The Creeper Dance, Reaper #1

by Darcy Lennox

  ‘We need to keep you well fed…’ she said while nervously trying to keep her eyes off mine. If she had a heart, I would have heard it beating from out of her chest as loud as a drum. But I did not need her heart when I could hear her finger trembling instead.

  ‘Fucking vampires,’ I hissed.

  She squirmed and cowered behind a chair in fright. ‘Please, I’m just here to feed you,’ she cried.

  ‘Pathetic. I don’t want to be fed, vampire!’

  Without a second to spare, she flew out of the room and before the door slammed shut Akilis ran to clutch the handle before it could trap us in.

  ‘That was much easier than I anticipated,’ Akilis said anxiously.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ I tugged at the shackles.

  ‘Something doesn’t feel right…’

  ‘Then you should probably stop wondering and cut me loose?’ I snapped.

  Bickering like 1972 was just yesterday while risking our lives and for what? Well, this time it was humans – and the world. Vampires and lycans were allergic to silver but I however was not. Together, we yanked, and I pulled the shackles around my wrist and ankle’s until they snapped loose.

  ‘You’d think that your dhamujki genes would at least make silver as lethal to you as it is to us, just another reason as to why you’re so valuable,’ Akilis said curiously while untangling the shackles from my limbs.

  ‘Yeah, well there are some pros,’ I said and used my strength to yank the bar off from its hinges across my neck. The stone to which it was attached began to crumble and then bend until I had pulled it free off my neck. Freedom smelled sweet.

  In a flash, I locked my fingers around Akilis’s throat and smashed his head into the stone slab as if it were soaked in water and he was drowning. ‘You deceived me!’ I spat and felt my eyes burn with rage, the amber fuelling a bright yellow that replicated a shade of the sun.

  ‘I – didn’t –’ he chocked under my lock. ‘Stop –’

  ‘No, you did not think,’ I lowered my face before his and saw from the reflection of his eyes the demonic blaze of anger that plastered itself inside my eyes. For a moment, I considered trancing him, but I knew that I could not risk that now.

  When I let him go, Akilis gasped for air and took gulps of it by the second. The sound of his struggling satisfied the demon at the bottom of my stomach and I stood up to stretch.

  ‘Holy shit!’ Akilis spat.

  I crossed my arms and gave him a look that suggested I was not in the mood to talk. I needed to kill, and I needed Deathclaw to do so quickly. ‘My katana, where is it?’ I said while flinging the duster over my shoulders and releasing my long dark hair from within its hold.

  ‘I don’t know – here take this,’ he held out a handgun.

  ‘I don’t like guns, I am faster than bullets and prefer to feel my blade cut through flesh…’

  ‘Well, unless you want to use your hands…’

  ‘I will,’ I said and clenched my knuckles in preparation.

  ‘I forget how stubborn you are.’

  ‘How were you able to sneak guns into this place anyway?’

  ‘I have my ways just as you have yours,’ he smirked.

  Ignoring him, I punched the stone slab with my fist causing to crack in two. No doubt the sound would attract some attention, but I wanted to be heard. I wanted them to know that the Reaper was angry, and she was out for blood, their blood.

  The corridor was blindly bright due to the fluorescent lighting, my eyes took a second to adjust. I had always imagined the Daggertooth headquarters to be somewhat darker, dirtier even. However, it reminded me of the infirmary from the Kingdom of Ahkul where everything was white and spotless and that smell, which was heavily masked by vampire scent but was clawing to be seen amongst their hideous ashes – bleach?

  ‘Where are we?’ I whispered as Akilis followed me out into the eerily quiet corridor.

  ‘The basement, or in other words – their experiment isle – quick, I have seen them go through that door before, that’s where their lab must be,’ he nudged his head to the right and as we turned the corner, it led the way to another corridor in which the fluorescent light at the end flickered off without a sound.

  I felt Akilis tense behind me as we crawled closer towards the last door. Something was wrong, there would have been guards or at least footsteps nearing in on us by now? Akilis had the same expression plastered across his face. As I put my hand on the door handle slowly, I saw a stroke of fear flash before his eyes.

  ‘Blow the laboratory up, kill as many vampires as we can – and then get the hell out of here!’ Akilis reminded me.

  ‘Yes.’

  Going in full force I thrust the door open in a powerful push. I heard Akilis flinch and hold his breath as he pointed his gun at the door defensively.

  But there was nothing there. The light above our head flickered on to highlight the shadows of the empty room. When I stepped in, I saw that on the other side of the room there was a giant mirror. I watched Akilis walk in behind me, in which he pointed his gun at all four corners of the room while scouting for targets.

  ‘I don’t understand, I saw them go into this room – this was the room they were talking about I’m sure of –’

  BANG! The door slammed shut behind us. Akilis and I jumped from the unexpected sound. I pulled at the handle, but it started to… move. Like melting steel, the handle dissolved into the doors surface as did the door into the wall.

  ‘What the… where did it…’ I whispered into the wall as I felt around the smooth texture in search of a bump or a hole.

  ‘Ah! Good, I see you’ve found it,’ Zagan’s voice echoed across the room.

  ‘What is this? What’s going on?’ Akilis hissed.

  A devious cackle pierced the silent atmosphere, the sound made my ears fizzle as if there was a fly stuck behind my ear drum and I could hear its miniscule wings flutter faster than my heart would allow.

  ‘We’ve been one step ahead of you the entire time, all we had to do was attract your attention with crooked vampires, Reaper. You just couldn’t resist, could you? Oh! But the bonus came with you Akilis, offering to take her in for us, did you not think we had you followed? Did you think us stupid? Reaper… we’ve been watching you for months, learning how you move… what ignites the need for you to reap? Your purpose in this world… oh it was so easy it’s almost a shame that it’s over now.’

  Fuck. I thought back to the murders of Terrence Gambone – how could I have been so stupid? The reflection in the mirror depicted a picture I had very rarely seen, was it anger? Or surprise that I had been played so very well.

  ‘We knew it was the only way to get you in here, you’re a threat Reaper and instead of working against us – help us, we could make this world ours. The humans have been destroying their world for centuries, they have no idea of its potential. But us – we – do!’

  ‘Never!’ I barked.

  That same cackle vibrated through my eardrums again, the excruciating sound matched the expression on my face in the mirror.

  ‘It’s too late,’ he exclaimed, and the echo of his voice was suddenly all I could hear.

  Akilis and I stared blankly at our reflection, neither of us really looking until something strange happened to the mirror. The reflective surface rippled and stretched into a window. On the other side was a room – a laboratory even – filled with vampires in hospital attire and what appeared to be two bodies on two separate stone slabs shackled with chains, much like myself moments earlier.

  ‘They must have taken some of my blood when I was unconscious,’ I said.

  ‘Makes sense, you were out cold for a good few hours,’ Akilis replied.

  I looked at Akilis like he was a fucking idiot, Akilis returned the look in a gesture that suggested he agreed.

  The surgeon, whose body was concealed within a white suit opened the mouth of the male body.

  ‘He’s human?’ Akilis remarked.

  ‘
The female must be vampire,’ I said just as another surgeon with the same suit began to prod into her mouth where two sharp fangs were visible under the light. Her wrists and legs were painted in red circles due to the silver pressing into her skin.

  ‘It’s not just vampires they want to turn, it’s humans too?’ Akilis said more as a question to himself than to me.

  Several nurses began to fiddle with the female’s body where shackles were carefully placed around her ankles, wrists and neck and heavy clothes to protect her skin from the silver. The surgeon lightly tapped her on the forehead and she began to stir awake.

  ‘She is alive?’ I exclaimed and immediately placed my hands on the window for closer inspection.

  The surgeon made signs with his fingers and the female nodded at each. Next, a wooden stick was positioned between her teeth, I saw the female clench her fists in approval. The second surgeon came back with a syringe generously filled with black liquid, my blood. Slowly, he placed the syringe by her neck and pierced her skin with the needle. I saw her wince as the blood decreased from the syringe and under her flesh. When it was gone, both surgeons and the nurses took a step back from her body while Akilis and I inched closer with our faces stuck to the window like amazed spectators of a circus audience.

  Her body twitched and withered to begin with, but the twitching increased into heaving and screaming that grew wilder by the second. Some of the nurses flinched back, clearly frightened for their lives. The wooden stick between her teeth snapped as she pulled at the shackles aggressively, tearing the skin around the metal. A shriek escaped her lips, but that same shriek turned into a roar so shrill and evil the surgeons and nurses in the laboratory cowered to the ground to protectively cover their ears. The demon within her had taken control as her skin pumped with black veins, my blood burning through her system, clawing at her soul. One of the shackles snapped loose from her wrist, now they were in trouble. With her free hand, the vampire tugged at the other shackle but she was beginning to slow down. The heaving ceased and just as fast as she had reacted, she lay lifeless on the slab of stone. When they felt safe, the nurses and the surgeons arose from their cowering nests and looked over her body curiously where the surgeon felt her neck for a pulse.

  ‘She is d –’ I gasped.

  Her arm pumped up into the air and she hissed sharply. The nurses drew back instantly, one of which had leeched herself onto the window forcing Akilis and I to slide apart for a better look. The vampire’s hiss fizzled out but when she opened her eyes, mine grew large.

  ‘They’re – like yours!’ Akilis exclaimed.

  The vampire, who was clearly in a state of delirium from the shock that her body endured began to claw at the bar on her neck with little thought. There were no burn marks, no scars, and no sizzling of the skin as her vampire skin felt silver for what would be the first time in years, perhaps decades.

  ‘It worked…’ Akilis gasped. ‘They’re going to be unstoppable,’ he said, and a shadow cast itself across his face as the reality began to settle in.

  ‘The human,’ I hissed and pointed at the window. ‘They are going to inject him.’

  Just like they had done with the female vampire, they carried out the same procedure with the human. He, however, was not so co-operative. He began to fidget when they woke him up, and squirmed when he saw the syringe but when my blood was pumped into his system his body responded differently. Unlike the vampire, he struggled to breathe – the blood vessels in his eyes popped and burned his eyes black. He howled as he took in his last breaths, choking and coughing until he was dead. My blood – it killed him, it was poisonous to humans.

  The surgeons and nurses tried to revive his body, but with no luck they were beginning to tire down until… his toe suddenly twitched. We all held our breaths, waiting, waiting, waiting, but nothing happened. And then – the skin of his chest darkened to a sickly pink – a bruised orange – until it was as dark as it could ever be, blood red. The black veins from underneath his skin pulsed, and the blood red colour from his chest began to spread until it engulfed his entire body in the same crimson shade. The hair from his arms, face and head withered, the surgeon by his head plucked a lone strand from his chest where he witnessed it dissolve before his very eyes.

  ‘This doesn’t feel right…’ Akilis warned.

  There was a quietness that made my blood run cold. My heart thump. And my teeth electric. The man’s hand shot up and out of its shackles and grabbed the surgeon’s wrist. I watched as the surgeon winced from the strength of his grip, and then the beast let out a shriek so crude it matched that of a Bloodbyrd. The nurses, who were terrified flew back from the body. One of which was quick to release the female vampire who was just now beginning to understand what was happening.

  The creature – it was no longer fair to call it human – yanked the surgeon’s wrist down and grappled his head with his other arm that he had pulled free from the shackles. He turned to face the terrified nurses, tantalising them with his evil black eyes, and then crushed the surgeons head between his own hands as if it were a succulent tangerine. He opened his mouth and let the blood trickle down his throat, where the bar around his neck still restricted him.

  ‘What is that, thing,’ I heard Akilis say somewhere in the background, not quite sure where as the edges around my vision sparked and darkened. I was falling.

  Chapter Eight

  I heard Akilis calling out for me first, why was he so far away? His voice was muffled like it had been stuffed with tissue at the entrance of his throat. But it was my hands that startled me the most, I felt the smooth floor under my grip. How did I – what happened?

  ‘Quickly!’ he shouted. ‘We need to go, now!’

  What? What was he saying?

  I felt his hands grab the sides of my face, and then his face appeared before mine as if it were a mountain with eyes and a nose to match.

  ‘Get up! We need to go!’

  I pushed him aside, as a flaming flash caught my attention behind him amongst the alarming blue emergency lights that spilled into the room. The beast, now free from its shackles had taken hold of the nurse by her neck, it hissed and bit her in the forehead while squeezing her neck. She squirmed under its grip, irritated by her flailing hands he suddenly pulled them off her body as if they were dry branches from a tree. The dangerous ease at which it moved shocked the hearing back into my skull.

  Jumping to my feet, I pushed Akilis further aside and saw the trail of bloodied bodies in the laboratory. The female vampire who had successfully survived the transfusion only moments earlier was struggling to break free of the last shackle attached around her ankle.

  ‘We need to kill it!’ I spat. ‘If we do not do it tonight – it might be worse than what we imagine of the vampires!’

  ‘How?’ Akilis said.

  ‘The guns, give me one – shoot at the window, now!’

  Akilis hurled his handgun at me, I caught it and we both shot at the glass window with little success.

  ‘Fire in the same spot, there in the middle where the small cracks are – the glass is weak!’ I said.

  BANG. BANG. BANG. The glass began to crumble, Akilis booted down the window aggressively where the glass shattered to the ground. The beast and the female vampire distracted by our sudden presence stopped in their tracks. It dropped the nurse’s lifeless body to the ground, blood and saliva slurped across its mouth like that of a rabid dog. The eyes, wholly black made it difficult to guess who he was looking at as I tried to get a connection in the hopes of trancing the damned thing to a calm. But that is not what it was doing – the thing – it – was trying to smell me, it hesitated in my direction and then in a motion too fast for human eyes, it flung its head in Akilis’s direction and squealed like a wild pig. Unlike me, it could detect Akilis in seconds and flew across the room at him in full speed. Akilis fired at the beast, but it kept moving – albeit a little slower.

  I wrenched the shackle off the hybrid’s ankle from the stone slab.
For a moment, as the shackle came loose, she sized me up but a mutual understanding conferred between us – our battle would have to wait for another time. The alarm rang louder within the laboratory, no wonder the beast was going berserk, I could barely hear myself think.

  ‘A little help?!’ Akilis spat as he swung for the beast’s head with his gun.

  I steadied my own gun between my hands and aimed, but the damned thing was moving too fast and the bullet hit the wall by Akilis’s head instead.

  ‘Shit!’ I snapped.

  The hybrid crouched down to her hands and feet, she was about to pounce on it and then she looked at me – it was a distraction. Akilis kicked the beast in the stomach where it flew back into the wall. The hybrid used the open space to claw at its face in which the wild thing shrieked loudly. The sound alone could make anybody cower into their skin, including me. Akilis locked its fidgeting legs to the ground, whilst the hybrid twisted its arms behind its head. Like a slab of meat on a stick, the blood red beast squirmed under their restraints.

  ‘Shoot it!’ Akilis hissed.

  I held the gun up to its face and clenched my teeth, when I let go of the trigger the bullet sunk a hole straight through the bone between his eyes. Its hairless head fell to the ground with a screechy thump like a pebble in a pond. Akilis and the hybrid held their breaths, too afraid to let go… and they were right. Its limbs twisted and turned, the damn thing was still alive!

  ‘In the heart, that’s where it’s energy must come from!’ Akilis barked.

  I fired at his heart twice, this must kill him or else we are all fucked.