by Unknown
Sakura stepped back. “Don’t even think it.”
He ground his teeth. “Listen, child. It won’t hurt, I promise.”
“Don’t say it.”
“Just want to help.”
The punch drilled him quick as a bullet and nearly shattered his skull. Ned hit the tiled corner like a heap of trash. Deadblood surged and mended the damage. Her gnarled hand snapped out of the tape, gripped his throat, and pushed him against the wall. “Help? You call turning me into a fucking fangjob help?”
He gripped her mangled fingers and squeezed hard.
She dropped his ass and backed up, pain coiling her face as she nursed her hand.
“Idiot move,” Ned said. “Like we need to breathe? And if he knows your hand is busted, he’ll tear it up like a rat on a bleeding baby.”
Her back hit the bench. “Asshole!”
He stood, slow, sure, unthreatening, but his voice trembled. “Damn right, and you know why? Because I’ll tell you the truth. Win or lose, you ain’t coming out of that fight alive. We both know it.”
She hissed.
“However you do what you do, it’s being flushed out with every swing. Each fight, each victory, each miracle sucked out a few years here, a few years there. You only got one fight left.” Nausea ran through him worse than hunger, one symptom that blood could not cure. “Don’t you get it? I’m losing you tonight unless—”
“Ned.”
She’d regulated her breathing. Forcing strong breaths in and out. Calm. Cool. Focused as a razor on a wrist. Maybe she’d heard him. “Yeah?”
She spit a pink stained gob on the floor. “You’re right. About me … burning out. About the boos. About the cheers in the Scrum. Why they’re listening. Because a brightblood is doing the impossible. Fighting back.” She swallowed hard. “So this is what’s gonna happen.” She held out her exposed wrist, tape hanging off. “Ned?”
Ned’s tongue rubbed his incisor.
“Tape me up.”
His jaw clamped like a nail in soft wood. “Yeah, child.”
When it was done, Sakura boxed the air faster than any human could, each swing with the force of a nine-pound hammer cracking into a spike. A buzzer sounded. The crowd’s savage roar peaked.
“Time’s up,” she said.
“Sure is.”
Her lip pouted out. “Last question?”
Here, on the wire, his resolve crumbled. He couldn’t lie to her about the bet. Not now. “Ok, shoot.”
“Why’d you decide to train me?”
He smiled. “I know a sure thing when I see it, child. Now go on. Your fans await.”
She snorted, but smiled. And left.
He stood and connected the dots on the mildew-stained walls, sucking in the smell of old blood and the cool air of decay. She needed to walk out alone. When the boos pitched, he strolled to the door, heading for his place in the stands.
The stink of a familiar brightblood halted him, a strange mix of old smoke and wet sugar.
A Turncoat filled the hallway, long, black rain slicker too big for his frame, chewing gum. One arm was folded to make sure his lost appendage was clearly noticed, just as much as the giant pink scar on his neck and the red eye patch. “Howdy, Coach.”
Ned removed his fists from his jacket. “You quit smoking, Wallace. Good for you.”
The Turncoat chewed. “What was it you used to say? Be harder on yourself than your enemy, and over a thousand battles you’ll be victorious. Too bad we both lost that bet, huh?”
“I don’t have time to hold your hand down memory lane, Wallace. Get to the point, or get out of my way.”
Wallace smiled, still chewing. “Easy, Coach. We need to chat.”
“I won’t miss this fight.”
Wallace chewed. “Afraid the Lords disagree. Feel like you might try and play foul. Best to let the new girl meet her fate her own way.” He chewed. “Not yours.”
Ned scratched his face, hard. “How long you been listening?”
“Long enough. Trying to turn her before this big mixed-race fight? Jesus, the only reason anyone cares is because she’s not one of you. Course, that’s also got the Lords worried. Though, I must say, it made me wonder why you never made me this tasty offer. Unlike Ms. Sure Thing here, I sure could have used it.”
Ned tightened his fists. “You were good, Wallace. And the day you fought out of the mob, you were great.”
Wallace’s smile flatlined, Adams apple caressing the pink wound on his neck. “And you’re a sucker for a lost cause. I was feed compared to what your cherry bomb can do.” He chewed until his smile returned. “Christ, hear that? Those fangjobs want her torn into gristle so fine it sluices through their teeth. You should see the Scrum. Brightbloods hovering over stolen laptops. Waiting. History in the making, they say. Revolution in the air. If she wins.”
The boos and screams shook the air, filling the greasy halls and walkways of the old slaughter mill. She must be already in the cage.
“You always talked too damn much,” Ned said. “What do you want?”
“Answers.”
“Do I look like a fucking library?”
“About her.”
“What difference does it make?”
“Lords don’t know what she is.”
Ned growled. “Bullshit. They tested her, prodded her, damn near committed her before agreeing she could fight our kind. All results came back. She’s human.”
“Bullshit.” Wallace spat juice with his words. “We can’t do what she does. If we could, you and every fangjob would be shrieking back to the dark side of the Balkans or wherever the fuck you came from.”
“Jersey.”
Wallace snorted, cheeks chubby, gum juice on his wet lip. “Funny man, that’s our Coach Diamond. See, I think I know what she is. And why you’re protecting her like a mother hen.”
The crowd cheered and Ned wanted to die.
Wallace spat out his gum, peeled off the silver foil wrapper on a new piece, and shoved it into his mouth. After three long chews, a word fell out. “Bastard.” He chewed hard, swallowing the juices. “Mutant, half-breed bastard.”
Ned bristled, and a deeper pit opened in his stomach. “We can’t carry your brood. And your kind die if they carry ours. Along with the babies.” So all that’s left is the daddy, alone and wounded and crushed with eternal memories of their passing as fresh as they day it happened, memories like a demon shackled to his heels. “It’s impossible.”
Wallace smiled, wet and big. “Ain’t evolution a bitch, Coach? Try something a zillion times and all you get are dead, dead, babies. And then, one day, someone else tries it and … bang!” The word snapped out, wet and sharp. “Mutation! And a new happy family. Too bad the Lords don’t like change.”
Ned licked the sharp edge of his teeth. “No. She’s just a kid. Just a kid from the Scrum.”
Wallace shrugged. “You’re a worse liar now than when I was your protégé, Coach. But fine, suck on the tit of denial if you want. Whatever she is, she’s coming with me when the fight is done. I got a feeling that her blood work and heart look a little bit different than last week. Going to need a whole new set of tests.”
“Only if she lives.”
“Oh, she will. Gregor’s playing ball. Going to knock her out cold. He’s got enough chemical in his system to take on a hundred magic mutant girls. She’s got a better chance of shooting eleven the hard way than winning, let alone dying. And you’re coming too, Ned. We’ll just be one happy family.”
The crowd roared. She was losing.
Ned bowed his head in surrender, but the hands in his pockets were fists. “Then what harm is there in letting me see her fight?”
“You always said I got a soft heart, Coach. Might break it to watch you lose some replacement for a half-cast, still-born daughter.”
Wallace’s last word choked as Ned drove his fist into his solar plexus and his teeth through Wallace’s neck. The Turncoat’s death-gurgle was absorbed by the wail of
the crowd. Sugar tainted the wet red rush into Ned’s mouth, but he ate until Wallace defecated in his pants and expired in Ned’s arms. He shoved the soiled husk aside as the Turncoat’s heart link beeped.
Kill a Turncoat, Ned knew, they send in the Blackcoats. And even deadbloods never saw them coming.
He had seconds.
In the stands among the howling throng, louder than any alarm bells or whistles, legions of fans stood with arms in V formation as their hero stalked Sakura. She was broken, on her knees, swooning like a willow stalk. Her bandages were torn, ugly knuckles exposed.
“Come on, Child!”
Gregor wiped his sparkling ruby fist across his mouth, long and slow, licking every finger while the crowd ate it up.
“Sakura!” A black hand of steel clamped Ned’s mouth while others gripped his arms.
The crowd’s attention steered toward him. Their voices hushed to a hiss for the interruption. From the bottom of the pit, Gregor looked and laughed. He gripped Sakura’s neck, turned her head to see Ned before waltzing around her for a choke. Her swollen, bloody eyes barely opened.
Ned ate through the hand on his mouth and it snapped away for a beat, long enough for him to suck in air and shout. “I bet everything on you!”
Everything tightened. Cold sizzles burned through his back and danced like barbed static across his eyes … but he kept them open, thanks to the fresh blood in his guts … the world slowed and silenced until all that Ned heard was the thud of a courageous heart, strong, fierce, and defiant.
Sakura still stared at him. She smiled, and snapped out her thumbs. Bullet quick, she drove them behind her and into Gregor’s eyes.
Yes!
Gregor, hands on face, stumbled blind as Sakura rose from the bloody ground. Quickly, she wrapped her fist into a mangled morning star, knuckles big and rotten, and went to work.
Stars popped against the growing black in Ned’s eyes, as Sakura’s heartbeat slowed, racing toward its final thrum: elbows to the neck, kicks to the back of his skull, softening him up like an ax on an old tree until Gregor’s neck was ripe … then a gasp, a stumble.
Breathe, child, he thought, head swimming with memories of a back-alley delivery room, and the breathless faces of a mother and daughter, still as the night, heartbeats lost … she never even got to, the tiny thing never got a chance to—
“Breathe!”
Sakura inhaled hard, the beats slowed, but her form was perfect—
The morning-star-fist launched, and a dying girl screamed with her last heartbeat. Gregor’s head landed six feet from his body, but all Ned could feel was Sakura’s heart burst, her body crumble, her pulse whisper to silence.
Pain engulfed Ned, a sliver of what was to come. But it couldn’t shake the fresh memory of Sakura at her best, doing what she was born to do, and the spark she’d lit in the dark places of this world. A memory worth dying for.
* * * * *
Jason S. Ridler has published over thirty short stories in such magazines and anthologies as Brain Harvest, Not One of Us, Chilling Tales, Tesseracts Thirteen, and others. A former punk rock musician and cemetery groundskeeper, Mr. Ridler holds a Ph.D. in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada. About his story, he says, “‘Blood that Burns so Bright’ was inspired by the Joe Louis/Max Schmeling boxing matches of the 1930s, and how a single fight can encapsulate a moment and time of great importance. Plus, I’m a sucker for an underdog story. And who would be more of an underdog than a human fighter in a vampire fight circuit?”
Survival of the Fittest
By Leanne Tremblay
It took Kara Morales more than two hours to slow her breathing. Only then did she try to wipe the blood off. Killing Angeline had been surprisingly easy.
At first, she had sat on the floor beside the body, mesmerized. A cavity the size of a fist yawned in the chest. The pooled blood beneath the body had begun as red but had since turned black. Kara touched the tip of her tongue to the droplets adorning her wrist like a bracelet. Salty. Hesitating, she licked the rest of the blood off her arms and fingers and sucked at the matter congealed under her nails.
At some point during the afternoon, she left her office and activated the cleansing system. Thirty minutes later, she re-entered in fresh clothes. Her office, sterilized and lightly scented, showed no trace of blood. Looking at the body annoyed Kara, even though it had been scrubbed white as a china doll. She lifted it under the shoulders and dragged it out of sight behind her desk. The monitor blinked the time, just past four o’clock in the afternoon. Two hours until sunset. For now, she had to remain where she was, sealed inside the Institute. She’d just have to wait.
Kara’s first surprise had been seeing Angeline in the examination chamber when she arrived at the lab. The woman had been laughing, sharing a joke with a figure already seated at a small metal table in the centre of the room.
“Angeline, what are you doing here?” asked Kara sharply. The woman’s interference in her research was becoming endemic; always sniffing around. Kara put it down to a morbid curiosity in the research subjects. Homo sapiens were short, cowering creatures, dirty, malnourished and infested with parasites. She assumed Angeline wanted the thrill of proximity so she could pass along scintillating tales to her friends.
Secretly, Kara despised the woman’s classic Vamparian looks: tall, pale, sharp features, red lips, perfect skin. She was the pretty, public face of the Institute, the PR voice that soothed and cajoled. Kara may not have inherited beauty but she did inherit the mind, the historic bloodline. That’s what mattered.
“Kara, there you are! Charlie and I were wondering where you’d gotten to.” Her canines flashed, the ridiculous diamond chips embedded in them winking under the fluorescents.
Charlie? Who? Confused, Kara blinked several times and halted mid-step.
“Ah, hello. That would be me,” said the subject, getting up from his chair. He rounded the table in a few long strides and offered his hand. “Charlie Koop.” He smiled.
Charlie — the second surprise.
Dazed, she took his hand automatically. Lord, he was warm! Even through gloves, her hand sucked up the heat from his fingers and an unfamiliar wave of perspiration pricked her skin.
Civilized social behavior, coherent speech — what form of Homo sapien was this?
Kara cleared her throat, hiding her unease. “Hello … I’m Doctor Morales. I run the Sapiens Outreach program.”
“I was just telling Charlie about the Institute’s mandate for hominid species preservation,” said Angeline.
“What a relief,” he quipped, smiling at Angeline, who’d hitched herself onto the edge of the table, letting one long leg dangle.
He turned back to Kara and frowned slightly. “You okay, Dr. Morales?” Standing at full height, he was as tall as any Vamparian male, but his face, brown and smooth as glass, betrayed a different ancestry. He was dressed oddly, in a high necked tunic made from some kind of dull brown fiber. His hair, so blonde it was nearly white, fell softly to his shoulders. With his height and healthy build, he could almost pass as Vamparian, if it wasn’t for his skin. Burnished gold. Like sunshine, she imagined.
Flustered, she fumbled with her recording tablet. “Yes, um, I’m fine. I’m sorry, but where do you—”
“I live in a community about a hundred miles outside New Chicago.”
Kara nearly choked. A hundred miles outside the Net? No one had lived that far from a Net city in centuries. “But the atmosphere … the heat during the day would… So, there are more like you?”
Charlie laughed easily. “Sure. We don’t all live under rocks.”
“But that’s impossible!” she spluttered. This had to be a joke. Sapiens in the New World lived individually, not in groups. In fact, as a species they were becoming hard to find, hence her Outreach program. Her brain scrambled to assemble the possibilities. An entire community within a hundred miles of the Institute? If Koop was telling the truth, then she’d made the discovery of a
lifetime.
“Isn’t it just so lucky that we found Charlie,” Angeline said, interrupting her thoughts, “before some nasty race mongers got their hands on him.”
Starting, Kara looked at her and blanched, the threat underlying her statement all too clear. Angeline had no intention of letting her keep this discovery to herself. Kara sucked in her breath and gripped the recording tablet, her knuckles whiter than usual. She still hadn’t turned it on. Charlie was unlike other Homo Sapien she’d ever encountered. She couldn’t, wouldn’t lose this opportunity.
Ignoring the smug look on Angeline’s face, she tapped the tablet to activate it and gestured towards the chair. “I’d be interested in hearing more about your community,” she said.
He smiled and sat, folding his hands loosely on his lap.
Kara drummed her fingers on the desk, keeping time with the flashing clock on the monitor. She thought it surprising how little she remembered of their conversation, although she and Charlie talked for at least an hour. She had a vague recollection of Angeline leaving during the interview, probably bored. The thought pleased her. One thing she did recall was telling Charlie about her father. Had he asked her about him? He must have — everybody did. Her father had been over four hundred years old when he finally died. She’d only met him a handful of times. The last time, he grabbed her chin, his yellow nails digging into her jaw, and forced her mouth open. Squinting, his rancid breath blowing up her nostrils, he ran a dirty thumb over her canines. They were like child fangs, no more than blunted points compared to the elegantly-tapered dentition of the devotees clustered around the sickbed. “Throwback!” he’d barked, and shoved her away. She never saw him again.
Kara glanced at the hole in the body where Angeline’s heart had been. She studied the secondary and less obvious wounds, including deep slashes at the throat. She wondered suddenly if her father would have been proud of her. “Genetic throwback, my ass!” she snapped, swiveling back to the monitor.
Twenty more minutes. She inhaled, letting scented air fill her lungs, and ran her tongue over the enamel on her teeth. For the first time, her head felt scoured clean. All this from the taste of blood.