Idi Han cocked her head.
“I don’t know. Is it any worse than the punishment for killing one?”
“Kill me? That’s a joke. Topan!”
Idi Han whirled around, bracing for Topan’s attack. She cursed herself instantly as she saw her sire had disappeared, long since fleeing the battle. But now, of course, she had her back to her adversary. He punched through her back, his fist passing through her ribcage both in the back and in the front, and plucking her heart from out of her chest. He held it out, unbeating, before her, as he lifted her off her feet, impaled on his forearm.
“Now, there’s a stroke of luck,” he said, pointing at a sledgehammer which a construction worker had left on the catwalk. “If I had my other arm I’d just rip your head off. But now we’ve got to do it the hard way. Shh, shh. Relax, darling. Sometimes the hard way is more fun.”
She struggled, kicking, trying to extricate herself from the arm penetrating her, but there was little she could do. The sledgehammer lay on the floor, heavy enough not to be blown away by even the strongest wind.
“Oof. That handle looks a little dull. Not much of a stake, is it? Well, we’ll make it work. Enough force and you can push a square peg through a round hole. That’s pretty much what you’ve been trying to do your whole life anyway, isn’t it?”
She relaxed and let Signari take her away. There wasn’t really any pain anyway, just a weird feeling of fullness and violation. He stepped on the head of the sledgehammer, turning the head and bringing the wooden handle up into the air. He pressed her expurgated heart to the top of the wooden handle.
“You could’ve had it all. Been my adopted get. Even Matriarch of House Cicatrice one day.”
“As your lapdog!” she spat out.
“Yep. As my lapdog. That was happening either way. That was in the cards since the day Topan approached me. Now, though? You crossed the line. I’m going to get you staked and when you wake up it’ll be in one of my torture chambers and that’ll be eternity for you. Good night, tiny bitch.”
Signari raised his arm and her whole body with it to slam her heart down on the wooden handle. As soon as her legs were high enough, she wrapped her legs around the sledgehammer handle and brought it swinging backwards. Signari toppled as the hammerhead slipped out from under his foot, and the entire weight of the tool swung up between his legs, pulverizing his testicles to pulp and shattering his pelvis.
He dropped to his knees. Now with her feet planted back firmly on the catwalk, Idi Han had the leverage she needed. She grabbed the railing with one hand and wrenched herself counterclockwise, yanking Signari’s other arm out of the socket with a loud, gutwrenching pop.
She turned to face him, literally disarmed, as he rose, his hips and balls mending. His severed arm was still planted through her midsection like a flag at the North Pole. She reached out and took hold of her heart with one hand. With the other, she folded down his thumb, index and ring fingers, and pinky, until only his middle finger was out, pointing at him.
He growled and lowered his head to charge her with a headbutt. She tried to yank the severed arm through her chest, but found it was so dangly with bits of armor and thickened up towards the bicep that it was easier to push it back out and cause less damage to herself. She returned her heart to its rightful home and pirouetted out of the way of Signari’s charge. He tumbled to the floor of the catwalk, initially finding it difficult to raise himself back to his feet without his arms.
With a surge of immortal strength he bent his legs and popped himself upright.
“You know what’s going to happen now, tiny bitch?” he growled.
“Yeah,” she replied, “I’m going to beat you to death with your own arm.”
Raising Signari’s arm over her shoulder the way Nico wielded his baseball bat, she proceeded to do just that, smashing Signari’s face to pulp. He staggered against the railing and nearly toppled over, but she grabbed him, flung him to the floor, and began pulverizing his bones with his own arm.
When she finally finished, Signari had been beaten to a bloody mess, his fancy armor all dented and smashed in so that it barely resembled its original gleaming look. The only part that was even remotely still holding together was his breastplate. She wrenched it off his chest and ran her finger along the edge.
“Oof. That seam looks a little dull. Not much of a blade, is it? Well, we’ll make it work. Enough force and you can push a square peg through a round hole.”
Signari grinned wide at her, most of his teeth missing and struggling to regrow from the jaw.
“Cicatrice is dead. I still hurt you first,” he managed to form through his devastated jaw and tongue.
“It doesn’t matter who strikes first. It only matters who strikes last.”
She brought the dull piece of armor down and severed Signari’s head from his body. She lay down, breathing hard, and feeling an incredible hunger rumbling in her body. But there was no time to rest yet. Topan was still on the wing, and The Damned were making mincemeat of the city.
She rose and tossed Signari’s head, arm, and body to the wind, in three different directions. The morning sun would dispose of him permanently.
“Tiny bitch,” she muttered, spitting into the wind after him.
Three
Renee leaned over and whispered in her husband’s ear, “Jesus Christ, Jon, I thought you said Vegas was a place you could take your kids.”
Jon Pickup shrugged and made googly eyes, as if displacing all guilt. All up and down the strip men continued to catcall and click stacks of prostitute – sorry, “call girl” – flyers together. The whole place was like a din of clicking, buzzing insects. Even though her daughter, Ava, seemed to be delighted just by all the lights, noise, sound, and action, Renee quietly hoped this was about as unsavory as Sin City got.
“Well, what do I know?” he replied, his British accent unmistakable though tempered by a decade in the USMC. “I’m not even from here. You should know these things.”
“That ‘I’m not even from here excuse’ was hoary about the time Ava was born.”
“Whorey?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Well, you still love me.”
She planted a peck on his cheek, glorying in leaving behind a purple smudge of lipstick.
“You’re lucky you’re pretty.”
And he was. Rugged, tall (well, taller than her, anyway) with a Marine Corps-chiseled body and a chin to die for. (Although she suspected he would’ve taken care of his body whatever his day job was.)
Ava reached out to grab one of the hooker fliers. The man snapping them shrugged, seeming to feel that his job was more to blanket the city with fliers than check to see whether a six-year-old had the wherewithal or resources to hire a prostitute. Before Ava could put her grubby little mitts on the thing, Renee snatched her daughter up off the ground, swinging her through the air as though it had been deliberate.
“Wooh,” she said, “you’re flying!”
“I’m flying, Mommy!” the precocious six-year-old cried out, putting her arms out as though she were Superman, “I’m Superman!”
“You sure are. Jon, can we please find something kid-friendly to do?”
“Oh, well, sure. There’s shows…”
“I’m not sure a six-year-old is going to want to sit through David Copperfield.”
“Well, what about Wayne Newton?”
“Wayne Newton is dead.”
“No. Is he? No. Well, they’ve loosened the curfew. We can head down to the Hoover Dam.”
“Damn!” Ava announced proudly, “Damn damn damn damn!”
“Oh. Well. All right. We’ll think about the…water…gushy…thingie…a bit later. Ah, look! See, I told you Vegas was for families. Here’s a bunch of, urm, animated characters right here.”
A concrete overhead walkway connected two casinos. A gaggle of half-assed Batmen, mangy-looking Elmos, a few non-descript knockoff characters that resembled no cartoons in pop culture
Renee was aware of, and what was either SpongeBob or a bar of walking soap hung out at the street level entrance to the walkway. Children Ava’s age and younger were gleefully running up to their favorite characters (as played by drunken street hoods) and begging for free iPhone pictures that ranged in price anywhere from $5 to a punch in the mouth for not paying your $5.
Renee blew a puff of air out of the corner of her mouth, lifting up a dangling lock of her bright orange hair. Sometimes she wore it in a Mohawk, and sometimes down like today, but usually in fun colors that she and Ava would pick out together. Ava was a perfect little blonde, which came from God only knew which side of the family.
“Ava, do you want to get a picture with Elmo?”
Ava’s eyes opened wide as she looked out at the barely-dancing, barely-capering, mostly-leering costumed characters. Ava shook her head furiously and buried her head in Renee’s neck. Renee shot daggers at Jon.
“Why does she hate Elmo?”
Jon’s cheeks reddened.
“Oh, yeah. That’s my fault.”
“Explain now.”
“You remember when that Elmo impersonator got arrested in Times Square for, you know…?” Jon made a “snort snort” motion with the side of his nose.
“Vaguely…”
“Well, I didn’t want to have to explain what D-R-U-G-S are to the poor kid, so I told her that, ah, Elmo and the Count had been eating the other muppets.”
“Eating?”
Ava nodded in her mother’s nape.
“Yeah. Killing the other muppets and eating them. I mean, he’s a vampire.”
“Elmo’s a vampire?”
“No, the other one. The ‘ah ah ah’ guy.”
Ava wrapped her arms tightly around her mother’s neck.
“No Elmo!”
Renee jabbed Jon in his armpit.
“We are going to discuss this later. Although it sounds like a pretty awesome conversation.”
“It was!”
With some difficulty, she prised the child from around her neck and placed Ava on the ground, then crouched down to her level.
“Look, Elmo’s not eating anyone. See?”
She pointed over at the barely-capering, barely-waving, generally coked-out characters. None were making any motions towards eating the children within their grasp. Mostly they were making Cassius’s itching palm sign towards the touristy parents. Nevertheless, Ava shook her head.
“Oh, well, maybe you just can’t see right. Would wearing mommy’s glasses help?”
Ava pondered it for a minute, but there was no arguing with the acute desire to be like her mom. After a period of deliberation deemed appropriate by a six-year-old, she nodded. Renee took off her bitchin’ clear purple frames and stuck them on Ava’s head. Ava made a big show of adjusting them like binoculars, and looking over at the assembled characters.
“Ooh, mommy, who’s that?”
Renee squinted to see without her glasses on. A new crowd of “performers” was approaching. She wondered if they worked in shifts. More likely, she reflected, they probably worked by having turf wars. The new gaggle seemed to be dressed the same as one another, but she couldn’t tell for the life of her what they were supposed to be, not without her glasses on.
“Who’s that, Daddy?”
She punched Jon lightly.
“Oh, um…actually I don’t know. Teletubbies?”
“You’re no help whatsoever. Here, honey, let me have my glasses for just a second and then you can borrow them again later.”
“Okay, Mommy.”
Renee took the now-greasy lenses back from her daughter, rubbed them against her Rosie Killjoy scarf, and took a second look. Her lips immediately pursed in wonder. Twelve horrific, sallow-skinned mutants were loping onto the scene in a Flying-V with all the speed and balletic movement of Alex’s gang of droogs from A Clockwork Orange. Only bowlers and eyeshadow would’ve completed the look.
She had to admit, though, bowlers would’ve ruined the effect. These were no cheap, store-bought costumes. They looked like professional Hollywood makeup artists had done them up. How they had achieved the missing lower jaw effect was beyond her. And their long, Neanderthal-like arms and pinched, gaunt, sallow limbs were works of art.
“Ooh, monsters,” Renee said, her eyes sparkling. “Must be some kind of special thing for Halloween. What do you think, Ava, you want a picture with a gruesome, grisly, creepy crawly?”
Ava clapped her hands excitedly. Renee and Jon had been horror aficionados for years, and though they weren’t eager to show their daughter Cannibal Holocaust or Nekromantik, they had been gradually introducing her to the fandom, mostly through ‘30s Universal monster movies and fun things like making spider cupcakes and that sort of thing. Elmo, a mere muppet trying to teach her ABCs was banal, but a horrific ur-vampire thing? That was exciting.
“All right, relax, honey,” Renee laughed as Ava practically pulled her along to the street corner. “They’ll still be there in a minute.”
A wide ring had formed around the twelve newcomers. They seemed really committed to their role, hissing and lunging and dangling their fingers towards the crowd. The SpongeBobs and other clowns had backed off, giving them a wide berth, and the other parents were seemingly confused, while loose kids were hiding, running up, running back, and giggling, as though it were a scare game.
Renee finally released Ava’s hand when they were a few feet away and she skipped up to the head of the formation, apparently the leader of the pack. Ava grabbed at the poor woman’s hips and tugged on her skin as though she were wearing a skirt, as she had done to Renee many times before.
“Oh, no no no, honey,” Renee said, running up and pulling her daughter away, “don’t touch. You could mess up her makeup. Remember how hard it is to get your makeup just so?”
Ava nodded.
“Okay, just be nice.” She grinned up at the jawless woman. “Sorry about that. Really, you look amazing. Are you supposed to be anything in particular?”
The monster cocked her head inquisitively, a splendidly alien and/or animal gesture. Such commitment!
“Sorry! Monsters. Got it.”
Renee scurried back to Jon’s side.
“Uh, Renee…”
“Hang on, I just want to get a picture.”
“Are you sure this is just a street performance?”
Sighing, Renee planted her hands on her hips and turned to look at her husband.
“They really do make you take your brain out and put it in a jar, don’t they?”
“Hey! You were a jarhead, too!”
“I am a jarhead, honey. Once a jarhead, always a jarhead. Now our daughter is having fun for the first time since we got here, so please…you know what, I don’t want to turn into that nagging mom. I just want a picture of Ava. You ready, honey?”
Much to both Renee and apparently Ava’s surprise, the monster woman reached down and grabbed Ava by the scruff of her neck and lifted her up bodily off the ground. Renee had a sudden impulse to hurry over and help, but Ava was giggling, and the woman really was doing her best to make this a fun time. Ava was laughing so hard she had to cover her face to hold back the explosion of laughter.
“Perfect. Perfect! Thank you. Hold that for just a…”
Renee raised her iPhone and started to open her picture app when suddenly the monster woman reached over and grabbed Ava’s hair, snatching the scalp from her head in one swift motion.
“Is…is that…” Jon muttered, sounding dazed.
The monster woman lifted Ava to her nose and sniffed at her now exposed skull. Ava was screaming bloody murder. Apparently not liking what it smelled, the leader tossed Renee’s daughter over her shoulder and the other eleven creatures in the Flying-V scrambled to snatch Ava to pieces.
Renee’s phone dropped to the ground, shattering into a thousand component parts, all scattering to Hell and gone. Before she even knew what was happening, her arms and legs were pumping and she was charging full til
t at the monster woman, an unholy war cry on her lips.
The monster snatched her out of the air and held her up, squeezing her head like a ripe lemon. Jon was running too, and then he was in the monster’s other hand.
“I’ll kill you! What did you do to my daughter?”
The creature held Renee up to its face and as its hot, angry breath struck her full in the mouth, she realized that the missing jaw and the sallow skin was no makeup. This was a real monster. Then she felt the strength ebbing from her, a coldness spreading through her body. In its other hand, Jon was convulsing, frothing at the lips, and an instant later blood began spewing from his mouth, ears, and eyes.
Renee opened her mouth to scream some other obscenity, but her own mouth was sticky with blood, too. She felt the blood rushing out of her every orifice. The warm, flowing redness in her veins was replaced with an aching cold. She shuddered, shook, and finally a moment later was flopping. Blackness descended on her.
When she awoke the world was violet and she was throbbing with hunger.
Four
A knock came at the doorjam. It registered somewhere in Price’s groggy state but not sufficiently for him to actually rise from his mattress.
“Price!”
“Go away,” he muttered into his pillow.
“Price, this is ridiculous. I’m coming in.”
He turned his head just enough to the side so that his words might register to whoever was on the other side of the tarp which he had used to cover the missing door.
“Oozit?” he slurred.
Professor Kasprzak stepped through the tarp and planted her hands on her hips.
“Where’s the boy?”
“What boy?” Price muttered, finally rolling over onto his back.
She stomped in and stopped in surprise, just short of the huge hole in the floor.
“Are you allowed to live in here like this?”
“Probably not.”
“This place should be condemned.”
“I should be condemned,” he said, pulling the pillow over his face, “Condemned to Hell. Go away, Holly Ann.”
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