Chapter 4: A New Moon

Thank you for applying to the System. Your application has been accepted, however, due to the length of your torpor, some of your physical abilities have diminished over time. With practice, they will come back to their original state. Keep in mind that skills do fade and it is not advised to allow fading too often.

Your previous experiences with the Nassau Empire have granted you Vampire Level fifty-five. Please take a moment to choose your starting class when it is safe to access the codex.

The message went on and on across my thoughts as my eyes snapped open. My coffin’s plush interior greeted me rather than the hard floor I expected to find.

“Amelia?!” I called out while the message covered my vision with stats like Mind, Body, and even Health. All meaningless to me without knowing their purpose!

I shoved the lid away and stumbled out, glancing around my hidden chambers as I called for her again. Reaching at the air did nothing to abade the message.

Caleb and Amelia weren't in the room. Perhaps the fledgling was already upstairs. However, my sire leaned against the wall in a form-fit leather suit underneath a dark leather duster and wide hat.

“Help!” I reached for her, eyes wide at the messages making it hard to see, falling to my knees. “What do I do?!”

She tipped her hat to me and smiled. “Good evening, child.”

“I can’t see, sire.”

“Focus on the message and will it away. I believe you can do it.”

I nodded right as it asked me to pick a class and began listing everything in existence from a simple merchant to a politician, to a mechanic, ship captain and various combat types.

With a small thought and staring hard into the wall, the message vanished from my sight, leaving me alone with my sire and relief washing over me. My chest expanded as I involuntarily inhaled again, nodding to Isabella.

“Thank you…”

“Anytime. Now, don’t forget to pick a class. They are useful for more than just pretty numbers.”

“What time is it?” I asked, looking around the room for any blood offerings or even that canned junk. Maybe a human? My fangs ached for blood like I was a darned fledgling again.

“Forty minutes after sunset. Was on my way to work and thought I’d stop by to see if you wanted a ride.” Isabella smiled at me.

“To where?” I cocked my head to the side. She had to be playing a game of some kind, but I wasn’t sure what, because my sire always had a plan going on. If it wasn’t trying to assassinate another vampire, it was trying to rob a stagecoach or swindle some money from drunken card players. Or capture a ship.

She pushed herself off the wall and picked a fairly large helmet off the floor, and held it in the crook of her arm. “Come, I’m buying you a new age horse.”

“Truly?” I smiled at the idea of owning a magnificent animal once again. One who would come to my aid and carry me until the end of time. Unless she meant a motorcycle. Then that was even better! I could tell her about the one I wanted to buy.

“Truly.” She nodded.

I walked toward her, my eyes looking at the empty bowl near my coffin, causing me to look around and call out for Amelia.

Isabella placed a hand on my shoulder and frowned. “I’m sorry…” her voice trailed off and held no joy to it. Only a deep regret in those two words I never heard her utter toward anyone in the near hundred years we were together.

I worked my mouth trying to come up with a reply, but nothing came of it aside from a small croak. Not even a syllable.

A deep frown crossed her lips. She couldn't even look me in the eye as she spoke. “It's my fault. I was riding Bobbette as hard as I could to warn you, but the house was ablaze by the time I arrived and Amelia… was gone. I buried her on the hill in her favorite spot and looked for any sign you were unalive. I spent hours until hunters showed up to steal the rest of your effects. They weren't expecting anyone on account of them thinking they killed the vampire.”

“Huh?”

“Amelia said she was you…”

“Why?!” I blinked at her story. It didn't make sense.

“She loved you more than anyone, even before you made her your retainer. I suspect it is why she is still hangin’ around. And as for them hunters? I tracked the ones that killed her and made examples of them.” Isabella gave my shoulder a soft squeeze and a light rub.

It was something, I supposed, but the thought of her lying about who she was, was odd.

Isabella let my shoulder go as she stepped away and scanned the stone room. Her hands tightened around the large helmet, rotating it in place. “You were already awake about three days after the house stopped burning. I found you stumbling around a couple of fresh corpses callin’ out for her.”

“I did?” I blinked at her, stumbling back as I held the side of my head trying to recall if I did or didn't. There, in the dark recesses of my mind was an image of my sire's face looking quite sad as she hugged me and broke the news, but I felt numb to it all. As if I were merely watching it play out and the emotions were long dead. Words lost to time floated out from her lips as I punched the woman hard enough to send her through the barn wall.

I shook my head, trying to bury the memory before it broke the dam.

“Hey, grandma!” Caleb shouted down the stairs, causing me to frown. “I, uh, got you fresh food?”

“I ain't your grandmother!” I called back to him.

Isabella snorted. “Get used to it. Fledglings these days ain't exactly respectable. Look, I came here to warn you. They're gonna make you a social media clown, but it's up to you if ya wanna do it.”

My arched eyebrow was all she needed to rub her forehead.

She explained it was a place where people from around the continents got together to watch people be idiots. “Now, before you go up there, remember: We don't know each other to the common rabble, your sire did a turn and run, and I’m just an old friend.” She glanced up the stairwell before slipping something heavy into my pocket and whispering in my ear, “I’ll see you up top.”

My sire tipped her hat and shadows wrapped her like a blanket before hiding her from sight. Her favorite parlor trick and one of mine.

I walked up the stairs without her, feeling the object in my pocket, but not taking it out, and recognized the shape of a smartphone. It was unlike anything I ever held before yesterday. I supposed it could be a tiny Bible but it was heavier than that and didn’t have the paper feel.

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At the top of the stairs, I found someone had cleared out a large area of the basement and packed my things in new boxes made of a thin paper-like material. A lot of good that’d do when everything in there was likely gone anyway.

The blood sacks and Caleb were outside the house near their van with a few chairs clustered around equipment I couldn’t recognize. Amelia floated around them poking and prodding at the uncomfortable looking cloth chairs. Her glow was the brightest thing there next to a few large and highly focused lanterns all aimed in the center of the circle where two chairs sat.

They were really going all in on the interview and I didn't know why. There was nothing special about me.

Caleb stood nearby, holding a hand out toward another woman who looked beyond nervous. She couldn't even give me the courtesy of looking at me, her head tilted to the side in a way that would expose her neck.

“What is the meaning of this?” I asked them. Her heartbeat pounded in my head while my fangs ached to dig in. I wanted to let them, for it felt like it had been centuries since I last tasted hot mortal blood.

She stuttered, “Do… um, do you w-want to drink my blood?”

They had no less than two cameras aimed right at the newcomer with Caleb's partner aiming one right at me.

It took all my remaining strength to tear my eyes from the woman and shoot Caleb a glare. “Are you a court jester?” I asked.

He blinked at me and stepped back. “Huh?”

“You just want to use me for your game, don't you? You want to use my lack of knowledge and make a spectacle of me for the whole world to see. Well, young fledgling, I am disinclined to be your spectacle.”

I wheeled around in the gravel and walked off, my feet crunching grass and dirt alike as I left the group behind, despite them calling out for me to wait.

Caleb rushed up behind me, asking, “What's wrong?! She agreed to do it!”

“I refuse to drink someone on camera!”

“What, why?”

“That goes against everything I was taught.”

Hide who you are. Lurk in the shadows. Don't let them see your true nature or they’d kill you. Humans are panicky in groups, much like a herd of animals. Alone, like Amelia, they are fine, but in groups? No.

Deep in the back of my mind, my hunger growled at me to go back and drink from the offering. There was a willing blood sack back there. Those canned drinks were water and did absolutely nothing for my thirst. I knew I was drinking ‘blood’, my body absorbed it, but it wanted fresh. It wanted warm and straight from the source. Not whatever in the devil that canned crap was.

A faint rumble from near the barn drew my attention and I went over to behind it where I saw my sire sitting hunched over a dark blue motorcycle like the one I had first seen flying down the highway. No markings, a Westcal number plate tucked close to the back and within easy reach if she leaned to the side. Her helmet was on now and made it impossible to see her face. A pair of saddlebags sat on either side of the seat much like a horse. And just like a living animal, the Liquid Crystalized Magic engine breathed and wanted to run free. It couldn't wait any longer. Up close, a motorcycle’s engine was an odd thing. It had blue glowing piping running from the fuel tank near my sire’s crotch down to the engine. The exhaust it put out smelled like blueberries.

She lifted a boot up, and smacked a pedal down with a metallic click. Then glanced over her shoulder at me, lifting her visor up where her glittering silver eyes were the only thing I could see in the dark. “I’d give you a ride,” Isabella said to me, voice muffled by the helmet, "But that dress don't work with a bike." She pointed to a saddlebag. “There's some pants and a leather jacket in there.”

Caleb frowned. “So you were warned,” was all he said at first, and then he nodded. Worry took over his face, but I wasn't sure if it was for me or his group not getting what they wanted.

“Caleb,” I began and motioned at my sire, adding, “Being a vampire is far more than having fangs and drinking blood. I was born into a vastly different world than you. Back when my house still stood proud, mortals hunted us if they knew the truth. For you, that happened hundreds of years ago. For me, that was just yesterday. Give me time to adjust and I'll tell my story.”

“I w-want to know,” he said softly, red eyes looking down at the ground. “I never… I never…” his shaky voice trailed off, but the gist was clear. He never drank from a mortal before and had no idea what it was like or how it even looked like. Much like those terribly tasting cans, his existence as a vampire was hollow. His blood did absolutely nothing for his powers. Caleb was just a Merchant after all. Not someone like my sire or I who could duel men or command ships.

“Meet me here tomorrow," I replied and then looked at my sire. "Alone."

Isabella nodded firmly. “No cameras, no mortals. Just like the old days.”

Caleb ran off, leaving me to get changed for the ride.

Isabella had brought me loose fit trousers, a blouse and a thick leather jacket inside her bags. She told me what not to do on the back of the ‘bike’ and took off into the night. It was much like riding on a horse. Only far, far, faster and the turns were just like I thought.

*** ***

We spent the better half of the night going through a couple different motorcycle dealerships with Isabella helping me out on how to ride a motorcycle, so I could take them for a small spin around the block to get a feel for how they rode. I was nervous, but trusted her word on how things worked. Easiest ones to ride were the scooters: A brown Stephenson NF3, a Huskar 50, and Montclair XC3. The Huskar was the slowest with the XC3 being the fastest and most comfortable.

Others, like smaller versions of my sire’s, were a bit more complicated, but easy enough to get a hang of even with a big fat zero in motorcycle riding skill. I managed to hit level one by the time I finished the fourth lap around the block.

My sire wouldn't let me buy anything bigger than the 300cc bikes, so I had her buy the Montclair XC3 due to all the storage space. Even more if I added saddlebags to it like her motorcycle had.

I managed to ‘bluescreen’ the device they wanted me to sign paperwork on by simply touching it, which annoyed the salesman, because he had to then print everything out and manually sign it. I didn't see a problem with it, but it meant that he would be there later into the night.

While waiting on the blood sacks to process all the paperwork and prep the machine, I asked my sire about the social media websites so I could look at them and she told me about a website where people posted pictures of everything from food to sunsets. She showed me how to make an account there and the first thing I did was look for pictures of Encinar in the daytime. It looked considerably less beautiful than at night and there was even a new town in what used to be California. One that managed to go beyond any expectation with all the light displays and fancy hotels.

I leaned to the side, tugging on my sire’s leather jacket as I pointed at the phone. “We should go here one day.”

“To Vegas?” Isabella raised an eyebrow at me. “That’s through the Mojave Wasteland.”

I nodded so fast my head damn near came off my neck!

Isabella patted me on the shoulder and chuckled. “One night. One night. How about after you get settled in, leveled up, and figure out what to do with Amelia?”

She gingerly took the phone from me and dug around the video application for a few long moments until she set the phone back in my lap. There on the screen was an image from Antwerp according to the tag. It looked vaguely similar, but again, vastly different to what I remembered, and with obvious reasons. I remember it burning and reduced to ruin, but couldn't recall the year. Bland compared to Vegas, or even a place called Nalia over on another shard my sire called Ventros, but still. It was nice to see my hometown still around.

I used the stylus to watch a video on Nalia where they had words and images on the side of buildings. So many elves, half-elves and humans all spoke a language I didn’t know and one thing stood out among all others: It’d be terrible to hunt in that city with how much light there was. I did see one person in the crowd that wasn’t fully there. A shade almost. Like a smudge on a painting.

I pointed them out to my sire. “Is this what I look like in photos?”

Isabella nodded. “It's how I look, too. Kind of a good and bad thing. The average person won't know the difference and assume it's an artifact. The inquisition? They'll know. There's a reason I didn't head straight here. Had to be sure we weren't bein’ followed.”

I glanced around the nearly empty office, keeping my voice low as I asked, “They're still a threat?”

Isabella nodded, leaning in and covered her mouth like she were yawning. “Just in different ways. What Caleb did was highly illegal and not something you can upload to the legit internet. Our dragon overlords don’t like us drinking from living mortals.”

“Dragons?” I asked.

My sire nodded. “Dragons. They rule the Shards like kings of old. Lord Halifax allows us to exist where other dragons would hunt us down.”

“Well, nothing’s changed then regarding that.” I expected feeding from someone was frowned upon with how prolific that nasty imitation blood was. They even had a vending machine setup with one low end brand that tasted about as good as smacking your face into the wall. It still kept thinking back to that woman who tried to throw herself under my fangs. She was so scared, yet so sure about me drinking her blood.

I glanced at Isabella and smiled, barely moving my lips as I whispered, “Can we…?” She didn’t need the rest when I showed her my fangs.

Isabella held a finger to her lips, flicking her head in the direction of a corner where I didn't see anything unusual at first. Until I noticed a small dark nipple hanging down from the ceiling. She had mentioned cameras were sneaky, but to look like that was not something I expected.

*** ***

After buying a helmet, jacket, and gloves, I hopped on the scooter and rode into the night, finding out pretty quickly that I had to have a glove between electronic devices and I or they didn't like it.

Isabella had me follow her out to a large empty parking lot the daywalkers used for shopping, so I could practice low speed maneuvers and stopping. We did this for a few hours: U-turns, figure eights, weaving in and out of cones her retainer Harlow set up before we got there.

Not once did she let me use her motorcycle aside from sitting on it to see how it felt, which is to say, like a well broken in shoe considering we were close to the same height. It had that hunched forward position to it like you were trying to go fast just sitting there. She explained that the motorcycle was capable of reaching two hundred miles an hour!

My eyes widened at her. “Two hundred miles an hour?! What's your riding skill?” I checked mine by focusing my thoughts on the system interface and seeing that I was almost level five in scooter riding. I'd have to ask her about how fast the levels worked another day.

“Close to a hundred.” She smiled. Then threw a hand in the direction of the city behind her. “C, I’ve been riding since I bought my first motorcycle in ninety-nine. Only my retainers own cars.”

“And it’s not maxed out?” I asked the obvious. It was only prudent to know the details on how the system worked.

“Because I've been lazy these last two decades and the skill regressed. This is the first time I've ridden two days in a row in a long while.”

“So you've gone soft.” It was an observation more than a question and she knew it, because she nodded and waved to her retainer to come clean up the cones.

She explained that while vampires were allowed to openly talk about being vampires, talking directly about certain activities was frowned upon and authorities may be listening in. We were to use older lingo we had come up with ‘back in the day’ to talk about them.

Back in the day? Like last week?

We got on our motorcycles and rode out again, leaving the parking lot behind. My sire led me home. Something about the traffic would be starting in a few hours and we had to beat it, because it could be brutal on a Monday. She’d teach me about its patterns another day, but now she had to get home and wanted to keep varying our speeds with the back roads and non-highways. Something about breaking in the engine.

It was just dandy. Taking the roads at a leisurely pace and riding with my sire again. She never once zoomed off or left my sight on the ride home. When I was behind her, I noticed the license plate swinging and shifting with each bump in the road. And there were many bumps. I wondered the purpose until it hit me like a bag of bricks. Isabella could hide her number plate if she were doing something the sheriff didn't like.

I wondered if I could rig mine to do that and tried to look at it, but thought the better of it while riding. It was best to ask Amelia when I got home.