The Last Supper - A Christmas Tale of Horror Read online

  We moved beyond the tower, heading East until we reached the top of a small mountain from where we could see the plains surrounding us. I took my snow shades off for an instant, searching for any signs of light in the distance. Nothing. I put the shades back on and Amilda and I zoomed in with my night vision to search for other life forms.

  Altered voices climbed up the mountain, along with the wind. We weren’t very far from the tower and the plains were perfect for spreading conversations. I drifted my attention towards the meeting down bellow. My mother, whom I recognized because she was the smallest and thinnest of the group, was hiding behind one of the tower’s wooden foundations. Another woman and another man from the refuge, which I couldn’t make out because they had their backs to me, spoke to an agitated young couple, with few clothes for such a harsh winter. I managed to get pieces of the conversation, and I heard them mention the Web of Blood, which they referred to as WB. That made sense, since the mono-siren was not an attack warning but a call for aid. Had it been an attack and a whole orchestra of sirens would’ve been playing.

  Many new vampires chose to cooperate with humans in exchange for blood. Since humans had become harder and harder to find, and the youngest vampires didn’t have their ancestors’ skills, they made pacts with some refuges and in exchange for their silence about the locations of human hideouts, they were provided with blood whenever they needed it. A fair trade, since humans could not abandon their hideouts every time someone was turned into a vampire. Otherwise they’d have always be on the move and that would limit population growth. Unfortunately not all new vampires were in on the WB and tragedies occurred far too many times.

  Amilda’s voice made me shift my eyes from the scene bellow. “You think we can trust them?”

  “They’re young. Seem to be just out of their transformation and they’re scared.”

  Lifting her shades to see me in natural colours, Amilda pulled down her collar, showing off her crooked smile. “And you got all that just from seeing their green faces?”

  I shrugged with a laugh. “You know me …”

  Shaking her head, she turned towards the surrounding area again. “You’ll have to teach me that trick some day.”

  “It’s not a trick, it’s feminine--" she cut me off before I could finish.

  “Intuition. I know! But if that’s true, I’d like to know why I don’t have it, and neither do any of the other women on the refuge.” she said.

  I shrugged again. “Maybe because I’m more of a woman than any of you?”

  She laughed and I felt tempted to do the same. Instead I stepped aside a little, towards the East, covering the narrow top of the mountain, so thin it was almost like standing on the blade of a knife. There was no movement, but that was exactly what set me off. At that time of the night, in that place, it wasn’t uncommon to hear wolves, see tigers, owls and other animals of the dark, who had, with time, regained the territory humans had taken away from them.

  I turned back to the transaction down at the tower. The mood had shifted, calmed down. My mother was still hiding, just in case there was trouble, but the young couple was more at ease and another snow bike was arriving from the refuge. That was a good sign.

  I stepped forward carefully, strolling in the opposite direction Amilda had taken. Something was tingling at the back of my head. It wasn’t the cold and it wasn’t the young vampire couple. At the tip of a small precipice I sighed and closed my eyes, trying to concentrate, remove all the voices and the howling of the wind; and it was only when all that slipped from my mind that I felt it. The force that made my hair stand. An energy so weak and distant, that I wouldn’t have noticed it if I wasn’t looking for it in the first place.

  At the refuge I was not considered a true sorceress, not like my mom and not even like Amilda; but there was something at which they knew I was better than anyone else: using my senses. All humans, like prey warned by the presence of a predator, could feel vampires up to four hundred meters, sometimes even five hundred. But that was where I stood out from the crowd. Since a young age, my internal radar (let’s call it that) has been more powerful. I could feel vampires up to a kilometre, or more, if I focused hard enough. In that particular case, I didn’t even need that much. The vampire I felt was too far for other wizards to foresee, and that was clearly not a coincidence.

  “Fuck!” I cursed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I ran towards the snow bike and Amilda met me there. With a simple look into my stern face, she jumped on top of the bike and turned it on, asking “Where to?”

  I pointed a finger southeast and she moved forward at full speed, turning the headlights to the max. The snow flew around us, hitting hard against our legs and our faces. In a few minutes I started hearing the other three bikes coming behind.

  Amilda screamed above the bike’s noise “They’ve spotted us!”

  The other wizards were coming to our aid. And with the bikes going full throttle, unless the intruder had some means of transportation, he would not get away.

  With my hands tightly closed around Amilda, I felt the moment her body stiffened.

  “I can feel him.” She said.

  “Good! Follow him and I’ll deal with the rest.”

  “Ok!”

  The snow hitting my visors just wasn’t helping me get a clear view of what was ahead, but I didn’t need my eyes for what I had to do. I locked my feet on the bike’s slots and let go of Amilda, almost being thrown back by the relentless wind. Regaining my balance, I took off my gloves with my teeth and stored them in the pockets of my coat. In the distance a lonely figure ran across the fields of white, stumbling here and there, and frantically looking back at the approaching snow bikes. We were close enough.

  “Stop here!” I yelled

  Amilda obeyed immediately, making the bike come to halt and turning slightly, to give me a better line of shot. I breathed deeply and, ignoring the nagging stings on my back, I extended my left arm with my fist closed, in the direction of the moving target, then extended my other arm and pulled it, slowly, towards my body, while saying “Invocare ad lacea ab spiritus.”

  As I pulled my right hand, with two fingers spread, a beam of bright red light stood in its path, forming a bright arrow that pulsed against my skin; and from my left fist another ray of red light went up and down, in a curve, forming a bow. I adjusted my aim and exhaled as I released the arrow’s tail, letting it cut through the air, straight into the intruder. The bow of magic disappeared as soon as the arrow flew, but the red arrow didn’t stop until it lodged on his back, cutting through his heart. The vampire didn’t make a single sound as he went down into the snow that would be his eternal tomb.

  We ran until we reached the body, and Amilda moved closer, turning him around with her boots, and crouched to get a look at his face. He was old and had nasty scars all over his face.

  “You think he’s with the other two?” she asked.

  I bent down next to her. Just as my bow, the arrow had vanished as soon as its purpose was accomplished, but a hole stood in its place and blood tainted the man’s spent clothes, and his mouth was open in a silent scream, showing off his long fangs, which had provided him plenty during his second life.

  “No. I think he was following them, spying on them. You saw, just as I did, that he was far enough not to be seen by anyone.” I finally answered.

  “But why would he be following them?

  “To find us, maybe?”

  She inhaled deeply and said “Well, at least we know he won’t be telling it to anyone.”

  I looked away, into the distant night, narrowing my eyes, hoping to see something else, something that wasn’t there.

  It was the first time something like that happened. Vampires that sought help usually were extremely cautious as not to be followed. And all of that seemed very strange.

  “I have a bad feeling” I said.

  Amilda trembled, getting up and closing her arms around her body. “Don’t
say that!”

  The other wizards and sorceresses finally arrived and when they saw the dead vampire, they spread out and started searching the surrounding area, looking carefully at the immense scenery that surrounded us. I got up and helped them cover the vampire’s body with snow. The last thing we wanted was someone coming by and finding a fresh body. In a few hours the animals would find his carcass and get rid of him.

  We quickly went back towards the watchtower and found my mom and the two people I hadn’t recognized earlier, Gigliona and Borodorin, gathered around the corpses of the young vampire couple. I trailed my eyes away from the two when I saw how they’d grabbed hold of each other in their death. They were children, no more than sixteen, and they had died scared, if not of the scare alone.

  “You didn’t have to kill them!” Gigliona screamed at Borodorin, who chose to ignore her, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes.

  “You’re being a sentimentalist, again.” The man, who was much younger than his colleague, rubbed his fingers on his elbows and blew his black hair away from his eyes, acting like that was nothing but routine.

  “Sentimentalist?” Gigliona’s auburn hair curled even more with her growing anger, like it had a mind of its own. “They were still children, you insensitive prick!”

  A feral anger shone in the eyes of both sorcerers, and my mother had to step between the two and stop a physical confrontation. “Calm down!”

  When Ishvar spoke, everyone shut up and listened. Having a mother like that was amazing … sometimes.

  “What’s done is done. Let’s just get back. We have a lot to do.” Only when she felt that the other two had calmed down, did my mother lower her arms and walk towards Amilda and me. “My daughters.” She hugged us, joining us by the shoulders and crushing us against each other. But just as fast as the affection came, so it went away to reveal her usual professionalism. “Tell me what happened.” She demanded.

  I had no need to talk much, because Amilda quickly filled her in on the details. But during all that time I couldn’t shake the feeling something was slipping away from my perception. My experience told me that instinct was the strongest weapon humans had against vampires, and my instincts were telling me something was eluding me.

  “Angel Gabriel – Blood Bound” comes out on the first trimester of 2013.

  To read this and other short-stories and novels, or simply hear the news about other projects by the author, please visit Ana C. Nunes’ Blog: https://anacnunes.wordpress.com/

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