Manchester, England. December, 1918.
It was the middle of the night. Grant Roberts woke up in a sweat, screaming in horror. Sharing the bed with him was Helen Nantz - soon to be Helen Roberts – Grant’s fiancée. “Mmm, ‘nother nightmare, love?” Helen asked, still half-asleep.
“I guess you could call that,” Grant said, wiping his face with his hands. “Dreamed I was back in Somme,” he began to recount. “So many voices crying. So many of us didn’t make it back from that battle,” as Grant began to quietly sob. Helen did her best to comfort Grant. Despite the Great War being only a month removed from its armistice, Grant had some problems readjusting to life outside of the British Expeditionary Force. Since his return home and keeping his promise to marry Helen, Grant found himself reliving the moments of trench warfare on a weekly basis in his sleep. Now Grant found the dreams happening on a bi-daily basis, and he was more than grateful for Helen to be there by his side during these troubling dreams. “It’s okay, love,” Helen told Grant as she wrapped her arms around him in a loving, caring embrace. The two of them eventually laid down back on the bed and fell asleep shortly.
Edmonton, Alberta. Present Day.
Grant Roberts now sat by himself outside on the balcony of the suite he shared with Kaitlyn and Seth. Looking out to the skyline of the city, Grant found himself thinking so much of the past eighty years of his life. So many memories to go through. So many lives lost at his hands, both as a soldier who did his duty for king and country, and a vampire. Grant had done his best to repress most of the vampire memories. Then one name mentioned brought it all back in a flood of memories: Anya. Of all the names to come back now when he had done his best to forget and repress it all, why did it have to be her name? Especially after having one of his happiest moments in a long time with his date with Amy Moore.
“You all right there?” Kaitlyn asked as she came out to join Grant for his moment of reflection. She was wearing a flannel robe over her pajamas, and eating from a small container of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream as she sat down next to Grant.
“I’ll be okay, again,” Grant finally answered back, as if he needed to think about to respond. “Just heard a name tonight that I thought I would never hear again.”
“Let me guess – Anya?” Kaitlyn asked.
“How did you know?” Grant asked back.
“Well, I’m pretty sure it was her who crashed Sully’s party tonight just to tell us to leave vampires alone. That and Seth told me you were muttering her name when you came back,” Kaitlyn said.
“Oh thanks a lot, Seth!” Grant shouted as Seth appeared, sitting right on the edge of the balcony wall. Seth then told Grant, “Well then, don’t come back from a first date with a girl who for whatever reason digs you muttering your old flame’s name then”
“Well, when some stranger comes up to me afterwards and tells me that someone who I haven’t had contact with in well over half a century wants to apparently make peace, I’m sure you’d be unnerved too.” Grant snapped back at Seth.
“I try not to dwell on the past, my friend” Seth said. “That would require thinking about unresolved issues, which you all know I am staunchly against.”
“Right,” Kaitlyn chimed in. “So then, since I know little to nothing about this Anya, tell me about her?”
“She’s very powerful, manipulative, and totally insane.” Grant answered with dread. He then went to say: “Kind of knew something was off about her the first time I met her in the army hospital when I was diagnosed with the Spanish Flu. I was told I was going to most likely die. All of this happened as I found out my fiancée was pregnant and I was not looking forward to leaving them both behind. Then I met Anya, who was masquerading as a nurse, who told me of a way I could live forever. As a man who was afraid of losing everything, or maybe delirious from the fever, I accepted her offer. Little did I know what that entailed.”
“Being turned into a vampire?” Kaitlyn asked.
“Yeah, and then spending the next twenty years as an indentured servant to her.” Grant once again answered with regret in his tone.
“Insane, huh?” Seth asked. “The hot ones usually are,” he added jokingly.
“Really, was that necessary?” Kaitlyn asked with disdain, recalling her own encounter with Anya that left her feeling rather unsettled herself.
“Oh like you weren’t a tad bit titillated when she went all ‘Daddy’s Money Lesbian’ on ya.” Seth replied back.
“Wait, what?” Grant asked.
“It was nothing but head games. She was trying to get my goat and that’s all there is to it,” Kaitlyn replied back rather defensively.
“Yeah that is vintage Anya,” Grant told Kaitlyn.
“Well I’m more interested in hearing about this insanity she apparently harbors,” Kaitlyn said to Grant, who just trailed off into thought.
Poland. September, 1939.
Grant Roberts, Anya, and another vampire couple ran through the countryside of a country that was the first to feel the wrath of Nazi Germany’s blitzkrieg. The four of them were on the run now from a German infantry unit, a until that the four of them tried to unsuccessfully feed on. Shouts of orders in German, gunfire, and barking from dogs were heard in the background as the four vampires hid inside a crestfallen barn, waiting for the unit to pass by as their pursuit on their would be attackers. Panting and out of breath slightly, the female from the second couple chided Anya “This is your fault! Only you’d be crazy enough to try feed off the German army!”
“Actually, if he did not panic,” the male vampire said looking directly at Grant, “We wouldn’t be on the run at all!”
“I think we should worry less about passing blame and worry more about an enraged German army after us!” Grant snapped back at the man.
“Sadly he’s right,” Anya half-heartedly said in defense of her own creation. “We have seen what they are capable of doing to their own kind. There’s no telling how much pride they’ll have in singing the praises of killing themselves a vampire for the Fuhrer.”
“Well then we need to find another place to hide other than this barn!” the female vampire insisted. Anya then looked to the distance from a hole in the barn and noticed a rather huge farm just about a couple miles away. “Looks like that’s our ticket there for the night, sweeties,” she proudly announced and motioned for everyone else to follow her down that way.
The four vampires made their way down into the farm yard in the middle of the Polish countryside. The four crossed through a livestock pen, nearly startling the sleeping pigs within the confines of their wooden pen. The quartet was finally at the door of the farm house as Anya reached into a satchel she had hidden under her cloak to produce four Star of David armbands for the party to put on. “My Yiddish-Slavic dialect isn’t up to snuff, so you two do most of the talking,” Anya instructed the other couple. “Grant and I will keep quiet and stay to the background,” she added as everyone but Grant placed the armbands on.
“This is equally insane!” Grant protested. “You think they’re gonna buy us as four Jews on the run?”
“Not with that negative attitude they won’t” Anya chided Grant like a mother would to a son. “Which is why we’re staying out of this and letting our new friends handle this!”
“Fine,” Grant said with mild reservation. “Just don’t blame me when this one also blows up!”
“Hush now!” Anya said as the other couple knocked on the door. An elderly Polish man answered the door as he and the vampire couple conversed with each other in Polish, with a bit of Yiddish dialect thrown in for good measure. The vampire couple explained they were a group of Jewish refugees on the run from the advancing German army. They also told him that they were going to escape further west and eventually go to America but have been running all day and need to rest for the evening. The old man agreed to their request and invited all four into his home. Still speaking in Polish, the old man explained how it was he and his wife who were lived here most of the time, but his son and daughter-in-law were here too to help with the upcoming harvest. Anya and Grant privately snuck off to a bedroom in the house as their traveling companions ended up feeding off the old and young couples. Grant was slightly troubled by the screams of mercy from their Samaritan Polish hosts, but something about it set off a glimmering twinkle in Anya’s eyes. It was as if the blood curdling screams acted as an aphrodisiac to Anya, who was slowly writhing and moaning quietly.
“Can’t believe that of all thing, that still gets you excited,” Grant said with slight disgust. Disgust with what he had become as he got slightly excited as Anya disrobed her cloak to reveal a dark red and black corset and garter belt. Grant sat on a bed as Anya sauntered over and seductively straddled him. “Mmmm, sweetie, you are so tense,” she purred while nibbling on Grant’s earlobe and massaging his shoulders.
“Well, is that all there is to a life like this?” Grant asked, trying his best to resist Anya’s alluring nature.
“Now is not a good time for a moment of existentialism,” Anya said with frustration as she lowered Grant onto his back and place his hands on her thighs, guiding them to feel around the garter belt. Grant did his best to fight her off, but he and Anya’s attention both turned to a quiet whimpering from a bassinet that was set aside near a wardrobe closet. Anya readjusted her corset and wandered over to the source of the sound. “Ooh my,” Anya cooed in joy as she saw in the bassinet a young infant. Male. Probably two or three months old. Anya picked up the infant, who fussed slightly. “Now here is a rare treat for us,” Anya said as she brought the infant onto the bed and placed it right beside Grant.
“What are you talking about now?” Grant asked.
“It’s been so long since I tasted the blood of their young,” Anya said, bearing her fangs and unwrapping the infant from his tightly wound blanket. “It just invigorates me so much. Wanna share with me?” she offered the child to Grant, who bolted off the bed quickly.
“Are you out of your mind?!” he protested.
“Come on,” Anya said, “All you have fed off so far are the sick and weak. You need the taste the strength of the young and pure!”
“This wasn’t what I signed up for!” Grant once again protested.
“Signed up for? What did you think this was?” Anya asked, rather annoyed by Grant’s sudden defiance. “I gave you my essence! A chance to never die, a chance to live free of disease and mortality. Had I known twenty years later you’d become such a weakling, I wouldn’t have offered you my blood and let you die in that infirmary with the rest of those normal mortals!”
“But it’s a baby!” Grant pleaded. “It’s innocent!” Anya countered back with “Innocent? That innocent child will one day grow up not only hunt us down, but be taught to hunt and hate his fellow normal mortals. Don’t believe me? Look back at that infantry unit we were running from! They are taking orders by a man who exudes evil. An evil that even scares me!”
“We can be so much better than this!” Grant once again tried to bargain with Anya over the child. “Fine, remain weak!” Anya said to Grant with disgust as she took the child in her own arms and much to Grant’s horror, sank her fangs into the neck of the infant…
Edmonton, Alberta. Present Day.
“… And that was the last time I saw Anya,” Grant told Seth and Kaitlyn. “The couple we were traveling with blind-sided me and knocked me out. They showed some mercy and tossed me in the barn so I wouldn’t burn in the sunlight.”
“Wow,” Seth said in an unusual for him serious tone. “She drained a baby of its blood?”
“Yes,” Grant replied back. He then told Kaitlyn, “And that is what you will have to contend with. Someone with no sense of right or wrong. Someone with no morals and would be relentless in any kind of confrontation.”
“Huh,” Kaitlyn said. “I may have an idea if you are interested in it – what if I was to bring you in as a special consultant?”
“What?” Grant asked.
Kaitlyn answered “Well, we got Sergei in as a werewolf hunter…”
Seth then added “… Who is either gonna hit it with ya or skin ya alive....”
“Don’t remind me, Seth!” Kaitlyn growled at Seth.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to face her, or even take such a prominent role against my people,” Grant said with reservation. “Hell, it took a lot of convincing from Claire to be a figurehead for the pro-vampire rights movement. Even with what happened to her, I still have doubts of going through with it. And even having reservations about going through the lawsuit.”
“Well if you’re gonna chicken out, you better let her know right away,” Seth told Grant. “Claire called while you were out and is proceeding ahead with the suit.”
“Why am I just hearing about this now?” Grant asked.
“Because you were all ‘Oh Amy! Oh Anya!’ when you came in.” Seth told Grant back. “And I at least made her laugh probably the first time in a while when I answered the phone ‘Castle Frightenstein’.”
“Oh that’s rich!” Grant bemoaned as he got up and went back inside with Seth following him. The two playfully bickered with each other while Kaitlyn remained outside with her ice cream. She stared into the skyline of the city, feeling her heart beat pulsating faster and faster. Her breathing becoming more rapid. It was as if the night time was calling for her to be free of her human skin and to run free as her lycanthropic self. It was almost like Grant’s trip down memory lane was acting as a way for Kaitlyn to confront her own possible past. If only to know for sure what really happened to her other than the obivious two facts: someone at her Safe Grad drugged and raped her, and after that night, became a werewolf.
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