Crossed

by J. F. Lewis

  A tiny fleck of blood lifted from my cheek with a tingle not unlike a butterfly on my skin. It rose and flattened against the undercarriage, sinking into it. Fang worked his way across my face, tendrils of blood lifting off in tiny drips and drops. He went lower, his invisible hunger tickling my skin and tugging at my clothes. Butterfly touches caressed my breasts and traced warm lines along my rib cage. When he reached my groin, the excitement generated more blood and he was forced to focus on that area longer. . . .

  I hadn’t expected it to be sensual, much less sexual, so when pleasure built and I came, the orgasm surprised me and I lay back, relaxing in the grip of his power, not quite touching him and yet not quite touching the ground as the remnants of blood splatter rose from my legs, my socks, my shoes. “Far out,” I said eventually, as Fang rolled back, revealing my clean skin, clothes, and hair.

  Talbot hovered over me.

  “Are you okay?”

  I breathed in deeply, a nod to the very human sensations I’d just felt, and let it out in a dramatic postcoital shudder. I closed my eyes and nodded, waiting for my legs to stop shaking.

  “I’m fan-fucking-tastic.” I sat up, noticing the pavement beneath me, the way it bit into my skin. “And I have a totally new understanding of autoerotica.”

  With a satisfied sigh, I let Talbot help me up, then pushed past him and climbed into Fang. “To the Towers,” I said. Fang pulled away, leaving Talbot behind, and I let my eyes close again. There was no music, just an uncomfortable silence. “Don’t act all weird, Fang.” I patted the stick shift. “It was nice, but I don’t think we should do it again.”

  As if signaling his agreement, Fang’s radio clicked on to Radio Disney. Someone who undoubtedly had their own show on the Disney Channel sang songs that were very pop rock and upbeat. I listened halfheartedly, wondering what would happen to Dad if I killed Fang. We hadn’t actually had sex, so I guess it was okay not to kill him, plus Fang is a car and that would be like strangling a vibrator. Still, it might be interesting. It couldn’t be too hard either, could it? As if triggered by the internal question, the LEGOs in my head snapped into place and I knew how to kill Fang.

  He was a memento mori; all I had to do was melt him down or completely disassemble him. Knowing how was enough; Dad wouldn’t like it if I killed Fang, and . . .

  “Ow.” When I’m stalking a vampire and figuring out how to kill him, it doesn’t usually hurt, but this time pain stabbed through my sinuses like they were being cauterized with silver nitrate. I grunted, grabbing the bridge of my nose; my teeth gritted together.

  More LEGOs fell into place, as if the idea of destroying Dad’s memento mori and understanding how to do it was all I needed for the right pieces to click together.

  I knew how to kill Daddy. I’ve read that there is a moment as a kid when you realize that your parents are going to die one day and leave you all alone. I’d never felt that way before. My daddy was an uber vamp. Not even the sun could kill my daddy. He was forever and he’d always protect me, just like he had from the moment I met him.

  Destroying him wouldn’t be easy, but it could be done. I punched the steering wheel. “Unacceptable!”

  We’d barely made it two blocks from the Demon Heart when traffic came to a halt. Policemen were trying to direct traffic, but it was a complete snarl.

  “I wonder if the buildings down here are close enough together for you to go off-road . . .”

  “Now there’s a possibility.” The light, self-amused voice came from my right. I swiped at it without thinking. My claws passed through something cool and damp, yet ephemeral, and Fang accidentally nudged the yellow Mazda Miata in front of us. The vampire in the seat next to me gazed down at the point where my arm protruded from his chest without disturbing the straight lines of his unbuttoned dress shirt. I wrinkled my nose in confusion. He could do mist, and fast. The ability was rare—five or six in the world rare—and should have helped me figure out who he was. . . . Oh, yeah. Ebon Winter.

  Other than my hand sticking through him, the only sign of his etherealness was a gentle blurring at the edge of his body. His hair, a shockingly vibrant blue, was done in tasteful spikes that appeared styled rather than horripilated. Delicate tattoos covered his face, but they added too much blue and didn’t suit his look. It was close, but not quite right.

  Like a scientist examining a bug, he focused on my reaction to his appearance. All sense of bemusement melted from his face, and it reminded me of a bird of prey.

  “It’s the tattoos.” His smile returned with a degree of warmth that convinced me for a split second that it had never absented itself. “They don’t work?”

  I examined the subtle blue curves, wondering how they’d managed to do such a good baby blue. The basic pattern was designed to subtly enhance his features and complement the blue of his contacts. “They aren’t quite right.”

  “I rushed him.” The vampire casually pulled an old-fashioned silver straight razor out of the pocket of his jeans. “My own fault.” He ran his left hand over his face one time and then again. “You’ll have to excuse me for a moment.”

  The young girl driving the Miata had climbed out of her car. I only noticed because Winter glanced her way.

  “What are you—”

  He began to cut and my hand, still extended through his body, clutched convulsively, digging into the upholstery of the passenger’s seat. Tracing the same lines his fingers had outlined, the vampire removed the tattoos, skin and all, with a series of cuts.

  “Holy shit!”

  Peeling away the skin on his forehead in one large rounded rectangle, he revealed a mass of uncut muscles like thin red cords. The vampire threw the now excess skin over the windshield past the hood and into the street.

  The Miata’s driver opened her mouth to scream, but Winter caught her eye and her mouth froze. In mid-scream, she closed her mouth, looked away, and got back into her car.

  “The car will enjoy that,” he said thoughtfully. I didn’t see how Fang would enjoy the girl not screaming, but then I realized he meant his skin. Next he did the left side, flaying the skin next to his eyes and working down along the cheek, exposing the tissue beneath. The muscles there were less uniform than under the forehead, curving in circles near the eyes, yet cutting long straight angles at the cheek. He left the flap attached at the chin and let it fall loose, hanging from his naked cheek. There was no blood, not a drop.

  “That’s fucking awesome.” I gripped the steering wheel tightly with my left hand and he began to cut again, on the right side, turning his head a little to give me a better view. He didn’t flinch. His smile never faltering and his eyes never leaving me, he created an exact mirror of what he’d done on the left side of his face.

  “The chin is the tricky part.” He made an incision below his lower lip. “I tend to cut too deeply.” Even as he said it, he made his final cut and I saw for the first time the way he would break into vampire speed, making adjustments and slicing away tissue as he pulled to give the illusion that he was easily pulling the skin away. Swapping just that much of his body back and forth to mist, cutting his face off while continuing to ignore my hand, still stuck through his chest, claws gripping the seat cushion. . . .

  He tossed the rest of his excised skin to Fang and settled back in his seat. “Did I get it all?”

  I nodded, and his eyes flashed red. An eruption of regenerative madness rolled across his skin and his face was whole sans tattoos.

  “And you’re just a Soldier?”

  “Me?” He laughed between his words, and the sound warmed my stomach. “A Soldier? No, darling. I’m a King if anyone is.”

  “But I didn’t feel you.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Is that all?” The sense of him hit me all at once, but the dossier was slimmer than what I was used to getting. His name I already knew. That he was a Vlad, I knew as well. That he could sneak up on vampires the same way I could—that was new.

  “There,” he said as I withdrew my
arm from where it pierced his mist form, “now you’ve sensed me. Two Vlads in a memento mori, enjoying the night air. We’re so cute together I may vomit.”

  Winter’s voice tickled my ears and made my brain go fuzzy. It didn’t really matter what he said, I just wanted the sound to keep coming out of his mouth.

  “Don’t drool now,” he chided, “you haven’t the time.”

  “Time?” I’m not in a hurry. What was he talking about?

  “Of course you’re in a hurry.” He drifted sideways out of the car, straightening, and leaned toward me over the closed car door. His shirt fell open, exposing washboard abs. “You have to change into something appropriate if you’re to be seen at my concert. And you’ll need to bring your sire’s memento mori with you if you intend to keep it concealed from Lisette. Who will, I might add, be there.”

  He ran his hand casually through his hair. “You need to read her on three successive nights in order to deduce her method of destruction, yes?”

  “How did you—?”

  “I have an eye for details.”

  I took another swing at him, but all it did was generate more laughter while sending portions of his shirt into swirls of mist. “Don’t try to fight me, Greta. It’s not something I do. If you truly try to end me, then I shall be forced to murder you . . . not a preferable course of events, though I find some of your practices revolting.” He made a grand sweep, indicating Fang. “I mean, frotting yourself to completion against the car? Honestly. It’s akin to masturbating with a matchbox car while wearing your father’s underwear over your nose.”

  “I did not frot. It was an accidental thing, and—” I blinked. “You saw that?”

  “I’m not the vampire who has thralls watching the Pollux and the Demon Heart, my dear.” He leaned back against the car door. “But that’s not what I’m here about. You’re concerned that you’ve deduced a method by which your father may be destroyed. Now that he’s created a memento mori, he’s technically vulnerable.”

  “How did you know that?” I took a third swipe at him. Even at top speed, I caught nothing but mist.

  “I’m very clever, and if you do that again, I’ll skin you in your sleep and have my mage cast a spell to make the regeneration take a month.”

  Ow!

  “Fine.” I slumped back in the seat, arms crossed beneath my breasts. “What do you want again?”

  “Come to my concert. Sense Lisette. And then I’ll tell you how to make Eric unkillable again.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Do you know which movie is your father’s favorite?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “So do I.” He murmured the words under his breath and then he was gone, shooting backward in mist form up into the air like a cloud. “Be at my concert.”

  “Where is the concert?” I asked myself, but then I knew. This was Ebon Winter. He’d be on the big stage at the Artiste Unknown, front and center. Where else?

  What do you wear to a concert where the man who says he can make your daddy unkillable is performing? What do you wear to a place like the Artiste Unknown? The solution hit me like a bolt of lightning: Talbot would know.

  “Looks like we’re going to a concert,” I told Fang. He pulled forward enough to devour Winter’s discarded flesh, then turned back toward the Pollux, much to the dismay of those in the lanes nearest us.

  24

  TALBOT:

  AVERAGE EVERYDAY HERO

  Every now and again I wish my dad had been a spider deity, his DNA granting me the ability to swing from rooftop to rooftop instead of the power to Devour. But I make do. From my perch atop the old Mandrake Hotel, I watched Fang driving up the exterior of the Void City Metro Bank building. Tired of the traffic jams from the music festival, Greta and Fang had clearly chosen that building because it stood taller than its neighbors and had widely spaced windows that aligned perfectly from top to bottom.

  “That is physically impossible.”

  “Says the guy who can turn into a cat and eat beings larger than himself in their entirety without bloating up like a blimp.” Magbidion chattered away in my ear via the Bluetooth headset of my cell.

  “Touché, Magbidion.”

  “Here he goes. Watch him! Watch him!”

  “I am watching him.”

  Fang reached the middle point of the building and gunned his engines. He lost traction on the slick exterior surface, smoke billowing free of his tires as he began to slide back down the wall, veering far enough to the right that I feared one of his wheels might plunge through the glass windows on either side. The Mustang drifted another four or five feet before lurching upward pedal-to-the-metal, rocketing up the side of the building with ever increasing speed, leaving tire tracks in its wake.

  I switched over to the akasha and watched Fang’s power build; a corona of brilliant purple energy flared out from his frame, centering on his engine. Violet sparks arced from the rapidly spinning prongs of his simulated knockoff hubs to the building and back.

  “He’s not slowing down.” I caught myself standing up, leaning toward the scene without intending to do so.

  “He won’t.” Mags’s voice was excited. “He did the first time and they had to start over, but . . .”

  The magician’s words trailed off as Fang cleared the top of the building. Greta’s whoop of exhilaration was audible even from where I was.

  The car hung in the air, a fly in invisible amber. I counted under my breath . . .

  One . . .

  Two . . .

  Three . . .

  And the car exploded into motion, falling backward hood over trunk, headlights burning red, then purple when, tumble completed, the Mustang’s wheels were once more oriented toward the ground and the fall slowed to a lazy crawl.

  “He’s—” I began.

  “—gliding!” Magbidion broke in.

  In the akasha, twin wings of magic like those of a gargantuan bat, the same purple as the car’s aura, billowed out on either side of the unearthly vehicle.

  “Chitty Chitty Fang Bang.” My words were a whisper.

  “That way! That way! That way!” Greta shouted from the driver’s seat, her long blond hair trailing behind her like the tail of some golden comet. Her aura was still pained, but the joy, combined with what I interpreted as a renewed sense of purpose, was keeping her functional.

  “Got any flight amulets, Mags?”

  “I’m no good with that kind of working, Talbot. You could try the Mage Guild, but I think the going rate is upwards of four million bucks for something that really lets you fly at will.”

  “That much?”

  “It’s a luxury item with a sustained effect.”

  “Later then.” I touched the button on my headpiece, ending the call, and stuffed the thing into a jacket pocket before rubbing my ear. I hate those things.

  Eschewing the more mundane routes meant Greta and Fang would make it to the concert before me, but I was less concerned about beating them there and more concerned about . . . that! Breaking away from the roofline of a condemned Gothic-style church, a goat-headed being with gray wings took flight, cutting from building to building in short trips as if it wanted to remain unseen. Three minutes later and I’d counted half a dozen of them.

  It would have been so much simpler if I’d staked Greta and left her in Fang’s trunk until Eric got back. I looked down the side of the building and shook my head, picturing myself attempting to slide down the side of the thing using my claws to slow my fall. Maybe if I weren’t banished and could make the leap into dreams like Dezba . . . Maybe if I were younger and had more lives left . . . Maybe. But not today.

  I took the elevator down to the bottom floor and walked over to the deck where I’d parked my motorcycle. Straddling the bike, I donned my helmet, because even a Mouser can get in a wreck. I’m not much of a biker, but during the music festival, and really, any time there’s a huge traffic disaster, it’s easier to get around town on one. I test-drove a Hell
cat Combat from Confederate Motors, but in the end, it seemed like a waste to buy a machine like that and only drive it a few times a year. Eric would have pitched a fit if I’d bought a crotch rocket, so when I decided to get a bike a few years ago, I went with American made: a 2008 Harley-Davidson XL 1200N Sportster.

  The early evening rain was gone for the moment, leaving the normally intense city scents muted. Warm sticky air made my clothes cling to my skin. Pulling out of the parking deck, I looked up before heading out. The clouds told me the rain would return, and my nose for trouble advised me I’d be seeing the gargoyles too. Despite the weather, the crowd showed no sign of dissipating, and the music festival was in full swing. Somewhere up and to my right, Greta and Fang drifted toward Morne Park.

  Void City has several small parks, but Morne is the largest of them all, the center of the festival, with most of the other parks hosting a smaller stage, and lesser bands playing on street corners throughout West and East Side. Ebon Winter often held a huge party at his club, the Artiste Unknown, but this year, he’d closed the club and agreed to play the festival. Belatedly, I caught myself wondering why.

  Had he bet on Greta? On me? Against either of us?

  How strange. An hour ago, I’d been worried about how to keep her focused, and now that she was focused, I was fretting about why she was focused.

  Greta had come to me wanting to know what to wear to Winter’s concert, and had been almost disappointed to hear that he’d be playing at the festival and not at the Artiste Unknown.

  “Every woman needs a little black dress.” I’d helped her sort through some of the other girls’ things, most of which were too short for her. “Even the crazy vampire women.” She donned the dress, an off-the-shoulder mini in basic black, and I flicked a stray bit of white string with my claw, removing it from the tight, body-hugging sheath. In this kind of dress she’d have to be careful walking upstairs, bending over, or kneeling unless she wanted it to spontaneously transform into a T-shirt equivalent.