Vampire Boys Of Summer (Completed!)

Episode 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.”