Seattle, Shoefiti II: Shoefiti Serie, #2

By Tania M. Crespo

Paula won't rest until her mission is completed, even if she puts her life in danger to do so. He who has nothing to hide has nothing to fear, her new motto. Finding Diana in the USA will not be easy, but an unusual travel guide will help her get around such a vast country and find herself again. The girl who forsook her life in Madrid is gone, along with her psychology, and her kindness. Now she's just thirsty and wants revenge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Dec 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781547599066

Tania M. Crespo

(Madrid, 1982) Madrileña de nacimiento y breana de corazón. Estudiante de Grado de Lengua y Literatura españolas, escritora en prácticas y lectora compulsiva. Inconformista y reivindicadora nata. Cocinillas y madridista confesa.

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Seattle, Shoefiti II

Tania M. Crespo

––––––––

Translated by Heaven Love Bowland 

Seattle, Shoefiti II

Written By Tania M. Crespo

Copyright © 2019 Tania M. Crespo

All rights reserved

Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

www.babelcube.com

Translated by Heaven Love Bowland

Babelcube Books and Babelcube are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

SEATTLE

SHOEFITI II

TANIA M. CRESPO

Title: Seattle, Shoefiti II

© 2019, Tania M. Crespo

©From the texts: Tania Martínez Crespo

1st edition

All rights reserved

To Julia, my mother.

It is said that unlike friends, we cannot choose family,

But even if it were so, I´d choose you over and over again.

PROLOGUE

Paula got off the plane with an urge for blood. The tourist she'd enjoyed back in Toronto's airport hadn't quenched her thirst at all. the trip had taken just a little over five hours; to her, it felt more like five days.

Having been a vampire for five years now, she thought she was able to control the quantity of time necessary to quench her lust for blood. She'd tried every single day to accomplish this, to follow Sophia's life philosophy: not no feed upon humans. But her new wondering lifestyle made this very difficult. The main problem was having tasted immortal’s blood once there was no satisfaction when drinking mere human's vital fluid.

Paula headed towards the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport exit as fast as her feet could take her. Looking for the nearest taxi stand, she took the first cab available.

Living by night had as its greatest advantage null agglomeration.

As soon as she hopped inside the cab she disliked the driver's aroma, only 0.6% of the world's population has AB-type blood. It was the kind Paula disliked the most, as to her it seemed to have a very metallic taste to it. Ironically whenever she was extremely hungry her victim had it.

‘I so hate Murphy and his damned law’, she whispered to herself.

She let the driver —otherwise known as her next meal— know the name of the hotel where she would stay, and the naive man was on his way.

‘Do you know any bars nearby?’, she asked in perfect English, hoping the bar was less illuminated than the hotel.

‘Yes, ma'am’, the unsuspecting driver replied.

The bar was a few streets away from the hotel and poorly lit- just what she was hoping for.

The man let her know what the total owed was and Paula handed him the amount plus 20% more as a tip- knowing she would have it all back in a few seconds. The man's last action was to smile. She drank his blood until noticing his heartbeat slowing down and then completely stopping.

A year ago she would never have been able to kill an innocent person. Now she knew the meaning of morality.

The first week as a vampire her human traits remained intact, but in the nights that followed- after each encounter and also after finding out about the true conditions of her previous race- her human guilt, the one she felt every time she ended someone's life was practically gone.

––––––––

Once she settled herself in the majestic room she'd reserved at the Four Seasons in Seattle, she walked over to the window and, even though it was a moonless night, she noticed the view towards Elliott's Bay was impressive. Standing in front of such an incredible amount of water she realized how far away from home she was. Some six thousand miles separated Madrid from the Emerald City. And 9 different time zones, her wristwatch informed her as she compared it to the one in Puerta del Sol.

She had spent hundreds of days along with their respective nights chasing a herd of psychos and even though remorse no longer overcame her sometimes she was left to wonder,

How was she any different to those monsters? Then she'd tell herself over and over- as a way of psychoanalysis- that she always tried to cause as little damage as possible. She was a predator and her will to live was more powerful than the pity she felt when she had to kill.

As she entered the bar, she looked back briefly towards the taxi still parked on the sidewalk. No one would notice the corpse on the driver's seat; it looked very much like a man merely taking a nap.

With every second that passed, that burning sensation down her throat intensified. She needed a drink, now!

A couple of hours later when she walked out of the bar, she noticed the taxi still parked there. As dead to this city full of life as it could be.

It couldn't be left alone.

She thought about the man's family. There was no remorse about the murder, but she did feel guilty over the damage the victim's death would cause to a third party. She walked over to a telephone booth on the corner next to the bar and dialed 911. She gave the anonymous tip, hung up and was finally able to take a breath. She went back to the hotel. Upon entering her bedroom, she closed the curtains; the sun would come up in a matter of seconds. As for her, she tumbled into bed and fell asleep almost instantly.

––––––––

After a few hours of light slumber, Paula got up and went over to the bathroom to take a shower. Then walked over to the mini bar. She seemed to be living some sort of permanent hangover and the only thing quenching her thirst was drinking alcohol continuously, especially Bourbon. Rum had always been a personal favorite of hers, but ever since the transformation, her new body had not been accepting any other kind of alcoholic beverage.

She ordered room service, noticing a sort of vampiric appetite and human food was the answer.

While she waited for the food, she sat down on the bed with her handbag in front of her. She opened it to look at the files inside.

BOSTON

Paula left the floor she shared with Sophia as fast as her new vampiric speed would allow it. But because she was so nervous, the only items she remembered to take were her roommate’s purse, a safe she'd found buried in the closet, the cooler with plastic bags filled with blood, and the keys to the vehicle.

She drove all the way to the cabin in Cuerda Larga, searching in every nook and cranny. She grabbed anything which might be useful or with an emotional attachment to it and placed it inside the vehicle. Then went over to the garden where the Wolf Killer leaves were planted. More than a fence it looked like a fortress by now.

Next to the cabin's exterior wall, she noticed a white-water deposit, made from polyethylene. Fairly big, it was covered by a metal structure, similar to a square. Right beside this deposit, there was a dark brown wooden chest. She forced the steel lock securing the chest, opened it and took out a white and yellow striped hose, about ten meters long. Collecting all the aconitum she went back inside the cabin and boiled all of it the way Diana had described during their sessions. While the deadly potion cooled off, she returned to where she had parked her vehicle, taking along with her a piece about a meter long of the hose she'd grabbed from the wooden chest. She took out the antifreeze from the trunk and threw out its contents over a smooth rock nearby. Then she went to the gas deposit opened and, sucking up some gasoline with the hose, filled the container with it. She returned to the cabin.

Any other person having walked back and forth from vehicle to cabin four times would've been exhausted by now. But her new immortal condition allowed her to make the trip at least twenty times before even breaking a sweat.

The container she left on the wooden porch. Then proceeded to go back inside and fill with the Wolf Killer liquid two boxes she had found under the sink full of small glass bottles topped with a cork. These she carried and left right outside the cabin.

Going back to the garden she took out from the wooden chest a mattock and a shovel and proceeded to dig a ditch about a meter and a half deep. The cleaning up came next: she washed her face, changed her shirt for a new one, too revealing for her taste, which she'd found inside one of the bedroom's drawers. It still had tags on and everything, so she assumed it belonged to Diana. She walked towards the garden one last time and broke the deposit so that thousands of liters filled the ditch. Then went ahead and grabbed the container filled with gasoline and spread it generously both inside and outside the cabin. Paula lit some crushed newspaper and a cigarette taken from Diana’s handbag and dropped the newspaper all over the summerhouse.

She stood there watching the small dwelling being consumed by the flames all the while smoking that one cigarette.

When she had shared a floor with Mia, that is, Sophia, she had never understood her obsession over menthol cigarettes. She considered herself an occasional smoker, indulging only in social events. Then it came to her mind one time she'd asked Sophia for a cigarette right after eating, and it caught her attention how she always bought menthol. The Lucky Strike Click and Roll brand. The ones that had a tiny menthol pebble near the filter and when pressed, it turned a normal cigarette into a menthol. Paula had never done it, preferring to smoke them the way they were. Oddly enough, she seemed to crave the freshness of mint down her throat as it rather relieved her craving for blood. This thought made her smile. She began to understand Sophia and could only think about how she would've liked to have had her around for a bit longer. She got to know her minutes before her end, this thought made her extremely sad.

The fire took a while to die out, so she decided to use her time wisely by reading what she had brought along and hadn't been able to finish yet: the hundred-year-old book from Diana's grandfather. It explained why she was a monster.

A post-it, placed as a page separator, indicated where to continue reading.

The book told the story of a young woman, a result from the union of a werewolf and a witch. It all happened in what we now know as Louisiana, in the U.S. Spanish conquerors arrived at a region full of swamps or marshes at the beginning of the sixteenth century, crossing over roads and destinies with the native Americans who dwelled there.

Even though most of the time such encounters were not happy ones for neither party, at other times, when talking about humans we mustn't forget the emotional factor and the sexual impulses.

Within the land, a young Spanish sailor who had the werewolf gene met and made a native American fall in love with him. She who belonged to a natchesane small tribe —the avoyel— was known as Hina.

Hina had abilities as well: she was a shaman or a witch-doctor like most of the women on her tribe. Due to them abusing their black magic practices, nature herself decided to punish the avoyel by allowing fewer boys to be born. This became more noticeable with each passing decade. They were destined to oblivion, so the women decided to mingle with other tribes or even ethnic groups.

Both Hina and the sailor's lives met. They kept a relationship- emotional for her, physical for him- and a daughter was brought into this world. Much to her mother's disappointment. She was then named Nevaeh.

The young sailor traveled back from the Indies to Spain, leaving his newborn daughter and a lover in Louisiana. That abandonment filled Hina with rage. She planned a sacrifice to beg to the gods the return of her lover. She prepared for the ritual, which consisted in making her daughter bleed out, all the while taking her heart out, then eating the still beating tiny organ, and so connecting with the young one's father, forcing him to return. But the ritual was over before anyone damaged the girl's body. The five women who had gathered began to sing. A dark cloud began to form a storm above their heads. But the moment Hina raised a sharp stone above the tiny baby's pectoral, lightning struck down her forehead, dividing itself into four more and striking everyone present. This ended their despicable lives.

As for the baby girl, she was found five days later feeding on her mother's breasts, unharmed. An old avoyel woman carried her away from her mother's corpse. She had seen her amber eyes and knew the child was a reincarnated god.

Neveah massacred her people in the XVII century. By then a couple hundred