Plus ca Change: Part 1d
by Tom MacCarrol
"No kidding. Timeline, nothing. This has to be the wrong guy. We can bail now? Go home? Thaw out?", she asked in a non-stop barrage. "Maybe get some sleep tonight before one of us has to show up for school?" Oh geez, school. Her programming project still undone, and tonight gone with no further progress made.

"Not the 'wrong guy'", Br. Gerrard continued speaking softly, a note of real concern creeping in, "but the wrong grave. The markers here aren't at the foot end - as is customary on my homeworld - but up at the head, putting me off by one row. Mr. Ekkevard isn't buried in the grave we've been looking at, rather he's in the one we've been sitting on."

Both of them sprang up to scramble off the fresh grave in a near- comic flailing of limbs and spilling cups. Anne's right leg stopped abruptly in mid-step, dumping her sprawling face first on the ground. Feeling the tight pressure around her calf, her first thought was that she'd gotten tangled up in some sort of wire.

"Um Gerrard, I'm caught on..." An errant patch of moonlight revealed that what was wrapped around her leg were the fingers of a strong, cold, hand - reaching up from out of the ground. She changed sentences in mid-stream, "...HIM! It's him! He's got me, HELP!!" A second arm and hand came into view, then a head broke through the sod like a swimmer surfacing from a dive.

Anne tried to pull away without success. The *thing's* grip was as strong as cured cement. Nails that felt like actual carpenter's nails dug deeply into her flesh as it pulled the other way.

She twisted onto her side in order to bring her other heel down hard on the hand gripping her, smashing several times in a row as hard as she could. It had no more effect than bouncing her foot off a curbstone. She was now stomping and kicking at first the thing's wrist and arm, then at the face that lunged toward her. A lunge that pulled it's upper chest free of the ground while it tried to use it's fangs for a biting attack as well.

Yes, fangs. The creature's face was hardly human - distorted jaws filled with oversized teeth as well as the prominent sharp fangs, the demonically re-sculpted features - made even more hideous by the rapidly shifting interplay of moonlight and shadows. And then the eyes. The horrible in-human eyes that were windows not into a soul, but into a very bad place.

Anne couldn't think or plan, between the violence of the attack and the noise- the creature's growls and some ditz screaming like an air-raid alarm - she couldn't concentrate long enough to shape a coherent thought. Some small part of her brain was embarrassed to realize that she was the source of the screams. She did manage to land one solid kick to the creature's face; snapping it's head back and showing that it was exposed to the waistline now.

Br. Gerrard seemed to be trying to get in between them, but succeeded in blocking her more than he did the vampire. It ducked away from whatever Gerrard had tried, then attempted to pin her free leg down with it's other arm.

Anne and the vampire traded blocked swipes for blocked kicks, then it gave up and just grabbed her already pinned leg up around the knee. It then began pulling itself hand-over-hand up her body, freeing itself past the hips from the ground in the process. She kept kicking and stomping at it, but was rapidly running out of leverage as it crawled higher up her.

"At least the screaming stopped.", Anne thought, changing to a new strategy. Rather than continue to kick, she planted her foot on the vampire's collar bone and pushed, levering it's head and teeth away from herself.

Br. Gerrard stepped in then. He had a cross held in a two-handed grip, which he thrust into the creature's face. As it reared back, he advanced. Once it reached the limits of it's arms, it was forced to let go of Anne and continue to withdraw.

Anne pulled her injured leg away from the vampire, and wobbled upright, whimpering from the pain and fear. She stared at the confrontation being played out before her eyes.

Br. Gerrard had the thing pressed almost supine, the vampire trapped between his cross and it's still buried legs. But it would stay neither trapped nor buried for long. While avoiding the cross, the vampire kept swiping its talon-tipped hands at Br. Gerrard's arms, trying to bat them and the object they held away, and allow it to get back up. At the same time, it was churning it's legs like a high-stepping dancer. With each step, more of it's legs pulled free of the ground. Once completely unburied, the vampire would be able to roll away from the cross and either attack or flee.

Anne stood rooted, stunned by the sudden violence and near paralyzed with terror. "This isn't happening. This *can't* be real. I'm having another of my nightmares, it'll end soon and I'll wake up in my room with Mom trying to comfort me..", her thoughts ran in useless circles.

Br. Gerrard took one hand off the cross to pull a small plastic squeeze bottle out of his pouch. The vampire took advantage of his momentary distraction to bat the cross away and rear up again. It lurched toward Gerrard, seeking to shred him into bloody confetti.

He stood his ground, spraying liquid from the bottle onto the vampire as it closed with him. The thin stream broke up, spattering across the vampire's lower face and upper torso. Every place where the liquid hit, the vampire's flesh steamed and boiled away in clouds of smoke. For the first time, it's growling roar turned into a hiss of pain.

Seeing that the thing *could* be hurt went a long way towards breaking Anne free from her panicked deadlock. Br. Gerrard's voice calling to her did the rest.

"STAKE! USE your STAKE! It's getting LOOSE, and I don't HAVE any MORE Holy WATER." Almost every other word was punctuated with another squirt of liquid. Br. Gerrard was trying for the vampire's eyes, but unsuccessfully. Still, the shielding arm that it raised to block out the Holy water blinded it no less thoroughly, although less permanently.

Anne came unstuck, and scrabbled for her purse. She dumped the garlic and half the other contents unnoticed on the ground while retrieving the stake she'd been given earlier that night. Clutching the sharpened wood in a clumsy overhand grip, as if it were an icepick, she rushed up to the vampire- stabbing downward into it's chest.

It swung at her and she stepped inside the blow, stabbing into the left side of the thing's chest several times with her stake. She had her free arm clenched around it for stability, almost as if they were slow-dancing. The vampire's own arm was caught between them, blocking it from getting it's teeth in close enough to bite. It's face was jammed only centimeters away from her's, the focused hate drilling from it's eyes at point-blank range. Anne kept punching holes in it with her stake, doing only incidental damage, fighting hard to keep from screaming again and sliding back into blind panic.

Br. Gerrard's shouting reached her, as from a long way off, "Center. The heart is in the center of the chest. Hit it there." She shifted her aim more to the midline of the vampire's body, and the second plunging thrust went home.

The anger left the vampire's eyes, replaced by a look of shock and surprize. Then, faster than thought, it's entire body sublimated into dust and ash. Part of the cloud condensed out all down the front of Anne's body, the rest drifting away on the night breeze. Anne stood dumbfounded. Sounding very small, she asked, "Where'd he go? What happened?"

Br. Gerrard came and stood next to her. "The vampire is dead. You slew it. When the demon is destroyed, the energy backwash blasts the human husk it had been inhabiting into ashes."

"Uh... uh, I think I swallowed some of it. I think I'm gonna be siiiick. . ."

Reaction hit her all at once. Anne pitched forward onto her hands and knees, crying and vomiting at the same time. Gerrard knelt beside the girl, gently stroking her back and speaking soothingly untill the retching and sobbing died away. When she seemed able to understand again he told her; "Anne, it's alright now. It's gone, we're safe. You've had a rough time tonight, but it's over. Let's get you home now."


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