Vampire Weekend

Sunday Morning

Keeping her ears open for the man's return, she went to work.

Four hours later her trap was laid. And just in time, as just as she was hiding the stake she had ended up making out of an old broom handle behind the blood splattered couch in the sitting room the back door in the kitchen opened and the man came breezing in. Lyla went to the kitchen, moving just as fast as he was.

The man put the gym bag he was carrying down on the kitchen table. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her.

Lyla froze.

"Did you miss me, my love?" the man asked.

Lyla smiled and nodded, not yet able to speak. He had kissed her. He had kissed her. She had never been kissed before and now her first kiss was from a murderer.

And if her plan didn't work it would also likely end up being her last kiss.

The man turned to the bag, leaving Lyla to quickly pull herself back together before he could notice anything was amiss. "As promised, I brought something special for dinner."

The man reached into the bag and pulled out something that squirmed in his arms. He turned around and proudly showed her the wriggling, red-faced baby in a little green jumpsuit that he had stolen out of its stroller when no one was looking.

The man smiled. "Do you like it?"

No, no she didn't like it. Oh, this was bad. This was bad, bad, bad, bad.

Lyla smiled back. "It's wonderful, my king. Where did you get it?"

"In town," the man said, "at the park. Your mother was there. I stopped to say hello to her and that's when I saw it."

He talked to her mom!

"How did my mother seem?" Lyla asked carefully.

"Oh, very sad," the man said. "She wasn't ready to let you go, was she? But love finds a way. Love always finds a way."

The baby kicked its dangling legs and gave a sudden wail. Maybe the smell of stale blood was getting to it.

The man looked at the baby. His irises grew red and his fangs began to poke out from under his top lip.

"Let me take it," Lyla said quickly. "We wouldn't want you to spoil dinner after you did all that work it get it."

The man looked at Lyla and the red faded from his eyes. "You are correct, my queen."

He looked at Lyla slyly. "Perhaps just a taste?"

Lyla forced out a laugh. "Not until dinner. Hand it over."

The man gave her the crying baby, which she carefully balanced on one hip.

While she worked to calm the child down, Lyla said offhandedly, "I nearly forgot, Mother wanted to speak with you when you got home."

The man shook his head with a smile playing across his lips. "She always does. Did the two of you talk while I was out?"

"Not as much as I would have liked," Lyla said truthfully.

If Mother could have talked that would mean she was alive.

"Let us both go see her then," the man said.

Lyla smiled and closed her hand tightly around the book of matches that was hidden by the baby's loose-fitting jumpsuit. She offered her other hand to the man and together they walked into the sitting room.

The smell in the sitting room was much, much worse than in the rest of the house. It was so strong that even a vampiric sense of smell couldn't detect the kerosene that had been mixed with the blood on the floor.

It also shocked the baby into silence. The poor child blinked rapidly and helpfully decided to burry its face in Lyla's dirt covered shirt rather than doing something like throwing up.

Lyla led the man to a patch of carpet that was absolutely soaked with kerosene. He thankfully didn't notice the liquid seeping through his sneakers, or maybe he thought it was blood, Lyla didn't know.

"You wanted to see me, Mother?"

While the man waited for Mother to reply, Lyla shifted her hold on the baby, struck a match, and dropped it between his feet.

Flames leapt up past his ankles. Lyla darted away as they spread out around him and climbed up onto his sneakers, chasing after the kerosene she had spread.

The man screamed.

"Mother! My queen!"

Lyla tried not to step in Mother as she ran across the room. She failed, and slipped the last few lengths to the couch before she caught herself. She grabbed the broom handle from behind the couch and held it up, pointing the sharpened end at the man.

"No," the man cried. "My queen, no!"

The flames had eaten their way up his pants by then, and he made it worse by falling to his knees on the burning carpet. He reached out towards Lyla, looking genuinely upset that she was leaving him. There were even tears running down his face, though those could have been caused by the smoke billowing into his face.

"Please, my queen. Please..."

Lyla backed away from him, keeping her stake leveled at his chest. Yet, something about that useless stretching out of his arm brought tears to her eyes.

Though, again, those could have been caused by smoke.

"I am sorry about this," Lyla said thickly.

She stabbed the sharped broom handle into his chest. The point caught briefly at the corner where the two sides of his ribcage met before continuing upwards and piercing his heart.

The man gave a horrible scream, and then he was silent. His body decayed before her eyes until it matched the state it would have been it had he been dead for almost a year. He was a young vampire then, practically a baby, to have only been converted less than a year ago.

Lyla let go of the broom handle and watched the corpse fall into the fire. "Rest in peace."

The baby coughed.

"Yes, we're going now," Lyla told it.

The flames wererunning across the room towards them. Despite her kerosene soaked flats, Lylastayed a moment longer to watch the man's body being consumed by the fire. Thenshe ran out the door with the baby in her arms, leaving the burning room farbehind them.