The creature staggered back, glaring at Fiya with hungry eyes. Now its smashed nose resembled the flat, ugly snout of a real vampire bat. Black blood smeared all around its lower face.
Though tempting, Fiya didn’t stop to laugh at the resemblance to the animal. She rushed forward, thrusting the stake forward into its chest, and it shrieked. Its cry shivered their ears and sounded like multiple voices, all at once like a horrible chorus.
Fiya ducked away from its gaunt, flailing claws. As it failed to get a good grip on the stake, it cried, “You whores!”
She was unaware, but one of Rutger’s other secret tricks to his stakes was a finishing coat of garlic oil in the wood. This added an extra burn when it penetrated the vampires’ bodies.
Rutger walked up next to Fiya, who remained out of reach from the fiend’s swipes, and admired how much pain the vampire was in. It kept its back against the wall, as if it were compelled to stick to it like a pin holding an insect in place on a cork-board.
Rutger put his hand on her shoulder and smiled. “Now, what did we do wrong here?”
Fiya stared in confusion, tilting her head like it was the math problem from Hell. Her nose crinkled. “Did I not hit it?” She had practiced so many times on dummies, she swore she had her aim down.
He squinted, examining the state from a safe distance. “No, I think you did.”
The vampire drooled blackened blood, spouting venomous slurs at them but the blood gurgled so much that neither of them knew what it was saying, and Rutger had enough of that. He took the flat side of his axe and hammered the stake home. With that plunge, it coughed up the last of the blood it stored in its stomach, splattering all over Rutger’s jacket. It fell limp and stayed staked to the wall.
Rutger backed up to Fiya again, and they watched the vampire corpse, like two persons admiring a painting in a drafty museum.
Fiya now understood: when a vampire is staked, it is pinned in place, anchored, even if the stake didn’t actually nail it to something. Putting the stake all the way into the heart knocked it into a coma.
More work, however, would be necessary before it would be slain.
“Okay,” Rutger said, and he pointed toward the stake in its chest. “What you need to do is push that thing further in. I think you were only piercing its heart.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Not too much of a biggie. I’m sure you could’ve done better had it not knocked the mallet away, but you should always be prepared to go at it raw, too. Good instinct! When you go through the Sacred Initiation, you’ll be stronger, so that won’t be as much of an issue, either.”
He looked back at her and touched her chin. “I misspoke. You didn’t do anything wrong. Given the circumstances, they were all good choices that you made. You just don’t have the muscle yet to back it all up, and that’s not your fault.”
Fiya watched her mentor, nodding her head as he continued to explain, pointing at the corpse. “Their tissue might seem soft, but their organs can still remain tough. It’s not quite like a ghoul where the flesh becomes fragile. Ghouls are soft, but a vampire's insides will remain strong.”
All daylight disappeared as Fiya helped Rutger drag the vampire corpse up the stairs. He took the head and shoulders, the dangerous end, while she carried the feet. At one point, Rutger dropped the vampire near the top of the stairs when his rear bumped into the doorknob. Its bald head smacked on the edge of one of the steps, breaking its pale skin and leaving more blackened blood behind.
Fiya almost fell backward, but she had a secure grip on the fiend’s feet. Rutger grumbled and kicked the basement door back open as he improved his hold on the bloodsucker.
They figured it was going to be an all-nighter and took the vampire’s corpse outside and left it in the dirt, away from any of the dry grass.
Without the haze of city lights getting in the way, a clear night sky provided a marvelous view of the stars. The stars twinkled as if they approved of the job they did.
Fiya looked at the corpse and asked, “Are there any others, do you think?”
Rutger popped a beer open from the ice chest. “What? Vampires? Of course.”
“No, I mean anymore inside?”
He reached into the ice chest again and fished out a can of Cherry Coke. He held it out for her, and she grabbed it. She didn’t crack it open yet, but her fingers circled the pull-tab.
“Nah, I don’t think there’re more. If it was a nest, they would’ve been grouped together. If there was a revenant guarding its master, we would’ve met it on our way in.”
Fiya nodded and cracked open the Cherry Coke, her favorite. “So how come we didn’t just use your axe on it?”
He looked at his axe, propped against the Jeep, and thought about it for a moment while sipping the beer. It was cold, refreshing, smooth.
“When you learn to draw, you have to learn the basics: the correct, realistic proportions, anatomy, lighting, blah blah blah, all that stuff, before you can adapt to your own style and take shortcuts. That’s what you’re doing here. Stake in the heart is the tried-and-true way of knocking these things down. Complete with finishing them off with a good sunburn. Or decapitation. If you don’t do either of those, the staking will only put them in a coma-like state, until it’s removed. When you get your own signature weapon ─ your shortcut, if you will ─ there are going to be times you won’t have it on you. Like, say … when the airport suddenly loses your luggage, so you’ll need to know what to do without it.”
“But they won’t stay down.”
“True. Someone could easily remove the stake, like some moron mortician who doesn’t know what he has, if authorities discover the body … and then they’ll wake up soon after. It’s happened plenty of times. That’s why we’re camping out here for the night, till sun-up, to make sure no one comes by and does something stupid.” He paused for a moment, looking up at the stars in a black licorice sky. “If we were desperate, I’d just decapitate the thing, but I’m looking forward to a beautiful morning fire.”
They both drank.
“Now, we just have to work on your upper body strength,” he said. He smiled. “You did good.”
“You did good,” Rutger remembered. He opened his swollen eyes, stinging with sweat and blood. His vision blurred with bright spots of light surrounded by darkness, with figures moving about.
As the image sharpened, he found himself in a large, open room with several long tables thrown aside. Plastic chairs were all over the place, some stacked neatly against the walls, others scattered and knocked over. In the distance, he could see wide openings in the walls, with reflective metallic surfaces inside. He found it difficult to look around to be sure, but he guessed he was in the school cafeteria.
There were two floodlights burning down on him, the kind on a tripod with a protective wire cage around the super-hot quartz bulb. He could feel the heat from the nearest floodlight, cooking the dried blood on his skin. His bare feet rubbed on the tile floor, and he realized he sat on a stool, with his hands tied behind his back, attached to the stool. The bindings had the scratchy texture of hemp rope. His shirt had been removed, and for a moment, he thought he might be naked, which luckily wasn’t true. They had left his pants on.
As his vision continued to improve, he saw Kael, in his human form again, standing next to a woman sporting a haircut that would make him assume she worked at an indie coffee shop in Los Angeles. She wore a deep-purple, long-sleeve blouse, knitted like a doily, transparent enough to reveal she wore nothing underneath. Distracting, to a mild extent, but wouldn’t shatter his focus if that was her intent.
Behind them were other ghouls, far enough away from Rutger that they were still a little blurry. Something new came over him while in this room: a heinous smell of rancid rot. It was the smell of a place where the dead resided and continuing to decay without being put under the earth. The dampness didn’t help either. In all his years of disposing ghouls before a massive outbreak, he never experienced
the smell of a place where many of them dwelled together for a long period of time. This could break him before Mohawk’s nipples would.
A few rats moved about just outside the range of the floodlights, which caught Rutger’s eyes. He didn’t get a good enough look to see if they were plagued with Ghoul Fever, but he’d bet his balls on it.
“THE Rutger Bronson …” the woman in the knitted purple shirt spoke, like velvet off the tip of her tongue. “You, sir, are a tough one to find. You’ve murdered many of us and others like us. Your name is known in the underworld. Not quite legendary status but known none the less. Feared too—and that’s a compliment. The demon lords love it when they have a feared hunter in their presence. It is a pleasure to have you here before me on this occasion.”
“And who the gee-golly-fuck are you?” Rutger grunted, ignoring her facade of praise.
She pulled up a chair and sat close to him, leaning in. “I am what the underworld calls Violess.”
He held his gaze for a moment, waiting for her to finish. When she didn’t, he replied, “That’s it? No surname? No fancy title? One of those mono-name chicks like Cher?” Rutger’s vision was still sharpening, but he caught Kael cracking a smirk behind her. “Vio-less. What’s that mean? You’re violent, but less so? I’m not terribly good at colors, but your shirt is slightly violet, I think. Is that your thing?”
Her eyes tightened, unsure how to respond to him.
Rutger gave her the slightest little smile of a schoolboy brat. “I’m sorry, I’m kidding. I do know your name. Violess, Keeper of Vermin, or something like that. One of the titles they give you when you’re a custodian in hell?”
She flared a nostril.
“The Black Plague way back: was that your art? Or was that some accident with rats that you’re jealous of? You’d probably lie and say it was your doing anyway.”
After taking a breath and tightening her lips, Violess chose not to respond to the questions. “We have tried for weeks to nail you at your home, with no luck at all.”
“Were those missionaries yours? My bad.”
She ignored him. “Yet we finally get our hands on you breaking into our home. Lapdog here did an outstanding job.”
Kael’s eye twitched at the nickname of Lapdog. His gaze went from Rutger to her, and at that moment, he wanted to yank her head off, but he refrained. A cool head was better than a reckless mongrel.
She continued. “The dogs thought they had you at your home too, but how you escaped they still don’t know. That was impressive. Luckily, Kael didn’t want to stick around and knew you and your little rascal would probably come back this way on some rescue mission. I had my doubts, but I needed to be elsewhere. When my vermin scouts spotted you hiding the girl, I knew Kael was correct.” She looked over her shoulder at Kael, with her eyes seductive and steamy. “He’s a good boy.”
His eyes only narrowed at her.
Then Rutger laughed, unexpectedly breaking her concentration. Not just giggling, but a full belly laugh ruptured from him. It hurt his ribs to laugh that hard, but he did it anyway; he couldn’t contain it. Its reverberation bounced around the cafeteria walls, and the ghouls looked at each other, uncomfortably confused. Rutger appeared mad, not angry, but loony-bin crazy.
Violess turned her nose at him like a dog had just squatted and shit right in front of her. She smacked him with her open palm, rattling his jaw.
His laughter continued.
“Stop that,” she hissed. When he didn’t, she continued. “Why are you laughing? You are in no position to laugh!”
He dialed down the laughter and caught his breath. “I’m sorry, I was just thinking about all the bodies the fire department probably found behind my house.”
Violess looked at Kael for confirmation, wrinkling her brow. Kael shrugged, remembering his pack saw the bodies and didn’t care. She turned back to Rutger, who stared like a stone back at her.
“Get to your point,” he said.
“My point?” Violess perked back up in her seat, delighted that he just asked her the secret question of the day. “My only point was that I was gushing how we finally got you. I can’t be excited about this? You’re like a legend, and I get to terminate you. And I’m going to gloat about it all I want, and I want you to know it. We’ve eliminated all your hunting buddies, and the ones we didn’t kill rolled over very easily. See, I may not have been responsible for the Black Plague, but I sure learned some tricks from it.” She stood up from her chair and paced, theatrically waving her arms.
Everyone listened, though Kael seemed very disinterested, almost disgruntled. His eyes stayed on Rutger, finding himself agreeing with the bloody sack of meat: Violess is talking just to be talking, and it annoyed him.
Rutger let a string of bloody drool drip to the floor as he watched her.
She continued. “Paul DeMatto was the best, though. He had enough intel on the rest of you, even the procedures of contamination for your organization, so it made it easy for him to bargain for his life. Did you know Paul?”
Rutger stared through his heavy eyebrows. “Not really.”
“Then it wouldn’t pain you to know we didn’t hold up our end of the bargain?”
“Shocker.”
She smiled and continued the enjoyment of monologuing. “Do you know what we’re doing here?” After no response from Rutger, she continued. “We’re reviving the Great Bahtzuul and making up for lost time! His spirit has been dormant, anxious, and it certainly pained me to see such a beautiful soul not carry out what He craves to do, what it needs to do, what it was meant to do: Destroy life.”
“HUKTHPEW!” Rutger spat a giant glob of blood on the floor, breaking her momentum. “You’re boring me,” he said.
Her face soured, and she stared at him for a moment. She sighed. “You’ll witness His resurrection, which you wouldn't want to miss, anyway. You’ll be the first meal, then the others. If you tell us where your little sidekick is, I can assure you will be a quick bite.”
Rutger smiled. At that moment, he realized Fiya had not been captured. Even the goons would’ve found her dead body if she died in the crash, so she must’ve escaped, even with that alpha in the area. You did good, little Graveslinger, he thought … You did good.
His smirk, unfortunately, was interpreted as an act of defiance, and Violess snapped at Kael, who lumbered forward and backhanded Rutger, knocking him and his stool across the ground. His shirtless, sticky body smacked the tile, and it stung on impact. He could feel the old dirt and tiny, sharp rocks digging into his blood-soaked skin.
Violess stepped up to him, and he now noticed she wore high-heel boots that laced up to her knees. And spandex bicycle shorts. He was confused about the bicycle shorts, especially with the boots and the sweater. The clothing style made no sense to him, and he found it funny that her wardrobe was the single strange thing about her that he focused on.
She lifted his chin and said, “This nut’s not gonna crack.” She was really speaking to Kael while looking at Rutger. Then she turned to Kael, her finger not leaving Rutger’s chin, and added, “We can go in circles, but we need him alive, and I want to hurry this up.” She yanked her finger away and let Rutger’s chin smack on the floor.
“Hey,” he said, trying to get her attention again. She paused to look at him with a glimmer of hope that he’d reveal Fiya’s whereabouts. Instead, he asked, “So whose body did you steal to do all this work?”
Her brow furrowed. “Come again?”
“The body you hijacked. Was it consensual? Did this tall drink of water open herself up for you to dive in? Or did you wait until she was dead, and you leaped right in that tiny sliver of time between the soul leaving and the body becoming just a decaying corpse? It was the latter, wasn’t it? Must’ve had to stake that one out to know when she was gonna die. Someone without too many connections so no one would come looking for her? Hooker with a drug problem? Overdose? I’m making a lot of assumptions here, but I’m trying to get to know you, and yo
u’re just not letting me in. Why won’t you open up to me?” The schoolboy brat smile returned to his face.
Kael side-eyed Violess while she shook her head slowly. Not because Rutger was wrong, but because of how disturbingly close to the truth he got, and she didn’t want to confirm any of it. She didn’t care for his sarcasm either.
“Hey,” he continued. “What’d you fuckers do with my axe?”
“Why?”
“Just wanna know. I mean, it’s like my security blanket. My binkey. Helps me sleep at night, especially the lonely nights.” He smiled up at her, just to watch her sneer again. He was not disappointed.
With a nasty sigh, Violess marched to the nearest exit of the cafeteria. As she did, she ordered, “This one talks too much, and not at all about what we need. Tranq him and load him up with the rest.”
Rutger tried to roll over, but Kael gripped his sweaty hair to yank his head back and jammed a needle into his neck.
Thomas stirred as he felt his body shake. Groggy from the drugs they gave him, a familiar voice slowly came to him, and he fought to open his eyes. “Daddy?” the voice said again.
He cleared his throat and finally opened his eyes. He didn’t recognize his surroundings: bland wood and metal walls and a roll-up door on one side. It reminded him of the inside of a storage unit. As he sat up, he saw Liama crouching near him, shaking his body awake. In the room with them were the other prisoners, several still drugged, while others were shaking it off. It didn’t appear to him to be everyone, but he was too groggy to do a proper headcount.
“Baby?” he said with a painfully scratchy voice.
Tears swelled her face. “I’m sorry, Daddy, I did what you said. I didn’t answer the door, but the big wolf came in anyway.”
He reached out to hold her, and she embraced him. “No, baby, I’m sorry we left you there. Seemed like the best idea at the time, but I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” He kissed her cheek. He wanted to say more, but only the words I’m sorry kept coming to mind. Thomas was just happy to have his girl back in his arms, even though he knew they were no longer safe and sound.
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