Chapter 40: 40

The shutter snapped, the familiar sound was nice despite the immense pain that lanced up my finger from the tiny movement. My finger hadn’t been broken, thankfully, but it had been dislocated. My excuse for this when it came to Mike and my Mom had been ‘I tripped and jammed it on a sign post.’ They believed the lie.

Scarlet looked uncomfortable under the sunlight. She squinted over the people. There were only twenty or so but it felt like a lot to me, and probably to the rest of the band. As their photographer, I didn’t have to stand up on the stage; staring out at all the impatient, grumbling and disinterested faces. A steady stream of foot traffic continued behind us on the designated path in and out of the Hallowsgreed event space. Every signpost had been laced with fake cobwebs and cheap plastic skeletons. The local fire department had a video playing of scary fire incidents for educational and entertainment purposes, and several food vendors were selling a mix of funnel cakes, corn dogs, hot dogs, candy apples of all kinds, and way on the end, a sad-looking food truck was trying to sell something called Empiñatas.

Even from the ‘crowd’ I could see how much pain Scarlet was in if she wasn’t careful. They were tuning their instruments and Sierra was balancing the sound, so Scarlet was warming up her voice with Lee. When she hit some of the higher notes she winced and her hand was constantly hovering right by the injury. I was sure a human would have been hospitalized for at least several days for an injury like that but Scarlet healed fast. The wound had closed up within a day or so, so as long as she was careful the healing would happen, though she’d be left with a massive scar there for a long, long time. Probably a lifetime or two.

I sighed and rubbed my face with my hands. There were details I hadn’t thought about before that worried me. For one, Scarlet wouldn’t age. I’d pieced that together a while ago. The same monster that had murdered the woman in the asylum twenty years ago was the same monster up on stage now. How exactly she’d survived for so long in the dark with little-to-nothing to eat was beyond me.

When it came time for them to actually perform I got ready. For the most part this was a pathetic crowd to play to, but they had to start somewhere. Once they did, they started with an amped-up version of Here Comes the Sun featuring a haunting melody by Scarlet interspersed with Lee screaming into the mic: “It’s alright.”

They certainly had a style if not talent.

I relaxed as time went on. More people came up once there was live music playing and I quickly slid to the outskirts of the crowd, getting some side angle shots for social media and website publicity. The band worked well together. Sierra didn’t have to do much other than occasionally adjust the sound balance and swap tracks, but she kept them on point, and a lot of her hard work was in preparing. Like how mine was mostly publicity purposes.

While the crowd wasn’t big, I was feeling a bit claustrophobic so I met Scarlet’s gaze briefly, gave her a reassuring smile and slid to the back of the crowd to give myself some space to breathe.

The butterflies had worn off, replaced by a strange sense of euphoria. We had gotten here. It had been a lot of hard work and we’d taken a lot of shit from Josh and their group, although they’d rescinded their performance slot for some reason. 

I realized, from all the way in the back, I could tell exactly how many people were here. It was a lot more than I expected. I guessed playing a haunting Beatles' song had attracted a crowd. The beat was so slow that what had been a three minute song had stretched to six or seven, a decision I’m sure Lee regretted as they finished and she took a deep breath and let her violin droop.

My spine started to prickle warily as the audience applauded. There was nothing spectacular. A couple adults whistled but no one was jumping up and down for more. That was to be expected. All of us were only seventeen, with the exception of Scarlet, but Scarlet wasn’t feeling great anyway.

As the applause died down, Lee anxiously took the mic. I tuned in to listen to her, readying for another photo opportunity. But someone brushed against my shoulder.

I whirled. There was plenty of space in the ‘stage’ area and I hadn’t heard anyone come up behind me. But there he was.

It was a man.

He looked down at me from a cocky angle I didn’t quite like. More importantly though his eyes were a deep shade of plum, somewhere between purple and burgundy. It was off-putting, and my modern instinct said coloured contacts but my ‘vampire girlfriend’ instinct said unhuman.

I stepped back, uncertain of how to react.

“Hello,” he said. His black hair and facial structure nagged at me as familiar somehow. I was struggling to place him in my memory. Was he a friend’s brother? A dad? Someone I’d seen around town?

Wait no—. Brother.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked cooly.

I shook my head but my mouth said “One of the Bludges.”

His mouth sneered. “Yes,” he agreed.

I took another step back, trying to keep calm as the crowd was cheering the band on as they started their next song.

“Uhm… hi,” I said. I wasn’t certain how etiquette for normal in-law relationships went but for the supernatural vampire ones, I was completely lost. “I’m Lexi,” I introduced myself.

He nodded and extended a hand to introduce himself. “My name is Blacke Bludge,” he explained.

I took it, still trying to calm a racing heart. “It’s… nice to meet you,” I said.

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He looked up at the stage where Scarlet had her face shrouded in weak shade with a properly fitting hoodie that only gave her some protection from the sun. I’d slathered so much sunscreen on her it looked almost like white grease paint at first. Rubbing it into her skin to make it an even, not-quite chalky layer had taken time.

“That’s my sister,” he explained.

“Oh…” I said. That made sense, although it also raised a lot more questions. Why was he here now? And why had he left her in that asylum to starve to death on her own?

“Thanks for taking care of her,” he said.

“Of… course,” I agreed.

We quietly watched Scarlet perform for a moment.

“I’ll be in touch with you two. I’m sure there’ll be… complications to this,” he explained.

I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant by that but when I turned to look at him, he was gone. I slowly closed my mouth again, letting out the breath I’d held.

He was simply not there anymore, the same way Scarlet could slip in and out of a room fast and quiet. I looked down, seeing a small cooler on the ground where he’d been.

I swallowed and crouched and just barely cracked it open to find packed ice. The thing weighed about forty pounds.  I opened it a little further and saw a deep red sludge contained in recycled water bottles. I quietly shut it again and sat on top of it to seal that horror inside. My stomach churned uncertainly, not quite sure what to do about it. It was obviously meant for Scarlet, but she hadn’t noticed her brother’s presence. And of course I was going to give it to her. Whether it was animal or human blood, it would be a sin to waste it. 

I watched as the group wrapped up their second song. My heart was still beating in my chest way too fast. I felt more than a little sick, but I was here for one reason and that was to take photos. I did so, but I couldn’t focus on it. When Scarlet caught my eye in their brief interlude she gave me an excited smile.

She was happy.

I let out a breath. Like everything before now, I just had to take everything in stride. If Scarlet was happy, I could be happy too. Even if that meant occasionally someone else had to die… right?

 

 

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How to Train Your Vampire II coming Fall 2023

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Thank you so much for all of your support, be it monetary, emotional, motivational, etc. You all mean a lot to me and have made me feel like maybe I should be 'wasting my time' by writing fun cute stories.

As always, you can support me on patreon or Ko-Fi. A HtTYV holiday special will get posted on Patreon sometime in the next week or so. It will not be plot relevant but more of some fun little fluff because despite Scarlet and Lexi being my main focus for this story, there hasn't been enough fluff.

 

A new story, Feather and Scale, will be coming out on January 15th, which will be a fantasy adventure type story. I'm hoping to do daily updates for that one instead of every other day because (shamelessly admitting this) it feels good to get on the trending list and that's more likely to happen with more frequent updates.

 

Special acknowledgement to my editor who literally fixed so many grammatical errors. She's also just an amazing person who helped me come up with these characters and checked to make sure I wasn't being insensitive. 

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