by Davis, SJ
***
I sat in the car and waited for 30 minutes before I realized that I did not have to. I mean why am I waiting on Hunter? He is, no doubt, in the library getting sucked off by someone. Maybe the librarian…who fucking knows but I stepped out and onto the street as the sun was making its way over the horizon and my time…the time of the vampire was here. Nightfall is such a relief to me and I know that it is to Hunter. We are stronger and more cunning, better at moving quickly, charming and killing and the prey is everywhere, in every club on every corner. I pulled out my bottle of diet pills and swallowed some with a shaky hand as two girl walked by me laughing. Their voices echoed in my ears and I should just fucking give in already. I do in spurts anyway but something in me tries so hard to be human, something sad and lonely and wishing things were different, that my humanity had remained intact and my sanity really. Something that would allow me to love…someone, maybe someone like Riley, I cannot forget that the memory glitches still prevail, I still lose things…track of moments in time and it is not getting better…in fact it is getting worse…so much more so, that I…
I stopped as a man spoke to me and I looked up, wondering how the fuck I got here. I looked around me.
“Baby girl, it’s 25 to get in early,” he said to me. I looked up, he was a large man, a bouncer at a club no doubt and I focused in on the people in line behind me bitching as I must have passed them all by and walked up like the royalty that I am.
“I don’t pay,” I said and he leaned up to me and looked me over.
“Everyone pays”
“I do not,” I said as I touched his arm and he suddenly switched gears on me and lifted the red rope line. Everyone grumbled behind us but he allowed me through as my vampire charms overtook his senses and caused him to enter a state of euphoria and extreme calm. I guess that is a plus does not even out all the negative shit.
I walked up the steps as they lit up under my feet and felt nothing. No joy. No excitement, no want for the “hunt” as Hunter called it. In fact I am not even horny, which sucks ass. I stopped as a girl floated up like a pixie all cute and annoying and cocked her head as she looked me over.
“You look like you could use a pick me up doll!” she said and I raised an eyebrow at her. I mean how fucking chipper and annoying. I looked her over and looked at her small breasts under the green tinted plastic wrap on her upper body. Her stomach was flat but she was small, smaller than me and I am somewhat tiny.
“What do you mean?” I asked her and she grinned and took my hand as she start to pull away, me with her…a vampire, and something that could kill her in 3 seconds, but she was cute I guess, in a kitten sort of way? I grinned as that crossed my mind. That was so ridiculous of me to think. To start rationalizing the humans, I mean eventually I will be a calculated fuckhead like Hunter, someone who has risen above everything and is top of the food chain then I stopped and jerked my hand from the cute little cupie doll and realized what I smelled was not perfume and cologne, but that of something I knew all to fucking well. I looked up and a bitch swung across the room on a swing and a droplet of red hit my cheek as I blinked and reached up and wiped it with my finger tip and pulled my hand out ever so slowly and the sweetness glistened in the club lights. Fucking blood…this is a cutters paradise, fuck me. Miss wrapped in plastic stepped up to me and raised a small knife and grinned as she cut it across her arm quickly and hissed, laughing all psychotic and then licking it and letting the blood infiltrate her teeth. She grinned and I stepped back hoping like hell my teeth did not just jettison out of my mouth and take her face off. I pressed on my stomach as the growl rumbled through it and almost doubled me over and she giggled and started to dance, letting the blood drip on the floor around her. I bit my lip as hard as I could to keep my mouth shut, keep my mind on something else, some small annoying pain in my flesh as I tore through it with my teeth and then it happened. The devil stepped out, wearing only a half mask this time and letting his lips catch my attention. I seem to have a fetish for lips I know, just fucking bear with me. He grinned slightly as he saw me standing there all pathetic and fighting my urges and he approached me without caution which would have made Hunter livid. He likes to feel as if everything is beneath him and me and maybe they are, but this masked demon is not and he had shown me that he had something we also had, a predatory nature and strength only added to by speed. My confusion rested on how he did not smell of vampire as Hunter did. In fact he smelled….human.
“You are alone,” he said to me, suddenly at my ear.
“No, Hunter will be here.”
“Mmm. No, he will not,” he said and I looked at him and narrowed my eyes as he stepped in front of me.
“Why do you say that?” I asked him and he grinned and looked me over.
“Hunter is not concerned with you mostly, he thinks of his own pleasure first, as should you,” he said and I looked around us and spotted the exit.
“Hunter is a dick but he cares for me, he has for a long time.”
“Even in death you act like a girl,” he said and I clinched my fists.
“Excuse me?”
“You changed when? At 18? What a beautiful time to become immortal and yet a terrible time, to not be quite emotionally mature enough to handle such things.”
“I am mature!” I yelled at him, shocking myself at how immature I was acting. He paused and looked at my face for a moment and lingered there, it actually made me feel uncomfortable and I turned to walk away. I felt his hand on my arm and jerked it from him as I looked back and stared him down.
“I should fucking kill you, right here, right now.”
“And yet you don’t, is it you are curious about me and what I can do to you?” he asked me.
“It is the fucking crowd. I am a vampire remember? I do not need everyone knowing that shit.”
He grinned and I saw his teeth, they looked similar to a vampires teeth, but not at the same time and he closed his mouth quickly as if to hide them from me.
“I am confused by you,” I said as he circled me like a hyena. I started to feel like food and the thumping music in the club was the dinner bell.
“By me?”
“Yes,” I said as I stood my ground and scanned the room, seeing what all I could use if he suddenly snapped and tried to break me in half.
He stopped and tilted his head and I watched him breathing, felt the air come across the space between us and then hit me. Again, human stench, the blood and living but decaying flesh filled my nostrils, what a confusing thing and what the fuck is he?
“I find you intriguing, you are infected fully and yet you fight it, with whatever you can muster to have some hint of humanity. I would guess that is torturous.”
I laughed and tried to look relaxed although with each passing moment I am getting more and more irritated.
“I guess I enjoy it, the torture that is.”
He chuckled; I guess I would have on the receiving end of that.
“So…where does that leave us?” he asked me.
“I need to know,” I said to him as I looked down allowing him to understand that I did believe he was stronger than me by lowering my head. It works in all animal groups; I would assume he would understand my gesture. I felt his hand on my chin and his flesh was cold, like mine and he lifted my chin so That I had to look into his eyes.
“I am legion,” he said to me and he opened his mouth and rows of teeth became exposed suddenly and I screamed out as I dropped to the ground, him biting at me and missing the flesh he craved. I rolled as he slammed his foot into the floor of the club and everyone scattered to the outer edges as his foot left a broken crater in the floor. His strength was much more than I expected it to be and his mouth terrified me…yes, terrified an immortal vampire.
I scrambled to my feet and spun around as he turned to see me and he ripped off his devil mask and showed me his true face, pale white, black eyes and black veins running through it. He cried out and the sheer volume of it and
pitch made my teeth hurt and I swear I could hear a small fracture run through my jaw and into one of my elongated fangs. I held my hand over my mouth and he cracked his neck from side to side and stared me down.
“Legion…as in demon?” I asked him.
He laughed and spit flew from his mouth and hit the floor, causing it to bubble up slightly and a small plume of smoke curled up from it.
“Many,” he said as his voice fractured and he sounded like a few people, proving his statement of “many”.
“So…why? Why is a demon, or many demons after me? Or Hunter for that matter?”
He laughed, it sounded strained and he coughed at the end of it making me narrow my eyes as he wiped his mouth and licked the venom, shuddering with the sting of it.
“You are a menace, a shit stain on what we have going on here…no souls, no job,” he said and I shook my head.
“No souls?”
“Yes you whore, you and your boyfriend change these monkeys into vampires and when do we get them? Never,” he said.
“So what…Satan sent you?” I asked him.
He laughed at me again which was just starting to piss me off quite honestly.
“I am Satan you stupid bitch.”
“Fuck me,” I yelled out as he pulled his gun and shot at me, sending a barbed looking hook device right past my face. I could see my reflection in the smooth surface as well as the black tentacles of muck clinging to the edges of it with rows of teeth also. I rolled in the air and landed easily as it hit a human behind me in the eye and started to consume its flesh with black ooze.
“Well shit,” I said, as I looked back the demon.
“I am a bitch, you got that shit right!” I yelled at him as I decided to take a stand, I mean it is either that or fucking get wrecked by this smelly fuck. I jumped up into the air and let my foot give him a good hit upside his head and he stumbled to the side which excited me and gave me something vampires never feel…hope. He recovered quickly snatched my foot from the air and spun me around like a dead doll.
I yelled as he made me into a helicopter propeller and then I saw him, Hunter… he came in dragging to new friends…that of Riley and Sage, who both had some wear and tear on them as in Hunter smacked the shit out of them. I yelled and it came out in waves of sound as the demon dickhead under me continued to spin me above his head.
“Oh that is attractive,” Hunter said as he let Riley and Sage go and they stayed put like obedient dogs.
“Hunter...fucking help me out here,” I screamed at him and with that the legion of shit tossed me and I hit the wall, causing a huge crack to form up it and slid down, into a pile of fucked up. Hunter glanced at me and I shook the plaster from my hair.
“So…what have we got here Vanessa?” he asked me.
“Legion,” I said and Riley looked at his sister and she looked at the floor.
“Oh perfect,” Hunter muttered as he grabbed Sage and drug her forward. He stopped and tossed her forward as she fell at the demons feet.
Riley stepped forward and Hunter held his hand up behind him and Riley stopped and quite honestly it impressed me, I won’t tell Hunter though.
“Sage,” Hunter said and she looked up at the demon and tilted her head. Then she started to mutter and at first it sounded like nothing but gibberish but then she got louder and started to stand up and the words became clear as she quoted scripture by heart and called out verse and all…
Matthew 4:10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
Matthew 16:23 But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.
Mark 4:15 And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts.
Mark 8:33 But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.
Luke 10:18 And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.
Luke 13:16 And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?
Luke 22:31 And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: 32 But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.
Acts 26:18 To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.
Romans 16:20 And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
2 Corinthians 2:11 Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.
2 Corinthians 11:14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
1 Thessalonians 2:18 Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again; but Satan hindered us.
2 Thessalonians 2:9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
Revelation 3:9 Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.
Revelation 20:2 And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years
With each verse the demon cried out and tried to cover his ears, but it was to no avail, Sage spoke the words loud and clear and with conviction and she alone held the sword with her tongue. I was in shock and stood up as the demon cowered before her and then started to sink in his own filth of bubbling black blood and chunks of flesh. I covered my mouth as the room filled with bile that burned the nostrils and caused what cowering humans remained to choke on it and fall dead in its wake. Then just as he had been, he disappeared into a hole in the floor and it sealed itself up tight as Sage held her hands out and continued to pray in sense. The only thing that remained was the gun and she reached down and Hunter was on it quick as I have ever seen him and he cocked it and held it to her face and she stood with no fear and stared him down.
“Hunter? What the fuck just happened here?” I asked and Hunter never took his eyed from hers.
“Well, this is Riley and Sage…they are a troublesome duo of shit that I have come across before but they looked different the last time.”
“The last time?”
“Yes… in, what was it Sage? 1589? Maybe 90? When you were 10, who fucking cares right? I mean you tried to kill me then too, along with your asshole brother here.”
I looked at Riley completely lost.
“Riley?”
He ignored me and kept his eyes on Sage and Hunter.
“These two are witches Vanessa, very cunning bitches too, although I am still trying to fucking figure out how you survived the fire?” he asked Sage, who kept her mouth shut. Hunter cocked the weapon and Riley held his hand up and shook his head.
“Trade,” he said and Hunter looked at him.
“What trade?”
“Souls, ours…we go to hell when we die.”
“Oh, how pleasant, although I would guess you give this cunt a week and she will be running it,” Hunter said as he glared at Sage.
“I need the story Hunter…I mean what happened.”
Hunter laughed and shook the gun at Sage.
“Go ahead Sage…or should I say Jane?” he said and I looked at her.
“Witches plagued our village,” she muttered and Hunter hit her across the face and she fell. Riley moved but Hunter pointed the gun at him.
“This little
bitch killed many for amusement.”
I laughed and shook my head and Hunter was not amused.
“Including Alice, John and Agnes,” he said as he looked shaken by their names.
“Hunter?”
He leaned down and grabbed Sage by the hair and jerked her up onto her feet and drug her to the staircase, he started to climb and drug her along with him as she struggled to break free. I ran after him and Riley followed cautiously behind me.
Hunter held her out over the balcony and let her feet dangle as he held onto the front of her shirt.
“You killed them for amusement, and that of your brother here,” Hunter said as he ground his teeth. Riley started to run and I tripped him and he fell down the stairs, screaming as I heard his leg crack in two places and he landed at the bottom, moaning and spitting up bile.
“Hunter…talk to me. Please,” I said.
He looked at me with sorrow in his eyes and it actually disturbed me. I did not know he was capable of such feelings and quite honestly it was one of the main reasons I fought so hard to hang on to some humanity.
“My family, she killed my family to hide the fact that she practiced witchcraft, her and her sadistic fuck of a brother down there, they turned them over to the church as witches and a warlock and that included me, all because my Mother saw that she was faking her “possessions” along with her four sisters, her brother stood by and protected them as my as my family was martyred for amusement and childish games…they killed them and I would have died to, but I ran…like a coward and I received what I should have for not trying to save them, I was bitten by a beast of man in the woods and fucked relentlessly for days as a slave to his will, all the while smelling the charred flesh of my family as it floated through the woods.”
“Fucking hell Hunter,” I said as Sage struggled and he held her tightly.
“So now what…they are immortals?”
Hunter laughed. “Oh no…no, they are not. They extend their lives by collecting people and sending them to be fed on in hell, but what a prize…right Jane? I mean to come across me and Vanessa! Fucking vampires! Forever escaping hells wrath! What a fucking prize to have but then again, you knew who I was at first site and your hatred for me and “my kind” alerted me to a bias I had not seen in ages, one stirred up by a child and her evil will, but you summoned him and offered the greatest prize but that gun gave you away…why, why did you keep it?” he asked her.