A painful twitch ran through my body when I woke up in the night, drenched in sweat. Without knowing why, I had not had a nightmare, my heart was racing with agitation and an unexplainable nervousness. My breathing was so fast that I was afraid I would start hyperventilating at any moment.
Yibo was sleeping quietly next to me, as I noticed when I looked at him. My eyes could see that without any problem and despite the darkness. His chest was rising and falling quietly, he was sleeping soundly.
Not wanting to wake Yibo, I got out of bed and quietly left the room. I needed fresh air, so I went upstairs to the deck and stared into the all-encompassing darkness. It was so dark that not even the sea could be seen. Only the small waves slapping against our sailboat proved that we were still on the high seas.
I slowly turned my head up to the sky, breathing in the cool autumn air. There were no stars to be seen, and I didn't expect to see any. Well, maybe I had hoped. But since it had been cloudy for a week and it had rained again and again, I knew what I would see when I looked up.
Only very slowly my restless heart calmed down again and I could finally breathe normally again. But what had happened? This question circled me for minutes through my head, while I directed my gaze on the pitch-black horizon. And then, as if someone had pointed a shining arrow at it, I saw something that should not have been there. Light!
The light, which was clearly coming from something burning, quickly became brighter. I saw flames that were getting higher and higher. I looked around again and gulped in shock and amazement with both hands to my mouth and then to my forehead. This could not be! How could this have happened?
Hastily I ran to the anchor, the anchor chain still hanging down into the water. I shook it, it moved, which shouldn't have happened, because it was normally always taut and didn't move. But now I could move the heavy chain at least a few inches to the right and left.
At the same moment as I realized what had happened and that I had not been wrong about our "new" surroundings, I felt a strong breeze above me. It was not the wind! With a great leap I jumped onto the steering cabin and concentrated my gaze on our surroundings. I slowly turned in a circle and then I felt this breeze above me again.
Something was there, I just couldn't see it. Maybe it was too fast, maybe I was too slow. The fact was, there was something! I jumped off the roof of the steering cabin roaring for Yibo and He Peng, ran downstairs and grabbed my spear that I had stowed next to the door. Yibo came sleepily out of our room, looked at me in confusion, and then seemed to realize.
Yibo grabbed one of the harpoons and his axe. He Peng, who was now also there, wordlessly grabbed the second harpoon and a machete, which he already had with him when we found him on this deserted island.
We hurried upstairs and the two of them sharply caught the air between their teeth when they saw the fire on the horizon. Whereby horizon was wrong. Because as it seemed, we were driven very close to shore. While the two of them looked around, I explained to them about the anchor, which had apparently come loose from the chain. If that was even possible.
He Peng rushed into the steering cabin and checked the monitors. Then he shouted, "We're in Beijing!"
"But that's impossible!" Yibo shouted back.
"I know, but we are here in Beijing!" Shouted He Peng.
I didn't waste time thinking about how this happened and why. I couldn't. Because in my head I heard a voice telling me, "My frrrriend! Jump into the waterrrr! Dangerrrr!" Without being able to explain it, I knew it was the voice of the creature that had bitten me. The elf vampire!
"We have to get the hell away from here! We have to get off this sailboat!" I shouted. And as if to back up my words, a black flying thing swooped down on us, narrowly missing He Peng.
"Son of a bitch!" He Peng shouted and ran back below deck.
I focused completely on my senses for a moment. I listened, smelled, and felt into the night. There was something there. Something dangerous! It was one of the flying creatures. And it was not alone! There had to be at least 6, I could feel. Once again I yelled, "We have to get down here!"
Yibo came running towards me, dragged me with him below deck and hastily packed a few things together with me. Most of it was in our waterproof backpacks. Then he grabbed chicken fricassee and called for He Peng, who came at the same moment with his packed things. "We can't just jump into the sea." Admonished Yibo.
I listened to myself again and asked the voice that was screaming incessantly in my head, where should we go? I shouted in my mind that around us there is only ice-cold water. And the voice answered, "Help is coming my frrrriend." I nodded, even though it was completely pointless and only brought in questioning looks from Yibo and He Peng.
"We, we get help." I said, stuttering. Yibo just nodded, probably he would ask me later how I knew that. He Peng, on the other hand, looked at me with confusion and a look where he was probably trying to figure out if I had completely lost my mind. Who could blame him? After all, we hadn't told him about my "blood brother" and that he bit me and I've had abilities ever since.
Yibo told He Peng to just follow us. With flashlights that were probably so bright that they had to alert any hostile creature within at least 500 meters, we shone over and around our sailboat. Chicken Fricassee cackled grumblingly because the chicken didn't like that Yibo had put it in a big bag.
Of course, now with the flashlights that seemed more and more like floodlights, the other two could see the flying hell creatures flying around our sailboat, licking their teeth greedily for our meat. I think I even heard the growling and hissing of a few of them.
Minutes passed without any help arriving and we had to fight off the flying devils again and again with our weapons. Yibo asked me impatiently, "When?" I shrugged my shoulders. I wasn't sure if he could see it, but he certainly guessed how I had reacted, because he replied with an angry: "Great!"
And then, as if our "help" had heard, we heard the engine of a small boat approaching us rapidly. As it came into view, Yibo and He Peng stared in disbelief at our helpers. And I looked at them no less confused and amazed. For they were three elven vampires. And my new blood brother was also with them. I could feel it.
When they were close to our sailboat, he called out to me in his heavy accent, "Come, we must hurrrrry." I nodded and climbed down from the ladder into the boat of the marvelous elf vampires without thinking. Yibo followed next and then He Peng, the two of them sitting close together with their arms and legs drawn to their bodies, hardly daring to look around.
I myself sat next to my blood brother, who immediately sniffed me again like an animal. His two companions did the same and talked to each other in a language foreign to me, then one of them started the engine and steered us back to the beach, where more, at least 20, elf vampires met us. And each one sniffed with interest at me!
Like bodyguards, the vampires took us in their midst and hurried away from the beach with us. Again and again they fought against those hairless creatures and those flying devils who attacked from behind from above. More than one of the vampires was injured, yet they continued to run and fight undeterred.
After a few hundred meters they stopped and looked around, then they ran on with us to an armored bus, more or less pushed us inside and one of the vampires started the engine and drove off. I didn't even ask where this one had learned to drive. I didn't care. All I cared about was getting out of there.
The bus rumbled along the roads, though I assumed it wasn't a road at all, as we were properly bounced around and more than once heard and felt a thud when one of the wheels went over a hollow in the ground. "Where are we going?" He Peng asked me. But I didn't know either, and my blood brother made no effort to tell me.
"It doesn't matter. The main thing is to be safe." Yibo replied, instead of me.
"Safe?" He Peng asked with a laugh, looking around demonstratively. "How can we be safe with these creatures?" He asked further, after taking his time and pointing at our handsome yet scary companions and rescuers for at least 10 seconds.
"Well, they did save us, didn't they?" Yibo asked him instead of answering him.
"Yes, but why?" He Peng wanted to know.
My blood brother looked at him curiously, then stroked my head and said, "I'm helping my frrrriend." Yibo's look revealed that he didn't like that the elf-vampire kept touching me, but he didn't say anything. Maybe because he knew it would be pointless or would only anger the vampire.
"Thank you." Yibo said to him quietly and the vampire nodded. He stood up and walked over to Yibo, sniffing him just as he had done the first time with me. Yibo held very still and kept his eyes on me.
"You too frrrriend." Said my blood brother.
"Oh yeah?" Asked Yibo in confusion.
"You smell like my frrrriend."
"Okay."
"You love frrrriend?"
"Yes. I love Zhan."
"Good, frrrriend love you too."
"Yeah, I know." Said Yibo with a smile. The vampire patted Yibo on the head and then turned to He Peng. He sniffed at him as well and then tilted his head.
"You are afrrrraid and you arrrre sad." He said to He Peng. And before He Peng could answer, the vampire wrapped his arms around him. "I'm sorrrrry for yourrrr loss." Suddenly, He Peng burst into tears and wept bitterly, as if the vampire had opened the emotional door in him that had been able to keep him from breaking down until now.
But now He Peng could no longer suppress his feelings. Sobbing, he hung in the vampire's arms, who gently patted his back and kept saying, "You crrrry. Crrrrying good." The tall elf vampire's companions agreed, they began humming a soft song that sank deep into us, giving us a strangely relaxed and liberating feeling. As if all our worries and fears had been erased.
I don't know how much longer we were on the road before we stopped and found ourselves in front of a large rock wall. Maybe it was hours? We didn't care. We were just tired and could hardly keep on our feet. All this had been too much for us. And that even though we didn't even have to fight these flying monsters ourselves and were rescued by our new friends.
They led us to some tall trees and dense bushes, behind which, to our surprise, was a kind of cave entrance into the rock. They led us in there and through some quite narrow and sometimes deep passages before we arrived in a large cave room, where in the light of at least 20 torches, several elf vampires looked at us very astonished. Among them were also female ones, some with big bellies.
One of them, definitely the birth of her baby was close, came to my blood brother and greeted him. His wife, I realized. He kissed her, caressed her belly and spoke to her. Again in this language unknown to me. At any rate, she had then shouted something to the others, who hurriedly prepared three sleeping places of straw, hay and a few old blankets.
Two of them came to us and handed us water in cups. Two others handed us bread and a piece of meat that I couldn't tell which animal it came from. But it tasted good and filled my stomach. And after this refreshment, the leader, my blood brother, told us, "Go. Get some rrrrest. We'll talk later."
We did as he asked and lay down on our improvised, but surprisingly comfortable beds. A couple of little vampires, maybe between 3 and 5 years old, whom we saw only at that moment, joined us and were mostly interested in chicken fricassee. Yibo let them play with the chicken. Then we fell asleep.