Blood Angels (a Jenna Moonlight story)

One: Blood Lost

Sleeper (n): A skinless, human-eating monster in a post-apocalyptic world. Once humans, sleepers hide and sleep during the day when they're vulnerable to fatal sunburns. By night, they hunt, often in packs, killing countless of humans and turning scores more into new sleepers.

~*~

Logan hacks a sleeper’s chest open with a machete and I barely flinch. Bile doesn’t run out of my mouth anymore when I hear the sound of a sleeper's bones and cartilage splitting.

“You’d make an excellent butcher,” I whisper to Logan.

Logan, a vegan, ignores my comment. He wipes dirt from the graveyard off his hands before ripping the sleeper’s ribcage apart, exposing its raven, plum-sized heart. Ba-dup, ba-dup, the little heart beats.

“Your turn, Jenna,” Logan, always serious, whispers back. God, I love his voice, even when it’s just a whisper. It’s so smooth, deep and low.

Logan sighs. “Jenna, any minute now…”

“Yes, yes, I know.” Cheeks ablaze, I creep toward the sleeper. It barely bled from the surgery that Logan had just performed. The sleeper's thick black blood (we call it LOD for liquid of death) can only be found in its tiny heart where it pools and sustains its living-dead existence. The rest of its body is bloodless and nourished by the blood, flesh and souls of the humans that it feeds upon. 

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. There’s only one area of the sleeper's heart that I can pierce with my stake without killing the monster in front of me and sullying the LOD. LOD from a dead sleeper is useless. Seconds of deep concentration later, I spot my target, a tiny red aura that the heart emits, discernible only by Collectors like me.

*Rule # 1 of Scouting: Hunters stalk sleepers, remove them from their graves and reveal their hearts of sleepers. Only Collectors stake them to collect LOD.*

I twirl Stabby, a thin ebony stake, in my hand before staking the sleeper’s heart squarely through the red aura. Now this is what I call hardcore phlebotomy.

Ba-dup, ba-dup, ba-dup, ba-dup. The heart beats faster and faster as the stake collects LOD straight from its valves.

“Ok let’s go,” Logan says. “That’s good enough.”

I shake my head. The collection vial connected to Stabby is still half empty. Every drop of LOD counts. Logan knows this.

“The edge…” I drawl, watching precious LOD fills the vial.  

Logan arches his eyebrow at me. “What about the edge, Jenna?”

“Live on it a little, boy.”

Logan rolls his pretty gray eyes. As usual, when he’s had enough of me, he rubs the jagged scar running from his left cheekbone to his chin. Five years ago, a sleeper cut Logan’s face open during one of his first hunts. After Logan revealed the sleeper’s heart, the Collector he worked with then, Jakob, froze. The sleeper woke up and sliced Logan’s face with one of its jagged rib. Then it killed Jakob, devouring him in seconds. Since that incident, Logan has been more careful than a grandpa (who has knee replacements) walking on thin ice while scouting.

“Now this is enough.” I swish the full vial in my hand. Even though I know LOD is poisonous when ingested, I can’t help but lick my lips as I stare at the black, viscous fluid. It’s a beautiful raven honey with a scent sweeter than chrysanthemum tea. Taste me, it beckons.

For a second I feel dazed. Snapping out of my haziness, I realize that we’ve overstayed—time’s running out for us. 

Logan and I can be the most careful Scouting team in all of Nevaeh, but we could never control our fates and destinies. We also can't control the monsters that sleep during the day and go bump, bump, kill-and-kill at night. Sleepers tend to sleep all day but not when their chests are hacked open. 

Logan curses. His handsome face pales before my eyes. He grabs my hand and pulls me toward him. Stabby drops to the ground. I stop holding my breath when the vial of LOD doesn’t shatter.

With my cheek against Logan’s chest, I hear his heart beat as it races out of control. I feel sharp nails digging into my scalp. Said nails belong to the sleeper. It yanks my hair hard and grabs my shoulders, pulling me away from Logan. The sounds the sleeper makes tell Death to draw near me. Asleep, the sleeper doesn't look as threatening as it does now. A pair of jaws houses two sets of sharp, flesh-piercing fangs. One snap of its vicious mouth and it can decapitate any poor soul. Standing, the sleeper is over ten feet tall. It has no skin, just sinewy and dry, black muscles over blackened bones. 

This monster... sleepers are what all of our nightmares are made of. 

Shi@fuc#damn. The look on Logan’s face tells me that I’m a goner. History is going to repeat itself again for Logan if he doesn't act fast. Either way, he's going to lose another partner today. 

“Kill me, Logan!” I scream. I’d rather die by his blade than have pieces end up in the sleeper's belly. My body would rot away as it digests me but my soul would be forever a part of the sleeper.

"Kill me now!" 

Kat's Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3342372.Kat_Lieu
Kat's Amazon page: http://www.amazon.com/Kat-Lieu/e/B003U1T7SC
Kat's webpage: http://www.nummyz.com

Naohi credited for this awesome pic of my character Jenna Moonlight :)