Chapter 15: Messing with Vampires

Lexi loaded the flare gun. "Okay, does everyone remember the plan?" she checked.

All three of us nodded. It was arranged that Lexi would formulate this attack since she was the only one who had been here before.

I pulled four overalls from my bag. Each was treated with chemicals that would hide our scent as we ventured into forbidden territory.

"Remember. Above all things keep your identity secret. My dad will literally slaughter me if he found out about this. Chop me up and maybe even keep me in a fridge," she mentioned casually.

"Hanged, drawn, and quartered," I chuckled.

"Bound, bagged, and tossed in to drown," Trisha chimed in.

"Not before being kept on nothing but water for six weeks," chirped Dylan.

"Okay girls I get it. Lattis is getting irritated," Lexi cut us off.

We shared a laugh as we donned the overalls.

"Okay. Let's go." We split up, Lexi taking Dylan and me taking Trisha.

Trisha and I flattened our bodies to the earth while Lexi and Dylan crept round to the side of the cave. We crawled up farther and farther up the hill.

We had to belly crawl over about fifty meters of ground. It wasn't all grass either. It was hollows, shrubs, fallen branches, insects, and a few snakes.

Trisha was an oh-so-wonderful companion on this crawl, squealing every five minutes. "There's a bug on my nose!" "Eek, an earthworm." "Look, Cindy, a hedgehog!" "OMG, was that a shooting star?"

"Trish, at that rate we're gonna be late for our own shooting star," I answered sternly.

She kept quiet for five more minutes, then began again.

"Hey Cindy, come check this out." "Whoa, what is that?" "Cindy you're leaving me behind!" "I can't believe we're out after curfew." "What will Alpha do if he finds out?" "Have you ever worried that the sky will fall?"

"Trish I swear if you don't shut it this instant I will carry out all the threats we discussed at the foot of this hill!" I hissed in exasperation.

She didn't say anything else, so we made it to the top of the hill.

"There's the boulder Lexi mentioned," said Trisha, suddenly growing up.

With our wolf strength, we pushed the boulder off it's spot but not down the hill. We took off the shovels we had strapped on our backs.

"Let's hope we get out of this alive," I said resolutely and got stuck in.

We dug into the hole as quietly as we could. When we had dug a foot deep, we began to use our hands to scoop up dirt. We scooped carefully, sice we could already hear the hollowness beneath it.

Finally, the hole broke through. We could suddenly hear the voices of many, many people in the cave below. I was the first to place my eye on the hole.

What I saw amazed me.

It was pitch black, but that didn't pose much of a challenge to my wolf eye.

I saw, several meters below me, a man and woman standing in the middle of the cavern. The man was speaking aloud, possibly making announcements or doing a speech. And above and around him and the woman, along the walls, sat tier upon tier of bats, hanging upside down on their perches and listening attentively. The bats would give applause when necessary, and each one of them had a pair of glowing green eyes.

Vampires.

Lexi had promised to show me some of the other supernatural beings, and she gleaned information from unknown sources about when the nearest vampire coven would be hosting their King and Queen. On the designated night, Lexi had plotted for me to be able to see them, and we would play a prank on them.

Which is why I am here, watching them through a hole in the ground, and Lexi and Dylan are hiding near the mouth of the cave.

I backed up and let Trisha see, while I readied the camera. Surprisingly, she did nothing more than gasp quietly. She didn't jump up and down in glee; right now she was as serious as they come.

I was impressed with her ability to switch demeanors; she could be childish and irritating, but she could be serious and goal-oriented when need arose.

When she was done ogling, I placed the camera at the hole. We watched the hundreds of green eyes through it for a few minutes, then I nodded at Trisha.

She nodded back and pulled out her phone. She texted Lexi.

In another minute, through the camera, we saw a great yellow light flying into the cave below. The King and Queen immediately shifted into bats just as small as the rest, while confusion reigned in the cave. All bats rose from their perches and began fluttering wildly about. All of them stopped speaking English and switched to an earsplitting, high-pitched screeching that bounced and echoed in the cavern.

After thirty seconds, I realized that the bats were not panicking; instead, the eternal fluttering and flapping was meant to confuse the apparent enemy while the largest bats assembled around the smallest ones. Ingenious, really.

Trisha and I watched and snickered as the hubbub died down. The flare was beginning to subside, and some of the bats came forward to investigate it.

When they found out that it was nothing but a flare, there was an uproar.

We giggled.

The vampire King and Queen changed beck into their human forms. "This is outrageous!" the King bellowed. "Find them and bring them in at once!"

"Are they going to be okay?" Trisha voiced her concern.

"I think so," I said. "Lexi seemed pretty confident." I smiled at her. "Don't worry," I said, and it calmed her down greatly.

"We should go. The prank is over," she said calmly, but I could tell that she wanted to get out of danger as fast as possible. I did too, so I stopped the video, pocketed the camera, and helped Trish push the boulder back. I began looking for a way to get off this hill undetected. We silenced our phones so they would make no noise.

After an hour of careful creeping and crawling, we made it to the bottom. Avoiding the cave mouth, we escaped towards our own pack lands.

When we reached what we deemed to be a safe distance, we took off.

We tore across the acres at top speed for miles without stopping. When we were almost at the pack house, Trisha collapsed on the ground and laughed. I joined her and we laughed together, rolling in the grass and holding our sides. We laughed until our breath was spent and our sides ached so badly we could barely talk.

Still lying down, we plucked out our phones to see the same messages on our screens.

"Where are you two? Are you okay?"

"We made it back to pack lands. You?"

I texted her back.

"We're alright. Only about a mile to the pack house. The video is safe in my pocket."

I waited.

"Great! We'll be there in ten. Meet us at the back."

We got there and met up with Lexi and Dylan, and shared another laugh. We showed them the video. They laughed and Lexi told us what had happened.

"When we blasted the gun, we didn't stop to see what would happen next. We were already naked at the time, with our clothes hanging in bundles tied to our stomachs. We just shifted and ran away as fast as we could. After a few minutes, we smelled that the fastest vamps were gaining on us, so we squeezed into a small abandoned jackal's cave and lay low.

"The vamps didn't come for us. They couldn't pick up our scent, thanks to those chemicals, so when the coast was clear, we made a break for it.

"If this isn't the best adventure I have ever had, I don't know what is. In fact, not many can top this one."

I wholeheartedly agreed.

*Picture of Trisha*