Blood & Juniper

It's going to take me forever to learn my way around. I guess I have a phone in my possession again. I'll just depend on the maps like everyone else does.

After many disorienting rights and lefts I finally recognize a street that connects to spiral hood and branches off to my old apartment.

The wet surroundings make sounds bounce off every surface like we're inside a cave. The clicks, chirps and whispers ring sharper. They hold a weird hollow echo, twisting in my ear canals.

June keeps a quick pace just in front. I examine her inhuman movements, she's elegant as a leaf drifting in the breeze.

We haven't said anything to each other for a while and her moods have been quieter than mice hiding in the walls of a kitchen.

Now, they're lightly bubbling like a pot on a stove, thoughtful and serene. She constantly has an eerie stillness about her, it must be the foundation of her being. Maybe that's why she comes off so cold at times.

A low thud penetrates my thoughts like an arrow striking true. The scent of fresh wounds causes my head to rotate as if my name had been called. It slithers, wrapping around my arms like enchanted vines. A tingling sensation of d.e.s.i.r.e ascends from my shoulders to crown.

A continuous thumping, clearer than all other noise. It's slowing down, dying out.

I spot him. Them. One human and two vampires against a parked car. The two predators are slowly draining him to death.

"The mortality of human beings distresses you," Juniper comments at my side as we peer at the scene behind a rusty BMW.

My mouth curls with bitterness, "It feels wrong to watch him die. It's wrong to leave knowing he won't survive."

"You hunger for him, yet your concerns for his health overshadow your own?"

"I won't be a murderer, but I'm letting him be murdered..."

"You won't try to stop them?"

I glance at her face, it's purely curious and placate. She isn't looking for a correct or incorrect answer, she only d.e.s.i.r.es my true thoughts.

I can't call the police. I can't help him. Hell, a big part of me wants him for myself. It feels so pointless. For being immortal I sure am powerless.

"Would you like me to stop them?"

I feel my face crumble into confusion as I look at her again, "What?"

"Would you like me to stop them from consuming the mortal?" she asks, her gaze is thick as if penetrating my mind. It's not a hypothetical question, she's offering this to me.

A million questions swamp my brain as to why she would offer such a thing. Sam said we shouldn't interfere but she's willing to? This doesn't make sense, nothing is adding up.

Is this a trick question? No, she means it.

His heartbeat continues to slip as I puzzle, "I… I don't understand."

"Yes or no, Ashlen. Decide, he doesn't have much time left."

I should be dripping beads of sweat. How can I possibly say no? But what will happen if I say yes? My teeth grind back and forth from being put on the spot.

A devilish grin stretches across her face and her irises irradiate with menace. I may have just made a huge mistake.

"Stay here and don't get involved or I can't guarantee your life," she comandands in a delighted whisper, leaping over a car in front of us. Crap, what did I just initiate?

She stands in the middle of the empty road a few yards away from the vampires as she calls out, "Leave him, the both of you. Drink anymore and you'll surely bloat like ticks."

The male and female vampire's heads pop up like prairie dogs both snarling at June. The stick figured female with a bright blonde mess of fluffy hair snaps back, "We got a big shot priss! You think you can interrupt so rudely then order us around? Get lost, before I give you a new hole to breathe out of!"

Juniper's words float sickly sweet through the air, "Leave him. It's for your own good."

The girl's lips vibrate into an ugly scowl. She releases her victims carelessly as he flops on the roadside. Her furious gaze fixed on June with a radiating heat. She leans forward to make an attempt at June.

The male vampire snatches her wrist before she gets the chance to gun for Juniper. His face is tense with malice but also layered with concern. He eyes June with wide suspicion.

The girl's neck snaps to the boyish looking vampire, "Hands off! There's a throat that needs squashing!"

His eyes veer over with warning to the girl, "Something's not right about her, Cynthia. She's stronger than she lets on. We should cut our losses, it's not worth it."

Thick talons spring forward from her fingertips, teeth pour from her mouth, elongated and sharp. Both nails and teeth are longer and thicker than the others I'd seen. Her calf muscles bulge as she lunges forward, her arms shape shift from meager and frail into Olympic athlete status in an instant. She dives at June like a terrifying lioness.

I gasp, frozen in speculation as dangerous claws lash out like a python for Juniper's throat. June grapples the arm in her tiny fist, yanking it past her throat. The claws slice the side of Juniper's neck as she thrust her other palm into the blonde's elbow.

The vampire cries out as her arm pops forward in the wrong direction.

A powerful foot comes rocketing into June's gut throwing off her balance. An elbow smashing down on her shoulder, sending June to her knees with a grunt.

A foot comes for her stomach a second time, but Juniper grabs with both hands. She thrusts the leg in an upward twist. Blonde hair twirls like a propeller as her body spin in the air. The girl stubbles on the landing like a clumsy feline.

The vampire roars like a mad viking woman, her yellow hair in a tempest, flying around her head. She swipes at June with such power, matter seems to warp and bend around her. June ducks, raking nails down her gut like a cat clawing curtains.

They dance around the stretch like Kung Fu movie on fast forward. Arms darting out in turns, the occasional a hiss as skin is sliced away, parting like a massive papercuts. Delayed fluid seeps from the fresh wounds, sprinkling the street in crimson rain.

Huffs and grunts flit like throwing daggers. It's a samurai fight if the katanas were claws and teeth.

The amazonite woman's hits are less frequent but brutal. She throws a solid punch, pounding June's fleshy cheek with an audible crack.

The woman slaps June hard in the c.h.e.s.t, thwacking her with the force of a battering ram, sending her reeling back.

The crazy blonde presses on the offense, zig zagging then crushing her fangs into June's upper arm, jaws like a great white.

June's yowl is guttural as she shoves a hand into the yellow mane and rips her off like a band aid, tossing her aside. A chunk of sinew comes with. A wet, low pitched tear. Red droplets fling from June's fingertips and the girls mouth as blondie rolls and skids across asphalt.

The woman's heavy breaths come out with high pitched growls, a patch of her hair now muddied and brown.

She scrambles to a parked Chevy in a hulk rage, separating the bumper from the frame as if it were cardboard. I grit my teeth slamming palms to my ears from the horrendous sound of metal warping and snapping.

Viking girl heaves the massive scrap over her shoulder. Iris bursting with yellow light, charging like a mad bull. She swings it like a monster bat with a wild battle cry. The air flexes and whirs from the force of the swing.

It comes rocketing for June's lower half. She leaps as if weightless, the metal scrap whoops nearly hitting her ankles. Two words exit Juniper's lips while airborne, sharper than the deadliest blade, colder than it's metal, "Too Slow."

She lands nimble and steady, attaching like a magnet to the ragged metal slab.

She runs up the length of it like an acrobat on a balancing beam, kneeing the blonde in the jaw, which smashes together in a nasty crunch.

I wince witnessing the blow as air is forced from the vampire's c.h.e.s.t with a horrendous groaning shriek. Several cracks sound off like splintering wood. She face plants into the street and grinds a few feet away.

June looks positively rabid. Teeth sharp, both rows exposed. Blood drips from her hands and face, multiple wounds gushing from her stomach and arms. She wastes no time jumping on top of the blonde and hacking into her, hissing and snarling. Her face is completely demonic.

The male vampire comes out of nowhere, dashing to June's backside. Her eyes widen with midnight and ice but she doesn't react quick enough. He tackles her from behind.

They summersalt and roll. Clawing, striking and biting in a heap. He's really fast, faster than her. He gets a clean strike on her face and arm, then repeats. She manages in one clean backhand, hurtling him into a car door.

She howls like the deranged, springing for the vampire trying to drag herself to her feet. June latches her open hand to the vampire's forehead and smashes it into the pavement.

She releases a sickly wicked laugh before chomping into her neck. The blonde screams bloody murder, clawing and fisting at Juniper's face and shoulder.

I shudder as she tears a chunk from her neck coming up for air. An ear splitting howl matches the action, the scream drags up to uncomfortable octaves.

It's not over, June continues to wail on her, slashing the girl to ribbons, tattering her clothes and skin. Screams become incoherent groaning as June beats her from side to side. The woman is barely conscious, her bloodshot eyes roll unfocused, looking nearly dead!

Swipe, swipe, swipe! Horrific inhuman sounds company each attack as the body is jostled like a punching bag. She's not letting up!

My palms are crushing into the side of my face. I screech, my voice cracking, "Please! Stop this!"

The man leaps for her, hands cutting into her throat. June inhales sharp through her teeth as her fingers latch on his like a bear trap. She bellows like a diseased animal, switching targets. She rips his hands off and wrestles him to the ground.

She hisses in his face, "Too weak!"

His face looks ghastly pale as it melts into terror. His massive eyes stare into her monsterous face, like he's witnessed his own end.

He kicks fast and desperate, both feet launching into her ribs. He slides out from under, popping off the ground and grabbing the butchered blonde. His movements are a blur.

June snarls, snatching up the female's ankle before the boy can drag her away. She slips out of his grip, slick from oozing wounds.

The man shouts desperate and panicked, "You've won! We're leaving! We'll leave!"

"Only if you're fast enough and she isn't," June's voice is hardly human, it chills me to the bone.

He stammers unintelligible and frozen, "We-we p-please!"

She drags the disoriented body closer, which could be easily mistaken for marred cow meat. A growl crescendos from her c.h.e.s.t to throat, low and terrorizing.

I scream, "Enough, June! It's over!"

Her hand hovers, drawing back like a knife ready to plunge into her c.h.e.s.t, I lose it.

"No!" I shout, descending on Juniper. All my weight rams her off the girl and she grapples me.

We roll rough. The road isn't as smooth as rain made it appear, it's gritty and inhospitable. It beats and digs into my arms, punching at bones of my shoulder blades and lower back with each full circle. We tumble over each other trying to get the better angle in the chaos.

She ends up on top. Teeth bared, no whites in her eyes, blazing with madness.

I cry out as her fingers dig into my arm and more clutch into my throat as I gag. Her iron grip cuts into my flesh like barbed wire.

I tap her arm for mercy as her nails draw blood enclosing tighter. Blackish goo weeps from her tremoring lips. The sound of circling wolves living in her c.h.e.s.t spews forward.

I choke out, "Jwu-an-"

Her energy, it's too much. It's pressing into my body on all sides like an iron maiden. It's suffocating and frightening beyond reason!

A hiss sends a spray of blood through her teeth. Her head plunges forward, mouth wide, fangs agape and elongated aiming to pierce through my windpipe.

This is a nightmare! A nightmare where you can't scream.