Vampin Book Series #3
Boston
By Jamie Ott
opyright.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used without written
permission, except for where credit is duly given.
ISBN-13: 978-1467979214
ISBN-10: 146797921X
For all inquiries, please contact ladysonoma@americamail.com.
Boston
Chapter 1
They pulled into the Boston bus station around 6 a.m.
“Lily,” Starr shook the blonde girl, sitting in the seat next to her. “Antony,” she kicked the back of the seat in front of Lily, accidentally breaking the metal foot rest in half. No matter; it’s not like anyone would believe a girl, her size, could do such a thing.
Groggily, and rubbing their necks and shoulders, they clambered out of their seats and pulled their luggage from the compartments above their heads, not that they had much: one bag each, though Antony only had a small grocery store plastic bag. Then, waiting in a line, they slowly exited the bus.
Outside, winter felt like it had already arrived. The sun reflected off the air, as though its molecules were inlaid with glass, and everyone, at the bus station, was heavily buried in coats, hats, and scarves.
Less than twelve hours ago, they’d left NYC because Starr didn’t want to kill her, one-time, closest friends, even though they had tried to kill her.
On the street, she instantly noticed the beauty of the old reddish-brown buildings, with bricks that were much smaller than brick buildings of today.
Lily was shivering, and her teeth chattering so loudly, she thought they might break.
“Here,” Starr handed her, her black leather jacket. Starr never felt cold anymore, since being turned.
“Thanks,” said Lily. “Mica promised to give me a coat for winter, from her closet, but we left before I could ask for it.”
Mica was one of the girls who tried to kill Starr; she and her other friends thought Starr was in danger of ‘vamping out,’ a term used to describe when their kind became more animal than human, more zombie-like than demon, and unable to do anything other than kill, drink blood, and eat the organs of anything that bled.
“Take my jacket, please, and give that back to Starr,” said Antony.
“Why?” asked Starr.
“Because I don’t want to look like a jerk. Yes, we don’t get cold anymore, but chivalry is not as dead as people think.”
They walked to the front of the station where they stood, looking around and feeling lost, for a moment. A second after Antony asked, “What do we do,” a strange man with eyes as black as Starr’s hair approached them.
Immediately, Starr did not trust the man, for she couldn’t get a scent from him. After being turned, that was one of the abilities she’d come into: smelling people’s body chemistry. Although humans didn’t like to think they had body odor, the truth was, even with deodorant, they still gave off notes of foul to high sweet, depending on what they were up to or feeling, from the millions of open pores on their bodies.
The man must have sensed Starr’s feelings because he looked to her when he spoke, his eyes rarely leaving her face; a common human action when one wants to gain another’s trust.
“Hi, you guys need a ride?” the guy asked.
“No,” said Starr, but then she looked down and saw Lily shivering and said, “Well, actually, we need to get to a boarding house on the North End. Can you tell us anything about it?”
“Well, there are a dozen boarding houses on the North End. Can you be more specific?”
“Well, it’s old but clean. It has a cement patio and it’s across from a liquor store with a sign that says, ‘We check I.D.’”
Starr realized her description was, pretty much, useless, but what bothered her was how she knew those things. How did she know where the boarding house was? For a moment, she wondered if, maybe, someone planted the thought in her mind, like Shane could do.
Shane was the one most responsible for her friends trying to kill her. She was also part telepathic and part empathic. For example, she could hear people’s thoughts and feel what they felt, but she could also communicate into people’s minds, and plant thoughts. Additionally, if L.S. Credenza was right, she could probably make others feel what she felt; although Starr had not, yet, witnessed an occurrence of that.
Credenza was an author-expert on the subject of vampires. Starr never met the person who turned her, so she had no one to teach her how to adapt to her new condition, except for Credenza, through her books and journals.
“Okay,” said the man,” looking at Lily doing a jig to keep warm, “come on. I think there are a few boarding houses similar to what you’re describing. We can just drive by a few until you recognize the one. Don’t worry, I won’t charge you. I’m not a cabbie.”
“Then why are you offering us a ride?” Starr was baffled that the guy would want to drive three rowdy looking teens across town.
“Well, it’s a bit obvious you’re lost.”
Normally, Starr would have told the guy to go away, but her main concern was getting Lily someplace that was warm. Starr hadn’t turned Lily because she was only twelve; although angry, at first, she agreed that spending multiple lifetimes in the body of a twelve year old could present problems.
Besides, if the man tried anything, Starr could handle it. Everyone, who was a vampire, had an increase in the strength of their own natural abilities. Starr, whose natural abilities were athleticism when she was alive, was now what Superman would have been, if he were alive as well as a woman.
They walked across the parking lot, to a black Lincoln sedan. Very peculiar to own such a nice car, when the owner looked like a bum. The man turned around and looked Starr in the eyes; he looked affronted. She hoped he didn’t read minds, like Shane.
In the back of the car, Lily continued to shiver. Starr put her arms around Lily and rubbed her shoulders, but Lily said, “You’re too cold, and you’re making me colder.”
“Oh,” said Starr, “sorry.”
“My name’s Mick.” He reached over and turned on the heat.
They were extremely fortunate in that they only had to go to three houses before stumbling onto the one they were looking for; Starr recognized it instantly.
They climbed out of the cab, and walked up the steps and rang the bell. When no one answered, Starr suddenly had the idea that a key was up on the sill of the door. She reached up and there it was. She turned the key and they entered, waving goodbye to Mick.
When they opened the door, a storm of dust flurried about, tainting their faces and clothes as well as the air Lily inhaled, causing her to choke.
Covering her face, Lily said, “I can’t see anything.”
“Really,” said Antony, still tripping on his new powers.
Antony was only turned right before they left NYC. Shane and the girls rigged a shotgun, for Starr, but it got Lily, instead. Antony, not understanding what they were, tried to attack Shane, so she broke his neck, nearly killing him.
The fables would have you believe a stake to the heart would kill a vampire, but it wasn’t true, for the heart was already dead. The real way to kill a vampire was the same as killing a zombie, by destroying a brain’s cortex, or by fire.
“Wow, I can see everything, now. I didn’t even realize the room was that dark, until you mentioned it,” and he flipped the broken light switch, to his left. “No electricity.”
“Another trick of being what we are, heightened senses, and strength of hearing and sight.”
“I don’t care about that stuff; I want to be strong, like you,” said Lily.
“Don’t underestimate heightened senses because they always alert you of danger; it’s how I knew you were being held against your will.”
“Whoever lived here, died,” said Antony walking in between stacks of books and newspapers.
“What?” asked Starr.
“I can smell an old lady, she died here. Can’t you smell it?”
“No, but, like I said, we’re all different.”
“Okay, stop talking about dead people. You’re freaking me out,” said Lily.
The room was cluttered with junk. In addition to the three dusty couches, and two recliners, piled on each other in the center of the room, there were half a dozen wood chairs piled in the right corner. Stacks of books and newspapers, completely, lined the walls, except for the fireplace which had black ash in it from the last time it was lit.
“Well,” said Starr, “it could be worse. You should have seen the clinic when we moved in; it was nastier than this place, trust me.”
After Starr and the others turned, there was no way they could go home because they didn’t know what their new condition would be like; they didn’t know they’d be able to pass for human, and that they’d, nearly, be the same as when they were alive. For that reason, they moved into an abandoned clinic that Starr and her sister used to sleep in. As they fixed up the place, and moved in other young adults who came from abusive homes, were neglected, or were runaways, they found it harder to return home because the kids needed them.
“I need heat, before we do anything else.”
“Right,” said Antony.
Instead of looking for wood, he walked over to the pile of chairs. He pulled the top one down and, with a grin on his face, broke it up into pieces.
“Wow,” he said. “That was like breaking a little pencil,” and he threw the pieces of wood into the fireplace.
Starr walked over to the pile of newspapers and began crumpling.
Although it took a couple tries, and a few sheets of paper, they managed to get the wood burning. Lily sat as close to the mesh as possible, trying to thaw out.
“You guys stay here, I’m gonna go explore.”
Like a wolf, Starr always needed to know all the corners of her habitat before she could rest in it.
As she walked down the hall, she found herself less disgusted, except for the layers of dust, the place seemed alright. Also, she couldn’t hear any scurrying, which meant there were, likely, no bugs or vermin.
Stopping in the hallway bathroom, for a moment, she tried to draw on her memory so as to figure out how she knew about the place. When nothing, familiar, came to mind, she continued onto the bedrooms. They were all empty, which meant they’d all be sleeping on the dusty floor, for the time being.
This time, she paused in the sixth, and last, bedroom, but she didn’t recognize any of it. At that moment, Starr was absolute that she had never, ever in her life, set foot in that house, let alone Boston. This was scary because either someone planted the thought that they should come, or she had accidentally gleaned the thought from another person’s mind. According to Credenza, it was possible that their preternatural abilities would change, or grow, over time.
Starr went downstairs and found Antony ripping up the rest of the rocking chairs. Lily was still sticking by the fire. She continued past them, into the kitchen. It was just as dusty as the rest of the house. In the corner, there was a pile of wood logs: she picked up all twelve of them and carried them into the living room.
“There’s fire logs?”
“Yes, but keep burning the chairs. It smells bad but we don’t have a lot of cash, so we’ll end up burning them anyway.”
“How long do you think we can stay here?”
“Well,” said Starr. “I don’t know, but we haven’t any choice. We’ll just have to be on our guard.”
“I’m severely allergic to dust. Do you think we have enough money for a broom, or a cheap vacuum cleaner? Or one of those carpet cleaner rentals?” Lily asked with red eyes; she sounded congested, like she’d been crying. Lily rubbed her dribbling nose and said, “Also, do you know what today is?”
In the rush of everything, Starr and Antony had forgotten that it was Thanksgiving Day.
Getting Settled
Chapter 2
In spite of the holiday, Boston was nearly as active as any other day. Together, they were able to locate a chain grocery store on the edge of downtown. There, they walked the aisles, picking up what they could afford.
That night, Starr grilled slices of turkey breast while mixing up a pot of stuffing on the butane grill they’d picked up. Legends like to say that their kind could only drink blood, but it wasn’t so. To Starr, and as Antony had discovered, eating was even better with the heightened sense of taste that they’d acquired. After stuffing themselves with dinner and pie, they cuddled up on one of the freshly steam cleaned couches and watched a movie they’d picked up, at the grocery store, on Starr’s little disc player. Then, Starr fell asleep, curled up in Antony’s arms while Lily slept on the couch, closest to the fire.