Blood Ties: Chpt.1

         

         As Jennifer's teeth sank into the tender flesh of his neck, she felt his heart begin to race, but her iron grip held him fast to her kiss. The coppery taste of his blood sent icy shivers down Jennifer's spine, bringing her into an ecstasy no mortal would ever enjoy. Second by second his heart slowed, from its hard gallop to an almost imperceptible beat. As the heart stopped beating she released her teeth from his neck. As always, Jennifer began to remember the faces of all those she had killed before. She etched the new kill's face into her memory like a tombstone maker etches names into stone. She slowly removed her ceremonial knife from its sheath and pressed it down on his Adams Apple. In one quick clean movement she sliced it through his neck, severing the spinal cord on the other side. This was the only sure way she knew of stopping her victims from waking up tomorrow with a few new "abilities".

         Jennifer herself had been bitten when she was 19, 52 years ago. Even though she had seen the world around her change, Jennifer knew that the people around her really hadn't, and because of that she was able to obtain her victims just as always. Men, and a few women, were always attracted to her young looking body. Almost all her "food" came to her and she seldom, if ever, went hunting for it. In her belief, it was this that had kept her alive so far. She never made daring attempts for food.                 

         When she was done fully separating his head from his body Jennifer stood up to her full height of six feet. Her hair was a deep black, shoulder length and slightly curled at the bottom. Her pale skin made her eyes shine in the dark, and her red supple lips always turned heads. She had dressed in a tight fitting black polymer sleeveless shirt and tight black mid thigh shorts, knowing that with her looks her "food" would find its way to her quickly. As she mentally reviewed the kill she felt the rush of adrenaline that came with knowing that a life, a life in its prime, had been taken, and as always it felt new all over again. Jennifer slowly smiled into the empty alleyway, her fangs glistening under the partial glare of the distant streetlight. She loved this.

         However, it had not always been this way. When Jennifer was first turned she had needed to learn quick to survive. She had needed to know the limits of her power as soon as possible, so that she didn't choose a victim too strong to handle. But due to the vampiric blood in her veins she had no physical match in a mortal. But she had not known that all that time ago. Jennifer learned quickly she could still sustain herself off of mortal food, but that it had lost its illustrious flavor. Only blood had a flavor to her, and she found that the more of it she drank, the more addictive it became. She hadn't eaten mortal food in over a decade, but it wasn't as though she missed it. She could also walk in daylight. She had found that out quickly when an angry hotel owner had run her off her daytime hiding spot into a crowded street. The sun had only warmed her skin. Jennifer's eyes had changed from their lovely shade of green into a cold ice blue that not even the sun could warm. She supposed it was her eyes that played a predominant part in reeling in her prey. She hadn't found a mortal yet whom they had not entranced. To say they were enchanting would be an understatement. But it had taken time to get used to. But now Jennifer was in control of herself and she loved it that way.

         Jennifer had also learned that she was different from the old vampires. They had deep scarlet or red eyes, could only drink blood and would experience extreme discomfort and eventual death in sunlight. To amuse herself she used to drive them from their daytime sanctuaries and into the light of the sun to watch how the skin would slowly begin to burn and eventually catch fire until they burned to death. After this had stopped amusing her she instead turned to killing them outright as a sport.

         Jennifer was unsure why she was different, or whether there were more vampires like her, or what exactly had bitten her. All she knew of her own vampiric birth was that a young man had taken her at night near the slums where she had grown up. She didn't remember his eyes and didn't really care. She knew she was superior to the old vampires and that she would have a plentiful food source for years to come. She slowly walked away from her kill into the dark streets of Manhattan. Once more on the prowl Jennifer's smile came to her lips, 'Tonight will be a good night,' she thought to herself.



O O O



         She was upside down. The room was pitch black but her eyesight was much more adept at seeing in darkness than a mortal. Jennifer could feel the rope holding her ankles and her hair falling away from her face. Exactly how long she had been unconscious, she didn't know. She looked above towards her feet. The rope was tied to the support beam of the room. Her fingertips could probably brush against the floor but as it was her hands were tied behind her back. Although this might have posed a problem to a mortal she merely pulled her wrists apart until the rope snapped in uneven split ends. Reaching above herself to grab the knot holding her feet together her head began to swirl with dark flashing colors.

         "Too fast," Jennifer said aloud to herself. As her head slowly cleared, her dexterous fingers pried the knot apart. As it was about to fail and drop her slightly swaying body to the floor, she grabbed the rope higher up and let her legs swing down, then let go of the rope and landed gently on her feet.

         "Now where the hell am I?" Jennifer began to look around to get her bearings. A slight sliver of light was coming through a small crack in the plank wood ceiling, so she guessed it still had to be daylight. She was still dressed in the same clothes she had hunted in last night. The last thing she could remember before waking here was a young man coming into her safe house. That place had been in the one of the smaller catacomb under the main city. The man had slowly tried to catch her unawares, but her exceptional senses had known he was there for a while. She had risen in preparation to run and attack him, but he had shot at her with a small tranquilizer gun. It had to have been an extremely powerful dose as her metabolic rate was abnormally high, which was the norm for her kind, and would pass a small dose through her body in less than a minute.

         Jennifer slowly walked around in an ever-widening circle observing the plank wood walls and floors around her. She noted the odd lack of a door. With her head cocked slightly to her right she listened for signs of life. When she was satisfied that no one was outside the walls she decided to act. With one deft punch she made a hole the size of her fist through what she guessed was the west wall.

         Looking through the hole Jennifer became slightly puzzled at the lack of light. Unless this room was in another larger building, the light coming through the ceiling should have been all around. It wasn't. Only more inky darkness lied beyond. Her eyes searched the darkness for any signs of life her ears could have missed. None.

         "Well they could have at least left the lights on," she said quietly to herself. Although Jennifer's tone was passive, inside she was a roiling ball of rage. 'How dare someone hunt me,' was the thought going through her head the most, with 'I'll drain that fucker clean,' running in a close second.

         She began to pull at the boards around the hole in great force until she could wriggle out of a person-sized hole. When fully through, she began to ascertain her surroundings.

         Jennifer had been upside down inside of a plank wood shack that was sitting in the middle of a large warehouse. The warehouse looked to be approximately 50 yards by 25 yards with what looked like a 30-yard high ceiling. The shack looked to be only 6 yards by 5 yards with a flat roof 8 feet off the ground. A single lone light hanging from the middle of the warehouses support beam made the light coming through the crack in the shacks roof. A large pair of loading doors was placed in the middle of the longest wall. A smaller door for employees and workers stood to the loading doors right. As she took stock of her surroundings Jennifer could hear the sound of heels on concrete closing in from the direction of the smaller door. She quickly moved next to the door so that it would open and she could sneak behind the person who entered.

         The door opened inward and Jennifer prepared to snap his neck, but as she moved close behind him she smelled his cologne and came near to vomiting whatever it was that was in her stomach.

         To a mortal the man's cologne was probably just a small scent, but to Jennifer's extreme sense of smell, it was almost a weapon. The smell was horrid, like some sweet honey had been mixed with extremely pungent horse dung. Although unpleasant Jennifer could tell he was alone by the sounds and smells from outside. She wasted no time in dispatching him with a clean twist of the neck. Although she was thirsty for blood she did not dare touch the man as the scent was extremely putrid around his neck.

         'If he knows about vampires than that might be a reason for why he wears such strong stuff,' she thought to herself. She slowly moved to the outside of the warehouse. Once outside in the light she assessed her situation. The door faced the ocean. Jennifer deducted that if she could still see the ocean and could still smell some familiar scents she must still be on Manhattan Isle. The docks were currently deserted, which probably meant it was still during morning curfew. The sun had not yet fully risen to its prominence and as such did not warm Jennifer's chilled flesh. Glancing to make sure the coast was clear she made her way toward an electric plant and its 100-yard high cooling towers by way of the warehouse wall. Once there she followed a circuitous route toward the main skyscrapers and one of her safe houses. She met with no trouble and once there she changed her clothes and prepared to sleep until night to begin an investigation of whomever or whatever had captured her last night. "Someone will pay," she said to herself in the darkness, "they'll pay dearly." Although she did not know it someone else was thinking the same thing.



O O O



         Jennifer's internal alarm woke her up at exactly 9pm. She had been able to set her inner alarm for at least the last 30 years, and it had helped greatly when she had slept in places with no means of knowing the time.

         As she changed into her customary hunting clothes she thought about what had happened to her during the last day and a half. She had been abducted by persons/things unknown, and that was bothering her. As always the route home she had taken was circuitous and winding, knowing all the nooks and alleyways in Manhattan had its perks. But not on the last hunt. A young man had been able to tail her in such a way as to not draw attention, and if it had not been that, then he had already known where her safe house had been, which meant she might need to change all her spots to avoid another incident.

         As Jennifer finished dressing she began to review what she could remember of the man who'd shot her. His scent was odd, and as always she could remember how it was different, but not what made it so. All mortals gave off different pheromones and hormones that Jennifer could smell and distinguish. Every individual had a scent tailor made to their body. Even though Jennifer could smell all the different scents they rarely made sense to her when she wanted them to. Normally she would recover a scent when she least expected to. She hoped this wouldn't be the case with her captor.

         Jennifer closed her eyes and focused on her glimpse of his face, it was long, ending with a pointed chin, a large obtrusive nose, small beady eyes that were hazel, a raggedy clump of brown hair, and slightly pale complexion. Now she cursed her mistake in not searching the man she had killed at the warehouse for an ID card or an ID dermal implant.

         Stifling her rage she left the house to begin her hunt.

         Manhattan itself was large, and after the 2010 State Committee Meeting it had been granted statehood. This had been somewhat of a thorn in Jennifer's side as now most of her kills were noticed one way or another. In a registered population of 12 million, a blood drained headless corpse usually caused some (still attached) heads to turn. So to balance out feeding with being safe Jennifer never went to the same area of Manhattan a month in a row. This was where the size of the state was an advantage. She could start at the west end and make her way slowly over to the east end and the whole affair would take over 3 years.

         Within two hours, she had picked up his scent. She followed it from the safe house she had been taken to, to the warehouse and past the electric plant. Once at the plant she lost the scent. Well, not lost, not completely at least. But it had changed. Where before his pheromones and hormones had indicated nervousness they now indicated intense fear. Fear was, interestingly enough, one of the hardest scents for Jennifer to track, while heated compassion, such as before or after sex, was the easiest to track.

          Someone or something had chased him to the base of one of the cooling towers. It was at the base of the tower that she first noticed the splotches of blood. A second later she began to smell them. He had been shot, as she could also smell the gunpowder. Looking around Jennifer spotted a small indentation in the steel base of a tower. Quickly looking around and sniffing the air Jennifer decided she was alone and knelt to examine the indent. Yes. A bullet had struck the steel. She could still smell some faint blood on it. Slowly looking around she noticed a trail of blood that started small and increased in its amount.

         'Someone was punished for not keeping me in the warehouse,' she thought to herself. Jennifer deduced that he had been shot from behind as he was running away from the direction of the warehouse and that the bullet had made a clean pass through his body. Following the blood trail steadily became more difficult as dock workers and plant workers became more frequent. Many a time she had to wait for what felt like hours before being able to safely follow more of the trail. Luckily, she had her powerful senses to alert her before someone came to close for comfort.

         Eventually the trail ended in front of a large drainage pipe. Jennifer slowly lowered her body inside so as not to alert anyone nearby. The pipe was 4 feet in diameter and 9 feet deep. The bottom was filled with an inch of murky water and trash. If a mortal had come down the pipe without a light they would have to wait for their eyes to adjust to the darkness as above ground light poles were inter spread at fairly reasonable distances. But down here no light was visible except a small amount at the top of the pipe. Looking around Jennifer began in the only direction she could, straight ahead through a 7-foot high tunnel. She could still smell her quarries blood and hormones, but now it was mixed with the smell of ripe waste and brackish water.

        Jennifer followed the tunnel for what she guessed to be a distance of 100 yards before it abruptly stopped. The tunnel opened up into what looked to be a water treatment tank. She could smell the acids burning in the pool below that were used to treat water.

         "Well, looks like I found me a mother friggin dead end." Jennifer knew that if he had stumbled or, more likely, been dropped into the vat his body would be completely dissolved by now. Turning around she began to follow the tunnel to the entrance. With every step her anger and thirst grew. She could not smell whoever had shot and/or dumped the body, and that bothered her. She never had met a mortal she couldn't smell. And that worried her even more. Because if it wasn't mortal it had to be a-.

         Jennifer stopped her train of thought abruptly. Why would a vampire work with humans to target other vampires? And even if they were working together the vampire or the humans had to be pretty powerful and wealthy in order to rent an entire warehouse for one little shack and an upside down vampire. Puzzled with this her anger began to build again. Her thirst rose also. She needed to hunt now or she would tear into the nearest living being. As she left the dockyard she began to think about what she would hunt tonight and decided it would suffice to hunt the same type again. If she hunted a specific group too long the newspapers would call it a serial killing and then the police would become too involved.

         She walked slowly down a small street lined with dilapidated houses and crummy alleyways. Jennifer decided here was okay. She looked around at her choices. Most of the men and women in the alley were old and dying, born as street urchins and dying as street urchins. Many sat or stood next to hobo fires in old barrels. They were the despondent dregs of this society. They had been pushed around by those bigger than them since their birth.

                These people Jennifer had no interest in killing. Though their blood would sustain her, the blood of someone young and vital always tasted and renewed her the best. She spotted what looked like a young man in his early twenties warming his hands around a hobo's fire. She slowly walked up to him and began to lure him into her trap. Although those around her held mouths agape at her attire the man was looking just at her face. Like a fly caught in a spider's web, he was caught as soon as he looked into her eyes. His mind didn't even register that she was dressed so differently from him. Her eyes had awakened his sexual urges. He didn't even really hear what she was saying, all he paid attention to was the eyes, and before he knew it she had moved them both to a deserted alley.

         "You know, I could take good care of you tonight," she quietly but huskily whispered to him. He stared at her exceptional physique, still trying to slow his breathing and failing.

         "I could make tonight worth your while."

         Trying to stammer out a reply and figure out what was happening to him the young man was oblivious to her mouth and teeth moving ever closer to his throat, he was oblivious to almost anything now. But as Jennifer's teeth punctured the flesh of his neck he awoke from his trance, and his entire mind raced with fear and pain.

         Stifling his scream with an open palm Jennifer began to drink in his blood in earnest and finished quickly. Repeating the beheading like always she quickly moved to another alleyway.

On the fly Jennifer decided she would continue to hunt as many as she could before daylight. Knowing what the fallout would be from this kind of behavior she smiled. This time she was too far away for any light from a street lamp to glisten on her teeth, and so she smiled quietly and eagerly into the darkness, unseen by mortals, her eyes lighting up at her bloody thoughts.



O O O



         When the night was through and Jennifer had retired to a safe house she reviewed what she had done. Her first kill of the night had been the young man in the alley. That had been at 11:23pm. For 6 hours afterward she had bitten and drank from young healthy mortals in the alleys. She had not followed custom by beheading them; instead she had turned them into vampires. She knew this would have serious consequences, the largest that she feared was that they would turn into an epidemic and overtake Manhattan with her still inside. If that happened she would likely die. Her second largest worry was that the old normal vampires would figure out who had started turning humans and would stalk and kill her. But to Jennifer the pros of her plan far outweighed the cons. She could only hope her plan would work.

         As she stripped from her hunting clothes beside her bed she thought about why she had been turned and not killed. She had never seen another vampire like her, all the others were distinctly red eyed. And as far as she could remember she had never turned a human before. Even in the initial panic of discovering she was a vampire she had had enough sense to remove the heads of her victims.

         Now there were at least 10 more like her roaming the streets and drinking, whom she desperately wished would not remove their victims heads, but as to whether they would have multiplied by tomorrow night she had no idea. She hoped they would spread quickly, allowing her to fulfill the next phase of her plan fairly easily. Lying down in her bed she smiled. 'Hope, what a funny thing,' she thought as she slowly began to fall asleep.



O O O



         Fire, slowly circling, feeding off of the gasoline soaked floor and walls. She screamed, again and again. The all-consuming heat was drawing ever closer. They were dead, she had watched as he'd shot her parents, she'd seen the blood and brain and splinters of bones as the bullets hit home. He had not shot her though; he had left them to die another way, slowly and in the most pain. She closed her eyes and clutched her knees to her chest, desperately trying to protect the life within.

         "NO, NO, NOOO!" her screams were barely heard above the cacophony of burning materials. The smoke from the massive fire was reaching her, her head was pounding, and her breathing was labored.

         "NOO-"



O O O



         Jennifer awoke with the last of her screams still echoing around her room. Panting and sobbing uncontrollably she dared not close her eyes for fear of once again seeing those bygone flames. Almost every week for one night her dreams were haunted with the memories of that night 52 years ago. Even as she had lived longer and gained many more memories the fire was still the strongest. Jennifer believed it was that way because it was her last real human memory and that her change had also affected her memory in some way. She slowly calmed down and began to breathe easier.

         Her bedside holo-clock read 6:57pm, Thursday, July 20th, 2024. Slowly she rose from her bed to take a shower. The soothing heat from the water pounding her body drove the memories of that night from her mind. As she finished drying herself off she turned on her bedside television. She slowly strolled around her house, absentmindedly listening to the television for anything relating to her work. She gazed at her belongings. Her bed was a queen size, the carpet plush; the wood paneling on cabinets and floors was replicated mahogany. Most fabrics and paints were green, a color she had loved since she was a little girl. The electronics were what you would expect, 2040 HD television by Santoro, vid-phones, total control lighting, and the latest computer system. The only thing odd was the lack of food utensils, a refrigerator, or a steam-dish washer. Jennifer herself did not think anything of it, but if a mortal gained access to this safe house they would be immediately intrigued. Some of the other safe houses were nothing more than holes in a wall, such as the catacombs where she had been abducted. This however was one of her more expensive and vibrant houses and as such was decorated with a variety of art from her many decades of existence. Whenever she had needed to spend money she had made sure it would be toward comfort, weaponry, and armor. A room in the back was based solely as her personal armory. Rows of knives and guns lined the walls. A large closet held much gear, accessories, and clothing, including her customary black hunting clothes. Heavier armor and gear was placed in a chest against a wall. As she was walking around a few words from the television caught her attention.

         "Tonight our breaking story is the recent government quarantine of Tribeca City. Apparently a small outbreak of the H7N7 Influenza Virus began last night. Authorities have not allowed reporters into the quarantine zone and the only official statement that we have been given is, and I quote, "The likelihood of a full epidemic or pandemic of H7N7 is limited or none. We have fully quarantined the infected area and we will soon see to it that all those who are suffering are cured."

         After that the reporter listed off a series of facts to contradict the statement, but Jennifer had heard enough and decided that whatever she had started was beginning to go into full swing. She had hunted in Tribeca City last night, and in all of the helicopter photographs of the area no CDC vehicles were to be found. The only vehicles were military vehicles and strange black and orange vans and eighteen wheelers. Jennifer wondered if the black and orange vehicles belonged to whoever had abducted her.

         Knowing that tonight would be the first of her most dangerous hunts she dressed herself in clothes designed to protect her body, not show it off. She slipped on tight combat pants with interwoven threads of kevlar and a polymer known as synentic. Her pants would act as a temporary bulletproof material if hit. Her shirt was long sleeved, skin tight, and made of the same material as her pants. She placed on a bulletproof vest. Its lightweight and small size allowed her to carry it easily and comfortably over her chest and back. She placed her knife in its holder on her right hip. She put on bulletproof kneepads and elbow pads. The last piece of gear to go on was her military issue urban combat boots. Over the years she had tried many boots but these had always been her favorite. As she looked herself over in a full-length mirror she checked to make sure no part of her body below her head was exposed except her hands. Nothing was. Clad entirely in black she could seemingly glide through the shadows, enabling her to stalk her prey invisibly and escape from potential threats.

         As she prepared to leave the safe house she wondered if she should take a gun. She decided against it. 'If I'm attacked I have my knife, plus I'd rather not take the time to aim a gun,' she thought to herself. Her only weapons on these hunts would be her enhanced abilities and her knife. Close and dirty were Jennifer's specialties and she would stick to them.

         She left the house. The street and sidewalk were deserted. The outside of the house was a plain white, the plots next door held abandoned and decaying apartments.

         As she stepped onto the sidewalk of her lawn the sniper keeping watch from the apartment roof next door reported to his commander. As the sun fully set behind the darkening blue of the ocean horizon, a lone shot was heard ringing out and echoing into various streets and alleys.







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ID: 1577177   (Rated: 18+) Blood Ties: Chpt.2  More about Jen is revealed, conspiracy abounds. by John Patricks