Spliced

Present day...

For twenty more minutes, or was it longer? They travelled in complete silence. Then Sirius took a side road that looked suspiciously like more desert. Another ten minutes and they pulled up in front of a high metal gate with a small shack to the side. The fence continued endlessly in either direction.

“We’re here,” Sirius said, then added, “I think,” as an afterthought. He raised his eyebrows in question at Amanda.

She nodded but didn’t reply.

Cat looked out the window at the mounds of sand that carried on and on beyond the gate.

“Where? The middle of nowhere?” She asked sarcastically.

“Your drop off point,” Zephyr replied with an eye roll and a twisted smile.

Cat shot him a dark look.

Amanda rolled down the window. “Hello?” she yelled out.

For a few seconds nothing happened, then the door of the shack opened and a small head popped out. After a moment’s hesitation a tiny sandy-haired man stepped out with a big silly grin plastered all over his face.

“Hello!” He spoke like he’d consumed a lot more than his recommended dose of caffeine. “I’ve been expecting you. I’ll just open the gate.”

“Probably the most excitement he gets all week,” Cat murmured under her breath.

He dashed back inside his little shack and a few minutes later the gate swung open. A single-story square concrete building materialised in front of them.

“They must have some kind of camouflage spell on the surrounding gate,” Kass commented softly.

“All the way out here?” Cat raised an eyebrow skeptically “Why bother?”

“Planes, satellites, ... UFOs?” Falco shrugged “Maybe they don’t want to be seen.”

“No planes fly over this end of the continent, besides they’re a scientific facility not a military agency,” Cat replied, eyes narrowed.

“As far as we know”, Indi tried to inject as much spookiness into her voice as possible.

Cat rolled her eyes and resigned herself to looking out the window.

Sirius drove the van forward through the gate. When the van stopped Wolf reached over and opened the door. As everyone piled out of the van, an old man with glasses almost as round as himself walked towards them from the concrete building.

“Welcome,” he gave them a pleasant smile.

He gestured for them to accompany him into the building “Please, follow me. We’ll send someone to get your bags for you.”

Once they were all inside he turned to them and said “Please excuse me for a moment and make yourselves comfortable. I will be back shortly.” He disappeared through a door in the back wall and they were left alone standing in what seemed to be some sort of waiting area.

Cat flopped herself down on one of the couches and swung her feet up so the heels of her calf-hugging black leather boots were just hanging over the edge of the armrest. Zephyr gently pushed her legs out of the way, then sat himself down on the other end of the couch. Cat raised an eyebrow in warning but didn’t say anything, she just readjusted her position, crossed one leg over the other, leaned backwards into the chair, and ran her gaze around the room.

Amanda, meanwhile, had wandered across the room and was casually perusing an array of books on a small shelf. She pulled one out and flicked through the pages curiously. Falco and Sirius made themselves comfortable on the other couch. A mirror spanned wide across the wall directly opposite them, just another item to distract guests from their wait. Indi perched herself on one of the armrests and couldn’t help checking out her own reflection.

Unlike the vampires from stories, Indi could see her reflection quite well. As long as she was wearing her glasses. Falco often joked that she really was as blind as a bat, another allusion to the old legends. Turning into bats was not a vampire thing at all, and all vampires had exceptionally good vision, although sensitivity to bright light was common. Indi’s poor eyesight however, had been inherited from her father, who wasn’t a vampire at all, but a witch like most of her companions on this adventure. The violet colour, light sensitivity, and other vampiric features she had inherited from her mother. Indi could see a little better in low light but she was still terrible at the details.

Her eyes jumped from her own reflection to each of the other women in the room and back again. She envied Cat’s well-earned physique, Kass’s natural pretty pixie features, and Amanda’s sun-kissed skin. Indi loved to lie in the sun. The entire sea-facing side of her house was nothing but windows. However, once again her genetics betrayed her. Being part vampire meant not only could Indi never tan but that if she spent even more than a few minutes in the sun without her special sunscreen she’d burn very quickly and very severely. At least part of being a vampire also meant having an efficient metabolism. Indi probably could have had Cat’s physique if she’d wanted, but that would have meant exercise of some sort and the only place Indi liked to break a sweat was in a sauna. So, while she was pretty far from fit she would likely never find herself getting too pudgy, even though she did like to try.

She glanced back out the window. It faced roughly east, and at this time of day the sun was hidden overhead and more to the other side of the building. She wished she’d taken one more moment to appreciate its’ rays on the way into the building. Any other vampire might be looking forward to a few days in an underground bunker, but Indi already missed the light.