Bathory Blood

Vampire High

The fresh air exhilarated Glen as she moved across the driveway with speed she would never have imagined possible. She felt so powerful, so strong. Glen leaped, and, jumping far higher than expected, she crashed into a tree's uppermost branches, making, what seemed to her, a lot of noise. Glen rested there for a while, examining the land beneath. Her eyes were keen and penetrated the darkness as though it were daylight. She could see the main gates and the road leading to her freedom, but she knew that Lucius was looking for her. Without proper knowledge of the area or where Lucius was, Glen decided to hang tight for a while.

It was the best strategy as, not long after she had decided, a horse whinnied from the field twenty yards or so away from her position. Glen knew that it was Lucius arriving from his fruitless search. She held still, melding herself amid the shadows, becoming a shadow herself. Glen was unaware of this ability and assumed that the branches did an adequate job of hiding her.

Unlike Glen, Lucius wasn't attempting to hide, so he was clearly visible as he moved through the field. The horse galloped away from him, neighing and shaking its head, its eyes and nostrils flaring in fear.

Sensing something was wrong with the tree, Lucius stared into it for a long time. But just as with when he was inside the house, he assumed the shadow he could see amid the branches was just that. He was weak in the arts of the consciousness as he had no idea it existed. Lucius treated the Bathory blood much like all the other drugs he took and was yet to fully understand the potential. Like most humans who consumed the blood, it was done for pleasure and self-aggrandizing rather than enlightenment.

Not true with his mother, Minerva, who was extraordinarily well-read and practiced in all the vampire arts. Minerva had consumed so much blood throughout her lifetime, she was now addicted to it and intoxicated herself from morning till night. Nobody understood the vampire's skills better than Minerva, not even many of the historic vampires themselves. Lucius didn't relish having to explain to Minerva how he had lost an entire tube. There was no way he could afford to replace it, not at five hundred dollars a drop. He couldn't even blame it on his stupid sister, even though it was her fault. But she would pay for this somehow... and so would her friend, once he found out who she was. Lucius knew he would get the information out of Anna very quickly. He just hoped that he got to Glen in time before she consumed or sold the lot.

Waiting until Lucius had entered the mansion and closed the door behind him, Glen jumped from the tree and floated to the ground. The descent was so slow that it felt like flying. The same was true of her journey into the tree. She understood a little about gravity and was pretty sure she was defying known physics. Either that or the muscles in her body were now so strong she could generate thrust. Glen had applied way more strength than necessary when jumping into the tree, but how did she know she could do it in the first place?

Its eyes wide and head held back, the horse whinnied and snorted at her, scraping its foot along the ground, warning her that it might just charge. But Glen knew that it wouldn't; she could access its feeble mind and knew that it just wanted to run, run, run away. If not for the field restricting it, the horse would have done just that, and never would it have returned. Horses had genetic memories of vampires and knew instinctively that they were not human and not good.

"I'm waiting," Erzsebet whispered, her voice traveling like waves through a gentle breeze.

"I'm coming, Mistress," Glen relayed, and then she ran. Ran like the wind. As she accelerated, Glen's body lifted from the ground for more extended periods until, eventually, she was off the ground for far longer than she was on it. It was as though she was genuinely flying with her feet being off the ground for several hundred feet at a time.

For a terrible moment, Glen considered that she was dreaming. That, perhaps, this was all a part of the MDMA trip. That, rather than jumping through the air like an age-gone-by vampire, she was, in fact, slumped on the bathroom floor in Anna's Mom's mansion. It didn't help that everything she was experiencing felt surreal. Even the way the air behaved; it was as though it existed peripherally and only allowed because she decreed it to be. Was it even necessary? Glen had no idea. Her mind was full of questions, and she hoped that truly Erzsebet. With Erzsebet's blood coursing through her, Erzsebet being alive and hidden somewhere in the clinic was as true as anything else she was experiencing. It was so true; it was a certainty.

"How long will it last?" Glen communicated, and it was as though she had spoken out loud, even though she knew that she hadn't.

"The dosage was high. It will last the night, perhaps longer." Came the response. "Not far now. When you arrive, you will be protected." Glen didn't need to ask how. That Erzsebet guaranteed it was enough. She jumped the main gate, clearing it smoothly, and hopped along the road before seeing a car headed toward her and jumping into a nearby bush.

Unbeknownst to Glen, the car that had just passed her was a chauffeur-driven limousine belonging to Minerva, who was returning home after an important meeting with the police commissioner. Nobody had done a better job at ridding Byranville of its homelessness scourge. The homeless problem had shrunk tenfold since Minerva took over as mayor.

With the roads being busy, Glen kept to the shadows, moving swiftly, but not so that it would draw unwanted attention. She'd noticed during her journey that she felt no urges for blood or to attack anybody. Glen just felt good, really good, better than she'd ever felt. It was as though her whole body was happy and in love with every other bit of itself. The stories Erzsebet had shared were all true, Glen thought as the clinic's Gothic architecture loomed ahead.

"Where are you?" Glen asked, frustrated after peering through every window in the building.

"I'm inside." Hearing this, Glen looked toward the main doors, and where she knew Mike, the security guard, would be sitting. "He's sleeping like a baby," Erzsebet imparted. "The key hangs about his neck, only it is not made of iron."

"A keycard," Glen shouted in her mind, suddenly making the connection.

"Get it, and set me free."

"That's it?"

"What else?" Despite not being one hundred percent sure of the plan, Glen trusted that Erzsebet knew what she was doing and head cautiously toward the main doors.