Monster Stalker

by Elizabeth Watasin

  “Just so you know,” Heloise said, “quite a few of the victims wanted to meet you to say thank you.”

  “You’re so American, Heloise.”

  “Huh?” Heloise said.

  Nico didn’t answer. She stared at the evidence of her rampage and banged against the steel vault her blanked memory had become.

  What was I after? What did I want to kill?

  “We have no idea what set you off,” Heloise said, as if answering Nico’s unspoken question. “You weren’t only liberating victims, you were slaughtering traffickers, setting fires. Destroying it all, really. You were quite an accomplished arsonist. Then, after three months, you vanished.”

  For three months I terrorised, Nico thought. Like him. But did she achieve the final kill, like he would have? She saw the date beginning her spree: one week after her birthday.

  “You killed buyers, bosses, corrupt officials. My discussion boards could not stop talking about you. If you’d gone all the way to assassinating a minister, I would have won a very nice wager.”

  “I killed profit.” Nico looked at Heloise. “What did the vampires of the Leningrad Oblast think of my activity? Didn’t they run some of these operations?” She indicated the news articles.

  “I don’t know.” Heloise raised her eyebrows in thought. “Back then, I was too American to form a relationship with the ex-Soviets. Maybe you created a convenient power vacuum. Maybe you were working for one of the vampires, getting rid of the competition. No one could make sense of your pattern, if you had one. You were so random about it.”

  Just like him. Nico pulled out her security wallet from her shirt and fetched the little black book. She handed it to Heloise, then touched the light keyboard, activating it. She typed an entry for 1987.

  Crucified maker on the letter Y of the Rocklyn Hotel’s marquee, Los Angeles. Watched him burn at sunrise.

  “Well, that explains things,” Heloise said over Nico’s shoulder as she read. She then straightened and thumbed through the black book, her cigarette between her fingers.

  “I’m sure you had a better vampire childhood.”

  “Oh, the usual murderous sort. I wasn’t chosen for my ninja abilities.”

  “I’m not a ninja.” Nico flagged the Morrissey concert entry as untrue. “And I’m not some highly trained Nikita. I learned how to stalk and murder from my own murder, and I used what I learned to stalk and murder my maker. That’s all.” She closed her file.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is all in Cyrillic.”

  “Can you match the names in it to the ones in police reports and the news articles?”

  Heloise frowned. “Well, if I apply a formula to scan these pages, then transla—”

  “Thank you,” Nico said. She had a sudden thought. “Can I borrow your lighter?”

  The lighter Heloise handed her was of black lacquer and silver, looking more like a cosmetic case than a lighter. It was a vintage, feminine tool, meant for evenings dancing with Sinatra types and listening to chanteuses. Nico raised her foot, activated the lighter, then applied the flame to the bottom of her shoe. She and Heloise watched while the thick rubber sole resisted the flame. After a while of attempting to set her shoe on fire, Nico clicked the lighter shut and gave it back to Heloise.

  Well, that explains my ugly shoes.

  “Not a ninja, huh?” Heloise said.

  An alert chimed from the table and a hologram superseded the Again Walkers database. Two male faces materialised, one thick and small-eyed with a horn growing from his forehead, the other of an elvish, slim lad with a mop of hair and pointed ears.

  The logo above the faces said: SLAUGHTER SPAWN. A tinier logo in the corner said, Winkie Bets.

  “Sorry about that. Let me just—” Heloise tapped the keyboard. A three-figure sum appeared beneath the elvish boy.

  “You’re betting on the spawn fights?” Nico exclaimed. She swivelled in the seat. “That’s so—what vice don’t you indulge in?”

  Heloise stood holding her cocktail glass and cigarette and looked at her, perplexed.

  “Can’t you just go out and cha-cha? You don’t do smack, do you?”

  “Nooo,” Heloise answered, dismissive. “That stuff will ruin you. And so would the crap tables.” She sipped her Sidecar and smiled.

  Nico rose and headed for the doors.

  “I’ll get to work on your little black book posthaste, Miss Alexikova,” Heloise bade, laying down her drink. She followed. “What will you and Bear do now?”

  “Oh, the usual; stroll by the lake, read poetry. Stalk something.” Nico stopped.

  Looking at you is like looking at what we lost, Heloise had said.

  She turned to Heloise. “A lot can happen in twenty years. I have a question about when I was gone.”

  Heloise grinned. “We can have dinner if you’d like to talk more.”

  A smile nearly turned up the corner of Nico’s mouth. Heloise never seemed to quit.

  “No thank you. I just want to know: why did you say at the lake that I was something you all had lost?”

  “Ah. That.” Heloise’s face lost levity. “Well, to put it simply, darling, we lost the protection of being a myth. And we were outed in the worst way possible. A bioweapon was launched against us as a result. A plague.”

  Heloise drew on her cigarette, then snuffed it out in an ashtray resting on the balustrade. “You’re lucky to have not seen it happen. The primacy directed an exodus, because the cure was here. Every vampire who could reach the weird matter engine came through. And should still be crossing over, if the machine’s still working.”

  “That’s why you were held in immigration. Quarantine.” Nico doubted she would have survived a plague herself. As a lone vampire, she most likely would have died, uncomprehending. “Were you ill?”

  “No.” A brief, haunted look escaped before Heloise hid it.

  Nico nodded.

  No wonder you’re celebrating.

  “Do you use a service to order live meals?” she asked, curious. “Which one?” She continued to the doors and touched the control that opened them. Heloise hesitated and Nico looked at her.

  “Willing Kittens,” Heloise answered, walking to the door.

  “So how many girls are you having for dinner tonight?” Nico queried as she stepped out. “And which one are you going to dress up like me?”

  Heloise stood, one hand against the entryway frame and the other at her hip, and looked at Nico, exasperated. The doors slid shut. Nico ran for the elevator platform before Heloise had time to consider a retort and open her doors again.

  ***

  Night fell. Nico whiled the hours away at a coffeehouse’s sidewalk table on puke street, where the service didn’t mind that she only drank two cups of blood with a slice of blood sponge cake. The cake had been a bit much, since she was still not used to eating food, so she’d given it to a backpacking vampire. Nico studied her hundred civic questions for the citizenship exam and watched the street.

  So I’m a mass murderer in a different sense. Did the Po in immigration see behind the blank in her head and learn that? Though the Nico of Old Earth seemed to have had her reasons, massacring traffickers, it was still vengeance killing.

  Which I guess is okay on this planet, so I needn’t worry? She preferred to focus on a different and more present problem: Esche.

  Nico watched the street and easily recognised young people and frugal backpackers she’d seen since coming to the hostels sector. But none who walked or enjoyed themselves were vampires from Again Friends.

  Her Id chimed; Shayla. Nico felt the corners of her mouth lift, and then her smile broadened, reading the message. Shayla’s shift began in the afternoon, tomorrow. What would Nico like to do?

  Elevenses? Nico typed, at the Blue Owl.

  Magic, Shayla typed back.

  Nico left the coffeehouse and recognised a rarity. She had had a beautiful day. A monsterless day, one worthy of a new beginning fo
r a new arrival on a new planet, with new romantic prospects. She even liked Heloise’s attentions, though Nico preferred to not admit that. But at the end of the day, the question of who she had been on Old Earth, or who she’d forgotten she had been on Old Earth, still remained. And she was still Esche’s champion, whether Esche was living or dead.

  Nico touched the mystery button pinned to her cardigan front.

  Night is when bad things begin.

  “Okay Bear, let’s screw this up,” she said. She stood outside Again Friends’ entrance until Dann noticed her and buzzed her in.

  “I haven’t seen her,” Dann immediately said when Nico entered. “Isn’t it about time you, uh, moved on to a new obsession?”

  “No. You keep leaving your booth. How do you do that?”

  “Oh, I got a private exit,” Dann said, cheerful. He pushed the sign-up sheet towards her.

  “Really.” Nico picked up the pen. “Like a backdoor?”

  “Eh...it’s a secret.”

  “No one’s backdoor is a secret.”

  “Hey, are you implying something?” Dann said, indignant.

  Nico signed her and Bear’s name while staring at Dann. Then she departed down the entry hall for the adjoining ground floor hallway.

  The rec room blared some holo show, and Nico turned for the short hallway where the empty vending machine stood. She pulled out her remaining credit card from her wallet and slipped it into the door seam of the shut classroom, right next to the doorknob. She pushed the card, and it slid against the lock’s short bolt, disengaging it from the doorframe. The door clicked open.

  In the darkness, piles of possessions lay by stacked chairs and desks: coats, garments, shoes, books, bags, and packs. A bright red backpack with garish green accents lay nearest the door, as if casually tossed in.

  Nico quietly shut the door.

  Nico entered the rec room, recognising only broody boy and Ozzie girl among the vampires present. The new vampires barely glanced at her and returned their attention to the holo show. She did not see paperback girl, tongue-pierced girl, Danica, or the Sushi Hut worker. No Iris or Re’shawn.

  Ozzie girl smiled and made a presentation gesture to the box with the blood packs.

  “Still some left,” she said.

  “For once, I’m hungry,” Nico said.

  “Ace! Give it a burl.” She handed Nico two warm packs and Nico accepted, removing the straw of one pack and piercing it. Then she sucked.

  “Mm,” she said, and beneath the metallic flavour of simulated blood, she tasted traces of a heavy sedative. She took a seat in an empty armchair, stored the remaining pack behind Bear, and activated Dorothy. She read while she sucked on her bag. After a few minutes, Nico rose and walked out, still eating and reading. Once on the stairwell, she ran quickly for the boys’ bathroom.

  Nico locked the door and vomited up as much of the ingested blood as she could into a lavatory receptacle. After she washed her mouth out, she fetched her dose of pUff and put the applicator to her nose. She released the dose and inhaled deeply through her nostrils.

  PUFF

  Nico tried to keep her mouth shut but coughed anyway. The stimulant spiked, elevating her senses until she was a floating balloon. Nico plopped on the bathroom floor. She giggled.

  “Shhhh,” she shushed to Bear. When she glanced at the full-length mirror, her doppelgänger’s eyes were too bright.

  “Don’t look high,” she ordered her reflection.

  ***

  “Rest time,” the voice-over calmly announced.

  Nico lay atop her bed with eyes shut, Bear strapped to her and her Id resting on her chest, as if she’d fallen asleep reading it. The room dropped to blackness when the new girls entered, talking. One eased into the bed that had been Iris’s. Nico envisioned paint drying and grass growing to keep herself from jumping up and running laps around the room. If she had a beating heart, pUff would have had it pounding a mile a minute.

  “It’s way earlier than 22 hundred,” one girl said, and someone yawned.

  “It is,” the yawner replied. “But I’m ready to turn in.”

  The last, whispered conversation died, and when the room fell to complete silence, Nico opened her eyes. She carefully turned her head, and everyone to her vampire’s sight lay as still as dead people in the blackness.

  She tucked her Id behind Bear. Right then, she only had to wait until the anxiety began. She stared at the ceiling and started counting shee—

  The darkness compressed, pressing her into the bed, and the hand she raised in alarm fell towards her, sinking—

  Nico heaved herself out of her bed. She landed face first on the floor. When she looked up, the girl in Iris’s bed raised her arms and legs high, her body sinking. Nico jumped up.

  The girl disappeared into the bed. Nico looked at everyone. They all sank, bodies, legs, and arms vanishing, eaten by their beds.

  Nico ran for the door.

  She pounded up the steps for the rooftop exit, feeling ghost fingers might catch up and drag her into the vanishing place. The door to the roof stood bolted. Nico threw herself against it, making it rattle. She kicked hard, and the metal surface dented. She kicked again and again, her blows echoing in the stairwell.

  The door’s metal suddenly screamed as it twisted from the pull of an outside force. Nico stepped back down the steps when the door jerked. Gloved fingers appeared in the gap created between the stubborn door and the doorframe. Another hand joined it and slowly peeled back the protesting metal, revealing the Makepeace, Amazon Woman.

  Nico looked up at the moonlit Makepeace as she created an opening big enough for her armoured body to step through.

  “Come down, hurry,” Nico cried.

  ***

  Nico led Amazon Woman quickly down to the girls’ dorm. She ran in, and then stopped.

  Vampire girls lay in the beds, still and asleep. Nico turned around. Everyone seemed present. She looked at the Makepeace, who surveyed the room, apparently having no trouble with visibility in the darkness.

  “They were all gone,” Nico said. “Sucked into their beds. I was nearly one of them, but I jumped out in time.”

  “Oi, what’s going on?” Jess said slowly, rousing at the end of the room. She then sat up. “What’s a Makepeace doing here?” Other vampires stirred at the sound of Jess’s voice.

  “These girls were not here when I ran to get you,” Nico insisted to Amazon Woman.

  “We were what?” a girl said in drowsy confusion. She looked around. “We were where?” Jess got out of bed.

  The Makepeace raised her arm and pointed her gauntlet. Jess put her hands up.

  A beam emitted from the gauntlet, and Amazon Woman scanned Jess, then widened her beam and ran it along the room, floor, and each bed’s occupant, some stirring awake while others slept. The Makepeace cut her beam and said nothing.

  “They were not here,” Nico repeated.

  Jess approached, a concerned look on her face. “Are...are we in trouble, officer?”

  “Were you dreaming?” the vampire in Iris’s bed said to Nico, rubbing her eyes.

  “Or did you make a mistake in the dark?” Jess suggested.

  “I don’t have a problem with seeing in the dark,” Nico shouted.

  “What’s happening?” another girl murmured.

  “They were gone,” Nico said to the Makepeace. “Every one of them. Veils took them.”

  “This is a bit naff,” Jess said under her breath and laughed a little.

  “It is not,” Nico said.

  “Okay!” Jess held up her hands. “Wrong choice of words! Sorry, mate. Let’s find this—whatever’s gone wrong.”

  “It was abduction, that’s what’s wrong. The free blood is drugged with a sedative, making everyone pass out and become easier to take. Here.” Nico pulled out her second blood pack from behind Bear, still uneaten. Amazon Woman took it from her and pricked it with a needle from her gloved finger.

  “This blood contains tran
quilisers,” the Makepeace stated.

  “But isn’t taking a sleeping aide in that agreement we signed?” Jess said, confused.

  ***

  Nico descended quickly for the ground floor, the Makepeace and Jess following. Some vampires emerged from the dorms, drowsy and curious, but others could not be bothered and returned to sleep.

  Dann sat in his caged booth, the only light lit in the hostel. A holo programme loudly played from his Id, of an anime with singing cat girls. He nodded to the sugary beat, then turned his head at Nico’s entry.

  At the sight of the Makepeace behind Nico, Dann stood abruptly.

  “Where-where did, uh—I still have that Id you gave me,” he announced to Nico. “For Asha, right?”

  “Shut up,” Nico said. She brought the sign-up sheet towards Amazon Woman. “Here. The terms are on the last sheet.”

  Dann quickly lowered the volume on his programme as the Makepeace flipped the pages and then scanned the terms of agreement.

  “This agreement is in order,” she said, lowering the sheets of paper.

  “If we’re supposed to be doped up, why are you wide awake?” Nico accused Jess. Jess looked at her, bewildered, and shrugged.

  “I—I may be getting used to the sedative. I have been here a few nights, mate,” she said.

  Nico turned to Amazon Woman. “There’s a room, come on.”

  She led the Makepeace to the locked classroom, Jess following. When Nico opened it with her credit card, the black interior held nothing but piled chairs and desks.

  “No,” Nico said in bewilderment and stepped into the space.

  “This was full of stuff from the missing vampires,” she cried. “Backpacks and things. One from a girl who had stayed here last night, and there’s no way she would have left a backpack behind.” She looked at the Makepeace. I should have taken photos. “They used veils here too,” Nico then stated. “Look.” She pointed at the floor. Even in the darkness, she could see the dust outlines where objects had rested.