The Fallen Vampire -- Flux & Firmament: The Cloud Lords

CHAPTER ONE

     "Listen if you're afraid to take the risk, I understand," Chloe said, "But it's chilly out here, and we can't stand on your back porch arguing all night."

     Conflicted, Miranda looked up at the full moon, then guiltily down at her slippers. She hadn't even bothered to get fully dressed—proof she'd known all along that she wouldn't have the courage to sneak out. As she twirled one of her brown locks, she said, "Maybe I'll catch up with you later."

     Chloe rolled her big, green eyes and groaned. "Alright, but if you do, remember to travel by an uninhabited route."

     Slipping into the dark shadows cast by the trees in Miranda's backyard, Chloe was determined to follow her own advice. Her route took her along the streets with the greatest number of derelict buildings. For convenience, the townspeople of Dragon's Faith had taken up residence in close proximity to one another, leaving the remainder of the former city's houses and buildings to languish in decay. Almost anything of utility had already been stripped from these gutted out homes. Chloe always got goosebumps when she trekked down these lonely streets. Under the full moon, the dark, empty windows of the houses seemed like watchful eyes. The only real danger was the feral dogs skulking along the ruins, which occasionally banded together into packs. They had been known to attack children and elderly people walking alone in the evening. But fortunately, over the winter, the sheriff had been given the task of culling stray animals that had lost their fear of humans.

     Although Chloe treaded down the center of the street in order to avoid stray dogs, she listened carefully for sounds of a patrol. At any moment, she was ready to dive into the thick bushes of the overgrown yards. She couldn't keep her mind from drifting and thinking about how this city had been fully populated only seventeen years ago. Last year, she and Miranda had ridden their bikes to the outskirts of town where they found a shattered wooden sign, face down in a ditch. When they turned it over, they determined that an artillery shell of some sort had completely demolished the upper half of the sign. Although the town's original name had been obliterated, they could still make out the inscription: 'California'.

     "Such information from the past is useless to us now," her father had said when asked for more information about 'California'. "And don't go spreading that name about. You'll get us chastised for nostalgic yearnings.

     When pressed again later, her father still refused to tell her the original name of her home town, even though she knew it hadn't always been called 'Dragon's Faith' as he insisted. Although adults were forbidden from recounting such information by strict 'nostalgia laws', her generation had an insatiable curiosity to know more. Whenever one of her classmates learned something about the lost era, it was passed by word of mouth to all the other teenagers. They had compiled a very weak understanding of the lost era as well as the events leading up to the downfall of the preceding civilization. Among friends, Chloe had been proud to reveal that the territory surrounding her town had once been known as California before being renamed as 'The Pacific Governorship'.

     A sudden dry rattle from above startled Chloe, and she let out a shriek of surprise. She glanced overhead and found a coatl sitting on its perch. The creature resembled an enormous rattlesnake with wings of iridescent rainbow colored plumage. Chloe had been so lost in her thoughts, she hadn't even noticed that she was walking past the Cloud Temple. She and her friends had concluded that the building had once served as a church for the old religion. It was a large brick building with a steeple out front. Above the entrance doors, a large metal pole had been affixed to act as a perch for the coatls—messengers of the Cloud Lords. With another shake of its rattle, the angry serpent stretched its wings, bared its fangs and coiled its body, signaling that it could strike at any moment.