Chapter 2: Under an Alien Sky

“Amelia?!” my voice failed to echo off rotting walls, reminding me once again that darkness feared to carry anything spoken by me. Moonlight pierced through broken glass windows stained with dirt and tattered drapes. Everything was in ruins! From my furniture covered in thick layers of dirt, gouged with swords, to our family portrait over the fireplace being defaced and torn away. Everything I owned was gone… My world was destroyed in an instant because people didn't like me existing. I wasn't ‘God’s design’. A blood sucking monster, the Inquisition said.

Oh, but I was much more than that. So, so much more than just a blood sucking monster.

As I wandered my old house, I took notice that the carpet was ripped like they were trying to find hidden doors in the floor. Gouges marked where things were unmercifully dragged across and even a few burn spots like people tried to light a fire over the years.

Through a shattered window overlooking the bay, I saw a city beyond anything I could imagine. Sure, Encinar wasn't that far away when everything was new and you could barely see it in the distance, but now? Now, I saw illuminated buildings stretching skyward like a skeleton clawing at a strange skyline. A bright glow engulfed the horizon making it feel like the sun was coming up. My old pocket watch had run out of juice, so I wound it up again with a few choice cranks.

Two minutes to midnight according to the watch. No telling what it actually was, but the familiar device was a comforting reminder that not all was lost. I still had the clothes on my back.

My jaw dropped the instant I stepped outside and looked up at the night sky, eyes widening at a terrible sight. They scorched the sky…

There were stars, sure, a great many of them in fact, but not enough at the same time. My unbeating heart should have been racing as I stepped away from the rotting house. Frigid air washed in from what was left of the San Francisco Bay. Gone was most of the water. Now, buildings stretched halfway into the bay while the sky glowed bright from not just one moon, but the shattered wreck of a moon, almost as if someone filled it with gunpowder and lit the fuse.

I fell to my knees, slowly blinking at the sight. “What…?” I whispered, my lips barely moving. Hanging in the blackness above Mother Moon, were at least five other large chunks of something. They were too far to make out anything beyond they had water and greenery and one of them was a large U-shape with a swath of brown. They looked like parts of Earth at one time. Shards as it were. “What have you blood sacks done to Earth?!” I yelled, my voice echoing off the rotting house behind me.

No, no, no…

I got to my feet and backed away from the building. My home’s roof sagged heavily, waiting to collapse. One wall looked precariously twisted and grotesque as if it wanted to break apart at any moment. Strips of a clear bright orange cloth covered parts of the door, the windows, and any entrances. I wandered the property looking at the signs saying Keep Out! and Property Condemned. Another sign said the house was set to be demolished on May 15th, 219 and the city owned the property now.

“No…” I whispered to myself, passing the front door where the woman followed me with her camera. “It’s all gone! Everything. The stars, the paint, my furniture. What happened?!”

Still, Amelia remained hidden as I peered inside the old well not far from the house. “Amelia!” My voice echoed uselessly down to the depths below. I left the condemned well and made my way to a tree where Amelia and I sat last time we were together.

There wasn't a tree, was there?

Walking up the short hill overlooking the house, I found the air growing even colder, but it didn't bother me. What bothered me was both the alien sky and the unending sorrow coming from the tree. A familiar energy I couldn't be sure of, but it felt like I was walking toward a grave. I remembered the spot as being one Amelia and I would sit to watch the stars quite often.

“Amelia…?” I reached out to touch the tree and felt a spark of recognition from the bark. The tree creaked ever so softly on the wind as if to reassure me that it was okay.

It wasn't.

“It wasn't s-supposed to end like this, Amelia… I’m so, so sorry.” I sat next to the tree and leaned against the trunk, snuggling as close as I could until I wrapped my arm around it. Almost immediately, her cold touch hugged my torso. She moved closer to my side, and then rested her ethereal head on my shoulder like we used to do in the past when looking up at the stars that were now non-existent.

Beyond the house lay the now bustling city of Encinar, California. I had lived deep in the backwoods of the Bay where I was hidden from prying eyes. Where I would be at peace with my partner while our distant budding town grew into a flower, but no. Those vampire hunters took her from me!

They shoved a stake into her heart…

My fingernails dug into the bark, right as an insect crawled over my hand and continued on up the tree. Amelia sighed softly, but didn't say anything.

I wasn't sure what to do, but I had an idea. “Amelia, are we where you are right now?”

Her ghostly hair fell over my shoulder as she nodded firmly. “Mhm.”

“Do you… do you want to watch the sun ri-rise with me?” It was the only option I could see with the madness floating in the sky. One of the chunks had rings around it! I saw airship lights zipping to and from the city as well. So many they looked almost like a single line.

“Mistress?” She lifted her head up and her voids for eyes stared up at me with furrowed brows. “You can't do that! Please?”

“But you're bound here to the tree, right?”

“Well, yes, I am a tree now, but I have you.” She nodded. “And your plan worked! Look at our beautiful city.” She waved a hand out over the glittering city of Encinar.

I smiled at the ghost and hugged her as best I could, trying not to move my arms through her strange form. My eyes fell upon my blurry, condemned, house better fit for a fire than to live in. With no money, no job, I was better off waiting for sunrise, but I couldn't. I had to stay unalive for her.

“You're crying, my love.”

“I am?” I pressed my fingers into my face, coming back with red stains. My cheeks felt strange, because they were drenched in that frigid fake blood. “Oh.”

“I’ll get it.” She grabbed her ghostly apron and managed to actually wipe blood onto the ethereal cloth.. “Better, but you need to do the rest.” Amelia smiled.

I returned the smile and glanced around the property. “Thanks.”

A strange self-propelled wagon sat not far from the house. I’d seen it earlier, but the door was closed. Now it was open and light spilled out while blood sacks spoke to each other. One of them was walking toward Amelia and I.

“You may have noticed a few things,” Caleb said as he walked up the hill, waving back to the city. “The stars, the Shards, the bay. Yeah. Things have changed and there's one very important thing you need to know.”

“That I'd be better off waiting for sunrise?” I tried to wipe the blood from my face with my handkerchief, but all it did was smear it across my cheeks. I needed water now.

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The man stopped not far away, crouched down and smiled. “Ever heard of the System?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Thought not. See, back when I was just a young vampire, we all panicked about the year two hundred fast approaching, because of some prophecy, but none of us knew what it meant until the new year hit and everything shut down.”

“Huh? What shut down?”

“The world.” He waved a hand toward the sky. “Every computer and electronic device on every Shard stopped working. The next thing to happen was a display popping up in my face telling me there’s now a ‘System’ and I had to pick my Class. Everyone did. I picked Merchant, because that’s what I did before. So it made me a level one Merchant.”

System? Levels?! What nonsense does this fledgling expect me to believe?!

“Tell me the truth,” I replied, flexing my fingers. My fangs ached for blood. He had blood, but so did his cohorts. Theirs would be juicy and fresh. Not… whatever he gave me. If he had that manure on him then it stood to reason that same nasty liquid would be floating through his system.

Ew.

The vampire frowned at me. “I’m not joking. Look, I’ve done the math and you’ve been asleep for almost two and a half centuries. Try focusing on—”

“Caleb?” Jezebel said from somewhere inside the vampire’s body.

He grabbed a small object from his hip and placed it close to his mouth like he was about to eat it. “Go ahead,” he replied, pushing something against the side of the object. It made an odd noise when he released it.

“That vampire grandma? She doesn't appear on video.”

“What do you mean? She's right here in front of me.”

What in tarnation is video?

The woman spoke again through the box. “She’s there, but glitchy. Like the camera has a hard time processing what she is. Should we report it to the authorities?”

Oh no. I knew I should have drained them.

“No.” Caleb shook his head. “Let’s take her to the Council and get her a System License.”

A smile crossed my lips. The Council still being around was a good thing! But at the same time, a feeling in the back of my mind told me I shouldn’t go there. Someone would know who I was and want to put a stake through my chest when they saw me. I nodded. “Take me to the Council.” Then looked at Amelia. “I’ll be back before dawn.”

She nodded firmly, drawing Caleb’s attention. He tried to wave a hand through her, but she floated away from the fledgling and glared.

“Is she right there?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Weird…” He got up and waved for me to follow. Caleb led me down the hill to their odd self-propelled horseless carriage made of metal. It had two doors in the front and a sliding one in the sides with two on the back. Long, sitting far too low to the ground to be of any use on the carriage roads, but they must have used it to get to my house.

“What is this?” I asked, since self-propelled carriages and wagons looked different only yesterday.

“A Tremcar Model B van,” Caleb replied.

“What happened to her face?!” the other man yelled, eyes wide as he turned away from the carriage and looked at me. “Did she cry… blood?”

“Don't worry about it,” Caleb replied. He helped me to climb into the open side door, pointed me to a large reclining chair and buckled a belt across my lap.

I tugged on the belt, finding it not moving at all. “What is this?”

“A seat belt to keep you in place if we crash.” Caleb climbed past me and sat down in his own seat, buckling himself in.

“Well, yesterday, I didn't need to put a ‘seatbelt’ on when riding a horseless wagon.” I harrumphed and unbuckled myself. Why worry about a crash when I could survive it?

He frowned deeply at me.

The woman sat next to him on the other side. She showed him a large, strangely flat object with moving pictures on it. Jezebel pointed at me, then the device, and back to him. Their voices were low, but I heard every word. “We can't use this footage. It's trash!” she whined. “How am I going to get paid?”

Caleb shrugged. “Well, you got the ghost on there, right?”

“Yeah, but it might seem fake because it listens to a vampire.”

Fake? Amelia isn’t fake.

Two men got in the front of the wagon and an annoying roar filled the cabin for a moment. It lurched forward without any horses to pull it. So they still used combustion engines… such noisy things. The more expensive arcane powered wagons were far quieter.

“What happened with the world?” I finally asked as we got on a strange road made of dark stone.

The man riding shotgun looked over at me. “You don't know?”

“Fill me in on things, please.” I grabbed a towel offered to me and leaned back in my seat, scrubbing the blood from my face and then threw the towel in the back where they kept boxes.

The man threw a thumb toward Jezebel. “First thing, ever seen an elf before?” he asked. Jezebel and Caleb exchanged glances and that was when I noticed the woman’s ears were vastly different to anyone else’s. She had pulled her hair back to expose hand-length ears that came to fine points. The ears were much like the Nassau Empress’s in that they were angled backwards rather than straight up.

“Excuse me, but are you related to Empress Catalina?” I asked the elf.

She leaned toward her door, eyes widening in shock. Her jaw practically hit the floor! Even Caleb and the two men in front looked stunned by my words as if I wasn't supposed to know that name. She was around for nearly a century by the time I was a vampire, so of course I heard of her and her little empire. Although no one knew whence she came from. The rumors had it she just appeared in the Port of Nassau one day and conquered the pirates with a flick of her wrist. There was likely more information that everyone buried, because the Caribbean was a hotbed of activity before I was born in 1723.

Trees lined the winding road, becoming a lush oak forest to block out the sky. Encinar was soon out of sight, leaving only the wagon’s lanterns to illuminate our path forward. The ‘road’ was in fairly poor condition and barely wider than the wagon, forcing the driver to keep us slow as he went from a left hand turn to a right hand turn, zig-zagging his way down along the old trail I used just yesterday.

Jezebel leaned toward me again and spoke up, “You know the wood elf Empress?”

“I know of the Nassau Empress, yes.” I nodded firmly and smiled, having known something they didn’t! I refused to tell them how the ‘Golden Empress’ gave my sire and I a Letter of Marque to sink British ships in the Caribbean shortly before I became a vampire. I continued, “A friend and I crossed paths with her Majesty’s Empire once or twice.”

“Well… expect to see more elves,” Jezebel replied and pointed to herself “There’s a lot more now.”

“How?” I asked.

She pointed at the ceiling, so I leaned toward the window to look up at the forest canopy. “The elves broke the sky…” I whispered.

“A little over two hundred years ago.”.

Strange that I didn’t feel it break like the ‘shards’ showed. I'd rather call them continents, because that is what they looked like if you drew a map of them. Perhaps it was luck or fate that let me sleep through it. Perhaps not. I wasn’t sure, because the modern world felt alien to me. From the new wagon, to more elves in the world. First there was one elf, the Empress, then the British had their male elf. Did they meet up and make more? Or did they come from somewhere else? I suppose I should have kept up with the fighting after rounding Cape Horn instead of heading straight for Mexico, but there were more pressing matters at the time as the Spaniards had found... something. Now? Not so much was pressing aside from finding out just what in the Devil was going on. I closed my eyes and waited for Encinar to come into view. The driver was gentle with his movements and felt well practiced compared to the old self-propelled wagons I had ridden in. Even the road was smoother than anything I was used to.

It took us roughly twenty minutes to head down the hill according to my watch, which would have taken an hour or so by horseback.

Encinar was beautifully decrepit and stunningly beautiful with all the lights. Nestled close to the water, you had a view of the remaining bay and all the stilted buildings built into the mud. Tall structures stretched on, twinkling into the night while any stars hid away like the sun was trying to come out. Caleb and Jezebel told me those strange chunks in the sky were known as Shards and they were what was left of Earth and another planet. He and Jezebel didn’t know much more beyond that since they were born after the destruction.

I adjusted my pocket watch to the wagon’s time clock on the dashboard. It showed two in the morning, meaning a lot of lazy vampires would be getting ready for bed while the night was still young. They drove us through the city, my eyes wandering from one tall building to another tall building, strange wagon to strange wagon until a mosquito flew by so fast it shook our wagon at the same time the interior filled with an angry buzzing.

“Asshole!” The driver threw the one-finger salute to a small horse-like machine as it vanished into the distance. It sort of resembled a motorized bicycle with a blue glow around its center.

“Was that a bicycle?” I asked.

“A motorcycle,” Jezebel corrected. She handed me a smartphone as she called it. A strange rectangular device with a flat screen displaying a manufacturer’s webpage about their two-wheeled motorized bicycles. I sat back and touched the device like instructed. The screen didn't quite respond to my input, so I held my finger down. It flickered instead and went dark, showing off my ugly face. I pushed the button on the side like Jezebel told me to and tried to work it again. Only for it to do the same thing.

With a deep frown, I gave it back to the elf woman. She pulled a thin fountain pen out from the smartphone and gave both items back. “Try that,” she said, “Just press it to the screen.”

I focused my blood on my fingers and the fountain pen appeared to work. I scrolled down to read about the ‘number one’ Amarillo motorcycle brand and how they were big two-wheeled machines, but they didn't look like the one that passed us. They were more like large smoking chairs on wheels and had a style that didn't speak to me in any way. Too much brightwork like they were designed to impress rather than do what I’d seen.

“What was the one that passed us?” I asked, navigating my way through a constantly shifting website like a ship captain in a storm.

“Some Elven bike most likely.” Caleb shrugged. “Maybe a Stephenson? Montclair?”

I tapped the top of the screen like instructed and wrote down Elven Motorcycles, since I didn't know how to spell the names, and a few different manufacturers showed up. “Is there a way to hear what they sound like?” I asked.

“Yeah!” Caleb laughed.

I followed Caleb’s tutelage on how to go between the different areas of the smartphone and found myself on a strange website dedicated to showing off all the latest moving pictures about, well, everything! On the app’s home page were videos on ghost hunters looking in old houses for ghosts and asking about the origins of vampires. He likewise showed me how to search the app and cross referenced the different motorcycle manufacturers while we made our way downtown.

The world was lost to me as I absorbed the moving pictures from a rider’s perspective of them flying down the highway, or moving through a city full of so many blinding lights it was beautiful. Even one where it was a person going full gallop through a canyon in the daytime.

I smiled at the moving pictures and leaned back in the seat to watch. I hadn't seen the sun or daytime in so long that I forgot what the world looked like during the day. The countryside was so beautiful, but so strange when the rider leaned into one turn and two suns blinded them! My inner darkness was strangely quiet about the suns. As if it, too, knew that it was just a picture and not the real suns. Two suns, chunks of two planets floating in the sky… what the hell happened while I was asleep? Just how much destruction did the elves bring to our world and why? Something to find out for later.