Of Man and Monster

by Saje Williams

  "Immortality? Eternity on a leash?” She laughed, shaking her head. She was frightened, sure, but she would be damned if she was going to show him how scared she was. “I don't know how anyone that stupid could make detective in the first place, Binks."

  She remembered him as a uniform in town. She'd had her doubts about him for the duration, but he'd done his job well enough, without any obvious mistakes. He'd passed the detectives exam with high marks—surprising the whole detectives’ squad. They'd had a pool going on the results. Everyone lost.

  Now he stood here with a gun in her face. She would never have expected it. Life was full of surprises, especially lately.

  His lip curled into a sneer. “I don't know how anyone stupid enough to get in a car with her killer could've made detective either."

  "My killer? You shoot me—my-my son's going to tear your fucking head off."

  "He's on borrowed time too,” Binks said. “You don't know how pissed off she is at him. She not only wants him dead, she wants him destroyed."

  She opened her mouth and he pulled the trigger. The slug caught her in the breastbone, an explosion of agony that sent her backward and into a wall of black.

  * * * *

  Monday night—even later still.

  They reconvened at Gina's. As Ben rummaged through the fridge, the four vampires gathered in the living room. “We need to feed,” Jason growled suddenly, his face twisting into an ugly grimace. The Thirst roared through Cory and he staggered, catching himself against the side of the couch.

  The clock on the VCR read 4:18. Cory swore silently as he realized Jason was right. They couldn't go another night without it. “Doesn't one of your neighbors have a few goats?"

  "Goats?” Gina groaned. Of all of them, she found feeding from animals the most difficult. Cory had no intention of allowing her to taste human blood. If she did, he feared she'd never be able to go back.

  "Goats. Jason—go get them."

  He nodded once and left through the front door. Shine watched him go, then turned to Cory with a hiss. “You expect me to feed off animals?"

  "I do,” he answered. “That's what we feed from. We can survive that way just fine."

  "Yeah, and mortals can survive on beans and tofu—but who'd want to?"

  "I did,” Gina cut in, with a weighted glance at Cory. “Why'd you bring her here? We can't trust her, right?"

  He shook his head. “Nope. She's somehow bound to the bitch. I'm going to figure out a way to break that bond."

  Shine snorted. “You are, are you? Stupid kid. She's going to rip you apart and I'm going to stand there laughing."

  "Yeah. I'm sure you are.” He drew close, holding her gaze in his. Her mouth opened slightly, her fangs slowly distending. Something like electricity crackled between them, an intangible energy. He heard Gina gasp.

  His hand reached up, grasped the back of Shine's neck and drew her lips to his. She fought for a second, and then gave in. His tongue lashed out, tangled around one of her canines and left a touch of his blood behind on it. She fell into his arms, a low moan escaping as her nails clawed their way up his back.

  He ran his tongue around her lips, then down her jaw. She drew back slightly, a ghost of a smile on her suddenly ruby lips. “What are you doing?"

  "I don't know,” he told her honestly.

  "I think I'll leave you two alone for a while,” Gina said, following her son out into the night.

  "You're fifteen,” she said, “and I'm almost thirty."

  "We're immortal. What's fifteen years compared to that?"

  "Good point,” she murmured, tangling her fingers in his hair and pulling him into her. They collapsed on the couch as his fangs gently dragged across her neck. “Do it."

  He groaned and tore his way into her neck. He drank deeply. His head spun. A billion images flashed against the back of his eyes as their minds and bodies melted together. She pushed against his chest and he pulled away, gazing deeply into her eyes. “Your turn."

  Her fangs ripped into his flesh. He nearly screamed. His heart, silent since he'd woken up dead, beat fitfully in his chest. A tremendous pressure began to build, swell like a balloon inside his skull until it exploded like an expanding ball of shrapnel tearing through his awareness.

  He collapsed beneath her, his bones and muscles suddenly turning to jelly. “What was that?” he gasped.

  "Dunno,” she murmured softly. “But, whatever it was ... I'm free."

  "Geez, guys ... get a room.” Looking under her arm he saw Ben standing in the kitchen doorway, a huge hamburger clenched in one hand. “Way to go, Cory!” he said, giving him a big thumbs-up with his other hand.

  Shine drew back and stood, offering him a hand up. “Nice technique, kid."

  He accepted the hand and pulled himself into a sitting position. “Don't call me kid. My name is Cory."

  "Fine. Cory. Tell me, you have any idea that would happen?"

  "Nope. I'm glad it did, though."

  "Me, too. How's the Thirst?"

  "Gone. You?"

  "Much better. I guess we can feed off one another in a pinch, eh?"

  "Looks that way.” Cory grinned up at her, her taste still smoldering in his mouth.

  She seemed to sense it. Her answering smile struck him as slightly sad as she gazed down at him. “Thank you.” She leaned forward and brushed her lips gently against his. “Immortal or not—we'll talk about the rest of it in a few years."

  The front door slammed inward. The terrified bleat of the goat in Jason's arms jerked all their heads around toward the sound. “Woo-hoo! Goats are fun!"

  He obviously found it a lot more enjoyable than the goat. It rolled big brown eyes and bleated again, a note of plaintive confusion in it this time.

  Gina appeared in the doorway behind him. “That was unsettling. He enjoyed that way too much. And he plays with his food."

  The goat bleated agreement.

  "Finish it up,” Cory sighed as he pushed himself off the couch.

  "Already had one,” Jason said. “This one's for you."

  "Detective? Care to share a goat?"

  The goat objected to that idea. Loudly.

  Cory could hear Ben laughing behind them.

  "Isn't funny,” he said.

  "I'll take some,” Shine said.

  "Catch!” Jason called. He threw the goat.

  It kicked at the air in panic for the half second it took to traverse the space between them. She snatched the goat out of midair and snapped its neck. She tore into its throat and drank deeply. She took it down in three big gulps, then handed the corpse over to Cory.

  He finished it off and pulled his face away. Shine threw him a roll of paper towels. He tucked the dead goat under one arm and caught the roll, tearing a couple sheets off with his teeth.

  "Tastes better than dog,” Jason said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

  His mother reached out and slapped him upside the head. “That's just gross,” she said.

  Cory had to agree. “C'mon, man—don't be an asshole. Wipe your face off on the goddam paper towel.” He threw the roll to Jason and the goat back to Gina. She stepped out of the way and watched it fly back out the door.

  Twelve

  Monday morning.

  She wasn't beautiful. She never had been. The best anyone could have said before she'd been changed was that she was plain. Her features, well enough if taken separately, made her face seem somehow incomplete, as if perhaps her eyes—or maybe her mouth—belonged on another woman entirely. Her chin might have been a trifle to sharp for her full-lipped mouth, or her eyes just slightly too far apart for her delicately curved nose.

  None of that mattered now. What she lacked in physical beauty, she more than made up for in darkly radiant charisma.

  They stood in a fairly large cavern, at least thirty by thirty, beneath a twenty foot ceiling. A string of electric lights tacked across the roof provided what little illumination there was. She looked magnificent—her kingdom, a touch p
athetic.

  "The one cop I needed to complete my collection,” she purred. “Of those I cared to collect, anyway."

  He struggled in vain as the two women behind him forced him to his knees.

  "Kneel to the Dark Goddess,” one commanded.

  She was slightly heavy, with dark auburn hair streaked with white. He remembered her as a waitress from the Yankee Café on the southern edge of town. As he recalled, she'd been friendly, if harried. She was anything but friendly now.

  "I'd sooner drag my genitals through broken glass,” he hissed back at her.

  "That sounds entertaining,” Veronica mused aloud, laying one slender white finger against her chin. “I'll have to remember that one. Throw him in with the others."

  "Yes, Mistress,” said the former waitress—the one whose name he couldn't remember.

  "You vampires should really wear nametags,” he told her. “You all look alike to me."

  They lifted him to his feet, spun him around, and marched him out the way they had come.

  * * * *

  Bigby counted two lefts and a right as they tromped through a shallow underground stream and leaped across a thin crevice. He waited for another fifteen paces then slammed his elbow into the vampire on his right, smashing her nose back into her vapidly pretty face before shoveling a back side-kick into the side of her head.

  As vampires they didn't need to breathe—at least he hadn't seen any sign of it unless they needed to speak. Brains—on the other hand—were brains. Smashed up against the inside of a skull anyone's brain would suffer from concussive response.

  She went down like she'd been pole-axed. He shot a quick look at the other one, the former waitress, and nearly laughed at the expression of shock on her face. While she stood there flat-footed, he broke into a sprint.

  His feet pounded a rapid tattoo against the stone floor, he reached a T in the tunnel ahead and whipped to his right. As the vampire hit the corner he swung around and clothes-lined her. She went over like a bowling pin and he launched a kick into the side of her head. He leaned down and quickly searched her, coming up with nothing of any use.

  He floated back to find the first vamp he'd taken down and searched her as well. Also nothing. He had to run now. Into the darkness. Why do I have the feeling they're going to be better in the darkness than I am?

  He knew caves. He'd spent a lot of time in them when he was younger. Much younger. But it had been a long time since he'd ventured down and his ability to adapt to subterranean environs had suffered in the meantime.

  Thirteen

  Monday morning.

  Amanda Keening stood on the front porch of the Flynn house, fingers curved around a steaming cup of coffee, breath hanging like white smoke in the cold morning air. She'd been crafting all night and her head hummed with the low-level buzz that came from eight hours of near continual spell construction.

  Her vision wavered, swimming between normal sight and magesight. Everything looked either too bright or somehow diminished, even the shiny new car that sat in the driveway on this sunny, cold, spring morning. The air around her swirled with gray threads that permeated everything, threads which vanished suddenly as the magesight lapsed back to normal vision.

  She'd pushed herself—nearly too far. Manipulating mana was work. Her body ached as if she'd been shifting large blocks of stone rather than small threads of metaphysical matter. But she had fifteen prepared spells on hand now.

  She hadn't loaded up this far since the end of her first year at the Academy. None of the spells she'd put together back then had the zap these ones did.

  She drained the last of her coffee in two long swallows and leaned against the support column, watching as the Shiba Inu—Rowdy, right?—sniffed around the yard in pursuit of some nocturnal invader long gone. She'd dropped her crafting circle expecting Rachel to be home, perhaps asleep on the couch, but found the house still as a graveyard.

  A remarkably apt comparison, she teased herself. All things considered. Rachel must've spent the night out with the vampires, she decided. She could've at least left a message on my cell phone, she thought snippily.

  She went back inside and searched until she found the dog food. She poured half a cup in the bowl on the porch. He made an odd kind of short singing howl and started chowing. “I'll assume that was a thank you,” she said, reaching down to scratch between his ears.

  She took returned to the kitchen and rinsed out her coffee cup and stared at the refrigerator for a second. She could cook herself up some breakfast—assuming, of course, there was anything in the fridge to cook. Rachel didn't strike her as the domestic type.

  Ten minutes later she was on the road. With a quick stop by a Burger King for a breakfast sandwich she was at the police station in twenty. Of course, as she walked up to the front door it was pretty clear the place was empty. Nothing moved inside. She pushed on the door and it swung freely inward. Why do I have a really bad feeling about this?

  The door leading back into the station and, presumably, the jail cells, lay on the floor next to the reception desk in ripped into four roughly equal pieces. Well, isn't that interesting. She thought about it for a minute and realized, quite belatedly, that one of the prisoners back there had been bitten by a werewolf only a few days earlier.

  And, hoo, none of us even thought of it. Of course, with the chaos around here, it's no wonder no one saw it coming. It's not like it's an everyday occurrence. In the Real World, it's an “only happened once” occurrence.

  So being bitten by a werewolf might actually turn you into one. Legends got that one right, at least. Weird. How could something spring into existence just recently and end up following the patterns set down by centuries of folklore?

  Her teachers hadn't said anything about it. Thoth himself—Head Instructor at the Thorne Academy—had answered, when asked about such creatures—that they certainly weren't native to this world.

  Whatever that meant.

  Some of the rumors around the school suggested that Thoth had been on a walkabout of a hundred different universes—places where the probability streams had run differently than they had here. Worlds where the President Kennedy had been hit by the gunman's bullet rather than having been saved by an incredible twist of fate.

  Or so she'd been led to believe. And who's to say what's real in what world, right?

  She turned on a heel and strode back out. She stood on the corner for a long minute and pondered her options. The best one was to find Rachel and the vampires. At this point it looked like the vampire bitch was winning. The only organized resistance would be those with the power to fight her. These poor mortal cops didn't have a chance.

  * * * *

  Ben staggered out as she pulled into the drive, rubbing at his eyes. He looked like someone recovering from a three-day binge.

  "Where's Rachel?” she asked.

  "Hell if I know,” he said. “I wish she had shown up. Being the only day guard around here is kicking my ass."

  She could understand that. “Go get some sleep. I'll play guard for a while."

  He thought about it, and then nodded. “Thanks.” He vanished back into the house as she took a seat on the porch.

  So Rachel was missing, too. Amanda didn't like the sound of that at all. She should have been either here or at her own house. The fact that she wasn't made it seem likely she'd been taken like the other townspeople. Where, and for what purpose, still remained a mystery to her.

  That crazy bitch couldn't be turning everybody into vampires, could she? It seemed entirely too ridiculous a notion. Without purpose. Of course, she is crazy.

  Amanda didn't find that thought very reassuring.

  She sat there a while, then wandered inside. There wasn't much she could accomplish until everyone woke up, so she settled in for a long, boring day.

  * * * *

  Ben crawled out of his hole about five, giving Amanda the chance to snatch a couple of hours herself. She dropped off a lot faster than she'd expected,
then awoke a couple hours later to the sound of voices in the other room.

  She walked out to find the vampire family hour in full swing. Cory wanted to go look for his mother and Gina was urging caution. The tension felt like a transparent door she had to push through to get from the bedroom into the rest of the house.

  "It's worse than that,” she said abruptly. “The cop shop is wide open. There's no one there. Everyone's missing."

  "We know where they are,” Cory told her. “With any luck my mom will be there, too.” He hurriedly explained what they'd found out in the desert the night before.

  "Okay. That's just weird.” Amanda shook her head in disbelief. “What the hell is she after?"

  "That's a good question. How ‘bout we go ask her,” Jason said, actually looking pleased at the prospect. Amanda shot him a disgusted look.

  "Not so sure that's a good idea,” spoke the werewolf, between bites of a formerly frozen pizza he'd rolled into a huge cigar-shaped mess.

  "Why?” Jason asked. “You think we should sit around here and eat whatever doesn't run away until it's all over?"

  Ben finished off the pizza and calmly wiped his fingers on a paper towel. “No, I think we should rush into the meat-grinder without a road map.” He aimed a mocking glance at Jason, who lifted a lip in response.

  "I'm getting tired of listening to you two snipe at one another,” Gina growled from her position perched on the arm of the couch. “I'm ready to go tackle her by myself just to get some peace."

  "I'm about to join you,” Amanda said. Unlike Gina, she was more serious than not. She thought sitting around was probably about the worst thing they could be doing. Which meant, in effect, that she agreed with Jason.

  That bothered her more than she wanted to think about. “Jason's probably right. If we don't take the offensive somehow, she's going to hit us with everything she has and that'll be the end of it. And us."

  She aimed this at Cory. He still hadn't waded into the fray. Seemed to be considering it. “I agree."

  Ben looked down at his feet and shrugged. “You're the boss."