The Artist of Ruin

by Matthew S. Cox

  “How dare you insult my work as being less than true art!” she shouts.

  “Ugh.” I push myself up, only now noticing that my impact left a small dent in the wall. “Whoa. Holy crap.”

  “Don’t ignore me!” roars Petra.

  I launch myself straight up as she dives at where I used to be. Before she can turn, I drop behind her and plant a stomp kick square in the middle of her back that launches her into the same spot with a meaty slap, deepening the dent. Screeching, Petra pushes off the wall and hurls herself at me again. I’m expecting claws, not a fist to the nose.

  The next thing I know, I’m flat against the opposite wall, staring at her upside down. Blood dripping from the claw marks on my face gets into my left eye. Ow. Bitch! I fly out of the divot I crumpled in the aluminum siding, and rotate upright before zooming back at her. She catches my arms, and we spin around a few times before her strength advantage sends me crashing chest first back into the bricks. A distinct crack echoes through my skull when I hit. My legs don’t really cooperate when I try to stagger backward.

  She grabs me by the hair and we wind up rolling back and forth on the pavement, snarling and clawing at each other like a pair of cheerleaders with insane nail extensions. Hey, I didn’t get into any fights in school, and it’s kinda obvious this bitch is a ‘lover not a fighter’ so to speak. Despite our immortality, this is totally two clueless people having an extreme desire to mash each other’s face in and little idea of how to do it.

  Petra gets me in the chest with a claw rake that destroys my shirt and bra in one fell swoop, not to mention opens a bunch of parallel slashes down my front. Vampire claws sting so damn bad. The pain stuns me for a second of gasping. She laughs at my reaction.

  “Aww. You’re so new. All the more delicious to utterly destroy you.”

  I ram my knee into her side, throwing her like a missile into the bricks. She might be stronger than me, but I’m still a vampire, and she’s barely 120 pounds. The crunch of her shoulder breaking on impact makes me smile.

  She skips the insult, and goes straight to charging at me while shrieking like one of the Kardashians after someone threw Kool Aid on their wedding dress. I have a nice intimate meeting with the wall, then the alley paving, then the aluminum siding so fast I can’t keep up with where the pain is coming from. When the spinning stops, I’m face down on pavement, my head a few inches from a wall.

  Something metal clangs behind me. I start to push myself up, but the bitch rams a length of steel rebar through my shoulder into the ground hard enough to penetrate the blacktop and pin me like a frog in biology class. My fangs are out whether I want them to be or not, a response to pain and anger. And yeah, I scream like hell.

  “There, there.” She grabs a fistful of hair at the back of my head and presses my face into the top of her shoe, forcing me to ‘kiss her feet.’ I snarl, but she jerks me back before I can bite. “Considering you have shown proper respect, I won’t destroy you right now.”

  “Eat a dick,” I mutter.

  “Oh, no. I’m going to destroy you slowly. When I finish with you, it will be you who wants to walk into the sunlight because my art shall have left your soul in little, tattered fragments.” She slips a finger under my belt. “Tell me, girl. Are you shy? You’ve already taken your shirt off. Why don’t we finish things?”

  “Been there, done that. Wouldn’t be the first time I streaked Woodinville.” I try to push up, but the rough metal through my body hurts way too much for me to move. I gasp, involuntary tears rolling down my face.

  “Hmm.” She sighs, frowning, and abandons her idea to shred my jeans off. Small favors. Guess it’s not worth it if she doesn’t think I’ll be mortified. Yeah, my vacation at the county coroner already got me over that issue. “I think you’ve learned enough for now.”

  All I can manage to do is growl.

  Petra stands, kicks me in the side, cracking a few ribs, and walks off humming some bit of classical music I don’t recognize. “Enjoy what time you’ve got left before it all blows away, ashes on the wind.”

  I grunt, trying to push myself up again. The rebar scrapes through my shoulder, sliding a quarter inch or so. Again, I scream my throat raw. Oh, this is not good. I can’t let anyone find me like this, and not only because my boobs are free. Channeling pure anger at that bitch, I work myself up from the ground little by little, letting the agony of rusty metal grinding over my bones and muscle pass in waves. Pain makes me light headed, but it hurts so damn much I can’t even scream anymore.

  As soon as I can get a hand on the bar beneath me, I grab on and try to wrench it out of the ground. There’s probably two or three feet of it above me and only a few inches in the earth. Grunting, I pull my knees up and rotate as much as I can side to side. Tears blur my vision, but I keep pulling. Minutes seem like days. Eventually, I get a second hand on the rebar sticking out from my breast, and yank it free from the ground. The weight of the bar hanging out of my back pulls me over sideways.

  I lay there staring at maybe ten inches of rebar jutting out in front of me, gasping for breath I don’t need while waiting for the pain to stop. At least this giant bar has made the claw wounds trivial. I don’t even feel them anymore.

  It’s kinda amazing that no one has come running given all my shrieking. That thought motivates me to push myself up sitting. I gotta get out of here. Despite knowing my parents are helpless to do a damn thing about this particular problem, I can’t help but want to run to them and cry. Come on, Sarah. Grow the hell up. I’m not a kid anymore. Mommy and Daddy can’t kiss this and make it better. They can’t handle this sick ass bitch. No. For their sanity and protection, I can’t even let them know about her.

  I grab the end of the rebar in front of me, take two deep breaths, and pull it toward me, forcing it out my back. It doesn’t fall clear, but it’s no longer sticking out like a second metal nipple on my right breast. Fortunately, the hole it made closes in seconds. The claw rakes down my stomach are still there, but they’re no longer seeping blood. Reaching to grab the rebar behind my back is too awkward, so I do the next best thing: I wobble to my feet and twist around in a sharp spin that sends the rod flying.

  … and promptly swoon to my knees in sheer agony.

  “Hey, are you okay?” asks a guy. “Holy crap. Hang on. Don’t move. I’ll get an ambulance for you.”

  Footsteps rush up beside me. I peer up into the eyes of a youngish police officer.

  Man. He’s so concerned for me I feel guilty as hell for doing this… but.

  I can’t ignore a self-delivering snack. Especially when I really need to eat.

  He stares blankly at me when I command him to be still. I stand and pull myself up on tiptoe so I can reach his neck and bite. The flavor of his blood almost makes me laugh—glazed donuts. Each mouthful I swallow causes an answering flare of burn in the claw wounds, about half as intense as the initial pain. I’d probably be crying again if not for the rebar. Damn that hurt. I drink as much as I feel safe taking from him. Feeding has reduced the slices down my front to red lines, not open splits in my flesh. Grr. I hope my face doesn’t look like that.

  After blotting myself out of the cop’s memory, I stagger off down the alley before he breaks free from the mental fog. I’m going to need to find one more person so I can drink enough blood to fix myself up after that beating. What’s bugging me is I can’t tell if I got my ass kicked because the sick bitch is much older than me, or it’s due to my being an Innocent. Everyone so far has told me my powers are weaker than other vampires, but do they mean everything like basic strength and speed, or just the fancy stuff like turning into shadowy vapors or mind controlling an entire crowd at once?

  I stop in a shadow at the end of the alley and watch the cop until he looks around confused, shrugs, and walks away like he can’t remember what worried him. Being topless isn’t that big a problem. Vampires are ambush hunters, right? Whoever I find to finish feeding from won’t see me coming. And even if they do see
my boobs, I’ll blank it out of their thoughts.

  Not that I’m really old enough to say ‘in all my years,’ but in all my years, I’ve never considered myself a vicious person—or even a mildly vindictive one. But damn… I really want to do something bad to Petra. I want that bitch to scream like I shrieked with that rebar through my body.

  Aurélie’s kinda my second mother, my mother in vampirism so to speak.

  Maybe I do need to ‘run home to Mommy.’

  14

  Charity Cases

  Despite feeding until the idea of biting another person made me ill, I still have claw lines down my cheek and front when I get home.

  I hang a red sock on my doorknob, hoping it will act as a warning to my sibs. A few hours later when it’s time for bed, I sleep with my face buried in the pillow. Not like I need to breathe. Consciousness returns a little after three the next afternoon. My bones don’t feel like lead, so the sun’s probably not feeling super-mega today. Unfortunately, unless the weather report is wrong, it’s still a little too bright for me to want to deal with the outdoors in the absence of an emergency.

  The basement bathroom mirror makes me feel a little better. Thin red lines still appear on my face, but they’re more faded than they were when I got home. The ones on my chest look like someone drew on me with a red pen. All are tender to the touch but I wouldn’t call them painful in a true sense. It’s weird finding my boob and back completely normal, considering that wound had been so much more major. Vampire claws have a little magic in them apparently.

  To hear Dalton explain it, someone cuts our hand off with a metal blade, it’d come back pretty quick. Claw wounds can take a while to heal. Beasts and Shadows evidently cause the worst injuries. He said something about pissing off a Beast about forty years ago and it took a month for the scars to fade. Mine are quite tame by comparison. Guess Sybarites aren’t terribly potent for fighting.

  Still, I don’t want anyone to see me all ripped up—especially my siblings.

  So, I’m antisocial.

  I send Dad a quick Facebook chat message informing him that I got into a ‘catfight’ with another vampire last night—totally her fault—and have ‘some facial wounds.’ I should’ve known better. Dad doesn’t answer. He barges into my room a minute later, worried to bits. Of course, me saying ‘some facial wounds’ turned into ‘my entire face is gone’ in his mind. He’s way relieved to see I’ve only got some thin red trails on my cheek.

  Since I can’t bring myself to lie to him, he gets the full story. Amazingly enough, he doesn’t flip out. He takes it in relative stride.

  “What can I do to help?” asks Dad.

  “Umm. Not much really. That bitch was pretty strong. You guys are off limits though. She’s afraid of Aurélie. I’ll deal with it… somehow.”

  “What about those agents?”

  “If they didn’t want to do anything with Scott, they’re not going touch this Petra bitch. They might be the government, but they’re still mortals. Let me at least talk to Aurélie first. Not like I knew Alex was her pet project of severe mental damage.”

  “Right.” He sighs and squeezes my shoulder before tracing a finger down my cheek. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right. I’ll make sure the guys leave you alone today.”

  “I don’t want to scare them or anything. And Sam thinks I’m like some superhero. I can’t tell him I got my butt handed to me.”

  “Say no more.” Dad stands, hugs me, and starts to leave, but stops in my door. “You want me to make you a mug of cocoa?”

  Whenever I got sick, he’d always make me hot cocoa and wrap me in blankets. I grin at him. “Aww, Dad. Thanks.” Even though it’ll go straight through me, I shrug. “Sure.”

  He smiles and sets off with a look of mission in his eyes.

  Today, I’m going to be antisocial. I don’t want anyone seeing me with red marks on my face.

  Netflix keeps me from going insane for a day.

  After binge-watching Stranger Things, I totally get why my dad loves it so much. He grew up in the Eighties and played a ton of D&D. My father basically was one of those kids—just not the telekinetic girl. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t completely freaked about me becoming a vampire. My crazy life has basically put him right in the middle of a storyline like one of his favorite movies. I only hope that when he realizes this is real, he won’t fall apart. Though, I think by now if mental breakdown was coming, it would’ve happened already.

  Anyway, the weather decides to be cooperative for once—in Portland I mean. Their local news website is still showing tomorrow as gloomy, so I decide to fly there tonight. Once it’s dark. Figure I’ll pull a Dalton and hunt for some random place to crash, hit the doll shop as soon as I wake up, and then wait for dark so I can fly home.

  Going to a city I’ve never been to before in another state on my own during the day is tweaking my anxiety the same way the idea of attending school in California did. I come pretty close to trying to formulate an excuse that won’t piss Aurélie off so I can stay home and hide under my bed. But, really. Come on, Sare. I’m basically an adult now. Not to mention an immortal. I can’t spend my whole life being a hermit in my bedroom. Even Sophia, scaredy-cat she is, likes going places and seeing new stuff. Sierra isn’t so much afraid of new things as she resents being dragged away from her electronics. Sam is the picture of blasé. Take him somewhere: no big deal. Let him stay home: no big deal.

  Right. I can do this. I’m not afraid of being in Portland during the day when I’m as vulnerable as a mortal. No, I’m worried about what that insane bitch is going to do next. Oh, this is just like one of Dad’s movies. I’ve got a nemesis. Why do I have a nemesis? I haven’t been eighteen for three full months yet. At what point did my life become so bizarre that I have an arch enemy?

  Ugh.

  After checking myself in the basement bathroom mirror (and finding no more scars) I head upstairs and decide to burn an hour or so soaking in a lavender bath bomb. Within one second of me standing there naked, about to step into the tub, the door opens and Sam’s friend Jordan walks in. He stops short gawking at my utter lack of secrets in complete awe.

  Um. No.

  I stare at him, willing him to forget seeing me… but it’s daytime.

  Shit. So much for the vampire reaction to being totally embarrassed. Time to fall back on the normal response.

  “Ack! Get out!” I scream, covering myself as much as I can.

  Jordan hauls ass. I shove the door closed and lock it. My face goes bright red as two ten-year-old boys erupt in wild laughter a little ways down the hall. Two. That means Sam isn’t laughing. No surprise there, he doesn’t laugh much. Maybe he’s grinning (his usual response to funny) or maybe he’s angry.

  A shadow falls over the little bit of sunlight leaking in under the door.

  “Perhaps you will eventually learn about these things called locks?” asks Dad.

  Despite having a closed door between us, being within a foot of my father when I’m not wearing anything is still totally mortifying. I squeak out a, “Already did,” and back up.

  It takes me a moment to calm enough to realize my bathwater is getting cold. So much for a relaxing bath. I sink into the tub and try to stop thinking about the look on Jordan’s face. Fortunately, at his age, catching his friend’s older sister about to get into the tub is nothing more than funny to him.

  Dad has a point. I really ought to start locking the door now that they are older. Mom said that once I have kids, I’ll forget what privacy felt like. She forgets I already lived that helping her take care of the sibs when they were small. A toddler does not care Mom is pooping when they want to show her something.

  The bath is nice and relaxing, but it still doesn’t help me forget Petra or stop worrying about what she’s scheming. I dry off, dress, and head back downstairs. As much as I want to call Aurélie and ask her as politely as possible to tear that woman’s head off (in a
literal sense), I can’t. At this hour, she’s doing the ‘corpse’ thing, asleep in her lavish bedroom.

  An afternoon of awkward glances drags on by. I can’t sit still, can’t make eye contact with anyone, keep opening and closing the fridge without taking anything. My parents know I’m anxious about something. I always used to get like this whenever I had a project due for school in a few days that I hadn’t even started. Same thing happened the whole week leading up to my driver’s exam. And SATs. And finals.

  The tension finally snaps around the dinner table.

  “Sarah, what’s bothering you?” asks Mom.

  I don’t look up from my small portion of spaghetti. Damn. Mistake. I know that’ll tell her I’m omitting something but… damn ingrained habits. “I have to go to Portland tonight. Doing a favor for Aurélie.”

  “You’re going to drive to Oregon?” asks Mom, her voice rising a little in surprise.

  “No, was gonna fly once it got dark.”

  Mom absentmindedly twirls her fork into her spaghetti. “Well, don’t go too fast. You don’t need any tickets at your age.”

  I look up. “Mom… if a cop is motivated enough to pull me over when I’m flying, I probably deserve the ticket.”

  She keeps on twirling. “Be careful. Don’t fly too high or whatever. I don’t want you getting sucked into a jet engine.”

  Dad sputters into laughter.

  “Well…” Mom has almost her entire portion of noodles wrapped around her fork. “I… You’re flying to Oregon.”

  “Yeah.” I point at her plate. “Planning to eat your whole dinner in one mouthful?”

  She glances down at the wad of pasta. “Oh, ugh. You’ve got me all discombobulated, too. You’ve been anxious all damn day.”