A dark silhouette blotted the autumn moon. She stood as still as a gargoyle on the roof of a house on a hill, the one that loomed over Bloodless, Arizona like a slumbering god, ancient and beautiful, a woman in long black robes.
Mina's eyes scanned the grainy black landscape of the night, but she saw neither the fingernail sliver of new moon nor the twinkling multitude of stars nor the drifting shadows flittering and twittering through the sky like leathery birds. She peered deep into a vision of memory and was chilled by what she saw.
Bodies.
Blood-drained and lifeless, their faces drawn up in silent screams, their dead hands claws that scraped the air. They littered every memory like land mines. Mina remembered why she came out into the desert: to escape the bodies, to escape the curse, to escape HIS legacy. To starve herself.
Mina sighed. It had not worked out that way. Mina was known as Master to some, the Bride to others, and to all she was a manifestation of the purest evil on Earth, a curse that was a thirst that knew nothing but to drink and drink and drink, doomed to never be satiated, doomed to turn Mina into a raving lunatic mass murderer.
Her tongue slipped over her lips, licked the tip of one sharpened fang.
She had come to this place to die. She had found a cave and chained herself to a wall. She knew that eventually, without the nourishment from feeding, her body would decay and the curse would be lifted. Death was the only way. Death was her penance.
Then someone found gold. People came and built this town, this town that now lay dead around her, and they had found Mina in the mine, the same mine where she now kept the unwanted ones, the lost.
They had found her, and Mina had fed. At the point when children disappeared nightly, and blood stained the streets, the people fled from her and her curse. But having stuffed herself, Mina lived a long time after that, a long time to forget who she was and what she had done. Time erased her pain. Time turned her again into a monster.
She remembered the night he came for her: dark flowing cowl and glowing red eyes, the Prince of Darkness. They had thought him dead, killed during a daring rescue by a band of brave men including her husband. They had been wrong. Mina remembered her husband's surprise and his bloodcurdling scream upon seeing the Dark Prince, undead and well, and the sound of Jonathan's blood spraying against the wall.
And Mina remembered how her sweet Prince had taken her over her husband's dead body.
Hot tepid breath on her neck, his cold groping hands, his penetrating freezing member, his teeth sinking into the soft flesh of her neck, puncturing her jugular and stealing the life that pulsed within, but what Mina remembered most was the shuddering, mind-numbing orgasms that left her helpless in his corpse-like arms.
A chill shivered up her spine, a mix of repulsion and lust.
Mina felt her stomach rumble. The thirst tickled her throat. Why had she hoped to die? She had been weak then. How did she not realize that blood was power? Death could not be her penance for she WAS death. She must not only accept her fate but relish it, welcome it with open arms and receive the gift the Prince of Darkness had seen fit to bestow upon her.
A coyote brayed in the night, and Mina smiled.
***
"So what the fuck just happened?" Bridget Briswell said, her hands clutching her shoulder length, straw colored hair.
They gathered around the smoking remnants of the vampire, now only a flickering pile of ash as if it was a waning campfire, and Bridget waited for someone to break out in "Kumbayah." Instead, Doctor Malcolm St. Graves, vampire hunter, dusted off his tweed jacket and flashed a small smile, his face unnaturally calm after the near disaster. Bridget thought about how the old man had dangled like a worm on a hook from the creature's hands, and she shivered.
"I daresay they knew we were coming, ladies," he said. The old man walked over to the archive's single reading table where his briefcase had been placed before hell opened its doors and unleashed the creature that had attacked them. St. Graves flipped the case open and pulled out a couple of small metal flashlights.
"No shit, Sherlock. We're lucky to be alive. Did you see the size of that thing? It could have killed us all!" Bridget replied in spastic breathless gasps. Her heart still pounded in her chest, and she felt the world sway under her feet.
St. Graves shook his head and said, "It would not have killed us, my dear. It would have turned us."
"Turned us?"
"You know bite us, make us one of them?" Alexandria Knight said, her dark face stoic and hard. "A common strategy to keep outside forces from being suspicious while increasing their own numbers."
Knight took an offered flashlight from St. Graves and said, "What do you make of what it said about this Bride?"
She flicked on the flashlight, stabbing St. Graves chest with a circle of light. A silver crucifix gleamed around his neck. The white-haired vampire hunter frowned at the question and stroked his goatee.
"I'd rather not make any hasty assumptions. Instead, let us quickly dig up any useful information we can on Bloodless and take our leave of this place," St. Graves said and shot them a solemn expression.
"The fiend may have had reinforcements coming."
***
Ol' Karl looked crusty and sun-baked across the table from Morgan and Melvin, Karl's eyes squinty with wrinkles, his skin blotched with sun spots. Threads of beer leaked from the corners of his mouth as he chugged, the mug pressed hard against his thin, cracked lips. He finished it off and thumped the empty mug onto the table. A few drops of foam specked Melvin's shirt.
"Whadda ya wanta know? Karl said, wiping a dirty sleeve across his mouth. His grating voice crackled and slurred. His yellowy weasel eyes narrowed.
"Joseph Gray," Morgan answered, and she leaned over the table. Her own eyes turned a steely blue. "You talked to him about a town not far from here. Bloodless."
"I 'member that fella, I do. Talked him up 'bout some gold. Ya interested in gold, yerself?" Karl's eyes twinkled. He was a man who liked to tell tales. He wore a dusty flannel shirt, jeans, and a faded blue baseball cap on his tiny head. Melvin had seen plenty of his type in the city where they were better known as con men.
"What did you tell him?" Morgan said. Her voice implied that she did not want any bullshit.
Melvin hid his smile behind an upraised hand. He felt constantly impressed by his wife, not just her powers as a witch but her understanding of people and how to manipulate them. On top of that, she was easily the most beautiful woman he had ever known, sweeping black hair, thick pouting lips, slightly-slanted glittering blue eyes surrounded by luscious long dark lashes, her curvy but athletic body, her naturally sexual demeanor.
Karl's cackling chuckle broke off Melvin's thoughts.
"Don't play aroun' do ya?" the old man said with a crooked grin. "Well, I tell 'im 'bout the house onna hill overlookin' Bloodless. The mayor's house, ya know, stuffed with gold an' abandoned once the townsfolk ran off, their tails unna' they legs. The mayor hisself, well, he up an' disappeared."
"Can you take us to this house?" Morgan said. Karl's mouth drooped into a deep frown.
"Nah, sure cain't. Won't ever see me in Bloodess, no maam."
It was Melvin's turn to talk, and he said, "We can make it worth your while." He plopped a wad of bills onto the table next to Karl's empty mug. A flimsy rubber band held them together, and the pudgy smiling face of Benjamin Franklin adorned them all. Karl exchanged a wary glance with the former founding father.
"I'll show ya," Ol' Karl finally said.
***
"That went fairly easy," Melvin said outside the saloon. A light wind whispered down the dark and desolate main street of Left, Arizona and ruffled his messy brown hair. Except for the few vehicles parked in front of the saloon, the town looked dead. Melvin thought again of the forlorn men on the stools, zombies drinking their lives to extinction, and he shook off the chill that threatened to slip over his heart. He must still be drunk.
"A little too easy," Morgan said as she popped open the door of their red Jeep and climbed inside. Melvin slipped behind the driver's seat and cranked the ignition, the key in his hand and dangling from its slot.
"I think he knows more than he's telling," Morgan continued, leaning her head on her hand, her elbow propped against the car door. A thoughtful look glazed her eyes.
"Shall we meet up with the others, tell them what we know?"
The thoughtful look evaporated as Morgan turned to look at him and answered, "We have some time. Want to fool around?"
Melvin didn't know why she had to ask. When it came to Morgan, he always wanted to fool around. Had she not looked in a mirror lately? She was amazing. He pulled the Jeep behind a rundown building in a dark, abandoned alley. Seconds later, her lips met his, and Melvin's hands were in her hair, stroking her, loving her.
They stumbled into the rear of the vehicle, knees and elbows banging against the car seats, refusing to pause in their kissing and their groping like two teenagers on a first date. Melvin unbuttoned her shirt, peeled it off, and kissed the smooth skin of her neck, moving down, tickling at the protruding bone of her clavicle.
Morgan ripped off his glasses and flipped them towards the front of the Jeep. Melvin would have protested if his lust hadn't overcome all rational thought as he unclasped her bra, and her fleshy mounds of bare breast heaved in front of him. She closed her eyes and petted the back of Melvin's head and neck as his mouth moved over her breasts. His tongue darted out and flicked her hardened nubs of nipple. Morgan sighed and shuddered, tingles of pleasure coursing through her. She felt him slipping off the rest of her clothes, his mouth moving lower and lower, kissing her stomach. His hands kneaded her naked thighs.
