by D. N. Hoxa
I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t agree to live like this. I wouldn’t.
VIII
Hammer called for me to stop while I ran forward without direction. I had jumped from the window of that room almost ten minutes ago. I had to, or I would’ve torn both those men apart. Those men—and the other heart that was beating about three rooms to the left of theirs.
“Morta!” Hammer called. He intentionally stayed a few feet behind me though he could reach me easily if he wanted to. I didn’t stop.
“Morta, just stop, will you?”
The scenery changed in front and around me soon. The buildings were once again covered in ashes, black curtains covering what had no doubt once been a beautiful sight. Broken cars, much like around the wall where I’d lived for the past two years, stood rusted and colorless on the broken asphalt.
How much more had I not seen of the world? How many more broken buildings and destroyed cars were there, all of them a memory of the past, a black omen for the future?
“Morta…”
“Just leave me alone!” I shouted. “You’ll find me later. Just leave me alone for now!”
I started running as soon as the last word left my mouth. I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about where I was going. I just knew that I didn’t hear Hammer’s steps behind me anymore. Hopefully for once in his life he’d listen. I couldn’t look at him right now, because all I saw in his eyes was myself. God, how I wished for this torment to end!
Harley’s face came to my mind all of a sudden. As opposed to Jessica, she sometimes smiled at me. Even touched me when I was little, until I grew old enough to know that if I would rely in anyone else but myself, I’d be in much more pain than I already was.
But her face fascinated me because it was nothing like Mom’s, Jessica’s, or mine. She was the opposite of all of us. She reminded me of a could have been. A very bright, and very happy could have been. Her eyes held a smile that neither Mom’s nor Jessica’s did. Jessica was more beautiful, but Harley was sweeter. Put both my sisters in two separate rooms, and I was sure that ten men would go after Harley and maybe one after Jessica. She just had that kind of a face that made you want to feel good about yourself.
“Maybe one day it won’t be like this,” she’d once said to me. I was twelve, and my mother had found the lotion that smelled like vanilla and coconut hidden under my pillow. I loved that smell so much, and at some point, my childish mind had convinced me that it was okay to take it, that Mother wouldn’t mind. Because I just wanted to smell it before I went to sleep every night. I still remembered the white bottle with the beautiful yellow flower drawn on the front.
Mother did find it, and Mother did mind. She beat me with her leather belt, the one she always wore with the crème-colored dress that went to the middle of her thighs and had the back opened so that just the edge of her bra showed. I’d liked the golden frame and the warm brown color of the leather once. When its loops were imprinted across my back, I learned to hate it easily.
Harley was the closest thing I’d ever had to a family. She sometimes combed my hair and braided it, though we had to undo it every time Mom was at the door. She didn’t want any of them messing with me in any way. But Harley told me I was beautiful twice and promised me that once I found a husband, I could get out of there and never see the house, or them, again. I’d been naïve enough to believe her and even dreamed about the prince that would come to rescue me from the evil witch. It wasn’t long before I learned that fairy tales were just fairy tales. A world of fantasy.
The last time Harley spoke to me and smiled at me was when I was fifteen. I’d hidden Jessica’s new, sparkly shoes under the cracking piece of wood in the attic. Neither of them could prove it, of course, but they all knew that I took them. As a reward for her pulling my hair the other day because I’d eaten a whole fruit yogurt, and it had been the last one.
“I know you have them,” Harley had said to me while mother and Jessica were upstairs searching. I’d said nothing. “They were her favorite pair,” she added, and before she turned around to leave, I saw the smile on her face, a little mischievous grin that filled my heart and made me feel as if I wasn’t alone in the crime I’d committed. That—given other circumstances—Harley would have probably done it with me.
I didn’t miss her. I didn’t miss anyone. I just missed the could have been that her eyes reminded me of.
My breath caught in my throat when I was suddenly hit with a round, heavy something right on my left shoulder. I flew to the side fast but somehow managed to land on the ground still standing. The searing pain brought my teeth to points, though it soon disappeared. I looked around but saw nothing except for shadows. I hadn’t kept track of how long I’d been running, but there was nothing but torched ground and fallen old trees around me. I smelled dirty water from maybe a mile or more away. I heard a flapping of wings by something small, maybe as big as my palm. And I smelled something else.
Leather, mud and vodka mixed with nicotine. Someone that wasn’t Hammer was close to me, and they were definitely not human, because I heard no beating heart except for mine. I panicked. I looked back to see where Hammer was until I remembered that I’d yelled for him to leave me alone. I’d made him stop following me.
“Do I smell Hammer on you?” a voice said, as cold and as low as mine or my Lord’s. Definitely a monster. My hands started to shake as I helplessly looked ahead and saw nothing.
“Yeah, definitely him. It must be our lucky night,” another voice said with a hint of laughter.
“W-who…who’s there?” I asked, my voice dead cold yet the stuttering still obvious.
“Don’t fear, little girl,” the first voice said, and that’s when I heard the steps, simply because they wanted me to hear them. Two men, bigger and wider than Hammer, dressed in leather pants and hoodies, came out in the silver light in front of me. Their faces looked as if they were cut out of marble. Their eyes shone in the darkness as if they were cut from glass. My heart should’ve been pounding, but it followed the same rhythm, no matter my fear. A million things they could do to me crossed my mind.
“Who are you?” I asked, looking back where I came from in desperate hope of seeing Hammer coming to my rescue for the second time in the short while I’d met him. I didn’t want to be tortured, raped and then stuck a monster for God knows how long because I didn’t keep a promise.
“The question here is who are you? And why the hell do you have a beating heart?” One of them said, amusement leaking from his words. In a blink of an eye, the taller one of the two was in front of me. My hands moved instinctively, and I tried to push him away like I’d done with Hammer, but he grabbed my wrists, as if he were waiting for that move.
“There, there. We don’t want to be rude, do we?” he said, grinning widely and looking down at my body.
“You think Hammer sent a snack our way to say sorry?” the other one asked. He stood with his arms crossed, two feet behind his friend.
“I’ll be damned…” the one holding me whispered against my face before he took my chin in his cold, big hand and made me look up at him. “I’ve never seen something like you. Mind if I take a bite?”
A numb scream left my throat while I tried to move away from his grasp and push him. He didn’t even budge.
“Should be fun to try,” the other said, coming closer to us.
I tried to kick him while I begged my tears not to spill. I didn’t want them to see that. I didn’t want them to rape me or bite me, or whatever else they had in mind.
I wished I hadn’t run away from Hammer like that. He would have smelled them. He would’ve…what? Protected you? a voice in my head whispered. You’ve been nothing but a bitch to him, and he is no more than a monster. He watched two helpless people die in front of him, and he did nothing. Why would he want to save you?
“Let me go,” I said, when I realized the voice in my head was right. I was going to have to talk my way out of it. It was the last chance I had.
“You don’t mean that, do you?” the one who still had his hand wrapped around my chin said.
“Get the fuck away from me!” I hissed and almost broke my neck trying to jerk away from him. If I was going down, I was going down fighting, no matter that I knew I was no match for the two.
“Oh, she’s feisty…” the other said and touched a string of my hair to brush it away from my face.
“Let her go.”
Three heads turned to the left to see where the cold, dead voice came from. Again, my heart should have pounded at the sight of Hammer, his black shirt tight against his torso, his legs set wide and a piece of thick, rusted iron in his hand.
“Holy hell, look who it is!”
“I knew you were around here somewhere!” the vampire holding me shouted, tightening his grip around my chin.
“Jordy, let her go, now,” Hammer said.
“Or what? What the hell are you going to do if I don’t?”
“You think you can take both of us like last time?” the other said, taking small steps towards Hammer.
“No, last time I let you live. This time, I’m not going to,” Hammer said calmly.
I couldn’t understand any of the words they were saying, but my eyes glued themselves to Hammer’s face. I thanked whoever was up there that he didn’t just leave me alone like I asked him to. He came after me. And he wanted to help me.
I knew it was because he wanted to find my Lord that badly, but it still didn’t push away the feeling of gratitude I felt for him. I was looking for death, sure, but somehow, I didn’t think Jordy and his friend wanted to kill me before they experimented with the vamp that had a beating heart.
“You know, I still haven’t gotten over that,” Jordy said.
“What did you think, that Mohg was going to hold us in forever?” his friend mocked.
“No, I knew he would let you go. I was actually wondering when I’d see you again, Tick. When I’d get to see you again so I could do what I should’ve done the first time,” Hammer said, raising his chin.
At that Jordy laughed. They both laughed, and Hammer joined in. My eyes almost popped out of my skull as I tried to move my head or open my mouth to speak. Unfortunately, although Jordy was laughing, his hands were still strong as steel.
Everything happened so fast after that. Hammer’s rusted piece of iron went inside Tick’s chest, and it stayed there. Tick fell to his knees the same second Jordy’s head flew back, and I was finally released.
I took a step back and watched in horror while Hammer fought the big man, fist after fist, kick after kick, until they started to throw each other. Literally throw each other.
Hammer grabbed Jordy’s shoulders and connected his knee to Jordy’s chest. The big body flew out of his hands, as if he and Jordy were like poles of a gigantic magnet. Jordy fell against a building, creating a dust cloud that took vision from us. We didn’t see the speed at which he came back and hit Hammer so hard on the jaw, he flew twice the distance to the other side.
Tick was still on his knees a couple of feet away with both his hands around the iron buried in his chest, trying to remove it. He looked in pain, and he sounded like it, too. Hammer and Jordy kept throwing each other through the air for a long while, or so it seemed to me.
I just stood there, watched the three of them, unable to bring my body to move. My thoughts banged against the walls of my mind, and there was absolutely nothing I could find to do with my hands except hold them in front of me, as if waiting for something to crash on me.
My gut was telling me to move, find something, anything, and help Hammer. He’d come back for me, and he deserved my doing something except standing there like a pathetic little girl, staring. But my mind wouldn’t let me function.
The ground in front of me was covered in brown, dry mud. A blink and Hammer’s head landed there. I was so scared, I didn’t even jump away.
Jordy fell on Hammer’s stomach and with his big fists that held three sharp pieces of iron right below his knuckles, hit him, over and over again.
Blood spilled on my boots, and my thoughts left altogether. I don’t know what I had in mind when I did what I did next, but I barely remembered it. I stepped away and went behind Tick’s back. I wasn’t very creative so I couldn’t think of another way to try and fight. I grabbed the piece of iron coming out of Tick’s back, put my foot on his shoulder, and I pulled it out, accompanied by Tick’s hisses.
I went behind Jordy, and I did the same thing Hammer had done. I pushed the iron inside Jordy’s back. He stopped throwing fists and fell to the side, trying but failing to stand on his feet.
“Fuck, Morta…” Hammer said, wiping some blood off his face that was looking much better than it did seconds ago. I didn’t understand what he meant by that until I felt Tick behind me. He hit me so hard on the back of my head that I fell on the ground on my face and spun at least a dozen times.
“You little bitch!” he hissed from behind me and then grabbed my hair to pull me up to my feet. I was well aware that I had the strength to at least push him off as long as he couldn’t grab my hands, but I didn't. He kicked me with his knee in the gut, and I doubled over, though the pain barely registered in my brain. He threw me, and before I could completely fall against the dirty wall of a building, he was there and pushed me back with a fist on my face.
I bit my tongue, and it hurt so much, sparks flew through my head. Another fist, and another, and then one to my stomach, and I was ready to bet this was it. I didn’t feel that good, though. Not when I knew that Hammer was in on this, too. Because of me.
Tick’s next fist—I stopped counting after the fifth—was stopped short when he got pulled back. His body took a strange angle, his chest and stomach forward, like they shouldn’t have been, and he let out an agonizing cry when I heard his backbone break. He fell forward, and I saw Hammer stand behind with his knee forward.
“Don’t move,” he told me, his voice barely a whisper.
“I’m sorry…I-I wanted to help…” I stuttered, and for a second, his face softened. His eyes lost the darkness and turned to amber, glowing gold. He watched me for as long as he could.
“I know. Just don’t move,” he said again and then turned back to the vampires.
By the time he was done with them, I had fallen on my ass on the ground, feeling my internal vampire clock tick, announcing the arrival of the sunrays.
I felt hands under me, and then there was wind for a while. The sky had turned completely orange. It looked so beautiful the way I saw it. Blurry, yet so magnificent. Like a low burning fire.
Eventually, we were inside. The smell of something burning wanted me to push my eyes open. I didn’t have the strength to move, but I did try to speak.
“Burning…” was all I said.
“It’s alright. You’re safe now.” Hammer’s voice, melodic like I’d never heard it before, reached my ears.
Safe.
If his voice hadn’t sounded so sincere, I would’ve accused him of mocking me. I’d lived long enough to know that there was no such thing.
But I was put on something soft. Soft and comfortable, as I hadn't felt ever since the house I grew up in burned down to ashes. The sour smell of burning made me flinch once again. That was the last thing I remembered as I drifted into my day-state.
IX
The young night was peaceful when I opened my eyes. I was lying on a bed, a warm bed with a window right above my head. I wondered if I’d been sleeping there all day, because the sun would’ve killed me if I had. Somehow, I knew Hammer had something to do with it.
The stars showed clearly that night. Millions of small, glowy dots in the deep blue sky. I sat and watched them for a while. Something like that was rare at the time. We never had clear skies. We never had winter, or summer, or spring, or autumn. Just a constant of cloudy skies and sometimes cold, sometimes colder weather. The sky was clear maybe once or twice in two years. The last time I’d seen such clarity was the night my fam
ily died.
When I thought to turn and look around me, I saw that I was in a small room, clean and tidy. The bed where I was lying had sheets and a thick blanket. The mattress was even framed with a simple, wooden design. The wooden floor was cracked in several places, but a brown round rug covered most of it. There was a shelf filled with random items: a couple of books, all in Spanish; a vase with the rim broken; a candle holder with one branch missing; an ashtray shaped in form of a woman…with her legs open. I would’ve blushed if I were capable.
The door was completely intact and closed. I reached for the knob, half expecting to find the door locked. It opened easily with a low crack.
The hallway was wide and empty, lined with candles through the whole way. I followed it to my right until I found myself at the top of a set of stairs. They were mostly unbroken, but the wood gave with my every step. Downstairs to the left, there was a living room. I hadn't seen one so well kept since my house. It had a low black table with two burning candles on it, and around it were two sofas, one green and the other black. Another bigger shelf with the lower half covered in frosted glass took one corner. The carpet, thick and stained in several places, was yellow and looked completely out of place.
“Slept well?”
I turned around to see Hammer by a doorway with no door. I nodded and took my eyes off him immediately.
“Come on,” he said and waved for me to follow while he made his way to the other side of the house and into a room with a door.
There was a kitchen, mostly broken. He had a table and only one chair with two of its legs tied with rope, a set of plates, each different from the other, and four candles. Glasses were lined all around the rusted sink and there was even a coffee machine that made me drool. That was a bad thing, since it immediately took my mind to blood.
“What is this place?” I asked, sounding braver than I felt. It wasn’t that I was scared. After last night, I didn’t think I could ever be scared of Hammer again. The way he protected me, threw himself in front of two very big vampires, told me that if he wanted me hurt, he would’ve simply left me with them.