Night Feast Read online

  Night Feast

  Yvonne Bruton

  Copyright 2011 Yvonne Bruton

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  Chapter 1

  Lia was as quiet as a mouse, non-existent to her human prey. The young girl had no idea that she was being followed. She hurried down the tree-lined, dimly lit street and decided to take a shortcut through the nearby woodland. It was late, a little too late and she was going to have to face her parents withering disapproval. They were never going to believe that she had been studying for an exam with a friend, and had been so engrossed in the subject that she had lost all track of time. In truth, she had actually spent the evening with a boy that she had liked for ages. They had been at the house of a mutual friend of theirs, and as she gazed into his eyes she had for a while, forgotten how it would be for the next few weeks at home with her Mom and Dad. The boy had asked to walk her home but she knew that her mother would be staring out of the window, rooted to the spot for at least an hour, waiting for her return. She had lost her parents trust about six months ago when they had caught her sneaking out of her bedroom window one night to go to a party. She had never dared do anything like that before, but she was a teenager and it was the only way she could spread her wings because they would never have given her permission to go. They had gone crazy, she had never seen them so mad. They had waited for her in her bedroom with the lights out, two figures spouting words of condemnation in the darkness. They had made her read from the Bible for a full three months and had threatened to disown her if she ever showed signs of being anything like her older sister again. Her sister was their special object of shame. She had married a man, they deemed unsuitable, against their wishes. They never wanted to see her again. The girl knew she should have kept her eye on the time but she really liked the boy, her parents wrath was worth it. He had asked her for her phone number. She didn’t have a cell phone, her parents wouldn’t allow it so she gave him her home number. That would be okay because her parents were used to her college friends phone calls. They actually approved of the type of young person who had an interest in studying rather than those under aged drinkers of alcohol who brought nothing but shame upon their parents. As she watched him tap her number into his cell phone with enthusiasm, she felt a newborn joy grow within her. He was going to call.

  The woodland was dark. She could hear the sounds of the night creatures as she disturbed them with the sound of her quick footsteps on the cold hard ground. Her breath was a white cloud emerging from her slightly open mouth. Suddenly she heard the sound of a twig snap behind her. She turned around quickly but only saw the outline of trees in the darkness of the night. She shuddered and hurried on, feeling a little uneasy now. She imagined that the thud thudding of her heartbeat was echoing through the woods. Not long now, she was almost there.

  The shock that rushed through her body was electrifying as she felt a hand grab onto her long blonde hair that was flying in a thick mane behind her as she rushed through the woods. She opened her mouth to scream but the sound refused to erupt from her lips in response to the fear that now owned every cell in her body. She felt her purse slip easily to the ground from her gloved hand, but she knew that it was pointless to try and retrieve it. Then she could no longer feel the ground under her feet.

  Lia looked into the frightened eyes of the young human girl that she had raised into the air. A delicious mixture of hunger and excitement shot through her tall and slender body as she anticipated the sweet taste of human blood in her mouth, on her tongue , trickling down the inside of her throat like a rich, ruby red stream. The fear in her prey's eyes was now a combination of confusion and disbelief. Her assailant was a girl about eighteen years old, only a year older than herself. She had expected to be looking into the eyes of a middle-aged man dressed in an old overcoat with a facial expression of intent, lust and cruelty. The sort of man that had his photograph on the FBI wanted list. Her mother had warned her of such men when she had dyed her hair a lighter shade of blonde, saying that she was appealing to the depravities of the God forsaken in society. Her mother said a lot of things like that.

  They had flown to a deeper, darker part of the woods in a blink of an eye. No words were spoken, no questions were asked, nothing was said. The girl felt her feet touch the ground but Lia continued to hold onto her hair with a vice grip. In a small and frightened voice the girl finally spoke.

  “Who are you, what do you want?”

  Lia smiled. Her frightened companion watched in confusion as the corners of her scarlet red mouth turned up at the corners. Despite the odd circumstances, the captive thought that her assailant was extremely beautiful. In the midst of the blood curdling fear that gripped her mind, she felt the same sense of admiration and envy that she usually reserved for models and current attractive female celebrities. Her captor had the most beautiful dark red hair she had ever seen, it was thick long and wavy. Her skin was pale but also luminous and creamy in great contrast to the darkness of the night and her eyes were a dark emerald green. She wore unusual clothing, a red dress that looked like it was from another century....and then she spoke.

  “To feed of course, I want to feed.”

  Suddenly her smile grew wider and revealed her teeth. They were white, sharp and pointy teeth that made the girl shudder with terror. This couldn’t be happening, this couldn’t be real. How had she become a fictional victim in a film her parents refused to let her watch? She knew that she wasn’t dreaming, the feeling of the other girl’s icy cold breath on her face was a true testament to that. She tried to struggle but Lia was too strong. Lia yanked her head back and ran her nose along the girl's long and slender neck. The flowery aroma of her captive enveloped her nostrils and the vampire sighed with pleasure, totally unmoved by the screams of the young frightened girl. Then as the excitement and anticipation exploded within her Lia, sank her teeth into the girls neck like a lion attacking an impala. Her victim’s struggling ceased as her life left her body and, as Lia drank her blood with relish she saw the girl in a vision. She was talking to a boy, a beautiful boy who was looking into her eyes. He was tall and lean and, as Lia continued to drink the girl's blood she felt a stirring inside her that she had never felt before. She concentrated on the boys face and she continued to feed until she had drained every drop of blood from her prey, and then the vision disappeared.

  ****************************************

  “I think she ran away from home, and who could blame her?

  Jay struggled to eat the toast that his mother had given him for breakfast. It had been two weeks since Elena Hudson’s disappearance. He really regretted that he had not escorted her home but she’d insisted that she should go alone. If only she’d had a cell phone. He had told the police all he knew, they were at a friend’s house from college, he took her number, she was in a hurry to get home because she didn’t want to get into trouble with her folks.

  “I guessed her parents were kinda strict mom but...”

  “Kinda strict! That’s putting it mildly. The Hudson’s are crazy. You know she had an older sister, Stephanie? They don’t talk to her because she married an atheist or something, you’d think she’d married a serial killer, jeez!”

  Cora Patterson turned on the television set.

  “Eat your breakfast honey and don’t worry, she’ll turn up, there’s probably a reasonable explanation.”

  The newsreader’s face
on the television screen looked appropriately solemn as she relayed the latest news on the disappearance of seventeen year old Elena Hudson. Her older sister Stephanie Hudson, now Stephanie Jameson who has lived in the state of California with her husband for three years now, had not seen who been contacted by her younger sibling. The disappearance of the teenage girl still remains a mystery.

  The doorbell rang, it was Kevin, Jay’s friend who had come to pick him up for college. They climbed into Kevin’s car and he weaved between the traffic like someone who had been driving for more than twenty years.

  “You OK dude?”

  Jay nodded.

  “Mom reckons that Elena ran away from home, but she really didn’t seem like that type.”

  “Don’t feel bad man, there’ll be other girls.” Kevin was only trying to help. Besides Jay was a good looking guy and he always had lots of girls vying for his attention, not that he seemed to care much. Kevin wouldn’t have minded stepping into his friend’s shoes once in a while.

  “Yeah I know that , I just hope she’s okay, wherever she is”

  There were a lot of rumours at the college about what had probably happened to Elena Hudson. She was being held captive by her parents, she was a hooker in New York, she had joined a Cult. Her disappearance had caused quite a stir in the city of Portland, Maine. Her parents made many appeals on the news for her safe return, to no avail. Their glum faces on their neighbour's television screens didn’t manage to evoke the sympathy that they believed was due to them. Mr and Mrs Hudson were well known for their unorthodox parenting techniques. Their daughter Elena Hudson had vanished without a trace and no one could really blame her.

  ****************************************

  Eddy McCann liked to exercise his four Alaskan Malamutes in the woods. He did this every evening at seven o’clock while his wife Marybeth cooked dinner. Eddy liked being out in the fresh air with just his dogs for company. He had a good life, his children had all left home and got married, he and his wife had a very good relationship. She was a good woman. Nothing much ever happened and that’s the way he liked it. He didn’t pay any attention to the media or even read the newspapers, although he liked to do the crosswords. All the media could talk about was terrorists and crime, hell he didn’t want to know about that, he wanted a mind full of roses not weeds! The whole world was on its way to hell but that didn’t mean that he had to take the same journey, no sir, his life was just fine, uneventful and no surprises.

  “Hey, where are you goin' boy? Get back here!”

  One of the dogs had taken it upon himself to go on another route. Eddy felt cross, he trained those dogs himself and they weren’t suppose to give him any trouble. The other three dogs seemed reluctant to follow the wayward one and Eddy didn’t blame them. He himself had never been to this particular neck of the woods and never wanted to. It was kind of creepy with its thick wiry bushes and its distinct lack of bird song. However, Eddy followed his dog, calling him and cursing him at the same time. He suddenly felt a really cold chill and he pulled his jacket closer around his neck. He could hear the loud barking of the annoyingly investigative Malamute and as he got closer Eddy could see what all the commotion was about.

  Eddy felt a cold shiver run quickly down his spine and he felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck as he saw that his dog was standing over the body of a dead girl. Her eyes were still open and the shock and trauma of her tragic demise were registered all over her still pretty face. Eddy had been in the army, and he had seen many things that he didn't want to think about or talk about, but he had never seen anything like this. The dead girl was wearing nothing but her underwear, no dress, no jeans, no, shirt, no shoes. Eddy retched when it suddenly occurred to him that her body looked like it had been drained of all its blood.

  Cora Patterson was cleaning the kitchen windows when the telephone rang.

  “Jay it’s for you, it’s Kevin” she called to her son who was in his bedroom listening to music in an attempt to relieve his boredom. He rushed down the stairs to speak to his friend, hoping that he could offer him some light relief. Everyone was talking about Elena Hudson's disappearance, and the hooker rumours around college were really getting old.

  “Hey what’s up?”.

  “Have you heard about Elena Hudson?” Kevin said breathlessly.

  “No, why? Has she gone back home?”

  “No, I mean Jay it’s not good news, someone found her body.”

  ****************************************

  For the next two weeks, the Elena Hudson story was covered by all the Maine papers and on the news. The seventeen year old girl was portrayed as a sweet, intelligent, straight ‘A’ college student with her whole life ahead of her, who had been found dead by a neighbour, a man who had been walking his dogs.. Acute paranoia swept through the city of Portland like an emotional tidal wave. Parents forbade their teenage offspring from going into the woods where Elena’s body had been found. Jay Patterson was really quite shaken by the news. He had liked Elena Hudson for quite a while but had never really had the chance to talk to her. He had, however, been very pleased when he’d caught her shy, furtive glances in the corridors at their college. He liked her shyness, she was different from the other girls. They tended to be bold and obvious, especially around him. They assumed that he liked their behaviour but he found their blatancy and willingness very embarrassing. Unfortunately it was always the shy, sweet girls who found themselves in dangerous situations because they were so innocent.

  The police did not release all the details of the condition of Elena Hudson's body because they didn’t want to cause any more alarm . An out of town forensic team examined the corpse and concluded that the deceased must have been killed by some sort of animal. The fact that her body had been totally drained of all its blood, and the only sign of broken skin was on its neck, caused a lot of confusion and indeed, fear amongst the Portland police department and the team. It was so strange no one had ever seen anything like this....except in horror films, but nobody would actually say that out loud. So Mr and Mrs Hudson were informed that their daughter had been killed by an animal, and her body had been so badly mutilated that it was best that they didn’t see it. A female police officer insisted that it was best that they remembered their child as she was, and that seeing her body would only spoil that memory. The Hudson’s decided reluctantly that this was probably the right thing to do, and went home to grieve the death of their youngest daughter.

  A distraught Eddy McCann was ordered by the police department not to tell anyone what he had witnessed. He agreed, he didn’t even tell his wife Marybeth who he always told everything. Marybeth knew nothing about the half naked, bloodless body that had once belonged to the young college student, but hoped that her husband’s nightmares wouldn’t go on for too long.

  It was said that she had been killed by an animal, probably a wolf or some sort of wild dog, that had attacked her out of fear. However no explanation was offered to why her purse had been found a long way away from her body.

  The case for the disappearance of Elena Hudson was closed.

  ****************************************

  Lia lay on her wooden, four poster bed, clutching Elena Hudson’s jeans and shirt to her chest. The vision of the beautiful face of the boy came back into her head and she used her imagination so that it was she herself who was meeting the interested gaze of Jay Patterson. She didn’t usually take the clothes of her victims after a kill, but this time it was different. The smell and the touch of Elena’s clothes caused the vision to appear in the vampire’s head time and time again. When she saw Jay’s face she felt herself soften in a way that was alien to her. Something had awakened in her that she could not explain. But she knew that it was an itch that she intended to scratch.

  ****************************************

  Valentin Malenkov was totally unaware of his daughter’s recent activities. He had taught both his daughters to hunt and he knew that they could t
ake care of themselves. However he was aware that the twins wanted to expand their horizons and although they were both strong girls, he still felt that they needed to be protected from the vampire hunters that were spreading in number. He himself had fled his motherland, Russia, during the year 1412. He had been a vampire for just two years when a new breed of bloodsucker hunters had risen in society and had decided to make it their life’s work to destroy all vampires. However Valentin Malenkov, unlike his two daughters, was not a vampire born.

  He was born in Moscow, Russia during the year 1377. His parents had taken work on farms to support themselves and their only son, but at the age of fourteen Valentin became an orphan when his parents became ill and died of a disease that had been sweeping around the country at that time. Valentin found himself homeless, so he returned to Moscow where he begged and found odd jobs to keep himself. He grew from a young boy to a man without ever having permanent accommodation or any real companionship. Life was hard, devoid of any warmth or happiness. At the age of thirty three, he worked in a local inn in the town where he was born. Night after night he served alcoholic drinks to the heavy drinking clientele that frequented his place of work. Most of the men were already drunk when they arrived and they would insult and abuse him for their own entertainment. One of these men, Yakov, was particularly offensive. He saw Valentin as fair game for his sadistic pursuits. Yakov always wanted to prove himself stronger and more powerful than the younger bartender. Valentin had been subjected to this man’s barrage of spiteful comments, and the occasional shove, when he had walked past him carrying trays of drinks.

  One night Valentin left the inn after finishing a shift and walked out into the cold, dark night. He was heading for home, which was a rat infested room in an old house. His wage was meagre and he could barely afford to rent it. He suddenly heard footsteps behind and was surprised because the streets were usually empty at this time. At first he felt no particular reason to be afraid but when he heard the footsteps quicken in pace he had a strange feeling that he was being followed. He felt himself being shoved to the ground and as he lay face down on the road he felt someone turn his body onto his back. Before a large fist hit his face he saw in the darkness the red, leering face of Yakov, his tormentor. Then everything disappeared.