by Debra Dunbar
“The others should be in and out tonight for the month-end audit bonuses. You can grab them all if you’re patient and hang around long enough.”
“Thank you,” I was truly grateful. I began to send energy deep within him. This would hurt, but I wouldn’t prolong it. I had other places to be before the vampires caught up with me and cut my fun short.
“You promised,” he screamed. “You said you wouldn’t kill me, you promised!”
“Yes,” I said with pity. “But demons lie.”
Chapter 23
I surveyed my kills with satisfaction. This night just kept getting better and better. I’d wrapped up my original, sanctioned kill in record time and raced over to the warehouse. I was well aware that I’d passed my meeting time with Mario three hours ago. I figured that I’d just keep on killing until they eventually caught up with me. No one had shown up so far, and I had plenty of time until my morning meeting with the head guy. Plenty of time to have more fun.
Four bodies. I was inspired to create a lovely tableau and started prepping by removing limbs and stacking them neatly in piles, while formulating a vision of sculpture in my head. Wyatt would be at his game all night and this was more fun than spending the evening at a blackjack table. I contemplated removing teeth, but opted to leave them in and do eyes instead. And maybe tongues, too. I had just completed separating and organizing all the parts for my artwork when I heard a noise. Turning, I saw a man at the edge of the warehouse. In spite of his obvious shock, his instincts were good and he bolted. I took off after him.
The warehouse was a warren of stacked boxes, forklifts, and shelving racks. The bay doors were locked down tight and I’d be on him before he could wrestle them open. Unlike most warehouses, the human-sized doors were not beside the bays, but clear across the building and down a hall flanked by offices. There were only two doors and they were placed to keep any visitor contained and shielded from what they shouldn’t see. The guy had to have recently came in through one of those doors. If he’d been here before, in one of the offices, he would have heard all the screaming and made a quiet exit. No doubt he was here to pick up supply and walked in on my evening’s entertainment.
I assumed the guy was heading back to the door. He’d need to weave around the shelving units a bit. I had a clearer path and should get to the hallway in about the same time. There, I could disable him and enjoy a fifth kill tonight. Kind of like dessert.
I paused when I got to the hallway. There was no sign of the guy. Had he beat me here? I made my way down the long hall toward the door, checking each office briefly as I passed. I would have heard the echo of the heavy steel door if he’d fled the building. If he’d left, ah well. If he was still here, he was going to remain here until I found him. I’d start by searching each of these offices thoroughly on my way back to the warehouse.
As I turned around, I saw the guy standing at the warehouse end of the hallway. Smart. He had me trapped at the end of a hallway, drastically limiting my movement and increasing his chances of hitting me with a bullet. Raising his arm, I saw a flash, heard a roar, and felt a bullet slam into my chest, followed by another.
Wyatt had told me that in spite of what you see in the movies, it’s very difficult to get in a head shot, or even a limb shot, on a moving and unpredictable target. When you need it to go down, you aim for the biggest area you can, the torso. I also knew that no matter how skilled they were, humans became terrible shots when they were stressed and scared. This man had punctured me with two of the four bullets he’d shot. Not a bad success rate.
This would barely slow me down though. I began to rapidly recreate flesh, raining the shattered bits of bullets from my body and coughing out blood from my lungs as I shuffled toward him. All the blood loss would have been more dramatic if I hadn’t been already soaked with it from my victims.
The guy held his ground and continued to shoot, pumping bullets into me so fast I lost count. I longed for the days of the six shooter. Who knows how many bullets this guy had in his clip, or if he had another clip to snap in before I could reach him. I concentrated on removing the bullets and healing the flesh as quickly as he pumped them in. One blast hit my hip spinning me off balance to land on my rear.
I rolled over and got up, fixing the shattered bone for stability before repairing the flesh. He dropped the empty clip and tried unsuccessfully to slap in another as I straightened and kept moving forward. I wasn’t in mortal danger, and continuing to walk toward him riddled with bullets was freaking him out in a very satisfying way. His hands shook and he dropped both the empty clip and the full one. At that point, he realized that even if he did manage to load the gun, it wasn’t going to do any good. So he ran.
I chased after him, letting him stay just a bit ahead of me as we weaved in and out of the warehouse rows. A few times I let him get far enough ahead to try and hide, then I’d carefully flush him out to run again. It was fun, dangling hope before him that he might escape, that he might elude me. That false hope thrilled me, and it would be even sweeter when I caught him and saw it die desperately in his eyes.
I herded him slowly toward the others, aware that he was tiring and becoming frantic. Finally he broke into the open and paused, unable to stop himself from gagging at my neat piles of body parts and organs.
“That will be you too,” I told him. “Immortalized in a work of art I’m going to create. It will bring meaning and beauty to your death. Five is a far more auspicious number than four. You’ll lift the piece up; bring it nobility through the addition of your flesh.”
He looked at me in horror and backed away slowly, as if he finally realized that there was no chance of escape. There wasn’t. I walked casually toward him.
“I won’t promise you a painless death, because that’s no fun at all. You’ll scream, you’ll cry, you’ll beg, but at the end of it all, you will die. I do promise that. There will eventually be a release from the pain. I’m very turned on by all this chasing, too, so I may lose control and kill you quicker than I would like. You can take comfort in that.”
He slipped in a smear of blood, landing heavily on his rear and narrowly missing the intestines roped in coils beside him. Scooting on his butt, he kept his eyes fixed on me, but not fixed in a way that I could lock him in and hold him with my gaze. Pity. I approached and stood over him. Mmmm, what to do, what to do? So many options.
“I challenge you to a contest,” he said, his voice wavering a bit. “If you win, you can have my soul. If I win, I get to leave here unharmed and safe from you forever.”
I laughed. What an interesting man this was.
“Your soul? I could take that; I could Own you without your consent. I don’t even know if I want to Own you. So many humans are boring and dull. There’s probably nothing you have that would be a suitable bribe. I admire your fortitude, though, and your ability to think so quickly on your feet. Or on your ass.”
“There must be something I can offer you,” he said with surprising calm. “And the challenge of a contest itself should be entertaining.”
I wondered how this man knew so much about my kind. He must have a relative who had taught him some things in his childhood. A granny witch maybe.
“I do enjoy a challenge.” I mused over his proposal for a moment. I had enough time. Curiosity wiggled through me. What did he have in mind?
“Ok, I’m game. What kind of challenge? A feat of strength or agility? A task we must complete? Like perhaps who can find the most beautiful ring? Although we’d need someone impartial to judge that contest and all your friends here are dead.”
He shook his head, remaining seated on the ground and carefully not looking at me. “Not strength or agility. I know I couldn’t win that.”
“A riddling game? Or a musical contest? Not violin though,” I added hastily. That Daniels guy had cleaned my clock a few decades back and I didn’t want to suffer such embarrassment again.
“I don’t play an instrument. And I’m not good at riddles.�
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Fuck, what was the guy good at? I’d probably win anyway, but it would be a lot more fun if he felt like he had a chance in it.
“Beer bongs? Belching? Or you could take out your phone and we could play Words With Friends for your soul.” I was losing my patience with this guy. He was no longer holding my interest. Time to start dismembering.
“Angry Birds.”
“I was fucking joking!” I yelled in frustration.
“Angry Birds it is. If I win, you let me leave unharmed, unhurt and guarantee I live out my normal lifespan free from you or any of your kinds’ torment. If you win, you get to do with me whatever you want, including taking my soul. You can also have all of my immediate family.”
“You either really hate your family or you’re really confident in your ability to play Angry Birds,” I commented.
“Deal?” he asked.
“In order to make you safe from other demons, I need to mark you,” I warned. “It’s the only way. Otherwise they won’t know to keep their hands off.”
He thought for a moment. “Okay”
“Deal then.”
We stared at each other for an awkward moment.
“Do you have it on your phone?” I prompted.
He pulled out a flip phone and showed it to me.
“Oh, wonderful.” I dug around in my pants pockets for my phone. I obviously hadn’t brought a purse to a hunt and had almost left the phone behind. I hoped it hadn’t gotten smashed during the evening’s fun activities.
“The devil has an iPhone?” the guy asked in amazement as I pulled it out and examined it for damage. It started right up.
“How else am I going to call my boyfriend and tell him I’m running late?” I replied.
I scrolled through the huge list of apps that Wyatt had helpfully downloaded onto my phone. I didn’t even know what half of them did. What the fuck was Qwerty anyway? Under games I had Solitaire, Mahjong, Words with Friends, Bejeweled, and Zombie Dash. No Angry Birds.
“This better be a free app,” I told the guy as I scrolled through the online store. “I’m gonna be really pissed if I have to pay a dollar ninety-nine for this thing.”
I’d seen the Angry Birds merchandising and got the general idea that the player catapulted fat, red birds at various structures in an attempt to smash everything and kill the equally fat green pigs. I loaded the game and the cheerful, catchy tune blasted full volume through my phone speakers. It was the kind of tune that would be stuck in my head for days.
“How should we do this? It seems to be single player. Should we compare high scores? Best two out of three?” I asked my opponent.
“Scoring is by level. You unlock the next highest level by killing all the pigs before you run out of birds, regardless of your score. Maybe a combination of highest level achieved and highest score on any level?”
“That can be the number we compare to determine the winner.” I said, shifting the pile of legs so I could sit down on the bloody floor. “If you fail a level 3 times, then your round is over, and we do three rounds? Top overall score out of three rounds wins?”
He thought about it for a moment then nodded.
“I’ll go first,” I offered, feeling generous. “That way you have an idea what score you need to beat.”
I hit the play button and shrank the images so I could see the bird catapult and my scaffolding target all on the screen. The bird launched with a vindictive squawk and promptly smashed the wooden structure and killed the pig. I cleared level one with a score of 28,030. Why was that only worth one star? I killed the fucking pig with one shot, damn it. I got ten thousand more points on the next level, but still only one star. Fuck this game. I managed to work my way through nine levels with declining scores. I could only hope that flip-phone guy sucked worse than I did.
“Three hundred forty-two thousand, two hundred seventy.” I told him, passing the phone over. He’d been peering over my shoulder watching me play, torn between wanting to see and keeping as far from me as possible.
He looked at me in suspicion and tried to do the math in his head.
“My high score times level nine.”
He continued to work the numbers unsuccessfully.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said, sticking my finger in a cold, congealed pool of blood. If we didn’t resolve this soon, I’d need to do my sculpture with stiff body parts.
Finding a somewhat clean space I wrote out the formula and showed him the math. He nodded his consent.
I had no such qualms about personal space, so I hovered inches from him, breathing across his ear and feeling the tension roll off him. He only cleared level five, but had a higher score than me, bringing his total score to slightly below mine. I snatched the phone from his shaking hands and smiled at him with satisfaction. Two more rounds and I’d have warm, soft flesh to go with the cold. I still only cleared nine levels, but significantly improved my top score.
“Five hundred twenty-two thousand, two hundred seventy,” I told him smugly, then went to write it in blood on the floor. It was starting to look kind of cool, all these numbers and math formulas written in blood on the warehouse floor. I’d put circles and triangles around it and totally freak out the human who discovered it. Maybe I’d carve some prime numbers on the torsos of my sculpture, too. It would tie everything together nicely.
I breathed down my opponent’s neck again and watched as he worked his way through nine levels. His scores were pretty close to mine at this point. I’d been unable to beat the tenth level and leaned in even closer to see if he’d provide a clue.
“Do you mind giving me a little more space?” he asked with an odd combination of irritation and fear. “You’re practically in my lap. Worse than my kids.”
“I can’t get past the tenth level and I’m trying to see if you can. The structure the pigs are in isn’t wood anymore. I use up all my birds hammering at the thing only to have the pigs safe and doing that mocking grunting noise at me. I hate these fucking pigs.”
“You need to tap on the screen when they are close to their target on this one so they break into more birds and get extra oomph. Didn’t you pay attention to the directions? The game showed you that when you reached the level.”
No, I didn’t. I don’t read directions, even in graphic form. I like to just wing it. I watched him carefully as he made it to level eleven and pulled ahead of me in top score. Last round.
I made it to level twelve this time, but couldn’t manage to kill the big fat pig sheltered in pillars of concrete on either side.
“Seven hundred twenty thousand, forty-nine,” I told him. That put me back into the lead. This was his last chance to save his life and his hands shook as he took the phone from me. I could hear his heart pounding, smell the sweat, thick and rancid on his skin.
Twice he failed level twelve, having the same problem with the big fat pig as I had. On his last attempt, his last bird, the thing managed to break through the glass ceiling and squash the pig from above.
He’d already won, but I knew he couldn’t do the math in his head, so I let him continue to play and sweat it out while I leaned over him, blowing in his ear and rubbing myself seductively on his back. If I was going to let him go, I might as well have some fun first.
He finished out at level fifteen and tried, to no avail, to do the math in his head. I made him write it out himself in blood on the floor. He shook like an epileptic the whole time. His bloody numbers were practically undecipherable.
“Eight hundred ninety-six thousand, two hundred eighty,” he told me, his voice catching on a sob. Then he vomited all over the numbers. I stood and watched him, panting on all fours, threads of spit extending from his mouth to the pool of puke.
“It seems you’ve won your freedom. Of course, it would be the ultimate in irony if you were to be hit by a bus on your way home this morning.”
“Mark me so I’m safe,” he panted as he glanced up at me, still not directly meeting my eyes. “I want to get out
of here.”
There are lots of ways to mark someone as mine. I could damage him in some fashion. Even though the wound or broken bone would heal, the signature would remain, forever evident to my kind. I could fuck him, although it usually took several times for the energy to hold tight. I thought about the angel tattoos, the little brownish angel wing marks they left on the foreheads of those they killed. Their “forgiveness mark,” showing that the dead had paid their dues and were ready for whatever judgment the afterlife brought. Those marks were small and subtle, hidden along the hairline.
I’d do a tattoo in a more visible spot, I decided. Of course, all the demon symbols that would have terrified the humans a few hundred years ago were cool now. It was common to see even businessmen sporting bloody skulls, winged beasts, or corpses on their bodies. The stuff of nightmares was now stylish. Inspired, I placed a thumb on his cheek and sent my energy into it. He balled up his fists, but withstood the pain. When I finished, I pulled my thumb away to see a fat green pig on his cheek.
“There. Other demons who see you will know you are mine and they should keep their hands off. Of course, if someone’s really pissed and gunning for me, they might decide to torture or kill you to taunt me. That’s unavoidable.”
“How likely is it that you’re going to piss someone off and they’ll take it out on me?” His voice quivered in fear.
“Oh I piss a lot of people off. That’s pretty likely. But you’re not one of my household. I have humans around me I care much more about. It’s a pretty slim chance that someone would bother with you when they have so many other beings whose injury or death would cause me pain.”
I looked at the tattoo with a critical eye. I think my perspective was a bit off, but it looked pretty good if I might say so myself.
“The vampires probably won’t mess with you. You may want to avoid angels though. A demon-marked human isn’t going to win any mercy from them. Of course, your current profession probably wouldn’t have won you mercy from them anyway.”