Vampire Boys Of Summer (Completed!)

Episode 66: Sentries

Everyone looked at me as I stood there with the wooden stake in my hand. Luhan raised an eyebrow. It was hard to say if he were concerned or impressed. Chi just smirked and Ryo frowned. Haru, however, kissed me.

“Well then, you heard my baby, let’s go.”

“Not yet,” Luhan suggested. “We need to make them believe we are complying with their request. It will make it easier to surprise them if they think we’re leaving Chelsea Valley.”

Ryo’s frown was unchanging. “It will take too much time. Every minute we waste puts Nora’s friend further in danger. Who knows what they are doing to her?”

It made me smile that Ryo was thinking of Angela in all this, but maybe it wasn’t her welfare he was concerned about. Perhaps his concern had more to do with me. I don’t like thinking in such vain ways, but since day one he had done nothing but try to deter me from Haru. Maybe this was yet another attempt to…

“Ryo’s right,” agreed Chi, interrupting my thoughts. “We are losing valuable time. We need to get to the lake and find the labyrinth.”

“They have a lot to answer for. Not just your friend, Nora, but your father as well. And Miss Lazenby. That was like killing my own child. There must be payment.” Ryo turned on his heel and headed for the door.

Luhan didn’t appear to like the fact we were rushing in to things. “Listen Ryo. I understand. I get it. But we need a diversion, a ruse to fool them.”

“Might as well forget the ruse,” Ryo mumbled.

“Why?”

Ryo had walked to the window and peered out. He turned to look at us. “They are watching the house.”

We all joined him to look through the curtains at the outside world. The yard seemed empty. Just grass and trees in the expanse that led over to Haru’s place. “I don’t see anything,” I said.

“Look up,” he said.

I peered up into the sky, but again saw nothing, except the sun starting to make its descent.

“No. The trees.”

At first I didn’t see them. They seemed to blend right in with the scenery. But he was right. We were being watched. They sat perched in the trees, at least half a dozen of them. Girls and boys both. On a normal summer day it would have been no cause for alarm. Just kids being kids , playing in their yard. But this wasn’t their yard, nor was it a normal summer day. And despite what they may have been once, they were children no longer. They were servants dying to please their master, hoping to be rewarded with their first drops of blood.

“Smart move,” sighed Luhan. “Send kids so we won’t harm them.”

“Cowardly move is more like it,” Chi replied.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

Haru put his arm around me. “Don’t worry, love. They can’t do much to harm us. They are just sentries.”

“That being the case, I think you should deal with them, Luhan. They won’t feel as threatened and their guard will be down.”

Luhan cast Ryo a somewhat baleful glare, as if to say that just because he was in the body of a child didn’t mean he was only capable of small jobs. “What are you impl…..”

Ryo laughed, and considering the circumstances it was a cheerful thing to hear. “Never mind, little guy. I got this. Don’t get ruffled.”

“We should all go down together,” Haru asserted, squeezing my hand. “Don’t give me them the opportunity to divide us. The kids out there. They are meant to be a distraction.”

Ryo snorted. “They should have sent Beyoncé.”

We did as Haru suggested and went outside together. We stood on the porch to see if the kids would make any kind of move from the trees, but they didn’t. As a group we went down the steps and into the yard, intending to go next door and get Haru’s car. They put me in the middle of everyone, so that I was protected on all sides. Haru held my hand to put me at ease, but it was apparent they thought someone might try to snatch me. Within their protective circle, I still didn’t feel as safe as I wanted to. There was something wrong about these children in the trees. As we drew close to them, they began to stir and whisper amongst themselves. It reminded me of birds calling to each other that there was danger coming. Then one of them jumped down from his perch.

He was a little ginger about ten years old. His hair was screaming orange with freckles covering his entire face. He looked like he would have been at home in a breakfast cereal commercial rather than confronting four vampires and their uneasy charge. He stood right in front of us, a smug look on his face.

“Which one of you is Nora?”

“I am,” said Ryo.

The kid laughed and clapped his hands in delight. Another kid threw something down to him and he caught it with one hand. It looked like an article of clothing.

“Just in case you need a reminder,” he said to Ryo. “Of the seriousness of your situation.”

He tossed the garment to Ryo who unfolded the piece. It was a T-shirt dotted with splotches of blood. Across its face the screen printed words read: Babymetal. I recognized it immediately. It was Angela’s. The very same one I had given back to her that day she’d come over to try and spy a vampire boy in my shower.

Ryo knew it too. After all, he had been there. He turned to look at me and tossed the shirt my way. Haru caught it, but wouldn’t let me see the blood.

“I’m surprised you little munchkins could resist the blood. I’d be going crazy about now.”

The ginger kid just smiled. “I have a message….”

“I do too,” Ryo interrupted. “Tell whoever sent you that there’s going to be plenty of blood to go around…namely his own.”

“He said you’d be a smart ass. So let me make it plain. You don’t leave the valley, the girl will suffer a fate worse than death.”

“What would that be? Standing here talking to a little cherub who’s upset cause his momma took his Pokémon Go?”

If Ryo was trying to rile the tree kids up he was off to a good start, because they all started to fidget angrily in the trees. But something was preventing them from going on the attack. Perhaps it was fear of us. Or maybe they were being controlled and held in check by the vampire master himself. In this, Ryo seemed a little sympathetic and he knelt down on one knee in front of the kid.

“Listen to me, and listen well, young friend. Do you go to church?”

The kid nodded.

“Do you know the story of the three wise men? How they went home a different way?”

Again a nod.

“I suggest you do the same. Now, me and my friends, we are going over there and getting in a car and a driving away. Now I don’t want to hurt you, so….”

Ryo stopped. Three figures emerged from behind the trees. How we didn’t notice them before I don’t know, because they towered over the kids. In fact they were huge. Football players I recognized from school. They must have picked the biggest guys of their lot for this job. They looked like three human bulldozers wearing brass knuckles and carrying nunchucks.

Ryo stood. He grinned. “Now this is more like it."