Garin yanked me deeper into the crowd packed with dancers on the main floor and revelers with drinks along the sides. I glimpsed the bouncer holding the door for the security guards and the pair of IT guys now following them. I ducked my head and let my hair drape down to obscure my face. Not having a vampire’s reflexes, “I think they saw me.”
“No need. They can probably smell you.” He pulled me close like dancing, “Sometimes easier to smell than see.” He pulled my hand again through the crowd and the pounding music. We came to the labyrinth of back halls. The stink of the restroom Garin pushed into shouldered aside any other odor. Guys peeing against the wall to fall into trench-like trough urinals half plugged with cigarette butts and ineffective scented blue hockey pucks. Maybe the plumbing wasn’t so sophisticated back then or had corroded over the years. “Why did you bring me in the men’s restroom?”
“Guessing it’s a stinker.”
“You’re kind of right.” Though I had seen some nasty women’s restrooms. While still early in the evening a few sinks already floated full of vomit. Their plumber bill must be huge.
“But that’s not why,” he pointed to a window, “the women’s restroom backs to the main street by the line and bouncer. This one goes to the alley.” Garin jumped on top of a sink and pressed the window. It swung freely. “You use this route before?”
“Maybe.” He reached for my hand. “Hang on the ledge of the window until I’m out.”
He lifted me in the air and spun me around to stuff me feet first out the window. I clamped my fingers on the cold damp iron sill. The slime covered brick wall on this side of the building never saw any sunshine. And stank of urine that must have soaked through the walls since the club had been here. Garin dropped to the ground well below me. A putrid ramp of a shipping dock not used in decades filled one end of the alley. A pair of bloated white raccoon carcasses floated hairless in the stagnant water collected at the bottom of the ramp.
“Ok, let go.”
My fingers released from the sharp iron edge of the sill and I fell to Garin. A growl came from inside the window. One of the security guards appeared half hanging out the window held from his belt by another set of vampire hands. A claw-like hand reached for me. It brushed my wrist gouging and gripping at it. I shrieked. But the guard only caught the sleeve of my sweatshirt. The same sharp claw-like nails that sliced into my flesh rent the cloth. The shirt ripped and tore and I fell into Garin’s arms. Garin sprinted away with me before the guards could get themselves through the window.
Several streets over Garin stopped behind a large factory and looked at my bleeding wrist. He became agitated, “We need to get you healed and drop the sweatshirt.” He raised my wrist to his lips and pricked my skin ever so carefully, though I could see his fingers shaking slightly. He twisted us through the streets so effectively I did not know which way to go. But I didn’t care as the ecstasy broadened through the body. My breathing sped up, if possible after our chase, but it felt different from fear. I began wanting him in other ways. For something more to happen.
He stopped and ripped the sweatshirt off me and rubbed at the blood on my wrist and hand now healed. “That will have to do for now.” He balled up the shirt, dabbing the wall to add distraction, and threw it like a baseball up and over onto the roof of the factory. The ripped sleeve dangled lightly over the edge of the roof. A bloody flag to mislead our pursuers.
It seemed as if we had taken too long. Even though I knew barely moments passed. But I heard the whistle of wind and the fast steps of vampire boots on pavement.
Garin spun me on his back and we ran. He jumped over a low chain link fence. No razor wire needed near this particular shipping dock. Rough and abused semi trucks backed trailers of cattle against the dock. Manure squished through the sides of the racks. Drool dripped from large bovine sandpaper tongues licking roughly between wooden slats to taste the air.
An empty trailer pulled away from the dock as we crossed before it. The strong ammonia stench of cattle remained after long transport from auction yards sometimes states away. Or from the miles of feedlots stretching across the Midwest farms and near out West ranches. Places that filled the local fast food chain with ninety-nine cent wonders of ketchup and pickles. Much different being vaguely aware of a slaughterhouse on the far side of town than actually being inside its gates. The odor of burnt diesel exhaust and scorched antifreeze from the radiator of a rig almost provided a respite. The driver of the injured truck surveyed the front of his grill as cattle handlers eased his load into the maze of racks and chutes and gates that made up the handling floor.
“Yeup!” said the driver, pushing his straw cowboy hat back as he reached between holes in a punctured fascia fractured in long broken arcs. He pulled out a thick white fork of horn with hot green antifreeze dribbling off it and splashing his jacket like the blood of an alien beast. He watched us walk passed. “I knew bad news when those three deer jumped out onto I-94 in front of me. I wasn’t going to make a hundred and twenty piles of hamburger to save a couple of deer. But looks like they got me anyway. I’ll have to check the tires for bone shards and leaks.” He told us, “You two shouldn’t be out here. You’ll get run over.” The tractor belched and steam shot from the fascia holes and radiator grill, “Good thing I carry some water. It’ll get me to the repair shop.”
“Stop them!” demanded one of the guards flying over the fence.
“I’ll be –” said the driver, “You two better skedaddle.” then louder, “You’re not plant security, you better leave.” He spit on the ground and rearranged the chew in his mouth like I later remembered the cows did with their cud.
“Out of our way old cowboy.”
“Tex-arcana-boy,” He popped the snap on the holster of a large bowie knife and drew the blade up a few inches. The wave of Damascus steel forging clearly evident on the custom knife, “I see a lot of weird things driving across this country.” he spit again, “You don’t want to be one of the tales I tell to a truck stop lot-lizard keeping me company some night.”
The security guard halted and waited for his companions to join him.
“They’re already gone.” I heard as the man snapped his blade down, “Now let a trucker get back to fixing his ailing radiator.”
One of the IT guys bumped the security guard and pointed. The unloading dock spotlights reflected our flashing feet in the wet mire coating the concrete under the truck as we ran.
“We’re going in there?”
Garin didn’t answer me. He lifted me and jumped onto the cattle unloading floor. He held me above the feet of the jostling cattle and warded off the horns around us. He forged ahead through the gates. The workers, if they saw us for a moment, blinked and we disappeared amid the pressing animals. Their mind couldn’t register a girl being carried across the docks like crowd surfing over a rock concert mosh pit.
Garin pushed forward like a bull cutting through the mass of steers and spent dairy cows. The maze of fences turned into a concrete box that wedged down to a cone that only allowed one steer at a time to pass through. The concrete cone bent at the end so the pressing cattle couldn’t look around the corner until too late. The steers couldn’t back up. Those behind them coaxed by their weight and pushed with the force of a herd that any individual steer had no hope of stopping.
The steers resigned themselves to the inevitable slaughter.
The cattle pressed against a breech that loaded each of them into a metal magazine. They indexed to the side where clamps pressed against their bodies and legs and dealt rapid pneumatic hammer blows through their skulls. I glimpsed the edge of the abyss at that enormous plant. Whirring chains on tracks carried the pieces and parts of cattle. Bins and vats collected entrails and offal. Pipes carried other things away. I should have read more Sinclair. I should have paid attention. I could even smell it. The blood everywhere. A fine red mist.
Garin grabbed me with a savagery I didn’t expect and he jumped forward over racks and onto machine
s and pipes and across catwalks. He growled like I had never heard before as he carted me forward deep into the plant. His eyes wild with barbarian blood lust on an order of magnitude greater than any fantastic adventure movie I had ever seen. Ever.
A commotion erupted near the pneumatic hammers where the blood rushed out of the carcasses. The security guards and IT guys fell onto the machines biting the cattle and slaughter house workers in random rage. I think I saw one of the guards fall to the concrete lapping up the spilled blood like a wolf. Brimstone in its crimson eyes. Conveyors screeched and complained and burst. Stainless metal chunks and cattle giblets flung around the equipment as the killing spree of those four continued unabated. Cattle pushed through the entry wedge by those behind them sprawled on the slippery concrete and garishly fell about in flashing hooves and horns
The factory became a blur. Garin carried me forward like a monkey at the zoo carries a snack tossed by a kid who couldn’t read the ‘don’t feed the animals’ sign. Hunched over with one arm he pinned me against his body too tightly. He ran. Concrete and stainless grates and steam pipes and fork trucks blotted my blurry view. I glimpsed the wrapping line where nice pretty little steaks arrayed on shelf-pleasing white trays wrapped in see-through plastic and bar coded labels. These nice packages fell stacked into stiff cardboard boxes baled onto wooden pallets. Then sent to a local supermarket near anyone. But only a fleeting glimpse. Twenty minutes transpired between the steer standing at the beginning of the loading floor and packaged steaks boxed for transport to a supermarket. So fresh they probably still quivered in the packaging. Garin would tell me later this process encouraged a young Henry Ford to reverse the slaughterhouse steps and produce cars for a nation. The method carried through and used by the auto manufacturers today. And apparently still slaughterhouses.
Garin crashed through a window with a snarl and we fled into the night. Flecks of glass and wire and steel bounced on the pavement in our wake.
-:- Eighteen -:-
The fierce wind tugged at my skin and shredded my hair. Although the running seemed to calm Garin and he put me on his back rather than hugging me like a rag doll. We ran through the countryside passing subdivisions, small farms, old houses, corn fields, newly harvested wheat field stubble. And then with a leaping snarl we stood at the back door to his house. He set me down. He fumbled getting his keys out of his pocket. He dropped them.
I picked up the keys and unlocked the door.
Garin swooped his arms under me, carried me across the threshold like a new bride, and to the king bed upstairs. He tossed me on the billowy sheets. Then scrambled back until he bumped against the dresser. The dresser’s tall mirror quivered and thumped against the wall.
I kicked and wiggled my way backward until my spine pressed hard against the ornate headboard. Heavily stained swirls of carved oak pushed through my t-shirt into my skin.
“I want you so badly!” he clung to the wood at the foot of the bed, “The blood!” His head shook back and forth, “You must leave.”
“I can’t leave. I’m terrified. But I also can’t leave you if you are having this much pain.”
“I’m feeling out of control.” He wailed; pulling on the heavy bed frame and rattling it like a thin cage. “This is bad. It’s not ever been like this before.” His muscles rippled through his shirt as his hands strained at the wood. His fingers dug into the oak foot board like one of those green foam blocks used to keep roses alive, his muscles and sinew writhing under his hard skin. “You need to go.”
I had this urge to save him. I should be running. Running down those stairs and out the door, never to return, but would that incense the creature that fought him for control? Like never run from a dog? I knew my intense feelings for him.
I came toward him on my hands and knees. His tormented eyes locked with mine. “Turn around,” I whispered.
He flipped around but still gripped the foot board with both hands as if he dangled his feet over the edge of a tall building – a single gust of wind away from falling to doom. I pressed my body against his and tightened my arms around his chest. I held him for a long time. His breathing slowed. His muscles relaxed a fiber at a time as I rested the side of my head against the back of his. We stayed silent and still.
My mind flashed to the moment in the street when he healed my injury. Helpless, the warmth that spread through my body then now returned and wound through my senses, seemingly never relinquished. A lapse in judgment. I moved my hands down and pushed up his shirt. It lay on the floor. I kissed his shoulder. His body warmed and I realized an aroused vampire is oh so deliciously warm. He turned and met my lips. I became lost in that kiss. A kiss that became my center of everything. I felt my blouse and bra briefly break our embrace as they slid together over my head. My hair bounced back over my bare shoulders in freedom. His naked torso turned in my grasp as he fell back over me onto the bed. We landed in that kiss again and … I surrendered.
His touch came light and intense. Stroking along my body in the right places. Never really getting to any target but getting achingly and passionately close – purposefully and knowingly teasing my body into desire. My body agreed and the passion of the next kiss became much more intense. Golden energy radiated out of my heart to my extremities. His rough, almost gritty beard stubble raked across my cheek as he kissed my ear, then his lips alighted warmly on my shoulder. I turned into him and kissed deep against his neck.
“NO!” He had me in the air. Like a salsa cross-body dance spin he whipped me out uncoiling and spinning until held only by my hand at the extended end of his. A fragile second ticked and he yanked me back in. I coiled up in my body and his – finishing the dance move. His face near mine. His fang points pressed against the delicate skin of my neck. I screamed as I had never screamed before.
His eye’s flickered. Pushing the wickedness away. A battle fought against the hunger in the fragile tick of the wall clock’s pendulum. Moonlight from the window glinted sharply from the polished pendulum as it swung back.
He hoarsely grunted, “Don’t ever kiss a vampire’s neck without warning.” He dropped me back on the sheets. The billowing comforter did not comfort. I pushed its softness away with my hands as I stood. My body ached as my bare feet touched the floor. I trembled. I guess we had gotten more undressed than I realized. He glowered and clung to the carved mantle of the cold fireplace. Dried husks of wood sat neatly stacked and dusty from never having burned. I stood there more vulnerable than my lack of clothing. I fought with conflicting urges to either save him or fall into him and lose myself. Vampires aren’t fuzzy cuddly pets. Real danger. Real death. My body reminded me painfully of the deathly dance I almost died in. The tick of the clock echoed in the silent room.
I reached for my clothes and slipped them on in silence despite my hands shaking uncontrollably. My rubbery leg muscles protested. My big toe caught in the side of my jeans as I pulled them on and I almost fell over.
Fear welled from my heart – are we not meant to be? My head demanded considering safety. I saw Garin’s Katana swords resting in hangers above the fireplace. I should protect myself. My eyes glanced at his naked body. His arms still knotted and his hands gripped the mantle. The scenes carved in that wood might be happy pastoral scenes of cheerful animals on a farm, but in the moonlit darkness they twisted into frightening hunting scenes. Ghoulish moaning faces.
His body shook. “I need you to leave but I can’t let you go out there alone.” He turned his head, “Not until we get this figured out.”
“I don’t think I can stay. I care deeply for you. But I can’t be constantly afraid … of us.”
His phone rang urgently in his pants balled up on the floor. The phone’s display glowed like a little ghost through the pocket lining.
“Are you going to get it?”
“It’s my phone. You let me worry about answering it.”
We stood there unmoving. Funny how a device makes people automatically do something at its mewing. The rings c
ut off finally. The display went dark. I imagined someone leaving a random message. Then the display lit up and the phone commenced ringing again. Garin growled deep down. Almost hidden from me. I finished putting my clothes on. I sat on the bed pulling my socks up. The phone stopped. I sat there. The phone rang again.
Garin flicked over from the fireplace and picked the pants up. He dug the phone from the pocket, “What?!!”
Other than my breathing and the ticking of the pendulum clock on the wall, the silence let me hear the voice on the other end of the call.
Yashar said, “I’m sorry it’s late – or early. We’ve got a problem. You need to stop by my house. I have paperwork from the plant and I need you to verify what I’m seeing. It’s best to see it so we can decide what to do before anyone goes to work early at the plant.”
“What’s your address?”
“North of Main and West of Indian Trail. Twelve-hundred Gallows Court.”
-:- Nineteen -:-
“I’m glad you arrived so quickly,” said Yashar, opening the door and motioning us to enter his massive Tudor built with old European timber and daub trimmed with gray brick. Cylindrical lamps of thick heavy glass brilliantly lit the walkways against the night.
“Did you park on the street? You could have parked on the drive.”
“No, we walked. It’s not far.” I combed my wind-shredded hair with my fingers. I probably looked comical wearing Garin’s trench coat as it hung loosely on me. I leaned against Garin’s ear, “We have to get your car fixed or get mine.”
The Vampires Of Livix Twin Pack (Volumes #1 & #2) Page 17