I uncap the Sharpie with a pop, then flip over my left hand to expose the palm. The sigil I drew on the clipboard earlier was roughly made of two concentric circles and a hexagon; I draw the two circles onto my left palm, then the hexagon onto my right. I close my eyes, then put my palms together as though in prayer, completing the sigil’s construction.
My stomach drops like I’m on the downward slope of a roller coaster. I wait for the nauseating momentum to end, for that bump-stop that signals arrival at a destination. And then I open my eyes.
I’m staring up at the chin of a King-Kong-sized version of the vampire receptionist, while a similarly giant machine resembling a microscope looms to the side. This room is similar to the one my body is in, white walls and tiled blue ceiling, just narrower with a door on one wall and another on the opposite labeled UTILITY CLOSET. The seeing sigil I penned onto the clipboard doesn’t let me swivel my gaze in different directions, but my field of view is so much bigger so as to be disconcerting, like my eyelids have been peeled off.
The receptionist is warbling out the chorus of “Hungry Eyes” in a low, scratchy alto. She presses a few buttons on the microscope-device, hums her satisfaction, and reaches up to pull off her hair. There’s no a cap under the wig, just a bald top with a sparse blond combover. And then she sticks a hand into her mouth and pulls out her teeth—oh, gross! I figured she’d have her real teeth filed into points like a lot of street vampires do, but nope, they’re all rotted to orange, jagged bits.
Her gargantuan fingers reach down for me. I can see individual wrinkles and gnarled, browning fingernails, and my vision criss-crosses with static as she disturbs the papers covering the sigil. She picks up the vacuum tube painted red inside—crap, my blood! She pierces the top with a syringe, sucking up about half the liquid, then leaking a few drops onto a fragile glass slide. Then she lifts the syringe up, up, up, tilting her head back and positioning it right above those rotting teeth and a slimy purple tongue—
The door slams open. “Put down the syringe, Lisa,” says a gruff voice. My blood runs cold as I recognize the face in the doorway: Icy Eyes.
Lisa rolls her eyes. “Oh, baby, you always show up at the worst times,” she grumbles, sounding like the unholy offspring of a 1950s lounge singer and a garbage disposal unit. It’s… kind of a turn-on.
“Don’t call me that. Where’s Phyllis?”
“Hmm?” She cocks her head, batting her oddly perfect eyelashes.
Icy Eyes doesn’t even notice. He stalks closer, his thin lips set in a murderous curve, and I feel my physical body shrink away from his presence. “Don’t pretend you don’t know exactly who I’m talking about. Where is the fucking receptionist?”
The faux-flirting melts off of Lisa’s face and drips into a scowl. “How am I supposed to know, beefcake? Maybe she got hit by a bus on the way to work, maybe it’s not my fault at all, ever thought of that?”
Icy Eyes narrows his eyes at her, his jowls shifting. Then he barges past her to the other side of the narrow lab, where the utility closet is.
Lisa knocks the clipboard with her hip as she chases after him—everything rushes upward, the world quakes, and I’m on the floor, staring up at the giant forms of her and Icy Eyes like one of those hapless human extras in Godzilla.
“Woah woah woah, hang on, you can’t go in there, there’s—there’s specimens in there, very important, very fragile specimens—”
Icy Eyes yanks open the door, revealing a slumped, heavyset female figure in a skirt and blouse. Its enormous, clouded eyes are staring directly down at me. The neck is slashed open, and the blood around the wound is smeared in shapes uncannily resembling a human mouth. One of the feet is stretched out toward me, clad only in ripped hosiery; Icy Eyes seems to notice that at the same time that I do, and his eyes trail from the dead receptionist’s bare feet to Lisa’s ill-fitting black heels.
“Lisa,” he growls. “You ate the receptionist.”
Lisa throws up her hands. “She was high, alright? She came in smelling like six pounds of cocaine and you know I can’t resist that shit, especially since you’ve got such a stick up your ass about letting me eat the rejects! And really, it’s the boss’s fault for coming up with this dumb clinic setup in the first place—just nab ‘em off the street like you did last time, problem solved!”
Icy Eyes squeezes his temples with meaty fingers. “I’d kill you now if you weren’t such a pain in the ass to replace,” he grits through his teeth. “Damn it Lisa, we’re on a schedule here. How many bloodbags did you chase off with that sickening face of yours?”
Lisa huffs. “I’m not that hideous, you’re just too used to your clean-faced human bimbos—”
“How many, Lisa?”
“…Three. Since lunchtime. Four, if you count the one that wandered in this morning and jumped out the window.”
“You stupid fucking vampire—”
Icy Eyes lunges, and Lisa skips backward with a “Hey hey hey! There’s a girl in the next room and I’ve got her blood right here, you gonna let me do my job or what?”
Icy Eyes takes another step forward—Lisa’s voice raises.
“Your next dose is ready!”
Icy Eyes stops. He glares at Lisa with tension in every line of his body, his fist clenched at his side. Then he straightens up and relaxes. His unhappiness is still obvious, but measured. “Prep the blood first.”
He leaves Lisa alone as she goes back to the counter. I detect what looks like an eyedropper, and the shine of another glass slide in her hand. She bends down, her form swelling momentously in my perception, picks me up, and tosses me back onto the countertop. Lisa flicks on a yellow light at the microscope’s base, then draws away. “Alright, let me go get your happy juice.”
“Don’t call it that,” Icy Eyes mutters, but Lisa is already toddling away to slide a plastic bin out of the utility closet.
There’s a folded plastic chair leaning against the wall; Icy Eyes starts setting it up while Lisa pulls two vials out of the bin, one yellow and one blue. Another syringe makes an appearance—dammit, I hate those things—and Lisa uses it to puncture the top of the blue vial, filling the syringe about halfway, then the yellow one, filling it to completion. The two liquids bleed together, turning… lavender? I’m no artist, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how color mixing works.
“You sure you don’t want to do this with a slower IV?” she says, flicking the side of the hollow tube. “It’ll hurt less.”
“Don’t have the time.” Icy Eyes is sitting in the chair backward, with his legs to either side of the chair’s backrest. He ducks his head and pushes his blond hair off the nape of his neck.
Lisa walks up behind him, the syringe ready in her hand. Then she pauses. Chews her lip.
“Hey uh, champ? You know these drugs I’m giving you are really dangerous, right? There’s a fifty-fifty chance they’ll kill you faster than the disease itself.”
Icy Eyes grunts. “Better to be a corpse than dead weight that breathes.”
Lisa’s nose wrinkles. “…Suuure, yay eugenics and all that, but…I’m a drug designer, not a doctor. I’m covering up the symptoms best I can, but if you really want a chance at beating this thing, the boss has all sorts of fancy mojo—”
Icy Eyes doesn’t budge, but his voice is a low, unsettling monotone. “If you tell anyone about this, especially the boss, we’re going on a walk in Central Park. In the nice sunny area, without trees. We’ll set a timer and see how long it takes for your first organ failure. And right before your heart gives out, I’ll set you on fire.”
Lisa shudders violently. “Ugh, fine, be that way.” And she stabs Icy Eyes in the back of the neck with the needle.
Every vein in Icy Eyes’s face stands to attention—from this distance, I can count them on one hand. His pupils shrink to the size of pinpricks, and his hands seem ready to snap the back of the chair with their death grip. Lisa ignores him, steadily pushing the plunger down until the syringe bottoms out. She p
resses an alcohol swab onto the point of entry, then carefully extracts the needle.
“There you go, Jacky boy. You’re set for, eh, maybe a week.” She ruffled his hair. Icy Eyes swipes at her with a hand like a bear paw, but she pulls back just quickly enough to avoid him.
“It’s Jax,” he snarls. “Enough with the pet names.”
“Whatever, hon,” Lisa answers, tossing out the used syringe. “Honestly, I’ve never met anyone who needed a blunt as badly as you.” She goes back to the microscope-device, peering into the lens. “Alright, blood’s ready to be processed.”
As Lisa messes with my blood sample, Jax stands up and puts the plastic chair back against the wall. The knobs on the microscope squeak as Lisa twists them. Jax rolls his head, then one shoulder, glancing at the corpse in the utility closet. He crosses his arms. Uncrosses them. Rolls his shoulder again, this time warily eyeing the black dome on the ceiling.
“Quit being so antsy,” Lisa scolds without looking up from the microscope. “You know as well as I do that all the cameras here are fake.”
What the f—oh, come on! So I could have walked out of here anytime?
“I don’t care about being watched, I care about getting my job done as quickly as possible.” Jax snaps. “But there happens to be an idiot, crackhead vampire standing in my way. Are you finished with that sample or not?”
Lisa frowns. “Hang on, I’m having trouble figuring this one out. Definitely anomalous, some kind of… disease?”
“If she’s sick, we can still use her. Illness doesn’t taint virgin blood.”
Lisa adamantly shakes her head. “But it might not be a disease. Could be a street drug I haven’t seen before. Either way, I don’t think the purifying rituals will work on this one.”
Jax shrugs, and it’s the most casual gesture I’ve seen him make so far. “Alright then, kill her, and I’ll pack her up with the rest of the rejects. Boss said take no chances, not after last time.”
Lisa’s head whips up, her eyes sparkling like champagne. “Then can I eat her? Just a little bit?”
“No, Lisa. You’ll poison yourself with whatever she has and we’ll have to pump your stomach again. Do you know what kind of disgusting shit came out of there the last time?”
“Yeah, yeah, you don’t have to tell me. But I can still kill her, right?”
“Sure, go ahead. Just clean up the mess afterward.”
She giggles, and it sounds like Gollum having an orgasm.
I have to get out of here.
I separate my hands in a blast of fear and revulsion—and realize too late that I should have done that with my eyes closed. My whole world is an oil-slick kaleidoscope falling away at breakneck speed, and my thoughts are a chaotic mingle of Is this what it’s like to fall through a black hole? and FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK—and then my whole body jerks forward like a crash dummy in a test collision, throwing me off the surgical bed and sending me rolling onto the floor.
Still disoriented, my vision a mess of pulsing black spots, I scramble across the waxy floor, out the door and into the hallway. A green-lit exit sign indicates stairs to the right—but then a door is opening not ten feet away in the same direction, and I can hear Lisa humming the first few bars of “Hungry Eyes” again. To the left, run to the left—this end of the corridor ends abruptly with another door, upon which a Post-it reads: “AC on, leave door closed!” I yank it open and slip into the room like an eel through a grate.
A blast of blizzard-cold air hits me full in the face, and then I promptly trip over something on the floor. My face lands on a sheet of thick plastic draped over some sort of solid form; feeling around in the dark, I also discover a long, sturdy zipper. Son of a bitch, it’s a body bag—an occupied body bag. Two of them, if I’m also counting the one my knee’s still pressing into. I’d investigate further, but I hear Jax and Lisa’s footsteps approaching from the hallway; I crawl on my hands and knees until I find another, empty bag, then wriggle my way in and close the zipper up over my head.
I hear the door open. Icy Eyes—Jax—mutters something. Through the small gap at the top of the zipper, I see the lights turn on. Gods, it smells horrible in here. Like dead people, obviously, but also cheap plastic, and… hairspray?
Jax grunts, and I hear rustling close by; he’s dragging out the other two body bags. Footsteps and sliding plastic fade away. Moments later he returns and picks me up by the ankles, then starts tugging me out of the room. Mother of fuck, it’s hard to keep still when my skull’s being dragged over every bump and scratch on the floor—ow, shit, there goes the doorway scraping up the entire length of my arm. Jax, you chocolate-powdered onion, would it kill you to be just a little more respectful to the dead?
My journey of torment across the clinic floor comes to a sudden halt. “Lisa? What is it?” Jax says.
“She’s gone. That chick whose blood I was just testing, she’s gone.” This time Lisa’s voice is pitched higher by panic, not artifice.
“Did you lock the door when you left her in the room?”
Lisa pauses before answering, “…Yes.”
“Is that a lie?”
Lisa pauses even longer before answering, “…Yes?”
Jax sighs. “Well, you vampires can smell body heat, right? Sniff her out, see if she’s still here or if she’s already run off.”
Oh balls, I’d completely forgotten vampires can do that. I hold my breath and pray to every god I know as Lisa goes deathly silent.
…And then she stays silent, for much longer than is necessary. She mutters something under her breath.
“What?” Jax growls.
Lisa mutters again.
“Your nose? What about your nose?”
“Can’t use it.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“…Too much cocaine.”
“Oh, Christ—” Jax drops my legs, and I bite down on my tongue to keep from yelping as they hit the floor. “We hired a vampire who can’t smell? Why are you—hold on, is that why these fucking corpses are covered in hairspray?”
“Hairspray? I thought that was Febreze.”
Jax is silent. For a good five seconds, I wait for the sound of him shoving Lisa’s head through the wall. Instead, he says in a chillingly calm voice, “What did she look like?”
“Who?”
“The woman whose blood you just tested.”
“Oh, uh, Asian, tall, black hair, all banged-up and bruisey, had a big pink scarf over her nose and mouth. Why, is it important?”
Silent, sub-zero tension again. Then an uncharacteristically airy, “No, not important at all. Have you thrown away her blood sample yet?”
“Not yet. You want it?”
“Sure, why not.”
I’ve got the heebie jeebies to end all heebie jeebies right now. There’s no way in Hell this can be good, but there’s nothing I can do about it from inside this body bag. So I just hold my breath and play dead as Jax picks me back up by the legs and resumes hauling me out of the clinic.
There’s a weightless moment as he picks me up, then a painful one as he dumps me onto a hard metal surface. Heavy metal doors slam shut near my feet, making the floor under me bounce. Alright, so I’m in the back of a truck. A few minutes tick by. I vaguely consider the possibility of escaping with the bodies; it’s been a while since I’ve hotwired a truck, but Google can probably refresh my memory. Then Jax rudely interrupts my scheming with the THUMP of another bulky load hitting the floor beside me.
The doors slam shut again. The ignition starts, and the truck rolls forward. I zip open the body bag to get some fresh air—Christ, I hadn’t realized how humid and sweaty it had gotten in here. I use the flashlight on my phone to take a look around, gathering that there are now nine other bodies in the truck container with me. I’ll probably make noise if I try to check them out; I’m not risking that with Jax in the driver’s seat. So I lie back down and settle in for the ride.
I’ve gotten “Game Over” three times in Bejeweled by the t
ime the truck lurches to a stop. I slip back into the body bag and zip it up; a few seconds later the doors to the compartment are thrown open, letting in an unfamiliar male voice.
“How many today?”
Jax grunts. “Ten.”
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”
The mystery man picks me up—then promptly drops my legs. “Fuck, this one’s heavy,” he complains. Godsdamned slacker. I have to grit my teeth and endure another minute or two of incompetent transit until I’m dumped onto yet another metal surface—a table, I think.
I hear a low, angry growl from Jax. “Why are the other stiffs still here? We handed them to you four days ago, they should be gone by now.”
The mystery man’s voice is squeaky enough that I can’t imagine his being anywhere near Jax’s size, but the sass in his words is unmistakable. “Yeah, well, you sent so many that the furnace gave out while we were toasting ‘em. It’s supposed to get fixed later today.”
“If it doesn’t, I’m collecting heads.”
A confused pause.
“…Whose heads?”
“Depends. How many dogs did you say you had?”
Silence. The mystery man’s voice starts and fails twice before he manages a hoarse “Three.”
“And one’s a Malinois, right? Shame, I like that breed. But who has time for pets nowadays?”
A heavy, muffled thump thump as Jax pats an enormous hand on the mystery man’s shoulder. Booted footsteps fade into the distance. Straining my ears, I hear the faint snarl of Jax’s truck starting outside, and then the rumble of him driving away.
“Asshole,” the mystery man says, but his voice shakes. He gives a wet sniff, then his feet shuffle across the floor. A zipper growls open. “Poor bastard,” he mutters. Some more shuffling, another zipper, and a low, drawn-out whistle. “That freak over at the clinic got you good, didn’t she? You couldn’t pay me to go near that one.” Shuffle shuffle. The zipper over my face splits, letting in a torrent of artificial light that filters red through my closed eyelids. I lie still and hold my breath a second too late to avoid smelling cheap cologne. “Well, at least you aren’t too bad off,” the mystery man says. His voice, and the musky stench, is coming from around my left shoulder. “Guess they aren’t always such—”
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