It fell, with barely a wet thud, as far from him as it was from her, but he spun around, quicker than a creature of his size had a right to be, called not by the noise, but by the scent hitting his fine-tuned senses. He could taste her on every breath.
With a hungry growl, he leapt towards his prey, cornering it. The little mound of cloth had fallen in the shadows and it took him a few minutes to locate the focal point. The slates cracked like eggshells under his enormous boots.
Her trick was short-lived. The Beast picked up the shirt with a low growl, jagged claws tearing the thin fabric.
Behind, the girl made a noise, a calculated high whistle, and he spun around, ready to pounce.
She stood on a low wall, the crossbow in her hands aimed at him. As he remained in the shadows of the roof, she occupied the light, her clear blue eye following the straight line of the arrow to her prey at the end of it, as if an invisible thread was tied already between her arrow and his heart.
The sight of her naked torso was enough to give him pause, a breathless second, a gasp of surprise that forfeited his life.
The arrow whistled through air and smoke, a semitone higher than the hunter’s call.
*****
The Beast had been a dead man for years.
Or he should have been. His agonizing body was stolen away, bought and sold like a horse for dog food. He woke up in a regeneration tank covered in runes and pigeon blood. No peace and no grave, his flesh changed forever, pumped and stitched, a beast of skin.
Spooked by the malevolent intelligence in his yellow eyes, the investors demanded termination. The Doctor, in a rage, packed up his creatures and went underground.
*****
Everything is sound. The twang of the string, the whistle of the bolt, the dull thump as it hits his chest, fur, skin, bone, flesh. It doesn’t stop until its silver-laced point is buried in his monstrous heart. That final sound has a deeper, crimson tone, nerve-jangling to the primeval instincts. It is intimate.
He tried to take a breath, frowned at the sudden flash of pain and went down slowly, like a felled tree.
The impact reverberated through the entire roof. The girl lowered her weapon and approached, reloading as she went, her finger on the trigger.
The Beast looked down at the black shaft protruding from his bloody shirt.
“You missed,” he croaked, with a raspy laugh.
“I hit your heart.”
The girl stood above him, crossbow aimed at his eyes. His gaze ignored the arrow and lingered on her breasts, with a little smile.
“Ah, yes. The heart. It’s all about…the heart… He…wouldn’t shut up about it,” he gurgled, coughed. “Do me a favour, will you, cherry pie?” he whispered, with the last of his breath. “Break his fucking heart…”
His chest spasmed in a convulsive attempt to breathe, and then the monster’s body was still.
With the tip of her loaded weapon pressed firmly against his throat, the girl untangled her slashed shirt from his fingers. But he was done.
She took a picture on her phone, added the coordinates and sent the message.
By the time the recovery team arrived, she was far from the building, a girl with a black backpack and a retro-fashionable t-shirt artfully slashed to expose her young skin. One more on the streets.
*****
The house was cleaned by little robots, buzzing and zapping around the furniture. They always had a busy couple of hours after she got back from her trips, bringing a myriad of exciting new particles of dirt and germs.
Lux shed her clothes on her way up the stairs, knowing that they would be burnt anyway.
The sound of mechanical vacuums and brushes sang a comforting symphony while she bathed.
There weren’t many bruises this time. The girl examined herself, recounting old scars. They were small, but strategically dangerous, most of them caused by sharp objects, drawing a map of her mission. Many of her prey had been close enough to draw blood. Too close, it was true, but death requires closeness.
Only those such as the Beast and his well-armoured heart required other means of extermination.
She had a sandwich in the kitchen, her bare toes perched on the bar of a high stool at the breakfast counter which had never seen a breakfast.
Lux looked like anyone’s daughter. Dark honey blonde hair, clear blue eyes, slight frame. She was stronger and heavier than she appeared, but she moved like a dancer (or a trained assassin) and it made her seem weightless.
*****
Alchemic Genetics, he called it.
The Doctor’s science was a mix of alchemy, chemistry, anatomy and superstition. All these elements combined had produced his monsters, and all of the elements were necessary to destroy them.
As the body count rose, he trusted Lux more and more, to the point where he didn’t even inquire about her strategies. He simply waited for her call.
The Doctor was absorbed in a new project, and his faith in his own control over her was absolute.
As if all that she contained, all that she was, was what he had put in there—his own witch’s brew of cruel, cold potions. He allowed her to read. He was oblivious to the pathways growing through her mind, the connections being made that had turned her many pockets of knowledge into a powerful network of resources.
From herself and the others, Lux had learned that their mutations continued to evolve, just like their minds. He had archived their files too soon.
He collected hearts. Framed pages from old medical books, plastic anatomical models, the drawings of DaVinci, the speculations of the ancients…
But the heart had no secrets. Muscle and blood, entrances and exits, chambers, electric impulses, systole and diastole. No mystery.
Brains were a mystery, minds even more so. He even spoke about the aetheric spirit sometimes. And yet, there were hearts everywhere.
A memento of his old obsessions, surpassed now and forgotten. Mere decoration.
Lux’s favourite was a marble heart, an antique paperweight. It was carved from blue-veined white marble with exquisite detail, and perfectly proportioned.
Her own heartbeat was faster than it should be, faster than any human’s. Maybe she would die young, or live forever. It had worked without falter till now but, if she was ever examined by a regular doctor, it would cause some alarm.
*****
She always disliked breathing in the complex. That’s what they called the underground extension of the house, the lab, the cells, the other rooms.
The air down here was filtered, processed, fabricated gas that made her lungs cringe.
It didn’t matter that she had grown up in the complex, with precious little outdoors time. There was no nostalgia there. Who would be homesick for a plastic cell and the hum of machines keeping you alive?
But she took deep breaths and measured steps, a good little monster doing her chores. No feelings, no wishes, no superfluous thoughts.
The steel doors swooshed open, her biometric scan a flawless match.
*****
The Witch was next.
She was one of the most dangerous, not just because of her abilities but because she’d want to keep Lux alive, keep her for herself. The Witch was one of the smartest minds to escape the Doctor’s nursery.
Lux had prepared herself for a long time, studying the files, adamant about not flinching at the most brutal tests. She had read many of those reports before, all of them in fact, even the ones from the dead. Each one was a one-way mirror into a bubble of pain and isolation. She was familiar with the bubble. She had one of her own. The Doctor had never allowed her to read her own file, but she suspected that he was still writing it. His last monster.
The Witch was hiding in plain sight.
No shady alleys or trailer parks for her. The apartment was beautiful, a welcoming space designed for comfort. It wasn’t even bobby-trapped, but of course, an empa-telepath has her own in-built alarm system. Not to mention weapons.
It wasn’t
a pristine abode. Lux found it pleasantly dishevelled, a textured chaos of life being lived. She walked into every room, the methodical exploration of a well-trained killer, getting the feel of the place.
But hiding places are useless when facing a telepath.
According to the file, the Witch could detect her emotions, and possibly hear her thoughts, from at least two rooms away. Who knew how much bigger her range might have become since the break-out.
She examined the clothes carelessly flung everywhere. They were soft, colourful fabrics. Not garments to fight in. Exotic images adorned the walls, far away lands captured into frames. The bathroom was a special place, with shelves full of jars and bottles. Modern potions of beauty. Fragile bowls held aromatic salts, bars of soap carved into flowers and powdery spheres of bubble bath.
A luxury of scents to overpower the senses. A fragrant hiding place. She recognized a safe-room when she saw it.
Lux was coming out of the bathroom when a flicker of movement startled her. A cat was looking at her from the sofa. It was a slick creature with misty-grey fur and golden green eyes on its heart-shaped face. It waved its long tail, like an undulating question mark.
The Witch’s primary power was a biological self-defence. Her skin produced a mutated pheromone combined with a mild hallucinogenic to aid her psychic suggestions. Simple chemistry. Lux raised her hand and inhaled deeply on her sleeve, soaked with a mixture of essential oils to neutralize the Witch’s subtle scent.
“I can see you,” she said, even though it wasn’t true yet.
The cat blinked twice and a woman took its place. Like her feline illusion, she continued to study Lux with the calm eyes of a predator that isn’t hungry at the moment.
“Come closer, girl,” a smile bowed her perfect red lips. “Sit down with me. Be welcome to my home.”
She wore a lovely summer dress, and her hair had been meticulously braided.
“That was a good trick, with the perfume. You’ve done your homework. But it’s quite unnecessary. I only use my tricks on paying customers.”
Lux gave in to the telepathic pull, but not completely. She resisted enough to take a chair, instead of joining her host on the sofa. The mental fingers probed her mind lightly, as delicate as a cat licking blood.
Meanwhile, she kept talking, talking.
“And how is the Doc these days? Still strapping girls to tables? You grew up pretty. He must be all over you…”
Lux flinched at the salacious images filling her head.
“Oh, I see. It’s not like that with you, is it? You’re just a sweet obedient killing machine. I suppose I was your prototype. Or maybe all of us were. He enjoyed my services a few times, before he decided that I’d be an ideal subject. He paid well, until then.” She watched the girl shift, uncomfortably. “He’s just a man, cherie. He bleeds and he comes and he can be…distracted.”
Lux, concentrating on keeping the woman out of her mind, thought of a wall of spikes.
“No need for that, sweetness. I am only skimming the surface. Although I don’t suppose he allows you to have depths. No. Thinking creatures make bad slaves,” she paused. “You are here to kill me. But…you don’t want to. What is it that you want, Lux?” She had picked up her name, like snatching a fish off the water. “What’s your heart’s desire?”
The Witch’s skin was flawless, creamy caramel. Her skin was her armour. No one would ever touch her again. Were their powers determined by their wishes? And, if so, what did a terrified five-year-old wish for?
“For a while, I thought you were his child, but he must have stolen you from somewhere. Do you even remember?”
Lux flinched again, and the probing stopped.
“No, of course not. You are not his, Lux,” her voice sprouted hard edges. The honeyed charm had no place here. “None of us are.”
The girl stood up. It was the Witch’s turn to flinch.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“What will you tell him?”
“That you’re dead.”
*****
The Witch dropped her clothes on the floor and walked naked into the bathroom. Everything was in its place. The girl had felt longing here, but she had resisted temptation. Clever girl. She wondered how well-trained Lux really was, how long before she tried to break free. Her mind was full of bolted doors, repressed horrors going back to a tender age. How long before he sent her back, better prepared this time, a true menace?
Her scents enveloped her in a comfort cocoon, perfumes and soaps blending in the steam. She inhaled deeply, waiting for the water to reach the perfect temperature. The Witch stepped under the high-pressure shower and let it wash the darkness from her mind. After the initial relief, she felt an uncomfortable tension creeping through her body. She was rooted to the spot. Gasping, she looked around for the source of the pressure choking her. In the thickening steam, a pattern on the ceiling revealed itself. Chalk lines of an iridescent glow. A practiced hand had drawn a circle above the shower, complete with cabalistic symbols that made her insides burn. The runes hurt the roots of her eyes.
The Witch stood under the high-pressure cascade, screaming without sound, while the soluble contents of a muslin pouch stuffed inside the showerhead mixed with the water. Alchemy-chemistry, magic and science poured down in burning droplets, rising into the fine mist, dissolving every inch of her perfectly bewitching creamy caramel skin.
*****
Lux could almost taste the bone-dust chalk on the smell of her hands. She rubbed them against her jeans but the hairspray (a spur of the moment inspiration) had fixed it to her skin as well as to the ceiling.
From a park bench two blocks away, she closed her mind to the telepathic howls and sent the text message. In the buildings around her, babies woke up screaming, dogs whimpered, cats’ fur bristled.
Her mind was exhausted from the strain of allowing herself to be read while keeping the little corners hidden under everything else.
Her own perception was perhaps stronger than the Witch’s but it was triggered by emotion, rather than will, and her instinct had been to hide it from the beautiful woman she had to kill.
Her list was nearing completion. She didn’t want to count, just move on to the next target, research and execute, but she was very aware of the refrigerated chamber where the Doctor kept the remains of his subjects.
For future examination. For secrecy. For Lux to never forget. Each one of them had possessed a weakness; each had to die in the right way. Some methods were cleaner than others. Eyes of the seer, skin of the witch, spine of the wall-crawler, heart of the beast, voice of the enchanter… A long list.
*****
The Machine was a nest of glass tubing. Pipettes, alembics, distillation chambers, retorts, cooling domes and refining filters, like something out of a museum. At the end that connected to the subject, the technology became high end medical equipment, all polished steel, pure porcelain and sterile needles.
It was a mind-boggling contraption of science spanning five centuries. No need to wait for a lightning bolt, though. The Doctor had devised a less capricious catalyst.
But Lux had been its last subject. Or, rather, the last surviving one.
The labyrinthine instrument slept in a long-abandoned room, gathering what little dust made its way though the air filters down here. In the beginning, building it in the farthest corner had been a necessary inconvenience, so the screams would not be heard. Lux remembered the screams.
The others, the ones that stopped so abruptly.
And her own. Over and over.
She didn’t tell him about her nightmares anymore, so he assumed they were gone. Forgotten. He thought she was transparent to him, a simple lab rat. However, she had thoughts, when he wasn’t looking, and she kept secrets. Truths. Memories.
She had never been fully awake inside the machine. There was hypnosis, those bright oscillating trinkets, and the bitter juices poured into her mouth.
Her m
emories were in her dreams. For years, she fought to shut them out, but now Lux listened to them, dove into the remembered agony and examined every detail her five-year-old subconscious had retained by binding it to horrors.
Her examination of the machine, aided by research of science old and new, had reached an intriguing conclusion. The contraption was quite whole, if slightly disassembled, but the linchpin was missing. There was a hollow space in the glassy entrails, where a key component had been removed. All she could guess about it was its size (not big) and that it was equipped with at least four connection points, where four now sadly gaping rubber tubes linked it to the system. It was the catalyst.
*****
No colour on his craggy cheeks, no feeling to his stony fingers. Dead hair, faded blond, clinging to his cracked scalp. Fingernails turned into glass.
Dead, he would give away too many secrets. This body could not be recovered. He must be allowed to live long years, until every part of him had petrified, and no tests were possible.
In the meantime, he had free reign of the dream world.
He lay on a bed, covered by sheets he couldn’t feel. Tubes went in and out of his shell, keeping his insides alive. Acute scleroderma, it said on his chart.
The bed was reinforced, and double sized. His body had gained weight and density with petrification. The nurses needed a mechanical crane to move him.
They opened the curtains every day. Perhaps sun was not such a good idea.
Brain activity was inexplicable, off the charts, an unpredictable flurry of thought and emotion in a perennial electrical storm inside his skull.
They didn’t know what was going on inside his head, but Lux did. He was living a hundred lives.
She wore skirts and pretty shoes, put on pink lipstick, became the sweetest of volunteers at the hospital where his family had stored him. They had stopped visiting, because life goes on and why spend time caring for an unresponsive rock?
It wasn’t too long before she became his regular companion. Nobody else wanted to. When she fell asleep in the room, the nurses laughed it off.
“You are not the first one,” they said, “he must give off sleepy vibes.”
Here Be Monsters - an Anthology of Monster Tales Page 5