Ghoulish

by Kat Bellamy

  Jason shifted in Colt’s arms, staring at him. Colt could always tell when he was trying to figure something out, even if the what remained elusive. “What is it?” Colt asked.

  “There’s something different about you,” Jason mused.

  Colt’s heart beat a little faster. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” Jason said thoughtfully. “It’s not a bad thing. At least, I don’t think,” he added with an impish smirk.

  “You don’t think, huh?” Colt pulled Jason back down next to him, rolling to pin him slightly. “Am I a suspect now?”

  “You never know,” Jason said, his eyes alight with mischief. They softened as he cupped Colt’s face in his palm. “You know you can talk to me, right? If there is something going on.”

  “There’s not.”

  “But if there was, you’d tell me?”

  Colt swallowed the knot in his throat. Why did lying to Jason make him feel even guiltier than killing a man had? “Yeah. Of course.”

  Jason didn’t seem quite satisfied, but after a few seconds, he sighed and laid his head on Colt’s chest. “Whatever it is, I’ll figure it out.” His tone made it clear he was only half-teasing.

  Colt forced a smile. “Yeah. You always do.”

  Chapter 9

  “So, that’s how it is, huh? You get a better offer and you jump ship?”

  Colt could barely make out the dry challenge through the whirring of his tablesaw. He turned the machine off and followed the work boots planted in front of his station up to find Chuck, Evan and three of the other workers at the site standing in front of him. Chuck’s arms were folded with a stern look on his weathered face, but the glimmer of amusement in the older man’s eyes gave him away.

  “What can I say? Guess I just got tired of looking at your ugly mugs every day,” Colt shot back in a dry tone of his own.

  Chuck smirked. “Get cleaned up. We’re goin’ to Devon’s and we’re not about to let you go over to those bastards at Bracher without a proper sendoff.”

  Colt wiped the sweat off his brow and sighed. “Yeah, okay. Just give me a sec to put everything away.”

  It had been two weeks to the day since Colt had turned in his resignation and announced his plans to take the foreman position at Bracher Construction. There were times he still wasn’t sure it was the right decision, but despite Jason’s best attempts to seem neutral, Colt could tell it made him happy. Besides, he reasoned, now that he had a secret to keep, it was better to start over someplace new rather than suddenly becoming an enigma to the men he’d worked alongside since he was a teenager.

  Once a half-hour lunch had stretched into a full forty-five minutes and Colt’s coworkers were three sheets to the wind, Colt realized he wasn’t even close to tipsy. He’d never been a lightweight, a secret he was more than content to keep from his doting mother, but he realized something was seriously off when five beers had yet to phase him. He decided to cut himself off before the others could notice. Fortunately, they were too distracted by a disgusting joke Evan had just told to notice much of anything at all.

  “Be right back,” said Chuck, clapping Colt on the back as he stood from his barstool. “Gotta take a piss.”

  “Thanks for that,” Dan jeered.

  Gus glanced at his phone. “Man, I gotta get going. Promised the old lady I’d pick the kid up from school today.”

  Colt looked him up and down. “You can’t drive like that, man,” he said, taking Gus’ keys. The other man reached for them a few seconds too late, proving Colt’s point. Colt glanced back at the others. “Evan, tell Chuck I’ll meet you back at the site.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Evan mumbled into his next beer.

  After being called every profane variant of party pooper in the book, Colt led Gus out of the bar and toward the bus station. He’d taken the back alley route plenty of times when he himself was too wasted to drive home, but it was the first time he’d realized just how vulnerable a human walking alone--even one as burly as Gus--really was.

  “I’m gonna leave these with Chuck,” Colt said, dangling Gus’ keys before slipping them into his own pocket.

  Gus grumbled something about his wife killing him before he shuffled into the station. Colt turned and walked back, pulling up his collar to brace against the chill in the air. It seemed he hadn’t gained any invulnerability to the elements, just one hell of an appetite for shit that should have turned his stomach and enough strength to make sex an exercise in willpower.

  Alone with his thoughts on the way back to the bar, Colt found them drifting to places he’d rather avoid. He knew dating Jason was an idiot move. If his own judgment hadn’t been enough to tell him that, the worried looks in the Browns’ eyes would have sufficed. They were trying not to be judgmental, but Colt knew as well as they did that being as close to a human as he was to Jason was just asking for trouble on so many levels.

  It was reckless, foolish and definitely selfish, but Colt couldn’t bring himself to change his mind. He’d wanted this for years. It figured that with his luck, he’d finally get what he wanted when he had a damn good reason not to have it.

  There was part of him, however naive, that couldn’t accept that he was truly a threat to Jason. Besides, the cravings were under control and as long as he maintained a balanced, zombie-approved diet, they would stay that way.

  It was insufficient justification, and every now and then, Colt’s better judgment won out. He’d get so close to telling Jason the next best thing to the truth his life depended on keeping a secret, which was the truth that Jason was too good for him and that no amount of wishful thinking or passion would change that. That painful if convenient excuse would be on the very tip of his tongue, and then Jason would give him that look and the words would tumble off into the endless abyss of his denial, never to be seen again.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  Colt looked up sharply. The exclamation was followed by a guttural scream that faded into the unmistakable sound of blood pooling in a throat. Colt knew it only recently, but all too well. He turned and ran in the direction of the scream, freezing at the lip of the alley when he saw a woman in a tight red dress looming over a man’s lifeless body. The same red dress as the woman who’d walked past the construction site months ago, he realized. The same woman, in fact. When she raised her head and her bloodstained lips curved into a wicked little smile, her eyes as black and shiny as oil, there was no doubt.

  Apparently, that dress was her version of hunting fatigues. Colt wondered how many times she had gone by the site looking for easy prey, but all his wondering stopped short when he caught a glimpse of the man in her arms.

  “Chuck?” The name came out choked. It took a while for the realization to catch up with the hollow feeling in Colt’s gut. Rage took over as soon as it did and he lunged, but the female ghoul caught his arm and gave it a sharp snap until he felt the bone in his right wrist strain to the point of snapping. She turned his hand sharply and glanced down at it before her lip curled back in a grotesque snarl and she lunged for his neck.

  Colt thrust his hand forward in her grasp and wrapped it around her neck to slam her against the brick wall. Her black eyes widened in surprise as his own features morphed to match the horror and anger writhing deep inside of him.

  “A ghoul?” The woman’s eyes narrowed and she seemed to be studying Colt. “What’s your name?”

  “Fuck you,” he snarled, clenching his hand tighter to crush her windpipe. She reached up, wrapping both hands around his wrist and squeezing until he felt his bone start to give again.

  “That’s an interesting offer,” she taunted hoarsely. “If you weren’t such a testy little bitch, I might take you up on it.”

  She dug her pointed nails in deep and wrenched Colt’s arm up and to the side. He scarcely had time to cry out in alarm before he crumpled to his knees and her heels tapped on the concrete as she walked a tight circle around him.

  “I’ll ask you one more time,” she said in a pleasan
t tone, licking the blood off her fingers. Chuck’s blood. “What’s your name?”

  “Colt,” he growled.

  “Colt?” She tilted her head. “Never heard of a family by that name.”

  “It’s not a family name, bitch,” Colt snarled, up on his feet again. “Just the last one you’re ever gonna hear.”

  She gave a sharp laugh that felt like glass shards digging into his eardrum. “Oh, that’s adorable. Suicidal, but adorable,” she said, planting a hand on her hip. Something like realization flickered in her clear blue eyes. “Just a second. You wouldn’t happen to be that fledgling the Brown family took in, would you?”

  Colt hesitated, but it was enough. She had her answer. The triumphant expression on her already smug face made it clear.

  “I see.” She glanced down at Chuck’s body, then back at Colt, her face returning to its modelesque state. “I take it my dinner was a friend of yours?”

  Colt clenched his jaw, unwilling to dignify her question with a response. There were two things holding him back--the fact that he’d never even entertained the thought of hitting a woman and the uncertainty of what such a confrontation would bring down on the Brown family’s heads--but each seemed less important the closer the stream of Chuck’s blood on the concrete got to Colt’s boot. The worst part was how good it smelled.

  “That’s unfortunate,” she said with a sigh. It was the first sign of humanity she’d shown, but Colt got the feeling her remorse had more to do with stepping on another ghoul’s toes than killing in cold blood. “Look, I’m sorry about your friend. It’s nothing personal, but we’ve all got to eat and not everyone shares your benefactors’ obsession with the sanctity of human life.”

  “He had a family,” Colt said stiffly.

  “Then he shouldn’t have been picking up strange women in the bathroom hall of a dive bar,” she shot back.

  Colt gritted his teeth. He didn’t have a rational counterpoint to that. In fact, there was nothing rational about what he wanted to do to the monster in front of him. Stan had warned him that every emotional response, ranging from lust to fury, would be amplified now that he was awake, but he’d underestimated just how intense those impulses would be.

  Before Colt could decide what he was going to do, she turned and started to walk away from her kill. “There’s a reason we don’t play with our food. Take this as a lesson to keep your human pets at a distance. At least the ones you want to stay alive.”

  “Wait,” Colt growled. “We’re not finished.”

  She stopped and turned to face him. “Actually, we are and if you had any common sense, you’d recognize my generosity. Next time you interrupt another ghoul in the middle of dinner, even the Brown name won’t save you. Do give Susan my love, and tell her she’d better put a ring on it if she wants her pet alive. I won’t be so generous next time.”

  With that, she disappeared. Colt took a step to follow her but held himself back when he realized it was too late. Even if he was willing to risk exposure and all the trouble that would bring to the family that had taken him in, he couldn’t attack her in the streets in broad daylight. The human police would get to him first if the ghouls didn’t.

  Colt looked back at Chuck’s body, feeling a mixture of grief and disgust at his own hunger. He heard sirens in the distance and forced himself to leave, the self-hatred driving in even deeper with each step he took. He couldn’t shake the mental image of a police officer at Chuck’s door telling the man’s wife she was now a widow.

  Chapter 10

  Colt found himself at the Brown family’s kitchen table as he so often did those days. His parents’ household had once been the sanctuary he returned to whenever life got a bit too lifelike for his liking, but he felt like he was only endangering them with his presence. Especially now that he’d been given an all too visceral reminder of what his kind was capable of.

  “You’re sure no one saw you leave the alley?” Susan asked, leaning over Colt’s shoulder to refill his cup of tea with hot water.

  Colt hesitated before shaking his head. He understood where Susan was coming from, but the fact that she’d immediately jumped to the potential of police involvement was still hard to swallow. As civilized as the Brown family was, it was a reminder that they were still far from human.

  “I’m sure,” he said hoarsely, taking a sip of the tea. It did little to soothe his throat or the empty feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  Susan gave him an apologetic smile before sitting down across the table next to her husband. “Sorry. We just need to know if any calls need to be made.”

  “I was alone,” Colt assured them. “Except for her.”

  “You said something about a message,” said Stan, his expression devoid of the panic Colt might have expected of someone who’d just been informed of a murder. He reminded himself that to the Browns, it was more akin to a butchering.

  Colt barely remembered the frazzled account he’d given the couple of the macabre events that had taken place in that alley at all, but he nodded. “For Susan.” He looked up at her. “She made it sound like you knew each other. Said something about a...a ring, I think.”

  Susan’s eyes widened in recognition. “Tall, leggy blond with light eyes?”

  “Yeah. That’s her.”

  Susan sighed. “Her name is Evelyn. She and I were close in the old days. Before I met Stan.”

  Colt knew what she meant without further clarification. “The old days” was Susan’s euphemism for the time she had eaten murdered humans with gusto and without remorse. “We used to hunt together.”

  “You hunted?” Colt asked, unable to hide his shock. Most middle class ghouls liked to hire men like Stan’s brother to do the dirty work for them. It was hard to imagine Susan getting her perfectly manicured hands dirty at all, let alone staining them with blood.

  She gave him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Oh, yes. We were quite a pair.”

  Colt watched her, letting that new piece of information settle in. Even though she dressed conservatively in an attempt to look her age, Susan was still an attractive woman. He could certainly imagine that she and Evelyn had once had their pick of men--and prey. “I see.”

  “And you fought?” Stan asked, wariness that hadn’t been there a moment earlier edging into his tone.

  “Not really. She got the upper hand,” he admitted grudgingly.

  “I’m sure she did,” Susan scoffed. “The old bitch has a good thirty years on you.”

  “She just took me by surprise,” Colt muttered. “I wasn’t expecting her to be that strong.”

  Susan rolled her eyes. “Men.”

  “You’re lucky that’s all it came to,” said Stan. “Interfering with another ghoul on the hunt is one thing, but Evelyn is a special case.”

  “Is she an Alpha?” asked Colt.

  “No,” Susan said carefully. “But she is fucking one.”

  “Susan,” Stan coughed.

  “What? She’s always been ambitious,” the woman mumbled. “In bed, at any rate.”

  “The point is, there are rules. I thought we made it clear, if you came across another ghoul, you were to turn around and walk the other way.”

  “This wasn’t just some random person, he’s a friend,” Colt protested. “Was a friend.” He decided to leave out the fact that he wouldn’t have felt right walking away from any human being threatened by a monster. The last thing he wanted that night was an argument.

  Stan’s gaze softened in pity. “I understand that, Colt. More than you think, believe me. As tragic as it is, there are rules in this world that must be followed, just as there are social mores and laws to observe in the human world. Failing to do so would --”

  “It would put you guys in danger. I know,” Colt sighed. “I’m sorry. I just lost it when I saw her…”

  Susan reached across the table, covering Colt’s hand in hers. “It’s alright, sweetheart. I’ll talk to Evelyn.”

  “I thought you hated each other.”


  She smiled. “Sometimes the line between hatred and friendship is a bit blurry. I believe the kids these days have a word for it. ‘Frenemies?’”

  Colt snorted. “Guess you guys aren’t all that different from humans.”

  “Forgive me for changing the subject, but I assure you, it’s related,” said Stan. “When do you start that new job?”

  “Today was my last day at the old site,” said Colt. “I start at Bracher on Monday.”

  Stan glanced worriedly at his wife. “You’d better talk to Evelyn sooner rather than later.”

  “I’ll make a call,” she said, standing from the table. Her heels clicked on the tile as she disappeared.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Colt.

  “When a human body shows up, people start looking. For that matter, when a human disappears, people start asking questions. You being one of the last people to see Chuck alive…”

  “Right,” Colt mumbled. “It’s suspicious. Guess my brain’s just not there yet.”

  Stan gave him a sympathetic smile. “Nor should it be. You lost a friend. Just take the weekend to rest and let Susan and I take care of everything else. By the time you show up to work on Monday, I’m sure it’ll have all blown over.”

  Colt nodded. He was sure Stan was right. That was the problem. Humans disappeared everyday, but how many of them were believed to have been killed in the course of everyday life when in reality, they were victims of monsters whose existence they couldn’t possibly fathom?

  “Ah. Before I forget,” Stan said, jumping up from the table. He left the kitchen and returned a few minutes later with a small black box. “This is for you,” he said, opening the lid to reveal a thick silver band set with a ruby so red it seemed to glow in the kitchen light.

  Colt blinked. “Flattered as I am, you’re not really my type and I don’t think Susan’s the type to want to share.”

  Stan chuckled. “It’s a symbol. You asked once how ghouls identify one another in public. Well, this helps.”

  “Jewelry?”