But he had me out there. I thought he knew. I thought he knew. I was waiting for it, just waiting for him to say it. That thing I really am. That thing that got my sister killed. That thing that will get me killed if I’m not careful.
Lip bite, open mouth, bilabial stop. I can see it now, I can watch him say it.
Vampire.
***
Bennie and me, we did okay for a long time. Pretty girls, not twins but the next closest thing. You can fudge a lot if you’re using your brain—dark hair and pale skin and a vaguely Germanic or Celtic last name, and if anyone starts asking too many pointed questions, you’ve got porphyria. An allergy to light, a genetic blood disorder.
Technically, we’re dhampir. But nobody cares about technicalities. Especially not these fuckers.
I haven’t killed anyone in years. Three or four towns ago, maybe. An accident. And Bennie was almost as careful as me.
Not careful enough, I guess.
***
I’ve never taken home a bar patron before. Our clientele isn’t exactly to my tastes or standards. But Kitty doesn’t bat an eye when she sees me slip a note to Jason as I give him his tab. He unfolds the paper and reads it right there at the bar in front of me, distractedly fumbling for his wallet. He stops and looks up at me. I arch an eyebrow, tucking my chin down, as if to say, Well?
He grins and nods and shoves the note back in his pocket. He slides his credit card across the bar and I let my fingers brush his as I take it. He tenses, and I almost feel bad for this kid, for his youth, for his naiveté.
Almost.
***
He’s waiting for me in the parking lot of the bingo hall next door, like I asked him to. Almost four in the morning; the lot’s totally deserted except for his run-down pick-up. The fluorescents buzz and hum, even the occasional patter of moths banging into them audible in the near-silence. He’s sitting on the tailgate smoking a cigarette, booted feet dangling above the cracked asphalt. He sees me and grins, wide and toothy, and I’m not at all sure anymore if I’ve got the upper hand.
But I smile and as I walk across the lot, I make sure to put an extra swing in my hips, one foot in front of the other like I’m walking a tightrope. I can see his gaze traveling over me, cut-off shorts and cowboy boots and all that leg in between.
I say, “Hey,” right as he takes a drag off the cigarette. The night’s hot and close, like the air will collapse under its own weight. Even the city is nearly silent this time of night, only the rush of the occasional car over the interstate overpass.
He turns his head and blows out a long cone of smoke. “Hey.” He flicks the cigarette away and hops off the gate, his boots crunching on the gravel. “You do this often?”
I stop a few feet away from him and let my grin turn into something a little more feral. I’m already sweating in the heat. The humidity.“Almost never.”
“Where do you want to go?”
I cock an eyebrow at him, throw one hip out so I can plant my hand on it. So I can draw his eye. It works. “Go?” I say. My heart’s slamming in my chest like a panicked bird. My palms are sweaty. My mouth is watering. My voice is a throaty purr only partially caused by having to shout over deafening music for eight hours. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
His eyebrows pop up in real surprise, maybe the only authentic expression either one of us has had all night. I can’t shake the feeling that he knows what I am, knows what I really want from him.
That’s his job, after all. To know these things. Jesus.
“Why do you think I didn’t want to meet in the bar parking lot?”
He licks his lips. “Well, come here, then.”
I cross the space between us, and he hooks a hand around my waist. My breath catches in my throat, my pulse roaring in my ears. He knows, it seems to beat out. He knows. He knows. He knows.
He makes a low noise in his throat as his fingers spread against my waist, sliding around to my spine, pulling me closer. I’m trying to relax, trying to melt into him like I would a normal guy, a guy who hadn’t killed my sister.
“What’s the matter?” He must be able to feel the stiffness in my muscles. “Nervous?”
I give him a shy smile and look down at the ground. “I told you I almost never do this.”
He doesn’t respond, just puts two fingers under my chin and lifts my face to his and kisses me. His mouth is warm and anyone else would have felt lovely, red and wet and alive, but his lips feel like worms against mine and I have to struggle to return it.
Bennie’s body on her bed, that ragged-edged stump of her neck. Mattress soaked with blood.
His fingers slip under the edge of my t-shirt, and I can’t fucking stand it, I have to stop. I break away from him, backing up a few steps, my fingers at my mouth.
He knows, my pulse insists. He knows. He knows. He knows.
His eyebrows pop up. “Everything all right?”
I nod. “Sorry.” It comes out a shaky whisper.
“You sure you don’t want to get out of here?” He looks like he might be genuinely concerned. Like he knows there’s some other motive behind this sloppy seduction.
“Bucket list,” I blurt, desperate. “Your truck, I mean.”
He takes a deep, slow breath in. “Yeah,” he drawls, reseating his hat, “I can take a compliment, darlin’, but maybe we both oughta go home alone tonight.”
Panic: I’m out of options, so I punch him. Just take a hard step forward and slam my fist into his cheek. Two of my knuckles pop and I smell blood. He staggers back against the truck, his hand covering his chin and jaw.
“Jesus,” he barks, and when he pulls his hand away to examine it, I can see the smear of blood at the corner of his mouth. The scent of it drowns out everything. I’m drunk on it.
I grab his shirt with both hands and slam him against the lip of the truck gate. He hits it about hip level and falls backward, his spine bending awkwardly over the hard edge of metal.
“What the fuck?”
I can’t stop myself. I lean over him, putting all my weight on his chest, and lick the blood off his face. The flavor of it explodes in my mouth like the pop of a grape, each component and flavor layered and separate like a fine wine.
“Listen, you crazy bitch—”
I show him my teeth.
All of them.
He thrashes beneath me, trying to scramble away, maybe up into the truck bed or down below it, anywhere he’s not pinned like a butterfly. “Fucking vampire.” His eyes are wide with fear, whites visible all around the irises. It sends a thrill up my spine, because I know what that does to the blood, crave its spice.
“Close enough.” My speech always gets a little mangled when I let my fangs down. By that point, I’m usually done talking. Not tonight. “And you’re a hunter,” I say carefully. “How does it feel to be hunted?”
He’s stopped squirming, and his face has relaxed, but I can still feel his heartbeat, can still smell the fear on him. “I’m going to kill you.” His voice is even, neutral. His best effort at scary through the adrenaline.
“Like you killed my sister,” I say. It isn’t a question. I don’t need a confession to know he’s the one who did it.
“Probably,” he says. “I’ve killed so many of you filthy monsters, it all starts to run together after a while.”
I pull on his shirt and shove him back down again, letting the whiplash of the movement slam the back of his head into the bed of the truck. He blinks, shakes his head to clear the pain.
“I wasn’t a filthy monster when you thought you could get in my pants,” I say. “Is that how you treated my sister? Did you fuck her before you cut her head off and left her corpse for me to find?”
He doesn’t answer immediately, still feeling the effects of his rattled brain. I slam his head into the bed of the truck again.
“Here
’s the unfortunate thing, Jason.” I lick my lips, my tongue dancing around the tips of my fangs. His eyes are glazed, unfocused. “I’ve always been careful. Very, very careful. But Bennie was my only family, and now I have nothing left.” I lean in close to him, the smell of the blood in his mouth, leaking from the back of his skull, intoxicating, filling my head, making articulation an effort. “But you do,” I whisper. “Don’t you?”
“No,” he says, but his voice is shaking. “No family, no possessions. I live on the road.”
I smile, showing him my fangs again, and he winces. “Don’t fib to me, little boy. You’ve got your hunter buddies. Those boys you were with tonight. I know you care about them. I know they care about you. That you’re bros. That you’ve got each other’s backs.”
He twitches his shoulders in what was possibly supposed to be a shrug. “We all know the dangers.”
I lick his neck. I’m too worked up; I can barely form coherent thoughts anymore. All I want is for what’s inside of this guy to be on the outside. All I want is his blood fountaining into my mouth, pulsing against the back of my throat.
“So you’re going to kill me,” he says. He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing against my chin.
“No,” I growl. “I’m not.” I knock his hat off with the backs of my knuckles and wrap my hand around his forehead, a thumb on one temple, middle finger on the other. I pull him up by his face and slam that bloody spot against the truck bed again. He hisses with the pain, his eyes threatening to roll back into his head. His boots scrape against the asphalt as instinct takes over and he tries to curl up into a defensive ball.
“I don’t expect you to remember Bennie.” I’m speaking directly against his throat, unable to make myself move away from that throbbing spot under his jaw. He winces every time my fangs touch his skin. I can feel his pulse, hot and dark, against my mouth. I can barely think. All I want is to bridge that gap, to find the shortest distance between two points. “But you’ll fucking well remember me.”
He lets out a strangled noise as I close my mouth around his throat, fangs piercing his stubbled skin, tongue seeking the wash of blood that escapes. He’s struggling again, in earnest, but I’ve got him pinned, my hands pressing his elbows against the bed of the truck, crouched over him like an animal, ripping flesh and muscle, the need to feed urgent and sharp.
Thirty seconds pass and I force myself to stop, to pull away. He leans weakly against the truck, and I tip my head back, letting the wind cool the hot blood smeared across my face. It’s been so long since I fed like this, from a real, live person, all that adrenaline dumping into my veins. I’m panting, and I know what I look like: pupils dilated, lips parted, skin flushed. A flood of endorphins like I’m having sex instead of a midnight snack.
“Not going to kill you,” I mutter, mostly to remind myself. I climb up into the bed of the truck and drag him up after me. I stumble over something, barely managing to keep my balance. I feel hot and full, like the night air, like my skin can’t quite hold everything in place, like I’m going to just fly apart at the joints.
It’s perfect.
Jason has pretty much stopped struggling. I sit on his hips, just in case, as I crouch over and latch back onto his throat. I push my tongue into the wound, trying to slow the blood. I don’t want to kill him. I really don’t.
He moans underneath me, and the predator in my head goes nuts, like I needed to hear that little pained noise to know that he’s mine, that he’s almost finished. I can feel my heart racing in my chest, and I do everything I can to rein myself in.
I come up for air again, panting, and jerk him up by his shirt. I’m sitting in his lap, his head tipped back, his throat raw and bloody, his arms drooping behind him.
And I kiss him.
He doesn’t respond at first, and I have to push my tongue between his lips to get his mouth to open. He twitches against me. I feel him swallow. My lips, my tongue, my teeth are all coated in his blood. He swallows again.
Then his fingers are twisting in my hair, snatching my head back so my throat is exposed to him. His teeth move blindly across the skin, trailing sharp bites, and I let him, content to wait until he sorts it out.
He pauses over the throbbing pulse in my throat and my breath stops in my lungs. I don’t dare move. Not everyone gets it, and that’s fine: Darwinism applies even to us. But I can’t fuck this one up.
Then he bites me, and it hurts just like I know it will, but the pain doesn’t matter. The kick of it just falls into that dump of adrenaline, just makes everything sharper, makes everything more significant. The moon hanging low and sullen over the horizon, the yellow streetlights buzzing. Sweat dripping down my face, mixing with my blood, sliding into the corners of Jason’s mouth. His tongue moves against my skin, and I shudder.
But he shoves me off of him, harder than he should have been able to. I fly off the bed of the truck and land on my back on the cracked asphalt. I grunt as I slam onto the ground, my breath gone.
“You fucking bitch,” he snarls. All the weakness from his voice and breath is gone, and when I manage to get up to my elbows, I see him squatting on the edge of the truck gate like an animal, one hand wrapped around the metal.
I smile, and I know how horrible I must look, my face covered in blood, my hair wild. I know, because he looks like that, too. “Too late, Jason.” I cough, still trying to regain my breath. “You and I both know it’s too late.”
“I’m going to kill you.” His voice is calm, controlled. More what I’d expect from a hunter than a drunk guy at a redneck bar.
I push myself up and cross my legs, dusting my palms off. “That’s fine,” I said. “You already killed my sister, and you see what I have left.” I spread my arms, indicating the bar, the bingo lot, the whole mess of the night. “Not a lot. So go ahead. But you need to understand something before you do.”
He sneers at me. “What’s that?”
I stand up, adjust my clothes, pull my matted hair into a ponytail. “You can come after me, hunter,” I say with a smirk, cocking an eyebrow and pointing a nonchalant finger at him, “but it doesn’t change what you are now.”
“No,” he says. “No. There’s a way to reverse it.”
I leap into the truck bed again, tackling him, slamming him back down with my full weight. I grab his shirt with both fists and pull him up to me, get right in his face. “You better not let your hunter buddies know what happened,” I whisper, grinning. “I hear they decapitate vampires, salt the stump, and burn the head. That would just be awful. Wouldn’t it?”
“They’ll find you,” he hisses.
I sigh and look around the truck bed. That thing I tripped over earlier is a tire iron. I stand up, content that he won’t run away from me—he’s too pissed.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“You want a monster?” I ask. I pick up the tire iron and swing it at his head. It connects with a meaty slap, the skin at his temple splitting like an overripe tomato. He goes down hard, his fall shaking the whole chassis.
“I’ll give you a fucking monster.” I drop the iron. The clatter of it landing is so loud it hurts my ears. I’m still not worried about being found out here, though. It’s too late—too early—too damn something for anyone to come to a bingo hall out by the interstate.
I hop out of the truck bed and head down to the main road. Broken asphalt grinds under my boots, and it occurs to me that I probably ought to think about moving on again. I step down onto the road, look both ways—who am I kidding, ain’t nobody in these parts at this time—and hook my fingers in the manhole at my feet. The weight of it forces a grunt from me as I lift it out and slide it to the side.
Back to the truck, ole Jason slung over my shoulder like a sack of grain, and I carry him down to the road. He’s well and turned, I know, so I let him slide off my shoulder down into the unbroken blackness of the sewer. The splash
as he hits bottom I find particularly pleasing. I hope he’s landed in a big pile of shit.
I slide the manhole cover back over, letting it slip back into its grooves. That tire iron won’t keep him down forever, but he’ll be mighty disoriented when he comes to. And hungry. And eventually he’ll make his way out.
I dust my hands together and walk back to my car.
He thinks he knows what a monster is. He ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Voodooesque
Eden Royce
Lillian
He waited until right before closing to come into my shop. Until all the fancy ladies from south of Broad had fled back to their palatial seafront homes, not wanting to be caught on the streets of uptown Charleston with Negroes like me.
“May I help you?” I asked.
“Possibly,” he replied with careful nonchalance.
He looked like one of those who wished Juneteeth had never happened. But it was now the twentieth century and the plantations had workers, not slaves. Nevertheless, he was Eugene Patterson and he was beyond the law.
Patterson took his time walking around Voodooesque. He looked at each of my shelves, stopping to sniff at a decanter here, admire a crystal atomizer there. He was in no hurry, even though the sun dipped and most well-bred families would be gathering for dinner. Finally he approached me, maintaining a respectable distance.
He looked at my neck, eyebrow raised. “That. It’s ivory, yes?” My necklace was made of bone carved into an intricate profile of a woman. The cameo faced to my left and the woman’s exposed eye was white in her painted face.
“Yes,” I lied. “It protects me from evil.”
“Of course it does,” he said with a smirk. He cleared his throat. “I am in need your assistance.”
I smiled for the first time since he entered my shop, ready give my practiced sales pitch. “Of course, a cologne. Bay rum is popular but if you’d like something original, I can create it for you.”
The Big Bad II Page 13