“Looks like they got this, babes. You ready to head up?” Zane smirked.
“I’ve been ready!” Serena grinned.
The two rushed into the elevators and Serena sighed, readying herself for what was to come. Adrenaline rushed through her veins, flooding her system with just the right sort of fuel. She frowned, trying to catch her breath and slow the growing sense of dread. So much had happened—so much to warrant this kill—and yet, she was suddenly afraid.
“Serena…you okay?” Zane frowned, pressing his hand to her shoulder.
“I’ll be fine,” she smiled. “Just pre-show jitters.”
The elevator doors creaked open and Serena’s eyes widened as a caged-off region in the room was suddenly opened by several guards brandishing cattle prods, which they used to herd four ykalis towards them.
“I knew she was weaponizing the ykalis!” Serena glared.
“Are you fucking serious? They’re keeping these things as pets?” Zane growled.
Serena looked over at Zane as he gave her a reassuring smile and Serena felt her anxieties ease instantly.
“Let’s make this fast!” Zane growled out as he rushed forward, drawing a pair of pistols and beginning to fire at the charging monsters.
Serena grinned, pausing to appreciate her man’s work before she rushed in to join him, wielding her auric “bow” and filling the room with bright purple “arrows”. Between Zane’s and Serena’s combined efforts, the four ykali had just below a minute of time to regret their existence before bits and pieces of themselves began to fall from their bodies.
Two corpses filled with bullets and the aurically divided bits of the other two.
And, at the end of the stretch of carnage, two sangsuigan guards who’d died with their buzzing cattle prods still firmly held in their hands.
Starting for the staircase at the end of the room, the two began working their way up the building, using Serena’s auric “view” of what was coming to their advantage. As they continued ever higher, more and more pieces of more and more guards began to rain down in their wake.
Until they finally reached a floor with a familiar auric signature waiting on the other side.
Welcome back, Serena! Kristine’s psychic voice called out and Serena growled, tearing the door off the hinges with her aura.
Stay here, she paused to send a private message to Zane, keeping the auric shield up on him. She doesn’t know that you’re back, let alone back in your own body, I’ve been masking your aura from her the entire time. We can use that. Just wait…
Stepping through the door, Serena spotted her target and bared her fangs as she squared off against Kristine.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to show up here.”
22
Lesson Learned
“You!” Serena cried out as she rushed forward towards Kristine.
Kristine smirked and coiled her pale-green aura around Serena’s body as she threw her against the wall.
“You’ve always been so rash, Serena,” she smirked, stepping forward slowly. “I didn’t have to worry about whether or not all this would work out; I just had to trust that, if it didn’t, you’d be predictable enough to do exactly what you’ve done. That’s the problem with always letting your emotions lead you.”
“Shut up!” Serena glared, standing up and shaking debris off her as she stepped forward. “Don’t act like you know me! You’ve been a thorn in my side since you killed Devon, but you’ve never been able to figure out why you’re so obsessed with coming back! You want to play the ‘stupid emotional twat’ game? Try looking at yourself for a change!”
“Ah, yes. Poor Devon” Kristine glared, “The man you claimed to love so much until Zane came into the picture.”
“I did love Devon!” Serena growled and began to throw her aura out in jagged bursts, “I could never have been driven to kill him for any reason! You, you stupid jealous bitch, killed him because you were pissy that he hadn’t chosen you! You’re nothing but a spoiled little brat throwing a tantrum because her puppy liked somebody else more!”
Kristine growled, “Shut up! It was your new psychotic pet that finally destroyed Devon!” She glared, dodging and blocking the auric spikes and shook her head, “You are going to have to be better than that!”
Kristine lunged then and slammed her fist in Serena’s stomach, using her aura to propel the punch and grinned at Serena’s pained expression. Serena frowned, gasping as blood began to spill past her lips and frowned.
She couldn’t lose!
Not now!
Not ever!
Not when everything was suddenly so clear.
“Zane can’t be blamed for taking Devon from this world,” Serena hissed, spitting a wad of blood in Kristine’s face. “It was your carelessness—your fucking jealousy making you every bit the stupid bitch you’ve allowed yourself to become—that did that.” Kristine glared and tried to open her mouth to speak, but her auric shields were fractured—weakened by her emotions—and Serena wormed her aura into her mind and locked her jaw in a psychic bind. “No, Kristine. You’ve wasted your voice enough for one lifetime,” Serena started towards her letting her aura section off into three tendrils—two forming miniature crossbows in each hand while the third whipped back-and-forth from her chest—and started to march towards her. “And even after you fucked up and killed the man you claimed to love, he came back to me! You’re a special breed of loser, Kristine; the kind that would kill the puppy for playing with the neighbor boy, and then throw a tantrum when the puppy’s ghost didn’t bark outside her window.” Serena scoffed, “He didn’t even care enough about you to haunt you!”
“SHUT UP!” Kristine glared, her auric thoughts being thrown at her as she fought past the auric bind on her lips. She snarled, hurling her aura out at Serena only to have a purple whipping tendril deflect it.
Serena shook her head, “Wait, it gets better: because Zane—the one you blame for ‘taking Devon away’ despite your murdering him without any guarantee that he’d come back—only reacted to Devon’s fractured personality; a personality that’d still be whole if not for you. And when Devon’s mind was too far gone to make the right decisions, it got him the peace he should have been allowed in the first place.” She narrowed her eyes at her, “The difference between you and me isn’t that I’m a stupid bitch and you’re not, the difference is that you’re a stupid bitch who can’t own up to it and admit that sometimes the fault is just your own!”
She raised the two auric crossbows and took aim.
“And now, you boring, repugnant cocksucker, you have to die!”
Suddenly Devon was standing in front of her.
“D-Devon?” Serena whispered, “It… It can’t be…”
“It’s me, Serena…” He stepped forward and placed his hand on her cheek.
“No, Kristine,” Serena leveled one of the auric crossbows to Devon’s chest. “If you’d been listening, you’d know that I’ve made peace with the fact that Devon’s gone, and there’s nothing that—”
“Serena?” Zane stepped out from behind Kristine, “You have to stop thi—”
Serena rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, you stupid bitch! You’re not even—Zane! Will you please come out and show Kristine what a stupid bitch she is?”
Zane’s aura spiked from the staircase where she’d left him and he poked his head out, “Huh? Do you need help or something?”
Kristine’s eyes widened.
Serena smirked, “No, that was enough. Thanks, babes.”
“Uh… Yea. No problem,” Zane nodded.
Serena turned back, shooting two “bolts” from each of the auric crossbows—two through the fake-Devon and into Kristine’s right shoulder and hip, one through the fake-Zane and into Kristine’s left thigh, and the last in Kristine’s chest—and walked through the Devon illusion as it faded. Slumped against the floor, Serena watched as Kristine struggled against the auric binds that pinned her against the wall.
&n
bsp; “Probably should’ve mentioned that Zane’s back, and in his own body, no less.” Serena shrugged, “Thought that Axle trick was pretty clever, huh?” Serena’s auric crossbows faded from her hands, leaving only the purple tendril that extended from her chest, “Now, as I was saying: it’s time to die.”
“Y-you’re for-getting… my grea-greatest fault,” Kristine whimpered.
Serena sighed, “Well, since you’re probably going to bleed out soon you might as well tell me.”
Kristine chuckled against the pain, “If… I can’t win… I won’t let… anybody… win…”
Turning her aura inward on herself, Kristine’s life-force snuffed itself and triggered an auric burst, consuming Serena in the blast.
“She still hasn’t woken up?” Zane growled, driving his fist repeatedly into the empty gurney neighboring Serena’s body. “You said her aura’s active; you said that she was going to pull out of it! It’s been eight goddam hours! Why hasn’t she woken up yet?”
Zoey bit her lip, “I… I can’t answer that, Zane. Nobody can. I’ve been feeding twice the standard energy doses into her and I’ve got her on a synthetic blood drip that’s four times the concentration of what we used to wake you up when you were in Axle’s body. Biologically, she should be bouncing around like a damn hummingbird, but there has been a lot of stress and pain on her ever since you were taken,” she sighed. “I think that she’s exhausted, Zane; I think that her mind is taking a vacation to recuperate from all the sleepless, lonely nights and all the fear that she’d never get to see you again.” Putting the files aside and wrapping her arms around her friend, she used the contact with her left hand to drain some of his anxiety. “The most you can do right now is just be there for her.”
Zane sighed and nodded, looking back at Serena and smiling. “Well, at least we all made it out of there, right?”
Zoey chuckled, “You know she’s going to taunt me about being right when she wakes up, right?”
“Can’t really blame her,” Zane smirked, “She was right about everything!”
“Can you do me a favor and not feed her that gloating right for at least a day?”
“Only if you do me a favor,” Zane smirked.
Zoey groaned, “What?”
“I am dying to get a Slushie and a cheap, nasty gas station hot dog in my belly, and I’m sure Serena would love to have a Snickers and one of those magazines she’s always reading. Do you think you could drive me to the city and front me the cash to grab the goods?”
Zoey frowned, “Why can’t you drive and buy your own garbage?”
“Because then it wouldn’t be a favor,” Zane chuckled.
“I guess that makes sense… sort of,” Zoey nodded. “Alright, fine.”
Zane frowned and looked over. “Why are we keeping that thing in here?”
Zoey looked over at the ykali body that was still being infused with the Maledictus curse and frowned, “Because that’s a corpse…” She frowned, “And we’re in the medical center. Would you rather we kept it in the cafeteria?”
Zane frowned at the creature and shrugged, “I guess I just don’t like the idea that it could suddenly wake up.”
“Doubt it. It’s not that it’s not going to wake up eventually, but that’s been out without any sign of life—no pulse, no brain activity, and barely any measureable auric activity—for days, where Serena’s breathing and dreaming no differently than if she was just napping. Between the two of them, I’m willing to bet that Serena’s going to be the first to open her eyes.”
Zane frowned, glancing back at Serena. “You promise?”
“STOP THE CAR!” Zane cried, barely letting Zoey complete the stop before he was grabbing at the door handle and trying to get out of the car.
“What is it?” Zoey asked, looking in her mirrors, frantic to know if she’d done something wrong, “Did I hit something?”
Zane shook his head—his eyes wide and unblinking as he stepped from the car and stared down the sidewalk. Unable to bear the tension and suspense, Zoey threw the car into park and stepped out, as well. Stepping over to stare in the direction of Zane’s unseen obsession, Zoey frowned at the simple and common sight of people walking around the city streets.
“Zane…?” Zoey frowned, looking up at her friend, “You’re scaring me. What are you looking for?”
“I…” Zane shook his head and sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I thought I saw somebody I used to know. Sorry about that.”
Zoey shrugged and started back towards the car. “Happens to the best of us, I suppose.”
Getting back to the clan, Zane started back towards the medical center, daring to flip through a few of the magazines he’d picked up for Serena.
“‘Ten ways to please your man with just your toes’? What the fuck is wrong with women? Serena, I swear to god, if you ever try any of these things on me—well, I guess number seven looks alright… hmm—but yea, if you—”
The magazines clattered to the floor along with the extra-large Slushie and Zane’s half-eaten hotdog.
The room was in shambles.
Half of the equipment was ripped from the walls and in pieces; the other half had been fortunate enough to be out of commission on the other side of the room. Supplies and materials were strewn about like confetti, and the room was littered with ykali scales.
And Serena’s gurney was empty…
With nothing but a tuft of platinum-blonde hair to testify to the owner’s abduction…
To be concluded in Scarlet Dusk
By Megan J. Parker & Nathan Squiers
"To all the lovers and fighters out there; here's to always having what it takes to face down your demons"
Preface
“IT WAS NOT WELL TO DRIVE MEN INTO FINAL CORNERS; AT THOSE MOMENTS THEY COULD ALL DEVELOP TEETH AND CLAWS.”
-STEPHEN CRANE (1871-1900)
“FROM THERE WE CAME OUTSIDE AND SAW THE STARS.”
DANTE ALIGHIERI (1265-1321)
Prologue
He couldn’t recall being born.
Couldn’t recall much of anything anymore.
Still, he doubted it hurt as bad as this…
Unable to move or see—unable to even function beyond the simple sense that he was, in some way or another, existing once again—he simply floated in the void of his own growing self-awareness and let the jagged, ugly deposits of whatever reality existed beyond his blindness grow more and more obvious:
Voices. One was unmistakable; a voice that, for some time, he’d grown to know as a part of himself…
The vampire called Zane.
Though he couldn’t be certain if he even had lips anymore, he was certain the name would have brought a sneer to them.
The other voice, though…
The unmistakable pitch and sensuality of a woman though tarnished with an undeserving pride and intellect.
Ah yes… he mused to himself, The blue-haired whore!
The name escaped him, though the face shimmered just beyond the veil of his memory. One of Zane’s comrades; one of the psychic types, if he wasn’t mistaken. She was close to Zane, he remembered, though he’d never bedded her. No, she was more of a sister to him…
One of the reasons he’d always wanted to personally break her; to take her in the worst ways possible and leave Zane to soak up the guilt of the aftermath…
But, with Zane’s voice ringing outside of his head, it was clear that his unique relationship with the vampire playboy had been terminated…
Though, if he could figure out a way to operate whatever vessel he’d been placed within, perhaps the circumstances could be turned in his favor.
“You know she’s going to taunt me about being right when she wakes up, right?” the blue-haired whore said.
“Can’t really blame her,” Zane’s voice was solid and confident; happy! A deep rage boiled within at that realization as he listened on: “She was right about everything!”
“Can you do me a favor and not feed her
that gloating right for at least a day?”
“Only if you do me a favor.”
A groan from the whore, “What?”
“I am dying to get a Slushie and a cheap, nasty gas station hot dog in my belly, and I’m sure Serena would love to have a Snickers and one of those magazines she’s always reading.” The echo of freedom in Zane’s voice was only fueling the rage, then, “Do you think you could drive me to the city and front me the cash to grab the goods?”
“Why can’t you drive and buy your own garbage?”
“Because then it wouldn’t be a favor.”
A chuckle? He was actually laughing?
This wouldn’t do!
“I guess that makes sense… sort of. Alright, fine.”
A pregnant pause offered the hope of miscarried happiness.
“Why are we keeping that thing in here?” Zane asked, the familiar jagged edge of fear clinging to his voice.
Another pause.
“Because that’s a corpse…” the inflection at the end was more taunting than fearful, “And we’re in the medical center. Would you rather we kept it in the cafeteria?”
A corpse? Is that what he’d been dumped into?
Unacceptable!
“I guess I just don’t like the idea that it could suddenly wake up.”
Yes! There it was!
The fear!
The concern!
After all that had happened, he still had Zane by the manhood…
And it was right time to twist and pull!
“Doubt it. It’s not that it’s not going to wake up eventually, but that’s been out without any sign of life—no pulse, no brain activity, and barely any measureable auric activity—for days, where Serena’s breathing and dreaming no differently than if she was just napping. Between the two of them, I’m willing to bet that Serena’s going to be the first to open her eyes.”
Scarlet Night: The Complete Trilogy Page 40