The Cat Burglar - 1. An Unconventional Gift

Winter birthdays suck. Majorly. No pool parties in June. No barbequing with friends in July. No crackling bonfire at the beach in late August, drinking lots of cold beer, singing off-key to ancient metal ballads.

I guess my summer-birthday-having brothers had had enough of my annual whining. They invited our closest friends and organized a beach party for me...in February. So it was entirely my fault that I was sitting on my twenty-fourth birthday by the above-mentioned merrily-crackling bonfire with a scarf around my neck and a hat on my head, trying to open a bag of chips with gloved hands. And because it was so friggin’ cold and/or because of the many beers I had, I needed to pee urgently. I got up and looked around to find a quiet place to water the seagrass.

“I dare you to whip out that puny dick of yours where I can see it!” My brother’s girlfriend hid her eyes demonstratively behind both her hands. She might have had a little too much of the Chardonnay.

“You wouldn’t know what to do with this fine example of male beauty and virility,” I gestured at my crotch, bucking my hips suggestively, "if it hit you smack dab in the face!”

Lin pretended to gag. “Ew! Nathan, help!”

My brother instantly threw a beer can at me. “As if she’d look at your minuscule thing.” My so-called friends guffawed and cheered.

Minuscule. Someone had to show-off his higher education. Flipping them all off, I turned away and switched my phone’s torchlight on to speed-stumble towards the dunes. I really, really needed to piss. Behind one of the beach huts, far enough away from Lin’s delicate eyes, I fumbled for my zipper. With all the bulky winter clothes in the way, I couldn’t reach the pull tab as quickly as I needed. “Fuck that shit!” Shoving my down jacket out of the way, I pulled one glove off with my teeth. A sharp crack from behind made me stop mid-motion, and my back stiffened. A cold shiver ran down my spine. “Lin?” I lifted my phone and searched around. Maybe scanning the place before I got my dick out would have been a good idea. Just to avoid literally pissing off an unsuspecting critter with my most vulnerable body part out in the open. Right?

Even if I had seen him, I wouldn’t have been quick or strong enough to escape his iron grip or fight him. Increasing pressure on my shoulders made me stagger forward, and then something gripped my chin and sniffed along the right side of my neck. Then they struck. Searing pain instantly petrified me. It felt as if acid had been injected directly into my vein and pulsed through my body directly to my brain. All I heard was greedy gulping; moments later my vision blurred till darkness swept over me.

“Konstantin said he left him near the lifeboat.”

I sat up groggily, peeling my face off some slimy, wooden surface. Wiping away some grains of sand and pieces of seaweed, I grimaced when too many sensations suddenly bombarded me. Someone nearby was talking too loudly; the pungent stench of rotten fish and wet wood overwhelmed me. I inhaled more cautiously. I stank of rotten fish—and stale beer. My butt felt cold and damp. In the distance, the surf roared deafeningly against the cliffs. When I blinked my eyes open, the horizon was lined with the blue hues of early dawn. Clumsily, I braced myself against something slick and squidgy. It took me a while until I realized it was the underside of a lifeboat. I tried to stand, but my legs instantly gave out. I felt like shit. Worse than the amount of alcohol I usually drank justified. I never drank hard liquor. My first thought was that the others must have spiked my beer. Sand crunched. A huge, dark figure leaned over me. “I found him!” Before I could react, a thick cloth was thrown over me. I heard a muffled voice. “We have to hurry, Doc; sunrise is close.” They grabbed me, wrapped me up even tighter, and threw me over their shoulder in a fireman carry, as if I weighed nothing, and ran.

I woke from a tickle in my nose and promptly sneezed. The sharp smell of antiseptic was irritating. My first thought was ‘hospital’. When I tried to rub my watery eyes, I couldn’t; my hand was stuck.

“You’re awake.” The light was switched on. The man ducking in under the doorframe was dressed in black slacks and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Definitely not a doctor. Over his shoulder he called, “Tell Mother he is awake.” He came over to me and checked my arm. Now that there was light, I saw it was bound to some kind of metal frame with thick Velcro, and an IV was running into my vein. Alarmed, I struggled against the restraints. When the man lifted his hand, I instinctively shrank back as far as I could, but he didn’t hit me. “Calm down.” When he cupped my cheek almost lovingly, my racing heart did exactly what it was told. It calmed down even though the gesture creeped me out. “The restrictions are only temporary.”

My mouth was too dry, and I croaked, “Who are you? Where am I?”

“My name is Sebastian Hall, but everyone here calls me Doc.”

Doc? I tensed. Where was his white coat? The name tag, the stethoscope? My brain instantly provided one horrific idea after the other. Organ trafficking-illegal drug tests-slave trade-cannibalism. I looked around the small, windowless room; everything was white including the tile-covered floor. This wasn’t a hospital room. Despite the terror still lodging in my chest, I tried to breathe normally. “Where am I? Don’t think I didn’t notice you didn’t answer that question.”

The man smiled down at me, the corners of his aqua-green eyes crinkling as if he laughed often. “Mother will explain everything to you.” He stroked a crooked finger over my cheek. I was immediately okay with his non-answer, except for...

“M-mother?”

“She’s already on her way.” He pulled a rubber band from his wrist, gathered the mass of red curls cascading over his shoulders, and secured them in a tight ponytail at the nape of his neck. Then he turned around and opened a small silver cabinet and took something out that looked suspiciously like a blood bag and exchanged it with the almost empty bag hanging on the IV stand beside my bed. A small voice deep inside me kept wondering why I didn’t protest or at least question him more, but I felt strangely content and at peace.

“How is he?” The most unlikely woman swept into the room. In her seventies with neatly-arranged grey-blond curls, she wore a flowing, bright pink blouse with purple pansies scattered all over, hanging over slim dark-washed jeans.

“He responds well to the infusion.” Sebastian stepped aside, respectfully making room for her.

She extended her right hand. “My name is Elvira Night, but you will call me Mother.” When I didn’t immediately return the gesture, she tilted her head. Diamonds glittered in her ears, and she narrowed her eyes at me. “And you are?” My instincts screamed at me to not answer her. When Sebastian wordlessly handed my wallet over, I felt strangely betrayed. She opened it and pulled out my ID card. “Kavan Mitchell Clark, born February 17^th, 1998. Yesterday was your birthday!” She turned to Sebastian and smirked. “And what an exceptional gift he got, right Doc?”

When our gazes collided, goosebumps ran over my arms. For a short moment, it felt as if my soul had touched blue ice. I shivered.

“Where do you think you are?” She turned left and right and waved her hands, encompassing the entire room.

I don’t know what compelled me to blurt out my thoughts, or more, my fears. “Human trafficking? Or organ trafficking?” When she didn’t react, I said the next thing. “Both? Illegal drug test?”

She nodded. “These are very reasonable assumptions...but also very wrong. Actually...we’re vampires.” I waited for a punchline that never came.

I wanted to laugh, but it got stuck in my throat because I knew she meant what she said. She was dead serious, and I believed her. Of course, it was nonsense, and I swallowed and blabbed the next thing that came to mind. “Not werewolves?” She hissed angrily at me, and then she revealed her honest-to-God fangs.

“Shit!”

She elbowed Sebastian. “It looks we got ourselves a cheeky one, Doc.”

It must have looked as if I still doubted her, because she lifted the pointer finger of her right hand, and its nail became a talon. Her eyes flashed red, then she briefly touched my arm, and instantly blood welled up from a tiny prick. After dipping her nail into the red drop, she licked it off and hummed appreciatively. I had ended as vampire snack, or so I thought.

“If you survive the turning, you will be one of my special boys.” She winked at me and sort of giggled. “Happy second birthday.” Only then it dawned on me. Turning. I wasn’t a snack, at least not in the first place; they’d made me a vampire! I looked at my hands and willed my nails to become talons so I could rip off her smug face.

She smirked. “Cheeky and temperamental. Exactly how I like ‘em.” She pointed at my hands. “It will take a couple of weeks until you can grow those. But you’re lucky. Thanks to Doc the likelihood you’ll survive has increased profoundly since he developed a method to quicken the change and ease the side effects of the transformation. In the past, most new vampires died because their bodies couldn’t process the change, tolerate the agony, or couldn’t form a strong enough bond with their sire. Of course,” she shrugged, “some died because they were abandoned and went on a killing spree when bloodlust consumed them, and the Lord’s soldiers had to terminate them before the humans became suspicious.”

She was almost out the door when Sebastian asked, “Will Konstantin do his duty as Kavan’s sire, besides donating blood, or shall I look for a mentor?”

“He will fulfill his duty, after his punishment is executed that is. We need the increased numbers with the new situation.” With that, she left.

I had questions, so many important questions, but I felt listless and exhausted. Where did I hear that name again? “Who is Konstantin?”

“He is your sire.” Sebastian adjusted something on my arm.

That word again. “My sire?”

“The vampire who embraced you.” He injected something into the IV line.

“The vampire who embraced me?”

“The vampire who made you.”

“Embrace...a nice euphemism for killed me.” My lips felt weirdly stiff and unwieldy, my tongue too thick to form actual words.

Doc chuckled. “Mother was right; you’re a cheeky one.” After a while, my limbs grew heavy, and my mind became sluggish. Then I remembered my brothers. “My brothers. What—”

“Your brothers won’t be looking for you.”

He was wrong. My brothers would never abandon me; they would move heaven and hell to find me.

He smiled at me, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He seemed sad. “Your brothers might have looked for you when you didn’t come back from the dunes, but it was dark and your car was missing from the lot.”

“M-my car—?”

"When Konstantin found the keys in your coat pockets, he used it to get away from there. With the car gone from the lot, your friends probably thought you went home to sleep off your hangover. They might have called your phone—but you didn’t answer. After they found out that you didn’t come home, your brothers likely went to the police. The officer probably told them you might’ve gone to a bar or fallen in bed with a girl. They’ll wait at least forty-eight hours before they tentatively start looking for you. When someone, maybe some early dog walker, finally finds the large amount of your blood that seeped into the sand, your ripped, bloody coat in the dunes, and your mobile phone half-buried—Mother made sure the case is badly cracked so that the battery doesn’t connect and it can’t be tracked— the police will most likely conclude the obvious; that you were attacked by members of the biker gang that deals drugs at the beach, and they threw your body into the sea. All they’ll expect to find is it washing up on the beach someday. In other words, your brothers think you’re dead, and they won’t be looking for you.”

My last thoughts were that Nathan and Rylan would never give up. They’d know that I was alive. But—I wasn’t alive anymore.

Than you for reading the first chapter. What do you think what will happen next?
 @Valkyrie for being such a patient editor, beta reader and good friend.