I came awake at sunset in my home away from home, a bolt hole in a closet of an abandoned shack in the less nice part of town. I picked up one of the two bags of blood I’d arranged next to me. When this was over I was going to start trying to stay awake past the sunrise and waking up before sunset.
It seemed like an easy thing to work on. I might be weak in terms of power, but I’d take advantage of any tool I could put in my arsenal. Not being so tied to the movement of the sun gave me a flexibility I hadn’t even dreamed of a few nights ago. It might even make all this worth it in the end.
I took a chance and went back to my apartment, stopping for Cherry on the way. It got dark early now so I had a few hours to kill before I had to be at the family dinner. I circled the block a couple of times before parking several streets away. Clinging to every shadow I could find, I made my way towards my building, skulking a block away as I observed the front.
It looked deserted. But who knew with these people? They might be lurking on a roof a mile away and able to appear seconds after I made my move.
It probably wasn’t a good idea to go back to the apartment, but I needed a shower and clothes if I was going to visit my family. If I showed up as I was now, unwashed and wearing clothes from last night, my mom would try to have me committed to a short-term care facility. The odor coming off me would scream ‘problem’ faster than any hysterical outburst from me. I didn’t think I could make it through another night stinking of that creature’s attack anyway.
I walked nonchalantly up the stairs, using the spare set of keys I kept in my go bag to get inside. Sniffing experimentally, I moved through the tiny apartment with caution. Nothing smelled wrong. No decay or wet dog.
I didn’t bother with the light as I walked through the dark rooms. If the vampires were watching and I’d somehow managed to evade their notice, I didn’t want to alert them as to their mistake by turning on the lights.
I grabbed a shower, taking my time. I figured if the vampires knew I was here they would already be on me. When this was over, I would have to set up a few safe houses throughout the city in addition to the supply caches.
Getting dressed took only a few minutes. I grabbed a pair of dark washed jeans, a black long-sleeved top with a scooped neck and a pair of flat black boots that were scuffed and worn from years of use. The outfit was comfortable, flattering and wouldn’t make me stick out like a sore thumb in the dark. Perfect for meeting with the fam and then hunting a murderer afterwards.
I checked the time. Since night fell much earlier these days, I had about forty-five minutes until I had to be at their house. It wasn’t far by car.
I grabbed my tablet and pulled up a search engine. I typed in ‘draugr.’ I wasn’t entirely sure of the spelling but figured if I got close enough, the search engine would do the rest.
My search brought up 306,000 results.
Hm.
Seemed like the creature was pretty popular in several online games. I clicked on a few of those sites, reading up on the monster’s characteristics. Some of it jived with what the sorcerer said but most of it was pretty obviously fantasy.
I went back to the search page, clicking on results that seemed interesting. The chances of my finding anything useful were slim, but I’d never even heard of this creature before. Anything would help at this point.
From what I could tell, most of the sites agreed that the draugr was of Nordic descent. Think Vikings and Iceland. Seemed it could be created from anybody who died, though there was a lot of disagreement over what turned someone into an undead ‘again walker’.
A theory I found interesting was that a strong will and an extreme jealousy of the living tied a soul to the body, giving rise to the draugr. No one agreed on how the damn thing could be killed. Some recommended fire, others said you needed a hero to wrestle it back into the grave, while still others said a draugr was one of the few true immortals. Even if it was torn apart, it would just reassemble itself over time.
That was not reassuring.
I clicked the tablet off and tossed it onto the couch next to me. The fishing expedition had been a waste of time. There was no agreement among the sources, and I still had no new information that I could count on.
Either way, it was time to go. I headed to my bedroom and knelt before my nightstand, opening the door and typing a four-digit code into the safe inside. I tucked the gun and a holster into a backpack I’d grabbed from my closet. My first preference would be to carry the gun in a holster at my hip, as the backpack would present a serious challenge to a timely draw, but I didn’t want to carry the gun visibly around my family. They’d accuse me of paranoia. I had legitimate reason to be paranoid, but they didn’t know that.
The tablet went into the bag after the gun. I planned to use it for more research later, and I had no intention of coming back to my apartment until I’d settled things.
I locked my front door and tucked the keys into my pocket, hoping this wasn’t the last time I would be here.
My parent’s house was only fifteen minutes away but was in a much nicer part of town. Their historical four-bedroom house was in the middle of Grandview, a small suburb of Columbus that had a certain small-town charm. Everything was walkable and had those picture-perfect neighborhoods seen on older TV shows. The streets were narrow and lined with trees that I knew from previous visits blossomed with beautiful white and pink flowers in spring and turned an amazing red and orange come fall.
Today those trees cast strange shadows, their branches only containing about half their leaves, which had changed from the brilliant red of a few weeks ago to a lackluster brown. I parked the car on the street in front of their postage stamp yard.
As pretty as Grandview houses were, they didn’t come with a lot of land. Mom’s love of gardening was present in every plant decorating the front, from the perfectly maintained bushes to the fall flowers still holding strong, despite the quickly plummeting temperatures. It wouldn’t be long before even those went dormant for the winter.
The curtains were open, and I could see several figures moving inside. I took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be fun. I didn’t know what it was about my family, but even before I’d become a vampire, they had been able to strip me of common sense. They could make me lose control of myself faster than any other force on this planet. For this visit, I couldn’t lose touch with my normal, rational self. Not if I wanted to convince them their worry was misplaced.
I knocked on the door and waited. It was odd feeling like a stranger in my family home. They’d changed the locks sometime after I joined the service and never given me a replacement key. I knew Jenna had one, but it just seemed wrong to ask.
The door swung open.
“Aileen.” My mom’s calm brown eyes observed me. “You came.”
“I said I would.”
