I get behind the wheel, wincing at the slightest movement to my spine. I am taking a hot shower when we check in wherever we land tonight.
Sevan slumps in the backseat, her eyelids shutting as I pull out of the parking lot. “No motels,” she insists, her words slurring with sleep.
I make to reply but my phone rings before I can speak. “Hey Dad, what do you have for me?”
My father figure has true worry in his tone. “It’s about time you answered! Boy, don’t you know to pick up when I call? I gave you your space for three years, but when you’re trapping, your space is over. Don’t make me worry.”
“Sorry. We were a little busy putting Zagiri’s spirit to rest. Not sure my phone got a signal for a while.”
The long pause is disconcerting. “You didn’t do it, did you?”
“Do what?”
“Put Zagiri’s spirit to rest.”
“Of course we did. What else are you supposed to do with a spirit that refuses to cross over?”
Sargis swears. “We needed Zagiri, Keran. She did it.”
“Did what?” Avet sits up in his seat as much as he is able, his focus on my phone.
The same unease I felt earlier creeps back into my brain.
Sargis’ words are clear, but they make no sense to me. “Zagiri found a way to reverse a vampire’s curse.”
Avet and I stare at each other, unsure if such a concept could even make a believable joke Sargis would buy into.
Avet replies slowly. “But you know that’s not possible.”
Sevan’s words are spoken through a yawn. “What are you talking about, Sargis?”
My dad’s voice echoes through the car on Bluetooth. “I tracked down the security footage taken from the graduate lab the night of her murder. A vampire attacks her in the parking lot, kids. I’m sending the video to your phone.”
I pull over so I can watch this thing, making sure Sargis hasn’t been making up stories just to jerk us around.
The video is grainy but not without detail. There we watch Zagiri come out of the graduate lab we just left and walk through the parking lot. She’s got the baggy jeans and tank top on, her black hair long and unkempt. She is clutching her keys and something else in her fist.
Sevan closes her lips through a bleat of warning as a male figure races with inhuman speed onto the film.
The struggle for her life starts with Zagiri being tackled to the pavement, her calves jerked together while her shoes are shed in two easy swipes. I expect the muted scream and the struggle before Zagiri’s socks are ripped off and her blood sucked from the soles of her feet. I wince when the vampire’s mouth wraps around her heel and he begins to drink her blood.
“He’s not a new vampire,” Avet comments, pointing out the obvious.
Sure enough, the vampire has Zagiri on her stomach, her legs bent up behind her while he sucks from her heels. The prey can’t struggle as effectively in this position.
But what I see next doesn’t compute with what I know to be true of vampiric attacks, or of their unsuspecting victims.
Avet voices aloud the thing I am thinking. “What is she doing?”
Sevan tilts her head to the side while she takes in the images. “Is she sticking him with something? Is that a shot? An injection?”
Zagiri doesn’t look surprised that a vampire is snacking on her feet. Her fear is no match for her determination as she twists her arm behind her, aiming the syringe in her fist and jabbing it into the vampire’s neck. She pushes the liquid into him with determination not befitting a damsel in distress.
“She was ready for him,” Sevan comments. “Like she knew he would be coming for her.”
“What the…” Avet cannot finish his thought because the vampire—immortal and immovable creature they usually are—begins squirming on the pavement. He releases his grip on Zagiri and holds his neck. He wears a shocked expression of one who cannot believe they were just attacked.
The vampire’s body begins to jerk and twist, as if he is having a seizure in the middle of the parking lot.