was evidence of his duplicity in evil. And still, his deviousness and bad boy attitude screamed out to me that there was more to him than met the eye. None of that mattered now however, he was gone.

“Then who is it?”

He hung his head and I could tell he didn’t want to say. He’d been avoiding telling me, not because he didn’t want me to know. He just didn’t want it to be true. The longer he kept his silence, the longer he could avoid the confrontation that was coming. He looked up at me, tears brimming in his eyes.

“I can’t do this. I never wanted this. I just couldn’t follow him. It wasn’t right what he wanted us to do.”

He turned away from me and looked at Luhan. My young friend had an equally anguished look on his face, but without the tears. He was trying to be strong for Haru.

Haru fell to his knees before Luhan, bowing his head so low it was nearly touching the cold cavern floor. “I am so sorry….Master.”

Master? What the hell? Luhan was the master of their clan? Is that why the fake cops tried to take him? To make the rest of my Asian friends powerless? My mind ran backwards in memory at all the little things that pointed to this as the truth. How Ryo had been in fear of his wrath that night in my room, how he had been the one to dispense orders and advice. How he always seemed to be just hanging back and watching.

“Get up, Haru,” Luhan said. “This is not your fault. He made his choice. One thing that was not taken from us when we were changed. Free will. He chose evil deeds over good intentions. After our eventual purpose was served, and we chose rest and contemplation, he chose to become his own God. Now get to your feet, we need you. I need you .” He looked at me. “She needs you.”

Haru looked up first at Luhan, then at me. “I never wanted this day to come,” he said.

I was confused. I had no idea what they were talking about. Some thing from the past, I guessed. Maybe I wasn’t ready for this either. It was a big enough revelation that little Luhan was the master of the Japanese vampire clan that had taken up residence next door. I’d at first thought it was Tomoko, Haru’s so called Uncle. And here lately I was thinking of Chi because of her take charge attitude, but Luhan? He looked like he was twelve and stuck in middle school forever. Nothing at all like I imagined a vampire master to be. And with that being the case, who was the master of the vampire army we were going up against?

Haru looked at me as if he had heard the question spoke aloud. “It’s my dad.”

Continue to Ep. 75

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“Vampire Boys Of Summer” 2018 Paul D Aronson. All Rights Reserved.

Vampire Boys Of Summer (revamped) Ep. 73

Vampire Boys Of Summer

73: Through The Maze

We ran down the dark tunnel. There were no candles in the passageway to see by. The only light afforded us came through gaps in the ceiling where the roof had been haphazardly constructed. Small shafts of lights from the outside cavern painted lines upon the floor for us to see by. If there were other sections of a tunnel connected to this one, we passed them by.

Haru appeared to be heading in what he thought was a straight line, searching for the exit out the other side. We heard a faint stomping sound and shouts from somewhere behind us, but we couldn’t investigate for we could also hear the panting of the dogs amplified ten times in the corridor.

They were coming up on us fast. It was apparent to see Haru wouldn’t be able to pull me down the tunnel quick enough to escape them. We were going to have to hide or face them.

“We fight,” he said, reading my mind. I wasn’t sure about that decision. I’d never fought a dog before. I was a cat person. And these dogs were of such a size they probably ate cats as a snack. They were huge dogs, what they called Mastiffs. With massive heads and enormous bodies, they had to weigh nearly two hundred pounds each. From their jaws, dripped drool and foam, and even blood. If they managed to get their mouths clamped on a body part, it would probably be removed. As if to prove this, they came bounding towards us out of the darkness. Both mouths open they came in for the kill.

The first came at Haru. My love let go of my hand and the dog tried to take it. Haru was faster than the dog however. He grabbed a jaw with each hand, keeping its mouth open, so it couldn’t clamp down on anything. He spun around in a circle holding this gigantic beast by its mouth, and flung it against the wall. It disappeared into the darkness with a howl.

The second dog was airborne in front of me. It was hard to believe that with its size it could even get off the ground. But here it was in front of me, level with my chest, foam and drool flying in all directions. But I wasn’t unarmed. I’d prepared myself for bad vampires, but troublesome dogs could be dispatched in the same manner. The stake went in between two ribs, and I hit the floor with a roll, trying to get out of its way should it drop. It hit the ground and rolled, coming back up fast. The stake barely slowed it down. And I was out of weapons. The dog pounced and landed on my chest, pinning me to the ground. Its jaws snapped towards my face and I turned my head not wanting to see what death had prepared for me. There was a loud crack, a snapping sound that I assumed was its mouth clamping down towards my head. Instead the dog let out a sharp whimper and was still.

Haru dragged the dog off me and I looked over at it. My lover in his sworn protection had broken the dogs neck. He reached down for me, his hand extended and I grabbed it, allowing him to pull me to my feet. My legs were shaky and I clutched myself to him. He wrapped his arms around me. I began to cry.

“It’s okay, my love,” he whispered in my ear. “We’re okay.”

I slumped in his arm, and he held me up, kissing my cheek and earlobe for comfort.

“I thought I was dead,” I sobbed.

“We’re very much alive,” he assured me. “Everything is going to be…”

He stopped. A new sound was coming up the dark corridor. At first like a whisper, then growing into a roar. It was the sound of anger, rage, and delirious hunger. The vampires of the labyrinth were coming. Perhaps they had grown tired of trying to get on top of the maze to pursue Chi and Luhan. Now they were coming after us, and it didn’t sound very welcoming.

Haru looked at me. “Listen to me. We’re going to have to move faster than we ever have.”

I was already exhausted and I told him so.

“I know baby.” He held my face in my hands and kissed me. “I wish my kisses could give you strength.”

I started to cry anew and he looked around us trying to seek an avenue of quick escape, but there was none. He scooped me up in his arms and started to sing softly. At first it was in Japanese, a soothing lullaby that I couldn’t understand. The words were alien in my head but carried with them a certain peace. They were words of love and devotion unmatched by any other, a promise in a foreign tongue that need no interpretation. And then the words came clear in my head. I don’t know if it was his powers, or if suddenly like in a time of meditation, an ultimate truth had come to me. But I could understand what he was singing just as plain as if it were my native English.

“I will carry you through fire. I will carry you through rain. I will carry you across centuries just to love you all over again.’

He kissed my trembling lips and we waited for the vampire army to reach us.

There is a moment where your life flashes before your eyes. At the end of all things you are forced to relive your life in reverse, swallowed up in memories and thought as fast as a bullet train. They say you see all the wonderful, life changing moments at the point of your death. There is a moment when you accept the fact that dying is inevitable for everyone. This wasn’t one of those moments.

I looked into Haru’s beautiful eyes and knew death would not part us. Not today. Nor ever. He must have recognized the same truth as he turned to look up the corridor. We could not see light at the end, but we both felt it was there if we could only get there in one piece.

Holding me in what is called a fireman’s carry, he took off up the corridor away from the approaching vamps. I knew I was weighing him down, and that because of my exhaustion it would eventually tire him as well. But he gave us his best effort. He ran through the tunnel and I clung as tight to him as I could. I lay my cheek against his shoulder. It made me remember the times we had lay in bed together, curled up lovers without a concern in the world, except each other. In those memories, time had just seemed to melt away, and I wished the same for us now, that time would disappear and leave us floating endlessly, far away from enemy vampires and their unknown master.

But we weren’t floating now. We were running. And the vamps who had once been school peers and others throughout Chelsea Valley were right behind us. The noise had rose in volume. Their shouts of rage, screams of hunger, made me shudder in Haru’s arms. And then they burst into a view, a wave of bodies as crazed and ominous as zombies. But weren’t after our brains and flesh to devour. They all wanted our blood as their first feedings. I didn’t know if they could drink the blood of Haru, as he was a more powerful vampire, but if they could get to me, and remove me from my sweet boyfriend’s grasp, it would only take minutes before….

A sound came from ahead of us, up the corridor where we had not been. It was a loud banging, followed by shouts we could barely hear above the din. “Haru!” It seemed to shout. More banging, and then we realized it was the echo that made it sound like it was coming from up the corridor. In fact, the origin was right above our heads.

“Nora!”

The shout was clearer now and I looked up. Through the slats in the ceiling, the light was blocked out by something moving overhead. Suddenly a board was ripped from the ceiling. Another board a few feet from the first was torn from its place.

“Haru!”

Chi was looking down at us. “Get back!”

We took a step backwards, as she began kicking through the boards with her boots. Pieces of wood and debris cascaded down on us, as both Chi and Luhan made a way for us to escape.

The enemy horde was close enough to touch when Haru handed me up to Luhan, who despite his small stature, had no problem hauling me through the opening and onto the roof of the labyrinth.

Haru disappeared under a dozen hungry vampires.

“No!” I screamed, trying to dive back through the hole to help my Haru. Luhan tightened his grip and would not let me go. Chi however, jumped into the darkness to join Haru in the fray. I could see her land in a crouch, pulling combatants off of him, her long nails leaving gashes in the assailants that they would long remember.

Haru fought back with a fury as well, flinging the newly created vampires off of him. Several hit the wall and went limp, though I think he held back from causing further injury because he too knew that they had once been human.

Another wave surged towards them and they both leapt up through the roof opening, as the mindless enemy tried to leap after them. I kicked one of the attackers in the face, so that he fell back down into the maze, and I felt someone grab my arm. I spun, ready to fight, swinging my arm around. Haru caught my hand. “Let’s go!”

The four of us ran across the top of the labyrinth. We didn’t look back, but instead kept our sights on gaining the other side. We may not have gone all the way through it, nor ran into any of the puzzles Miss Thomas had promised, but we were now running free and unhampered. Soon, with any luck, so would my kidnapped bestie.

Continue to Ep. 74

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Vampire Boys Of Summer (revamped) Ep. 69

Vampire Boys Of Summer

69: Looking For Ryo

After the initial shock, I was overjoyed to see Luhan. I scooped him up in my arms , hugging him close.

“Oh my God, we thought they had you!”

“So did they,” he replied in his true, smug fashion. “But you can keep hugging me. I don’t mind that at all.”

I thought I better set the lecherous little guy down before he pinched my butt. When I said as much he gave me a wink. I thought to myself he might just be the most dangerous vampire boy of all.

Haru and Chi abandoned their search in the wreckage and were beyond happy to see that their companion was okay. Well, except for all the blood, but apparently vampires don’t mind being covered in the stuff. They came over, hugged him, and then we all had a big group hug, relieved over Luhan’s safety. We must have looked strange, embracing among the carnage of the crash with two dead bodies laying in the road. If anyone would have come over the rise, it wouldn’t have been good.

I stood there as Haru and Chi fawned over the little guy some more. I couldn’t help think there was much more to Luhan than meets the eye. He wasn’t just this cute little flamboyant kid. He was dangerous. He apparently took out the two fake cops and caused the crash. He even walked away from it as if nothing had happened.

“We better get out of here,” Haru finally said, mirroring my own thoughts of being discovered.

Luhan looked around, spotted the car, and then frowned. “Where’s Ryo?”

Chi looked down at the dust of the road. “We left him.”

“They got the advantage of all of us, Luhan. We had to leave him. We couldn’t let them get too far away with you. We didn’t know you’d be able…”

“And I wouldn’t have been able to escape if Chi hadn’t smashed their taser. I heard them talking about it and knew they had no way to keep me subdued once the shock wore off.”

He looked at us all. “Thank you for coming after me. But now, we need to go back and get Ryo. We need everyone to take the labyrinth. The way my captors were talking they do have an army, and its growing in numbers day by day, both vampires and human servants.” He started to head for the car. “Right now on our side, there’s only three vampires and one free spirited girl. No offense, Nora.”

“None taken, “ I replied.

We all piled into the car.

“The good news is even in real life the villains don’t know when to shut up.”

“What do you mean?”

“We now know the exact location of the labyrinth. Idiots wouldn’t stop talking about it. They even put it into the Cruiser’s GPS. Longitude and latitude.”

Hearing this was a relief. I mean I had a vague idea where it was at. I’d been to the cove where all the kids swam in summer, and according to my dad it was close by, hidden against a rocky hillside by wooden boards and overgrown brush. Devil’s Hole. I’d always been too scared to go there. That was for adventurous boys and the foolish girls that followed them. Which is exactly how I felt now.

The drive back to my house, where we had first been attacked by the children in the trees, seemed longer this time. Perhaps that was because we weren’t chasing someone anymore. Still, Chi had a heavy driving foot and no one else seemed to be on the road. It was almost dark. We needed to find Ryo and get to Devil’s Hole while we still had light to see the hidden entrance.

Pulling up in the yard, Chi drove across the grass to where we’d last seen Ryo. Our cocky companion was nowhere to be seen, though evidence of the attack remained. Tiny shoes littered the yard, a child’s jacket hung from a tree branch, a World Cup Soccer shirt, extra small and torn in two, lay discarded in a patch of grass. It was all very ominous, and yet there were no bodies. No sign of the children who had leapt from the trees, foaming at the mouth and out for blood. No matter his fate, Ryo would have gotten a few of them and rendered them immobile at the least. But there was no one there. Even the football players, those three hulking thugs, were gone. I’d halfway witnessed their demise at Haru’s hands, and yet it was like a clean up crew had come along and scooped up all the bodies.

“I don’t see him, “ Chi said. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

“Maybe he took flight,” Haru suggested.

“I cant imagine Ryo running away,” I added.

Luhan walked around the yard, looking for clues like a Scotland Yard inspector investigating a scene of the crime. “Well, he gave them a fight, that’s for sure.” He pointed to a pair of child’s fangs lying in the grass. It looked like they had been pulled right out of the kid’s mouth. “That one learned a harsh lesson. You almost feel sorry for new vamps.”

“Were all the kids vampires?”

He looked at me, shaking his head. “No. I think a few had just been turned. The others appeared to be under control of a stronger vampire.”

“To control that many, you have to be pretty powerful,” Haru replied.

Luhan agreed. “Yeah, this wasn’t some second rate vamp who just got turned in the past year or so. Their master has been doing this a very long time. Possibly as long as us.” He looked at both Haru and Chi who nodded solemnly. “I have a feeling we are going to be faced with some hard choices.”

“I do, too,” said Haru.

I looked at my love. He had a lost, far away look in his eyes. For a moment I wondered if he was thinking of Chiyo, the girl he had accidentally killed all those years ago. Because of love, his whole life had changed to the point he hadn’t even recognized himself as he had once been. I feared that’s what was happening to us now. As a result of our love, bad things were happening. Someone else wanted me as their queen. Ryo was gone, either dead or missing. Angela was being held captive by an army of vampires who probably just wanted to drain her dry. My father was dead. My mother a mess. And the whole town seemed to be under the spell of evil. Was love worth this much? Can you put a price on loving someone, and if so, how high? What does it take before you to say to yourself, this is beautiful and all, but it’s just not worth it?

Continue to Ep. 70

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Vampire Boys Of Summer (revamped) Ep. 68

Vampire Boys Of Summer

68: In Pursuit

I heard Haru’s voice in my head. “Get down. Don’t look,” it commanded, and I couldn’t help but obey. I lay on the floorboard and covered my head with my hands.

I heard a snarl, followed by a scream. A loud growling sound, born of rage and enough to chill me to the bone, followed by more screams. A tearing sound, ripping, cracking…even more screaming. Something big hit the back of the car and I dared to look up. There was a thudding sound on the roof and a splatter of blood cascaded across the passenger’s side window. The car rocked again as one of the jock’s bodies came slamming down on the trunk, with Haru attached to his neck. I turned my head and buried my face in the floorboard again. I didn’t want to see what my Haru had become. This was why he didn’t want me to come on a hunt with him. It wasn’t pretty, nor was it the Haru I wanted to know. Still, I loved Haru more than anything, and if I were going to be his girl I would need to accept who and what he was. After all, he wasn’t being brutal and destroying our attackers for no reason. He was doing exactly what he said he would always do: protect me.

Someone yanked open the driver’s front door and got in. They plopped down hard in the seat and began to repeatedly beat the steering wheel. “Shit, shit, shit,” they cried and I realized it was Chi. I heard her tearing up something in the front of the car and I dared to sit up. She was fumbling with wires under the steering column, touching some loose ones together. The car jump started to life, the engine revving under her heavy foot.Chi looked at me in the rear view mirror with fear in her eyes. Her face was streaked with tears. “They got Luhan,” she babbled. “Damn it, we should have known!”

“Should have known what?”

The front passenger door was flung open and Haru got in.

“What the hell happened?” He asked Chi.

“They took Luhan!”

“Drive! We got to get him back!”

Haru looked back at me. His face was covered in blood, but I knew it was not his own.

“What about Ryo?” I asked.

“We can’t help him now. Luhan is more important.”

Chi put the car in gear And we took off after the police car that had taken Luhan. I looked back. Ryo was nowhere to be seen. We may not have always got along but I feared for him. Did the jocks beat him to death? Was he still laying in the grass back there?

Haru looked at me as if he understood my thoughts. “I’m sorry, Nora. There’s no time.” He climbed over the seat to join me in the back. “Listen, I know you think we are being cold to Ryo, but he can handle himself.”

“But…”

“Yeah, I didn’t see him either. But listen, when his time comes he’s not going out under a pile of kids or from a couple aspiring football players. Whatever has happened to him, he’ll rejoin us. But he would want us to get our priorities straight. And right now, the thing to do , the most important thing to do, is get Luhan back.”

Chi took a sharp turn. The wheels screeched on the pavement and Haru slid into me. He put his hands lovingly on my face. I loved the feeling of his palms gentle against my cheeks. Any other time and I would be throwing myself upon his beautiful lips. Again, he sensed my thoughts and kissed me.

“I know you have seen some things today that are hard to take. I never wanted you to see me as anything other than your devoted boyfriend. I don’t want to be a monster to you.”

The image of him, teeth sunk int the neck of the footballer, blood spraying across the window, made me shudder inside, but I tried not to show it. “You’re not a monster, Haru. Never.”

“When the rage overcomes me the bloodlust rises. And when the bloodlust rises, I become something else entirely. Chinatsu has more control, but mine is…crazy.”

An uneasy look must have been on my face because he kissed me again, soft and tender as if to say, there’s no monsters here. “Don’t worry. I’ll never hurt you. Or turn on you in a blind rage. I don’t get that crazy. I will always protect you, Nora. Even from myself, if need be. That I promise you.”

“We should have been protecting Luhan,” Chi said from the driver’s seat.

Haru sighed. “We can’t blame ourselves, Chi. We got distracted, split up and divided. We’ll get Lu back.”

“I can’t believe we got beat by high school football and little kids.”

“We were too confident. It won’t happen again.”

I looked at my Haru. He had a determined look on his face, but beneath that was worry. Perhaps we’d all been bolstered by Ryo’s cocky attitude of revenge and everyone let their guard down. But I knew that was a mistake that wouldn’t be made twice.

“There they are,” Chi said, taking another crazy turn, pouring on the gas so much the back end of the car slid for just a moment. I grabbed the door handle to hold on. Up ahead I could see the police cruiser. It was pouring on the gas too, doing its best to keep a good gap between us.

Haru patted my knee and looked straight ahead. “It’s going to be alright,” he said, but I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or trying to convince himself.

“What if they kill him…?”

“They aren’t going to kill him, Chi,” Haru replied. “They need him alive just as much as we do.”

She nodded and tried to urge the car to go faster. The cruiser still had a lead on us, but it seemed we were closing in.

“I want to know where the hell they got the cops from,” Chi mumbled.

“I don’t know. I just hope they don’t have more than that.”

We took a curve, then another. The hills rolled out before us. “Damn it, they are surging ahead again. We’ll never catch them like this.”

The cruiser went over a small hill. When we topped the rise there were at another hill and going over. Our car left the road, airborne over top of the hill. We landed with a bump and screech of tires and kept going. But they were still gaining ground away from us. They went up another rise.

“Push it,” Haru yelled, and Chi pushed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. We climbed the rise so fast my stomach lurched. Then came the crash. There was the sound of tearing metal, car parts breaking away and scattering across pavement. The tumbling of a vehicle turning end over end on the other side of the hill. The police cruiser was under attack.

We came over the rise and the wreckage lay before us. Though we had just heard the sounds mere seconds ago, it appeared to be all over with in devastating ways. The cruiser was in pieces, debris of metal and fiberglass scattered everywhere.

Chi slammed on the brakes. Haru and I both braced for impact, but our car went into slide and avoided the crash. The vehicle came to a stop right in front of the blue suited officers. He was lying in the road. Arms and legs were twisted in uncomfortable directions, probably broken. His neck was a mass of exposed sinew and blood.

We all jumped out of the car. Haru and Chi ran to the police cruiser, but I hung back. I didn’t know what had happened, but whatever had destroyed their car I didn’t want to mess with. It looked like they had run into an invisible brick wall, for their was nothing else in the road they could have hit.

I watched as both Chi and Haru hurriedly sifted through the wreckage in search of our kidnapped friend. Chi flung a door out of her way. There was a body underneath. It wasn’t our companion. It was the other officer and he seemed to have suffered similar injuries as the first guy. Even from where I stood, I could see his throat also appeared be nothing but a horrible mass of ripped tissue and blood. I put my hand to my mouth to keep from getting sick.

“What’s going on,” asked a voice from beside me. It startled me and I jumped as I turned towards the sound. The figure standing right beside me was also covered in blood. It was on his face, dripping down his shirt, splattered on his pants, and even across his cute purple painted nails. Luhan looked up at me. “Looks like someone made a boo-boo.”

Continue to Ep. 69

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Vampire Boys Of Summer (revamped) Ep. 67

Vampire Boys Of Summer

67: Officers In Blue

The first one came forward. Ryo held his hands up in mock surrender. “Hey big guy, we were just leaving like we were told to. We leave, you return the girl. That’s the deal.”

The guy looked confused at first. It reminded me of someone who is getting instructions through an earpiece. It is was easy to see he wasn’t a vampire. None of these jock guys were. They were human slugs under someone else’s control.

“The deal has changed,” the guy finally said. “You leave. We keep the girl. You don’t die.”

Ryo lowered his hands. “Wow, I’m impressed. You actually strung some words together to make a complete sentence.” He began to applaud.

I wasn’t sure what to do. Haru squeezed my hand as if to say, brace yourself.

I heard the whir of the spinning nunchuck before I saw it. One of the other hulking guys had begun to show off his expertise with the weapon, though he held back to see what Ryo was going to do to their spokesperson.

“You know,” Ryo sighed. “You guys should have brought throwing stars instead.”

Before anyone could even respond, his arm shot out and his open palm connected with the jock’s chest. The force was so hard it nearly knocked the wind out of the guy. It wasn’t designed to harm the boy however. It was merely intended to shove him backwards a few feet, just enough to make him stumble into the path of his friend’s twirling nunchuck. The weapon, essentially two pieces of hard wood connected by a chain, slammed into the guy’s head, which stopped the momentum of everyone.

Ryo ducked and spun around the guy’s now falling body and popped up in front of Mr. Nunchuck. Again, his open palm was Ryo’s weapon of choice and it slammed up and across the bridge of the second assailant’s nose. There was a brief spray of blood, but Ryo ignored and it and charged the third footballer. This guy had the brass knuckles and was a more prepared than his friends had been. He managed to land a blow across Ryo’s cheek. There was a cracking noise and I gasped, thinking the guy had managed to break some bones in Ryo’s face. But the cracking hadn’t come from that. It had come from the fact Ryo had grabbed the guy’s wrist just as his fist had landed the blow. In one swift motion, he snapped the bone. The guy screamed in pain, and Ryo swept his legs out from under him with his foot. All three of the attackers were now on the ground in various degrees of pain.

Ryo stood over them , looking down as they writhed on the ground, moaning from their injuries. “Now, you tell your master….”

The kids dropped from the trees. There were more than we initially thought, and they were all landing either on Ryo or around him. Before he could even react he was buried breath a pile of rabid, foaming at the mouth children.

Chi broke off from our group and charged into the fray. She started pulling the kids off Ryo. I could tell she was trying not to harm them, but it’s hard to avoid injuring others when you are flinging them through the air. I couldn’t believe all this was happening. Just what was the purpose of this whole confrontation. They had to know this wouldn’t stop my friends. Why were they trying to delay us?

Luhan was getting agitated by all this as well, and looked to be ready to join Ryo and Chi, but Haru put a hand on his shoulder. “They can handle this one,” he said. “Let’s get to the car.”

“You’re going to leave them?’ I asked.

“They’ll catch up. We have to keep moving.”

I looked at the melee under the trees. Ryo and Chi were pushing kids away from them the best they could, but once you got three off of you, three more took their place. It was like trying to swat pesky flies at a barbecue.

We moved around them, Haru, Luhan, and I. We ran across the yard, aiming for Haru’s car. It had miraculously survived my driving skills from where we had raced home from the hospital. Hopefully, I t would get us up to the lake before night fully descended.

As we reached the car and Haru threw the rear doors open, I looked back. Ryo and Chi were still under assault, but now they had bigger worries. The football jocks were getting back up and they didn’t look happy.

“Haru?…”

I turned to look at my love, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the two police officers coming across the yard towards us. They wore blue uniforms and walked with a determined gait. They both had a pair of handcuffs in their hands. One also had what looked like a taser. But what really bothered me were the fact that they were police at all. You see, Chelsea Valley didn’t have a police force. We had sheriffs, and they dressed in tan, not blue.

“Nora, Luhan,” Haru said quietly. “Get in the car.”

I dared another look back at Ryo and Chi. I noticed Ryo had lost his advantage and the three hulks had drove him to the ground and were kicking him in the ribs. Chi was running across the grass towards her. She was screaming something. I thought it sounded like “Trap!”

“Nora Williams,” one of the officers in blue intoned. His voice was menacing and deep.

Luhan came around the car to confront them. It looked almost silly, these two tall policemen being confronted by a guy who looked all of twelve on a good day.

“You can’t take her,” Luhan said.

Both officers smiled and it was scary. They didn’t have fangs or anything, but their mouths looked dingy and dirty, as if they had been napping in a dirt grave for forty years.

“We didn’t come for her,” one of them said, pointing a taser at Luhan. He fired. The electric charge surged through Luhan like a bolt of lightning. The little guy’s body spasmed and he fell to the ground, flopping around on the grass, as the massive amount of electricity passed through him.

I heard a scream and at first thought it was me. But it wasn’t. It was Chinatsu. And she was leaping through the air. She touched down in front of the guy with the taser, smacking it right out of his hands. She grabbed him by the throat and squeezed. He brought a hand up in an attempt to do the same to her, but she was too fast. She caught his wrist before he made contact. For a second she seemed frozen in time, one hand around his throat, the other clenching his wrist, and then her hands moved in opposite directions so fast I barely saw it. But I heard it. The cracking of his wrist bone. The snapping of his neck. He didn’t even have time to scream. He crumbled in a heap at her feet.

The other guy had grabbed the unconscious Luhan, whose body was still twitching through the after effects of the electric shock. He hauled him up and over his shoulder and was breaking into a run for the police cruiser.

Chi snatched up the taser, angrily crushing it in her hand, and then went after him. Haru looked at me as if he were going to leave my side and give chase as well, but then he grabbed me shoving me in the back seat of the car.

“Keep your head down, “ he shouted, shutting the door once I was all the way in. Before doing as he said, I glanced out the window and saw all three of the footballers running towards us. I couldn’t see what had happened to Ryo, but the fact they were now coming after us didn’t bade very well.

Continue to Ep. 68

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Vampire Boys Of Summer (revamped) Ep. 64

Vampire Boys Of Summer

64: Evil On The Cell

Ryo had returned to the window, while the others had fallen into silence, giving him room to himself. But I couldn’t take the quiet. There were still many questions in my head.

“What happened to Angela?”

“She remained at school,” Haru replied. “Then she went home.”

“We have to tell her,” I said.

“Tell her what?”

“About you guys.”

“No way,” Ryo replied.

“She has the right to know what’s going on,” I reasoned.

“Why?”

“Because I’m her best friend. And best friends don’t keep secrets from each other.”

Ryo snorted. “I’ve existed long enough without a best friend. I certainly don’t need one now.”

“Well, I do. Maybe that’s what makes me human, and you’re not.” It got quiet. The sudden silence was like a dark cloud had spilled from my very mouth. I looked around at everyone. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s ok,” Chi replied. “We understand. We lost a lot of things when we became vampires. Even then we didn’t know what we were becoming. We were only wishing to defend our village from…”

“Can Angela keep a secret?” Luhan interrupted.

I nodded, but to be honest I wasn’t sure if she could. Still, I hated hiding so much stuff from her. It had caused enough strain on our friendship.

“I don’t think it’s going to matter before too long,” Haru said. “Everyone is going to know. At least we could prepare her and maybe have another ally.”

Ryo stepped away from the window. “I’ll tell her.”

“No. I will,” I said. I noticed Ryo shot me a look, so I explained. “She’s going to be mad enough for me not telling her sooner.”

He shrugged and turned back to the window.

“It may put her further in danger,” Haru said. “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

I nodded. “You have all trusted me with your secret. Until now, I haven’t told a soul, not even my own mother. Speaking of which, where is my mom?”

“She insisted life goes on and went to work,” Chi replied. “Haru tried to get her to take some time off to mourn, but she insisted.”

“Does she know what happened at school?”

“Not yet,” answered Luhan. “Oddly enough, no one has called to inform her.”

I shook my head. “That’s strange.”

“They may already have the principal in their pocket.”

“Or my guidance counselor.”

“Whoever their clan leader is, he is powerful,” Chi said. “He’s spreading his influence pretty rapidly. To have lured Lazenby to the boiler room took some doing. After all, She was already under Ryo’s influence.”

Luhan agreed. “He probably has some lieutenants in training or in place already. Only someone moving up in power could have done this. It was possibly someone she never thought to fear before. Maybe another teacher.”

“If they are going after every one connected to us, someone needs to bring my mom home. I don’t care what we tell her, but we need to keep her safe. If they take her, I won’t have any family left.”

“Tomoko is watching over her,” Haru said. “He’ll make sure she is protected.”

I thought back to the attack on the house. What I had seen as I looked back on the stairs, how Tomoko had changed into something dark and terrible to take on the intruders, ensured me mom would be okay. But Angela wouldn’t be. She was alone at home, probably upset that Ryo had carried me off into the sunset.

“I need to call Angela and get this over with,” I said. “Where’s my cell?”

Chi turned around in her chair and picked it up off my desk. “Here,” she said and tossed it to me. I caught it easily, which surprised me somewhat. Usually I couldn’t catch anything except a cold.

I woke the cell up. After telling her the truth, Ang and I would be like sisters sharing a secret you don’t tell your parents. But before I could press her name in my contacts list, the phone rang. The screen came up with her number. “Wow, she’s calling me,” I said and answered it. “Hi Angela, I was just…”

“Ick-uh-rus,” a sinister voice interrupted me. “If you want your friend unchanged and unharmed, tell your toothy friends they are not welcome here. It is time for them to leave or there will be more pain than you can imagine.”

I looked at my vampire friends and put the caller on speaker.

“We have already taken your father,” he continued unaware. “We have also taken your teacher, delicious as she was. Now who do we have to take next?” He hesitated a second. “Perhaps this blond hair morsel who secretly dreams lustful thoughts for a vampire? Her hair is already turning silver from her fear.” He laughed, and if I could I would have bit him through the phone. I looked at both Haru and Ryo. Haru had a fixed grim look on his face. Ryo looked like he could eat someone for dinner. Twice.

“What do you want from me?” I asked the caller.

“You will surrender yourself to us. You should be my queen. It has always been destined, even before they came. So you get rid of them or Angela dies. Then your mom and anyone else I choose.” He laughed again, but there was no mirth in it, only evil promise. Whoever the caller was, they were either completely turned so that none of their human self was left or…

“Are you the master?” I blurted out, suddenly afraid.

“I’m going to be YOUR master,” he chuckled, and for a moment his voice sounded familiar, yet I couldn’t place where I had heard it before.

Ryo couldn’t be quiet any longer. “You’re going to be fucking dead is what you’re going to be,” he snarled.

“Ah, speaker phone. Brilliant, Nora. Tell you what….Ryo, is it?…I’m going to rip this bimbo’s head off and set it on my desk if you don’t go away. Or perhaps I’ll give her the sweet burning taste of fire like I did your little hottie teacher. I shouldn’t have burnt her up so quick, what a waste…”

Before Ryo could respond, the caller hung up. I looked at Ryo, knowing he could explode into a rage any minute now. Instead he walked calmly back to the window, though his very anger seemed to permeate the room. “This isn’t going to be war,” he whispered between clenched teeth. “I’m going to massacre every last one of them.”

Continue to Ep. 65

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Vampire Boys of Summer (revamped) Ep. 63

Vampire Boys Of Summer

63: A Gathering For Nora

I woke in familiar surroundings. Both of my eyes fluttered open to be greeted to the sight of the Asian rock bands and anime characters of my bedroom walls. Some had been there previously, others looked new, including the sketch I had made of Haru. My computer was on and streaming “Heartache”, a song by the Japanese rock band One Ok Rock. The strange thing about it was I had been dreaming about that very song.

Ryo had been in the dream, healing me as he had done in real life. Except here he was telling me it caused him such pain knowing that would be the only way he could touch me. To have me only in a dream. Perhaps that sounds vain on my part, but one does not control the nature of our dreams. I began to wonder if it was even me in the dream. Maybe I was dreaming I was someone else, like the girl he had liked long ago. The one Haru had accidentally killed while trying to turn her. Before I awoke, Ryo had been leaning over me and saying in a sing song voice, “They say time takes away the pain, but I’m still the same,” directly referencing the song that I awoke to.

Fully awake, I now looked around my bedroom. It was crowded. My beloved Haru, sat on the floor beside my bed, as close to me as he could possibly be without sitting on the bed itself. Chi sat in the chair at my desk, her long legs straddling it in the same way Haru had done on nights he watched me sleep. Luhan was at my closet, rifling through my clothes, nodding his head in approval at some, shaking his head in disagreement over others. Ryo stood at the open window like a statue, his back to me and looking out onto the night. He was definitely one who liked the nocturnal hours because he seemed to be taking in deep breaths of the cool air and exhaling it slowly as if he were practicing some form of vampiric meditation.

“Hi,” I muttered, trying to address them all at once.

Haru got up from the floor and leaned over me, planting a long kiss upon my cheek. “Baby, you’re awake,” he sighed, the relief in his eyes belying his worry. I wasn’t sure but I think it was the first time he had ever called me baby or any other pet name.

“I’m home,” I replied. “I missed you.”

Through I didn’t think my injuries had been that bad before Ryo fixed them, Haru looked on the verge of tears. “I missed you, too.” He wiped a tear that was forming in the corner of his eye. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to watch over you. I never should have made you go to school.”

“You didn’t make me. I wanted to go.”

“You didn’t learn much though, did you?” Said Ryo without turning from the window.

I turned my head in his direction. “I learned nearly everyone is coming under a dark power. I learned, or I suspect , that those who attacked the house last night are new vampires, as none of them showed up for school today in the daylight. I learned it’s never too late to patch things up with your friends and that sometimes help comes from the unlikeliest of places.” I stared at the back of his head, wishing he would turn around and face me. “How’s that for learning, Ryo?”

He shrugged his shoulders but did not turn around. “Whatever.”

Chi spoke up. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help you, Nora. Luhan and I both were distracted and we didn’t realize the attacks would come from humans under the influence.”

I wasn’t going to let her off the hook that easy. “What distracted you?”

“Your teacher, Miss Lazenby.”

“She wasn’t at school today,” I replied, and for a moment it seemed to take her off guard as I caught her in her lie.

Still she smiled graciously and answered me in a tone that was both corrective and regretful. “Yes she was, Nora. But she never made it to class. She was down in the boiler room.”

When I gave her a confused look, Luhan closed my closet door and added, “She was burnt to a crisp.”

I was in shock. Now I knew why Ryo was staring out the window and not saying anything nice to anyone. It was his way of dealing with the loss.

“Someone or something lured her down there before school began,” Chi explained. “Then they lured us down to find her at the exact moment you were assaulted in the cafeteria.”

Luhan shook his head as if he couldn’t believe they fell into the trap. “It served two purposes,” he said. “Get rid of one of our allies and make the way for you to be attacked, possibly even killed if Amanda had succeeded in opening up an artery in your arm.”

I was bewildered by all this. I mean, Amanda Trump was a supreme bitch, no doubt about it, but a murderer? I didn’t think she had the guts to kill someone and I told Luhan so.

“She wasn’t herself. Like Mr Sharp she was controlled by someone else.” Luhan then grinned. “You putting the bite on her woke her up. Good job on that, by the way.” He winked at me. “Too bad Haru saw you first.” He blew me a kiss and I rolled my eyes at the little pervert.

Haru finally spoke up. “We found Bram. Ryo and I. But he wasn’t in condition to speak. Somebody scrambled his mind as if they were eggs in a pan.”

To say this news was also bad was an understatement. Bram was the grocery store clerk my father had attacked, believing him to be a vampire. Over time in the hospital, I think dad abandoned that idea and became convinced that Bram was a servant to a darker evil, a shadow figure he had seen him talking to. Information gleaned from that persuaded him a vampire invasion was coming. From the looks of things, he was right. All these things happening at once seemed carefully orchestrated, lining things up for another attack perhaps. Bram might have been able to give us some answers, but we were too late.

“All he could manage to tell us was that he’d been replaced by a school kid,” Haru continued. “He kept mumbling it over and over. We got the impression this vampire master found a better prospect for his right hand man.”

“Are you thinking Amanda Trump?” I asked.

“She would certainly fit the bill with her capacity for cruelty,” Chi replied.

Ryo finally turned around to face us all. “They didn’t have to kill my servant. I had given her life. Everything she ever aspired to be, I granted her. They took it all away. They took her away.”

I saw tears forming in his eyes, but whether they were out of sorrow or rage I couldn’t tell. The only thing I saw in his eyes was the desire for retribution.

Continue to Ep. 64

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“Vampire Boys Of Summer” 2018 Paul D Aronson. All Rights Reserved.

Vampire Boys Of Summer (revamped) Ep. 62

Vampire Boys Of Summer

62: Fixing Nora

I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t. It hurt too much. My head, my eye, my whole body felt as if it couldn’t move without sending a wave of pain through me. The shadow got up and walked towards me. Coming into the feeble light, I saw the hairless chest, tattooed and toned, before his face came into view. Ryo, his long black hair covering one eye, tried to smile, but he too seemed to be in some form of pain, or perhaps just indecision.

“Nora,” he spoke softly. “It doesn’t appear you have had a good day.”

I shook my head and looked around the room the best I could. I knew I wasn’t home, or at Haru’s, or even the Winston house where Ryo had taken up residence. The room appeared too feminine and girly for any of those places. Pink and violet dominated the walls. Unicorn artwork and sculpture, interspersed with walls and walls of books filled up the empty spaces. A chandelier was decorated with dangling multi colored streamers giving one the effect a rainbow was overhead.

“Where am I?”

“You’re at my master’s house. Against my better judgement maybe, but we’re just going to have to trust you. “

“You can trust me.”

He frowned. “We’ll see.”

He then reached under my head and carefully removed the pillow I was resting on. As he began to put it on I realized it wasn’t a pillow at all, but his ruffled white lace shirt. He buttoned it halfway and started to roll up the sleeves.

“Why am I here?” I asked .

“It was the safest place to bring you. Move over.”

At first I didn’t understand what he meant, so when I didn’t move, his dark, smoldering eyes met mine. In a low serious voice he whispered, “I need to sit beside you.”

With a little effort, and quite a bit of pain, I slid over so he had room to sit beside my stretched out form on the divan.

“It seems your life is in serious jeopardy,” he said, taking the seat. “Teachers and students alike want you dead, while rookie vampires attack you at Haru’s. I’m sure they know where I live, so this was the best place to take sanctuary. No one knows where we are.” He let that sink in for a moment before continuing. “I didn’t even know until today. The master believes in moving around…often.”

“Is your master here?”

“Yes.” The look on his face told me he had disdain for not being his own master, to having to answer to another.

“Will I meet him?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then why did you bring me here?”

“Nora Williams, you ask a lot of questions of the one who just wants to help you.”

“But why do you want to help me?”

He stumbled over the answer. “Because…I…I believe Haru would want me to.”

I didn’t believe that was his whole reason, but I let it go. “Where is Haru?”

“He’s at your house making sure it is safe for you to go home.”

I closed my eyes. With my father’s passing, I wasn’t expecting things to get so complicated and dangerous. “I didn’t think it was going to be like this, “ I said.

“Things are a lot different for all of us.” He looked at me, a serious gleam in his eye. “Nora, this is going to be weird, but just bear with me.”

He reached out with his open palm and placed it against my bad eye. For a moment it rested there, just long enough for it make me feel uncomfortable, and then I felt the pull. It was a gentle tug at my skin, as if the blood in my body was trying to rise to Ryo’s touch. His hand moved in a slow, circular pattern, moving outward from the area of my eye, then spread even further by drawing straight lines across my face north, south, east, and west. It felt as if something within me was moving with his hand. It was a strange, almost sensual feeling, as if he were a magnet attracting steel, and moving it where he wanted.

“What are you doing?” I asked nervously, a hot flush coming over my body from my face down to my knees.

“I’m manipulating your blood.”

“Why?”

“You got hit pretty hard. Normally there would be a very bad bruise, black all around your eye. I think she popped a few vessels in your face, too. That could leave permanent discoloration, but I’m fixing that.”

“You’re healing me?”

He nodded. “Something like that.”

“Can all of you do that?”

“No. Just the Alpha’s.”

I knew this was his way of saying, if you want to get healed, I’m your only hope. I was glad that he was doing it for me, but I feared what the price would be.

“Where else do you hurt?”

“Nowhere,” I lied. “Just the eye.”

He sighed and gave me a look of exasperation. “Why don’t you want me to help you?”

I was afraid to tell him the truth, but he already knew.

“I’m not going to demand anything of you, Nora. I just want to help. No strings.” He held out his arms and made a show of checking up his sleeves. “See?”

“You’re not that generous.”

“You’d be surprised how generous I can be. Now tell me, where else does it hurt?”

I reached my hand up to touch the back of my head. I winced from the pain, as it pulled the muscles of my arm and shoulder in the process.

“Everywhere then,“ he said with a lecherous wink.

“Ryo…”

Before I could get another word out, he shushed me and put his hands on my head. I felt his long fingers move across my hair, entwining close to the roots, the tips of them touching my skull. There was a slight tug and it was almost exciting. With his fingers in my hair, he leaned so close I could almost feel his breath in my scalp. I closed my eyes and tried to think of other things.

His hands moved down to the back of my neck, across my shoulder and upper back. The whole while I felt the pull. I could imagine the blood flowing inside of me at Ryo’s command. It sent a pleasant chill down my spine and made me catch my breath before it could get away from me. A knot grew in my stomach, an oddly sweet queasiness that embarrassed me. I didn’t want to feel excited by his touch and I demanded my body not to like this.

As if knowing my very thoughts, Ryo’s hands moved from my back to sweep down my arm, the warm rush racing after his fingers. The movement made me shudder in my skin, as his fingertips reached my hand. He stopped and for the very briefest of moments, his fingers laced with mine, before pulling away from me in one sharp motion, breaking the connection with the blood in my body. The hot flush within me threatened to chase after his touch, but the feeling passed.

“See?” He said. “That wasn’t too bad, was it?”

I dared to look at him. He was sweating, as if it had taken a lot of energy to heal me. “No, I guess not,” I replied.

He smiled weakly and sat there a moment, his eyes roaming over his handiwork. His close inspection made me feel a little naked and exposed, but I endured it. He got up and walked over to a bureau, where he picked up a large ornate hand mirror and brought it over to me.

“Go ahead, take a look.”

I took the mirror and inspected my face. I don’t know what I expected, if anything, but I gasped at my reflection. There wasn’t a single trace of bruising. In fact, my face looked as if it had never taken a punch. The skin was unblemished, except for a mark that was left behind by acne in the seventh grade.

“Sorry, I cant do anything about that,” he explained.

“It’s okay. I’m..wow, Ryo..this is amazing.”

He smiled brighter than I’d ever seen him before. “I’m pleased you like it, “ he said. “But this doesn’t mean you can go picking fights all summer, okay?”

I laughed. “Okay. But this time wasn’t my fault.”

“Well, I think the girl will think twice before assaulting you again. Her neck is definitely going to bear a mark. I guess Haru is teaching you well.”

I blushed and realized this was the first time Ryo and I had laughed together. I’m not sure how I felt about that, but at least the tension that had been in the room was now missing.

“Well,” he said, “I sort of lied when I said I expected nothing in return.”

The tension returned and I froze. I should have known. I should never have trusted him.

“Unfortunately, you cannot know where the master lives. I’m sorry, but those are the rules.”

Before I could even reply and say I would never reveal the location, his hand reached towards my chest, and he placed his palm flat against the space between my breasts. I felt nothing but the hot rush through my body, moving like a mixture of electricity and blood, somewhere between pain and pleasure, and then I was in darkness, unaware of my fate.

Continue to Ep. 63

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“Vampire Boys Of Summer” 2018 Paul D Aronson. All Rights Reserved.