The Other Kind (The Progeny of Evolution Series)

by Arsuaga, Mike

Most of my days went pretty much like that. Take your pick.

  At least it took my mind off worrying over the reluctance to share her past.

  * * * *

  The day started as one of the first kind for us. She thought she found a laugh line around one of her eyes, flying into a snit when I tried to explain lycans don’t get wrinkles until they are well past two hundred.

  “I can too see the lines,” she wailed from behind the bathroom door. “They’re as plain as day.” Next, she took off on a tirade, addressing first the subjects of gaining weight, no longer being attractive, and her insides being messed up. Even her period was off, she cried, going on to speculate she had cancer. When she accused me of wanting to leave her for Cynthia, I had enough. Sneaking a quick glance at young pussy didn’t count.

  “How can you say such a thing?” I was offended. “She’s a child. You‘re my soul mate.” I spent the next five minutes defining how much of a soul mate. I meant all of it, because Sam on her worst day beat the hell out of no Sam at all.

  Slowly the door opened.

  The next thing, we found ourselves in bed. Sam applied a sweet smelling lubricant to my manhood and stroked it to full erection. I shifted position so we lay head to toe and I could more comfortably reach her. She did not need lubricant. I thought of how women are lucky in one respect because they have orgasm after orgasm while we, even young vampires at the peak of their virility, need recovery time. Any female can drain the ardor of a dozen men. As I inserted my index finger through the slick heat of her hot crevice and began to rub the fibrous front wall of her inner core, I felt suddenly old.

  Sam rubbed the warming ointment around the tip of my member. I’m circumcised. She concentrated on the part where the good doctors cut away the foreskin. The nerves happily trembled under her touch. She felt for the vein pulsing immediately below the surface. Soon a thick hardness throbbed powerfully in her stroking grip. To my pleasant surprise she did not lose focus on me when I found her G spot.

  “Right…Right there,” she shuddered. “Oh yes!”

  Her hips plunged at a furious, repetitive pace into the bed to maximize the pressure and friction against my finger. She sought to satisfy the omnipresent urge continuously burning down there. The insatiable rubbing against my finger suggested a desire for total communion with digital contact. Her breathing became faster and more labored. The squeaking groan of the bed frame filled the room, alongside the noises of our passion. Her heart raced at a hundred and eighty beats per minute but she never missed a stroke on me. I have long fingers, and knew my way around in the viscid darkness of her passion. I touched places my explorations had rarely been. She found release in a flurry of convulsive spasms, collapsing into the damp furrow she made in the bed.

  After a few minutes she sat up and, to my surprise, flipped onto her hands and knees.

  “Why do this?” I asked, “I know it’s uncomfortable for you and...” I almost mentioned Leon Aubrey made her take the position when he raped her.

  “It’s all right. I know you like it.” She said, anticipating my concerns.

  “Come on,” she coaxed cheerily.

  I took in the image of her small butt lifted high in the air, offered to me. Enough daylight penetrated the drapes to reveal the light pink glow of her sweet flesh, starkly contrasted against the caramel color of her body. As gently as possible I inserted my shaft almost vertically. She shivered with a long sigh. As she raced to climax I reached around to massage her hot bud, which is one of the benefits of doggie style. She stiffened and sucked in a deep lung full of air at my touch.

  I watched myself go in and out of her. The avid cling of her glistening portal as it gradually darkened to blood red triggered my climax, in turn bringing on hers. The membrane separating and defining the individuality of our souls relaxed for a moment. Together we fell through a dazzling few instants of pleasure and creation.

  The ringing telephone jangled me awake. Sam mumbled, pulling the rest of the covers over her. I sat up and glanced at the clock. The digits announced past 1:00 a.m. The ID said the call originated at a payphone. “This better be good,” I muttered. I put the receiver against my ear, mumbling a hello into it.

  “Doctor Jim, this is Ed,” said the frantic voice on the other end. “You gotta come quickly. Something bad just happened.”

  “Take it easy Ed,” I replied. Sam stirred, all smooth cheek, red hair, and small pink seashell shaped ear. I leaned over and painted the ear with my tongue.

  “You gotta come!” Ed persisted. “It’s an emergency.”

  “Okay. Okay.” I said, trying to calm him while still gathering my wits. “Are you at home?”

  “No, I’m out.” He gave me the address.

  “What’s going on?” Sam asked, rolling over to face me.

  “Ed’s having an issue,” I said.

  “Should I come with you?”

  “No need. It’s probably nothing. You know Ed.”

  Ed directed me to a wide boulevard in a fashionable part of town. Hundred year old live oaks reached toward one another from each side of the thoroughfare. As I tooled down the silent dew-slick pavement approaching the address, a spidery figure leaped into view ahead, desperately flagging me down from under a street lamp. After pulling over, I rolled down the window.

  “Hurry,” Ed cried breathlessly. “She’s over here.”

  She? Ed brought me to a service alley behind a row of houses. From between two garbage cans, a pair of bare feet stuck out in the moonlight. I crouched down, shined a pen flashlight into the darkness between the cans, and observed for the first time in nearly a century the remains of a blooder kill.

  A young woman lay on the ground. Her face contorted in the wide-eyed, open-mouthed expression of violent death. She wore a school uniform. The white blouse stained nearly black by blood and ripped open, exposed small breasts. The skirt, similarly stained, rode up to the waist. Her legs made a wide ‘V.’ She wore no panties.

  I turned. “Tell me you didn’t…” I awaited his answer.

  He avoided my stare. “But it’s not like you think.”

  “How could you? She’s only a child. Living in this neighborhood means she will be missed. The police will be all over it.”

  “It’s not like you think,” he repeated.

  “Why don’t you clear it up for me?”

  He squatted in the moonlight. “I make night deliveries. I usually hit this neighborhood at around ten o’clock. You do know I got this delivery job for the brewery downtown?”

  I said I did and he continued. “I cut through this street doing the speed limit on the way to Jernigan’s over on Tenth when she shot out of the alley on a bike. I didn’t even have time to hit the brakes. She went right under the truck.”

  I glanced at the human mess in the shadow of the garbage cans. “Well, how did she get like this?”

  “I’m coming to that. I get out of the truck. She’s not moving. She’s limp as a rag doll. I figure she’s dead. I decided to carry her over by the cans and leave her.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police? It was an accident.”

  “No, they might order me to jail. I can’t go. I’d starve. I don’t have reserves like you youngsters do.”

  He had a point. “So what happened next?”

  “I’m carrying her over to the trash cans fireman style, getting a powerful whiff of her sweet young pussy. It tempted me, but I knew better. So I’m almost where I wanted to put her when she comes to. She’s not dead after all. She sees me, gets a horrified look, and starts screaming. What could do? I snapped her neck.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No,” Ed hesitated. “She looked so good, lying on the ground like a sleeping angel. Since she was already dead, I thought what the hell.”

  I still didn’t believe he did it. “You drained her and had sex with her?”

  He put his head down, refusing to meet my accusing stare. “Once I started I couldn’t stop myself and made the mess you see here,”
he mumbled. “Do you think we can blame it on that ‘Poser’ fellow?”

  “No, this is nothing like the way he does it.” I thought for a minute. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s get her back to the apartment. We’ll determine if Sam can use her for kill and figure what to do with you if someone comes our way asking questions.” I pictured, without relish, another trip to Milton’s place. I tossed Ed the car keys. “There’s a clean body bag in the trunk. Get it.”

  By daylight we returned to the apartment with the dead girl. Sam waited at the door. “We have trouble,” she said.

  I threw a prayerful glance to the heavens. “When it rains it pours. You go first.”

  “It’s Jethro.”

  Jethro Lee missed the last five group meetings. His attendance dropped since Cynthia left but he had never gone absent for five in a row. Now we understood why. He discovered Cynthia’s location and went to join her. When he showed up, unannounced, one of the hands nearly died playing Sir Galahad. Cynthia and Miltie chased him off. As she put it, “I’d rather seal my pussy with concrete than let the little asshole stick his yellow junk in me.”

  “Otherwise, is she all right?” I asked.

  “Yes. The business with Jethro stirred a lot of excitement, probably the highlight of the winter. What about you?”

  After an inspection of the girl’s remains Sam judged them to be fit kill. We put the body in the tub where Sam cleaned off the dirt and road cinders and quickly prepared her for the freezer. I drove Ed back to his truck. Dropping him off I told him to act as if nothing happened.

  This time getting leave for a trip to Milton’s was not so easy. Many of the faculty already made plans. Sam found the same situation at the museum. The earliest we could get mutual time off was the second week of November. Since nothing directly connected Ed or the rest of us to the missing girl the urgency eased. It also worked out for Sam, giving her time to email Dr. Ortiz regarding the advisability of seeking local medical attention for her headaches and nausea. After telling her it should be all right, she made an appointment for later in the week.

  * * * *

  I sat in my office between classes on a perfect November Indian summer day. The willows lost their leaves. The branches dangled forlornly like weighted yellow tendrils in the still air. The live oaks still showed a meager dusty green, a mixture of leaf and Spanish moss. In the glen where the hawks formerly nested, the trees wore a variety of fall colors. I thought how things showed solid signs of falling in place. Cynthia announced plans to return after the first of the year. Apparently the group lost Jethro as he hadn’t attended a meeting since the incident at the ranch. Perhaps Cynthia should have shown more consideration, but two centuries stretched ahead of him, plenty of time to find someone else.

  The clock announced ten to three. Sam should have completed the examination. I pictured the scene. “You mean you’ve never been sick,” the doctor would ask after reading her intake form. “Not even a cold?” I fervently hoped we would get answers about her mysterious condition.

  I waited until the last seconds before the class, and still no phone call. Worry sniffed at the edge of my mind, especially the fear she expressed over having cancer.

  “There is no known instance of a lycan or vampire younger than two hundred and fifty contracting cancer.” Dr. Ortiz insisted. My relief deflated when I remembered he based the conclusion on small samples, and anecdotal recollections gathered from the community.

  Predictably my lecture rambled, ending in vague homework assignments. Not that the Freshman Calculus students noticed, anyway. After finishing it, I immediately returned to the office. Ideas on how to best track Sam down raced in my mind as I rounded the heavy polished oak doorframe leading to the reception area of the professor’s offices.

  Sam sat primly in the fan-backed chair I contributed to the room décor when I joined the faculty. She held her compact little body erect with legs crossed and breasts jutting out ahead. She chatted gaily with a group of male students who flocked around while waiting for consultations with other professors. Observing her ebullient demeanor, I thought whatever the doctor found must not be too serious, definitely not cancer.

  From the shock of red hair to the color in her face and the flash of small white teeth as she spoke, she appeared to glow. How she could believe herself to be anything but beautiful? Sure the extra weight went to her breasts and hips. There might have even been a smidge of pooch on her belly, but there were also images like the one I now witnessed, of a vibrant dynamic Sam everyone wanted to be around.

  Her eyes brightened when she spotted me. “Jim!” she exclaimed as she rose to her feet, abandoning the conversation group, and rushed to me. The students must have assumed she was one of them, there for a faculty advisor appointment, because they let out a collective gasp of surprise when she pressed her body against mine and elevated on her tiptoes to give me a warm kiss on the mouth.

  “Way to go, Doctor White,” I heard one of them mutter under his breath.

  “You seem to be in high spirits,” I said as we stepped into my office and closed the door to the disappointment of the reception room gathering.

  Sam sat down. “I have good news. We found out what’s the matter with me.”

  “Good. If you need to fill a prescription, drop it at the campus pharmacy and go home. I’ll pick it up after work.”

  “What I have doesn’t need medicine. At least, not yet,” Sam said cryptically. In reply to the question I prepared to ask, she reached into the core of her being for a tone of voice that reflects absolute happiness. It is appropriate for maybe one or two occasions in a lifetime. “I’m pregnant, Jim. I’m pregnant!” she exclaimed.

  Chapter Nine

  The Girl on the Western Front Becomes the All American Girl

  Sam went home. After work I arrived to find her sitting in the middle of our bed along with the contents of the memorabilia box. Photographs, letters, and mementos, the box’s contents, deployed around her, sorted and organized into neat piles. Across the room the television, turned low, murmured the evening local news. Police found “The Poser’s” third victim.

  As my shadow crossed the scene she raised her eyes. “I think I’m ready to talk about my past now,” she said, patting an open space on the duvet indicating where I should sit. “There’s a group meeting tonight, but we’ve enough time.”

  Taking a seat, my heart pounded in expectation of learning her past.

  She took an old photograph from the box and handed it to me. “This is a family portrait taken just before the war. I was born in 1898 at a village named Maison Blanche, just inside France near Ypres.”

  I held the grainy and faded photograph. “I was the youngest of five children. That was taken right before the war. There’s Mama and Papa. The young men are my brothers, Armand and Louie. With them are sisters, Daphne and Claire.”

  I examined the faded handwritten names in the bottom margin. “Your name was Jeanne?”

  “Yes, Jeanne Breaux. When I fell behind the others of my age in development, Mama brought me to the local doctor. He diagnosed me as disabled, probably retarded. Over time my infirmity increasingly bothered the women of my family. Mama remained dutiful but unloving. She referred to me as ‘her cross to bear in this life.’ My sisters, especially Daphne, were worse.”

  Sam handed me another picture as a faint smile crossed her face. A tall young priest stared stiffly back. “That is Father Laurent, the only friend I had before emergence. When I was seven, he demanded my parents send me to mass and Catechism in preparation to receive the sacraments.

  “Because of my mental and physical slowness, the sisters placed me with the younger children. While among them I felt happiest. I believe my affinity for children, and babies, began then.”

  She passed over a picture of a dozen school girls, dressed in lacy pinafores. All but one, smaller than the rest, she wore roughly mended clothes.

  “By sixteen, I caught up in many respects with those my age. Always smaller an
d weaker than the others, my reading and ability with numbers improved, placing me no worse than the lower third of my peers. I graduated, in a sense, from hopelessly handicapped, to being merely dim-witted.”

  A yellowed folded newspaper came next. I opened it to see the front page covered by two words. “La Guerre!” Sam continued. “Daphne’s husband Claude left right before the Germans arrived. They spent a last night together in Daphne’s bedroom. Within a week he died in the charnel house known as the First Battle of the Marne.

  “My senses improved. In previous weeks I began to hear, smell, and see things others could not. It happened temporarily and only for short periods. I credited it to fortunate acoustics, chance air currents, or ideal lighting, but on my sister’s last night with Claude, I heard every sound they made. That never happened before.

  “Daphne and Claude spent the day together, returning after dark. I peeked from my room when they stepped out of the fog. Despite the misty darkness, no detail escaped my improved vision. Daphne pulled a shawl tightly around for the dampness and led the way. The stairs leading to the bedrooms groaned under their feet. At first I thought my parents might awaken before remembering I heard sounds no one else could. Daphne closed and locked the door. I heard all that happened, as if I had been in the room. That night they made little Claude. My eavesdropping awakened unique and mysterious sensations in me.”

  Sam paused, gathering her thoughts before resuming.

  “Before the war, Father Laurent noticed, as well as accepted, my tolerance for blood and gore and asked for my help ministering to the wounded and dying who the Germans sent to the church.”

  Sam produced a frail catechism booklet with curled edges and a line drawing of a church on the back cover.

  “As we moved among the rows of cots, each with its bundle of pain and misery, I found myself attracted to the freshly dead. My improved senses permitted discovery of their deaths almost instantly. Earlier in the year I developed a sporadic craving for fresh raw meat. I thought this unnatural and fought the urge with all my will. When I gave in, I felt ashamed but couldn’t help myself. By October I regularly purloined cuts from the scrap pile in Papa’s shop. I told myself with guilt, the next step would be eating human flesh like the unnatural ghoul I thought I was.