Midnight Reign

by Chris Marie Green

  Deciding that she’d rather be safe than sorry, Dawn began to inch toward the revolver, knowing this was her best chance to silence the human Vampire Killer by shooting Cassie in the throat to damage her vocal cords, then quickly in the heart.

  As Dawn crept her hand over the floor, her lighted headset slipped off, already loose from her fall.

  “The last straw,” Frank continued, “was when Lee the murderer became more famous than any of them ever anticipated. Every time he was on TV, it was hell, it was all of his bragging coming true. Even from jail he was superior. The Lee. And soon after the family arrived in town, they each had a chance to talk with him alone. When it was Cassie’s turn, he looked right at her and reminded her about all those nights”—Frank wrestled in a breath—“all those nights. He told her how he’d start them up again after he got out of jail because he was going to get away with Klara’s crime, and that meant he’d be able to get away with doing anything—especially with a nobody.

  “Cassie lost it. She was a somebody, and she wanted to show the Lee she was stronger than that, to mess him up just as much as he’d messed up her. Most of all, she wanted to prove she was a person—a special one—just like him and she was worthy of more than being his inferior.

  “So, on the sly, she planned everything, watched all the TV shows about murder, read about how to get away with it on the Internet, spent hours with books like Crime and Punishment to see what she had to do, how to act. She knew about trace evidence and, since she was smarter than the Lee, her first time went off without a hitch. She shaved her head and hid the deception with a wig and a scarf—a new style for a new state, she told her family. For her victims, she picked women because, realistically, they were the only ones she could physically overcome with the help of one thing: surprise. These were symbolic victims—at first they were just used to prove a point to Lee. But that’s before she got to like the blood….”

  Dawn held her breath, inches away from the revolver. But when Cassie leaned slightly toward Frank, Dawn paused.

  “After finding them in the ValuShoppe parking lot,” Frank continued, “Cassie would follow the women around to find out their schedules. Then she’d ambush them in their homes—all she had to do was pick locks and be careful about being seen. Then she’d slit their throats before they could defend themselves.”

  Frank was breathing harder now. “She was the real Vampire Killer, not the Lee. She was going to take the spotlight away from him by being more successful, racking up more numbers. After Jessica’s murder, it was easy to take any lingering evidence like the dresses and dry cleaning bags from the closet. She burned those things, plus her own clothing, in a homeless person’s bonfire near the motel. Cassie could finally use her acting skills, too, by pretending she was one of them and that she just wanted a warm fire.”

  He hesitated, then seemed to be overtaken, words rushing out, harder, more jagged. “Cassie wanted to dominate the Lee like he dominated her—thrust, thrust—she hated him, but she loved him, and maybe by imitating his murders she could also keep him safe from conviction, mislead the jury…. Oh, he’ll owe her big if she saves him and then who’ll be the superior—?”

  Bang, bang on the roof. Screee-ch!

  Dawn stretched toward the revolver again….

  “Dear God.” Frank was still enthralling Cassie, but it looked like he was trying to pull away. “What Lee did—”

  Closer, closer…

  “—to her…Marg would turn her back on them when the Lee would creep into the room at night. She knew—she had to know. He’d get into bed and tell Cassie not to make a sound. He was the superior, she was nothing.”

  Frank jerked back in his seat, but Dawn already had her weapon. It weighed in her hand as she aimed it.

  Groaning awake, Cassie blinked, then saw Dawn. Frank’s connection had been severed with his shock at what he’d seen in her mind.

  With a cry, the killer raised her knife, face arranged in a fanged grimace.

  “I’m Somebody!” she screamed, the blade coming down.

  Dawn rolled away just in time for Cassie to stab the floor. Frank bolted up from his seat.

  Shoot her before she can—

  “Get in here!” Cassie screamed in invitation to the Guards as she sprang to her feet.

  Bang!

  Knife tumbling from her grip, the pseudo-vamp flew backward, hitting a paneled wall and slumping to the floor, her chest smoking from Frank’s bullet.

  Then it began.

  First it was the roof, moaning as it was torn off like the lid of a can, exposing them all to the night sky.

  One pair of red eyes in a pale face peeked in.

  Dawn had imagined this so many times before that she should’ve been more afraid. But fear wasn’t what was driving her now. It was so much more—something hella more dangerous.

  Erecting a mind block, Dawn stared down a red-eye, adrenaline escalating her heartbeat. Lifting her revolver, she got ready to target the heart with her silver bullets, but anywhere else would at least slow these clowns down. Ready, aim—

  Three walls went flying to the elements, whizzing into the night. It left just the cab, with its weak light underscoring the horror.

  The Guards descended.

  Five of them. Five freakin’ maniacs with pale bald heads, burning eyes, iron fang teeth, and black clothing belled out like death’s wings.

  One zoomed toward Dawn, claws outstretched.

  Calmly, she squeezed the trigger. The Guard jerked backward, abruptly vacuuming into itself, its clothing falling to the ground and puffing to a quick, disappearing burn.

  Four.

  Panting, Dawn crawled to a better position, limbs liquid. She noticed Breisi trying to maneuver her arms from behind her back down to her feet, where she leveraged her sneakers against the rope to get the binding off.

  Dawn couldn’t help her. She had just enough presence of mind to notice that Frank had taken down another Guard in midflight before the last three crashed to the trailer’s floor, shaking it. They rose in their stop-motion heartbeat rhythm—ba-ba-boomp, ba-ba-boomp—and leveled their red eyes on the team.

  We could be fucked, she thought, pushing off of the floor.

  One of the vamps flashed out its long tail, accidentally catching Dawn’s weapon as it went for Frank’s gun. Her revolver flitted to the ground. The Guard slammed away her dad’s weapon, too, spinning it over to one of its partners.

  The other red-eye opened its jaws, catching the revolver between its iron teeth, then crunching the weapon to debris.

  So fucked.

  For some reason, the three Guards didn’t flick open their machete tails, and Dawn couldn’t say she missed the show of steel-edged blooms. Instead, the red-eyes merely tracked her and Frank with their gazes. The one nearest Dawn tilted its head as if it recognized her. Didn’t they all by now?

  Not giving up, she dove for her revolver, grasping it.

  A red-eye spit at her hand, and she instinctively flinched from what she knew would burn.

  On her belly, she just stared at her abandoned weapon—so close.

  Wasting no time, she started to reach for a crucifix in her jacket but a second blob of flying spit changed her mind. It barely missed her, too.

  “What’re they doing?” she asked, hoping her dad was aware enough to answer.

  While the Guards waved their tails in Frank’s face and hissed, her dad stood with his hands up in surrender again.

  “Maybe they’re thinking of all the fun ways they could use our bodies for Play-Doh?” he muttered.

  Breisi moaned against her duct tape, wiggling around as if she knew the answer. She probably did, the brain.

  “Eva,” Dawn said. “She wouldn’t have brought us if she knew the Guards might kill us. And if we’re captured? No problem. She wants us Underground anyway. Maybe these red-eyes have been instructed not to ever harm the family of Little Miss Master’s Favorite.”

  Frank laughed harshly. “I’ll be damned
if we get taken.”

  Something awful occurred to Dawn. “If we’re protected, then what about…”

  She glanced at Breisi. At the same exact time, Frank seemed to realize the danger his girlfriend was in, too.

  He reached into his man-purse and pulled out another gun, but this one was longer, the nozzle flared. What the—?

  He pulled the trigger. Fire scorched out of it, consuming the Guard nearest to him in one swallow.

  Dawn and Breisi both hurled themselves away, taking shelter behind seats and fallen tables as the Guard screeched and flailed, running, going nowhere but the dirt as it dove off the side of the camper.

  With a sick sucking sound, it moaned into a charred memory.

  As a seat caught on fire, one Guard yelped away from the flames, using its machete tail to slash the conflagration off the camper.

  Meanwhile, the third one attacked Frank, and Dawn reached into her pocket, whipped the velvet cover off her throwing stars, grasped one and used the motion of her body and wrist to flick it outward. The holy-water-covered silver blade swooped through the air, embedding itself into the red-eye’s neck.

  At the same time, Frank aimed his weapon at the other Guard—the fire scaredy-cat. The ticked-off freak easily cuffed the gun away from her dad, then wrapped its tail around him.

  Concentrating, Dawn flicked another blade at her own red-eyed attacker, grunting as it swicked into the Guard’s temple.

  Slowly, it reached up to the wound in its neck, then its head. It bared its iron fangs. Shook its head.

  Y-ah. Dawn grasped another star.

  But then the Guard went stiff, dropping to its knees and banging face-first to the floor.

  Convulsing, its head smacked the ground over and over again until its forehead turned to mash.

  One sucking instant later, it was air, a victim of the silver plus the holy-water poison.

  That really pleased Frank’s Guard. It got feisty, opening up its tail to full extension, the blades coming just inches from Frank’s surprised face as it raised him aloft.

  Whick, whick, whick.

  Blade after blade, it revealed a bouquet of machetes, screeching, body flickering with its ba-ba-bomp movements.

  As the creature fixed on Dawn, she grabbed her revolver from the floor, targeting the heart.

  In defiance, it lifted up both hands—throw down, bitch!—and basically unwrapped, then flicked, Frank out of its tail.

  Right away, her dad jumped toward Breisi, then whisked her into his arms, holding her as if she was all that existed for the quickest, longest moment he could probably manage. He put his face against her hair, and she pressed against him.

  Then he prepared to jump to the ground with her.

  Dawn should’ve known it was too easy.

  A hurricane seemed to fly down from the black sky, crying bloody murder.

  Eva?

  The silver-misted vampire flashed wispy tentacles, a heavenly storm of violence. Without preamble, a million strands seemed to wrap around the last Guard’s neck, lifting him as high as a sacrifice before he could threaten Dawn anymore.

  In the face of Eva’s power, the creature opened its mouth, not in fear, but in…loving awe.

  Then, with powerful thrusts in every possible direction, Eva tore the lesser vampire apart, its body scattering, meat hitting tree trunks with vulgar splats.

  “Mom?” Dawn cried. “Mom!”

  She’d come back. Why? Who cared—she was here and she was helping them!

  The little girl in her danced around, squealing.

  But when Eva twirled toward Frank, pushing him from Breisi and tossing her to the dirt outside, Dawn’s little girl died.

  “What’re you doing?” she screamed, looking to see that Breisi was okay. She was, already working frantically to unbind herself again.

  Eva floated, wisps of sparkling glamour mingling in her silver death-angel form. “We’re going back now,” she said in a shudder-inducing tone.

  Dawn opened her mouth to ask if Breisi was coming, too, but by then it was too late.

  In all the excitement, nobody had seen what Cassie was up to: they hadn’t noticed that she’d tumbled off the camper during the commotion, that she’d somehow salvaged the camera—which had probably flown off the trailer’s platform during the fight.

  Then—chest wound or not—she’d crawled from beneath the camper and over to Breisi, still intent on finishing her finale and becoming a star.

  Frank was the first to see what was happening. “Breisi!”

  Eva’s light illuminated it all: the camera’s passive gaze while it sat where Cassie had put it on its bent stand, the knife blade flashing as Cassie darted over to Breisi and pinned the still-bound victim to her back with one arm and a leg.

  All Dawn could think to do was yell to the most powerful being in their midst—her mother, the woman who’d been perfect in Dawn’s dreams.

  “Mom?!” she screamed.

  She was begging, and when Eva’s form shifted, just like a bed of stars colliding into each other, Dawn knew her mother realized it: she knew how much Breisi meant to both Dawn and Frank, and it disturbed her.

  I just want my family, the actress had told Dawn….

  Eva loomed, refusing to engage.

  On a choke of disbelief, Dawn started to get up, to go to Breisi herself. Frank frantically dug in his satchel for a weapon….

  But Cassie’s knife was already slicing down, aimed at Breisi’s throat. The start of the Vampire Killer ritual. After that, she’d use her fake fangs to rip into Breisi’s neck…it all had to be played out for the camera….

  Stop!

  At Dawn’s mind-blasting rage, the cab of the trailer burst apart, wires sparking and buzzing. At the same time, in a boom of heat and speed, Eva tardily zoomed forward at Cassie, as if to put on a show of caring.

  But the Vampire Killer had already lifted a blood-edged blade toward the lens, her fangs shining like white sacrificial knives as she assumed a profane swan-song pose for the camera.

  Viciously, Eva stabbed Cassie with her multitude of tendrils, lifting the killer high above, then smashing her to the ground, reducing her to paste.

  Vision blurred, Dawn sprinted forward, slicing past her mom to where Breisi lay jerking, bathed in Eva’s light.

  There was…

  Dawn couldn’t believe there was a wound. Flailing, she pressed her hands to it, tears and shock making it impossible to say anything. In her friend’s…her surrogate’s…eyes, Dawn saw utter confusion.

  Where was Jonah? Breisi seemed to be asking. Wasn’t he supposed to save me?

  Frank stumbled over, frantically trying to help Dawn staunch the bleeding.

  “Oh, no…no…I couldn’t get a shot off in…” He burst into sobs, touching his girlfriend’s face. “Don’t die, don’t die….”

  Breisi’s eyes got duller. Jonah?

  Even though it wasn’t right to blame him—how could he have been here in time?—Dawn did. She blamed him for this. And Eva…goddamn her, Eva, most of all because she hadn’t stopped it.

  Even worse, Dawn hadn’t been able to stop any of it, either.

  In the near distance, the wail of a siren pierced her hearing, but she didn’t know what it meant. Didn’t know what any of it meant.

  The lights in Breisi’s eyes dimmed as she jerked and stared at Dawn. Affection. Sisterhood. So many chances missed.

  “Don’t go,” Frank yelled, “God, don’t go! I love you, Breisi—” He turned to Eva. “Save her, Eva! You can heal her!”

  The sirens got louder.

  Eva’s light was waning, her voice soft. “This injury would take a long time to heal—it’s so deep I don’t know if anyone but the Master could even help with it….”

  Sirens…closer…

  Frank raised his face, his eyes crazed. “Try!”

  On what sounded like the pulse of a sob, Eva swirled her mist around him, maybe to comfort him, maybe to take him back.

  Breisi’s ir
ises had been taken over by her black pupils. She choked one more time, then stopped spasming.

  Instead of a baffled tint of horror in her eyes, Dawn saw something else. An…answer?

  Under the duct tape on her mouth, Breisi smiled, her head falling to the side.

  No. Dawn shook her head, throat hot and tight. No, this wasn’t happening—

  Sirens…

  Then the smell of jasmine.

  A blanket of mingled screams swept down from the trees, surrounding Dawn in protection, wrapping her in a womb.

  Dawn tried to tell them, Keep the cops away so Eva can heal Breisi! but she couldn’t form words.

  The sirens blasted, right outside the trees.

  With a silvery blast, Eva barged up against the Friends to get to Dawn, but the vampire couldn’t get past their spirit shelter.

  Then, wasting no more time, Eva’s form enveloped Breisi’s body, sweeping it into an embrace along with Frank, who pushed at the cloudy walls like a prisoner, mouth open in what Dawn thought was her name.

  They zipped away, over the trees.

  “Go, go…” It was the Friends, nudging Dawn away from the blood-soaked dirt where Breisi had just lain.

  Hazily, Dawn stumbled away with their help, crashing through the trees just before the sirens wailed to a stop behind them.

  Why had Eva taken Breisi? She couldn’t heal her. So why?

  It was as if the Friends were holding her up, pushing her along as branches slapped her face, forcing her into seclusion and never letting her rest until she got to a main road where she found a convenience store. Before going inside, they pushed her toward a washroom where she barely remembered straightening herself up. Then, numbly, she used the ATM, then a pay phone, which allowed her to get a taxi.

  All the while, something was embossing itself in Dawn’s vision, hissing over Eva’s old crime-scene photo.

  Breisi’s own death pose, eyes staring up at Dawn and asking how this could have happened.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE GO-TO

  DAWN couldn’t do much. But vague instinct told her that she needed to do something before the Friends escorted her back to the Limpet house: she was pretty much a fugitive who’d flown a crime scene. She had to get as much done as possible now in case she was called in for questioning by the cops.