Bloodied claws by Marc962 (polar express read aloud .txt) 📖

many years invaded his nostrils, the smell of blood lust and death. The smell of vampires. Jacob's eyes shot open, he was already sitting up. His head darted around, searching for the leeches, examining every detail of the room around him. He was in an old abandoned wooden room. He was lying down on a double bed with plain white sheets. The room was large plain, no decoration of any kind. The walls were an eggshell white color. To his right was a window covering most of the wall where it sat, long dark shades covering nearly every inch of the window blocking out most of the light, only stray strands of the dim gray light slipping through the small tears of the shades, signaling it as dawn. To his right sat two doors, one next to him, open, leading into a dark room, the other closed net to two closet doors. Cautiously, Jacob walked through the open door and felt his hands around the walls, and found what he was looking for, the light switch. He flicked the switch. The ceiling fluttered into bright life, illuminating the room. He saw it was a bathroom. The floor was covered with square white tile. To his left sat a plain white sink/cabinet with an oval shaped mirror sitting overhead. On it sat a tube of toothpaste and a pack of soft bristle toothbrushes. To the back sat a large bath, white like everything else, covering the entire back of the medium sized room. Jacob walked up to the mirror and examined himself. As he stared into the mirror, he found a handsome young man with a thin coating of dirt on his skin staring back at him. He grabbed a brush from the bathtub and began to clean himself. When he was finished, he turned off the lights and left the bathroom and examined the room once more. In the corner sat a simple wooden closet with two white painted wooden knobs. Curiously, Jacob strolled to the closet and pulled the knobs, opening the closet. It was a slightly narrow walk-in closet. It was full of different outfits. All of them were in his size and even his kinds of favorite styles. Slowly, he closed the double doors and sat down on the bed, trying to think of an explanation for everything. Jacob wasn't sure what to think. He couldn't remember anything from yesterday that might have led up to this. There was nothing. He flipped through ideas of how this might have happened, getting to his feet and pacing back and forth in the room. Kidnapping no, interrogation no, sleepwalking no. Jacob went through every possible scenario he could think of and none of them fit. None of them could end up with him here. A thought crossed his mind at that moment, momentarily breaking him from his nervous trance. Where was he anyway? He stopped pacing and looked towards the window curiously. Slowly, Jacob walked up to the window, and pushed away the curtains, and stared, his brain refusing to believe what his eyes saw, but unable to deny what he saw. Below him was a city. A large city filled with people walking on the street and no forest or even small patch of woods in sight. Cars drove around the brick streets. People bustled in small crowds on the sidewalk. And then he knew why the vampire smell was so strong, everywhere he looked he saw one of the leeches, hidden inside the small groups of people who passed by, unseen by the humans. They were everywhere. The city looked like it belonged in the 1700's, with its brick streets and old school fashion trend that everyone seemed to be wearing. He saw that it was lightly raining outside, small drops of rain falling from the gray clouds in the sky. Jacob's knees wobbled, then buckled under him, he fell onto the bed, his thoughts doing NASCAR races in his head, trying to wrap his mind around the idea of what was happening, but simply couldn't.

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Jacob had spent nearly an hour in his room trying to comprehend what was happening, and after failing miserably, he calmed himself down and stopped trying. He had decided to wear something plain yet indifferent, and exceeded all expectations. It was just how he was, he liked to stick out. He picked a simple red outfit. Specifically, he wore a blank red t-shirt, along with a matching loose red rain jacket and white and red Nikes. He even found red-dyed jean shorts to match. The clothes even had a human scent to them, as if the previous owner knew the next owner would require a strong human scent. The rain on his skin, might calm his nerves, Jacob thought to himself. He was now walking through the streets simply wandering around, not really going anywhere. It turned out 'his' room was a guest room inside of a small abandoned church hidden by several tall apartments, making it harder to notice. It was ironic, a werewolf calling a church his home and sanctuary. In the end, Jacob was right, the rain did calm him down, even though he could feel the vampire's eyes blazing into him for a moment, then floated over him, the human scent throwing them off. But he didn't care about what they thought of him, what anyone thought about him, he walked without a single care in the world, as if the weight of the world was once on his shoulder, but now finally lifted and enjoying the relief, and showed it every way he could without breaking the law. He forgot what it was like to be around people. To be surrounded by conversation and life and opportunity. To be his old joking, bold, kind-hearted self he used to be at his life in Jameson village. Even the humans stared at him funny, wondering where the newcomer had come from and what he was doing here. As he walked proudly with a feeling of overwhelming relief, cars passed him by and even a few old school New England carriages. He examined the city as he walked, but didn't stray too far from the church. It felt good to have a place to call home, Jacob thought to himself. For nearly an hour, he walked around the city never even considering where he might end up. The city was called Sazura. A city famous for its loyalty to the old ways, as the old woman Jacob had questioned had said. After the old lady had finished filling in the blanks, Jacob walked around to ponder over the new information. The city was several centuries old, all the way back to the early 1700's. The city was also famous for its strange laws and police force. One such strange law was a citywide law that during curfew, any 'incidents' are dismissed. Also the law enforcers there were called the Mulhar Fatal

. The locals believed it to be a simple tile with complicated foreign wording standing for justice and law or something along those lines. When he asked her if there had ever been a large scale epidemic or series of strange unsolved murder cases in the city, she said that tons of people in the city did indeed catch a rare and quiet strange disease around the time she herself was a young girl. The symptoms were pale skin and numbness of the skin, the victims not feeling or noticing the temperature's rise and fall. The doctors had cured it, but the symptoms remained and passed through the bloodlines, becoming hereditary. Nearly half of the population of the city had the symptoms for life. At first Jacob thought he heard the old lady wrong, her words containing a secret truth to them that she herself didn't notice. But Jacob knew he heard the her right, and if that were the case then that meant that the vampires across the city literally were the law and half of the population since Mulhar Fatal

was the Portuguese term for vampires. All the vampires were the same in two ways according to the old woman. They all had pale skin and didn't mind the extreme temperatures, high or low. With those simple pieces of information, Jacob learned that the old woman's words were true. Every age group was 'infected' with it, from old raspy breathing men to young arrogant teenagers. He was tempted to do something about this, to maybe alerting the humans to the presence of the vampires, or even taking on a quest to kill all the leeches, but found he couldn't. For the first time in years he was looked at but not hated because of who he was or what he had done. He erased the idea of action and walked on, his hood down. His hair sticking up defiantly. He could have done that all night long. After nearly another half an hour of walking around aimlessly, Jacob noticed out of the corner of his eye that a small group of people were coming toward him, all of them shrouded in black robes, their faces unseen behind him. At first Jacob ignored them, he was too happy to be bothered with these jokers, even though he knew he could pummel them in only a few moments, hoping they would soon go away if ignored. After a few minutes of tailing him, they increased their pace, ever so slightly trying to be unnoticed and unseen. But Jacob wasn't a fool, he knew what they were the minute they came within 3 miles of him. They were vampires, all three of them, probably acolyte level judging by their wardrobe and the strength of their vampire stench. Playing along, he casually walked on, preparing himself to be interrogated by the leeches. Soon they were upon him, right behind him and about to begin their questioning. Jacob turned casually, as if he had just noticed his pursuers presence behind him. But they surely didn't care when or if he even noticed them, restraining him as painfully as they probably could. The one on his right grabbed his right arm tightly and slammed him into the old brick building to his right. They surrounded him now, the one to his right tightening his grip on Jacob's arm until blood fell to the ground from the gash. Jacob winced in pain to play along, which wasn't very hard, his blood now gushing like a thick red stream of water from his arm. There were three of them, blocking any possible chance of escape. One in front, one on the left and the one on the right gripping his arm. Jacob played along and let a look of terror and pain slip into his face. As Jacob recovered himself, the one on the left gripped Jacob's other arm until blood gushed and fell to the ground, his red blood mixing with the rain, now resembling his other arm. Then the one in front of him thrust his hand forward and gripped Jacob's throat tightly, air barely making it to his lungs, but just enough for Jacob to still speak, these guys were pros, of that Jacob was certain. Jacob winced in agony, playing along, which wasn't hard in the least bit as the one in front bruised his neck with his hard grasp. As Jacob recovered himself, he examined his the three vampires every detail. He also noticed that everyone wasn't looking at them, avoiding them as if they ever did they themselves would be tortured the same as him. Jacob then knew he was on his own. No one was going to risk themselves for his sake, especially if they knew the real chances of escaping, if they knew the law enforcement was run and only populated by vampires. If he couldn't see their faces, he'd on their other features, such as their clothing, the shape and size of