New Dead Families

Kendra and I sat on a rooftop, trying to stay low so no one could detect us. She was doing her best to peer down onto the street corner without falling off, while I was busy tinkering with my crossbow.

“I think that’s the guy down there,” she said. “We’ll just kill him and be done for the night.”

“Okay, almost ready.”

My crossbow hadn’t been repaired in a while, and was about to fall apart. I needed a new one— that’s all there was to it. But I hadn’t even seen a blacksmith since New Orleans, so I cringed every time I had to take a shot.

“Please, please, please work,” I said.

“It’ll work, come on. He’s just a human— we can take him,” Kendra said. She was pacing out of sight behind me, raring to go.

“Maybe we should find a mirror first,” I said. If we found a Nightmare Mirror we could change from our human forms to our natural vampire forms. That way we would be a lot more capable.

“No. If we change now, we’ll alert the whole town.”

“Fine, let’s do it,” I said.

We went to the corner of the roof and jumped onto a nearby tree. The man who was on the street, our target, was amidst a group of his friends, making idle chitchat. Blah, blah, blah. From what I could remember, this guy was the mayor of the town. He had made a few enemies in Baton Rouge, and one of them happened to be a high-ranking voodoo priestess. She had hired Kendra and I to make sure he wouldn’t piss her off ever again.

So here we were. For a few measly pieces of silver, we were ready to assassinate the mayor of a small town. Kendra said it would give us a good rapport with the priestess, and that’s why we took the job. I was worried about how this would put us on these humans’ most-wanted list.

“Maybe those other guys can’t fight,” Kendra said.

“They’re all going to attack us as soon as we make a move,” I said.

“Do you still have any elixir?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I gave her one. “To our health.”

“To our reputation,” she said.

We drank the potions together, and jumped out of the tree. The effects from the elixir only lasted so long, so we had to move fast. Kendra went for the mayor’s biggest friend first. He had big shoulders and gnarly facial hair, like a curly fungus. She sank her spiked knuckles into Uni-brow’s cheek, then kicked him his ribs, which sent him reeling away. His smaller friend came at Kendra from behind.

“Protect me!” the mayor cried out. He scrambled down the street.

I left Kendra to take on the three goons while I followed our target. Maybe it was caused by fear, but the mayor was not escaping with agility. He ran and fell and scampered on his hands and knees across the cobblestone road. I stood a few feet from Kendra and took aim.

“You okay with those guys?” I called to Kendra.

“I’m fine, you get the mayor,” she responded. “This one keeps punching me. Stop punching me! How can I hit you if you don’t stop punching me?

“I need a new crossbow,” I complained over my shoulder. “I’m hitting him, and he’s barely even getting hurt. Oh wait, now he’s hurt. Sweet.”

The mayor collapsed and everything slowed down. Kendra appeared beside me and we watched the mayor clinging to his bloody stomach.

“You won’t get away with this.” He spat blood and coughed. “You hear me? They know who you are now.”

“Oh great. I told you.” I said to Kendra.

“How is anyone going to know? I killed all those guys,” Kendra said.

The mayor cried out in pain, sputtered out unintelligible gurgles, and then collapsed against the cobblestone road, glassy-eyed and motionless. A light flared on in the window overhead. Then a door opened, and we saw people’s shadows hurrying around. Someone called out into the street to ask what was going on, and several more voices joined in.

“There it goes,” I said.

We ran into the night, managing to escape amidst the confusion. But it was pretty obvious we’d been seen, and soon there would be new wanted posters with our faces plastered on them.

Far enough away from the town, hidden in the dark surrounding woods, we stopped to regroup and check in.

“You have to head out soon?” Kendra asked.

“Yeah. Do you need anything before I go?” I said.

“Nope, I’m good. Thank you for your help.”

“Hey, no problem. When will you be on again?” I asked.

“I’m always on. Hey, I think there’s something coming down the path,” Kendra said.

I turned around, scared that we had lingered too long in the woods. There were wolves out here that were easy to beat one on one, but if we got surrounded by a pack we would be out of luck.

“What is that?” Kendra asked. She was already pulling on her spiked knuckles. I followed suit and readied my crossbow.

I could only see a dark figure coming toward us. It was a man, I thought, but it didn’t move like a normal guy. I also heard a faint clicking sound, emanating from that direction.

“Hello?” I said. If it was a man, maybe lost in the woods, I didn’t want to shoot first and ask questions later. Whatever or whomever was coming toward us, though, was starting to freak me out.

“Do you need help?” Kendra said. There was no response.

The figure loomed closer, and I saw two red pinpoints in its head. Were those eyes? Kendra backed up.

“Shoot it, girl. I don’t think it’s a person,” she said.

“I don’t think so either,” I said.

I raised my crossbow and aimed at the figure. More details became apparent. It was a man, and he had clothes hanging off of his shoulders in strips, like an old suit on a hobo. His skin looked grayish, but that could have been the poor lighting and shadows. Those eyes still shone red, and the clicking sound grew louder.

“Shoot it, Clara,” Kendra said.

I felt panic stricken, wondering where this thing came from, and what in the world did it want. Upon her suggestion, I fired a crossbow bolt at it. Then another bolt, and another. They each struck home, pinging into his chest. He continued toward us, oblivious.

“No, thank you. Time to book it,” Kendra said.

She took off, running into the woods and leaving me behind. For some reason, I couldn’t make myself follow. I was panicked and frozen. When he came within a foot of me, I saw his face in detail. It was gaunt and frightening, but I couldn’t look away. A pointy red tongue came out from between his large teeth. The clicking sound increased and seemed to fill my head. His tongue snaked toward me and touched my neck. Then my vision went black.

*

I ripped my headphones out, sweating and gasping for air.

The screen in front of me blinked with red letters, informing me that I had died. Yeah, no shit. Dying was one thing I was good at in this game. But I had never fought a monster like that before, and I had never felt so afraid. The way my body reacted made me feel like I’d truly been face to face with a monster, and it was not a good feeling.

My laptop flashed back to a title screen, with Nightmare Mirror written out in bright red lettering. I sat for a moment, holding my chest and breathing, trying to normalize. I realized that Kendra was talking to me through the headphones, and I popped one back in.

“Are you still there?” she asked.

“Yeah, sorry. That was nuts,” I said.

The title screen asked me if I wanted to retry from a checkpoint. Nope. Not today.

“I don’t know where that monster came from, it was way too high level. Maybe it was a glitch?” Kendra said.

“I hope so. I’ll look it up tonight,” I said. “Talk to you later?”

“Yup. Have a good day,” Kendra said.

“Have a good night.”

We both logged out and I sat looking at my desktop for a second, still coming down from the panic attack, or whatever it was. Soon I would have to stand, lock up the bar, and go home. No way I was sleeping the Bulbul all day.

My phone went off, scaring me to death. It was my roommate, Akemi.

“Hey. What’s up?” I said, putting the phone to my face.

“Are you on your way back?” Akemi asked.

“Almost, just wrapping up now.” I shut my laptop.

“You won’t make it in time,” she said.

“Yeah, I will, okay? You don’t have to worry about me,” I said.

“Were you playing that game?”

“Yes, I was playing the game. Now I’ll be leaving, if that’s okay with you.”

“I don’t understand why you like it so much. You’re already a vampire, so why are you playing a game, pretending to be a vampire?” Akemi asked. She tried hard to keep her voice non-judgmental, and yet it still came through just fine.

“It’s fun, okay? You don’t need to understand.” I packed up my mouse, charger, and headphones while Akemi talked. “I’m leaving now. I’ll be home soon.”

“You shouldn’t be playing a game while you’re supposed to be watching the bar,” she said.

“I would have stopped if anyone came in, but no one has since three o’clock. I have to go now, bye.”

I didn’t wait for Akemi to respond. Just hit “End Call” and put my phone into my backpack, along with my laptop and headphones. I went around to all the little tables and blew out the candles. Then, with one candle to go, I caught glimpse of the emergency hatch door at the back corner of the bar. It was meant to be used in case of a skinner attack. Most vampire establishments built those or something else like it, so I had seen them around. However, since I had never had to use one, I hadn’t really thought about them too much.

I looked at the hatch, and I thought of the monster I had just seen in Nightmare Mirror. It had looked like a walking corpse with a pointy tongue. In the past, that’s how Akemi had described a skinner. I hadn’t seen one before, but I wondered if that’s what the game developers had used as inspiration for their monster in the woods.

A shudder went down my spine and I started to feel panicked again. I shook it off as I grabbed my backpack and left, locking up.

The bar wasn’t mine or Akemi’s. The Bulbul belonged to her vampire “nephew.” Tem was a local, the reason we lived in Kuala Lumpur. Akemi got all sentimental when we ran across Tem out of the blue. Akemi lost her family when she left Japan. The act of leaving was considered a betrayal by the Kuroto Clan.

Akemi had abandoned them for good reasons, but she had lived with that clan for five hundred years. There was some residual nostalgia. So when Akemi found Tem, she decided we should settle down and live near him. Whatever. Akemi had been the one who felt the need to constantly move from place to place, worried that someone from her old clan would eventually sniff her out. Tem was a reject from Akemi’s family, like the runt of the litter. The Kuroto Clan’s head honcho would kill Tem in a heartbeat. So Akemi and Tem were sticking together, hiding out.

Very sweet, I’m sure.

I wouldn’t know what it was like to be in a family clan. The guy who had turned me into a vampire wasn’t trying to— it was a fluke. I was sixteen, and thought I had met the man of my dreams. Livy just happened to be a vampire. He treated me like a meal, and I turned into a vampire.

Livy got sick of having a fledgling vampire around, and dumped me on his friend, Phineas. Then, not long afterwards, Phineas slit my throat and dumped my body into the Aegean Sea. I was lucky to survive.

So, no, I hadn’t come from a nice family vampire clan structure like Akemi did. The three of us, Tem, Akemi, and I, made up our own little vampire family.

Because I liked him, I would watch the Bulbul whenever Tem asked. He had named the place after a tropical Malaysian bird, but Tem’s bar was anything but bright and colorful. The Bulbul was located in a musty basement, lit only by candles, and catered exclusively to vampires. Tem sold packets of blood that he bought in an alley behind the hospital.

I was a terrible bartender, because I had no confidence to serve our tough vampire customers. But Tem paid me in blood, which was easier than getting it for myself.

This particular night I had been stupid and not planned to leave in advance before dawn. It was still dark, but I could tell that the sky was brightening Bad news for me. I tried to walk fast.

There wasn’t any real danger in me not making it back to my apartment before sunrise. If the sun caught me in the middle of Kuala Lumpur, I would simply fall asleep where I stood. At sundown, I would wake up just fine, because vampires don’t burn up in sunlight like they do in the stories. Worst case scenario, I might wake up in a hospital or morgue, having been presumed dead.

Akemi and I had experienced that once too often. One time we tried to fly from California to Singapore. Akemi decided to bribe a flight attendant to get us off the plane. The flight attendant took our money, but flipped out when she noticed we didn’t have pulses when we had told her we would just be sleeping.

I didn’t feel like dealing with all that, or with waking up robbed and naked somewhere, so I rushed through the empty marketplace, trying to find a shortcut back home.

Around the next corner, I bumped into Tem.

“Clara!” he said. Tem was heading toward the Bulbul. He was a short man, only an inch or so taller than me, with big brown eyes and a cheap polyester suit.

Tem was even worse than me, or better. Not only did he not sleep in the daytime, he barely needed any blood, and he could eat and drink human food. I couldn’t do any of those things.

“Hey there. I just locked up the bar, and I’m off to bed. I think you’ll find everything in order. Good morning!” I tried to push past him, but Tem wasn’t ready to let me leave yet.

“Thank you for watching my bar tonight.” Tem already knew how to speak English when Akemi and I met him, just not very well. I had given him pointers along the way, and he’d learned pretty fast how to speak English better than some blue-blood Americans. “I saw that man I told you about. You should go to see him speak. He is very smart.”

“Maybe one day.” I tried again to leave, but Tem had his hand on my shoulder.

“He will only be in town one more night, and then he is going to Bangkok. You might not get another chance,” Tem said. “You and I are different to other vampires. We don’t feel accepted sometimes. I was listening to this man’s speech tonight, and I felt proud to be a vampire. That is why you should go I think.”

“I don’t know. I’ll think about it,” I lied. I wasn’t about to go watch some puffed-up vampire talk about how cool it was to be undead and drink blood.

“I would go with you if you want. I know we are not the same even to each other. But we can still be vampires I think. We can still feel like we belong. That is what he was trying to say, that any vampire is important.”

“Well, maybe I’ll text you tonight. Goodbye, Tem.” I pushed past him, having felt like I’d been polite long enough.

“But you know, he never wanted to say the word vampire. Instead, he wanted to call us all the Woken,” Tem finished. “Good night, Clara! Please get home safely, and call me at sundown.”

With that, Tem finally moved along. However, I had halted in place, feeling as if Tem had just thrown a brick at the back of my head. The Woken? Had I heard him correctly? There was a male vampire holding pro-vampire rallies all over the world, and he was calling us all the Woken?

That was just fan-frickin-tastic. I’d only known one vampire who had ever referred to himself as the Woken, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to any seminar if Phineas de Bheal was the one holding it. Of all the Chinatowns in all the world, why did he have to come rallying to mine?