by J. E. Cammon
“Wow. Alright, I’ll be leaving now,” David said, walking away from the other man and gesturing over his shoulder.
David’s father had “the talk” with his son after he fathered many children with several different women. There was something animalistic about the duty one had to blood. The mother that David knew liked to read romance books. So he thought less harshly of Nick than his words implied. He swung around the front of the diner to make his way up the street. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Nick sat back down and was now ordering.
David hoped the strangeness of the last two days would only be restricted to those two days. After he turned the last corner, he noticed that the squad car was gone. Things were back the way they were before, and it seemed like maybe he had another friend. David hummed as he walked into his building and smiled as the elevator rose to his floor. He whistled in the hallway. He stopped when he got to his door.
To most people, the door was a barrier sound passed through in muffled ways. For David, it was much less of an impediment. Sounds were still clear and sharp, smells snaked up from beneath it and around its sides. He sensed that someone was moving around within. David decided he didn’t want any trouble, so he dropped his key ring first and cursed loudly. Then he jammed the key into the lock as audibly as he could and jiggled it around. He waited another moment and finally opened the door.
The person was still there. The illusion that the day might be unlike the previous two lifted like the curtain after an intermission. David turned on the living room light, scanning the placement of things. He wondered if his electronics were nice enough to be mugged over. He shrugged, resigned to play the frightened vet tech who managed to beat the burglar senseless out of pure luck.
As he closed the door he became more specifically aware of movement, someone striding towards the living room. He was surprised to see it was a she; the woman didn’t have the tell tale scents of body lotions or shampoos or perfumes that would give that sort of thing away. Her mouth and nose were covered, but her vivid red hair, pulled back into a pony tail, and her piercing green eyes were immediately visible. So were her guns.
David asked Jarvis once what it felt like to be shot, figuring that the vampire would know. Jarvis retorted with a question: did David mean full penetration, or the bullets digging in and staying? Sitting through the gory details was tiresome, but David gleaned some interesting tidbits. For instance, sometimes bullets would bounce or graze painlessly, but if they hit, it was definitely better when they passed all the way through. David got the impression that Jarvis was speaking from his personal experience as a corpse. He didn’t so much feel pain, as sense injury; there was an enormous difference.
The intense and unyielding burning was not mentioned among the sordid details. Crashing face first behind the love seat, David felt like a hot piece of coal, prickly with sharp spines, was eating away at his thighbone. He tried to think clearly, but that became instantly much less important. It didn’t matter whether the police car or the nicely smelling detective would come back, there was nothing else but the warm pleasure of letting go.
The world became more and less real at the same time; golden light of varying brightness showered everything. David heard more, smelled more, saw more; the world became filled with a colorful liquid that made objects brighter and slowed everything down. He became ferociously hungry to seize upon the next moment, and then the next.
David rose, hurling the love seat at the woman, which she deftly avoided. Her attack and resolute stance fed the rage that made the world glow. David wanted to filet her, and moved to. As he pounced, he was vaguely aware of her flinging a handful of dust at him, except it didn’t smell like dust. Smelling it, breathing it, turned out to be a horrible idea. His nostrils burned, and then so did his throat and lungs as he vomited forcefully. He coughed and wheezed, even as his throat tightened.
His attacker paused in her assault, unsure for only a split second. Vexed in his discomfort, David swatted at her, and became even angrier that the action knocked her through one of his windows. After she was gone, David could do little except retch and heave. Taut muscles stretched over his frame, joining into a chorus of horrible noises.
It didn’t last very long. After a few moments, the pain became secondary to the rage. David stopped vomiting, though he could still taste his own blood on his tongue. Infuriated—both by that taste and the limp he was quickly developing—he hurled himself after his prey out into the night, which to him was not night at all but much like an overcast day under jaundice clouds, streams of light streaking everywhere or hanging in the air like thin clouds.
The distinct scent from before was not only in mind; it was more like a delicious path at the end of which was desirable meat. Something Nick said was nagging at the distant recesses of his mind, and David’s not being able to remember only spurred him on further and faster.
With the joy that came with the freedom of being, there came the additional exultation that the woman was running, and she was wounded. David smelled fear and screamed, but what erupted from his throat was not the voice of a man.
Chapter Eight
Recent memories nagged at David as he sped along happily. There was a pool of blood and dinner and lunch and breakfast on the floor of his living room; he could smell it well enough to almost taste it. The momentum from the start of the chase sent him flying through the window. There was the distinct crunch of the short table under the sill disintegrating, and the angry noise of the paneling being ripped from its moorings and then falling down onto the sidewalk. David knew he wasn’t getting his deposit back.
Memories nagged at him, but it was nothing more than nagging. Everything took a backseat to the rush. Sailing through the air, rooftop to rooftop, he could do little more than think about how far he could jump, clawing at the horizon in midair as if he could touch it. The energy brimmed over in excess, a currency he couldn’t spend fast enough.
David knocked over several air conditioners and rammed askew a brick chimney, cleaved through a fragile bouquet of thin pipes and exploded through a gazebo. Some walls he leapt over, others dared him to charge them at full speed. That they were in his way fed the fire in his blood. Focusing the eye would distract his perception and a moment later the rest of him. Everything was tinged with the speckles of glitter and the stars shone huge and proud. It was like he was a kid again and had nothing but daylight and sugar.
At times he almost forgot mostly what he was doing—hunting—but as always, there were those scents and sounds that were just out of reach except in this fully awakened state. The smells crept over the tops of the rooftops, up through vents, from above and sideways; the same was with screams and cries and laughter and the other hundred noises people make without meaning to. A man was arguing with his wife while she was searing meat with vegetables; a family was praying over their dinner; a couple was having a fight; another couple was making love.
Blood pumped relentlessly out of his leg. He normally healed faster. Much faster. A question wormed its way to the front of his perceptions, but was beaten back down by the experience of the present. David’s capacity to wonder was incredibly diminished, and so he could not speculate. The confusion mixed with the inundation of everything stoked the rage.
Focusing on the tunnel of his intent, he rediscovered her scent and shallow breathing. David howled ecstatically. He wanted her afraid; it was better when they were afraid. Picking among every possible direction and figuring out the finite course that would lead him to his specific goal was like putting on worn socks: they were comfortable, and they smothered the golden light feeding his pores. He tried to exert a stranglehold on himself; enforcing the vice-grip of control was something he never mastered. His father’s voice echoed from the recesses of his mind: “We get to choose, David.” He snarled from deep within his chest.
She made it fun, ducking in and out of buildings, most of them public, le
aving him momentarily confused. She also crossed any water she could find. David got distracted a couple times. Once, he thought he saw Jarvis. Lifeless husks like him appeared as sink holes in the shimmering golden world, not inanimate like rocks or alive like people, but distinctly unnatural. He wasn’t able to divert course, however. He was vaulting from a building when he caught a glimpse of something while in midair, and the next moment he didn’t care enough to go back and look. That was the key, focusing. His father told him it got easier as a person got older and learned how to temper it. David remembered the cage in the basement, the sharpened edges of the bars, the disappointment in his father’s eyes and the fear in his mother’s .
He collided with a brick wall, squeezing hand holds into the bricks as he hung there, sideways. He realized he had no idea where he was. More importantly, he had no idea where his prey went. David digressed, moving backwards, until he found her scent again and moved forward. The chase was exquisite, but it had to end, as all chases did. It was in him to be sad on a philosophical level for the realization that it would never be like this again, but like every other emotion, it was swept up in the whirlpool and was eventually transformed into excitable ire, his drug.
She stopped to have a conversation, of all things. The voices, one male, one female, came at him through holes in a metal roof.
“What happened to you?” the man said. He was wearing aftershave.
“We have a serious problem,” she replied.
The building was some sort of machining establishment, another dead BC property. David stomped across the roof, letting a clawed finger drag as he went. He liked the sensation when the roof was that kind of wavy molded metal; it was like a very long keyboard.
“What the…” the man started.
“Lycanthrope,” she said. There came the clattering of weaponry loading and cocking. “It was the target the police tracked.”
“That is a problem.”
David rolled and jumped off the roof, swinging around. He had a moment of embarrassment at not finding a window, so he simply played through, barreling forward. There was an instant of resistance and then a section of the wall gave way. David expected them to be standing there, waiting for him, but he saw nothing. He heard the screeching whistle of bullets biting through the air. He waited for the burning pain from before, but none came.
“Go,” the male said to the female, reaching behind her.
David locked eyes with her and heard her heart pick up its pace. She did run, but not before kicking three levers on a nearby panel. Parts of the plant activated, first with a screeching whistle and half a dozen warning sirens. David staggered sideways into a fork-lift covered in dust and cobwebs, knocking it over. He watched the man pick up a pair of weapons and disappear deeper into the facility, and when he looked for the woman, she was gone completely.
David roared after her. He roared at the unceasing noise, at everything. Pure and inconsolable rage had him inwardly cursing the two of them, vowing to hunt down their families and loved ones. It was just rage barking for him; in truth, they were meat, and he was the eater.
David felt the squirming bullet wiggle its way out of the back of his leg and ring against the ground with a wistful chime. He supposed all the running and jumping worked it through his leg. David looked on in satisfaction as the wound began to visibly mend, stitching itself together. He reached up, shooting through the air, and caught hold of a building support. He couldn’t get high enough to escape the noise; it made his hair stand on end.
The man couldn’t possibly believe he could stay hidden for long. Or maybe he could; the two of them proved to be strangely clever. Did they mention something about the police? David jumped to another support, his claws biting into the steel for purchase. For a moment, he was pleased about finding his newest prey, unworried that it likely meant the man saw him too. Then he remembered the guns.
This time the whizzing bullets didn’t miss, and David lost his grip as searing fire enveloped one of his arms and the same leg. He landed hard, half of him on a conveyor belt going off to somewhere and half of him on the floor. His head bounced, but he was up again before the pain registered. Another split second, and David was standing where he saw the man last—and another split second later he realized that might be what his quarry was trying to accomplish. Sure enough, another half dozen bullets sailed toward him, this time ricocheting off the machinery all around. A couple bits of shrapnel from the adjacent machinery bit into his flesh but there was no fire, and hardly any pain.
David sneered and reached up for the ceiling again. This time, he let his momentum carry him up and through the roof, out into the night air. His arm hurt almost to the point of being useless and he was worried his leg would be ruined; both limbs came together to spark the inferno. David roared like the lion being taunted by the antelope. He pushed forward all of his consternation that the fragile man was mocking him, that he was shot, again, that his apartment was ruined—all of it went into seeking out the things all the noisy machines were toiling to hide. The yellow lights shifted, spinning in a storm the shade of gold. Somehow, his whim was affecting them, and David struggled to remember that detail for later.
Stalking about the roof, eventually, he found him. The man was keeping his breathing and movement under control, but his heart was working, what with all the running and jumping he was doing. He was afraid.
Altering his tactics, maybe falling back on instincts unremembered, David stalked down the side of the building and re-entered on the ground level. Moving with his belly close to the floor, he grew anxious with the smell of his own blood in his nostrils. His prey was close, which made him want to snarl, but he stifled it. To dissipate some of his frustrations, David scratched into the concrete as he inched along painfully.
Satisfyingly, his prey crept around a corner, slinking directly into his jaws. The man glanced behind him and to the sides, up. When he turned around completely, his eyes grew wide with the realization of the last mistake he’d ever make. He didn’t stop or pause. The man fell backwards as he brought his weapons to bear but David’s arm was already falling. Struck dead, the prey fell over, his front folding open like the gills of a fish. The blood spray was generous and brief, like the bursting of a watermelon.
Once the moment was over, David flexed his wounded arm painfully. The excitement was dying, and he was returning to more rationalized thinking. Focusing was easier, and everything that happened caught up with him, like it always did. First there was panic, and then guilt.
He sped off in the direction of Nick’s school. The significance of that decision was lost in the wind, but the first meeting David had with Jarvis while in his less than sensible state ended awkwardly with him on the losing end. The significance of that outcome David kept close at hand. More than twice he came to a falling, skidding stop on a rooftop rather than landing on his feet. The golden light was fading and the pace of the world was quickening. Nick’s scent flared on and off, palpable and then only vaguely perceptible.
Finally, naked and bleeding, he came stumbling out from behind a row of bushes in Nick’s path. It was somewhat ironic how when they first met the desperate shoe was on the foot of the other man. Nick was holding food, which he dropped in surprise.
“David?” he asked.
In reply, David collapsed, his knees bending under him like his bones were rubber. Nick might have yelled something then.
“Funny story,” David said, beginning to lose consciousness. “Remind me to tell you later,” he mumbled and promptly passed out.
Later, he woke up in a bed, with no inkling of what time it was or where that bed was. Sluggishly, David thought about where he started and where he ended up, trying to fill in the middle. A familiar voice in the next room cleared the cobwebs almost instantly.
“What happened to you?” Nick asked.
“We have a serious problem.”
Chapter Nine
Days passed since Nick saw David. He didn’t expect to. The lycanthrope didn’t call, but Nick also decided to recommit himself to staying on the straight and narrow. The guillotine was hovering overhead he knew, and every moment before it fell was borrowed time which he decided to invest in building a case against expulsion. He had a hand in the fire, and he was secretly ambivalent about everything that happened since.
He felt an odd lack of regret, but he also accepted that it was a mistake. Other concerns occurred to him, like what his guardians would think. He was supposed to be the bright one, the one to go the farthest. He didn’t want to fail their impression of what success was.
Then there was Dr. Gray. It was perhaps bad form to use the man’s love of order and duty against him. No punishment was leveled on Nick, which meant his status was unchanged, which meant Dr. Gray remained his advisor. That meant so long as Nick brought in work, his mentor was expected to help him.
“Oh. Hello,” he said when Nick knocked on his door again, holding stapled sheets of paper like a shield. He was wildly hopeful the man would not push the door closed in his face. It was awkward. It was almost like the first time, both of them feeling the other out and deciding upon their relationship.
Eventually, Dr. Gray used Nick’s work to forget about the things he shouldn’t have. “An intriguing premise,” he said finally. “I believe you’ve conflated the inner workings of the mind with something more relatable to a communal acknowledgement of the nature of reality, or maybe just physiology and sociology.”
Initially, Nick said nothing, only nodded and took notes. He was happy the man was talking to him at all. He was also happy that his idea was not disregarded, that he was being encouraged to tinker with real truth and understanding. Nick was always a learner, but he never wanted to do it so ferociously before. Desperation was as good a motivator, apparently, just as hunger was a spice.