The Vampiric Housewife (16 page)

    
Valerie rubbed her eyes. “Everyone, get washed up. We want to be ready to leave the moment your father gets back.”

    
John entered the bathroom first.

    
“Mom, I’m hungry,” Harry whined.

    
“Your father will bring us home something soon.”

    
“I could just go outside and catch myself a human. It can’t be that hard—“

    
“We are not to leave this room! Understand?” Her violet eyes burrowed into her son’s. She didn’t know what was on the other side of the door. But she knew it was dangerous. It could be Venjamin waiting out there wanting to breed her children like animals or humans who wanted to drive a stake through their little hearts.

    
“Yes,” he sulked.

    
One by one they shared the restroom coming out bathed and dressed in crumpled clothing. Harry turned on the television—he had become a master at the remote—and it revealed a radically different world from the one they were familiar with. At first it was a news program. The country was at war in far off places named Iraq and Afghanistan. Valerie had only read about wars in school text books. She thought the United States had been at peace since the Civil War. Unemployment plagued the country like an epidemic. Families were losing their homes. Everyone in Sangre Valley was employed. Everyone owned a house and a car and there had never been any fear of losing any of it. Murders and rapes happening daily within cities. Mothers murdering their babies, teachers having sex with their students, kids going on murdering sprees in their high schools. Humans were violent. They were dangerous. That was one thing Venjamin hadn’t lied about.

 
   
The news show didn’t hold Harry’s interest, and he flipped the channel. It was an infomercial for some kind of home gym. Who had ever heard of a home gym? Why would a person need that? He flipped the channel again. A woman was having an orgasm in the shower caused by her shampoo! It was only seven thirty at night! She looked at her children’s faces. They were wide-eyed and blushing. More commercials. There were so many choices out there. Twenty different cereals. Ten different soda pops. A phone that fits in your pocket. A home computer. It was space aged.
  

    
Then Harry landed on some kind of drama show about privileged high school kids. The girls wore almost nothing. Cleavage, mid-drifts, skirts barely below their privates. All three of her children were consumed by the skin and outfits of the girls, even Amelia. The boys on the program were just as bad. Constantly taking off their shirts. Then there was sex! Eight o’clock at night! Underage children taking their clothes off and rolling around in bed. It was indecent! But Valerie did not shield her children’s eyes. Like it or not, this was learning. This was the world they now lived in. As uncivilized as it was . . . there was something empowering about it. Moms didn’t have dinner on the table by five o’clock. They actually held jobs while having families. They were divorced and went on dates. They even got to have sex too. The girls weren’t going to school in preparation to be wives. They were going to go to college to have careers. Some dads worked, some dads stayed at home to care for their children. Valerie had never heard of such a thing.

    
The show ended and Harry began flipping through stations again. He stopped when a character said the word
vampire
. Until now, they knew they had been watching humans. Despite the consumption of food, they could have been vampires. Their speech and actions and emotions all mimicked vampires. But now they had found a window into how humans viewed vampires.

 
   
Valerie did not like it. It was another half naked blonde teenager. She was a student, a cheerleader, and a vampire hunter. Vampires were these stupid, aggressive, blood lusting creatures that she would stab through the heart with a stake after some gymnastic filled fight scene. It was crude and wrong.

    
“Turn it off,” Valerie exclaimed when she couldn’t take anymore. It was a make-believe show, she knew that. But how far from the truth was it? Was this what awaited them on the other side of the door? Charlie said most humans didn’t believe in vampires. But apparently enough knew about them to make a television show. And the people who watched that show must think that was an accurate representation of vampires.

    
“Mom, it’s not real,” Harry said. “You can tell the fighting’s fake.”

    
“Turn the channel or turn the TV off.”

    
He sighed and turned the channel. More half naked young people whose sense of humor revolved around sex and violence. She preferred her children watch that than the perverted distortion of her species.

    
“Humans are like us,” Amelia said quietly.

    
“No, they’re not,” John said obstinately. “They’re just more evolved than the humans in Sangre Valley. Monkeys who were taught to talk.”

    
“The humans in Sangre Valley were kidnapped from this world and drugged. They aren’t any different than us—except they don’t murder for a meal.”

    
“They eat meat. Isn’t that murder? Where do you draw the line? Why not stop eating cows? And humans murder
us
too. You saw it.”

    
“Of course they kill us! We murder them for food.”

    
“What is wrong with you, Aims? So what if they’re a little bit more like us than we thought? It’s like Dad said, we’re still on the top of the food chain. It’s nature.”

    
“Enough,” Valerie said. “My head hurts. Just turn the damn thing—“

    
The door swung open, the lock breaking the frame of the door. But it wasn’t Charlie who came through. It was Rhett, dressed in tight black leather pants, a crimson shirt, and a sleek leather jacket. He looked nothing like himself. He was smiling—grinning really. Behind him entered Drew with another vampire who was short and muscular with sandy blonde hair and beady eyes.

    
Slowly Valerie stood up placing herself between the vampires and her children. “Rhett?”

    
“Hi Valerie. You’ve been a bad girl.”

    
“What is he doing here?” she asked gesturing to Drew. “Does Venjamin know what he did to my daughter?”

    
“Every salacious detail,” Drew said. “Hi there, Amelia.”

    
“Go to hell,” she said.

    
“One day in the twenty-first century and the girl gets a filthy mouth. I like it.” He grinned.

    
“Stay away from my sister,” John threatened. Drew just laughed at him.

    
“Where’s Charlie, Valerie?” Rhett asked.

    
“I don’t know.”

    
“Takes you on the run then abandons you? Doesn’t sound like Charlie to me.” Rhett turned to his two henchmen. “Get them back to St. Vladimir. I’ll stay here and wait for Charlie. He won’t be coming back to Sangre Valley.”

    
The stocky vampire grabbed her by the arm. She pulled back but to no avail. “Do you know what Venjamin plans to do to my children? To Amelia?”

    
“As a matter of fact I do,” Rhett said.

    
“What makes you think he won’t do the same to Marie or Bobby or your unborn child? You’re a husband and a father—“

    
“No, I’m not. I have a job. That’s all.”

    
Suddenly Valerie realized how truly different Charlie was from the rest of his kind.

    
All three vampires were suddenly in the room. The third vampire started pulling her towards the door. Drew clamped a hand on the arms of Amelia and John, both who tried to pull away.

    
“Let go of my mom!” Harry yelled and jumped off the bed and onto the vampire’s back, his teeth sinking deep into the back of the vampire’s neck. Valerie got pushed to the floor. As if on cue, Amelia and John attacked Drew, Amelia kicking, John punching. With one arm Drew flung John across the room and into the wall with such force that the drywall cracked. He slid down the wall to the floor, dazed. Amelia was tossed onto the bed. In a blink of an eye, Drew was on top of her, pinning her down. “I’ve been craving this,” he whispered in her ear. This time he had no interest in getting under her skirt.

    
She stared back at him, courage in her eyes. “So have I.” And with all her force she pushed him off of her, across the room, and into the TV which exploded into sparks. Drew fell to the floor with shards of glass in his back, smoke rising from his leather jacket. Her strength from the other night was still with her.

    
Rhett tried to detach Harry from the back of the third vampire, but his teeth were sunk in like a leech.

    
“You little bastard! Get off of me! Get him off!” screeched the short vampire.

    
Charlie appeared in the door. He pulled Rhett away from Harry and threw his former friend across the room and into the bathroom. The tiled wall cracked. With lightening speed he tossed a dazed Drew into the bathroom. He knocked Rhett back down with a punch to the face. The unnamed vampire was trying to smash little Harry into a wall. Back on her feet, Valerie took the phone off the night stand and swung it into his face. The vampire went down and Harry leaped off of him.

    
“He tasted putrid,” Harry said spitting on the ground.

    
Charlie helped John up. Amelia jumped off the bed. “Into the car. Now!”

    
Valerie grabbed the suitcase and pushed Harry out the door. She didn’t see the car though. Instead there was a rusted blue van with the side door open idling in front of them.

    
“Where is the car?” John asked panicked.

  
  
“Get into the van!” Charlie yelled slamming the driver’s side door.

    
“What happened to the car?” he asked again as Valerie pushed him in. Before the door could slam shut, Charlie was speeding away checking the rearview mirror to make sure none of the vampires were coming after them. “Is everyone okay? Is anyone hurt?”

    
Valerie examined her children, her heart still pounding in her chest. Harry had blood on his chin and down the front of his shirt but it wasn’t his. John had a gash on the back of his head and seemed a little dazed, but he would be okay. Amelia was fine. “We’re okay. We’re all okay. How did they find us?” she asked climbing into the passenger’s seat.

    
“Venjamin has a lot of resources. But we’re going to be okay. I promise.”

    
“How are we going to be okay?”

    
“I have a plan. I have a plan,” he said, half speaking to her, half to himself. He hadn’t expected Venjamin’s men to find them so quick. But it made sense. He sent Rhett after them. Rhett who was an expert tracker. Charlie had hunted with him enough to know. And Drew having already tasted Amelia’s blood once would have a better ability to trace her. Charlie hadn’t recognized the third vampire. Probably a recruiter. They were nasty sons of bitches.

    
“Well, it’s time you shared it with the rest of us.”

    
“I will. I promise.”

    
“When? And what was that back there? Why could you move so fast? Why were they so strong?”

    
“I’ll tell you everything. Just not now.” He needed to think, to plan, to plot.

    
“No. Now! Because now is all we’ve got!”

    
“Okay! Okay. Made-vampires have some special talents. We’re fast. We can move quicker than the eye can see. And we have incredible strength.” His eyes flickered to his kids in the rearview mirror. “You guys may have it too. Venjamin always thought so. There were experiments but never anything conclusive either way. Amelia has vampire strength for sure.”