The Relict (Book 1): Drawing Blood Read Free

Matt’s eyes stayed fixed, and his gun was still aimed at the completely still creature lying on the living-room carpet, highlighted by a shaft of moonlight coming through the living-room window.
    The stillness was broken by the sound of a motorcycle engine. The sound was drawing closer, not growing more distant.
    Suddenly, the vampire flashed open its eyes – the pupils were enlarged and black like they were transplants from a shark. Then the creature opened its mouth, exposing elongated incisors glistening in the moonlight.
    Matt didn’t hesitate. He sprinted across the living room and leaped over the vampire just as the creature made a move to stop him.
    Beth’s living room window exploded outward.
    Matt landed on the front lawn, with thousands of pieces of glass trailing right behind him. His landing was awkward, but on two feet. He touched down, leaning forward, enabling him to roll into a somersault, which he completed only in a way that demanded that he roll into another.
    Instead he stumbled forward… and began to run. He looked behind him once, but that was only cursory. Matt was moving as fast as he could toward the sound of the motorcycle engine.
    He leaped over the hedge that ran across the front of Beth’s house. His perfect landing was highlighted by the beam from a motorcycle’s headlight.
    Jay skidded his bike to a stop.
    “I can’t believe you saw the flare…”
    As he hopped on behind him, Matt saw Jay was wearing a pair of night goggles
    “I told you to head west…”
    “Yeah, well, west runs right past the house.”
    Jay let his foot off the clutch and the motorcycle took off.
     
    Their motorcycle was weaving through the narrow, twisty, tree-lined road through the Morristown suburbs. It was where Matt grew up. And it was where he hoped he could eventually raise a family.
    But now all he could think about was how it was just another place for the vampires to occupy.
    “How many did you see?” Jay shouted into the wind.
    Matt responded as he ejected the spent clip from his Beretta.
    “Just one.”
    “Then maybe it wasn’t a vampire. Maybe it was just your ex-wife’s divorce lawyer. Didn’t you say he was always out for blood…?”
    Matt slammed another clip into his gun, expecting to hear Jay’s self-satisfied chuckle at his own joke, but it never came.
    Instead, Jay’s body stiffened… and then the motorcycle began to slow.
    Ahead of them was a blockade made up of several large military trucks, and a dozen figures standing in front of the vehicles.
    From their distance it was only Jay, wearing the night goggles, who could confirm what Matt suspected was before them.
    In the night scope the heat pattern of a bloodsucker registered as blue.
    “Vampires…”
    Jay released the brakes and steered the motorcycle into the surrounding woods.
     
    Their motorcycle was doing a "shake and rake" through the trees – bouncing on a bumpy, dirt path, with branches whipping across their heads and bodies.
    “Buddy, we can’t outrun them. So don’t try…”
    His caveat had the opposite effect on Jay.
    “Wanna bet?”
    He twisted the right handgrip and the bike picked up speed.
    Matt turned to look for any signs they were being followed.
    On his right, he saw a shadowy figure moving on a parallel course with their motorcycle. The only reason he saw the creature was the wake of bushes and trees the vampire left behind as it streaked through the woods in pursuit.
    He fired a couple of shots from his gun. Matt was surprised to see that he must have hit something, because the parallel movement through the woods suddenly stopped.
    Matt turned his attention to the other side and immediately spotted two streaking shadows cutting two paths through the woods.
    He switched his Beretta to his left hand and fired several shots, then ejected the spent clip from his gun. But before he loaded another clip, Matt noticed that the two vampires that had been trailing him… had stopped.
    It was too easy.