by Slay (epub)
She heard footfalls. They’re coming!
The vampire leapt to her feet and raced forward―covering the last mile within moments―to the next checkpoint. A hidden trapdoor. She morphed upward, hovering in midair, pushed it open and climbed up into a dark ghost town of stores and apartments. Not even a single streetlight burned. Moments later, a sepia-colored man with a ponytail of black hair appeared to face her. He looked to be twenty or so odd years but could have easily been two hundred.
“Name?” he asked.
“Sanyu.”
“Password?”
“Freedom.”
His full lips spread into a smile. “I’m Juan. We weren’t expecting your report for another month.”
Sanyu shrugged. “My cover was blown.” The town was silent and looked deserted, but she could feel eyes the eyes of the Others watching her. If she’d given the wrong answer, they would’ve torn her apart.
“The Council won’t be happy.”
Suddenly, the trap door, and the soil around it, exploded outward. Twenty-five Adze flew up into the town. Two grasped Sanyu on either side, another two, Juan. The rest raced through the town, searching for more resisters. The Adze on her right, an exquisitely comely man with a shock of black hair bent his fangs to her neck. Sanyu screamed, as crippling agony racked her body, and blacked out.
She awoke strapped to a table in a bare room with glass walls. Steel clamps secured her wrists and ankles. The Adze who’d bitten her stood over her smiling. “Hello Sanyu, I thought I’d killed you. And that would have been a shame.”
“Why didn’t you?” Sanyu said hoarsely. She was still in pain, but it was fading. Her vampire body was healing itself of his venom.
“Because you’re going to give me the names of your fellow traitors.”
Sanyu’s face twisted in anger. “I ain’t telling you shit.”
“In a few hours the sun will rise. I can leave you here to cook,” the Adze said softly. He stroked her cheek with a long-nailed forefinger, and she twisted her face away.
Sanyu glanced upward, then she bit her lip to conceal her terror. A wide swatch of the roof was covered with glass. “If I lose patience, I can chop off parts of you to hurry things along,” he went on. “A finger … a toe ... even your eyes. They won’t grow back under direct sunlight. But you know that already, don’t you? Give me their names and spare yourself a long, painful death.”
Insectile buzzing cries exploded in the next room―followed by a human scream. The Adze hissed and bared his fangs. In a blur he was gone.
In the next moment, a young man with brown sugar skin, freckles and a cloud of kinky hair appeared over her. A belt with two muskets encircled his waist. He grinned, exposing his fangs, and held up a ring of keys.
He unlocked the clamps, lifted her off the table and pulled a revolver from his belt. He pushed it into her hand. “Come Sister! Let us feed!”
Fangs bared, Sanyu rushed eagerly into the fray, her pain forgotten. The thirst was upon her now―an all-consuming hunger that would not be gainsaid, most especially since her body was still healing. She aimed her revolver and shot an Adze in the head. With revolver still in hand, she grabbed a fleeing human conspirator by her long hair and yanked her about. Sanyu dipped her head and tore open the woman’s neck, drinking from the bloody wound.
Ahead, a female centaur was firing her revolver … she took out an Adze, and then caught another one in her sights. A fae raised his hands and turned three charging humans to dust …
In minutes it was over, and the dead and dying covered the floors.
The Others gathered about the Council. Sanyu looked up at Sidonie, a towering vampire whose flawless caramel skin belied her age. She was a thousand years old, one of the oldest of her kind in recorded history.
“You used me as bait,” Sanyu said without anger.
“Yes beloved, we knew if we let them capture you, they would lead us to their cadre.” Sidonie touched Sanyu’s cheek gently with a cold hand. “We hoped they wouldn’t kill you, not until they’d gotten what they wanted.”
Damn, that’s reassuring.
Lance, an ebony-skinned Council member, sidled up alongside them. “You’ll have to be reassigned to another city,” he said in a rich basso profundo. “Passion is free of the Sheriff’s dogs. For now.”
“Could you reassign me near a bookstore that’s open at night?” Sanyu asked.
Lance roared laughter and put an arm about her shoulders. “We’ll see what we can do.”
Frostbite
Delizhia D. Jenkins
The icy rush of terror coursed through my veins the moment he sank his teeth into my skin; I could feel my heartbeat in my palms; I could taste his pleasure with every hard pull he took from me. In those moments, my mind fought against the sheer power of his will. His thoughts bludgeoned into my sacred chamber of well-placed memories, sifting through them like a man on a mission for spare change as he sorted through his dirty laundry. Here, I was raped. It was the mindfuck that nearly stripped me of my sanity, left me broken and bloodied on the cold linoleum floor, underneath a broken light fixture that flickered every other second.
I don’t remember much after that.
There are flashes of me being lifted onto a stretcher and an oxygen mask covering my mouth. A paramedic placed pressure on my open neck wound. I recall being surrounded by the entire medical staff as I struggled to breathe while simultaneously attempting to free myself of the clinging mask on my face. I ripped out the I.V. Alarms went off. The fire that surged through my veins, scorched me from the inside out.
It is the last of my memories from that night.
Three days after my hospital admission, I woke up on a cold, metal slab, locked away in a shelf awaiting burial. The darkness that surrounded me informed me that I was no longer fighting to breathe on a respirator. Gone were the cords that connected my heart to a machine, and the ivy drip that hung above my head, or the sounds of panic as doctors rushed to my bedside.
“Help me!” I cried out. “Somebody, please!”
Of course, my cries fell on deaf ears. My only company was the dead. The silence that surrounded me thickened like fog on the London bridge. Panic held me in its grip and when I realized that my heart could no longer beat to its own rhythm. I pounded the metal ceiling above me. The cramped spacing made it difficult to position myself to unleash impact of my strength. But after several hard kicks, the metal door broke off and I was able to slide out.
Once free, it didn’t take me long to realize how vastly different things would be for me moving forward. As I stood there in the center of the dark room of the morgue, dressed in a soiled hospital gown, memories of the life that I had lived up until that point returned to surface. I could never return home to the family I loved more than anything: my father, my sister, my mother… The thought of stepping across the threshold of our family home, the scent of herbs and spices tainting the air as my mother stood over the stove, preparing whatever it was she’d planned for dinner, and that blue line that pulsed down her jugular. Even as envision her standing in front of me with a warm smile, I can hear the hard thump and the rush of her blood coursing through her like the river to the sea. As I licked my lips, it didn’t take rocket science to figure out what I’d become.
I had been kissed by death, bitten by the frosted soul of a damned who hungered for heat.
I had joined the ranks of the damned.
But even as I mourned the life stolen from me, an awareness of a greater purpose awakened. Death may have become me, but the truth of the matter was, I have never felt more alive. Every sight, sound, smell and tiniest tactical vibrations had been enhanced nearly tenfold. Just two doors over to the left, the hushed whisper of the on- duty nurse who was supposed to be making the rounds on her shift, filtered into my awareness. Her husband’s philandering had finally caught up with him and as her attorney informed her that he was willing to settle outside of court with a million- dollar lump sum, her heart beat to the rhyth
m of victory. And speaking of heartbeats, just down the hall, the security guard who patrolled the building, whose pores wreaked of the fatty, greasy fast food he regularly gorged himself on, was one cheeseburger away from cardiac failure. I could smell his funeral from miles away.
I’m alive in more ways than one, but it’s the night that called me in a way I’d never experienced. The dark secret that my family tried to hide was what came to the surface through an ugly bite; the cold tendrils of the hidden truth penetrated my soul and forced Destiny to show its hand. The instant his fangs penetrated my skin, the truth of who I am, who he was and what my family had done, slammed into my mind’s eye. In that moment, it was unclear of what was more painful: his bite or the truth.
I detect the familiar presence of someone who was as close to me as my own skin. And now that I’ve awakened…
She was coming for me.
“I would be careful with that daughter of yours.”
I overheard my grandmother whisper to my father one night as we gathered in the living room for the Friday Night line up on ABC. Steve Urkel’s laughter tickled my sister to no end as I crept in, dressed in my favorite purple pajama set. My mother rested peacefully in the room she shared with my father, finally, after a long battle with what we thought was the flu.
I felt my grandmother’s eyes on me as I plopped down next to my younger sister on the worn, ancient green couch that had to be older than time itself. When our eyes met, she smiled quick to mask her concern. I disregard her comment as I focused on Eddie Winslow’s saunter into the scene. The studio audience erupted with catcalls and cheers and in this moment, nothing else mattered. I’d been waiting for this episode for over a week.
“Why do you say that?” My father asked with a heavy sigh.
“Darkness follows her, just as it did her mother,” my grandmother told him.
“We took care of that,” my father argued in a hushed whisper. “As you can see, Ana is doing better. She will be better.”
My grandmother looked at my father, “She will be better.”
I had no clue as to what either of them were talking about. As far as I knew, everything was fine. My mother’s condition improved, my parents loved me, and my sister was well…even at the age of twelve, what I did know was that my grandmother always had her eyes on me. Every little thing I did, wrong or right was heavily scrutinized. There was never really any love between me and Eileen Murphy. She demonstrated preference for my, and she hovered protectively over my mother like a hawk.
It almost felt as if she was protecting my mother from me. My father never treated me any differently. To him, I would always be his blue sky on a cloudy day– which is why he named me, Skai. As far as my sister, despite the two-year age difference, we grew closer with every year that passed to the point of being nearly inseparable.
Since that night and many nights that followed, I recalled sensing the presence of something or someone in the shadows watching me. My mother recovered to her normal, loving self. But there were nights when my father would stay up late, well into the early hours of the morning, near the window, keeping watch.
My grandmother too.
Like night sentinels, after the rest of us retreated to bed, those two kept watch over the house. I stayed up and discovered their nightly duty. Every day my father would be out the door by six in the morning to go to work without missing a beat. And every day my grandmother would cook our breakfast without so much as a yawn while my mother slipped on her office pumps and prepared for her 9-5.
Such was my childhood. I never asked about my mother’s mystery illness. I never asked my father why he spent many nights seated by the window, watching the street while my mother and sister slept. My grandmother managed to maintain her cool composure towards me, which in my book was fine. My mother discontinued her attempts to pacify the situation by ignoring my grandmother’s comments. The foundation of my family tree rested on buried secrets and like all things hidden in the dark, those same secrets would eventually come to life.
“There was another killing near the warehouse last week,” my father revealed to my mother just as I entered the kitchen.
As promised, I arrived for our family’s weekly Taco Night which was supposed to be our way of staying connected through good food, laughs and games. I moved out after high school and enjoyed my independence and solitude. My sister, Kayla, got the keys to her first apartment. Both of us live within minutes of our family home. No sooner had I fiddled with my keys and opened the door to come, my grandmother greeted me from her favorite recliner, her eyes sharper than ever.
“Hi Grams,” I greeted her as I walked by.
“Skai,” she said, my name sounding like acid on her tongue than anything.
“Yes?”
“Do you do as I instructed you to do?” she asked.
“Yes. Every night. I mop my floor with Florida water, and I wipe down my doorway and windows with the boiled herb recipe you gave me. And around my neck I sleep with the Aventurine stone.”
She paused, and the said, “Good.” Her gaze softened. “I know we have had our differences Skai, but there are things that you do not understand. Dark things, Skai.”
She never went into details about those “dark things”, which was how I ended up continuing into the kitchen to overhear my father discussing recent killings.
“Hey ma…dad,” I said, trying my best to sound casual.
Perhaps I should have stayed at my own place this week. Everyone seemed to be on edge and with the long workday that I had, the last thing I needed was more depressing energy.
“Hey baby,” my mom said, rushing over to me with a smile. “Didn’t realize you were here.”
“Yeah, I just had a brief convo with Grams…”
“Oh ok,” my mom replied. “Don’t worry. I’m about to get started with the tacos. I’m cooking both shredded chicken and ground beef, so your father doesn’t have a fit.”
“Whatever woman,” my father chuckled. “I just like real meat, that’s all.” He looked at me and smiled. “How’s my big baby? How was work today?”
“It was fine,” I answered evenly. “Same as always…” Dealing with people whether over the phone or person is was always draining.
The keys jangled at the front door, indicating that Kayla had made her way over. At nineteen, she stood a good three inches taller than my 5’7’’ but a good twenty pounds lighter to my 140. We shared a close resemblance, being that we inherited our mother’s slanted eyes, full lips with high cheek bones. My darker skin tone set me apart from Kayla’s lighter one. The train stops with our hairstyle choices. I opt for the simplicity of water, gel and conditioner, while Kayla dons the bolder, more colorful hairstyles.
My grandmother greeted her with warmth and open arms. I remind myself that the evening will be over soon enough, and it would not be long before I was home alone and under my own roof.
“Hey Grams.” Kayla leaned down to kiss our grandmother on the cheek. “Ready for me to beat you in Spades tonight?”
“Chile please,” Grams huffed. “I ain’t worried about you!”
Laughter followed and soon enough everyone relaxed, teased, and joked throughout the evening. My mother’s tacos left smiles on our faces and our bellies full. When 9:00 hit, it was time – at least for me – to leave. Hugging and kissing my parent’s goodnight reminded me of our nightly routine when I was a child. But as I bypassed my grandmother who this time, did not bother to raise her eyes up at me, I was more relieved than anything to leave.
“Skai!” Kayla called out to me from behind. “Don’t forget, I’m coming over to drop off that shelf.”
“Yeah, I know. I will be off by the time you get there,” I mumbled. “See y’all later!”
“Love you sis!”
“Love you too, Kayla!”
I never for one second thought that all my grandmother’s suspicions and questions would be fully warranted. For twenty-two years, I believed my grandmother forced herself
to live long past the cancers that threatened to end her life, the stroke that nearly left her with the ancestors, and the small day to day ailments that attempted to weaken not only her body, but her spirit. All of it, she endured to protect the ones she loved.
From me.
No matter how deep they’re buried, secrets have an interesting way of revealing themselves. I should have asked my grandmother about the “witchy” measures she demanded I take every night. But my refusal to engage with her kept me silent. That night, I was too tired to even think about Florida water, let alone sage burning, and repetitive prayers. Instead of the nightly ritual, I hit the shower before climbing into bed. Sleep found me rather easily. Nestled deep underneath the thickness of my comforter, my body succumbed to the day’s fatigue. I felt myself drift, ascending higher into the realms of unconsciousness before plummeting. I cannot be sure of how long I spiraled through the nothingness. But once time came to a standstill, I found myself isolated in a barren land of darkness.
The icy chill of his breath startled me. Red eyes pierced through the shadows of my bedroom and I froze. I felt a short breeze of movement dart from across the room and suddenly a cold finger traced a gentle trail from the base of my ear down my neck. I shivered from the chill that coursed through my veins from his touch.
“Do not be afraid, young one,” the entity said. His baritone voice ripped through my defenses, calling out to me in a way that no man had. “I’ve watched you for quite some time now.”
“Who are you?” I struggled to see more than just his outline. He stood over me by several inches, supported by a lean build and broad shoulders. From what I could make out, he wore a suit.
“You will find out in due time. You didn’t put the barrier down as your grandmother instructed,” he pointed out. “At last, you and I will meet again. I was robbed once, and I will be damned if I am robbed again.”
With that, my eyes snapped open. I could still feel the iciness of his touch. Is he the reason my grandmother had distanced herself from me and made me partake of senseless rituals?