DRAMA NOVEL ONLINE Chapter CHAPTER TWO
THE NEW YORK SKYLINE had a thunderstorm approaching with the occasional flash of lightning in the distance, and as Lauren gazed, she hoped it wasn’t the mood of things yet to come. Besides regretting the loss of Michael, she had a peculiar feeling going through her. Usually, the feelings were a bit clearer, but this warning remained murky if that’s what it was. Unsettled and uncomfortable, something was disturbing her comfort zone, and she had a conflict of feelings about missing Michael. This time she couldn’t tell if the warning was for her. Perhaps something big and nasty was getting ready to go down. She hoped it didn’t mean that Michael was in serious trouble.
The day was fiery and humid. The skyscrapers stood seemingly in defiance of the approaching weather. A few faces looked out of those windows with hopelessness as if they wanted to leap. The state of New York City was scarier than it had ever been. Rush hour traffic was heavy and impatient, with two large men engaging in fisticuffs in the middle of the street, the battle evenly matched. One tripped and fell awkwardly, skinning both of his knees. A wife’s screams for her husband to return to his shiny silver Mercedes-Benz went unanswered. He quickly got up, and then they went right back at it. Many people watched the battle for entertainment value. A blond 7-year-old boy in the backseat of a red Toyota Yaris covered his eyes as it was too much for him.
Lauren had settled into her apartment in New York, but she couldn’t get Michael out of her head, and she had never felt so alone. The days were long and the nights longer. The loft was large with shiny hardwood floors, and her furniture didn’t appear to occupy enough space, like miniatures in a dollhouse, but there was a place in her heart that also felt empty. Michael’s face filled most of her free time. That she missed him wasn’t a surprise, but the fact that she missed him to the extent she did certainly was. He had taken her heart without permission, ingratiated himself into her soul, absolutely nothing she could do about it. The damage was accomplished. Lauren couldn’t punch him for that. She returned to the day he had hired that guy to throw the note in the bottle from his boat, which lifted her mood. It made her smile.
The four rectangular windows were horizontal to the floor; they were huge and let in a lot of light. She had a large black sectional sofa with a chaise, a black reclining love seat, and in between a square glass coffee table with her swords resting on top. There was a curio cabinet with photos and knickknacks, and Michael’s note to her was inside it, still in the Coke bottle. The ceilings were the tallest she had ever seen, but the whiteness was not to her taste. It needed a splash of color. Someday she would take care of it but not today. The vast wall space dwarfed even her large Florida paintings of palm trees leaning over the water.
Lauren sat on the sofa, starting to read a new Dean Koontz novel almost a half dozen times, but her mind was distant, and she couldn’t get into it; it was hard to concentrate on anything. She alternately paced and then stared out the window. New York’s pace was hectic, even more so than Boston’s. There were many things to do and see, but she didn’t want to do or visit any of them. The nasty vampires were thicker here; she killed three in less than a week. One had had a spell on him, made his way surreptitiously behind her, and almost took her head. If it hadn’t been for that 10-year-old girl that screamed at her, she would probably be dead. She would take their heads if she ever discovered who the hell was providing the evil ones with magic.
The pot that was New York was beginning to boil. People were even more irritated with the oppressive heat; some felt like they were melting. People lost weight and hope, and some moved out of the city. Add the daily slayings making the mood a mixture of anger and bleakness. A story posted in the New York Times on the hopelessness of it all depressed many people, making them want to track down the writer and pound the snot out of him. The reporter was given a two-week vacation just in case the death threats had some validity. So many New Yorkers were at their breaking point these days.
When Lauren was bored or bothered, she liked to clean. However, the place was already shiny and clean, and she could not find a single dust bunny. And the painting was too smelly. Perhaps her mind needed to be vacuumed out, but that was one thing that she couldn’t accomplish. With the seriousness of her job, it wasn’t good to be distracted. Distracted in battle was an excellent way to get killed. She desperately wanted to cut something or someone in two. On top of everything else, Lauren began to suffer from a lack of sleep.
“I’m so bored, yet I don’t want to do anything, and here I am talking to myself!” Her lonely gray-blue eyes examined the place and thought the space was missing something important, and of course, she knew that what it wanted was Michael. She had to snap out of it soon. Her Nutrisse blue-black hair was short and sassy. Lauren turned away from the windows and sighed because she missed those hazel eyes. He had stalked her for quite some time before she finally agreed to a single date, but it had become much more. Now she longed for him whenever she wasn’t battling evil vampires. She was starting to feel like a lovesick teenager, and she didn’t like it. Love could be amazing or devastating; on occasion, it was both on the same day.
Lauren stared at the Supernatural brothers’ poster on the wall and then at the poster of Alexander and his female German Shepherd vampire dog Tessy. She stood immobile for quite a while, staring past the dog with her thoughts returning to Michael. The sheriff missed him on multiple levels, and she also missed Samantha. It wasn’t easy to make new friends when one was a red sheriff, especially those of the genuine variety. The excitement of dispatching nasty vampires had also lost some of its satisfaction. Lauren knew it wasn’t wise to put one’s happiness into the hands of another. Michael was back in Boston, and she regretted her decision even before she had arrived in the Big Apple. It was hard to find someone special, and now she felt she hadn’t fought hard enough for him. Those mixed feelings had turned into something substantial. Life was tricky like that.
“Maybe I should dirty the place so that I can clean it. Don’t even know why I took the damn day off.”
She had tried to call him but was not successful. Why he didn’t have a cell phone was beyond her, almost everyone else did. Those morons who strolled through the mall with their phones glued to their heads, spewing personal information too loud, were humorous and pathetic. “Oh yeah, I got a lump on my left testicle. I said I got a lump on my left testicle!”
Even Samantha, back in New York, had been unable to contact him. Michael’s absence made her days so much longer. On her next day off, she decided to fly back to see if they couldn’t make it work. After all, Boston wasn’t all that far away. It was the only thing she had to look forward to, getting Michael into her arms. All those years of being turned off emotionally made it hard to deal with. If necessary, she could bring him back in a trunk. That thought made her smile for the first time in days.
Lauren picked up her Samurai swords and held them touching at ninety degrees with her knees bent; she remained motionless as she went into a meditative state, transfixed like a statue. She stayed in that position for several minutes. Her level of concentration was at a higher intensity than most could obtain. The mind was wiped clean of all external distractions. She imagined several foes that approached. Lauren’s awareness was heightened; all her senses were razor-sharp. The mind was still as her muscles readied. The sheriff then went through a series of thrusts in a predetermined pattern, her swords cutting noisily through the air with the most impressive leaps. She parried, blocked, and decapitated in a fluid motion as natural to the sheriff as water in a brook.
Then she envisioned multiple attackers with swords as she went into kill mode, slicing and dicing. There were two males and a female, all with swords. She dished out controlled fury combined with experience and style. It was art in motion as she tumbled through the air with her blades striking at deadly angles.
Her front door was kicked off its hinges and flew across the room. It was no dream as her new home had sustained damage. Lauren faced the two intruders and smiled; Milton and Clifford blurred into the living room and were translucent. The spell that had allowed them entry without permission wasn’t exactly working as it should have. That was the thing with spells; people had to know what they were doing. The effects could be unhealthy, even deadly. They were tall, blonde, and skinny. Clifford’s hair was touching his shoulders while Milton had a brush cut. They were after bragging rights for killing a red sheriff, and there was now a prestigious club for biters that had killed sheriffs.
Lauren kicked Clifford with such fury that she drove him back out the door. Milton deflected a single attempted blow before decapitating him, as she was in no mood to play. He didn’t immediately turn to dust because of the spell. Sparkles of lights danced through his headless torso. Clifford rushed in, screaming like an insane samurai warrior; she knocked the sword out of his hand, and as he ran to retrieve it, she took his head. Lauren let herself fall onto the sofa and stared for almost five minutes at the corpses that hadn’t yet turned to dust. Milton was the first to pop and turn to dust, then several seconds later, the same thing happened to Clifford. It was time to get the vacuum cleaner. She had some cleaning to do after all.