Monster Stalker

by Elizabeth Watasin

  “Your name’s not Re’shawn,” Nico lightly accused. “I love your cat eye frames.”

  “Naw, I took that name during the seventies. ‘Harriet’ wasn’t cutting it anymore, though Mama named me that for Harriet Tubman. Harriet was dead, anyways. I liked those glasses too, but we don’t need stuff like that once we’re vampires.” Re’shawn put the wallet away. “I’ll tell you something; I rose, and I couldn’t be there for my man and my baby anymore, but I could kick ass. I could kill ass. My mama wouldn’t have been happy if she’d known, and my man would’ve been really unhappy. He was a pacifist; followed Reverend King and everything. But my boy grew up okay, I made sure. I decided to come here after he passed away. He had grandkids, but it was time I moved on.”

  “So you like being a vampire,” Nico said.

  “Yeah, I like being a vampire,” Re’shawn said.

  ***

  Re’shawn and Nico entered Again Friends after Dann activated the door for them, Re’shawn going first. She continued down the hall while Nico stopped before Dann’s booth. A sign at his window read: Please Don’t Break The Windows.

  “Do you know who’s breaking our windows?” Dann asked.

  “They must have thought there was a fire,” Nico said. “You were lucky there wasn’t one. Why is the vending machine always empty? There’s nothing to eat all day. Except maybe you.”

  “Machine’s broken. I keep calling to get it fixed,” Dann said. “It’s why the hostel provides free blood. That way, you guys don’t eat me. Neat, huh?”

  Nico activated her Id, displaying Esche’s holo-photo.

  “Before you ask,” Dann said. “Nope.” He pushed the sign-up sheet to her. “Asha, right?”

  “No, Esh—never mind.” Nico looked at the sheet and saw Iris’s and Re’shawn’s signatures, but no Esche. Tex and Delores’s names were not present either.

  “If you want to stay tonight, you gotta sign,” Dann said, cheerful.

  “Have you seen Iris? She’s been here a couple of nights. Girl with purple hair?”

  “You mean here right now?” Dann considered the question. “Um...she was here yesterday?”

  “How can you not remember?” Nico exclaimed.

  “I’m a non-discriminatory head counter,” Dann said defensively. “Purple, red, orange. You’re all the same to me.”

  “That sounds like, ‘you’re all the same nothing to me’. But you remember me,” Nico said.

  “Well, you keep talking to me. Not that I don’t mind it. You’re not my type, by the way.”

  “You are really lucky you’re inside that booth,” Nico said, and left.

  She went upstairs and viewed the girls’ dorm; no vampires loitered, and no Iris either. Pestering Dann about Esche had been a matter of rote. She knew her missing vampire wasn’t coming back, despite the tiny hope that held out for impossibilities.

  She walked the length of the dorm, feeling nothing out of the ordinary; it had normal walls, floors, and beds. She threw her shoe at the ceiling and nothing budged. She tossed one bed, revealing its wire frame, then put the bed (more or less) back together again. The dorm was a solid cell to take refuge in, a perfect Anne Frank hideaway. Except someone had betrayed Anne Frank.

  Dorothy, who owns Again Friends Youth Hostel? Nico typed.

  Charity Housing is the parent, non-profit organisation running Again Friends hostels in four different city-states: Again NewYork, Sister Orleans, Tokyo2, and New London, Dorothy responded. Nico cut the YOBA commercial before it started playing.

  “But who really runs this hostel,” she murmured to Bear. She went downstairs to the boys’ bathroom.

  Nico was standing on the boys’ bathroom sink counter, inspecting the metal sealed window when a boy walked in, smelling of beer.

  “I gotta get used to the she-boys on this planet!” he exclaimed.

  “Hey! Don’t call me that. Use non-gendered terms,” Nico barked.

  “Oh. Sorry. If you’re dressed like a girl, shouldn’t you be in the girls’ bathroom?”

  Nico hopped down and pulled out her Id. She showed him the holo picture of Esche.

  “No, I haven’t seen her,” the boy said in answer to her question. “Or him? He’s pretty. Look, I gotta pee.”

  “If you didn’t drink, you wouldn’t have to pee.” Nico left the boys’ bathroom.

  On the ground floor, she studied the seam of the locked classroom door facing the empty vending machine. The door possessed a standard doorknob and lock, unlike the rec room’s automated door. Just as she was about to pull out her wallet for her remaining credit card, a click sounded in the main hallway; a door shutting. Nico looked around the corner and Jess stood in the hall with her back towards Nico, inspecting her hand.

  Where did she come from?

  “Have you seen Re’shawn?” Nico asked.

  Jess spun around, startled. “Pardon?”

  Nico’s Id chimed.

  “Your appointment with Ms Allen is in one hour,” Dorothy’s muffled voice announced from behind Bear.

  “Is she the girl you were looking for, yesterday?” Jess enquired.

  “Never mind,” Nico said. It would take more than half her allocated time to reach Heloise’s place, but Nico wanted to get ahead of rush hour.

  As she moved for the entry hallway, she had the odd feeling she shouldn’t leave yet, but she felt as odd lingering, with nothing left that she could think to do—especially with Jess around. Dann’s booth stood empty, a little sign taped within the cage saying: Be Right Back.

  Nico exited Again Friends, the door sealing shut behind her.

  Nico stood on a shining light bridge of blue-silver and looked down at Again NewYork’s lower depths. Humans, Others, and vehicles milled on the byways clogged with rush hour traffic below, streaked by sunlight and shadows. The sedate upper quarter she was presently in held more calm, and the people who moved in it more confidence, as if they’d all the time in the world to merely live. The plaza was Again NewYork’s version of Avenue Montaigne, with more exclusive, off-world offerings. The curvy, high-rise structures of pliable glass and metal around the shopping plaza swept up to the clouds, their sinuous frames braced by steel membranes. Nico wondered if the rooms and hallways within were also constructed unconventionally, like the organic depths of a giant—specifically, a female giant. One building’s entrance had the unmistakable shape of a metallic vagina, à la H R Giger. She looked at the surrounding plaza’s glowing, high fashion shop portals, embedded in the flowing thighs of the colossus, and briefly contemplated the nature of arousal and the allure of money.

  The shoppers and visitors promenaded by on the bridge, and Nico stood back, hugging Bear to her, and people-watched. Intriguingly impractical clothing, ethereal scents, biomechanical enhancements, and fashionable gaits and mannerisms—there, a long-limbed, bird-like woman with head plumes moved with a mincing stride. But was she really of the bird people, like the Royal Bento off-worlder, or an altered human affecting their genetic attributes, courtesy of Avatar? Her facial features appeared highly human. The woman bobbed her head Nico’s way and stared with yellow, bird eyes. Other humans passed and Nico thought: new-rich, addict, trophy, con man. Hedonist, glutton, spoiled brat, rapist.

  It was unfair of her to assume the sharply dressed politician/fascist/businesswoman crossing the bridge—a woman with impossible, cornflower blue eyes and a cruel, red mouth—might buy girls for that purpose, but Nico had run into a few humans like her.

  The woman walked by Nico as if she were nothing, but passed near enough for Nico to perceive her blood’s pulsation and something else: the pristine, perfect scent that Nico associated only with vampires.

  How odd.

  Iris’s “living vampires” came to mind, but Nico knew human blood when she sensed it. The woman was neither preternatural nor “extra”. The woman paused at the bridge’s end, summoned a holo interface via the two Id rings she wore, and gestured behind its privacy screen. Intuition rang Nico’s tiny alarm be
ll and she constructed a scenario: the Bathory was calling security, and once they arrived and started pressuring Nico, the Bathory would step in, rescue Nico, and offer a meal, a ride home, perhaps request Nico’s help with something. That was when a girl like Nico blacked out.

  The woman dallied beyond the bridge after sending her communication. Nico thought about being entirely wrong.

  Never ignore it, Nicky, her maker whispered, that’s how I got ye.

  She stepped into a gaggle of strolling tourists and slipped away, rounding a store’s corner while the woman’s back was turned. Nico watched as two security personnel approached the bridge and looked around. The woman looked about the plaza as well, then left.

  ***

  Heloise’s address was a few buildings away from the plaza. Nico beamed the invitation on her Id to the shut doors of the address in question and it admitted her. It was a conventional marble lobby compared to the plaza’s undulating steel. When Nico walked to the back and entered the waiting elevator platform, she saw that the entire ascension tube was of glass, overlooking Again NewYork’s tinier buildings as they stretched to the harbour. Nico looked to the horizon while her platform rose.

  That high above, Nico was a bird flying forwards to forever. Beyond was the shining edge of a sparkling sea, folding over the lip of a seemingly flat world. By all appearances, it was a short boat ride to falling off that edge. Nico had stood in Tokyo Tower’s observation deck and thought the same when viewing the Pacific, except then she had looked out at a world dropping off into night.

  “It’s the edge of the world, Mr Bear, and beneath, it’s turtles all the way down.” The platform stopped on Heloise’s floor, and Nico posed Bear on the handrail. She took pictures of him at world’s end.

  Photo-op done, she stepped out into a circular mini-lobby with four doors leading to private living quarters. Scenic glass on the elevator’s side showed the spectacular view. Nico approached the third door and looked at the lit panel she assumed was a chime. Before she could poke it, the door slid open and revealed Heloise, smiling. Her jacket and shoes were doffed, and her tie pulled from the knot. The tie’s ends draped against the white of her silk shirt, where undone buttons exposed a clavicle.

  “Come in,” she invited, and stepped aside for Nico to enter.

  The interior was cool, soft whiteness, from carpet to walls. Blue light ran along the room’s edges. Heloise raised a hand to the small of Nico’s back to guide her in.

  “Don’t touch me, please,” Nico said, stepping across the entryway.

  “Sure,” Heloise said, her hand dropping to her side. The doors slid shut. “Would you and Mr Bear like something to drink?”

  “No thank you,” Nico said politely. She walked down into the sunken living area and her shoes sank into the carpet. Heloise’s Loulain heels lay fallen on their sides before the white couch, the outsoles like two dark bloodstains in the carpet. Nico wondered if her own oxfords were leaving footprints.

  “It won’t be drugged.” Heloise’s tone was light.

  “Still ‘no thank you’.”

  Nico stepped further into the living area and looked at the black baby grand piano, incongruous in the room’s streamlined smoothness. The handwritten sheet music, with its many creases from having been folded down into a tiny package, read: Somewhen, music by Leopold Bergstein, adapted by H Allen.

  “All right. Then I hope you don’t mind if I finish mine.” Heloise went over to the low glass table before the couch and picked up a cocktail glass. The liquid was golden orange.

  “A Sidecar,” she said at Nico’s curious stare, and sipped. She smiled. “I can make you a virgin one.”

  Nico headed for the doors.

  “Okay, fine,” Heloise said, raising a hand. “No more small talk. My interface is over here.”

  Nico stepped back into the living area and followed Heloise to a glass seat and tabletop. Heloise touched the table surface. Nico noticed the strands of blessed red string on Heloise’s wrist again, peeping from beneath her shirt’s cuff; Tibetan sai sin. A keyboard appeared, made of blue light, and a holo logo materialised above the table: AGAIN WALKER.

  “That’s the name of your database?” Nico said, incredulous.

  “I didn’t know the Darqueworld born-agains had co-opted the term,” Heloise grumbled. “I should have trademarked it.”

  “I want to see me,” Nico said, “before I died.” She sat and touched the light keyboard, making it brighter.

  Heloise nodded slowly. “Okay. Those photos are there.”

  Nico quickly tapped in Heloise Allen.

  “Hey,” Heloise said, but Nico was already perusing the items that appeared. She selected a photograph and it came to the fore.

  “I bet you made a mean pineapple upside-down cake,” she commented, staring at Heloise in a black and white photo. The young housewife in the buttoned up, three-quarter sleeved circle dress, pearl necklace, and white gloves smiled timidly as she posed before a 1950’s Lincoln Capri, holding her handbag before her. A new tract home stood behind the wife and auto, a perfect photo of a man’s three possessions.

  “My signature dessert was devil’s food cake, actually,” Heloise said.

  Nico advanced to the next photo, a black and white studio portrait of a male who might have been Heloise’s Mr Allen. Nico didn’t think his eyes were friendly, despite his overall mild, Midwestern handsomeness.

  “Okay, that’s enough.” Heloise reached around Nico to touch the keyboard. The photo blipped out.

  “Did they ask you at immigration if you liked being a vampire?” Nico said.

  “They did, and I said yes.” Heloise touched the keys more. “Here’s you.” Folder options opened on the holo display for the entry, Nicolette Alexikova (also ‘Nike’). Three photos were marked 1983. Nico knew what they were. She selected them to look.

  She was seated on the carpet by the white-curtained window at home, lit by the soft spring sun, because dad had wanted something casual of her as a birthday portrait, and the photographer had accommodated. Nico wore a long black jumper over a black top, and a long black wool skirt, her legs gathered under her. She rested on a hand, the other in her lap, and against her jumper front an aquamarine birthstone glimmered. It was the necklace mom had given her, a gift for Nico’s eighteenth birthday. The Nico in the picture gently smiled, gracing the camera with an expectant, hopeful face. A simple, intelligent face.

  Nico closed the photos. A week after the photo session, the stalking began. Three months later she was dead, and her parents too. She didn’t want to look at more pictures in case they were in them.

  “Did that help?” Heloise asked quietly.

  “I was just wondering if I was the kind of girl I’d want to kill,” Nico said.

  ***

  Heloise’s Again Walker database became globally accessible once the World Wide Web launched in 1994. A bird watcher had already “discovered” Nico in 1985, after the morgue incident where she had killed two risen vampires. But the watcher didn’t join Heloise’s database until 1996, when he uploaded his observations. By 1990, Nico had long left America to attend schools abroad. Various bird watchers entered mid-90’s sightings for a vampire they named “Nike”, who Heloise later affirmed to be Nico (the entry claiming to have spotted her at a Morrissey concert in Doncaster was unfortunately untrue) and she combined the folders.

  “Did you ever take the name Nike?” Heloise asked curious. “Because that’s a variation on your name.”

  “If I’d been born a boy, I’d have been Nicolas.” Nico continued to scan her folder. “Dad wanted me named for victory; ‘the people’s victory’. But no. Nike, Neko, Nicole, Nikkita, Colette. I’ve only been Nico. ”

  “I don’t see you as a Colette. More a Coco.”

  Nico paused in her perusal.

  There, in 1998. She inexplicably went on a spree.

  “For fifteen years you were quiet,” Heloise said. “Then this.”

  Nico quickly read through Russian
news clippings reporting murdered traffickers, destroyed property, and bombed cars. Nico was certain the car bombings were misattributed. She had no idea how to make a bomb. She found a Leningrad police report on a warehouse massacre and opened the photos. Several victims had throats torn out. Nico rotated the pictures, studying the wounds. She’d never torn out a throat, yet the evidence was there. The fleeting sensation of hot blood in her mouth returned, of her teeth tearing into warm flesh. Then it was gone.

  Heloise lit a cigarette behind Nico, the lighter’s flame flaring. She clicked the lighter shut.

  “Care for a—”

  “I don’t smoke,” Nico said. “And neither does Bear.”

  “Fine.” Heloise exhaled, and wisps drifted into the holo display.

  “How can your bird watchers be sure these were me?” Nico said.

  “One watcher listened to what the underworld was saying,” Heloise said. “They spoke of a terror carrying a bear, and the description of the girl fit you—perfectly.”

  “That’s nuts,” Nico said. “Do you know how tough Russian guys are? They’d never admit a girl with a teddy bear terrorised them.”

  “They gave you a name,” Heloise said pointedly. Nico saw it:

  страшная месть и медведь

  Strashnaya mest' i medved, Nico read. Fearful Vengeance and Bear.

  “Don’t say it,” Nico warned. “Don’t say it out loud.”

  “Okay,” Heloise said with unease. “You think it’s a post-hypnotic suggestion?”

  “No, I think it’s stupid.” Nico looked at more police photos, searching for someone she might recognise. Heloise leaned over and tapped her cigarette into a hand blown, amber glass ashtray on the holo table. Nico smelled Chasse Geraud Soeurs and wondered if Heloise had found a bottle on Darqueworld. Seeing nothing in the photos to spark memory, she skipped over a folder labelled Letters from Rescued. Had she been in Leningrad to receive them, she wouldn’t have read them. Any of the letters could have been bait to draw her out for assassination.