Simon leaned in further, his face pulsing. Deanna shook her head again. Composure had been fighting its way back but Mayor Cain’s words dragged fear towards the surface again. She could feel belief in his words, could almost see images of the war reflected in the dark pools of his eyes: black-clad vampires locked in violent embrace with wolfish beasts. Somehow she found a part of herself believing, recognizing the truths he told.
“Have you ever stumbled into the darkened alleyways of a major city when the day is done? Have you ever travelled the underground trains at night, child? In London or Paris or New York?” She didn’t answer; her silence gave him the response. “Don’t. You can hear them in the tunnels, savagery echoing off the stone walls. Battles are fought and won but the war goes on.”
Simon took a step forward.
Sweat seemed to stick Deanna’s skin to the wall through her blouse. The dominating form of Simon Cain towered over her. She thought he’d grown.
He spoke in a controlled, unhurried manner. “Don’t worry my dear, I am not a vampire nor am I a werewolf but I am a product of this war. Somehow, love prevails; it always does, even within the supernatural. The names of those who crossed the divide are not relevant, but they are carved in the stone of history. Even vampires and werewolves are prey to the desires of humans when they take man’s form. Love found a way through the hatred and the culls, love prevailed and brought them together while the war raged around them. Love found a way, more than once. They reproduced, bloodlines were crossed. Those who crossed are no longer with us, they were each slain by their own kind and their bodies burnt. Love had touched some across the divide but it only served to strengthen the resolve within each coven, throughout every pack, and the war rages still—fiercer than ever.
“The children survived. They were hunted for a while, vampires and werewolves united in a search to destroy what they believed shouldn’t have been, but the war took over, it consumed them again, and my bloodline endured.”
Sweat trailed into her eyes. Deanna closed them forcefully and willed her emotions to withdraw. She had to keep him talking. “So come on then . . . Tell me why you’re so important.”
His body spread before her, his face a foot from hers. His voice remained soft, a gentle hum above the clatter of rain on glass.
“I am one of The Chosen, amid the upper echelons of my kind: my mother a vampire, my father a lycanthrope. It is a birthright, a gift bestowed—a privilege. We are all around you Deanna, inhabiting your mortal world. Our infiltration program has been very successful,” he paused, and a look of elation altered his features. “We are immortal. The Chosen are supreme; we keep the bloodline strong.”
“What bloodline?” Keep him talking, ask him anything.
“We have the bloodline of lycanthropes and vampires, we’re shape-shifters. We feed on flesh, a feast that rivals that of the werewolves. We have a thirst for blood—it may not keep us alive in the true vampire sense—but it charges us and energizes us.” Simon edged closer. His appearance shifted, not a subtle flicker like before; his jaw line thickened, his skull bulging. A splintering sound cracked the stillness of the bedroom, bones shifting under his skin as his body swelled. His face protracted and slid out of proportion as if pliable and being manipulated by unseen hands. In the corner of her eye she saw his canines lengthen. The bulb hanging from the ceiling had gone, hidden behind the deformed shape Simon Cain shifted into.
Fear clogged her arteries. Her feet slid on the carpet, but she couldn’t free her gaze from his countenance. He resembled Simon Cain, but he’d metamorphosed into something caught between man and beast: human features lurking amid animalistic qualities, an unclothed body thick with muscular contours. Deanna tried to force breath into lungs that felt the size of deflated party balloons. She could no longer see images of the war within his dark eyes but her own face etched with terror, an acute fear that seemed to shift her countenance beyond its natural dimensions.
Thick hands reached out and dragged elongated nails over her tear-stained cheeks.
“Vampires and werewolves take human form, they hide in it, seek sanctuary in it,” Simon said. “My kind has evolved. We use our human form; we exploit the emotions that make mankind so weak and utilize that power. We are few, but we’re waging war on those who persecute us; we will eradicate them all. Our kind will remain long after all the covens and packs have gone.”
Saliva dripped from his elongated teeth. His nails dug harder at her flesh. Deanna throbbed, her body protesting about her stance and the way she tried to force herself through the wall to get away. Her legs trembled and sweat pulled her clothes against her skin. Terror escaped in a gasp as his fingers curled around her chin, tracing lines down her neck and across her shoulders.
“Alas, there is one trait we have not inherited. I cannot make you one of us; I cannot give you the gift. You are not born one of us therefore you are not one of us. Such a shame. You’re such a beautiful specimen, so much life and energy. I’m sorry, Deanna. I wish there were another way.”
Power surged from him, his eyes clouding as the force came. His shape shifted further.
Deanna let her legs collapse beneath her as he lunged. Pain spun along her spine as her hips met the floor. Her head jerked as her dark hair became entangled in his clutching fingers, a sharp jolt before momentum pulled the tresses clear. She needed to be quick. In the same movement of dropping her stance, Deanna lunged forward and grabbed Simon’s testicles. She squeezed and twisted as she dug manicured nails into his scrotum.
The transformed man’s squeal sounded like a butchered pig and he collapsed in pain.
Deanna had already moved, sliding between his legs as he jumped from her grasp. She rolled over; scooped up the canister of mace—terrified its vomit-stained surface would cause it to skid from her grip—and popped the lid.
Simon lunged for her again.
It may have been luck, but Deanna hoped she’d received help from something more holy, as the pepper spray squirted from the canister and coated Simon’s eyes in thick liquid. Deanna continued squeezing the plunger, some of it coating his fangs and disappearing down his throat. Fumes from the spray drifted on the air and Deanna coughed, forced to close her own eyes as they began to sting. Simon Cain issued a guttural cry and rolled onto his back, head lost beneath the hanging sheets on the bed.
Deanna shot a quick, grief-filled look at her dead parents, and then ran from the room.
The mayor’s obscenities followed her down the stairs. She took them two at a time, and didn’t stop to pull her coat from the banister. Deanna kicked her suitcase out the way as she tugged at the door.
“You fucking bitch!”
His voice echoed down the stairwell. He’d left the bedroom, almost to the head of the stairs.
Deanna flung the door open, it slammed into the wall, and then she sprinted from the house. Her lungs ached as she gasped damp air in an effort to increase her speed. Fumes from the pepper spray still clung to her air sacs like bloodsucking leeches. Her legs hurt, muscles strained from standing awkwardly against the wall, now on the verge of giving up through overuse. She could picture Simon Cain’s twisted face, deformed into a shape she’d have nightmares over for months, and the image of his countenance pushed her on.
Driving rain battered Sands, and thunder growled angrily overhead, a roar that seemed to vibrate the asphalt she ran on.
She couldn’t hear Cain behind her. She didn’t know if he’d left the house or remained inside to dispose of the bodies. He would surely be incapacitated for a while from the mace, but she didn’t know how long it would last. Deanna hoped the bastard would still be there, trying to clean the property of his visit when the police turned up.
She staggered and fell, grazing her elbow on the blacktop.
Rain smacked her face as she rolled onto her back. She wished she’d taken the mace with her when she had fled the bedroom. She didn’t remember when she’d dropped the canister, but without it vulnerability wrapped her hea
vily. Her mobile was back at the house too, stuffed inside her handbag.
Her legs protested as she hauled herself to her feet, kicked off her high heels, and ran onward.
At the head of the street she turned into the driveway of a familiar house. Deanna had often visited Mr. and Mrs. Burton, especially during the summers of her early teens when the sun seemed to take a lifetime to cross the sky. The couple were almost surrogate grandparents for her, and had supplied soda and cookies whenever she dropped by. The couple would be old by now—they were old then—but the house provided the only safety she knew.
Their porch had slipped into disrepair, and holes in the timber roof allowed rain to batter her as she rang the bell. She glanced nervously towards the darkened silhouette of her parent’s house, almost obscured within the density of the storm.
The door opened three inches then caught on a thin security chain. The face in the gap wasn’t Mr. Burton’s, but she recognized the man from pictures the old couple kept above their fireplace.
“Please,” she gasped, “you gotta help me, can I come in?”
The Burton’s son furrowed his brow. “No. Who are you?”
“I’m Deanna; I used to live down the road, Deanna Matthews.” Despair made her move towards the door. The man partially closed it and she took a step back. “Please, I need to use your phone, my parents have been murdered.”
He looked at her as if she were an incoherent mental patient. “Look, I don’t know who you think you are, but—”
“Can I speak with your mom?”
“No.” He closed the door.
Deanna pushed it before the latch caught. It startled him and she managed to open the door, wedging her foot in the slender gap. “You’ve got to believe me; I need to phone the cops. If we’re quick I’m sure he’ll still be on the premises.”
The man glanced back, presumably to his parents in the comfort of their living room. He looked back at her with contempt. “If you don’t piss off, I’ll get the cops on you.”
“I know your Mom and Dad—please!”
“Fuck off, you lunatic.”
He kicked her foot from the gap and closed the door. The lock snapped loudly.
Above, lightning split dark clouds with a multitude of forks, an electrical display that would have delighted her had her world not been ripped apart with the bodies of her parents.
She kicked the door. “Bastard!”
Shock and dejection clouded her senses.
Thunder boomed, and it may have manufactured the noise but Deanna thought she heard something in the distance—heavy footfalls slapping on asphalt and harsh panting: the approach of a predatory being.
Deanna turned from the unsound porch, ran over the mown lawn of the Burton’s, and climbed their high wooden fence into the next street. While the torn bodies of her parents still lay on their bed, she would try everything in her power to avenge their deaths. The town hall housed the police station, and she wasn’t about to let that bastard Cain get away with what he’d done. Only two blocks away along the coast, she would run all the way if she had to.
* * *
The town hall looked dark under night’s glare, its stonework slick with rain. The clock face, glowing a subtle white, seemed out of place on the oily-black structure. At the head of the road she glimpsed the undulating sea: featureless, it reflected night’s blackness.
Sinking momentarily, her hands dropped to her knees, body crying out to be given a chance to rest. She leaned forward and frantically gulped fresh air. She stood close to the hedgerow of a house to her left, the street silent and wrapped in sleep. Ahead and to the right an entrance sloped to the rear of the town hall, obscurity within deeper than the tempest enveloping Sands.
Something emerged from bushes down the street, to the right of the vehicular access. Deanna staggered back as a darkened form slipped through the pelting rain. A stray, the dog ignored her as it trudged unenthusiastically across the road to the cover of thicker hedge. Deanna sighed, fighting to control the jackhammer feel of her heart at her breast.
As she turned towards Main Street, movement on the town hall caught her eye, high up around its fourth or fifth floor. Pale against charcoal colored bricks, a naked form scaled the structure as if the bricks were lacquered with glue. She watched in awe as Simon Cain leaped from a slender window ledge onto a decorative outcrop on the building’s façade and squat upon its edge, scanning the street below. He searched for movement: her movement.
Cain lifted his head and listened for sounds on the squall. The inhuman form returned his gaze to the storm-lashed street below.
Deanna cautiously approached Main Street, hopeful the avenue’s shadows were thick enough to conceal her advance.
A glint of salvation came in the form of two white lights moving slowly along the curving coastal road, and the police cruiser illuminated the town hall steps as it pulled to a stop. Deanna took a step from the hedgerow, waiting for Cain to scurry into concealment so she could attract the cop’s attention.
She looked up to the corner of town hall. Cain waited, crouched on the edifice like a stone gargoyle perched on the edge of a gothic-style church.
The driver’s door opened and a rounded figure stepped into the storm. She could easily see the officer’s portly stomach as he ambled to the concrete steps. He looked up to the high ornate ledges, and a smile curled Deanna’s mouth. She wished she could see the shock and desperation etched on Cain’s distorted features.
The officer waved his arm. He conversed with Simon Cain but the exchanged words were lost under the thunderous rumble of a diesel engine as a Greyhound swept up Main Street towards the bus stop. Wind surged around her and whipped stinging spray into her face.
Tension gripped her throat and blood flooded her muscles as she pushed away from the hedgerow bordering the corner of West and Main.
Her gaze held on Cain’s form as the hybrid tensed, spotting her movement in an instant, as a hungry hawk would spy a fleeing mouse amid the desolation of a cold-hearted desert. She couldn’t help but watch the man swoop off the ledge and shimmy down the decorative stonework with the agility of a crab scuttling over slippery rocks. Cain’s call came a second before the stout form of the police officer gave chase.
Cain overtook the officer with speed.
The Greyhound’s engine roared in the night as the bus hauled its way up the slope of Main Street. She shouted for the driver to stop, knowing her protest could not be heard. Deanna’s lungs screamed once more in exhausted protest. She tried to ignore the pain and reach the bus stop in time. Her clothes were heavy, bloated with rainwater, restricting her movements. Piercing the din of the Greyhound’s engine and the hammering spikes of rain, the cruel growl of Simon Cain taunted her from the darkness; his panted breath full of hate, lusting for her death. The snap of claws on tarmac reverberated in her mind and she knew he would be quicker and more energized than she could ever hope to be.
The bus stop felt miles away.
Mom’s butchered body flashed across her retina, coupled with Cain’s brutal face as he leered over her in the bedroom, recounting his ancestry and the birth of his bloodline—it pushed her on, forcing forgotten energy into her limbs. It wouldn’t matter, though; he’d bring her down soon, like a determined lion digging claws into the hide of a fleeing wildebeest. She sensed his warm breath rippling over her neck and the touch of his talons upon her shoulders.
Deanna edged alongside the slowing Greyhound as it neared the stop.
She banged on the side of the metal vehicle, her pleading scream carried away on the strong wind. She looked back, immediately cursing her own foolishness, and saw Cain’s hideous form closing: he’d pull her into obscurity soon and a vicious, agonizing death.
Deanna fisted the side of the bus again, oblivious to a knuckle shattering with the impact. Airbrakes squealed and the bus rocked to a sudden stop. The front door hissed open.
The bus driver’s face contorted into startled shock as Deanna hauled her satu
rated form onto the steps.
“Drive!”
“What?”
“Just get the fuck out of here!”
She watched the driver’s eyes flick to the large side mirror and widen. She didn’t look. She had no desire to see the charging figure of Simon Cain filling the rectangle mirror. She stepped into the aisle of the bus as air pressure tugged the doors closed. As they worked lethargically into place, the bus driver crunched the lever into first gear and floored the gas pedal. The Greyhound lurched and struggled to pick up speed. Elongated fingers curled inside the bus, bulging the rubber seal as the door closed.
“Jesus, come on!” the driver pleaded.
Deanna implored the man to push the pedal further to the floor of the cab, to get its drive shaft spinning harder and pull away from the pursuing monster.
The bus seemed to lose power as another set of fingers searched the opening and forced the door wider. Deanna hurried down the steps and booted Cain’s fingers. They flinched but didn’t relinquish their hold. She kicked again, dislodged them, but they curled back in. The driver found third gear and the bus neared the crest of the rise leading out of town; once over it, Deanna knew, gravity would sweep the bus along the coastal road away from the nightmare clinging to the side of the Greyhound.
Simon’s face flashed briefly in the Perspex door. Teeth curved from a repugnant mouth and dark eyes which had shown her so much gazed at Deanna with pure hatred and abhorrence. She turned away and noticed a cigarette lighter protruding from a shallow breast pocket on the driver’s coat. She lunged at it and yanked it free. Simon held the doors open enough and tried to climb in, a vicious snarl of defiance whipping through the gap to implant itself in her brain and never leave for as long as she lived.
Deanna flicked the lighter and subtle elation edged into her at the smell of burning hair as the flame licked at Simon’s digits. He yelped in pain and she kept the flame trained on his hands until they dropped out of sight, the door closed fully and the only sound became the rumble of the engine beneath her feet.
BLOODLINES -- Blood War Trilogy: Book I Page 12