Vampire Street 2: Everlasting Stakes

OK, finally, we have the sequel to Vampire Street! So this sequel takes place about a year after the last chapter.

Benny: You mean we're now stuck with a moody adolescent, a boring teenage vampire and a wandering dumb blonde vampire? Oh joy, I'm gonna love seeing you screw this up. Then again, I don't think even you can mess with this.

At least you're being optimistic this time around, Benny. It's good to see.

Benny: Who said anything about optimism? I'm just saying that even you can't mess this one up.

On to the story!


In a small, cheap, two-star motel five miles east of Interstate 17, a young twelve year old girl got up and stretched in her hotel bed with a yawn. It was a humid but peaceful day in sunny Flagstaff and at the Jumping Buffalo Motel, she expected to find something that made it appealing that might make it stand out from any other crappy motel that she and her associate had been in over the past year.

Unfortunately, no such thing had occurred for her. The wallpaper was tacky and coming off, the bathroom was particularly small (even by her standards) and the sliding glass door to their small balcony would only close shut half of the time. The floor was clean but that wasn't saying much since it was a shaggy, dark purple carpet. The girl got out of bed and put on a pair of black slip-on slippers.

A seventeen-year-old boy walked into the room, rubbing his eyes. He had shoulder-length black hair and had medium skin.

He said "Morning, Linda. How did you sleep?"

Linda answered "Quietly for once. There was actually very little traffic last night so I didn't end up hearing anything much from outside apart from that noisy, little tabby jumping around and knocking over trash cans."

Justin replied "Why don't we share a room, Linda? Seriously, I hardly got any sleep. That's the third night in a row."

Linda rolled her eyes, crossed her arms and responded with "Do I have to spell it out? You're much older than me and on top of that, you're not my sibling, my boyfriend or even my friend. You're my partner in vigilance."

Justin protested as he stated "Hey, you're gonna be thirteen soon, you know."

Linda said "And you'll be eighteen soon, you moron. Which means if the cops find me with you, you'll be locked up in a jail cell and those rogue vamps would be able to take over the world. That, or I'd have to start over from square one and try to take them down all by myself."

Justin said "I'm a vampire human. We pretty much could live forever if we tried to."

Linda fiercely bit back with "Tried is the key word. Heather tried to do that and we killed her, remember?"

Justin looked down at the carpet with a furious glare as Linda sighed in remorse and regret. She knew that despite the fact that Justin wasn't Heather's biggest fan, he didn't want to hear a statement such as that. He simply needed some reassurance with a bit of a reality check, not a boulder dropped down on his head.

Linda responded with "Look, we may have gotten rid of Heather but there are still other vamps out there. Some are just ordinary mooks wanting to live their own lives and others are human-hating, blood-lusting psychopaths like Heather. We leave alone or try to help the former and finish off the latter. So just remember that, OK?"

Justin nodded and replied "You do know that if we stay in the area, you'll have to go to school?"

Linda groaned and asked "Are you joking? Can't you do anything?"

Justin answered "Do you want the cops and Social Services coming in here? I know we've only been in here for a week but I'm pretty sure even the guy at the desk is wondering why a couple of kids are running around Flagstaff instead of going off to Trig class."

Linda replied "Justin, we've been educating ourselves for a year now and it's been going pretty well. I'm not going to be stuck with a bunch of jerks, backstabbers and weirdoes. I had to deal with that enough in Newark and that was a high school. Middle school in northern Arizona? Does that sound like a nice situation, Justin?"

Justin answered "Middle school isn't always good for everyone, Linda but we have to do something. I've been checking the email and hopefully, a new contract will come up soon. But until then, we have to stay under the radar. That means you being in school."

Linda said "We being in school, Justin."

Justin raised his eyebrows as he responded with "What's that supposed to mean?"

Linda causally stated "If I have to stick my butt in a narrow seat with a bunch of irritating seventh graders, you have to get your face smashed in with a dodge ball by stuck-up twelfth graders."

Justin nodded and relented as he said "I can't argue with that. OK, I'll try to make some calls to the local schools."

Linda asked "Anyway, what's for breakfast?"

Justin answered "Whatever's left over at the restaurant downstairs. Chances are a bowl of cereal or some scrambled eggs, bacon and juice."

Linda responded with "Maybe I was expecting too much yet thanks to the Langham but I was expecting an amazing breakfast delivered straight to our room."

Justin laughed and said "Yeah, well, the River North it isn't. Come on, we'd better get going if we want to get anything" before he left the room.

Linda quickly followed him as her stomach began to growl for nutrients. On the other side of the country, in a large township outside of Trenton, Lindsay Hawkins was washing dishes in the kitchen of a small two-story house. She had been a vampire human for a year now and despite her creator having left for "lighter fields" as he called it, he still sent an unusually grand amount of money to her credit card account every month. At first, Lindsay had been wandering the streets of Newark after he left. She then ended up in a homeless women's shelter in Paterson and stayed there for a while until she received a letter from her creator with a set of house keys.

44 Brenwal Avenue in Ewing was hers but she allowed people- wanderers, loners, travelers- to stay there temporarily. It had two floors with her bedroom and two others on the first floor and two more on the second floor along with a bathroom on each floor and an office that is typically unused. At the moment, there were only two visitors in the home: Jal, a fourteen-year-old runaway who claimed to be sixteen and Arnold, a college dropout in his early twenties. Arnold had shoulder-length tawny-colored hair that he tied into dreadlocks and wore secondhand T-shirts and hoodies with drawstring sweatpants as he spent most of his days listening to electronic music, sketching and talking on his cell phone.

Jal was a slightly more interesting character. She arrived at the house one rainy and surprisingly chilly night in May asking for a place to stay. All she had was her backpack, the clothes on her back, a pair of headphones, a pair of gray Converse high tops and a pair of striped, fingerless gloves. Jal claimed to be sixteen when Lindsay asked her about her background and age. Lindsay suspected that Jal was younger than she claimed but she didn't push the issue. Jal mostly kept to herself and usually wore long-sleeved, baggy sweatshirts and hoodies which also aroused Lindsay's suspicion. Once again, however, Lindsay kept silent out of the fear of running Jal away from the residence.

Jal merely revealed that she was from Ohio one morning at breakfast when Lindsay had mentioned going on a trip to Cleveland. Apart from that, the teenage girl was virtually an enigma. She stayed up in her room most of the time, only coming down when she was either going out or for meals. Even then, there was only a fifty-fifty chance that Jal would eat dinner at the house. Sometimes, she would go to the 7-Eleven, the McDonalds or a local diner and pick up food there. Lindsay wondered about that young, troubling adolescent and what monster she was truly running from.


Alright, that's the end of chapter 1! The start of a new adventure!

Benny: What adventure? Those two brats going to school and the blonde becoming the younger version of that lady from the Blind Side? That's not an adventure, that's a sitcom idea.

It's a sitcom people would want to watch, Benny. Anyway, review and say what you need to say.