by C. N. Owens
“What have you done?” I slur, using a table as leverage to help me stand, but only pull it over on me. I heard the crunch, and I no longer feel the familiar weight around my neck. He took it, and he killed him.
“I’ve just made it easier for the boss to claim his prize… and it was so easy; I was expecting a fight.”
“What would you have done had she been here?”
“I’ve watched this place for days, and I saw her disappear into the woods.”
“Then you must know you’re on borrowed time.”
“I’m getting out of here soon,” he says and flings a bloody knife into the floor in front of me.
Using the bed sheets, I manage to stand. The room is filled with the scent of blood, metallic and acrid in the daylight; I look for its source and find a bloodstain where Andrea was lying. I turn to go for the man but collapse again. Crawling closer, I can see a little better—it’s Vlad.
“He’s coming,” Vlad says.
“What is he waiting for?”
“The full moon. He will claim her, and for helping him the way I have, he’ll allow me to be his keeper. I won’t have to force him.” Vlad smiles and grabs an axe from where he left it leaning against the wall. “You should thank me. At least I gave you the chance to defend yourself, something that Trent wouldn’t have done.”
“Get this over with,” I say, still too weak to rise. I collapse onto the floor and roll over onto my back.
Vlad readies the axe over his head. “I was hoping for more of a fight. Oh well.” He swings and before the heavy wedge reaches my face, I move my head. I wrench it free from the floor and jam the handle into Vlad’s face.
It makes a hollow crunch, and he stumbles backward, covering his mouth. “Where’s my woman?” I ask with a growl, while propping myself up on the axe.
Vlad drops his hands and spits blood and fragments of teeth onto the floor. Coming for me, he swings and I dodge, more like a stumble left. I raise the axe but I’m too slow, the head is far too heavy, so I drop the it and dive for my blades, sheathed on a table to my left. I grab one, but Vlad catches my wrist and pries the blade out of my hand. Once free, he drops it on the floor and stomps on the blade, snapping it off near the handle.
“I guess I’ll have to jam a few hooks into you to make you more of a challenge.” He smiles and grabs the axe again. “Or was it my fucking you, that woke you up?” He laughs.
I roar and grab my other blade, slashing in his direction so fast that it slides across his chest but flies out of my hand and hits the far wall. Still off-balance, I stumble to the floor.
I right myself and come for him again. He’s bleeding good now; his shirt has fallen away revealing my work: a cut on his chest so deep I felt the edge grating against bone. Finally, I think he’s had enough. I follow him down the steps, chasing him at the speed of a drunken walk, catching up to him on the first floor. I shove him against the door and spin him around.
I catch his hand and press it to the door, finally feeling a hint of my strength. “This is an embarrassing, slow-motion battle. But still, I think you understand why Trent killed vampires the way he did.”
“Why didn’t he use the wolf to kill them?”
“A man can only create so much death and carnage before it wears his soul thin.” I tilt his head and descend on his neck, but the door explodes, throwing me backward and during that split second, I see a giant gray-skinned paw reach through the hardwood door and rip Vlad out of the house.
I pull a shard of wood from my bicep and struggle to stand again. Outside, I hear growls, followed by a muffled scream, and I smile at the horror taking place, the moment I enter the blinding light.
She got her revenge, I think when I see Leila, in wolf form, take Vlad by the head and shake him like a dog, decapitating him on the second shake. Spitting out the remains, she grabs his body once more, shakes hard and releases, sending his mangled corpse cartwheeling through the air.
Trent’s focus.
I run upstairs, exhausted, about to collapse and find Andrea on the other side of the bed. She put up a good fight. Her face is bloody, her little pink night shirt is ripped, and her throat is slashed open. In her hand is the pistol I gave her.
I drop to my knees just as Leila enters the room, wrapped in a blanket.
“Where have you been? You could have prevented this,” I say, barking at Leila.
Her footsteps are silent, her hair is still damp and sticky. “I was with him… I think he’s dead.” She gasps when she sees what happened. “Oh, no.” She kneels beside me, forgetting modesty and letting the blanket fall away as she covers her face with her hands. “I’m a curse to all of you. I don’t deserve to live.”
“God, shut up.” I growl, my patience nonexistent, lacking the energy to feel the gravity of losing of my partner.
“I had planned to turn her in days,” I say.
“She doesn’t deserve this,” Leila says, sobbing. “Cassie, I’m so sorry.”
“There’s no time for apologies, where is Trent’s focus?”
She hands it to me. A centuries-old arrowhead with a shattered bone lashed to it and a braid of reddish-black hair.
“We have a chance,” I say, and try to stand again, but can’t. “There is a small silk pouch in my dresser, top left drawer. Bring it here, I’m too weak,” I say.
I lean forward and straighten out Andrea’s legs and arms, positioning her as though sleeping. “Is he dead?” I ask, and gently dab Andrea’s bloody nose with a rag.
She places the pouch next to me, still sniffling. “I don’t know.”
“Did you see him die?” I ask, trying to control my shaky voice.
“His skin was rotting,” she says, “I tried to carry him back, but he went away too fast.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“He fell apart…decomposing,” she says, her breaths heaving.
“Damn it,” I say, inspecting the bone closely. It’s splintered and will fall apart if I move it too much, but the lashing is secure, and the arrowhead is made of limestone; it would take a hammer to break that. I dump the contents of the pouch onto the floor. “Raoul and I thought of everything, but I think it might be too late.” On the floor is a lock of his hair, already braided, and the other bone that comes off when we take the finger. We've never had to do this, but we keep the other digit to be safe.
“That’s why you take two digits,” Leila says.
“Yes, I left this pouch with Gordon over a hundred years ago, after Raoul and I had a disagreement,” I say, while working the braid loose, then sliding the bone under the tight braid next to the damaged one. Thankfully, it fits, and I was able to pull the other one out in fragments. Focus seemingly repaired, I hand it to Leila and lie back on the floor.
“What are we going to do? How will we know?” she asks.
“I’m not sure, but I have to rest,” I say, my energy fleeing. “If he’s gone, we must run, immediately. Go back and look for him, see if you can pick up his scent, anything, but don’t linger. Come back and guard the house until nightfall. We will give him that long.”
Chapter 28
Leila
There is no trail that leads to the bluffs. I’ve only been there once, and that time I made it there using Trent’s scent alone… I could have done it with my eyes closed. Now, his scent is almost gone, but still, the beast finds his small sanctuary with ease.
His body is gone, and so is my focus. There’s no trail of footprints, human or otherwise, leading away from where he collapsed, so I take off into the woods again. I follow faint scents and trails… They are everywhere, but all are from last night.
I spend a couple hours searching before returning home. The house feels empty, maddeningly silent. It makes my ears ring… I don’t want to be here.
I drag Cassie into bed and position her as I’ve done before to keep her from bruising in places she doesn’t like, and then I reluctantly turn to poor A
ndrea. Her now icy cold skin has turned gray, her jaw is slackened unnaturally, and her eyes are partially shut. I don’t know what else to do, so I gently bathe her and dress her in fresh clothes, trying to offer some last bit of dignity, all the while sobbing and begging for forgiveness. Finally done, I braid her thick yellow hair the way I’ve seen it done a million times and let it hang over her left shoulder.
“I wish I could trade places with you,” I say, before I lean down and kiss her on the forehead.
I try to distract myself by taking a shower, but it doesn’t help. My only thoughts are those of remorse intermingled with memories of happy times—laughing and talking, the smell of food cooking, the floors creaking with the bustle of people that once made up my small, odd family for a short time. All of that is over.
Everywhere I look bears Trent’s influence, all the work he did to the house, the stack of sweet little notes he wrote to me, I keep them all on my dresser, along with the silly gifts he would buy me whenever we were apart. It all conjures agonizing memories.
I know I should do what Cassie told me to do, but I can’t. All I know is that I can’t be here, I have to go. In the back of my mind, I keep wondering if he’s on that plane of death now, running with Naamah’s pack of hellhounds, or if my focus is long gone, but I’m not as worried about that as I think I should be. From the moment I stepped out onto the porch, my attention has been drawn to something else.
I take one of Cassie’s cars and head west. I’m sure I’ll hear about it when I get back, but right now, I need this.
I drive and drive, feeling in the back of my mind something calling to me, it echoes in my mind, gently at first, but building… ever increasing. In truth, I don’t know what it is, but I follow it anyway, like a trail of airborne footprints, trusting my intuition.
I don’t stop until I run out of road. That sounds like a long way, but in Florida, water is no more than a couple hours away, it doesn’t matter where you live. I stop in an upscale beach town called Clearwater. I wasn’t trying to find a beach, but when I did, I was so excited to see it, I almost wrecked the car. I cover my head with my hoodie and kick off my flip-flops, loving the feel of the sugary-white sand between my toes. I’m on the gulf side, so there’s little surf, but the water is so clear.
I look out over the water, straining my eyes, but I can’t focus on anything; all I see is a hazy blue-gray gradient in the distance. Unlike where I grew up, there’s no shore on the other side, no riverboats, no swans, just an expanse of nothingness that’s almost frightening for someone with poor vision like me. I take a few steps into the cool gentle waves and dip my fingertips into the water and taste it… salty.
God, I wish I had better vision, I think, so excited to be here I want to cry. It’s almost enough to distract me from what happened this morning. I look around and can’t see anyone, but I hear their voices. They aren’t hiding, it’s their thoughts I’m hearing. I know what I could do to see this place better; the beast has the eyes of a hawk, but the cost would be too much—people would die.
I turn and walk toward the car. The voices grow louder, the closer I get to the street.
What should I have for dinner?
Did I lock the door?
Brad couldn’t possibly know I cheated on him, he would have said something by now.
And then the occasional Oh my God, is that an albino? Or, are her eyes really red?
But it was I bet she has a tight little ass, I'd have to fuck her from behind that pushed me over the edge.
He bumps his shoulder into me on the way past, and I turn, gasping for breath. He smiles, but it turns to terror when he sees my face… No doubt the animal is rising. I wipe a string of drool from my chin, and a few more people that see me panic and scurry away.
I dash into a coffee shop and make it three steps inside before the voices return.
Switch it off, I think to myself, remembering Trent’s words and how he explained that the voices can get out of control in large crowds. I look up, still gasping for air. Several people are staring at me.
“Ma’am? Are you okay?” the barista, a girl with brown shoulder-length curls, asks.
I take a breath and hold it. Come on, Leila. Just find a quiet spot and take some time to collect yourself. You’ll be okay, I think, and then nod at the girl.
“What can I get for you?” she asks as I approach the counter. I look at the menu, but none of it makes sense.
“A caramel macchiato,” I say automatically.
“What si—”
“Tall.”
“Your name?”
“LaPore,” I say, but I don’t know why.
The girl nods and writes it on my cup, then hands it off before ringing up my order.
“Сколько это стоит?” I ask.
The girl stops and giggles awkwardly. “Excuse me?”
I shake my head. Ugh! What is wrong with me? “I’m so sorry. How much?” I look at the menu again, and now, I can read it… English.
The barista’s male coworker had my coffee ready by the time I decided to quit making a fool of myself, so I paid her and found a table in the far back corner. I sit facing the wall, hoping to limit the input, disengage myself from the world, but it’s not helping, and it doesn’t help that this coffee is super strong. Only two sips gave me the jitters.
Fifteen minutes later and I’m still trying to work out a plan, but I can’t stop listening to the engrossing conversation the lady behind me is having with herself, about how her husband got fired for surfing the web on his phone. I think she’s texting it to someone, because she’s rewording her sentences, reading them out multiple times to herself in her mind. I look behind me, but I can’t tell.
All nonsense. I take another sip of my coffee and look up at a painting in front of me. It’s done in watercolor, a cityscape. A couple, no more than two dark smudges, strolls down a sidewalk in this imaginary city. I let myself travel there for a second. The color palette varies in black, gray, and light blue with bits of yellow to illuminate the windows, so I imagine it’s early evening, cold, and snowy—yes, snowy. I love the snow, and how during a blizzard, everything goes so quiet.
I begin feeling a little better, but I’m thrust from my daydream when I see a reflection in the glass of the painting. “No,” I whisper. I should have known—Bento. I think he led me here. The moment I made it into town, even now, I can feel him, his presence, like a faint vibration on the air. He’s wearing a black suit with a deep-blue dress shirt underneath, finely tailored, accentuating his massive build. He looks back at me with eyes so black they could be wells of ink.
“Sorry to bother you.” His voice is severely baritone, the way I remember, and his thin lips tighten into a sickening smile as he reaches for me. “I am happy to see you again.”
I reluctantly shake his hand but remain silent. He clasps his hands together and gracefully sits across from me. His muscular arms are hidden under skillfully cut fabric, but it doesn’t take a fortuneteller to know that this man is all muscle, probably six foot six. He has no chance in hell with me, but even if he did, I couldn’t imagine him and me together. He must weigh three hundred pounds, two hundred more than me. How could this man touch me without hurting me?
I already know his story. “I’m not scared of you, Benedictus Santiago, or should I say Blessed One?” I say, mocking the translation of his name. “You’re Portuguese, right?”
“I am.”
“Then you must be a seventh son.”
He nods, and pushes an errant lock of shoulder-length black hair behind his ear. “The youngest out of seven siblings. I was the only boy.”
“Sounds like you had a feminine childhood. So, does this mean all the legends are real?”
“Some.” He smiles, reaching for my coffee and smelling it, then places it back on the table. “You are a descendant of Thiess, of Kaltenbrun.”
“That doesn’t sound Russian.”
�
��That’s because your lineage goes back to Sweden… Livonia, to be exact. He called himself a werewolf of God. But he was in his nineties at the time and most dismissed his claims as the ravings of a demented old man.”
“You know so much about me, I’m at a disadvantage,” I say, trying to keep my cool.
“That’s why I’m here, not to antagonize you, rather, to get to know you, and to show you that I am not an evil person.” His English is rigid, conveyed awkwardly by his booming voice.
“Trent will not be happy about this.”
“Trent is dead, and you have been freed of your bond with him,” he says, and my heart sinks. “Even if he weren’t, you would be wasted on him. I would die in my pursuit of you, but that’s not a bad thing. I only want greatness for you.”
I laugh. “You’re kidding.”
“Leila, you are a reluctant queen, that is all. Glory waits for you… for us. You have heard what our child will be.”
“Yes.”
“No, you haven’t. Our child will have the blood of a god.”
“Yes, yes. I’m the doorway… my vagina is a doorway. I have dreams about it. I wish I could just keep my body parts private.”
Bento’s eyes widen. “What dreams do you have?”
“The same ones you have, I’m sure.”
“I never dream,” he responds. “What are your dreams about?”
“She begs me to help her.”
He straightens his back and shakes his head. “I envy you, for communicating with our creator.
I don’t respond, thinking for a moment. Trent has never really talked to me about any of this. I think he’s more concerned with life and the world around him than he is about taking advantage of his curse.
“I mean you no harm; I only want a chance to be your friend. We will be spending a very long time together.”
“If you mean me no harm, you shouldn’t have to claim it. Your actions should prove that.”
“Well you have to admit—our situation is unusual.”