Everyone Dies in the End #37

Cindy

His face was not unpleasant, Cindy thought. For a being that she had feared since childhood, he was remarkably nondescript. She wanted to rip the lips off that nondescription, but didn’t. It was a pleasure that would need to wait for a more advantageous moment. Instead she busied herself by studying him. The hair was jet black, worn in a sort of unkempt Bono-type style. Jeans, t-shirt, and leather jacket covered a frame that was neither tall, nor short, skinny, nor fat. The face was open, honest for lack of a better word. And the eyes? She tried not to look at the eyes. She knew vampires could do things with their eyes, make you do things with their eyes. But for a creature she had been taught was evil incarnate, he appeared disconcertingly normal.

“What did you shoot in my neck?”

“A tranquilizer. Guns don’t seem to work as well when the target can blink herself away.”

“Bullets kill me just like anyone else,” she replied.

He laughed again. For such a foul beast, he’s a good-natured jerk, she thought.

“We didn’t want to kill you, young lady.” He smirked. “Believe me, killing you wouldn’t be a problem.”

Cindy nodded, accepting the logic, but not accepting the reason behind it. She was no one, she had nothing. Nothing except her talent. A talent that had not been enough to save her friends. That talent and her knowledge. The knowledge gained through personal, traumatic experience. The knowledge of vampires’ existence.

“Why me?” she asked without looking at the vampire. She could feel his shrug next to her.

“I can’t tell you,” he replied.

“Why?”

“Because I do not know.”

She didn’t believe him, didn’t believe anything his kind said. “What do you know?” she asked, focusing on a crack running across the basement floor.

“You can look at me,” he replied. “I have not caught you to feed. If I had, it would already be done. I’ve been sent to bring you to another.”

Still she didn’t lift her eyes. “Another?”

“Yes, a man.” The vampire hesitated. “I work for him.” 

Cindy laughed, harshly, and lifted her eyes to the vampire’s face. I can’t look at the cracks in the concrete forever. If he wants to control me, it will happen sooner or later. “Since when does a vampire work for a man?”

He didn’t. Try to control her that is. “It is,” now it was the vampire’s turn to drop his gaze, “an arrangement.” The weight of the final word made it obvious that the arrangement was anything but two-way.

So, she thought, this man, this human, has some type of control over the vampire. How could that be? Cindy didn’t know, but that didn’t make the situation any less a fact. The vampire Ramzke was here, he had trapped her, and now he was taking her to a mysterious man. A very powerful man if he could control a vampire. How did the man control vampires? What was so important about Cindy that this man wanted her? Cindy could only think of one thing, her power, but couldn’t imagine how it would benefit others. Questions swirled in her head, but of all of them one stood apart.

“Vampire, where is this man?”

            Ramzke didn’t immediately answer. He stared at her evenly, impassively. After a moment he shrugged and gave a one-word answer. “Philadelphia.”