Vampire Boys Of Summer (Completed!)

Episode 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.