Canticles of the Prophet Zachariah:
She Wakes Hungry
Notes by Anthony
“The water was icy cold, but it didn’t hurt me like it should have. It pulled on my clothes, dragging me down. I choked before remembering I didn’t need to breathe. I could hear Ben coughing wetly as he splashed beside me. Whatever powers my blood gave him – he still needed to breathe. I yelled at him to turn back, even using Dominate to make sure he listened. I told him to take the car and meet us on the other side with the remaining ghouls. I treaded water until I watched him stumble onto the shore and into the driver’s seat.
“I reached Roosevelt Island as Asa and Gwen stepped out of the water, looking as bedraggled and soaked as I felt. Tala, still in wolf form, shook water from her fur. Gwen reached into her backpack and handed me something wrapped in an old, wax cloth. It looked like a handful of thick, grey sand. Slightly muddy at the edges from our dip in the Potomac. She told me I needed to eat it. I thought it would be hard to stomach, but the muddy sand was softer that I thought it would be. It seemed to almost wriggle down my throat as I swallowed.
“Bloody tendrils and grey, ashen clouds bloomed across vision. Spectral, bluish spectators surrounded me. An older man was pleading for his life before a woman with long, straight black hair. I think they were speaking Italian, but I could understand it. He begged her, Lucretia, to reconsider. This plan would lead to their doom. He asked her what it was all for. She told him he should have had more faith in the family. Something struck him and he fell.
“I was back in the forested shoreline of Roosevelt Island. The grey substance had finished coursing through my body. I was stronger, more energetic. I felt like I could run for miles. I tried not to think about how I had probably consumed the ashes of the man who died defying his family. I tried not to think about why Gwen had such a terrible thing. An awful howl broke the air and Tala raced forward, faster than I could even see. Even with my Auspex dampened to prevent the sulfurous smell from overwhelming me, I could hear people murmuring at the center of the island. Music and chanting, maybe. A cackle of laughter. I jumped into the shadows and ran forward as fast as I could, forcing the blood into my legs.
“It was chaos as I burst out onto the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial. I’ll try to paint the scene for you, dear listeners, though I only had a heartbeat to process it. The paving stones were scattered everywhere, like a bomb had gone off deep below the soil. Roosevelt’s statue had tipped over. His arm was broken off, as it had been in my vision. Four young people, who I later learned to be mesmerized thin-bloods, swayed unsteadily in long, white robes.
“Ashes blew around them from the gusts of wind propelled by two blurs. One was low to the ground and reddish in color. I could only guess that it was Tala as she chased the other blue towards the Wall and out of sight. I recognized Jinx near the statue. She wore a black dress and cradled a box with a moving, screaming bird skull inside. I hoped my Obfuscation would be enough to stop her noticing me right away. I remember the hatred in her voice as she pled with Joan to abandon her doomsday cult.
“Damien stood across from the statue. He wore a conductor’s black robe and held a black baton high in the air. A triumphant grin lingered on his smug, pretty pop star face even as members of his orchestra, also dressed in black formalwear, disappeared one by one into the shadows. One man remained standing, also mesmerized. He was tall and handsome, with long, blonde hair tied up in a ponytail. He held a violin limply in one hand as Damien took the other in his. Damien addressed the man as “Alexander” and told him to follow. I remembered Damien’s obsession with a man named Jordan, who needed to remember to be Alexander.
“Damien turned to me and smiled, calling me “brother.” Apparently, my Obfuscation was not good enough to stop him from noticing a 180 pounds of DJ radio host charging across an open courtyard. His delighted smile infuriated me.
“Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Asa defended the mesmerized thin bloods in white robes. One of them, a young woman, woke up and began to scream. Shots rang out as Asa exchanged gunfire with one of the cultists. Asa was hit in the stomach but stood his ground. Jinx punched Gwen as she ran up to her. They fought over the box with the bird skull. Flies, buzzing loudly enough to be heard over the gunfire and screams, surrounded the pair. They seemed to be emerging from Jinx’s ears and mouth. I turned back around as I reached Damien, meeting his eyes. He smiled and asked me if I remembered the hospital.
“Now, listeners, I’ve always tried to be honest with you. But some things are just…difficult to share. You know about my problems with sleeping. With the nightmares. That started way before this whole vampire apocalypse cult thing. Well, when I was a kid, sometimes I was so afraid of closing my eyes that I’d stay up all night. Or I’d wake up from a nightmare and be unable to fall back asleep for hours. Well, that led to me falling asleep in class a couple times. Not a crime, lots of people do it, I know. Micro-naps, my therapist called them. Unfortunately, I started dreaming in class. If you wake up screaming from a nightmare in the middle of biology once, well, that’s just the fat kid acting weird and we can all have a good laugh. Three or four times and, well.
“I was hospitalized. Voluntarily. Or as much as a thirteen-year-old can volunteer to that kind of thing. Sleep study. Group therapy sessions. Writing in a journal. A lot of drugs. But the nurses were nice, for the most part. No one understood what I was going through, least of all myself, but they tried. I was scared about being locked in there forever, of course. But it wasn’t as bad as the movies make it out to be.
“The hospital Damien created for me was nothing like my memory. But that didn’t matter. I was crazy. A failure. My friends had abandoned me. My parents were sick of me. A white straitjacket pulled my arms tight around my chest. It was hard to breathe. Crying just made it worse, but I couldn’t stop sobbing. I collapsed on the padded ground. Screams and maniacal laughter echoed outside my room. I couldn’t tell if the loud buzzing came from the flickering fluorescent lights or an electric chair. I was trapped. DJ Zachariah the Vampire Prophet was just another nightmare. The insane imaginings of a useless failure who wanted to pretend he was special. I was crazy. I belonged here. I was never, ever going to leave.
“I gasped back to life on the forest floor. A mist of blood filled the air. I could taste lives in it. Fat Eddy who had been shooting at Asa. The sacrificed Jamille. Ruth herself. Tala stood in front of a cultist wielding shadows. Tala’s face was all wrong. Too calm and coated in blood. And then Tala’s hand was inside the cultist’s chest, moving too fast to see. The cultist burst into blood mist.
“I turned back towards Damien. He held Jordan’s hand and was pulling him towards the forest edge. I got to my feet and lumbered forward. I pushed blood into my limbs even as they shook. I was too late to stop him from awakening Ruth. But maybe I could help some of the people he had forced into being here. I lowered my head tackled Jordan like a football player, breaking Damien’s hold. I wrapped my arms around Jordan’s chest from behind and clung to him. Let’s see that pop star waif try and carry both of us out of the forest. I looked up just in time to see that triumphant smile finally crack. He looked betrayed before disappearing into the shadows.
“The courtyard behind me was too quiet. I was afraid to move. Afraid of the carnage I’d see back there. Or, worse. Maybe it was quiet because there was nothing back there. The dream was ending, and I was about to wake up in the real world. In the hospital. But I couldn’t lie here forever. Jordan needed me. Asa and the sacrificial kids needed me. Ben needed me.
“If none of this is real, well, then what does it matter if I’m living in a dream? Either I’m in the hospital and the world is safe, or I’m a vampire and I’m needed to save the world. Easy choice, really. At least here, I have friends. And I have you, my dear listeners. I have you.”