Zen and the Art of Vampires

I don't know what the librarians thought as I flung myself through the doors. I only had a glimpse of startled expressions as I waved a friendly hand at them before heading to the back study area.

"The Zorya has come!" one of the women-ghosts yelled out from her spot at the end of one of the stacks, evidently acting as sentry. "She has come!"

"About time, too," Dagrun sneered.

"Karl!" Marta screamed, rushing past me in a flurry of ghostly nothingness. "Is he… Karl!"

Just as I emerged from the stacks there was a loud crashing noise, followed immediately by the tinkle of glass.

"There! He's there!" Ulfur cried, rising from the ground and pointing at a shattered window.

"Karl?" I asked.

"I'm here," came the shaky, somewhat muffled reply. I ran to the window and looked out, voices calling behind me indicating that other library patrons had heard the crash.

"Did he take anyone else?" I asked softly.

"No. We wouldn't let him," Hallur said with grim victory in his voice as he faded to a translucent state. He limped slightly and appeared to be bleeding, but grinned. "He'll know better than to attack the lot of us again, he will."

A woman behind me, assumedly a librarian, stopped next to me and started pelting me with questions.

"I'm sorry, I'm American, I only speak English," I told her, clutching my side where a stitch pulled painfully.

"What has happened here?" the librarian asked, switching into flawless English. She waved a hand toward the window as others arrived, all of them viewing the display with confusion and ire.

"It looks to me like someone went through the window," I said, peering out of the shattered window to a tiny patch of greenery. A few people who evidently had been strolling through the area were clustered together, pointing at a direction opposite the library.

"I will call the police," the librarian said with thinned lips. She gave me a piercing glance. "You will not leave."

"No, of course not," I lied, giving her a bright smile.

She evidently issued orders to the other librarians, herding the patrons out of the bits of shattered glass. I waited until they had gone about fulfilling her commands before turning back to my ghosts.

"Come on, folks. We've got to find you all a new hiding spot."

I smiled at the patrons who stood in the stacks, chatting about what happened. They stopped talking when I flung myself out of the window, managing to tear the leg of my pants on a shard of glass I'd been taking pains to avoid.

"Do not hurt yourself, Pia," Ingveldur called as they drifted out the window after me. "Oh! You are bleeding. Hallur, the reaper is bleeding."

"So am I. That Ilargi was a tough one. But we were stronger." His face sobered. "But it wasn't enough to save Jack."

"I know you tried," I said as we hurried away. "It's my fault, really. If I was any sort of a proper Zorya, I'd have had you to Ostri by now."

"Do not blame yourself," consoled Marta, clutching Karl's arm and sending him a look of love so profound it brought tears to my eyes. "If it was not for you, the Ilargi would have taken Karl, too."

"No, you all saved him," I said, feeling the full extent of my guilt.

"We were near the end of our strength," Ulfur confessed. "We could not have opposed him much longer. He ran because he heard you."

I felt moderately better, but strengthened my determination to see that my friends received their reward. If I couldn't take them, then I would move heaven and earth to find someone who could.

We managed to get away from the area just as the police sirens were heard, although I kept looking over my shoulder as we headed for the open spaces and busy area that was the waterfront park.

"Where are we going?" Ulfur asked as we pulled up en masse at the edge of the park.

"That is a very good question. I wish I had an answer to it." I scanned the area, looking for somewhere safe to hide for a bit while I made some plans. My arm burned with an increasing pain that I put down to the fading of adrenaline. I garnered some odd stares as people noticed the blood flowing down my arm, driving me to take up a position under the trees on the far side of the park.

"Pia, you are hurt. You should see a doctor," Marta's soft voice chided me.

I knelt in a slightly damp bed of discarded fir needles cast down by the tall tree that shielded me from the sight of the rest of the park, rocking for a moment as I tried to get a grip on the pain now radiating with increasing intensity from my arm.

"We should get to safety," Agda said, her voice even reedier than normal. "That Ilargi may come back."

"We can take care of him," Ulfur said, flexing his muscles in that time-honored male attitude of bravado.

"Aye, and just how are you expecting to do that?" Agda asked, squatting a few feet away from me. "I'm all done in. I don't think I could so much as move that pebble if my life depended on it."

There were murmurs of assent from the others.

My head swam suddenly.

"Pia?" Marta's face came into view. "She's fainting!"