The Night the Vampires Came

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"We need to stay away from the main roads," Jack said as he directed Holly to take the service road. "The vampires can be anywhere; some of them can even walk in daylight."

As we drove, I understood why Jack wisely made that decision. The highways were completely blocked off with destroyed and abandoned cars. The service road must have been flooded last night during the storm so they were mostly left alone. As dawn came, the Black Waters evaporated. Now there were only a few puddles of ordinary rainwater behind.

"Good call," I remarked, finally deciding to overlook his bluntness in calling our deceased loved ones vampires.

"I interned at Sylvirua every summer in high school," Jack bragged. "The jocks teased me for being a test-tube head. Now look who's laughing?"

"Save the celebrating for Miami, asshole," Holly muttered as she narrowly avoided a pile of bones that had been picked clean. Only the stripes of red flannel curled around the remains of a bloody spine told me that this had once been a person. "If we get to Miami, I'll have Andrew buy you a martini and apologize for calling you names."

I rolled my eyes. Holly was still dating Andrew Scott, the quarterback of the football team. High school ends, but some people never leave. I didn't care who these two were meeting in Miami. The only thing I knew was was that at least two of my family members were trapped back in Windflower Springs. I desperately needed to get my hands on those Lumin pills so I could save my family members. If they could still be saved.

"If you worked at Sylvirua, you must know where we can get some pills, right? There must be a hidden stash somewhere for employees?" I asked.

Jack snorted. "Yeah, if I did, I'll sell them for a hundred grand each. That is, if the USD is worth anything after today."

"Jacky boy," Holly said in a beguiling tone as we went off-road to avoid an overturned delivery van that had covered the road in boxes of Eggos. "What about that trinket you have around your neck?"

"Holly," Jack snarled. "Stop it. You know that thing means a lot to me."

"It means more to you than your life? Ailith did lend us her car. If not for her, the two of us would be nailing boards on windows and barricading down my house down for the long, dark night."

"Yeah, right, without me, the two of you would be stranded on the highway and probably made into girly mincemeat by now. Don't you know that it's the protocol for the national guard to go around throwing grenades at stalled cars to pick off stray vampires?"

"Stop trying to change the subject, dweeb," Holly snapped and slammed her palm against the steering wheel. "Give us all a goddamn break, Jack. Just give it to her. You told me it was expired, anyway."

Jack sighed. As reluctant as he was — the boy was no match for the bullying powers of a beautiful, popular girl. He reached under his shirt and pulled out a little pendant attached to a gold chain. He dropped it in my hand. It was a medicine tablet encased in a resin capsule. I squinted in the fading sunlight to see what was engraved on it. I made out a smudged T.

"It says Terciel," Jack said. "It's a company that Sylvirua took over many years ago. I found this tablet in one of Sylvirua's storerooms and kept it as a souvenir. This pill is probably over two decades old."

"How do you know this is even a Lumin pill? Didn't Yagerin only start making Lumin pills five years ago when the Blight started to get bad?" I asked.

"No, Terciel made the original Lumins," Jack said. "They were doing it long before the other companies were. This was a prototype that Sylvirua made their pills from. These babies were potent as heck. Too bad, Terciel doesn't exist anymore. There's this cool story that the owner of that company sold Terciel after his wife died. Supposedly he went crazy with grief. He was a genius, though; they say even Charles Liang was afraid of him."