CENTRAL SPRING RIDGE

TRIGGER WARNING!

This chapter is one of the most brutal in the series and is unforgiving. This chapter is for mature readers only simply for scenes of extreme violence and torture. There is some language, but it’s not that bad in the swearing department. Nevertheless, you were warned.

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“My time with Helen was shorter than I would have liked, especially after the tragedies that befell the weary peoples of the Shame. The cabal of vampires that hunted me picked us off one by one as we entered downtown Spring Ridge, and I can remember watching our little community whittle away to nothing.

Oddly enough, of all the people to help me, it was Paige who came to my rescue at that critical moment. The young woman had been seriously mentally ill before her nightmarish transformation into a vampire, but something about being one of those creatures inflicted a strange form of mercy upon her, because it gave her a conscience she had not previously possessed.

This was also the very first instance we ran into Mr. R, though I had no idea who or what he was at the time. Mr. R’s appearances never foreshadowed anything good, because it meant we were in a trouble that Jack could not help us with.

No, I knew nothing about the well-dressed, one-armed man at that time. All I knew was that I was separated from Jack, because the Angel of Death was real, and he had come to claim my dark defender.”

“Everyone inside, now!” yelled Mr. Lands.

Of course, his voice was barely intelligible within the confines of the pounding rain and the boom of thunder. Maria could see the elderly black man who was Mr. Lands waving a flashlight from the entrance to someone’s abandoned home, but that relatively short distance of rainswept street might as well have been a thousand miles within the pandemonium of everything that was happening.

The black of night had been lit up by lights as the power to this section of the city had turned on come nightfall. This was not a good thing, however, because it brought back the reminiscence of Rory, and those lights had been the bait for a trap, just as they were now, here in Spring Ridge.

The rain came, hitting all of the former residents of the Shame as they were setting up camp, so there was no fire for their little community, and then the “vamps” had descended. The weary peoples of Shame had taken too long to find a place to rest, so when the lights had turned on, Maria knew they were all in trouble.

They snatched Gabriella first, her screams barely audible in the storm as her pitched voice floated upward in the wind and rain. Gabriella and Camilla were the ones who watched the children; that was their job, and that was why they were taken first. Camilla followed her twin sister into the sky not thirty seconds after Gabriella had been plucked up from the street.

It was not the twins they were after, though. No, they wanted the children, and it was the children they took, William, Niobe, and Renee. Maria did not realize until much later that the children were taken because of her; she was actually the one they were after, so their instructions were to grab every child they could.

A big white man with a bushy beard grabbed Maria and picked her up. He hissed in her face, his big fangs white in the muddy brightness of the overhead city lamps, but that was his final mistake. He should have simply flown off with her as had been done with the others, for a black armored fist punched through the dirty white shirt he was wearing, punching through his chest like a finger through clay. Maria fell to the street as the bad man turned to ash, that ash scattered by the storm a second later.

Jack looked down upon her with those violet eyes of hers, violet irises plunged in glowing-yellow sclera surrounded by pitch-black skin. She took a step forward, hand outstretched, but that black armored glove was never destined to reach Maria. Just like the fist that had appeared through the bad man moments before, a long black blade thrust outward through Jack’s chest, punching through the armor between the black breastplates, those plates sprayed over by graded yellow. Maria watched the tall and slender woman in black battle armor sail upwards, carried off at the end of a pole by a fluttering of void-dark, ragged robes and skeletal, bony fingers.

Jack was tall and scary, dressed in the black soldier gear like the soldiers from before the Great Purge, before the missiles had struck. She always wore that black armor, though it changed sometimes when Maria was asleep or away from Jack. Maria had never seen what Jack actually looked like, though she suspected Jack’s real face was terrifying. Maria never saw Jack eat, or drink, or sleep, and the woman never took off that soldier gear of hers, even in the sweltering heat of the summer sun.

When Maria had first met Jack, Jack had been a man, but now she was a woman for the time being, but only because Maria needed her to be, and Jack would change back when the time was right. Jack could do that, and normal people couldn’t, which meant Jack was something…other…than human, though Maria had suspected this for a long time now.

Jack changed her gear quite often, and for now…well…before the skeleton man with the big blade had grabbed Jack…Maria could see Jack’s eyes and her skin to a degree, though those eyes were a stark violet and her skin was as black as a starless night with no moon, like the deepest shadow behind the flame. Her hair was pitch black as well, a long flowing stream of ebony that somehow seemed to move on its own. However, Jack always covered most of her face, because if she took off her mask, bad things happened and people died, and once someone was dead, they didn’t come back.

For some reason Maria did not understand, Jack had a responsibility to protect her and take her “north.” Where “north” was or why Maria had to go there, she did not know, but that was Jack’s singular purpose, so Maria went with her, because she was the only one who could really protect Maria, anyway.

Maria, herself, was small for a six-year-old, with ringlets of black hair in a corona around her little tanned face and big dark-blue eyes, but she was wary for a six-year-old, and that was one of the reasons she had not yet been eaten by the creatures that roamed the night. She wore a little blue dress with pictures of fruit on it, something Helen had picked up from an abandoned Dalbers store, and this look was completed by her little black shoes, the kind with buckles on them.

Right now, her clothes were the last thing on her mind, because the drawing she had made when James had been with her had come true, and her drawings always came true. The scary skeleton man in the black robe wielding the big pole with the long black blade on it…? She had drawn that way back when in the town of Rory, and now that bad feeling she got before things went really bad…? It was back and in force.

Maria shook as she watched the two figures in black disappear into the falling rain above. The skeleton man from her picture had come, and he had taken Jack. Maria did not know what would happen to Jack, but she knew that without the tall soldier in black, she was in real trouble, so she got up and ran.

She wanted to run to Mr. Lands, run toward the light he was waving, but rough hands grabbed her up like a bird gobbling a worm. Maria screamed as she was yanked into the sky, that distance high enough up to see the rooftops below. She squirmed and looked up into the face of her captor, this time a bad woman, one Maria had seen before. It was the young Asian woman with the low red tank top and faded jean jacket, the same bad woman she had seen back when James was still with her, and this woman smiled and hissed big fangs at her, too.

“Gotcha, you little shi—!” smiled the bad woman, nasty twin fangs decorating that evil smile.

Like so many other things in Maria’s life, that smile was short-lived. The bad woman let out a loud and surprised gasp, her blood-red eyes rolled upwards into the whites, and then she suddenly turned to ash.

Maria found herself falling from a deadly height in slow motion, a hair’s breadth of seconds that felt like an eternity, but that depth in time gave her the clarity to see her rescuer. She looked up to see a bald and familiar figure, that familiarity belonging to Paige. The bald teen held a sharp wooden stick in her right hand as she scooped up Maria in her left.

Paige was sixteen and had lived in the Shame with everyone else before the bad people had come and taken her away. She had been nice and pretty once, with tanned skin, rich brown eyes, and long brown hair, but then the boys of Shame had gotten ahold of her, and they had shaved her head and had done other bad things to her as well, and then she wasn’t nice anymore.

Maria had heard from others that the young teen had done bad things to some of the other girls, so she had avoided Paige, because she did not want those things done to her. One of the other girls, Laura, wouldn’t even talk to Maria after Paige had done something to her, so whatever the bald teen had done to the twelve-year-old, it was not good, not good at all.

But the bad people had taken Paige, and they had made her one of them. Paige was still dressed in her patchy, dark-green hand-me-down sleeveless shirt and tattered black jeans like before, though her big black boots were still in good condition, but it was clear that the bad people had not treated her very well, or she would have had better clothes by now.

Maria had not liked Paige, mainly because Paige had become so mean, but Maria had not wanted Paige to be taken by the bad people, because those people were far worse than Paige had ever been.

But now that Paige was one of the bad people, one of the “vamps,” she could fly like they could, but…not very well. They flew together at a twisting and weird downward angle, like a buzzing bumblebee, and then they went crashing through a building window seconds later. Maria tumbled from Paige’s arms to land unharmed in a corner, a miracle in itself.

The whole of it surprised Maria, but it was the bald teen who immediately captured her attention. Paige dropped the sharp wooden stick she held, and it clattered across the wooden floor of the empty house they were in. The young woman looked up and opened her mouth to reveal sharp fangs, but it was clear she was in pain, serious pain at that, because she let out a long and loud cry a moment later.

“I…I’m not…invited…invited in here…” gasped Paige.

Blood ran from her eyes to trail down her pale cheeks as the bald teen tried to crawl past a plastic-covered couch to a doorway in the distance. Maria could just make out the look of agony on Paige’s face due to a strong light shining from an outside overhead lamp.

Maria knew immediately what was wrong. Jack had mentioned this several times, so she did something that others would have said was stupid, but she did not want to see Paige suffer, so she did it anyway.

“You’re invited in!” shrieked Maria.

The bald teen let out a loud gasp and then slumped to lie unmoving upon the wooden floor of the abandoned domicile.

“You’re invited in,” repeated Maria in a quieter voice.

She did not know why Paige had rescued her, but she knew they were safe for now, because the “vamps” could not enter without an invitation…of that she now knew for certain thanks to Paige.

“You’re safe now,” said Maria.

Paige gave a short snort of strained laughter from her prone position on the floor.

“I’m s…safe?” she stammered. “I’m already dead, stupid. You’re the one who’s safe, not me.”

“You’re not dead,” argued Maria. “Is this ’cause you’re a vamp now?”

“Yeah,” breathed out the bald girl. “Yeah, something like that.”

That really wasn’t an answer, but Maria had a more pressing question to ask, anyway.

“Why did you save me, Paige?” she asked.

The young woman sat up and then dragged herself onto the plastic covered couch. Rain was coming in through the shattered window they had crashed through, and it sprayed across her, but Paige didn’t seem to care.

“I don’t know,” she said after a quiet second.

Lightning flashed outside, and thunder rolled a few seconds later.

“Those bad men…” said Maria thoughtfully. “You don’t have to be with them anymore.”

“I know,” said Paige.

“You can come with me,” said Maria. “You can come with me and Jack…”

She suddenly remembered what had happened to Jack, but she refused to believe the dark woman could be killed so easily, even by the skeleton man with the long black blade.

“I’m not going anywhere with that thing,” said Paige quietly. “You shouldn’t go with him, either.”

“He’s a she now,” frowned Maria, “and she’s the only one who can protect me.”

“And ‘she’s’ doing a bang-up job,” frowned Paige in return.

“The skeleton man took her,” explained Maria, “but that won’t stop Jack. She won’t let anything happen to me.”

“The skeleton man?” asked Paige. “What skeleton man?”

“The one in the big black sheet,” explained Maria. “He has a big black blade.”

Paige gave her a look of absolute confusion.

“What in the hell are you talking about?” asked the bald teen. “Are you talking about…? No, that’s impossible. I didn’t believe him then, and I don’t believe him now.”

“Believe who?” asked Maria.

“Tyberius,” spat Paige. “Motherfu…Ugh…He’ll burn in Hell. I’m going to kill him one day…I will.”

“You shouldn’t say bad words,” said Maria.

Paige snorted out a derisive laugh.

“Still a baby,” she frowned.

Maria had a bad thought at that moment. She was alone with Paige, and that was not a good thing. Paige had done things to the younger girls in Shame, and those things had not been nice. She had done those things after the boys had gotten ahold of her, and they had done the very same things to her that were not nice, like shaving her head.

Paige had turned mean after that. She’d turned mean, and for some unexplainable reason, she’d kept her head bald; she’d kept shaving it so that it always looked the same. No, Maria did not want Paige to do bad things to her, especially now that Paige was a “vamp.”

“Are you going to hurt me, Paige?” she asked in her little voice.

“What?” scowled Paige. “No!…Don’t be stupid.”

“But you did mean things when we lived in Shame,” said Maria. “Like what you did to Laura. You did some bad things…”

“Shut up!” snarled the bald teen. “You don’t know anything, anyway. Not a damned thing.”

“But Cory said—” started Maria.

Paige leapt up from her plastic-covered seat, gripped Maria about the shoulders, and shook her lightly, a strange fire burning in her red-tinted eyes.

“Do you know where Cory is?” she breathed in frantic excitement. “Is she still alive? Tell me!”

Maria nodded, but she was too scared at that moment to say much more. Paige was up in her face, and this startled her into inaction.

“You know where she is, right?” asked Paige in a desperate tone. “She’s alive, right? Tell me she’s alive!”

“She is,” came a man’s voice from within the darkness of the room.

Paige turned and immediately placed herself between Maria and the speaker. A man had appeared upon the plastic-covered couch that Paige had just been sitting on, and he had not been there a moment ago. How he’d gotten there or who he was, Maria did not know, but his sudden appearance startled her, startling both her and Paige, and that was not good.

This man was fairly big and broad shouldered, and that wasn’t weird, but he wore good clothes, and that was strange. He had on brown slacks, a white dress shirt with a grey tie, and a light-brown dress jacket over a brown dress vest. He was white like them, and he had a handsome square face bedecked by a short and immaculately cared-for beard and mustache. Upon his well-proportioned nose was a pair of round spectacles, something Maria did not see too often.

He had grey hair upon his head, though his face looked young, and upon that greyed head was a white dress hat, not quite a fedora but something similar. He held a black cane in his right hand, that walking stick topped by a silver fish for a handle, and in that fish’s mouth was a small silver bell, but that was not what drew Maria’s attention.

It was the man’s left arm that drew Maria’s attention, or rather, his lack of one. The man had no left hand, but instead had a strange-looking hook device in place of that hand, something that looked like metal rings or wires that could be used to pick things up, and it poked out from the sleeve of his nice dress jacket.

However, Paige did not care about any of that, because the young teen was startled at this man’s very presence, or rather, his sudden appearance from nowhere.

“Who the hell are you!” spat Paige in a panic.

“You can call me Mr. R,” said the man in a blank tone.

“I’ll call you dead if you don’t get out right now!” cried Paige.

This strange, well-dressed man raised his right hand and the cane within it, and then he tapped the cane’s tip back upon the wooden floor, one loud and strong tap. The silver bell hanging from the fish’s mouth at the top of the cane rang out in a clear and dulcet tone, and that tone clearly had an effect, and that effect was a strong one.

Paige closed her eyes upon hearing that sound, and she toppled over onto her right side a second later. Maria looked down at Paige, but she did not know what had happened to the bald teen. The young woman did not move from her collapsed position upon the floor, but Maria did not think she was dead. The other “vamps” had turned to ash when they had died, but Paige only looked like she was sleeping.

Maria looked up to the strange man and felt her little heart beat faster. She did not know who he was or if he was going to hurt her, because he’d somehow put Paige to sleep, and she did not know how he’d done that.

“Are you going to hurt me?” asked Maria.

The older man gave a quick chuckle and shook his head in a gentle no.

“My, you are precocious,” he said with a slight smile.

There came a low whine from beneath her, and Maria looked down to see Paige’s eyes were open and her lips were open, but she was not moving.

“You’ve done some despicable things, young lady,” said the man, this “Mr. R.”

Maria could tell he was speaking to Paige and not to her.

“Nevertheless, you may still redeem yourself,” said Mr. R.

Paige whined, and Maria watched in both fascination and disgust as a trickle of blood ran down the bald teen’s pale cheek from the girl’s open left eye.

“Jack is otherwise indisposed at the moment,” continued Mr. R. “She will not be gone forever, but it may take her some time to get back to you, Maria. During that time, this young woman will protect you to the best of her ability, cursed though she may be.”

Paige whined again, and she opened her mouth as if to say something, but nothing came out of her but a spittle-soaked hiss. Her new fangs were really all that Maria could focus upon, anyway. They made her look meaner than usual.

The man on the couch lowered his head a little so that his grey eyes peered over his spectacles, and he gave Paige a stern look.

“You will conduct yourself in an appropriate manner,” he said in a warning tone. “We make sacrifices for others because it is the right thing to do. You will remember that. If any harm befalls Maria, it will have been far better for you if you had never been born. Am I clear?”

Paige whimpered, her left eye looking around as if in a panic. Maria did not know what to make of it.

This Mr. R stood up from the couch with the help of his cane, the little bell on it jingling, and then he pointed the silver tip of that cane at Paige.

“There are some terrible things that have happened to you,” he frowned, “but that does not give you the excuse to inflict that same pain upon others. This is your last chance, young lady.

“When the time comes, you may be faced with a choice you do not like. That choice is yours to make, and I hope, for your sake, you make a choice that you can live with. Besides, I know you care about what happens to her, because the ones you are with are truly loathsome, and they will do terrible things to her…And we both know you don’t want that…As for now…you will watch her. Understand?”

Paige whined and squeezed her eyes shut. Her mouth opened a little wider than normal, as if she were straining to say something.

Maria cocked her head to the left out of curiosity, and she looked up to ask the man how he knew their names, but the strange man in nice clothes was already gone, vanishing as if he had never been there at all.

Paige sat up and looked around in a panic.

“Is he gone?” she asked. “Where is he? Where’d he go?”

Maria shrugged. She had no idea where the nicely-dressed man had gone.

“I don’t know,” she said matter-of-factly. “I don’t even know who he was.”

“We…We should get out of here,” said Paige quickly.

“With those vamps outside?” asked Maria.

“Yeah…No…I…I don’t know,” stammered Paige. “That man…He…I don’t know what he did to me…I…I don’t know what’s going on anymore!”

“He said you had to watch me until Jack gets back,” said Maria.

“I know what he said!” hissed Paige, and her dark eyes flashed red at that moment.

This scared Maria, and she backed away from the older girl. Paige, on the other hand, did not seem to notice. The girl talked to herself or perhaps to no one, as if she were working things out in her own head, but in an audible manner.

“Oh, crap,” said Paige in a verbal heat. “I just killed Jiyoo! Oh…Oh, no. Ty is gonna kill me…No, he’s gonna ram me in the ass and then kill me. Oh…Oh, this is not good.”

Her manner confused Maria.

“You’re saying bad words again,” she frowned.

“Shut up!” said Paige in a pseudo-panic. “You stupid little turd! Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused me?…Oh, no…No…He’s gonna rape me again…I gotta…I have to go, but…You…What do I do? I have to get out of here…I have to…Wait…he said…Yeah, Jacob…”

“Jacob?” asked Maria. “Who’s Jacob?”

Paige ignored her and stood up. The bald teen paced back and forth as the rain came down outside. Lightning struck in the distance and temporarily lit up the night sky, and thunder rolled a moment later.

“I’ll go to Jacob,” said the older girl. “Yeah…If I take you to Jacob, then they might let me go…Ty doesn’t know I killed Jiyoo…I think he doesn’t…He probably thinks that Jack guy did it…That’s what I’ll say…Yeah…I’ll just give you to Jacob, and then Ty won’t be able to touch me anymore…That’s…That’s what I’ll do…”

“Where are we going?” asked Maria. “Why do I have to go somewhere? Shouldn’t we wait for Jack?”

She was not sure she wanted to go anywhere just yet. Paige, on the other hand, did not share the same opinion.

“You don’t understand,” winced the older girl. “I can’t go back…I won’t…I won’t let him touch me again…He…He did things; he…he hurt me…You don’t know…Ty is just like all the others…worse, even…They did things…They…Never mind. Just…never mind. You wouldn’t understand unless I showed you…No…No, I won’t do that…I don’t want to…I won’t…”

The bald teen sat down upon the plastic covered couch and hid her face in her hands. She sobbed into her hands a moment later, but Maria did not know what was wrong. Paige was acting funny, funnier than normal, not as mean, but still weird.

“Are you all right?” asked Maria.

Paige did not say anything but shook her bald head no. She lowered her hands to reveal a pale face streaked with blood, that blood coming from her eyes again.

“They…They made me drink…” she choked out. “They gave me Lyla. You remember her? My friend…They made me…They…I…I killed her…What have I done?…What am I going to do now? I can’t go back…I can’t…”

Maria did not understand what was wrong with the older girl, but she suspected Paige could still hurt her or make her dead if she wanted to, and this gave Maria a little fluttering fear within the pit of her stomach. The man who had just been here, that Mr. R, had made Paige fall over with just a tap of his cane and the ring of his bell, so maybe the older girl was afraid of him. She was definitely afraid of the bad people who had taken her—that was obvious—but Maria could not use them as a warning. No, the only thing she could think of to protect herself was to mention Mr. R again.

“Mr. R said you had to protect me until Jack gets back,” said Maria firmly.

Paige stared at her as if she were a creepy crawly, peering at her with a piercing, yet slightly-disgusted stare.

“Are you retarded?” asked the older girl.

Maria did not know what that meant, but she suspected it was bad. She had no other options but to repeat herself, repeatedly if necessary.

“You have to stay with me,” she said. “Mr. R said so.”

Paige stood up, reached down, and picked her up from underneath her arms. The older girl’s eyes flashed red as they filled with both rage and pain, something that terrified Maria in that moment.

“Shut up!” screeched Paige. “Just shut up, you little abortion!”

Maria burst into wailing tears a second later. She didn’t want to cry, but Paige was scaring her and being mean to her, and there was no one around to help her with the older girl, not even that “Mr. R.”

“Stop it!” cried Paige. “Just stop…”

She started crying too, only her tears were made of blood. She hugged Maria tightly, pressed Maria closely to her chest, and moved her right hand up to the back of Maria’s curly black locks to push Maria’s head forward onto her shoulder.

“I’m sorry!” sobbed Paige. “I’m so sorry! It just hurts so much…It hurts…”

Maria knew something was very wrong with Paige, but she also knew that Paige felt bad about the things she had done in the past, or she would not have saved Maria from the bad lady. Cory would have stopped Paige from doing bad things, but Cory was not here, and Paige would not want Cory there if she knew what Cory had become.

Still, the nicely dressed man, that Mr. R, had told Paige to watch her, because Jack was off with the skeleton man, and she would not be back for a while. Even so, Paige was being scary, scarier than normal, and Maria could not have it. She needed a grown up to protect her, and Paige was the only one who fit that description right now.

“He…He said…” cried Maria. “He said you have to watch me!”

Paige nodded as if in compliance, and she set Maria down a moment later.

“We have to find Jacob,” sniffed the older girl as she wiped streaks of blood from her pale face. “We have to find him. He’s the only one who can…can help right now.”

Maria did not know who Jacob was, but Paige seemed to think he could help, so there was little argument over the matter. However, Maria did not have her knapsack with her, and without her knapsack, she did not have her drawing pad or her “crayons.” She needed that stuff, so she wiped her eyes free of tears and then asked Paige what needed to be asked.

“What about my stuff?” she asked.

“What stuff?” asked Paige.

“My papers and my crayons,” frowned Maria.

“That?” asked Paige in confusion. “That’s kid stuff. Just leave it.”

“I can’t,” replied Maria. “I need it. It shows me things.”

The older girl stared at her in confusion, her face a puzzle of thought.

“Shows you things?” she asked. “Like what?”

“It shows me things,” repeated Maria.

She did not know how else to explain it, but she gave it her best shot.

“When I draw something, it comes true,” she said. “It shows me things.”

Paige’s eyes darted back and forth as she processed this. The older girl seemed to have some kind of realization, but what it was, Maria did not know.

“Where would they be?” asked the bald teen. “Where would your papers and crayons be?”

“They were in Helen’s place,” said Maria. “That was before the rain came down.”

“Oh, crap,” said Paige uncertainly. “We could go…No…No, I have to get you to Jacob. I have to.”

“But my papers and crayons…” started Maria.

“We can get new ones,” said Paige.

“What?” asked Maria. “New ones?”

“Yeah,” said the older girl. “There’s plenty of that stuff just lying around. We’ll just get new ones. Right now, I have to get you to Jacob before…Let’s just…Come on. I’ll get you to Jacob and work this out, and then I can go find Cory.”

“But…” began Maria.

She wanted to tell her about what had happened to Cory, but she was afraid of what Paige might do if the teen knew the truth, so she held her tongue. Cory had been with Paige back in Shame after everyone had left, but the fourteen-year-old girl had been bitten by a big dog, a really big dog the size of a bear, and then she had turned into a big dog herself, but Paige did not know this. The bad people had taken Paige away before Cory had gotten bit.

“Okay,” said Maria in a defeated tone. “Let’s go.”

She did not know where this Jacob was, but she did know that the bad people, the bad men and women…they were still out there, and they were probably still flying around. Maria was only six, but she knew that it was faster for someone to fly somewhere than it was to walk. That, and if Paige was a vamp, then she couldn’t go out during the day, and the daytime was the only time the vamps weren’t flying around.

“Wait,” she said quickly. “The bad people are still outside, and I heard the grownups say that vamps can’t come out during the day. How are we supposed to get to Jacob?”

“Dammit!” hissed Paige. “I don’t…I don’t know! We just have to try!”

Maria’s shoulders slumped as her hopes fell. Paige wasn’t like Jack. Paige didn’t have that singular purpose of mind Jack possessed, plus Jack wasn’t afraid of anything, especially vampires. Nevertheless, they had to leave. They could not stay here, and Maria knew this. Paige could not travel during the day, and the older girl was not going to leave her by herself. They had to go now, or they never would.

“Okay,” she said in a sad tone.

She had a bad feeling about all of this, a rotten feeling at that, something that ate away at the core of her being like a worm in an apple.

“We’ll leave right now,” blurted out Paige. “If we leave right now, now while they’re still dealing with the ones they’ve snatched…we can make it…We can…I…I can’t let Ty catch me again…I can’t let him touch me again…You don’t understand…”

“He’s the bad man,” frowned Maria. “I do understand.”

“No, you don’t,” said Paige, her face twisting in some private anguish. “He did bad things to me…Really bad things…He’s done things you…you don’t want to know about. No, Cory was right…I can’t be that way ever again…I can’t. I see that now. I see it…”

“Then let’s go,” urged Maria. “Let’s go right now.”

It was sad to say, but if Paige really did want to help, then the older girl was right, and they did have to leave right away. There was no sense in talking about it anymore.

“Yeah,” said Paige with a worried frown. “Yeah, let’s go.”

The bald teen picked up her sharp wooden stick and motioned for Maria to follow her. The storm was still coming down outside, but it had let up a little, and Maria was glad for that. She did not relish the thought of being caught in the heavy stuff.

“We’ll have to make a run for it,” said Paige. “I can’t fly very well with another person, even someone as small as you. We’ll have to run.”

“Is that why we crashed?” asked Maria.

The older girl simply nodded down at her. Paige opened the door of the abandoned home and peeked outside. The only light from outside was from the city’s overhead streetlamps, but Maria was not worried about that. She was more worried about the bad people getting them.

Her fears were well founded. Paige turned to say something to her, but the older girl was grabbed from behind and yanked from the doorway. The bald teen reached backwards in a reflexive motion, unwittingly grabbing Maria by the arm, so Maria was yanked out as well, and she did not even have time to scream as her feet left the ground.

“Sleep, little one,” came a deep voice.

The effect was immediate.

Maria felt herself drift away into the dregs of sleep in spite of the fact that she was still in the middle of a downpour.

*****

Maria awoke in a small room that was not much bigger than the shanty hovels she was used to sleeping in. The lights were on overhead, long fluorescent bulbs that flickered a little, and this held her attention for a moment, because she was not used to electric lighting. She sat up from the ratty and tattered bed she was on to look about her small prison, but in truth, there was not much to look at.

Across from her in a similar bed lay another little girl, and even though the girl’s back was turned from her, Maria could tell it was Renee.

Renee was a little black girl a couple of years older than herself, and Maria had played with Renee quite often when they had lived in Shame. The girl was one of the few who Maria would have called “friend,” but that was a long time ago when things had been peaceful and not…this. Renee had been Nadeen’s daughter, but Nadeen had died a long time ago from something called “sewer-side,” so Renee had lived with Camilla and Gabriella.

Nadeen had been white, but Renee’s dad had been black, so Renee’s skin was not as dark as James’ had been. The girl had brownish-black curls for hair, and she had a pretty round face to go with her bubbly attitude. She was normally dressed in a pinkish-purple shirt and blue jeans, but she was not dressed in them now. A ratty, forest-green blanket covered her up to her bare shoulders, and Maria could tell by Renee’s bare back that the girl wasn’t wearing a shirt.

Upon further inspection, the room they were in was very small. It consisted of grey cement walls with grey tiles on the floor, and the beds were little more than steel cots with old, thin mattresses upon them and raggedy dark-green blankets strewn across those mattresses. There was a toilet and sink combo in between them at the back of the little room, and though Maria knew what they were for, it was still very rare for her to actually use such facilities.

Otherwise, there was a large reddish-orange door to the room opposite the sink and toilet, and that was it. Maria suspected that this room had once been what was called a “restroom,” but she wasn’t sure if that was the correct term or not. It was supposed to be somewhere where people went wee, but she suspected the bad people did not go wee, so that was why it was now somewhere to put her and Renee.

Maria decided to get her friend’s attention first. Maybe then they could find out what was going on and where they were. The last thing she could remember was Paige being grabbed and herself being snatched up into the air, so it was a safe bet the bad people had them all, and that was not good. Jack might not know where to look for Maria when she came back, and Maria knew deep down in her heart that she would come back. Not even the scary skeleton man could prevent that.

“Hey,” whispered Maria, but she got no response.

She edged off her dirty little bed and touched her little black shoes down upon the grey tiles of the floor. She was not wearing one of her dresses anymore, no. Someone had put her in a little brown T-shirt and blue jeans while she was out, but Maria was not used to wearing such clothes. She was used to wearing one-piece dresses, so her clothes felt a little tight and stiff, and she was not sure she liked that.

“Renee,” whispered Maria.

She reached up and touched the top of the girl’s bare shoulder, but pushing against Renee’s milk-chocolate skin was like pushing against wood, stiff wood that was cold to the touch.

Maria had a panic strike her; she pulled off the blanket covering her friend, but she immediately wished she had not.

Renee was completely naked, her right arm draped backwards behind her back. Her arm was crooked at the elbow, and her fingers were all bent in different directions, bent in ways they should not go. Pulling her over revealed her expression, an image of terror and suffering, her eyelids squeezed shut with her mouth open in a silent scream, her brown cheeks stained with dried tears, one moment frozen for all eternity in what could only have been an instance of pure horror and suffering. She had two big holes in her neck on her right side, and those holes were crusty with dried blood.

Maria backed away toward her own bed, her heart beating at a rapid-fire pace. It was clear now that Renee was “dead,” but Maria hated that word, and she did not even want to say it in her head. The look on the girl’s face was more than she could bear, however, so she steeled herself and covered her friend with the blanket so that only the girl’s bare feet were showing, though those feet were twisted at the ankles in ways that were not right.

There was a clicking noise from the door, and it swiveled open a moment later. A familiar-looking face peered in on her: It was one of the bad women, the white woman who had taunted James way back when. This woman had a square face with a broad nose and round lips, and her curly brown hair was pulled back into a pony-tail. She had on black jeans and a blue tank top, but it was the well-toned muscles on her arms that made her stand out from the other bad people Maria had seen.

She took one look at Maria and gave her a smug look, one that suggested bad things, really bad things.

“It wakes,” said the woman, and her tone was not nice.

She reached down and snatched up Maria as if she were a doll. Maria was not stupid, however…She did not struggle.

“It should still be out,” said the bad woman. “I didn’t have time to clean out that empty little juice box in here…Don’t know why Romeo is so interested in this one, though. I should just stick a straw in it and be done with it.”

Maria did not know what any of that meant, but she had the distinct feeling that it wasn’t good.

The bad woman held her up like a doll and carried her along in her arms as if Maria were her own child. They walked down a short hallway toward a couple of dark-green swinging double doors. There were a total of three doors in the hallway other than the swinging doors, but aside from the one she had just been in, Maria did not know where those went.

They walked past an open door on their left, and Maria looked inside the small room, but she honestly wished she hadn’t.

Inside was a small room like the one she had been in, but this one did not have a toilet and sink. No, this one just had a single metal cot in it, one with a thin, dirty mattress on it covered by a dirty blue blanket, and on that cot was another body. It was the body of a young woman, and Maria identified it as one of the twins, either Camilla or Gabriella, but she couldn’t tell which, because she could only see the woman from behind.

The woman was nude and on her belly, her big bottom up in the air, her girl parts showing, but those parts were all bloody for some reason. In her right buttock was buried a large steak knife with an ivory handle, and there was dried blood all around the wound. Her legs were tied to the bed at the ankles, as were her arms at the wrists, and what Maria could see of her face was a frozen expression of sheer pain and pure horror. Maria knew that it was either Camilla or Gabriella, and that they were dead, just like Renee.

The bad woman carrying her noted Maria’s inspection of their surroundings.

“No crying, no screaming, no scratching or biting…” breathed out the bad woman. “There is definitely something wrong with this one. I really hope Romeo doesn’t want to keep it. That dumb little cherry Ty turned has been nothing but trouble. We don’t need another permanent little turd to feed…Not that it matters. I think Ty is going to get the okay to end that bald snot…Good riddance. You’d think as many times as he’s bent her over a table she’d learn, but…guess not.”

Maria had the sense to know that this woman was saying bad things about Paige, and from the gist of it, Paige was still alive, though Maria did not know for how much longer. It sounded like the bad people, the other “vamps,” did not like or want Paige around anymore. As much as Maria had not liked Paige, she did not want her “dead,” but she also did not want the bad people to hurt the bald teen anymore. The big bad black man had hurt Paige a lot back when James had been around, and it sounded like he was going to hurt her again, maybe even kill her.

“Don’t know what happened to that freak watching it,” said the woman. “Ty says the big man got it, and if that’s the case, we should be throwing a party instead of wasting our time with it. I don’t make the rules, though, so…it had better be valuable. Personally, I’d like to unwrap it and put a straw in it. It seems like such a delicious waste, otherwise.”

“You killed Renee, didn’t you?” breathed out Maria.

She did not know why she had said that, but she felt it to be true. She had a feeling that went straight down to her bones that this woman had killed Renee, and that this woman had done bad things to Maria’s friend before letting her die.

The bad woman held her up in the air in front of her and looked her over like she was a can of food. The woman’s eyes flashed red as she smiled, that smile revealing her long and sharp fangs.

“You just saw Ty’s piggy,” said the bad woman. “Ty likes to cut his food…Yes, he does…She squealed like a pig when he cut her lips…Yep, she squealed and squealed when he cut off her little berry…Yes, he likes to put piggies in their place while Monica likes little songbirds…Yes…Monica likes her food to sing…

“And it will sing like that one did. Little Renee, it was…A twist here and a twist there…It’s the screaming, really. It adds the sweetest flavor. Oh, that juice box gave me such an electric little diamond; it felt like it was going to pop off, I was rubbing so hard.”

Maria did not know how to feel about this. She was scared, of course, but she was also determined, because she knew Jack was coming for her, though these bad people did not know that. That nicely-dressed man, Mr. R, seemed to know Jack; he knew Maria’s name, after all, and he had said Jack was coming back, so Maria had faith in that, a faith she held tightly to her chest. She would not reveal that information, however. There would be no need to once Jack got here.

Nevertheless, this bad woman made her angry, angry over the murder of her friend, and she decided to say something about it.

“You’re going to die screaming for what you did to Renee,” frowned Maria.

She stated it as a fact, no emotion, just something as normal as “The sky is blue.”

It did not go over well. This woman’s face darkened, her wicked smile turned to a scowl, and she practically spit her reply at Maria. Maria knew she had actually angered this bad lady, because the bad woman did not call her “it” at that moment.

“You little dog turd!” hissed the muscular vamp. “You’ll piss yourself just like she did! Piss a little yellow pool, you little turd! I’ll hear you scream as you shit the bed!”

There was nothing else to be said. The bad woman roughly tucked Maria under her left arm like a football and thrust open the swinging double doors with her right hand.

They walked out into a very large room with multicolored lights swirling about the expanse of it. Maria discovered later on that this building was something called a “discotheque,” someplace that people had come to in order to dance, a place that had existed a long, long time ago, but at the current moment, she had trouble imagining what this place was for, and that was in spite of the fact that she was now seeing it firsthand.

This place was probably the biggest room other than an open department store that Maria had ever been in. There was a large bar on one side of the room, a series of tables on the other side of the room, a music station complete with keyboards and turntables, stairs on each side leading up to a second-floor balcony, a huge dance floor in the center, and lots and lots of colored, swirling lights everywhere.

Black boards covered every window in the place, but she figured that this was to keep out the sun, because the “vamps” didn’t like sunlight. If it weren’t for the fact that she was being held hostage by some very, very bad people, Maria would have been overjoyed to visit such a place.

The first thing Maria noticed upon looking up was just how many bad people were in here—at least she assumed they were all “vamps”—because these people were all together in here, so it just made sense in a logical way.

There were two scruffy-looking young men dressed in jeans and jackets, one in brown leather and the other in denim, both in their twenties, both with ragged brown beards and mustaches. They looked vaguely related, maybe brothers or cousins, but Maria couldn’t tell.

There was a black woman with brown skin dressed in a red, flowing dress and a white woman with long and feathered blonde hair dressed in a matching white dress, and they both leaned on the arms of a tall and broad-shouldered white man with funny hair. He had something that Maria later learned was called a “pompadour,” but to her it looked like he had made his jet-black hair into a tube on his head.

This new man wore a white disco suit with a v-cut to reveal his pale chest, that chest bedecked by a large gold medallion, and this was all perfectly accented by the large square shades that rested upon his broad nose.

Next to the three of them was the big bad black man whom Paige had called “Tyberius,” the same man who had wanted to kill James, the same man who had done bad things to Paige, and the same man who had killed one of the twins, Camilla or Gabriella. The bald black man was dressed in a green camo jacket with black cargo pants held up by a big black belt with a silver skull buckle, and he had on big black boots with metal tips at the toes.

At his feet was Paige, but the bald teen did not look to be in good condition. Paige was in nothing but a small, dirty, white bra and a dirty pair of white panties, and even from her football carried position, Maria could see all of the bruises upon the bald teen’s pale, bare skin.

She did not know what was going to happen, but Maria steeled herself for what was to come, because she was sure Jack was coming back, and the tall and imposing female soldier in black was going to be here soon; Maria could feel it.

She did not have any more time to think on it, though. The man in the white suit with the funny hair spoke, and when he did, everyone else listened intently.

“Ah, so this is the little one,” smiled the man with the funny hair. “Bring her to me.”

The bad woman carrying Maria brought her up to the man with the funny hair and set her down in front of him. This man ran his right index finger along Maria’s right cheek, and she noticed that his fingers were covered with shiny gold and silver rings.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” snorted the big man with the funny hair. “Oh, yes. You’re going to draw for me, little one. Oh, yes.”

He looked over toward the two scruffy-looking men in jackets and snapped the fingers of his right hand. One of them came forward, the one in the jean jacket, and he held a large drawing pad in one hand and a box of crayons in the other. He handed them to Maria, and she took them without argument.

“Thank you,” she said automatically.

The small group of bad people laughed, but Maria did not understand what was so funny.

“Now sit and draw for me, little one,” said the bad man with the funny hair. “Show me the world. Show me my throne, oh, yes.”

Maria looked over at Paige. The bald teen was on her hands and knees, but the expression on her face was…Maria could not describe it. It was a mix of despair and suffering, and it made Maria frown inside. Paige had not been nice when they had lived in Shame, but Maria firmly believed that the older girl did not deserve to be punished by these bad people.

These “vamps” were bad, and they had killed the people they had snatched; Maria was sure of it. The bad lady who called herself Monica had killed Renee, and the bad man, Tyberius, had killed one of the twins. They had done bad things to Maria’s family, the people of Shame, had done terrible things to them before they’d died, and so these people deserved what was coming, because Jack would be here soon…of that she was certain.

Maria sat Indian-style and draped the new pad across her legs. The drawing pad was new, pristine, as were the large box of crayons, and she took a moment to breath in their fresh waxy smell as she opened the box.

She took out her colors and began to draw, but as always, what she drew was not under her control. It did not take her long to draw her picture, but what she drew scared her deeply. It was a picture of Paige, but the barely dressed teen had her teeth wrapped around Maria’s little neck, and there was blood flowing down Maria’s neck to make a little red pool beneath them. Paige’s eyes were two glowing bursts of yellow, like little stars, and there was a shining aura about the girl, as if she were glowing from the inside out.

Maria stood and handed the pad to the man with the funny hair. This man looked at her drawing, but his lips turned downward in a frown until his whole face held an expression of disgust.

“I should have known Jacob’s head was up his ass,” he said in an angry tone. “This girl isn’t worth shits. That freak…? What’s his name?”

“Jack,” said the big black man named Ty.

“Jack, oh, yes,” said the man with the funny hair. “End of times, my ass. Jacob wants me to believe that thing is being ordered around like a scullery maid?…That’s some royal BS…He was just carrying around a lunch box. I should have known, oh, yes. Well, what’s done is done. We’ll replace our numbers and move on.”

“Does that mean I can have it, Romeo?” asked the bad woman, Monica, who had carried Maria.

Her voice sounded hopeful, excited, and Maria did not like that at all.

The man with the funny hair gave her a wry smirk and snapped the fingers of his right hand.

“She’s all yours,” he smiled. “Oh, yes.”

The bad woman scooped up Maria without another word. The smile on her face scared Maria, because it was not a nice one. Still, they didn’t leave without one final outburst from Paige.

“Don’t hurt her!” called out the young teen. “Please!”

“Shut up, you walking hole!” barked the big black man named Tyberius.

He kicked her hard in the left side, and Paige fell over clutching her ribs while crying out in both pain and fear.

The bad woman holding Maria carried her off as Paige protested once more.

“Please!” cried the young woman. “Please, don’t…”

Maria couldn’t see it, but she heard the hits as Paige shrieked from each blow that struck her. Maria was only six, but her fear was summarily replaced with rage. She shook in the bad woman’s muscular arms, but she didn’t say anything. She had nothing to say, because what was coming was coming, and that was that. Jack was coming back; she knew it.

This woman took her back through the swinging double doors and back to the small room Maria had awakened in. She set Maria down on the dirty bed Maria had woke up on, and then she pulled her own blue tank top up over herself to reveal her own small bare breasts with her own small brick-red nipples in the middles of them.

“Time to unwrap, little juice box,” said the bad woman. “It’s time to hear it sing. It’s going to bring me such pleasure. It tastes better when it sings.”

This “Monica” took off all of her clothes and tossed them aside until she was fully nude in front of Maria.

This was not good.

Monica knelt down in front of Maria and rested the long fingers of both hands upon the bed. She reached up with both hands to pull on Maria’s brown shirt, plucking them up at the sides as if she were going to pull the tiny shirt up and over Maria’s little arms.

“Now we’ll unwrap our little juice box,” said the wicked woman, and Maria could see her long fangs. “Then we’ll hear it sing…We’ll start small. We’ll start with its fingers first. I can take a little taste after that, and then we’ll hear it sing some more.”

Maria did not know what this woman was planning to do, but it was going to be bad, very, very bad, and it was going to be the same thing Monica had done to Renee. This did not matter, however, because Maria knew something that this now naked woman did not.

“She killed Renee,” said Maria in a low voice. “Make her scream.”

This bad woman cocked her head to the left in confusion as she studied Maria’s little face, but Maria was not looking at her. No, Maria was looking at the stoic and dark form of Jack, for the tall and slender woman in black had arisen behind the bad woman like a phantom, her tall form standing as she stood up from the shadows beneath the bed that Renee’s naked corpse lay upon.

This bad woman sensed Jack before she saw her, and she stood and turned to attack Jack, her fangs bared, hissing like a cat. The tall soldier in black grabbed both of Monica’s wrists while they were in the air, and the two stood there, the muscular naked woman and the tall and slender woman in black, both locked there for a brief moment of struggle.

This did not last, however. Monica’s face crumpled in fear as she was forced backwards toward the sink. Jack bent her backwards as she struggled against the dark soldier, and Monica’s once-confident tone was now filled with fear.

“No…No…No!” she cried out. “No, stop! Stop it! STOP IT! STOP IT! STOaaaAAAAHHHHHHHGH!””

Jack let go of Monica’s wrists and grabbed the child-murderer’s face with the black armored glove of her right hand, then she reached around to hold Monica with her armored left hand. Jack reached around the small of Monica’s back to bend the woman over her armored left arm.

Monica grabbed onto Jack’s back in a desperate struggle as Jack bent the terrible woman backwards, bending her backwards until the female vamp folded in half, the bad woman’s spine making a terrible crackling noise as blood spurted upwards from Monica’s thin lips. The horrible woman pleaded with Jack and over again during this time, that plea turning into a terrible scream as Monica’s spine snapped in half.

“No please please no stop stop no NO STAAAHHHHP!” babbled the female vamp.

Monica screamed again as Jack planted the back of the vamp’s head through the white porcelain of the sink, the white front portion of it shattering, and then Jack bent Monica backwards until the top of her back touched her big bare bottom. He flipped her up, though she was folded in half, and placed her chest down on the hard tile. Her legs were in the air, useless, but this did not stop Jack from bending them the wrong way at the knees, a cracking of bone and joint that was terrible to hear.

Jack reached down and did the most terrible thing of all, and this time Maria had to turn away. Maria’s dark guardian pulled upwards with her left armored glove, and then the soldier in black tore off the bad woman’s lady parts from between her legs, the parts peeling off like a sticker from wax paper, peeling off in a shower of blood. Jack then threw the parts to the floor like so much trash, but those parts turned to ash a second later.

Maria figured that anyone else would have died by now, but this bad woman was a “vamp,” so Monica could not die so easily from this type of damage.

No, Monica screamed in a high-pitched, desperate squeal as Jack pulled down on both of the woman’s broken legs, only to fold Monica into a human square, like an origami swan of a person.

Jack grabbed her flopping right arm and snapped it in half at the elbow, bending it backwards like folding a sheet of paper, twisting the wrist all the way around in the wrong direction, and this woman squeezed her eyes shut in what could only have been pure agony, agony so terrible that Maria could not begin to describe it. Jack repeated the process with Monica’s left arm, and the bad lady’s screaming went so high in pitch that it died out altogether.

Maria studied Monica’s face for that moment and committed it to memory. This woman’s mouth was wide open in a silent scream, fangs dropped down to make her look like a snake, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her tongue bloody-red, tears of blood running down her pale cheeks.

There was a high-pitched, almost inaudible whine which escaped her open mouth, something that suggested pain so intense that there was no sound for it. This frozen image only lasted for a few seconds, however. Maria held a small note of mercy in her heart for the bad woman, for this woman could not die this way, not for a “vamp,” and even someone as wicked as Monica did not deserve such a punishment for an extended period of time.

Maria did not wish to look at the broken limbs, broken to where bone stuck through skin. She certainly did not want to look at the bloody, gouged out area between Bad Monica’s legs.

This had gone on long enough.

“She’s suffered enough, Jack,” frowned the little girl. “End it. She’s suffered enough.”

Jack clutched Monica’s head with her two big, black, armored, gloved hands. She twisted the vamp’s head all the way around, that twisting accompanied by a horrible cracking sound, and she did not stop until Monica’s head was facing entirely the wrong direction. The bad woman’s skin lit like a smoldering ember a breath of time later, and the burning spread all over her naked, folded body until she was but a pile of ash on the grey tile beneath the shattered porcelain of what had formerly been the sink.

With that horrible but necessary action finished, Maria hopped down from her bunk and looked up at her dark rescuer.

“Let’s go,” said Jack in her guttural, gravel-strewn voice.

“There are bad people out there, Jack,” said Maria.

“I know,” replied the tall woman in black.

“They have Paige,” said Maria. “She’s a vamp, too, but she tried to help me. I think they’re going to kill her like they did Renee. I think they killed everyone they took, because I saw one of the twins, and she was dead. Paige may be a vamp, but I don’t want them to kill her.”

“They will not have the opportunity to,” said Jack.

Jack took Maria’s hand in her own, and they left the confines of that small restroom/prison for good. Maria would remember that room for the rest of her life, if only for the mental snapshot she took of Bad Monica’s final expression.

They had just stepped through the door when the big green double swinging doors in the distance opened, and one of the scruffy-looking boys, the one in the jean jacket, entered the hallway. Loud music came forth from the other side of those doors, but Maria did not have time to wonder over it. Her attention was upon the young scruffy-looking man, for the look on his face was one of surprise upon seeing Jack and Maria, though Jack cut short that reaction rather quickly.

“What the fu—” was all the young man got to say.

Jack held Maria’s right hand with her own left, so Jack raised her free right hand, palm out. That black armored hand thrust forward from across the hallway, and tendrils of icy shadow emerged from that open palm, emerging as well from the entire black-armored arm. The young man flew backwards through the double swinging doors as he was struck by the umbral tentacles, flying backwards as if struck by a giant fist.

“This will not take long,” said Jack matter-of-factly.

She let go of Maria’s hand and tromped forward, and Maria followed her.

They walked out onto the dance floor, but the music had stopped. The man who had been flung backwards stood up, fangs bared, but Jack’s eyes were not on him but on the man with the funny hair, the man named “Romeo.” This “Romeo” still stood in the center of the dance floor where he had been standing before, so that had not changed.

“So it lives after all,” said Romeo.

He snapped his fingers and nodded once toward Jack.

“Kill it,” he smirked. “Oh, yes.”

The other “vamps” from before were still there, though they were in various places around the room. The black woman was leaning against the bar, the white woman was sitting at one of the tables, and the other young man in the brown leather jacket was sitting across from the white woman.

Maria’s eyes were not on them, however. They were thoroughly locked upon the big black man named Tyberius, for he was standing behind Paige. He had the bald teen bent over a table, his big right hand holding down her head, and he had his other hand at his pants. Maria did not know what he was going to do to her, but it was not going to be good…She knew that with unwavering certainty.

Jack moved toward the big black man first, and as he did, the music picked up again, and the colored lights began to swirl. Tyberius responded by picking up Paige and throwing her like a ragdoll. The bald teen in her underwear cried out as she was flung at Jack, but the tall and slender woman in black batted Paige aside as one would flick away an insect.

Paige rolled across the dance floor in a shriek of pain, and Maria ran to her side a second later.

She gripped Paige’s right arm with her little hands and pulled upwards in a comical attempt to help the girl up to her knees. She could not budge Paige, of course, but the bald teen only laid there for a second before pushing herself up by her own power, anyway.

Jack marched toward Ty, but she was intercepted by a high kick to the face from the black woman in the red dress. Jack jerked backwards a little from the blow, but then she staggered forward as she was kicked in the back from the white woman in the white dress. Both of the bad women wore high heels with matching colors for their dresses, and both of them apparently knew how to use that women’s footwear as deadly weapons.

The black woman jumped and spun in mid-air as her left foot crashed into Jack’s battle mask. Jack turned around from the force of the blow, only to receive a scissor kick from the woman in white. Jack staggered backwards and then fell to the floor as the black woman spun low and used a sweeping kick to take her legs out from under her.

“We have to get out of here!” cried Paige in a desperate panic.

She grabbed Maria by both arms and pulled her backwards toward the bar, but Maria struggled against her. She did not want to leave Jack behind.

“No!” she screeched. “We can’t leave Jack!”

The tall soldier in black battle gear stood up, but she stood as if she were a stiff plank of wood, as if her tall, slender body was simply raised to a standing position from a ninety-degree angle. The odd and disturbing way she stood froze Paige in her tracks, and the bald teen’s mouth dropped open in disbelief.

The young scruffy-looking man in the brown leather jacket cocked the chamber of a large-barreled shotgun and raised it at Jack. Jack took that moment to grab the black woman’s leg as it circled toward her midsection, and then she spun the black vampiress around in front of herself to use the woman as a human shield.

The young man in the leather jacket pulled the trigger of his gun, there was a loud “BOOM!,” and then a big flaming hole appeared in the black woman’s stomach. Jack released her as the black woman screamed. The vampiress staggered forward as she went up in flames, only to fall and turn into a flaming pile of ash a second later.

The man in the leather jacket fired again, and Jack jerked backwards as she was struck upon her battle armor. There was a brief gout of flame upon her graded-yellow breastplate as she was hit, but Maria knew this would not stop her. She had seen Jack walk through open flames without so much as a twitch, though the bad people did not know that about her.

The bad man shot her again, and Jack jerked backwards again, but as the man went to fire a third time, Jack flicked up her own black, armored, right hand, and the bad man’s own shotgun jerked upwards as it was struck by an icy black tentacle constructed of pure shadow, jerking the barrel of the gun to where the barrel was underneath the man’s own scruffy chin.

The man in the brown leather jacket had apparently been pulling the trigger as this had happened, for the gun went off, and the bad man’s head exploded in a splatter of flame-ridden gore. He turned to ash before his body could even hit the floor.

The other scruffy-looking man in the jean jacket shouted in pure rage as he leapt upon Jack. Jack reached up and turned the man’s head all the way around so that the man looked like the bad lady Jack had finished off in the restroom. This man’s eyes rolled up in the whites as he stared over his own back, and then he turned to ash a second later. He fell over in a cloud of burning embers as the music picked up with a stronger beat.

The woman in white was on Jack a second later. The song playing had two young women singing back and forth, the word “dance” kept coming out in a techno beat, and this bad woman in the white dress seemed to move with that beat.

She kicked Jack in the right knee with her left leg, then she used the same leg to kick Jack in the right side, and then she raised it one more time to kick Jack in the face, all in a rapid-fire motion of song and movement. She spun to her right and touched the floor with her right hand, and then her right leg whipped up and her right high heel caught Jack across the side of the face.

Jack spun and staggered backwards, but this woman did not relent in her assault. She snapped out a scissor kick as Jack turned back around, and it caught Jack square in the face again. Jack’s head snapped backwards as the blonde vampiress jumped high in the air and spun with her left leg whipping out like a long and slender pale branch, but this time Jack caught her leg with a left armored gloved hand, and though the blonde vampiress landed on her right foot, she did not stay rooted to the floor for long.

Jack clutched the bad woman’s left leg with both hands and swung that leg like a baseball bat. The blonde woman in white was whipped around to where her head went through several of the wooden barstools at the bar. The stools shattered apart as Jack swung her around and upward and then down like a hammer to crash the top part of her body into the top part of the bar. Jack swung her back around and down again, but the second impact upon the bar top did not strike with force, as her body turned to ash and spilled all over the bar and the remaining stools.

Jack turned toward the bad man named Romeo. The big bad black man name Ty was standing next to Romeo, arms crossed, and Romeo nodded toward him without looking at him.

“Wax those two,” said Romeo firmly. “I’ll take care of this one, oh yes.”

Jack raised her right hand and thrust it forward, palm out. The bad man with the funny hair, the man in the white outfit named Romeo, raised his right hand as if to brush something away. Maria watched the air ripple around him; it was like looking at black asphalt in a heatwave, there was a parting of shadowy tentacles that disintegrated midair, and then that effect disappeared as quickly as it had rippled forth.

“That won’t work on me, Hoss,” said Romeo. “And you have no idea who you’re fuckin’ with, oh yes.”

Romeo moved so quickly across the dance floor that he looked like a blur. His fist impacted Jack’s chest, center mass of Jack’s battle armor, right between her armored breasts, and where he struck was a great battered dent in Jack’s armor. Romeo stood there in a classic karate stance, feet at opposing angles with his right fist out and his left fist at his left side, and Jack flew straight backwards to crash off the plaster coating of the cement wall between two boarded up windows.

Jack stood, but Romeo was on her again in a flash of stop-motion vision. Romeo’s right fist crashed into Jack’s battle mask, and Maria watched in horror as that mask fractured and cracked across the mouth area. Romeo slung Jack over his back in a fireman’s carry a moment later, then the man in white bent down and bent Jack’s back like a twig, there was a loud cracking noise as Jack bent in an arc, and then Romeo punched straight up with his left fist to strike Jack in the small of her back.

Jack flew up and struck the ceiling, shattered the ceiling tiles there, and then she fell straight down, but Romeo did not let her hit the floor. The man with the funny hair snapped out his right foot and punted Jack right back into the cement portion of wall that Jack had already previously hit. The tall and slender woman in black bounced off of the wall to roll upon the dance floor a moment later.

Maria felt her heart leap into her throat. She could not believe it, but…Jack was losing.

Paige grabbed her, snatched her up, and scrambled backwards. The big bad black man named Tyberius flung a chair aside as he smiled at Paige, that smile revealing his big sharp fangs, and he marched toward them with what could only be a sinister, deadly purpose.

“Leave us alone!” shrieked Paige.

The bald teen in her underwear backed away with Maria, running and ducking through a wooden door behind the bar. They ended up in a lit room filled with bottles and bottles of various colored liquids on multiple shelves, liquids Maria would later learn were called “booze,” but at that moment, Maria felt nothing but abject fear, so she did not really pay that much attention to her surroundings.

Jack was losing to the bad man named Romeo, and Maria had never thought that Jack could lose against anything. The tall soldier in black had come back even when she had been carried off by the skeleton man, so it was unfathomable to Maria that Jack could lose to one of the “vamps.” It destroyed her simplistic, child-driven view of the world.

Paige ran toward a big and heavy metal door on the other side of the storeroom they were in. She opened the door and quickly ushered them into a small closet-sized space.

This tiny room had a single lightbulb swinging from the ceiling, and that bulb lit three walls of concrete and a concrete floor. This room was no bigger than a typical clothes closet, and it only held a single item, a small, steel, block safe with a combination lock on it.

Paige locked the heavy metal door from the inside and backed up to sit on the safe in the center of the little room. She held Maria to her chest and clutched her in a panic of both fear and desperation.

Ty’s face appeared at the small window at the top of the metal door. The little window consisted of two thick glass panes with a crisscross of wires through them, but it was clear enough to display the big bald black man’s smug grin.

“I’m going to kill her,” he said from the other side of the door, though his voice was muffled. “I’m going to kill her slow like, and you get to watch, little hole. I’m going to ram her little ass over your face…then I’m going to bang you. I’m going to hammer you all night long, and you’ll be using her little raw ass as a pillow.”

“Why don’t you just die!” screeched Paige.

The bald teen was crying now, and her tears ran down her pale cheeks in twin bloody streaks.

The metal door thumped as it was struck from the outside.

“Open this damn door!” shouted Tyberius. “Open this door now, or I’m gonna cut off your clit and feed it to you! You know I will!”

“Go away!” screamed Paige.

“I’m gonna tear you up, you little hole!” yelled Tyrone. “Open this damn door! You don’t open this door now, you’re gonna watch me snap that little turd into so many pieces she’ll look like a bag of plastic blocks! I’m gonna pull her little arms off while planting my big horse dick in her little ass! Open this door!”

Maria felt all of her hopes die right there. She wailed as the hopelessness of it struck her, crying out as the metal door rattled and banged with each hit. Jack had lost; the tall soldier in black was not going to save Maria, so Maria knew at that moment she was going to die, and there was nothing she could do about it. This bad man was going to do terrible things to her before she died, and he was going to do them right in front of Paige, because he knew the bald teen could do nothing to stop him.

Maria looked up at Paige for one last glimmer of hope, anything that might help, but as the bald teen looked down at her, there was nothing but apology in the older girl’s eyes. Paige looked genuinely horrified, an honest and true look of sorrow, sorrow for everything, past and present, and Maria sensed what the girl was going to do before she actually did it.

“I’m sorry,” wept the bald teen. “I’m so sorry…It’s better this way…You won’t have to suffer…I’m so sorry.”

Maria felt the older girl’s long fangs sink into the soft skin of her little neck, a sharp pain followed by a strange euphoria. She knew what Paige was doing, drinking her blood, and she knew why, because she connected with the bald teen in that single instance of time, their souls intertwined for that fated moment. The young woman wanted to grant Maria a merciful and painless death, but she did not know the consequences of her own action, and neither did Maria until that very moment.

Paige let her go and gasped as a rush of pure divine power swept through her. She let out a short whine as it hit her, the spark and bang and hammer-fall of creation running through her veins, and her mouth opened to reveal her long bloody fangs, a thin line of Maria’s blood trickling down her chin. Her hands shook as they began to glow from an internal light, her entire body vibrating as she began to shine from the inside out.

Maria felt her body slump over as she saw through Paige’s own eyes. She could see what the older girl was seeing and feel what she was feeling, and that feeling was strange, stranger than anything she had ever felt before. She felt a rising heat inside herself; it felt like a joy and a warmth and a flood of power, and the little room they were in lit up in Paige’s radiance as that glow of power picked up in intensity and shone from the inside out.

She watched through Paige’s eyes as the girl stood and stared out through the small window that was the only viewing port into the little room. She could feel the absolute power rushing through her, and she knew right then that there would be retribution…There would be, oh yes.

The power pulsed outward in a mini-nuke of glory, and the big metal door to the little room flew off its hinges. The big black man that had been Tyberius evaporated in ash and flame as the wave of light blasted over him, his big bald head parting from his shoulders before he was completely annihilated.

Maria watched through the bald teen’s eyes as Paige sped out onto the dance floor in an instant. The man named Romeo knew he was in trouble, Maria could sense it, but even he could not escape what was coming.

Romeo ran in a flash to the swinging doors, faster than the human eye could follow, but Paige was already there, faster than even he could move, the glow of power within her welling and welling to critical levels. Maria felt like a living nuclear reactor as the glow of light and glory swelled within her, that swelling within Paige herself, and the pair of them, Romeo and Paige, flitted all over the dance floor as the elder vampire desperately attempted to escape the ticking timebomb who was Paige.

But it was all for naught. No matter where Romeo fled, Paige was there. She grabbed ahold of him in the center of the dance floor, hugging him tightly as she stared upwards, the power within her pulsing in a euphoria she could no longer contain. Romeo screamed upwards as the power pulsed through him as well, shattering his big shades and burning out his eyes within their sockets.

And then Jack appeared next to Maria in a whirl of shadow. She drew Maria’s little body into her dark arms, there was a deep chill and a dark whispering within that absolute black, and then they were out in the street in the bright of day, far away from the discotheque they had just been in.

Maria felt so much as witnessed the large explosion of light that occurred across town. It felt like she was being torn apart from the inside out, and then she felt nothing, nothing at all, the connection severed, and she knew at that moment Paige was gone for good.

*****

Maria awoke in the middle of the night. Jack had reunited her with the small community of Shame, though there were only half of them left. Still, she was with Helen again, and they slept with an ease that only came with the knowledge that they were safe for once, truly safe, because all of the evil in this part of the city had been expunged upon Paige’s death.

The young teen had proven one thing that Maria did not quite understand, and that was that Maria herself was special, very special, far more special than that bad man, Romeo, had believed. There was something about her blood that had made Paige die, but it had also made Paige really powerful for a short period of time, more powerful, even, than Jack.

Right now, Maria awoke because she sensed another presence in the small shanty hovel that belonged to Helen. Maria looked up and saw the raised sail-cloth flap of the entrance and recognized the nicely-dressed man with the white hat and the one arm staring in at her. He said nothing as he closed the flap, and she could see his fine dress shoes walk off and out of her vision, the jingling of his cane’s small silver bell fading out with each step.

She got up from the dirty blanket she was laying upon and followed the man outside into the muggy heat of a summer night, but he was nowhere to be seen. Everyone from the community was in their shelters and asleep, but that did not mean Maria was alone. No, someone else was there instead, though Maria did not recognize her at first.

It was Paige. The girl turned around, but her once ragged clothes now looked nice, new, and clean. More surprising, however, was the full head of long brown hair on her head. She looked pretty again, and her face held a warm smile that was absent of the typical meanness she had displayed in the past.

She knelt down and rested her hands upon Maria’s little shoulders, and they felt warm and gentle.

“Thank you,” said the older girl.

“Paige?” asked Maria.

The older girl nodded a couple of times and smiled, but then a serious look crossed her pretty face.

“Listen to me, Maria,” said Paige. “You have to find Cory. Save Cory like you saved me. You have to. I’ll be waiting for her. Do you understand?”

“I don’t know how to do that,” said Maria.

And she really didn’t. She hadn’t done anything to save anyone, much less Paige.

“That doesn’t matter,” replied Paige. “You can do it; I know you can.”

“I’ll…I’ll try,” stammered Maria.

“Listen, Maria,” repeated Paige, and her pretty face took on a dark look.

“Jack…Jack is true evil,” she said after a second more.

“I don’t know what that means,” answered Maria.

“He…She…It… is the end,” said Paige. “Do you understand?”

“The end of what?” asked Maria.

“The end of everything,” said Paige. “You shouldn’t be with her. You can’t go with him or her anymore.”

But Maria would not listen. Jack was the only thing protecting her from the monsters in the dark, and she would not let Jack go, even for Paige.

“I can’t do that,” said Maria in firm reply. “Jack won’t go anyway, and I don’t want her to go.”

Paige sighed and nodded with a sad frown.

“There’s nothing I can do to stop you,” she said matter-of-factly. “Just remember what I said. Everything’s up to you…Anyway, I’d like to stay, but I’m sorry…I have to go now.”

“Why?” asked Maria.

“It doesn’t matter,” replied Paige. “Listen. Just listen for a moment.”

Maria nodded her little head and waited.

“Do not…Do not…go into the north part of Spring Ridge,” said Paige. “This part is safe, but…not even the vampires went into that part of the city.”

“Why?” asked Maria again.

Paige’s pretty face darkened again before she gave her reply.

“There’s something there,” she said. “Something worse than Jack.”

Maria looked behind herself and looked toward that part of the city.

“But that’s where we’re going…” she said, but her little voice trailed off as she realized she was talking to no one.

There was no warm touch upon her shoulders. Paige was not there anymore.

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Central Spring Ridge Copyright © 2025 bloodytwine.com Matthew L. Marlott

Central Spring Ridge Copyright © 2019 Jack Be Nimble Matthew L. Marlott

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Note: The images of “Vampiress Paige, Mr. R. and Romeo,” “Tyberius and Monica,” and “The Disco Girls” were generated via artificial intelligence courtesy of OpenAI and modified courtesy of Canva.com. The image of “Central Spring Ridge Jack (female)” was generated via artificial intelligence courtesy of SendFame.com and modified courtesy of OpenAI and Canva.com.

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