Page 9 of Newly Undead in Dark River

“Oh shit. I'm so sorry. I just wanted to try running likeThe Flash. Are you okay?” It all came out in one large run of words as I looked him over for injuries. As I realized he was okay, the predator noted our position, and the hardness of Walker's body beneath mine, and the hunger overwhelmed me. I dropped my face to his neck and inhaled the scent of his blood. It was like I had taken a back seat to my predator’s baser urges, who just wanted to bite into Walker's neck and hump him into next week.

I vaguely heard someone saying my name over the steady rush of Walker's blood through his veins. Two strong hands pushed me away.

“Snap out of it, Mika!”

I reared back and noted the crowd of people around us. Blood rushed to my face. If Walker hadn't stopped me, I would have bitten and sexed him up in front of half the town. I scrambled off his body. I had nearly violated the town sheriff. No one in the crowd looked outraged though, they just looked at me with expressions of sympathy, and some with straight up pity. I wanted to run away.

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

I shot to my feet and ran as fast as my new legs could carry me. Which turned out to be really fast. I stopped when the soles of my converses started to melt. The smell of the burned rubber was acrid in my nostrils.

I realized I was back at the WELCOME TO DARK RIVER sign. The reality of my new life crashed over me. If I couldn't control myself with Walker, how was I meant to control myself with my family? Alice had told me it would take decades for me to get my hunger under control. Was I going to go back to them, having not aged a day, and say, “Mom, Dad, I'm home!” But the thought of hurting them burned like acid in my gut. No matter what I did, they would feel pain. Physically or emotionally. I’d accepted all this so easily because I foolishly thought that I would be different. I would have better control than all the rest, and I could go home, see my family again. I’d been fooling myself.

Someone had done this to me, to them, and there was no going back. Rage burned up my body, and I screamed. I walked over to one of the towering pine trees and punched it as hard as I could. Someone had stolen my life without any thought of how much it would hurt the ones I loved. They would never have closure, always wondering if I would just wander back through the door, or stare at the phone every time it rang, hoping it was me. The unfairness of it all made me hit the tree trunk harder and harder until it cracked ominously and fell.

I sat down against the trunk of the tree and sobbed. Every sob seemed to tear loose a little piece of my heart.

“You'd make a killin' as a lumberjack.” The deep gravelly voice that whispered out of the darkness was already familiar. He was the last person I wanted to see. I wanted to wallow in my self-pity without wanting to jump anyone's bones.

I just let out an inhuman growl. The sound made me cry more.

“Jesus, Sugar, don't cry. I'm a Southerner, I don't deal well with tears.” Judge sat down next to me and patted my shoulder awkwardly.

I wrapped my arms around my knees and cried harder into my lap.

“It's not so bad. If you had to be turned anywhere, this isn’t a bad place to end up. Trust me on this, Sugar. There are places far worse for a baby vamp to be than Dark River. The cities are littered with rival clans, some in the throes of all-out war. Toss in the Council Enforcers killing you for even a little slip, and the fact that you have to fend for yourself, and Dark River is a damn paradise in comparison. A little Stepford for my tastes, but I can understand what they were trying to achieve. Though, you are quite the fly in their idyllic little ointment. One of them must have broken the first and second commandments. Thou shall not drink a human dry and then desperately try to cover up your mistakes by making them a vamp. It would have almost been better if you'd stayed dead, for the town at least.”

I stiffened at his words. His tone wasn't threatening, but his words sent a shiver down my spine. I edged away, and he laughed.

“C'mon. You can't think it was me? I don't have that kind of conscience. If I'd actually drained you dry, I would have buried you in the woods and hightailed it outta town. My moral code isn't that squeaky clean.”

He had a point. “Why do you stay if you are so scathing of the system?”

Judge shrugged and slipped a cigarette from the packet in his pocket. “No system is perfect, but so far, this is the best the Vamps have achieved. I haven't drunk the Kool-aid yet, but I adhere to their rules, and they let me stay. Maybe I’ll commit to the pledge, and get a cozy little job at the service station soon, or maybe I'll move on. I haven't decided.”

Make that two of us. The smell of the tobacco made me want to gag. “That's disgusting. How can you stand the smell?”

“You get used to it after a while. Besides, it adds to my devil-may-care demeanor, don’t ya think?” His hooded gaze and his one-sided smirk made me think all sorts of dirty thoughts. Thank God for cigarettes, or I probably would have tried to assault him like I had Walker on the pavement. We sat in the silence of the night, which actually wasn't very silent. Owls screeched in the darkness, and something skittered in the trees far above us. A wolf howled somewhere in the distance and was echoed by the howl of a second.

The blue and red flash signaled the police car pulling up on the shoulder of the road. Judge stood and tipped his imaginary hat. “Seems your white knight has arrived. I'll see you 'round.”

With that, he disappeared back into the darkness.

My knuckles had already started to heal, and the only real evidence of my little outburst was the blood splattered on my t-shirt.

“I can hear you out there, Mika. You have no reason to be embarrassed. It happens to everyone.” God, this sounded like my mother consoling me after I wet the bed when I was six. I stepped out of the surrounding woods just so he would stop.

I walked over to the storm drain where I woke up. It was smaller than I remembered, and the thought of someone stuffing me in that cylindrical coffin made my cheese fries turn in my stomach.

“Last night’s rain had washed away some of the physical evidence, and I couldn't pick up any scent except yours. That in itself means that we are dealing with someone of quite an age. Learning to mask your scent takes centuries of practice. We have a fang width measurement, but you'd already started healing by the time you got to town, so it's not as accurate as I would have liked. Also, the person who has done this has the ability to mind wipe, which again points to an elderly vamp. Most keep the ability a secret. We’re a secretive bunch.” He sighed and dragged his hand over his face. He seemed to do that a lot.

“I'm not going to lie to you, with evidence this sparse, it's going to be hard to catch the person who did this to you. I am praying that it was an outsider. I don't want to think that someone from the town could have done this. It hasn't happened in nearly two centuries.”

I could hear the desperation in his voice, as he clung to the hope that it wasn't someone he knew, that he had breakfast with, that he'd chatted about ball scores over pints with.

“I wonder where my stuff has gone?” I knew I shouldn't cling to my backpack filled with clothes that needed a wash, and a worn pair of flip flops, but it felt like I had nothing left of my old life.

Walker shrugged. “I went over the area with a fine-tooth comb during the daylight, but I found nothing.”

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