by Unknown
Which, he could only think, put pretty much forever paid to that.
Goran looked away, pointedly, while Cija kept on grinning, her blank eyes ravenous-covetous. He took a long, sobbing breath, into great silence.
“Then kill me,” he said, finally. “Just kill me, right damn now. I want you to.”
Goran nodded. “All right.”
But when Goran’s eyes were already rolling back and his own pulse was racing shallow, dying away, he suddenly thought: I ain’t gonna die like this, not after all I done. I deserve more. Thought: Who the hell are you to take my life away, anyhow? Even if I did give it? Fuck YOU, dead man. Fuck the pair’a you, and not like I usually do…
So he turned and bit deep into the neck of the monster who had him pinned, instead — battened on like a tick, held fast and didn’t let go, not even when a howling Cija ripped his ear off at the root; something inside told him it’d probably grow back, especially if he finished what he was doing. Just kept on drinking ‘til Goran groaned into coma, free hand shooting forward to choke Cija silent with abruptly vampire-grade strength before finally turning on her as well. Strength on top of strength flaring to life inside him, like a double-twisted halogen coil: The wily parasite whose contaminant touch alone had been enough to bring a lion — two lions — down.
That was the thing, with vampires: All the ones he’d met, anyhow, before or since. So old, so arrogant. So utterly convinced they’d seen everything there was to see, so sure they knew it all. They never saw it comin’.
It tasted good, too, damn good. And when he caught sight of himself afterwards, shaving dry with Cija’s black-handled knife as a haphazard razor, he found he shone so brightly he could hardly bear to look at himself at all — a bleak halo of stolen light all ‘round him like some eclipse turned inside-out, Goran and Cija’s long, shared midnight ramblings instantly translated to a full-body crown whose crenellations made one point each for every soul they’d ever taken, in turn.
When he finally tracked down Owain and the others, nesting in Montreal, they only had one thrall left between ‘em — made him think maybe they’d come down in the world a little, just for a moment, ‘til he recalled how they’d always liked traveling light.
Owain opened the door, frowning when he saw who it was. “We told you not to come back,” he said, warningly.
He nodded. Told him: “Goran and Cija said ‘hi’.”
And again, no immediate warning bells seemed to go off — Owain just turned his back, sighing disgustedly, head cocked at a perfect angle for the upswung axe to connect with; it left his slippery hands with a slight, odd ‘pop’, lodged deep in the parietal lobe. Owain went down, seizing, and he saw Chuyia’s blood-dimmed eyes widen from across the room, (pleasantly?) surprised, her mouth moving silently, words booming through both their synapses at once: Little spider, my born-again jungle creature. Oh, you treasure, you.
Then she was on him from one direction, Saoirse from the other, tag-teaming him both at once. Not that it ended up doin’ either of them all that much good, in the end.
The thrall was just a girl, meanwhile — maybe sixteen and deep-tranced, so much so she beat at him ‘til they were all dead, then hugged him tight and cried into his neck: You’re not another one of THEM, are you? Oh God! ARE you?
And: “Naw, not hardly,” he answered, hugging her back. “Me, I’m somethin’ else.”
Thought about killing her too, little as she and her kind still meant to him. But he forbore instead, for now, knowing full well how she’d be good help and better bait once he moved on to richer hunting-grounds: First in a long line of leech-traps, soft skin over hidden teeth. Another potential predator’s predator, one he could teach the true value of pretending to be born prey.
He caught his own glance in the bedroom mirror, eyes like peridot set in gold, and smiled a jagged black pearl smile. Thought: My Christ but I’m handsome, all of a sudden. Must be the light, the angle — something I did. Something I am. Something…
(Someone)
…I ate.
They spent the rest of the night dismembering their former masters with all the skill taught by long experience, stopped off at a local hospital to use the biohazard incinerator, slept ‘til dawn. Then loaded up the van, him and his new apprentice, and headed for fresher pastures. And every time she glanced at him, all worshipful-drunken, he knew just what it was would keep the vampires flocking to ‘em: That endless lust to see your reflectionless self cast back from others’ eyes, mirrored a thousand times normal size. Demigod promoted to full God status, if only for the length of time it took to make your victim’s gaze fix, dim, cloud over with dust and dreams … go out, entirely. After which you moved on, and on.
…you, or someone like you. For they are so easy to find, always…
Well, yeah. But what went around came back the other way ‘round, too, that was for damn sure; just as fast, if not faster. And twice as hard.
Because: He could still hear them, blaring behind his eyes even as he drove — all those pirate dream-broadcasts spilling out into the night, calling to him. That was how he navigated down this particular lost and endless highway, knowing full well they’d never even think to hide.
And when they finally fucked for the first time, him and the girl, it was in yet another motel, on yet another dirty bed — the old familiar pattern, varying only in how he deliberately forced himself to be gentle with her, pay attention to her pleasure, like he was breaking her cherry for real this time, with all the traditional attendant joys on tap: Physical show of affection, give as well as take, mutual orgasm, ‘love’ (or something like it … ‘cause what did she know, anyhow? Sixteen. What she understood about love would probably fit on a sleeveless baby tee, with room left over for two whole additional rows of dirty jokes and Internet quotes).
He slit his wrist open with Cija’s knife at the height of it, too, and let her drink from him ‘til her lips were crimson, ‘til she shivered, blinked and near passed out from the desperate jolt of it.
Thinking: Won’t make you LIKE me, I reckon, but it’s good enough to keep you mine … and that ain’t too bad, is it? Considering how I’ll for damn sure treat you better than any of those fuckers ever treated ME.
So. Because he wasn’t them, he finally knew, not really; never had been and never would be, no matter what. But he wasn’t nobody, either — not nothing. Neither wolf nor hyena but something new, something other, entirely: A chimera, of sorts. A victory of half-life over half-death, made unexpected flesh.
The flesh, the blood. The dark and sparkling Life. The Resurrection.
A Murder of Vampires
by Bev Vincent
Strains of “Highway to Hell” brought Vic out of a deep slumber. One eye popped open, then the other. It took him a few seconds to realize where he was and what was happening. Glowing red digits swam into focus.
2:17.
Operating on instinct, he grabbed his cell phone from the nightstand, flipped it open, and pressed it against his ear, hoping he had it turned the right way around.
“Yeah,” he said.
“We’ve got another one,” the voice on the other end said. The man then delivered an address on Uniacke Street, which Vic repeated to confirm that it had registered.
“Right. Fifteen minutes.” That was his stock reply, no matter how long it would take him to get to a location.
Olivia rolled over. Another night of disrupted sleep for them both. Why weren’t more people murdered in the daytime? he wondered, then brushed the thought aside.
Olivia sat up and waited for him to lean over to be pecked on the cheek. “Sucks to be you,” she said. He returned her kiss with a smile she would sense even if she couldn’t see it in the dark. Yeah, sometimes it really does, he thought as he rolled out of bed and lurched toward the bathroom.
It was closer to half an hour before he reached his destination. Finding a place that served brewed tea in the middle of the night was getting harder all the time.
> Cars and emergency vehicles clustered in the middle of the street, lights flashing, creating an eerie kaleidoscope against the dark walls of nearby buildings. Klieg lights mounted atop portable towers illuminated the surreal tableau.
Vic pulled into the first available parking spot. Car radio chatter filled the night air. Vic noticed several figures lurking along the periphery, clinging to the shadows.
The North End had always been one of the roughest parts of the city, with a long history of violence, but a mass exodus began five years ago, after they started moving in. It was a sure sign that a neighbourhood was going south when even the crack dealers and the homeless packed their bags. Now, although the main station was located less than a kilometre away at the south end of Gottingen, the police rarely patrolled this area, responding only to reports of major crimes.
The previous killings had been mentioned briefly on the inner pages of the Chronicle Herald, but there wasn’t much public pressure to close the cases. Few people cared what went on here, especially if it only involved them.
At their mandatory cultural sensitivity classes, members of the Halifax Regional Police had been advised to treat them as they would any other minority. “Imagine what it would be like if gay people had been the villains of horror movies for decades before we found out they were living among us,” the perky instructor had said.
Sensitivity be damned, Vic thought. Someone was breaking the law and he wouldn’t stand for it — even if he would rather be back home in his comfortable bed with Olivia. He clipped his badge to his belt and ducked under the ribbon of crime scene tape that had been strung around the entrance to an alley.
“Nice of you to join us,” Sergeant Heck Wilson said. He thought people called him that because his name was Hector, but it really was because they couldn’t get away with calling him “Hell,” which was what he treated everyone like.
Vic looked past the assembled officers and forensics analysts to the focus of their attention. In the wash of white light from the Kliegs, the pool of blood surrounding the body slumped against the rust-coloured brick wall seemed metallic. The victim was a male, maybe twenty-five years old. His skin was ghostly pale. His hair was a stylish mess, his three-day beard carefully groomed. He wore faded jeans and a grey t-shirt under an unbuttoned black-and-white checked shirt. A wooden stake jutted from his chest.
The only difference between this scene and the other five Vic had been summoned to over the past two months was the blood.
From the way Heck was looking at him, Vic suspected the sergeant was waiting for him to state the obvious, so he did. “The killer got it wrong this time,” he said. “Any idea who this is and what he was doing in this part of town?”
“I.D. says his name is Roger Patterson.” Heck held it up. “Address on the Northwest Arm.”
“Who called it in?”
“Anonymous tip on a disposable phone.”
“Any of them see anything?” Vic asked, indicating the loiterers. He tried not to over-emphasize the pronoun, but it was a hard habit to break.
“No one’s talked to them yet,” Heck said, not holding back at all. “We were waiting for you.”
“Thanks,” Vic said.
As he ducked under the crime scene tape again, Vic wondered if there was a collective noun for them. A ‘murder’? That was an apt description of what had been happening lately but, no, that was for crows. A coven? They hadn’t covered that topic in sensitivity training.
This was the first time they had congregated at one of the crime scenes. Maybe the freshly spilled blood had attracted them. Or, perhaps, the even fresher unspilled blood coursing through the police officers’ veins.
Maybe the dead guy in the alley was the vampire killer and his intended victims had caught up with him. The stake in his chest would be irony, then. Since they had signed a pact with the government, promising peaceful coexistence, there had never been a documented case of them attacking a human, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen — or that it hadn’t already. A lot of crimes went unreported in a ghetto.
“I’m Detective Newman,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. Could they smell his fear, the way dogs supposedly could? A couple of them shuffled their feet, but none spoke. When Vic took another step forward, they moved back as one. This was something he’d learned about them. Proximity to humans was a delicate issue. It was best to respect their boundaries.
“Anyone see what happened?”
A murmur rippled through the assembled group like a wave. There were no words, at least none that Vic could understand, but he sensed they were conferring. “Does anyone know the dead man?” He consulted his notes. “Roger Patterson?”
“Wannabe.” In the uncertain light, Vic couldn’t tell which one had spoken.
“Huh?”
“A human who wants to be one of us,” another one said. It had scraggly black hair and dark sunken eyes. Its face was pudgy, its skin as grey as wallpaper paste.
“Who would want that?” Vic asked.
“You’d be surprised,” it said. “Impressionable teenagers. Lonely middle-aged women.”
“Fat!” the first one said. Vic picked it out this time, a tall, lanky creature wearing a perpetual smirk. Its face looked like a cadaver’s. The pudgy one gave it a sharp look.
“And do you ever—?”
“Convert them? You humans think that’s all we want, isn’t it? To convert you?”
“Well—”
“You’ve seen too many movies. We have no use for your kind.”
“Food!” the lanky creature said with obvious delight.
“Ignore him,” the leader said. “He likes to antagonize humans.” It paused. “We just want to be left alone.”
“Someone’s been killing your kind lately. I assume you know that. You watch the news?”
“We have our own way of distributing information,” it said. Another murmur rippled through the crowd. “But, yes, we know that one of your kind is pursuing us.”
Vic indicated the alley. “Not him, though.”
“Wannabe,” the lanky one interjected.
“Not him,” the pudgy one said. “Wrong place, wrong time. Those who adulate us take risks. Come out here when it isn’t safe.”
Vic let that sink in. “Have you seen anyone suspicious hanging around lately?”
“Everyone who comes here looks suspicious to us. And nervous.” The pudgy creature fixed its eyes on Vic. “Like you.”
“I, uh—”
“Now he’s antagonizing you,” a new voice interjected. It sounded like a woman, but these were creatures, not people, Vic reminded himself. They might look human, but the resemblance ended there.
It took a step forward, until it was bathed in light from the Klieg lamps. Vic’s breath caught in his chest. It was … pretty. Its long dark hair hung loose around its shoulders. Its skin was as pale as the murder victim’s, but it wasn’t repulsive. “We haven’t seen anyone who looks like a slayer,” it said. “But how would we know? They don’t carry signs — most of them, anyway.” It smiled and batted its eyelashes at him. “If you saw me on a street corner on a sunny afternoon, would you know what I was?”
Taken by surprise by the creature’s appearance and forwardness, he didn’t answer. To mask his discomfort, he held out his card. “If you see someone suspicious, please call this number.” No one took it. Thinking that their unresponsiveness had something to do with their aversion to proximity, he bent to place the card on the curb.
The pudgy one said, “We know how to contact you if necessary.”
Vic nodded and took a step backward before turning away. It went against every instinct to turn his back on them, but he wasn’t about to back up all the way to the crime scene. He’d never hear the end of it if he did.
He was about to step under the crime scene tape when something grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. He reached for his pistol, but stopped when he heard laughter. The sound was not quite human, as if it had b
een learned through imitation, yet it had an irresistible allure. A skilled actor, perhaps, displaying an emotion it had never experienced.
“You have no reason to be afraid, you know,” the female creature said — the one that had batted its eyes at him. She seemed to have no issues with proximity.
“You surprised me,” he said, his heart still pounding. “Not a smart thing to do to an armed man. What do you want?”
“You asked if we’d seen anyone suspicious.”
“I thought you hadn’t.”
“I travel when the others don’t.” Vic waited for her to continue. Her eyes were wide and deep. A man could get lost in them, he thought. “When the sun is high in the sky. Did you know we could do that? Most simply choose not to.”
“Just about everything we think we know about you is based on fiction. Bad fiction, mostly. So you’ve seen someone hanging around. In the daytime?”
She nodded.
“Not another wannabe.”
“This human doesn’t want to be seen by us. That’s why he comes when he does. He drives a black car. He parks over there.” She pointed to a spot near where Vic had left his car.
“You didn’t happen to notice the license number?”
“I notice a great many things,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Not that. He is a young man, younger than you, at least, though not as tall. Thin. Dark.” She paused. “Full of blood.”
“What does he do?”
“Sets traps.”
“What sort of trap does someone set to catch…?”
“One of us?”
“Yes,” he said, fascinated by the way her eyes gleamed in the faint light. Her eyes — when had he started thinking about her that way? He couldn’t remember, but at that moment, if she had asked him to step into the shadows so she could show him something, he would have followed. She was close enough that he could see the features in her skin, the places where there should have been veins, but weren’t.
She smiled at him again. Her teeth were neat and even, just like Olivia’s.
“I don’t know,” she said at last.