Vampire Storm (Volume 1 : The Hurricane Journals)

The rain was coming down in sheets, assaulting Reggio with every stinging droplet as he rushed through the flooding swamp to find Jane Saint Marie. Everyone seemed to be accounted for but her, and she seemed to be the only one that Reggio gave a damn about. He wasn’t sure why, but every last instinct within him was forcing him towards her, demanding that he save her from any harm. The one thing his instincts couldn’t tell him, though, was where she was. But if that young witch in the tree shelter was correct, then he had a feeling that he knew right where to find her.

  He would let nothing stand in his way of protecting her, not even Mother Nature, herself.

  Despite her efforts to slow him, he kept on racing through the swamp, the wind blowing at his face, almost blinding him, but he pushed on regardless. The swamp was beginning to fill with water, just as it had been all day, but at a much more threatening pace. The once dry sections of the trail were now covered with more than a foot of floodwater, while the wet sections were hardly navigable any longer. He could not move as fast as he had earlier because the water was now hiding where the deep mud of the swamp was. That mud was thick enough without all this water to soften it, but with all the flooding it was like quicksand. Reggio found himself stuck in it several times and had to use the branches of trees to pull himself out, but he eventually fought his way through all of it to finally make it back to the underground chambers, the place where he first met Jane only a few hours before.

  He stopped right outside, just in front of the giant tree, and where he stood it was almost completely dry, with barely a foot of water at his feet. But as he looked over at the bridge, he could see that the water was rushing just beneath its crest, standing nearly as tall as he was. And as he looked around further, he noticed that all the water around him was deeper than the water he stood in. His eyes then followed where it was rushing to, and it led him right to the steps leading down to the underground chambers. A whirlpool effect had been created, and the chambers were quickly filling with water. It was already rolling down the steps like a waterfall.

  The wind then began to push at him, as if it was urging him to go inside, but he was not sure if she was still there. For all he knew she could already be back at the church with the others. His mind became made up, though, when he heard what sounded like a female’s scream. It was faint in the roar of the storm around him, but could be heard clearly by him. He knew it couldn’t have merely been the wind, not unless the wind was being blown up from the underground chambers, and was not about to follow that sort of logic.

  Without a second thought, Reggio threw caution to the wind and ran for the stairs. In two long strides he was there, slowing himself as he stepped down, watching the water cascading down into the blackness below, and then slipping backwards on the very first step.

  The vampire’s legs flew up into the air and the back of his head slammed hard against the ground as he began to roll helplessly down the stars, one after another, all the way down. And after a clumsy start, he finally came to a stop at the bottom and splashed down into the water that now filled the chambers.

  It took a moment for him to regain his bearings and find his footing on the flooded floor, but once he did, he popped out the water and followed another scream into the long hallway on the left, this one very clear. The water was at his thighs and still rising with every passing moment.

  The faster he seemed to move, the quicker the water seemed to rise. He could feel its warmth slowly climbing up his legs as he splashed through it, almost hopping as he ran, and reached the connecting hallway as fast as the flooding would allow him. The water was getting closer to his waist as he passed it up, but was stopped by another scream. It was definitely closer than any other, almost close enough to make a word out of it, but was coming from behind him. Reggio then knew where it had to be coming from and spun back around in the water, leaving a wake behind him as he pushed back through it and turned down into the connecting hallway that led to the library, a path he’d taken over a dozen times over the last dozen hours. And as he got further into that hallway, he could hear the screams turn into clear, angry words.

  “You have nothing to do with this!” A female voice yelled out, but was definitely not Jane’s.

  With the water now rising above his waist, Reggio ducked his head down as he slowly approached the voices he heard up ahead. With my eyes barely poking above the water, he followed his curiosity further down the flooding hallway.

  “We will give you one final chance to tell us where he is, and then you can walk away.” That same female voice said demandingly.

  Then he heard a second female voice yell out, still not Jane’s. “Just tell us where he is! None of us will be safe until he is dealt with in the proper way.”

  “And you do not have to die for him.” The first voice yelled again. “We do not wish to kill you. But if we must, then we will not hesitate to do so.”

  Then a third voice yelled out. “I will not tell you where he is, no matter the threats you make!” That voice was definitely Jane’s. “And you may be right. I may not have to die for him. But I will, without a doubt, kill for him.”

  Reggio then began to move more quickly towards her, now being sure that she was indeed in trouble. But the next words spoken stopped him right where he stood.

  “You should stop what you are doing!” Jane yelled out, emphasizing each of her words. “You should turn around and leave here, right now!”

  Reggio could here the other voices laughing at her comments, but he did not feel that they were directed at them. He felt like she was talking directly to him, that she somehow knew that he was there and was telling him, almost ordering him the way he heard it, not to help her.

  He stood still in the flowing water of the hallway as he thought about what he should do. But it did not take him long to make his decision, as he heard scuffling in the water up ahead. He remembered Jane saying something about if witches were allowed to get there then something will have gone terribly wrong, and assumed that these must have been those witches. Thus he knew that something had to be wrong, and terribly so. He didn’t know what it was, nor did he care. Jane was in need of aid and that was all he needed to know. He then crept slowly towards them, aware that he now had no more time to waste.

  “We will see how long you last in rising water like this!” Jane yelled out, probably as she fought, the sounds of colliding steel bouncing off the walls. “I am telling you that you should leave before it is too late!”

  Reggio knew for certain now that she was talking to him, trying to make him stop, but he ignored her still and continued forward regardless. A moment later he was able to see them fighting, with the water at their waists. He saw four of them in total, with three unknown witches pushing Jane up against the right wall.

  “No,” Jane yelled as she ducked under the blade of a sword that one of them swung at her, “Get back!”

  The three witches pushed forward ferociously, pouncing at her as she moved away from them. But then, with the mere wave of her hand, she knocked all three of them up out of the water and sent them sailing through the air. She then, with another thrust of her hand, pushed them all outward with an explosion of air, sending them each flying down the hallway, bouncing off the walls and splashing down into the water, one after another.

  Two of them bounced off of the walls on each side before crashing into the water, and the third, a warlock, back flipped straight into the flooded hallway just a few feet in front of Reggio.

  “By the fates, do not do this, Reggio” Jane yelled out while they were all under the water, almost pleading as she spoke directly to the vampire that came to save her. “You need to leave right frening now! You are not ready for any of this!”

  Reggio, however, completely ignored her, focusing all of his attention on the warlock that had splashed into the water in front of him. He was the first one to pop his head up out of the water, and as soon as he did, the vampire grabbed it with both hands and snapped his neck. The bone structure of the warl
ock was much stronger than that of any mortal, their spinal cords being a bit thicker, but still, he nearly twisted his head off before disappearing back beneath the water, just before the other two surfaced.

  While under the water, with his lifeless victim trying to float back up to the surface, Reggio sank his fangs into the warlock’s twisted neck and took a deep swallow of blood before coming up for a breath of air.

  “What the fury was that!?” One of the other two witches asked as they came back up, barely seeing what had happened to their companion.

  “Something just dragged George’ under the water!” said the other, quickly moving back against the wall out of the sudden fear of the unknown. That is when Reggio tossed the corpse of the warlock out of the water and surfaced with ferocity right behind it.

  “That’s got to be him!” One of the witches yelled out, the one that had been frightened. Her eyes were stuck on the ripped open throat of the warlock, that being her evidence to justify their assault, and as his lifeless body splashed into the water beside her, she jumped back again.

  “You should not be here!” Jane yelled out to Reggio at the same time, from behind the two unknown witches. “This fight is not yours. You are not ready to fight witches of this caliber! You have to leave now, damn it!!”

  “Oh, I believe it is much too late for that.” The other witch said with a smile, twisting her darkened yellow hair around her index finger. “But thanks for the compliment.” She then jumped out of the water and kicked off of the wall.

  “Look out!” Jane screamed to Reggio, who was still lunging towards the fright that he felt emanating from the witch nearest him.

  But the next thing Reggio saw was the polished black of the other witch’s boot as it slammed into his face!

  The shot crumpled him back into the water, but he immediately popped back up. The witch was on him, though, as soon as she saw his face come out of the water, almost as if she was hovering in the air above him while she unleashed a flurry of rapid punches. He did his best to avoid and block them, but many made contact with his face, knocking him back. Finally, after the witch reached back to grab something, Reggio was able to grab her by the arm and fling her into the nearby wall.

  As he did, though, the fearful witch was already coming at him, her arm stabbing down towards his chest. But before Jane could even warn him, he had already snatched her by the wrist and pushed her hard up against the wall. He held her tight against the stone, his grip tightening with the anger that began to fill him, and he saw that it was some sort of wooden dagger that she had tried to stab him with.

  His eyes then turned to hers for a brief moment as he had her against the wall, and he glimpsed upon a desperation that he had never seen before. But as that moment passed and the next arrived, he heard someone charging through the water from behind him and heard Jane shout, “Behind you!”

  Reggio swiftly ducked down beneath the water, still holding onto the witch’s wrist and dragging her down with him while the other witch shattered her own wooden dagger against the stone wall as she missed her target. And beneath that water he could still see the fear in the witch’s eyes as her long blonde hair floated above her head.

  They were wide with the realization that those may have been her last moments alive on Earth, wide with a gaze of desperation… no, not quite desperation… but rather, astonishment. It wasn’t fear that she was feeling, but instead something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Either way, he was almost drawn into that gaze, distracting him momentarily as her eyes almost melted into his. But then he snapped out of it as he took her arm and slammed it against the wall, the witch trying to kick him away. The shot loosened the witch’s grip on the dagger, though, and Reggio yanked it out of her hand as he was knocked to the side by her free arm. He then kicked himself off the wall to get away from her before coming back out of the water.

  “Toss it here, quickly!” Jane yelled out from fifteen feet down the hall.

  Reggio tossed it to her without a second thought while the witches were still confused, and while it was in mid-air, Jane shot a small yellow blast at it, evaporating it between them.

  “That is something you will want to stay away from.” Jane told him informatively.

  “What, sharp objects?” Reggio asked in confusion, not getting the point.

  “Would you please pay attention?!” Jane yelled next, as she pointed behind him, unable to answer him because of the charging witches.

  He spun to face them, feeling how close they were and throwing out his fist as he did, smacking one of them right in the mouth and knocking her back into the water. It was a lucky shot, and at about the same time, the other witch punched Reggio right in the side of the head with her own looping fist. The vampire stumbled back into the opposite wall, his vision slightly blurred from the punch, and leaned back against it in the stomach deep water as Jane yelled out to him again.

  “Look out!” She yelled as she pushed her way through the water towards them.

  Reggio managed to dodge the next punch and scoot himself away from the witch as her fist slammed into the stone wall. The other witch popped out of the water right in front of him, though, her wet hair being flung from her face as a long sword with a thick silver blade now took its place within her left hand. As the witch swung down at him, he froze up, not sure how to react to such a close attack. The blade of the sword swung down at his shoulder as the vampire tried to just duck away from it. It was slicing through the air towards him with great speed, but was stopped by the up-slicing blade of another sword and pushed back as Jane stepped out in between them.

  The other witch had come around him to dive at Jane while she was occupied with the sword. But before Reggio could even think to act upon the attack, Jane had pushed the other witch’s sword back against her chest, sending her into the wall, hard, and then hopped out the water to kick the other witch across the face, knocking her down into it.

  “I told you that you were not ready for this.” Jane told Reggio with a smile on her face. “However, it is nice to know that you still care.”

  Before another word could be spoken, though, the witch with the sword came at Jane again and engaged her in battle, and before Reggio could act in her defense, the other witch popped out of the water a second later and Jane had to point her out. “You watch out for her!” She told him, and Reggio turned to face her.

  He was just in time to see another fist coming at him, and instinctively reached out to grab her by the arm, her fist getting stopped just inches from his face.

  “Who are these witches?!” He asked Jane while keeping his attention on the witch he held by the arm. “Why are they doing this?”

  “We are the last faces you will ever see!” The witch he held answered him as she swung her other fist at his face. Reggio grabbed her hand with his and stopped the punch before it reached him, continuing to hold her still as their arms were now crisscrossed between them. She laughed, her dirty blonde hair stuck to her cheeks, and then went on, hissing angrily towards him, “And we are doing only what needs to be done!”

  “Sure… of course you are.” The vampire smiled awkwardly at the witch, and then began stating the obvious to Jane, “I do not believe it is safe down here! We need to get out!”

  “No, you need to get out!” Jane yelled back to him as she continued to battle with the other witch, the clashing of their swords sending tiny sparks into the floodwater, the sound of colliding steel echoing throughout the hallway. “Didn’t you hear anything I was telling you?”

  “No one is getting out of here!” The witch that Reggio held yelled out.

  “Hey, you need to stay quiet!” He growled at her, letting go of her right arm to admonish her. “No one is talking to you!”

  The witch smiled as she gladly continued with her punch, but Reggio slid away from it and used her own momentum to swing her by her other arm and toss her right into the wall, face first. She slammed against it and dropped down into the water with a rather big splas
h.

  “I will not just leave you down here!” He yelled back to Jane as he waited for the witch to pop back out of the water. “I would be letting you die if I did!”

  “You underestimate me, Reggi, something your past self would’ve never done.” Jane told him rather bluntly, not able to hold back her smile. “These youths are nothing to me.”

  “We will be the death of you if this keeps up!” The witch that was fighting with Jane yelled at her, but Reggio was stick stuck on what Jane had said.

  “Hold up… my ‘past self’,” he asked in a bit of disbelief, “What do you mean by that? Do you… know me?”

  Jane’s attention had since turned back to the witch, though. “You can kill me all you wish, willborn! But you know as well as I that it would solve nothing!” Then she turned over to Reggio as she blocked another sword strike and kicked the witch away, her eyes just as desperate as those of the witch he was fighting. “You must leave now! You do not have much time left!”

  Reggio’s face was one of denial, however, “Wait… no… I want to know what you meant.”

  Without anyone noticing, the other witch then popped out of the water while his attention was elsewhere and held out her palm, pointing it straight at the vampire. “Sorry to interrupt… but actually, you have no time left.” As she spoke, so did the water seem to part in front of her as an unseen force of energy flew towards Reggio and slammed into his chest.

  It hit him just as he turned back to face her, it’s painful impact burning his flesh without tearing his clothes and knocking him back several feet through the water, slamming him into the wall with enough force to leave an imprint of the vampire in the stone wall before he splashed back down into the water below.

  “You see… I told you it was too late for your vampire friend to leave now. So it looks like we will be ending this before it ever even begins!” The witch yelled at Jane, almost in victory.

  “No, damn it, this is a mistake! You are starting a war that you cannot finish!” Jane yelled out as she moved towards Reggio.

  “Wrong… we are preventing a war from ever happening!” The witch with the sword corrected as she charged Jane from behind and left her with no choice but to spin around and defend herself, blocking a downward slash with her own blade.

  “You know exactly what this is about.” The witch told Jane while the other witch snuck up behind her. “This is about the future, and the assurance that we control it.”

  Jane grunted at her, shouting, “And that is something I will not allow to happen! Rita will only…!”

  In mid-sentence the other witch appeared from out the water behind her to drive a knife deep into her side, just beneath her ribs.

  She never saw it coming, and was left to scream out in horror as the sharp pain nearly crumpled her into the water. The witch grabbed her by the collar of her dress, though, and pulled her up to her face, holding the sword down in the water.

  “I am afraid there is nothing you can do to stop us, Jane… not anymore.” The witch hissed with a smile on her face.

  Jane wouldn’t just give up, however, and spit in her eye as her own blood spilled into the water, turning it into a thickening red around her. But the witch only smiled at her, looking her right in the eyes as she went to pull her sword from the water. But as her arm became stuck beneath it, she looked down in confusion.

  A moment later… she was gone, dragged beneath the flood by Reggio.

  “Angela!” The other witch yelled out as Jane spun around and sent the point of her elbow into her temple, her long blonde hair whipping around her face from the impact.

  Jane then swung her other arm around, with sword in hand, and slashed through the air towards the witch’s head. In response, the witch, with her vision blurred, could only manage to barely duck beneath the blade, saving her head but leaving much of her hair behind to be sliced off.

  Beneath the water, Reggio fought to get at the witch’s throat to no avail. He managed to keep her sword pinned against the floor, but she got her feet underneath him and kicked him up into the air. He popped out of the water, facing downward as the witch leapt up after him. She flung her sword at the wall and it stabbed into the stone. And as the vampire began to descend towards her, she pulled out another wooden dagger from her long black coat.

  In response to that, he decided to change his direction in mid-air, and he turned his feet towards the ground to balance on the sword she had just stuck in the wall, all as the witch continued to slash at him, missing by a whole foot. The witch’s momentum then carried her up into the air, and before she could push herself back down, Reggio lunged at her from the sword, using it to catapult himself straight towards her. He grabbed her around the waist with one arm, wrapping up her wrist with his other hand, and drove her hard into the opposite wall.

  The two of them then plunged into the water again.

  Meanwhile, Jane was holding off the other witch as they battled along the opposite wall, the sword hanging above their heads. The witch did her best to stay away from the blade of Jane, just as Jane tried her best to chase after her. But Jane decided to stop her by placing her foot on the wall in front of her, beneath the water. The witch hit it and stopped, almost tripping. Jane then smiled and thrust her sword at the witch’s gut, leaving the witch, with only a second to act, to step up onto Jane’s leg and catapult herself upwards to avoid being stabbed. Jane’s blade hit the wall and snapped at the tip, her eyes widening at the sight of it and quickly looking up to see where her opponent was.

  The witch, while still in the air, grabbed onto the sword that the other witch, Angela apparently, had stabbed into the wall, and pulled it out. Jane backed away as the witch came back down, the sword held above her head and ready to be swung, leaving Jane to hold out her own sword in front of her, knowing that it was hardly an offensive weapon for her any longer, before she abandoned her position entirely and moved away from the attacking witch, sliding off to the side and circling around her to avoid the strike.

  Reggio and the other witch then popped out of the water between them, struggling with each other over control of the wooden dagger, and the witch managed to spin him around to where his back was to her companion.

  “Behind you, Reggio, look out!” Jane yelled out as she swung her sword at the back of the witch struggling with Reggio.

  As Jane swung, so did the other witch, right at Reggio’s back, but both him and the witch felt the attacks coming and ducked back under the water in unison. The swords of Jane and the now short-haired witch then collided in the air where they just were and sent sparks flying into the water below them. The next time the vampire came out of the water it was with the witch’s throat in his hands. The water was rising up his chest as he lifted her up out of it with one hand and slammed her back against the wall. His other hand was gripped around her wrist, bending the dagger towards her gut.

  “Say goodbye, witch!” Reggio growled as he used her own hand to stab at her with her own dagger.

  “Not yet, vampire,” the witch hissed back at him as she threw her other arm over and knocked the dagger out of her own grasp.

  As his eyes followed the dagger away, the witch backhanded him across the face and sent him back into the water. He kicked himself off the wall and reemerged away from her. Jane had gotten backed against that same wall, but one side step and a kick to the back of the head sent the witch’s face into the stone.

  “You need to get out of here, Reggi, while you still can!” Jane yelled out to him as she moved closer.

  “You know that I cannot do that! I already told you. This is what I’m here for… to save you… because I always was, wasn’t I? You know who I am… and I think my instincts have been screaming that at me this entire time. I know you from my past, and that’s exactly why I can’t just leave you… because I just can’t remember who.” As he rambled on, the two witches had since taken their stances just a few feet in front of them.

  Jane was just shaking her head. “Damn it, you st
ubborn bastard, can’t you see that I am trying to save your life?!” Her voice was becoming more aggressive as she took his side and faced the witches while standing next to him.

  “And can’t you see that I am trying to save yours?!” Reggio countered her question without letting his eyes off the two witches across from them. “Seriously, this water is getting deep. They will not be able to fight for much longer. Then you can just let me carry you out of here and we can…”

  The two opposing witches then began to laugh out loud as Jane looked over at him to shake her head.

  One of the witches pointed her finger at him. “You are far too ignorant, vampire!” She yelled out. “And that is going to make this all too easy.”

  “What is she talking about?” He asked Jane as the water began to swallow his shoulders, leaving him to bounce up and down just to keep his head above water.

  “Remember what I told you, Reggio, all of it.” She told him simply, which only prompted him to protest.

  “But you’ve told me nothing. You’ve only made it all the more confusing.”

  “Then figure it out!” She demanded him, looking him straight in the eyes. “Find the pieces… and find peace!”

  Then, cutting short her response, the two witches began to float slowly out of the water to hover above it, the tall ceilings in the hallway giving them much room to rise up.

  As Reggio’s eyes followed them up in shock, Jane pulled his face down to hers as the hovering witches floated closer towards her, speaking quickly. “You have to leave me now!” She ordered him. “And you must listen… I did not tell you many things because I did not feel you were ready to learn them just yet. But you must not be surprised by or become fearful of anything here, just as I told you. There are many things that may not make sense to you now, but with time you will grow and learn to understand that there is no such thing as impossible. I did not know that our time together would be so short… I had hoped that this was no more than a bad feeling…”

  Her eyes were distant and somber, “But I was wrong. And I am sorry for many things, many that you may never know of, but I atone for it all now, with this single action, this lone gesture of forgiveness. My life has been long, much unlike yours, but I hand it over to you in this moment. Leave and live the life you are meant to live, Reggio… Find your destiny.” She spoke with pride while looking him right in the eyes, holding his refusing gaze for as long as time would allow, and then told him with great fervor “Change this frening world.”

  He didn’t want to listen to any of it, though, and shook his head in defiance.

  She then looked over at the witches, seeing how close they were, and then back to him for one last time. “You have already saved my life! This time it is my turn to save yours! Now leave, damn it. Find peace! And never stop searching for it! Go… now!!!” Jane yelled at him as she too began to float up above the water to meet the approaching witches, the blood from her wound now pouring down into the flood below.

  Reggio looked on in astonishment, his breath nearly taken away by what he was seeing, and he curiously reached out his left hand to allow a single droplet of her blood to fall upon his fingertip. As he held it above the water, it began to mold into the shape of the river’s crescent, or maybe it was just gravity bending it randomly as he twisted his hand around to look at it. But before he could even react, he was grabbed from behind by Jade’s speed and pulled back towards her strength.

  “No!” Reggio shouted out in refusal as he tried to fight his way free. “I can’t leave her here! They’ll kill her!”

  Jane laughed at the thought of it as she faced the witches, blood still pouring from the wound at her side, staining her green dress red and dripping down into the already crimson floodwaters. “You don’t give me enough credit, Reggio.” She called back to him as he was pulled away down the hallway, speaking to the witches as well. “These Willborns are no match for me.”

  “You underestimate us, Jane.” Reggio heard one of them say. “Your vampire friend was right. We will kill you. And it really is too bad… because you could have walked away from all of this. But if you insist on standing in our way… then it will be your corpse that we leave in our wake.”

  “The only bodies that will be floating in this water are yours!” Jane warned, threateningly.

  “So be it, then!” Reggio heard the witch say as they left his sight. “You die alone!”

  After that, all Reggio could hear was fighting, the clashing of swords and the grunts of battle. The Strength carried him away on his shoulder, holding most of him out of the water while the Speed swam up ahead of them. But the vampire had since stopped trying to fight his way free as they made their way down the hallway and turned the corner towards the main chambers.

  “I’ll find you again, damn it!” He shouted back into the hallway. “I don’t care if I have to rip the frening heavens from their perch in the sky, I will find you! Now… put me the fury down!” Reggio wasn’t asking, but ordering his captures. “Seriously, alright… I’m frening finished. And we will be able to move much faster with me in that water. I promise to not do anything stupid. I understand that we must escape, and that I will have all the time in this world to find her again.”

  The Strength completely ignored him, though, and did not put him back into the water until they reached the main chambers. And as he dropped back into the water, Reggio realized that he could no longer reach the floor with his feet. He swam behind the Speed towards the steps, which were now a gushing waterfall pouring violently into the chambers, with the Strength trudging through the water behind them, his head and shoulders still above the water.

  The Speed was already working his way up the steps when Reggio made it to them. He got his footing and began climbing up the waterfall that used to be a set of stairs. With both his hands and feet planted firmly upon the steps, he turned and looked back into the hallway for a moment, thinking he still heard the sounds of battle somewhere back there. But as the Strength stepped up behind him and blocked his view of the hallway, Reggio turned and continued forward up the stairs, fighting his way through the torrent of water and finally stumbling back out into the utter chaos of the raging storm above.

  Chapter 12 - Before Finding Way from Trouble