The Big Bad II

by John G. Hartness

  With a snarl that grew to a scream she launched herself at the man who had put her at an impasse, the one who would only wreck her life and hold her back.

  “Daddy!” Ashley’s scream was distant under the tearing of flesh, cracking of bone, and gushing of blood. Wave upon wave of hatred and anger rushed to fill the empty void. It washed away the helplessness, the jealousy, the suspicion, the frustration, and all the other pointless, stupid emotions that had taken over her life.

  The color in Tom’s face had drained away by the time he’d landed on his back, chest laid open. His innards spilled onto the floor and the other housewife vampires fell on them, hissing and gnawing at the meat, lapping at the blood, unable to restrain themselves until her husband’s pieces were spread all over the fellowship hall floor in a streaked, gory mess.

  She felt a thousand feet tall as she stood in the middle of the mayhem, drenched with the sticky, copper-smelling liquid that had once been part of the man who had been her everything. What a fool I was to invest that much in him. She’d never been more in control, more beautiful, more perfect than she felt in that moment. When she raised her eyes, they locked on her stupid, sheep-like children. Ashley sobbed and clung to Robert, who held and sheltered her against the sisters who brushed and grabbed at them with greedy talons. Her blonde hair was stained pink and Robert’s shaggy brown mane was dotted with bits of meat. When they looked up at her, the girl’s eyes were puffy and pained, but there was no mistaking the hatred in them. As if she could compare with her mother. Robert’s expression was masked and suspicious as ever. There was potential in both of them, dangerous potential unless it was cultivated properly.

  She smiled. For once she didn’t have to hide the fangs. “My darlings, you have a choice.” There was no warmth in the words, no hope of compromise. “You’ll find it isn’t as bad as it seems.” She cast a warm look at The Patriarch, who returned the hungry smile. “We can all work together to make the world what we want. You, Ashley, will find beauty and power like you’ve never known.” The girl sniffled, but Amanda’s words had hit a vulnerable spot. “And Robert, you’ll finally have somewhere to direct all that aggression.”

  They stared at each other for a long time. “It’s one or the other?” Robert finally asked. He tried so hard to sound insolent, but his voice quavered. It was wonderful.

  “You heard our leader. It’s the rule of the Family. You can either help as a human or join the cause, but we don’t take kindly to those who turn us down.”

  He straightened and dropped his arms from around his sister. “Fine. I’ll play your game.”

  “Robbie!” Ashley gasped. He gave her a look and she bit her lip. Amanda gently pressed into his mind. It was far less guarded than his father’s. He was aware that there was more going on, that she was far too confident for someone who wanted to do the best for town and country. He was also under the wrong assumption that she was in love with The Patriarch. The elder was attractive as sin and powerful as brimstone, to be sure, but emotions were things to be used, otherwise they got in the way. She’d let him keep his assumptions for the moment. There was no reason for anyone to know what she really wanted: to be the ultimate head of The Family, to have a legion of followers hanging on her every command, desperate to fulfill it. It was all she’d ever wanted, the reason she’d started a family in the first place.

  He thinks he can best me. There will be much fun had making him see reason. She turned to her daughter and her smile slipped a little. She was the one who would have to be watched. She was so sweet, so docile, so easy for people to like. There’re useful qualities there, too.“Ashley?”

  The girl was disgusted and terrified, to be sure, but she saw the power to be had. Even better, she didn’t want to be left behind. “O-okay,” she whispered, and wiped her nose. They’d have to work on her presentational skills, to be sure.

  “Very good,” The Patriarch praised, right behind her now. Amanda jumped at the hand on her shoulder, hated herself for not hearing him. One more thing to work on later.

  She beamed at the compliment and nodded. As she watched, clawed hands and a few human ones clamped onto Ashley and Robert’s shoulders, holding them with a force they couldn’t fight, though they struggled. “Just remember that you want this and it will help you get through,” she whispered as Lucy bared her teeth, brushed aside Robert’s hair, and bit into his neck. Beside her, another member of the guild took his wrist and bit his pulse to speed the process. He gasped through gritted teeth and struggled, but stared into Amanda’s eyes as his blood was drained away.

  “Mommy, please! It hurts!” Ashley pleaded, though she had been babysat by Adelle Henderson, who had enough foresight to hug her close while she drained her life away.

  Amanda felt no need to intervene through the process. If anything, it gave her a feeling of raw electricity. She glanced over her shoulder and dared to smile at The Patriarch. “Might I be the one to turn them?”

  He blinked, surprised, and considered her words. “You’ve learned your lessons well and you now come from my blood, so their stock should be good enough. I suppose it will cause no harm, and it will serve you well to have built-in allies later on. It’s touching that you can think ahead so much to take care of them.”

  She nodded. There was no reason for him to know that she wanted her blood to be in them so they would have to be under her control, a first step in a much larger plan. If he caught on, he didn’t show it, and he was impossible to read.

  Her baby birds were laid out prone on the floor in front of her, the other ladies gasping and holding hands as if they waited to see a new infant baptized into the church. She knelt beside Ashley, gingerly peeled up her glove, and looked up at the one who had guided her so well. The Patriarch smiled and gave a single, firm nod. Amanda raised a wrist to her mouth, just as he had done with her, and tore open a vein with her teeth. The pain was bright and hot, and the red fluid splashed against the girl’s colorless lips. It took a few moments, but finally Ashley latched on and began to feed. “That’s a girl. Your mother knows what’s best. Drink it down until you can sit up,” she whispered, smoothing her daughter’s fair hair off her pale face as the girl fed.

  Ashley’s eyes popped open and her stained mouth dropped in a perfect ‘o.’ “I feel funny,” she whispered, then curled on her side, hands covering her face. Amanda turned away, leaving Lucy and the others to rub Ashley’s back and whisper encouragements to her offspring as she focused on her son.

  The incision on her wrist was almost healed. “Let me,” The Patriarch whispered and took her hand in his. Her stomach tightened and something else nearly pushed past the greed and hunger that gave her life meaning...but not quite. His hair tickled her bare skin as he pressed his mouth to her pulse. “Remember that there are many lessons left to learn, little one,” he murmured so only she could hear. She would have felt fear, but then the white-hot flash of pain was back and her wrist was pressed to Robert’s mouth. Unlike his sister, his mouth clamped on immediately and didn’t let go. His eyes fluttered open and he groaned, drawing on the vein until throbbing pain ran up and down her arm.

  Sweet God, is he trying to drain me dry? Could he even think of such a thing? His eyes narrowed and turned red as he stared at her.

  “Robert.” She pushed at his head, but he kept drinking. “Robert,” she snarled, but couldn’t find the influence to control him. Those around her murmured, but The Patriarch raised a hand and did nothing to stop the interaction. Her son’s gaze burned brighter as he greedily fed. Just as her mind grew fuzzy, he let go.

  “Sorry, Mom. Guess I didn’t know how much I’d like it,” he spat. Ashley sat beside him, eyes wide as she looked from one to the other. His thoughts blew into her mind unasked-for, unleashing a sudden, throbbing headache. I may not know your game yet, lady, but I’m far from stupid. Get ready, because I’m not trusting you an inch.

  There was no fear in his thoughts or
his eyes. It had never occurred to Amanda that although her children were pressured, either one would actually like the transformation.

  You realize you’ll have to kill. You’ll have to follow my lead. I made you. You are mine, she pointed out. Their shared thoughts were far more intimate than any conversation they’d had in years. She didn’t like it at all.

  “Don’t worry, Mom. It’s gonna be okay.” He squeezed Ashley’s hand as she struggled to make heads or tails of what was going on. “I’ll help Asha and we’ll get through it together,” he soothed, purposefully using one of the tacky nicknames Tom had given their daughter. Robert staggered to his feet. Soon, the sickness of acclimation would come and he’d be laid out flat for a while, but there was no need to warn him. She glanced to The Patriarch, who smiled and squeezed her shoulder. It was all the praise she needed. She’d done it. They were hers and only hers.

  “Oh, Mom? No worries,” Robert added as he and his sister were ushered to chairs and warned about the oncoming vertigo by The Patriarch. A slow, charming grin spread across the youth’s face. For a moment he looked like a darker-haired version of Tom. “I can handle the lifestyle and what it means. I’ll just keep you in mind when push comes to shove.” The other women frowned, unsure what he meant, but a cold sliver of something that surely couldn’t be fear travelled under Amanda’s skin. She shuddered and rubbed her arms, pleased that the world was looking right and her hands were back to normal.

  Ashley craned her head, startled, then looked at her brother as something passed between them. Her mouth opened in a sharp, fanged laugh, and the grin she gave her mother was neither loving nor pleasant.

  They were all hers, all right. For better or for worse.

  Old Nonna

  Gail Z. Martin

  The decrepit house trailer sat in the thick woods, halfway back in the hollow of two deep mountain clefts. Only, in these parts, folks called it the ‘holler,’ making a distinction between those who lived in the front of the ‘holler,’ who might be approachable, and those who lived in the back of the ‘holler,’ who made themselves difficult to find for a reason. Going from the front of the holler to the back was not a wise thing to do. Those who tried rarely came out.

  The old woman never let that bother her. She went where she pleased, when it pleased her to go anywhere, which was not often. Her beat-up house trailer might have been blue and white when it was new. Long ago, when the very first house trailers were made. It sat up on metal stilts, without even the dignity to draw skirts of cement block or latticed wood around its base to hide its scrawny metal legs. The sun had faded the blue metal and yellowed what used to be white. Moss grew on the north side, green and black and thick. Chintz curtains covered the windows, and nobody could remember ever seeing the curtains opened. Then again, few people dared come close enough to take a look.

  She lived there, in the house trailer in the middle of the holler, halfway in and halfway out. No one could remember a time when she didn’t live there, although the old folks swore that many years ago, the old woman had a shack on stilts instead of a trailer. When had she come to the holler? No one knew. Long, long ago. Maybe just after the fingers of God pushed down through the land and raised the mountains, leaving the deep clefts. She had always been there, and always would be, and the holler was hers.

  Some called her ‘Old Nonna,’ and some ‘the witch of the holler.’ Most called her nothing at all, except when they whispered about the old woman with her big nose and her ragged clothes and tumbledown trailer on its spindly legs deep in the forest, and warned their children to stay clear. Now and again, some drunk fool would four-wheel his pickup to the end of the dirt road and stagger into the deep woods to see the witch. Folks thereabouts would find the truck after a while, but never the fool who dared to disturb the witch.

  Oh, there were rumors. Over the years, the tales grew with the telling. Miners and loggers came from all over to work the lands near Old Nonna’s holler. They deep-mined and strip-mined and shaft-mined, clear-cut the forests, and hauled away the trees. Hard work done by desperate men who brought their own legends with them, and some of them swore they knew the witch from the deep forests of the darkest reaches of Old World. They called her by many names: Babushka, Nagymama, Bobute, Nain, Babka, Abuela, Oma. And they told stories about her, the old woman who never came and never left, the hag of the holler, the witch.

  They told stories about children who wandered into the forest and were never seen again, eaten—no doubt—by Old Nonna. Tales of how the wolves followed Old Nonna like pet dogs and did her bidding. Dark tellings, about loggers or miners who thought that an old woman couldn’t stop them from taking the riches of the wild holler lands, and who vanished from the face of the earth. After a while, and enough dead men, people left the holler and its witch alone. To some, that made Old Nonna a hero, the Crone Queen who stood up to King Coal. There were whispers that Old Nonna did not eat everyone who came to her holler. Sometimes, if her mood was generous and the wanderer was pure of heart and desperately needy, Old Nonna took him to a better place, where nothing dared hurt him again. No one knew for sure, because no one ever came back.

  Old Nonna cared little what people said, so long as it kept them away. She had lived in her holler for as long as time remembered, and she would live there after time forgot. Each day passed much like the others. Even a witch like Old Nonna has chores to do, food to cook, tea to boil, wood to chop.

  Once a day, Old Nonna would walk to the back of her lawn where the creek ran deep. She had a round, bowl-like boat that could float down the creek to the back of the holler, and a long willow oar to pole her way along the shallows. When the water was swift and deep from snows in the high hills, Old Nonna fairly flew along, and the woodland creatures heard her cackle with the wild power of the ride.

  No one came to the back of the holler. At least, no one came twice. Old Nonna’s children lived in the shadows and thick forest of the deep cleft in the high hills. Decrepit mobile homes, just as old as Nonna’s house, sat back from the creek, hauled in long ago. A few cabins, even older, squatted at the foothills of the mountain. Deep beneath everything were the caves, miles and miles of twisting passages no one had mapped. No one, except for the children of Old Nonna.

  Only a few dared to make the trek to see Old Nonna anymore. Some were curiosity seekers who wanted to catch the old witch on film and brag about their nerve. These, Old Nonna killed straightaway. Ignoring them led to more foolishness. If they never returned, their disappearances served as a warning. She knew that many of the noisy, ignorant people outside the holler would blame those missing people on mudslides and falling rocks, wild animals and rough terrain. Others would understand, and know that the old woman at the back of the holler was not to be trifled with.

  Once in a while, a kindred soul made its way to Old Nonna. Outcast, hurt and hungry, only the truly desperate would risk their lives to beg a favor of the woman in the woods. Each time, Old Nonna listened carefully, able to tell truth from a lie. Her large nose let her sniff out falsehood, and her wandering eye, the one that turned out and gazed outside this world, Saw what was concealed.

  If the soul was pure and the need was dire, Old Nonna would offer to take the petitioner into her family, the kindred at the back of the holler. She offered sanctuary, but no return. The back of the holler changed a person. It was better for everyone if those in the holler stayed in the holler.

  Tonight, Old Nonna swept her stoop and sniffed the air. The scent was distant, but clear enough. She turned her wandering eye to the heavens, and Saw. Her thin lips stretched across broken brown teeth. She could smell the hunt. Toward the front of the holler, she heard the baying of dogs. From the back of the holler, the howls of wolves warned their canine brethren to keep their distance. The dogs would be wise enough to heed the warning, Old Nonna knew. Men would not. And tonight, a wanderer would come. Perhaps more than one. Old Nonna would be ready.

&nb
sp; Ana Sofia had heard about Old Nonna, or as her mother said it, Bruja Nonna. Ana Sofia’s family had come to these parts for work, and stayed because the work they found paid too little for them to go elsewhere. Ana Sofia could work hard, even when her belly was empty. Just sixteen, she had been working since she was a child, always for too little and never on the books. It was better here, her papà said, than where they came from, away from the drug wars and their bloody lords, the desert that swallowed up hundreds of young women in unmarked graves, the corrupt politicians and the even more corrupt policìa. Her papà said that, Ana Sofia thought, to feel better about where they ended up. It wasn’t good, but maybe there were worse things somewhere else. Perhaps, but Ana Sofia doubted it.

  Especially after the night La Migra came.

  Ana Sofia and her family heard the shouting. They ran into the woods, leaving everything behind, not that there was much. La Migra came at suppertime, when people were tired and hungry, just getting home after a long day of work in the kitchens and hotels, the mines and construction sites. They came with their black clothing and big guns, kicking in doors and shooting the dogs that barked at them.

  Ana Sofia ran barefoot into the night, and in the forest, she lost sight of her family. She hid in the darkness and heard as the agents caught her papà and her mamà, heard her younger brothers and sisters shriek with fear. When her father shouted at the agents at the top of his lungs, cursing them, she knew he was warning her away, telling her to keep on running. Chinga la Migra, she thought as she ran, chinga la Migra.

  She ran until her chest ached like fire and her feet were cut and bleeding. She ran with tears streaming down her face, begging the Madre de Dios to have pity on her, to remember what it was to be a stranger in a strange land, an outcast without papers or pity.

  She prayed to la Virgen, and she found la bruja.

  Ana Sofia ran until she could run no farther. She stumbled into the small clearing, hungry and hurt and frightened beyond reason. In the distance, far back in the holler, she heard wolves howl. It was dark, and she was lost, but it didn’t matter that she couldn’t find the way home. There was no home left, nowhere to go. The battered old trailer sat alone in the woods, smoke rising from its crooked chimney, perched on rickety metal legs that reminded Ana Sofia of the chickens her mother kept. The chickens. Who would care for them now? she wondered. Another sob rose, and she stifled the sound.