Revelation
“A week ago, the neighbor saw him near the vampire territory; what’s going on in your father’s head? Those creatures are dangerous.”
Talia listened almost in a whisper to her grandmother as her mind wandered. Her thoughts were out at night, illuminated by the crescent moon; it was exactly three days until the full moon. She had given her father up for incorrigible; now all she could think about was the week she was going to spend unemployed because humans were forbidden to leave their homes during the wolf mating season. Since her mother’s death, David has taken to being an irresponsible father. From being a man of strong character, he became one whose debts piled up, leaving the responsibility of the household to her.
She continued to wash the dinner dishes while listening to her elderly grandmother when knocking on the front door suddenly brought them to silence. It was unusual for them to have visitors at that hour; the villagers preferred to socialize during the day and never arrived unexpectedly. She glanced at the old woman, but Nyree shrugged, noting she didn’t know who it was. The knock was repeated, this time the sound louder, and he had no choice but to go and see who it was. As she passed through the living room, she saw her father sitting in front of the television, oblivious to the knocking a few feet away. Talia rolled her eyes and approached the door, but when she peeked through the peephole, she saw no one. She waited a few seconds, and then they knocked again.
“Who is it?” she asked, intrigued to see no one on the other side but knowing she was there.
She got no answer, and the eerie silence gave her a knot in her stomach. She was about to ask again who it was, but her father nudged her aside. Talia watched him with narrowed eyes; something wasn’t right with David’s attitude. When he opened the door, a man with pale skin, perfectly coiffed dark hair, deep red eyes, and dressed in a tailored dark suit, flanked by three men who looked just like him, stood in the middle of the doorway. When the leader smiled at her father and the prominent fangs came into view, Talia was left with no doubt that this was a vampire. What they were doing there, in her house, was what bothered her.
“Where is Nikolai’s money?” demanded the leader in a deep voice as he took a few steps into the house.
“I couldn’t get it, Dorian,” answered David, his voice showing the fear he was feeling at that moment. “Please tell Nikolai to give me a little more time.”
Dorian exchanged glances with the rest of the vampires who came in behind him and closed the door, then turned his gaze to David and smiled at him full of disdain.
“I promise to get it. Tell him to give me a week,” David begged.
The angry faces let Talia know that her father was in deep trouble. They lent money, but they liked to be paid back on the agreed date. David had asked him other times, but Talia had helped him pay off his debt. Fear stuck in her chest. If her father hadn’t told her he owed money, the situation she was in was more serious than she supposed.
Before Talia could speak, to say that she was going to help him pay, the vampire named Dorian walked up to stand in front of David and grabbed him by the collar. Lifting him with one hand and separating his feet from the floor.
“If you couldn’t get anything so far, do you think if we give you a few more days, you’ll be able to make it?” the vampire scoffed. “Your time to pay is over; your game is up.”
David’s face was turning ashen with each passing second. Talia thought that if she kept squeezing his neck, death would end his life right then and there.
“Let him go, you’ll kill him!” she screamed, approaching the two men and grabbing the vampire by the hand that gripped her father’s neck. “If you kill him, they won’t get the money; that’s what they’re interested in, isn’t it?”
Dorian gave her a look loaded with irony as if she were an annoying gnat. But he dropped David, so she assumed his words were so true that they bore no doubt. The vampire approached her with slow, graceful steps.
“Your father is bad news for business. If he doesn’t pay, we have to show the deadbeats what’s going on with them, understand?”
“If they think that about my father, why are they lending to him? It’s not the first time they’ve done it, and I don’t think it will be the last,” Talia challenged him.
For an answer, she received a wicked smile that showed sharp fangs. She didn’t need a verbal response; it was very clear why they did it; the power they wielded was a better incentive than money. Angrily, she turned to her father.
“How much do you owe him?”
“A hundred thousand dollars,” David replied as he ran a hand over his bruised neck.
“How much?!!!” exclaimed Talia, unable to believe the figure her father owed. With her voice cracking in anguish, she asked him. “What did you do with so much money?”
“A business deal that didn’t go so well,” David replied.
Talia expected to see regret in his eyes, but all she saw was a man angry at having been caught. Not a dollar of that money was spent on the house; her father wasted it on a business that she was sure had no future.
“Who’s visiting us, Talia? Can you take me to the living room?”
Her grandmother’s voice brought her to her senses. If it had been up to her, she would have left David to his fate, but she knew that her sick grandmother would not stand for him to be killed. With a deep sigh, she turned to the leader of the vampires.
“I’ll help you pay the money; just ̶please, we need a little more time.”
“You have three days to pay,” Dorian replied.
“But ̶ that’s too little time.”
“It’s not my problem,” the vampire shrugged. “In three days, I want the money.”
David beat Talia to the punch and assured them that they would have the money by the date indicated. However, he couldn’t say more; with impressive speed, the vampire was on top of him, hitting him so violently that the man had no time to escape or defend himself.
Talia expected her heart to break into a thousand pieces at the sight of her father being mistreated, but she felt nothing. Years of struggling to survive and give her grandmother a dignified life, while he showed up when she needed him, did not let her feel sorry for him.
The beating ended when David fell to the ground after being hit with an accurate blow.
“Three days, we won’t give you any more time if you don’t pay ̶” The threat hung in the air, as powerful as the dangerous vampire.
Without another word, Dorian turned and walked out of the house, followed by the other vampires who had stood aside as he made it clear why they were feared in the city. The silence that followed was terrifying; the aura of danger continued within the room.
With slow steps, Talia approached her father and kneeled beside him. David was breathing heavily, warning that, despite the hard blows, he had not fainted.
“Wake up; we have to get money to pay your debt,” Talia ordered, as anger boiled inside his body.
He looked at her with his face twitching in pain and some tears falling from his eyes.
“At least give me a few hours to recover,” he asked with difficulty in his voice.
“Time is what you don’t have, David. They’re going to kill you if you don’t pay him; you understand that, don’t you?”
He knew he was right; vampires were not to be trifled with. Reluctantly, he tried to stand up, and when he couldn’t, he had no choice but to ask for her help once more.
“When you’re done with this debt, leave and don’t bother us anymore,” she asked him before going to the kitchen where her grandmother was.
In the following days, Talia and her father sought support from former family friends, hoping they would offer help, but to no avail; they all said the same thing: I don’t have any money. Desperation began to consume them as the days began to pass, and the extension time was coming to an end. They knew they had to do something; the money from honest work was not enough, and the vampires were not going to let themselves be convinced again.
“You’ll have to flee the city,” Talia said to David at noon on the third day.
“No, this is my home; I’ll see how I get more time,” he protested. “They’re going to give it to me.”
She looked at him with pity. She didn’t think it possible that the vampires would want to do that, though she hoped, for her grandmother’s sake, that she was right.
