My Soul to Reap (Archived)

Vampires Suck

My small crisis had apparently not taken as long as I thought it did, since I caught up with Brie fairly easily. I was walking a little unsteadily, worried I would end up slipping from shock. But I made it out of the closet alive, and our next stop was a the first door to my right. I thought about telling Brie about the twins, but decided against it. For some reason it felt like acknowledging their existence would somehow make them more real, and by ignoring them I was effectively destroying them. Or at least that's how my logic went. I pushed the thought out of my mind as well as I could, afraid that Brie would notice.

"So, just how far away from scratch are we staring from here?" Brie called over her shoulder, and I'd given up on the laws of physics in relation to this house. Her kitchen was, for all intents and purposes, normal, with white painted walls and pale wood cabinets. If you ignored the worrying array of knives, guns, and swords in every available nook and cranny, it was a completely normal kitchen. That's what I was telling myself, because anything else would worry me about as much as the twins.

"Um, aside from a self-defence class in Grade 9? We're going from scratch." She huffed out in annoyance, and started opening and banging the cabinets closed. I winced with every impact, the noise reverberating across the room.

"Could you be a little-"

"First of all, crash course to vampires," she said decisively, talking over me. I was effectively forced to move on from the twins, the decision not to tell her about them firmly made. "If you suggest to me that they sparkle you will be beheaded. They can't go out in the sunlight because it burns them, can't enter a house uninvited, need blood to survive- none of this animal blood shit either, those ones we don't have to worry about- they can be killed by a wooden stake through the heart and a blessed cross repels them. Any questions?" She spun around, holding a thin black box and handing it to me before returning to slamming cabinets. Figuring only a few words would make it above the racket she was making, I tried to be as quick as possible.

"Immortal?"

"Except for the whole stake thing yes."

"Sunlight kills them?"

"Burns and temporarily blinds them. Unless they spend more than ten hours in the sun they aren't dead."

"What happens if he bites me?"

"Then you have a sore neck and you get the fuck over it." She finally found was she was looking for, and my hand went to where Aryan had bitten me earlier. "It doesn't turn you, the actual process is a lot longer. Also, garlic," she said, holding the offending vegetable. "Weakens them the same way sunlight does." It didn't even register at first that I'd been holding the box, and I only really noticed it when she took it away. Luckily, she beckoned me over to the marble counter and opened the box, revealing a very anticlimactic belt.

"Uh, Brie?" I asked uncertainly, hoping she'd understand the rest of the question. She just smiled and pulled it out, unravelling it as she spoke.

"Vampires aren't idiots, even though they act like they are. They'll notice if you just run at them with a stake." She handed it to me, and cautiously I wound it around my waist.

"And what use is a belt going to be?" I asked, although I realized very quickly. Even though it wasn't visible from the outside, I could feel a slight pressure just below my right hip.

"No way," I muttered, smiling as I felt the opening sewn into the belt and removed what was inside it. Although it looked more like a knife than a stake, its purpose was clear. The handle and blade all looked like a single piece of wood, with small crosses burned into it. Brie took in from me, grinning too, and started to chop up the garlic with it.