"I have you," I say softly to the door and the person hiding behind it.
"open it" I repeat quietly, and my desire to see the act done drips through every word. I will not be denied this time.
I can sense the man's reluctance to perform the requested act, but he responds just as I wished him to do.
Strike quickly. Strike surely. Strike once, I repeat my father's mantra. No wasted effort. No moves that aren't necessary.
As soon as the sliding door snicks all the way open, I step back from the door, plant my left leg behind me firmly on the porch's cement and snap my right hand forward through the small opening. Keeping my hand flat and as stiff as possible, I punch it into - and through - whatever resistance awaits it on the other side. Something fleshy crunches beneath my fingertips, and instincts tell me it was an esophagus.
"hagurk-" is the only response I hear and it is followed by the satisfying sound of a heavy weight dropping unheeded to the floor.
His "witch" comment bothered me more than it should have, but it's too late to think about it now. My mystery friend's retirement for the evening seems to be gathering attention from others. Voices are shouting from deep within the house, and I'm guessing his sudden decision to lay down and take a nap is not getting a warm reception.
Ignoring the noises coming from within the house, I lean my ear against the door and rapidly begin tapping around the edges to listen for the reverberations. I need to know where the locks and hinges are, and how heavy they are. My rhythmic tappings quickly tell me what I need to know.
One lock. Fairly new and heavy, but the hinges are old, rusted and have been ignored up until this point. They are the weak point of this fortified entrance. They are how I will make my surprise appearance.
Backing up several paces, I judge the distance to the door and how much speed I will need to accumulate before impact to ensure that the old hinges give way before my body does. It looks doable, but also – quite likely - painful. Frighteningly, the thought of impending pain only excites me instead of warning me off (What is happening to me tonight?).
Planting my left foot behind me firmly in the grass, I prepare my body for the impact it will soon experience. As I release my weight into my loaded right leg and propel myself forward, something above me catches my attention.
A sparkle of light from a street lamp glints off a partially boarded-up window on the second floor. Wait. A second floor, period. A second floor means a much easier access point to the building.
"Perfect," I say and change my trajectory and speed. Instead of setting my weight to smash through the door, I adjust so that I can jump as I approach the door. Placing my foot on the door handle and pushing myself higher up, I jettison over my original target. The outer brick work makes scaling the surface above the door much simpler than it should have been.
Fingers and toes firmly pressed into the mortar, I shimmy around the second level of the house listening to the chaos erupt a few feet away from me on the other side of the wall.
"What happened to Lewis?"
"Someone punched him through the door!"
"Who?"
"Don't know."
The conversations echo back and forth through the house, and they all seem to be focusing on the fallen man in front of the door. Good. I hope that keeps their attention a bit longer.
Moving as quickly and quietly as I can around the house, I try to focus my attention in as many different directions as I can without losing my grip. It's not easy, and I find myself having to choose between listening for people approaching and keeping a solid grip on the wall multiple times. Because of my lack of focus, I don't notice the two men on the lawn until they are directly below me.
Both are older than me – maybe early twenties - reek of confusion and anger (I actually manage to smell them before I hear them. The foul smell of their emotions slaps me as I cling to the wall.), and carry what I assume are automatic rifles (My only knowledge of them stemming from the action movies I’ve watched with my dad.). One is a well-built white guy in a green tank top and sweatpants who looks like he could bench press an elephant, and his friend is a skinny black guy wearing a dark blue hoody and jeans.
Their scent freezes me on the wall with the closeness of their proximity. Watching them as they quietly pass below me, I contemplate letting them move on without engaging them. The warm humanness in their smell wafting up to me is enticing, but it isn't the smell that compelled me to come here. I have no desire to let my hunger satiate itself with them tonight. There is another in this house that I want more.
At the same time, it'd be better to attack now and catch them off guard - and hopefully subdue them quickly - as opposed to waiting until they can either call reinforcements or be the reinforcements someone else calls. Risk a fight now, or wait for the attack later?
"Better the situation I can control, than the one I can't," I whisper to myself as I make my decision.
Pulling air into my lungs, I let go of the wall and bend my legs slightly as I tilt slowly backwards, then straighten my legs with a violent jerk and propel myself backwards through the air and into a flip. As the lawn and the two men become a ceiling above me, I rotate and twist my body into an upside down spinning swan dive and reach out for the larger guy in the tank top. Moving towards him and the ground, time slows down for me as I approach (Actually I don't think I can really slow down time. That has to be impossible. I'm just accelerating my cognitive processing rate to the point that I'm thinking faster than things can move. It's very, very cool. And a bit scary.) allowing me to perfectly place my hands on either of his shoulders as I pass just in front of him and my back becomes parallel to the ground. Digging my fingers tightly into his collarbones and pectoral muscles, I arch my back and will my feet to hit the ground first. As soon as they do, I push as much of my weight into them as I can to steady myself and contract my stomach muscles and snap my arms forward at the same time. The whipping motion combined with the inertia of my falling momentum is too much for the muscle man's body, and I send him up and over me and crashing into the sparse grass in a violent steroid-soaked rainbow of surprise.
The satisfying whuff of air that shoots out of his lungs is immediately followed by a marked change in the sound of his heartbeat. I didn't kill him, but he won't be getting up and lifting any unwilling, girl-sized weights any time soon.
Spinning on the ball of my right foot, I turn to face his hoodie-wearing partner. The large, menacing, oily assault rifle is still clutched tightly in front of him as he swivels his body towards me in an attempt to discover what just happened to the pasty Hulk.
Stepping into him, I grab the rifle with my left hand and snap the button that says SAFETY to the on position (Thank you super-vision and slowy-time!) and my right hand snaps upwards into his chin. I continue the motion until my knuckles pass through where his forehead used to be. The sharp click his teeth make as they smack together is almost sickening as his head goes from vertical to horizontal in mere milliseconds.
I don't have to see his eyes to know they have rolled back in his head, as his slumping body and dead weight tell me enough. Holding on to the gun with my left hand I let his body fall away from me and bounce roughly off the hard turf of the lawn.
I would like to break the gun, but I don't know how. I just don't want it used against me...or anyone else. After turning it over in my hands a few times looking for an obvious "break here" sign, I give up and settle for just taking out the clip and throwing it onto the roof. Not a perfect solution, but one that works for now. Bending down, I give the wheezing muscle guy's gun the same treatment.
"Not bad for fifteen seconds of work," I tell myself while using my internal clock to assess how long it took. "Now," I continue as I allow a smile to creep onto my face. "Let's see what I can do with several minutes."
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Quickly re-scaling the brick wall - which had been my perch mere moments before - I return to my second floor vantage point. After spending a fe
w moments moving horizontally along the wall, I find a darkened window (one of the few not boarded up) set in the failing bricks of the rundown house. Pulling my hand back to punch through the glass so that I can shimmy inside, an idea hits me and halts my swing. I'm invading a house full of drug dealers and random miscreants, not a CIA safe house. What are the chances they even bothered to lock the second-floor window of a possibly abandoned room in a rundown slum house? Not likely, is my guess.
Resting my weight into my toes and using the pinched grip of my right hand for balance, I reach out and push gently on the windowsill to see if it will budge. It does!
With an ear-splitting shriek (Whoops! Maybe a smashed pane of glass would have been quieter after all.), the window makes its way up as I apply steady pressure.
"Way to go Ms. Sneakypants,” I say as the sound echoes around me in the thick air. "I believe we just sacrificed that whole 'element of surprise' thing I've heard so much about."
Adjusting my grip on the window to pull myself in, a delicious wave of the most appetizing scent wafts out and settles around my face. It's the smell of whatever brought me here. My desire to have it washes over me and weakens my hold on both the window and the wall. It's tantalizingly close and getting closer.
"Get a grip," I tell myself as another intoxicating rush of endorphins sends shivers through me and my fingers threaten to relax. I giggle as the double meaning of what I just said hits me. "Focus!" I hiss.
"Who's out there?" A tentative voice breaks my reverie as it whispers out of the room. Mr. Goodsmell is just inside the room. He's mere feet from me now. Everything in my consciousness tells me I have to get into that room. Now!
"I have a gun," he continues shakily. "I'll shoot you if you come near me."
Geezus, I think. What'd this guy do? Read the “things to say when you’re scared” section of the Clichéd Bad Guy Manual? What a waste.
His fear is almost as enticing as whatever his other smell is. The erratic rabbit-like skitter-thump of his heart betrays his every word. I can tell he doesn't want to shoot me. He doesn’t even want to be holding the gun.
After rejecting a half dozen fun ways to enter the room, I decide to just go with “quick and direct”. Shifting my handholds so I can slowly move my head until I have a view of the room, I push myself up until I can make eye contact with the scared, deliciously-scented man standing in the room's doorway. A man who is holding a very large and very intimidating-looking assault rifle (Seriously! Where do these guys shop? Scary Looking Guns 'R Us?).
Intoning my best I'm-just an-innocent-little-girl voice, I pull myself part way into the window and say, "Help me mister. I'm scared. It's scary. Can you help me? (Yes, I used 'scared' twice in a row. I was trying to enforce an image. Forgive me.)" I don't try to make him do it, yet. I imagine I could, but I'm not going to do it. I just use my normal voice to call to him.
My appearance takes him by surprise; both my sudden arrival through a second-story window, and the fact that I'm not the kind of person he was expecting to see (Check one off for not being the big, burly boy type. It's about time being a chick paid off in a situation like this...even though I'm pretty sure my actions just punched women's liberation in the proverbial ovaries.). The conflicting aromas that his body kicks out - surprise, confusion, fear, concern, hunger - disorient me as I continue my climb into the room.
"It's ok," I continue in my reedy falsetto as I get both feet planted. "Put the gun down, it's scary." I pause and then say shyly, "Come over here." (And here I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I then batted my eyelashes at him. Yup. I did that .)
He doesn't move and he doesn’t drop the gun to the floor, but at least he stops pointing it at me and lets it fall loosely to his side. It's a compromise I can live with.
"Who are you, kid? What were you doing out there? Are you ok? Do you know what's going on?" His questions come fast once he decides to commit to them. I’m no longer the source of his fear, but a general sense of it continues to surround him (It's still weird how I can feel shifts of that in other people. That's something I'll have to pay more attention to in the future.). Confusion and curiosity have become his primary scents.
Now that my life doesn't seem to be in any immediate danger, I take a moment to focus on my breathing and see what I can pick up. Why have I been attracted to this guy? Why is his smell so intoxicating?
As much as I try to focus, I can't. His very existence is too much for me to ignore. Every time I try to get a sense of who else is in the house, I’m stopped by his smell in front of me. My head is beginning to ache for one reason: this man. He's all I can think about. Well not him exactly, but something about him. Something very specific about him. But what?
Dampness on my hand gets my attention, and I open my eyes to look at it. My right palm is wet with a clear, warm liquid.
"What ta-," I begin and then realize talking has become difficult. My mouth is full of water.
Where'd that come from? I think. Wait not water, but-
"Sawiva," I continue, or at least attempt to. I have a mouth full of drool, and it's spilling out and dripping down my jaw. How'd that happen?
Wait. I was thinking about the guy and his smell and why it was so distracting, and then-
"-is wrong with you, girl?" The man's voice suddenly snaps back into focus and shakes me from my distraction. "What's coming out of your mouth? Are you spitting? Oh, that's weird. Too-"
With four quick steps, I close the distance between the two of us and smack his chin upwards cutting off his words.
"No more talking," I say quietly into his wide, dinner plate eyes. "you're done," I tell him and fill the words with my desire. His only reply is to let his eyes roll back into his head and go limp, but his body remains standing in front of me.
But this close. I can't think. The smell of him is too strong. The hunger reveals itself in me and whispers to me what I was missing. His blood. The red life water that flows through him is what called me. There's something about his blood.
I do my best to resist what I know is coming next, but my struggles are as weak and feeble as his are against me. This moment no longer belongs to me. This moment belongs to something deeper within me. Something I don't control.
Something I fear I am beginning to enjoy.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Whispering outside the room's door brings me joltingly back to the moment. Two voices.
"I know he's in there. He's got to be. We checked all the other rooms." A deep voice quietly resonates from just a few feet away.
"But why hasn't he said anything, then? It's not like him to be quiet like this," replies a lighter, higher-pitched voice.
"I don't know. Maybe that crap he's always on finally put him to sleep. It had to happen eventually."
"You think it's possible? If he's finally asleep and no longer talking, then I say we leave 'im alone."
Blinking my eyes, I realize they're talking about the man in the room with me. The man in my arms. The man that until just a few seconds ago I had had my teeth buried into the side of his neck. The man that drew me here.
Looking down at the puncture marks on the taut skin of his neck just below the chin, I instinctively lick the wound a few times (Why is that instinctual? Even if it does feel right, it should never be natural. For some reason, though, my licking does seem to stop the bleeding.) and then shiver as the realization of what I just did sinks in. Both the horrifying action with my tongue, and the more soul-torturing one that preceded it.
As much as I don't want to, I think I'm going to have to come to terms soon with what I am. Or as least, what I've become. As hard as it is to believe, the evidence piling up towards that conclusion is beginning to get overwhelming.
But I feel so...good right now. I feel even stronger and faster and more alert than I did after my encounter with the trash man. I haven't felt this powerful ever, in my entire life. The strength and speed, and the overwhelming desire to use it, bubble through me like the carbonation in
a bottle of soda. It's going to need released...and soon.
"...in there, I swear."
A third voice has now joined the others, and the raw fear wrapped around his words instantly piques my interest. Something's up.
"What are you talking about, Leroy? Are you crazy? No one else is in there. It's just Kemmy finally sleeping off that nasty dope he's gotten himself into."
"We're on the second floor, man. You can't be serious," continues the deep, bass voice.
"I'm telling you I saw someone...or something...crawl into that window," the new voice pipes in and the fright that laces every enunciation of his words pulls at something deep within me. It excites me. I smile at the man on the other side of the door in spite of myself. "I was outside trying to find Rick and Mateo after they ditched me, and when I came around the side of the house I saw it. It was hanging on the side of the house, and then it just, I don't know, slithered in or something. It was spooky. And I'm telling you it's in there."
"What 'bout 'Teo and Rick, Leroy? Did you see them out there after you saw this other thing on the wall?" The mockery in the high-pitched voice is unmistakable to me. This Leroy guy is not high on the social totem pole here.
There's a pause before Leroy's soft voice continues. "Yeah, I think so." But he doesn't say anything more.
Checking to make sure the unconscious man cradled in my arms is no longer bleeding (He isn't. My licking of his neck seems to have sealed up the little holes I had made with my incisors. Now he just looks asleep. Well...pale, unhealthy, dirty and frighteningly disheveled, but asleep.), I gently lower him to the floor of the room so that I can focus all of my attention on what's going on a few feet away from me behind the thin plank of fifty-year-old wood that's serving as a door. I'm getting the feeling this is going to involve me real soon.
The bass voice picks up the casual inquisition, "What do you mean ‘you think so’? Did you see them or not? And why do you look even more weaselly than usual?"
Catharsis (Book 1) Page 15