by P. T. Phronk
His foot stopped short of a maroon splotch soaking into the carpet. A step further, and the splotch turned into a smear. A step further, the smear was interrupted by tiny paw prints.
Bloody. He quickened his pace.
A gurgling cry echoed down the hallway. Stan nearly toppled over a maid’s cart as he rounded the corner into the open door the cry had come from.
Silhouetted by spotlights shining from the news vans below were two men. A man in a cloak stood by the window, holding a knife to the throat of the old man he’d seen there earlier. Bloody was by the door, crouched, with a deep growl rumbling in her throat.
“You came for me,” said the old man.
“I came for my dog,” said Stan. “C’mon, girl, we need to go.”
“No …” said the old man.
The cloaked figure pulled at the man’s hair and held the knife closer. “Shut up,” he said in an accented drawl. “You, take your dog, go. You, tell me the passcode before I prod it out of you.”
Stan moved to nudge Bloody out the door with his foot, but was met with a flurry of tiny gnashing teeth.
“Bad girl,” gasped Stan. Bloody had never even tried to bite him before.
The old man tried to jerk out from under the knife at his throat. The cloaked figure raised the knife above his head.
Bloody charged. She was so fast that one second she was by the door, and the next, her teeth were around the cloaked man’s wrist. The knife fell to the ground and the old man pounced on it.
When the cloaked man slammed Bloody against the wall, it was Stan’s turn to charge.
Covered in baggy cloth as he was, the cloaked man’s movements were difficult to predict. So when he dodged Stan’s attack, his body moved before the cloak could follow suit, and Stan found himself barreling through a sheet of loose fabric like a bull charging through a cape.
He tried to correct, but fury had given him too much momentum. His shoulder caught in the cloak and he tumbled sideways through the open window. He felt his feet flip over the rest of him, then sudden cold. He held on as the cloth pulled tight, then found himself dangling ten stories from the ground, his shoulders and wrists bent at an odd angle to grip the cloak with both handcuffed hands.
Just above him, the cloaked man’s cheek was mashed tight against the splintered window frame by Stan’s weight.
“So, your woman didn’t turn you,” the man said through gritted teeth, his gaze calmly flicking down to Stan’s flailing feet. He leaned forward to let the cloak slip off over his head.
A mottled arm wrapped around the cloaked man’s neck, then the old man’s head popped up beside it. He squeezed, making the muscles on his skinny arms pop like ground beef in shrink wrap. As Stan kicked at the side of the building, trying to pull himself up, he hazarded a glance at the old man’s blood-crusted face. Now, up close, he recognized that greasy hair, those wrinkle-lined eyes.
“Bob?!” he cried out. He jerked down suddenly. There was a ripping sound.
The old man looked past the gurgling cloaked figure. As the cloak ripped and Stan started to fall, helplessly coddling a piece of ripped cloak like a kid with a favorite blanket, he couldn’t hear anything through the wind rushing past his ears, but he saw his old friend Bob’s brow furrow as he mouthed: “the fuck are you doing here?”
Being moments from death several times in the last few weeks, Stan had the rare opportunity to identify patterns in the thoughts that run through one’s mind when one’s brain is about to be splattered on a sidewalk.
The slow motion of it was a constant. Like how as Stan fell, he had time to casually glance around. Behind him, he could see the little group of news vans parked across the street. In front of him, he could see the hotel, with its uppermost floors shooting flames from the windows and the entire right side raining concrete to the ground as it crumbled.
The slow motion applied to his thoughts as well, and his mind was free to wander in those last seconds of free fall. He figured this was the whole “life flashing before your eyes” stage of human decomposition.
He thought of Bob, who was, inexplicably, there watching Stan fall while strangling a man two—oh, now three—stories above. Bob, his old friend, who had helped Stan survive the last time he’d been in dire straits. Bob, who’d disappeared without warning, and who Stan had presumed to be long dead. Bones in a hole somewhere. But no, there he was, not exactly in the best of shape but very much alive.
Then he remembered that Bob had been Bloody’s master before Stan was. Back before Stan had found his dog snacking on rats and Italian food then called her Meatball, Bloodhound had hung out at Bob’s feet as they scavenged the streets of New York.
Somehow, the three of them had briefly reunited in a building falling to pieces as a crazed celebrity with vampire-like powers tried to kill his vampire stalker. One of life’s little coincidences.
Now five stories above, the cloaked man gained the strength to push Bob back into the room.
Stan thought about his mother. When he’d gone to New York for a better life, he’d dreamed of finding the money to help her. When he was running around with Bob living the homeless lifestyle, he’d felt the guilt of failing to help her more than he’d felt the misery of being hungry all the time. Five more stories and he’d never be able to help her.
He hoped her death was quick, at least. Weeks of torture and near-misses while waiting to die was not an exit plan he’d wish on his worst enemy (whose identity was no longer hypothetical, since she was right over there, in her room, sulking).
The lights of the news vans converged upon him as he reached the fourth story. He had time to acknowledge the appropriateness of dying on live television. If he’d been there with a camera, he’d have happily snapped pictures of the flailing body as it splattered on the ground, then sold them to tabloids to pay rent. Maybe he deserved to be the one doing the splattering for once.
Two more stories and his guilt would end. He hoped Bloody would be okay. Maybe Bob could take her back to New York and they could live together again, happily ever after. The circle of life.
Those hopes were dashed when the window he’d fallen from was obscured by a ball of purple fire erupting out of it.
“Bloody, no,” his lips slowly began to form.
Then he had the odd sensation that the top of the hotel was down and the ground was above him. Icy fingers closed around his waist and pulled him toward the sky, then wrenched him around so his feet touched the ground. Gravity shifted again and he was standing upright beside Dalla.
20. Just the Tip
WELL GOD DAMN, THAT ALEJANDRO cat could shoot fireballs.
After wriggling free of Morgan, the moustached freak dipped his fingers into a pocket of his cloak. They came out covered in a transparent goo. Alejandro inhaled. A scrap of memory deep in Morgan’s brain connected the look of the goo, the smell of it, and the intake of breath with danger.
He leapt toward the dog just as Alejandro’s breath hit his fingers and turned into a boulder of purple fire. Morgan felt his clothes buckle, then crack, then turn to ash. The leathery skin of his back bubbled in a million pinpricks of pain. The fire curled around to singe his arm hair, then his beard.
He faded to the sound of his old canine friend yelping in pain.
Stan screamed for his dog, demanding that she take him back. She didn’t. He found himself dragged through a hole in the side of the building, then racing through dark hallways. All around them, the walls shook with continued pounding, close now, and the rumble of fire roared from other floors.
She stopped to peek around the corner into one of the rooms, waited a moment, then dragged him in. A hole had been punched in the ceiling. She grabbed his waist and flew through the hole, through another room—this one splattered with blood—then into Dalla’s hotel room, though it was barely recognizable as such. The floor and the bed were buried under a layer of rubble and dust. The wall where Fox had punched through before was now completely gone. Half the ceiling, too, wa
s missing; Stan looked past jagged concrete edges and twisted girders to see straight through to the stars. He didn’t want to imagine what happened to the floors above this one.
“Why did you take me back here?” Stan asked.
“In case I get hungry. Again.” Her eyes flicked to the side, and Stan followed her gaze to a swollen foot sticking out of the rubble.
“Every time I ask why you saved me, you say it’s so you can have the pleasure of killing me. Why don’t you just fucking do it already?”
She sighed. That soft, human expression crossed her face.
“You know I can’t kill you,” she said.
One of the remaining walls imploded. A chunk of concrete the size of microwave flew at Stan’s head. Dalla’s arms surrounded around him. Through her body, he could feel the vibration as pieces of the collapsing building collided against her body. Thud, thud, thud, like an irregular heartbeat.
“I can’t let you die. I can’t kill you,” she mumbled as if she was talking in her sleep.
It was too much. Stan allowed his eyes to close. His mind flashed back to that horrible eruption of fire from the room Bloody was in.
Minutes later, Dalla released her protective grip. Most of the room was gone now; all that remained were the floor and a few chunks of wall where Dalla and Stan had smeared their blood over carved symbols. Cold air blew freely into the protective bubble that kept Fox from getting to them.
“He’s going to get in soon. Whatever you did to the walls, as soon as another flying boulder takes it out, we’re next. We need to run.”
“You’re so observant, Stanley,” she said. She noticed the handcuffs around his wrist. After yanking at the chain until it broke, she held his hands in hers. They locked eyes.
A voice interrupted them: “Fox!” it bellowed from above. Stan looked up. The cloaked guy—the one who’d dropped him then killed Bloody—stood on the roof, peering over the jagged remains of the floor above them. “Let me do it.”
Fox appeared beside the cloaked figure, then put a hand on his shoulder.
“Let’s talk,” he said. He glanced at Stan and Dalla. “B. R. B.”
The two of them strolled out of view.
“He’s distracted,” Stan said through clenched teeth. “Run, or take him out while you’ve got an advantage. Do something.”
She sighed. “He’ll never love me.”
Stan put his hands on the sides of her face. He pulled her close. He shut his eyes and channeled all his pain into his lips as they met hers. For a moment she was stiff, but then her lips danced with his. Their tongues met.
Her fangs extended on either side of his wriggling tongue. His cock extended in his pants.
For a few moments, his mind was blank. When her lips parted from his, and when his thoughts returned, the one that terrified him most was the uncertainty about whether the kiss was a ploy, or something he genuinely needed. Maybe even wanted.
“He is not the only one who can love you,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if that was genuine either.
A tear fell from each of her puffy eyes. Her lips formed into a vampire grin.
“Let’s kill him, Stanley,” she said. “I have always loved him so, but he needs to shuffle off.”
“Ow, ow, fuck,” said Morgan. He must have only been out for a few seconds, but he felt like he’d been asleep for hours. His dog nipped at his arm.
She barked and pointed toward the door. Her black nose was pink from all the flesh burned off of it, and her fur was half the length it should’ve been, ending in frayed black ends.
“I know I know, we gotta get outta here,” he mumbled.
Morgan’s dog closed her eyes and shook her head back and forth. She barked once more, then left the room.
Morgan felt like the skin on his back was sloughing off with every step, which was probably exactly what was happening. He followed his dog out of the room and toward the stairs. She was halfway up to the next floor.
“He up there? You wanna go up? Care about him that much, huh?” He hesitated for a moment, then realized he was probably destined for a hospital bed where he’d wait to die of infected burn wounds if he left now. There wasn’t much to lose. He followed his dog up the stairs.
They came to a door labeled roof. There were muffled voices behind it. Morgan put his ear to the door while his dog stamped her feet impatiently.
“… I deal with those two, I just want to say that I appreciate your loyalty,” said Mister Fox’s voice.
“Yes,” said another voice—the accented drawl of Alejandro. Once again, Morgan was reminded of the night he overheard them in the basement.
“You know the reason for all this, don’t you? I never wanted all this … well, this attention. It’s exhausting. My every action scrutinized, my every move tracked. Did you know I never loved her?” He laughed. “Such a perfect couple, everyone said. All the tabloids. Imagine the kids! And I believed them. I never loved her, but I fucked a baby into her belly because they told me it’s what I should do.”
He paused. “Now you see me.” He paused again. “Now you don’t. I can disappear. It’s all I’ve ever wanted, Alejandro. Some privacy.”
“Yes. Damien, we should attend to the interloperters.”
Morgan didn’t think that was a real word. He looked at his dog and shrugged. The dog shrugged back.
“You’ve seen what has come along with disappearing. When we find the other brat, we’ll have twice the power. I can fucking fly, Alejandro. And, well, now that I have all this, sharing it with someone would be a bummer, you know?”
“What?”
“For all I know, it’d go to your head and you’d spoil my secret. I need this, you understand? I need this secret. All to myself.”
There was a grunt, then a thump.
“I liked you Alejandro. Part of me even loved you.”
An indecipherable accented mumble.
“Yes, them too. After you. Close your eyes and hush, Alejandro. They will be next.”
Morgan’s dog began to growl. Morgan put his finger to his lips, but she barked anyway.
The door to the roof opened. Fox had his eyes closed. He held the knife—that same type of knife with the curvy bit at the end—to his face. He was in the process of licking Alejandro’s blood off of it, slowly, savouring the moment. Behind him, spotlights darted across clouds tinted red with reflected fire.
He opened his eyes. They locked with Morgan’s.
“Mister Morgan.”
Morgan nodded. “Mister Damien. You’re fixin’ to kill me too I suppose.”
Fox nodded. “‘Fraid so. But look, well, I really appreciate everything you did for me.”
Morgan took a step back and pressed into the railing behind him. Sizzling pain shot from his burned back. Whether from the pain or from the adrenaline rush resulting from a bloody knife bearing down to end his life, the next moments seemed like a series of snapshots.
Snapshot: a blurry shape appears behind Fox.
Snapshot: a woman leaping over Alejandro’s body.
Snapshot: she crouches behind Fox.
The vampire pushes off the ground; her blood-crusted hand grips the back of Fox’s head. Fox’s feet leave the ground.
Snapshot: Fox’s head is jerked back, his face raised to the sky. His mouth is open in surprise, so when he is shoved into the doorframe, he is forced to wrap his jaw around the wooden edge. His bottom row of teeth, previously so perfectly aligned in a row, buckle outward, then fly from his mouth. His head keeps going, but his jaw is left wedged against the frame. With a crunch, his jaw gives way and hangs at an angle that doesn’t align properly with the rest of his head.
The snapshot haze ended when a rain of teeth, blood, and spit splashed against Morgan’s face. He glanced down; his dog was gone, but a squishy bit of flesh jiggled on the floor. Gosh damn, Mister Damien had lost the tip of his tongue.
21. Collapsing in Her Arms
THE GUY IN THE CLOAK looked pretty dead, so that was good
news. Fox's head smashing against the roof exit, that was good too. The best, though, was seeing Bloody, charred like a burned chicken but very much alive.
She bounded from the chaos then licked the wounds on Stan's face.
“Thank God," said Stan.
Bloody barked. Behind her, Dalla tossed Fox to the concrete, leapt in the air, then smashed into him.
“There’s a fire escape at the back. Let's hope there's enough of it left for us to get down."
Bloody shook her head from side to side, then glared at the doorway.
"Is your friend still in there? Bob?" The implausibility of his old friend Bob being there again struck Stan, but there was no time to think about it, and he couldn't just leave him there.
Dalla drove her fists into Fox's face. As Stan passed, he heard scraps of her muttering: “not so pretty now; I never loved you; you never loved me.”
Indeed, what was left of his face was not so pretty. More mushy than pretty.
They had almost reached the door when it slammed shut in front of them, turning a tooth lodged in the doorframe to dust. Dalla blocked his way.
“You’re not leaving yet,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Yes, I—” he began.
Fox laughed behind her, an easy flowing, hysterical chuckle. He hoisted himself to his feet. “It’sh not enough,” he said. “It looksh like I can take whatever you can dish, monshter.”
She lunged, but he was already off the ground.
Stan tried the door, but it was jammed in its broken frame. He stuck his foot against the wall and pulled. Bloody tugged at the back of his belt.
He heard a thud and looked over his shoulder. Fox had been tossed to the ground, leaving a crater of cracked concrete. A moment later he was back in the air.
Stan yanked. His missing finger made getting a good grip on the knob more difficult than it should have been. The door started to give, but then his hand slipped. Bloody yelped as Stan nearly tumbled on top of her.