Hunter's Moon

Chapter 4

            The motorcycle chewed through the grass as it made its way back to the road. Robert kept his eyes peeled for any signs of movement.

            That kid is lucky. One bite from that leech and his life would'a been a whole lot more interesting. Robert thought to himself. Woo boy, I hate Chinese curses.

            The street came into view of the motorcycle's headlight. He saw a girl running several blocks away. There we are little darlin'. We can't be letting you get away. He gunned the motor and sped up to catch up with the girl. Robert passed her on the road, and then pulled to a stop, blocking her path.

            The girl stopped short. She looked at him warily. “What do you want?”

            “Not safe out on the streets tonight, little miss. I'm just trying to help.”

            “What kind of help? Why do you have a gun strapped to your back? I should call for help.”

            “Oh, but I am help.” Robert said as he got off the bike. “Obviously you’re cold and tired.” He reached for a blanket he had strapped to the back of the bike. He offered it to her, being careful not to step any closer to her, but motioning that he could toss it over to her.

            The girl accepted the blanket and pulled it around her shoulders, “I just want to go home. I shouldn't have gone to that frat party. My parents are going to kill me.”

            “Well, you look like you’re hurt,” Robert said. “I've got a first aid kit . . . You might even need a hospital.”

            At the mention of injuries, the painkilling aspect of her fight-or-flight reflex seemed to end and she suddenly became unable to stand up straight. Robert moved in and helped her keep her balance.

            “Whoa there,” he said as he reached for a flask of holy water for the second time that night, “here, drink this. It's just water.”

            The girl took the flask and took a big gulp, “Thank you. I'm Si--” the words caught in her throat as her eyes went wide in shock and she dropped the flask. Steam started coming out of her mouth, and the areas on her legs that we splashed by the falling water started to form welts.

            “I was afraid of that.” Robert sighed and pulled a knife from his belt and muttered a quick word under his breath. At the last syllable, the blanket covering the newly sired vampire sprang to life, entangling the girl, trapping her from movement. Robert slit her throat and then picked the limp body off the ground and lashed it down to the back of his bike.

            “Middle of the street is no place for you, little girl.”

            Robert mounted the bike again and rode off into the night.

            The Stramos looked over the map of the surrounding area. It was amazing how much things had changed within the last several decades. The advances in technology for one thing. Eric had explained to him how current devices operate, but most things truly confounded him. Cell phones, computers and the Internet. They were beyond him. Secondly, and this one pleased him, the population difference between when he was last awake compared to today. There were so many more people now, it would be easier for people to fall through the cracks and be missed by the general populace.

            He was studying the map, on paper thank you very much, looking for a location to perform the ritual. He needed a wide enough space to generate the pattern, and then also to position as many underlings as he could. Getting as many as possible to be affected by the spell's effects would be essential to his plans. He saw one location on the map and then paused to double check the scale in the map legend.

            "Interesting. This may just work," he told himself.

            The Stramos checked the clock and saw it was still several hours before sunrise, plenty of time to scout out the location in person.