“I... imagine the arrows are made from the bones of our …comrades too?” Clayton asked in searing pain.
“Yes,” she said as she waved her arm all around the room. “Everything in this room is made to incapacitate or kill vampires.”
“How human of you,” Desiree sneered.
Maryl chuckled. “Humans don’t have the ingenuity for such devices because most of them don’t know we even exist. Oh, there are small bands of humans besides the Fellowship of the Fangs that know of our existence. But the Fellowship ensures our survival because they serve my needs around the globe. And they are food for us too.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “We give them vague and shallow promises of vampire-hood by adding more and more small red droplets of tattoos. Plus, as a bonus when they combat humans who hunt vampires, we promise them we will convert them to vampire hood, which was the primary reason I created the group in 1912 at Stanford after the lecture. Remember that, Clayton?”
“Yes… I left because I thought you were going to take care of Stanley Pearson and his assistant.”
“Do the human hunters know of our weakness?” Desiree asked.
“Yes. The hunters were formed after disagreements within the ranks of the Fellowship of the Fangs.”
Desiree now understood something she didn’t earlier. “So, the humans at the campsite? They were hunters?”
“Exactly! Humans being humans… word spread. When the human being found out they had to have O negative blood to become a member of the Fellowship of the Fangs, dissension grew. How they knew of my cave is still a mystery to me.”
Desiree looked at Clayton, who was slowly wobbling from side to side. “Can you do something for Clayton? He doesn’t look good!” She asked in desperation.
“Your affinity for him disgusts me!” Maryl scolded.
“And your lack of compassion sickens me more!” Desiree yelled back.
Maryl snapped her fingers. “Draven, attend to Clayton!”
“Why? He’s the leader of AB positive, the enemy!”
“Do not question me! I can’t have him die before I show him the last piece of the puzzle!”
Draven zipped away and came back seconds later. “Hold him down while I take out the bullet. He’ll recover quickly after the projectile is removed,” Draven said to two nearby guards.
Once the bullet was taken out, Clayton felt better.
“What is the last piece of the mystery, Maryl?” Desiree asked, frightened.
Maryl waved them forward. “Come this way. It’s through this room at the door at the end.”
The group walked in silence as they passed table after table. When they got to the door, Maryl stopped, turned, and faced everyone.
“Brace yourself.”
Maryl opened the double-wide door and flew it open.
Clayton and Desiree entered, and what they saw made them stop dead in their tracks.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Behold, The Stranger!
Clayton studied the tall female Stranger in the thick glass enclosure. Her reddish-brown matted and tangled hair almost entirely covered her warm, radiant face. Her big, round brown eyes were set low within their sockets, observing with those outside the cage. It seemed as though a sword had left a mark reaching from the top of her left cheek, first running toward her thick lips and ending on her forehead.
Clayton could hear the heavy humming of electricity emanating from the pen.
“What the hell?” whispered Clayton.
“My ultimate weapon, our creator.” Maryl murmured back.
Clayton looked to the Stranger and then to Maryl. “How did you manage to capture her, and when?”
“The Stranger’s emergence every hundred years was the key.”
Clayton looked at Maryl in confusion. “How?”
“In 1920, when the Stranger was due to appear on May the fourth at seven-thirty three in the morning, I had the O positive, and the O negative scientists put out instruments over the globe the day before that could detect any strange energy signatures. While they are rudimentary by today’s technological standards, they were sophisticated back then. They discovered an enormous energy field fifteen seconds before the Stranger appeared. It was as if she was using a vast amount of energy that took time before she could appear on earth. With each successive decade, we were able to make the instruments more precise in detecting any kind of energy discharge. We even anomalously gave human scientists warning about earthquakes before their arrival.”
“You’re helping out humans?” Desiree scoffed.
Maryl shrugged. “We need their nourishment. I had to protect my food source.”
“How many minutes were you able to detect the Stranger’s location before she appeared this year?” Clayton asked.
“The location of the Stranger's appearance was almost as important as when she would arrive. We detected the energy field a full three minutes with our newest advances in technology. Not only did we know when and where she would show up, but we carefully studied the readings for a century and determined the source of her energy. We couldn’t duplicate it here, but we knew how to negate her energy once she arrived.”
“And you had the cage ready for her when she emerged?” Clayton asked as he felt his left shoulder. The pain was almost gone, but he would need blood soon.
“Not only did we have it ready, we knew the exact location, so when she arrived, she appeared in the cage!”
“And brought her here? Interesting. Have you interrogated her yet?” Clayton asked as he continued to look at the cage.
“Yes, tortured too. She has given up nothing.”
“Did you ask her why she comes back every hundred years?” Clayton wondered.
“No, I did not.”
“Why not? Don’t you want to know her purpose? Our purpose?”
“I care not how or why we were made, only that I must have her power for the O negatives to thrive!”
“That’s a little self-centered, Maryl.”
“I don’t care for your tone, Clayton. Remember with whom you are speaking with!”
Clayton changed the subject. “How did you come about all the technology when the other seven blood types did not?”
“Because of my need to prosper and flourish because we are low on the totem pole of vampire power.”
“That’s not true,” Clayton said with
