StarFall Comics
A Division of Pullemouttayerhat Productions
A Wholly-Owned Subsidiary of StarFall Innovations
Proudly Presents:
Blood Ties
#2: Blood Hunt
cover: Keili holding Rick's severed head as a trophy.
Samantha Douglas hung unconscious, upside down in a run-down shack, her ankles tied together and to a main support rafter. Her mind swirled in confusing flashes of broken dreams, distorted images, and emotions. Something deep inside her screamed for her to awaken, but she could not.
The images plaguing her grew more vivid and began to burn into her subconcious, while her body reacted as though she were trapped inside of an immense oven. Her blood coursed through her veins, and her pulse quickened to many times normal. With a jolt similar to that of an electric shock, she snapped awake.
"Ah," Keili breathed, steadying Sam's swaying body, "I see you've awakened. How do you feel, my black blossom?"
"Like shit," Sam moaned. "Where...?" She weakly turned her head, trying to get a measure of where she was.
"I forget my manners," Keili stated. "As I introduced myself last night, I am Keili Nephthys, Queen of the Vampires. This," she indicated the run-down shack, "is my humble abode."
Sam stretched her neck, gazing about the shack. All she saw were vampires, and blood-stained corpses hanging upside down like she was. The sight overwhelmed her, and all she could do was scream.
Keili just laughed, her fangs glistening in the candlelight.
Rick pulled his canoe up onto the beach in Eagle Bay, New York, just as the sun was setting.
"Perfect timing," he heard a voice behind him say. He tensed up, then turned, bringing a wooden stake into view. He sighed in relief when he saw who it was.
"Oh, it's you," he stated, lowering the stake. "For a moment there I thought...."
"That it was Keili?" Mike finished, with a thin smile. "Nope. I'm safer."
Rick looked over Mike's shoulder, noticing another man standing there for the first time.
"Who...?"
"Hunter, I'm what you'd call a vampire hunter. Mike called a favor I owe him."
Hunter looked nothing like what one would expect a vampire hunter to be. He was shorter than Rick, but better built. He wore blue jeans and a military cut sweater, and carried a .44 Magnum under his arm.
"I thought vampires could only be killed by wooden stakes?" Rick asked.
"Think again. All that Dracula stuff is crap. A high caliber round to the brain'll kill 'em just as effectively."
"Kinda tickles, too," Mike stated, rubbing an old chest wound. Rick looked at him with a questioning look. Mike just responded with a wry grin.
Hunter handed Rick a machete. "You know how to use this?" Stunned, Rick just nodded.
"Come on, you two," Mike stated. "We've still got another five miles to go."
The three sped North along Big Moose Road. Mike drove a customized Harley, while Hunter briefed Rick on the lay out of their target from behind the wheel of his Jeep.
"It's an old hotel resort, pretty run-down, and not much to look at. We've got lees than an acre of open area around it before running into the lake. There are a couple of boat houses around the shore, and a decrepit shack across the road. The place makes a decent warren for these guys, and the head witch probably picked it out for it's history."
"What about it's history?" Rick asked, trying to keep his teeth from rattling as the Jeep hit another bump in the road.
"You ever read the book An American Tragedy?" Hunter asked. Rick shook his head. "Well, back in the Thirties, back when the place was first built, a young man took his girlfriend out on the lake in a canoe and drowned her. The book was written by a journalist who was following the court case. Just the kind of thing that would attract a nest of vamps."
"Nice history." Rick replied, feeling a bit queasy.
Mike pulled up next to the driver-side window, and signalled for Hunter and Rick to get ready.
Keili turned, as a younger-looking vampire stuck her head through the door.
"Sis! They're coming!"
"Good work, Sara. Let's show Mike a thing or two about being real vampires."
Vampires flew in all directions, or were crushed under the wheels of Hunter's Jeep. Following closely behind, Mike put his Harley into a sidewards slide, and fired several stakes through some of them as he came to a lurching halt. Jumping from his seat, Hunter threw Mike a weapon, and opened fire on the vampire nearest to him.
"I thought you were an all-American, Hunter! What's with the AK-47?" Mike yelled.
"If you don't like it, get your own arsenal!" Hunter yelled back, stabbing a hostile in the throat as it came too close.
"We've gotta find Sam!" Rick cried, just missing having his head ripped off by a low-flying vamp.
"Right!" Hunter agreed. "Mike, can you handle things here?"
Surounded by a dozen other vamps, Mike replied, "Yeah. I think I have 'em right where they want me."
"Good. Rick! Move your scrawny butt!"
Rick and Hunter made their way through the run-down hotel, keeping their eyes peeled for Sam.
"She's gotta be around here somewhere," Rick groaned.
"You'll never find her," they heard a voice call out. "Mistress has plans for her."
Rick and Hunter turned to face a half dozen vampires, who were staring at them with hungry, animalistic looks in their eyes.
"Through faint of heart and many a tear, in our opposed paths perservere," Hunter muttered.
"What's that?" Rich whispered.
"A minor poet for a minor obstacle." Hunter unloaded his pistol into the nearest vampire. A click from the gun told him what he didn't want to hear.
"Minor obstacle?" Rick muttered, making sure he was still holding his machete.
Rick and Hunter each lunged into the vampires, hacking and slashing at the vampires, reaching for the necks.
Outside, Keili faced off against Mike, each armed with only a wooden stake.
"It ends here, Keili," he told her.
"Not bloody likely," she stated, brandishing her stake menacingly in his direction.
Keili thrust her stake forward, impaling Mike in the heart with it. He fell, face up, a hurt expression on his face.
"Why?"
"Simple, my love. You're in my way."
"No!"
Rick emerged from the hotel, tossing a stake in her general direction. Keili easily deflected it, and flew off. She landed behind the startled Hunter and sunk her teeth into him, carrying him off as she flew away.
"Rick!"
Rick spun around, and embraced his wife, who was running out of the shack across the road.
"Sam! You're still alive!"
Sam held her husband close. "I... I was afraid I wouldn't see you again," she whispered in his ear. "There's something I've got to tell you."
"It can wait," he stated. "You're alive, and that's all that matters. I love you."
"I love you too, Rick," she whispered in his ear. Something caught Rick's eye, as he turned his head to look at her.
"Rick, look out!" Mike yelled, pulling the stake from his heart. "She's...!"
Rick noticed a red glow from her eyes, and a white gleam from her teeth. He tensed, as his wife sank her new fangs into his neck, drinking in his blood. Rick screamed in pain.
A vision flashed before his eyes, of their wedding day, a week ago. "'Till Death do us part," he muttered, his life slipping away.
Keili laughed from the roof of the run-down hotel, watching her newest recruit drain the life from her husband.
"No!" Mike yelled, lunging for Sam and Rick.
"Yes!" Sam stated, dropping Rick's lifeless body to the ground. Ripping her T-shirt open, Sam grew her vampiric wings, and flew off, joining Keili and the other vampires on the roof of the hotel.
"Bye, bye, Mike!" Keili laughed, flying off. "Oh, I left you a little snack in the back!"
Mike worked his way through the ruins of the hotel, expertly moving through the rubble of the fight. Then he came to what Keili had apparently been using as a sort of "dungeon". Chained to a wall, clothes in tatters, was a young woman, no more than twenty years old.
"Please," she whispered when she noticed him. "Kill me."
"I don't kill," he told her.
"They made me drink thier blood," she stated. "I'm dead already."
Slowly, she tilted her head, offering Mike her neck. "Drink. Then kill me."
Mike found himself drawn to her neck. The fight, and the act of pulling the stake from his heart, had drained him. Hesitatingly, he sunk his fangs into her neck, drinking deep.
As Mike pulled out of the woman's lifeless body, he reached back, grabbed his machete, and, averting his eyes, sliced off her head.
"Keili will pay."