Building up to Christmas with Dusty the Demon Hunter - A Blast from the Past - Trouble Times Three - Part 1
Vampires - Trouble x 3 is my third adventure with Dusty the Demon Hunter. I had a great time with this one, putting folk lore and mythical creatures in with Dusty.
I hope you have as much fun reading as I did writing it.
Dusty the Demon Hunter - Vampires - Trouble Times Three
Dusty woke and was alert in an instant. What had woken her? She tried to think.
She lay in her bed and looked up at the ceiling, looking at the darkness.
Sometimes it was so dark that she didn’t know if her eyes were open or not. She loved living in the middle of the woods; there was no light pollution that reached this far into the seclusion.
The only time lights swept across her ceiling was if grandad’s car arrived and because both her grandparents were at a convention for the week, there was no chance of that.
She wondered what it had been that had jolted her awake. After a while she found herself drifting back to sleep but she was yanked out of her warm and comfortable pre-sleep state by a noise, and she realised that it was the same sound that had woken her.
It was an unearthly, high-pitched squeal, similar perhaps to the sound a bat makes if the sound could be brought down to a lower pitch for human hearing on a wildlife TV show, for example.
It didn’t sound like a bat’s call however, and she wondered what on earth it could be. She pushed her bedcovers back, slipped out of bed and padded across to the window.
The long open driveway stretched before her window and she could see nothing that would have made the noise. She was about to turn around and get back under the warm covers when the back of her neck shivered and the short hairs on her arms stood on end.
There was a man in the middle of the drive. He had appeared there all of a sudden. She didn’t know where he had come from or what he was doing there but he was looking right up at her window, and her eyes grew wide in fear and amazement.
Her demon blood vibrated in her veins as it was pumped faster by her racing heart and she could feel her eyes alter.
It was when they changed that the man moved.
He moved so fast that if she had been fully human, she wouldn’t have been able to follow his progress even though he took a direct course to appear right up at her window.
He looked at her as though he was examining something on an experimental slide in a lab. His head tilted to the side so he could get a different perspective and he didn’t seem to think that he was doing anything wrong.
“How can you see me?” he asked through the glass.
“Why wouldn’t I be able to see you?” Dusty asked her own question. She saw the pointed teeth as he smiled, and she realised what the creature was. Vampire.
“May I come in to talk with you?” His voice was seductive, even though part of her was immune to his glamouring, and she knew how difficult it would be for a full human to resist his charms.
“I don’t think so,” she told him and smiled. She allowed her eyes to change back to their usual, non-demonised state and his eyes opened a little wider, as he was surprised by the action.
“What are you, part-demon?”
She didn’t say a word but she nodded her head once and smiled. He knew that she was no ordinary girl that he could beguile and take advantage of.
Dusty’s brow furrowed as she thought whether she had heard of any vampire attacks in the area. Nothing came to mind and she decided that he couldn’t do anything to her whilst she was safe in the house; there were far too many items of protection surrounding it, not to mention the fact that he couldn’t cross the threshold without invitation.
She had turned away from the window to return to her bed when he knocked on the glass to get her attention.
“Don’t go. I don’t want to harm you, can we talk?” His voice had altered in its timbre and she knew that he had dropped the idea that he could glamour her – for the moment at least.
He smiled when she came back, draped in her quilt to sit on the wide window ledge. “Open the window?”
“No, not just yet,” she said. “Maybe when I get to know you a little better.”
He nodded acceptance and smiled again. “My name is Jerik, it means ‘city of the moon’.”
Dusty knew that by giving his name, he was showing that he was not trying to trap her in any way and she could trust him at least a little.
“And you’re a vampire,” she said, more to see what his reaction would be than for any other reason.
“Yes, I’m a vampire and I understand why you are reluctant to give me your name. If I knew your name it would give me a little more knowledge about you than you are comfortable with me possessing. That is fair; I shall wait until you are comfortable enough with me to share that knowledge.” He smiled again and Dusty was fascinated by the tiny pointed teeth that she glimpsed.
“Show me your teeth please,” she said.
“If you show me your eyes again,” he answered.
Dusty altered her eyes so that the iris looked as though it had a ring of flame surrounding it, then the dark hazel colour changed to red and it looked exactly as though there was a light being shone behind her eyes, and the vampire gasped. She heard the sound even through the glass and his surprise made her grin. “Now show me your teeth.”
He opened his mouth far wider than it was possible for a human to; it seemed to be opening wider and wider and she was mesmerised. His jaw seemed to unhinge like a snake’s and to her amazement, there were far more teeth in that mouth than she had assumed before. They stretched back almost to his throat and there were rows of them.
Row upon row of sharp, glistening teeth... she found herself moving forward, closer to him, in order to get a better look.
She bumped her nose on the window pane and surprised herself out of her fascination. Jerik’s appearance snapped back to normal and she realised what he had done. He didn’t have teeth that went on to the back of his head almost. He had ordinary, if exceptionally white teeth, with the usual four pointed ones, the same as she had always imagined a vampire to have. Then she became annoyed.
“Hey, if you want to find out what my name is, you must promise me on your honour that you’ll stop trying to glamour me!”
He looked ashamed then and to Dusty’s surprise, he apologised.
“On my honour, I promise to never glamour you again. But you have to admit, I did well.” He grinned and she could see that he was an eternal teenager. No matter how old he became in years, his outlook and attitude would be forever stuck as an energetic and mischievous teen.
She grinned too, pulled the quilt tighter around her shoulders and stood up.
His grin disappeared when he saw that she was leaving him. “Hey, don’t go.”
“I’m tired, I need some sleep, but I’ll be here tomorrow night and if you promise to behave and call around a little earlier, I may just join you outside.” Dusty closed the curtains on him. He was pulling faces at her as she did and he made her laugh.
“See you tomorrow, Jerik.” She pulled the curtain back a little in order to watch him leave. She might be beginning to like the vampire but she wasn’t about to trust him, and she certainly didn’t want him watching her as she slept, that was way too creepy.
I like to think I also possess a little glamour, cough cough, I mean charm. Looking forward to seeing what Jerik has up his sleeve tomorrow night.
Good job my friend . . . Thankyou for sharing
how many trouble you writed?
What a memorable experience Dusty had with the vampire overnight.
I enjoyed reading this.
I look forward to reading more from you @michelle.gent
Regards @maintain4real-eu
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I loved this part and will read the others this night :-)
I also write genre stories, and you can check my short work that i posted on the steemit here
https://steemit.com/writing/@hidden84/in-depths-lovecraftian-short-story
Anyway keep up the good work!
Ook, Dusty, now i see.