Death Embraces

by J. C. Diem

  Spotting a car easing to a stop just up the street, I hurried towards it. I might not be able to hotwire one but I could steal the keys easily enough.

  My victim was tattooed, pierced and might have been scary if I hadn’t been an undead creature of the night. He turned around quickly when I tapped him on the shoulder. I didn’t realize he’d stabbed me in the stomach until dismay filled his face. That’ll teach me to underestimate humans. Not that the wound bothered me at all. I was just used to thinking of them as a food source instead of something that could fight back.

  “Shit! Fuck!” he said in mangled English. “I thought you were a rival gang member.” Panic tinged his voice and his hands hovered helplessly over the knife handle.

  “You really should try looking before stabbing,” I suggested dryly.

  Speculation and animal cunning passed over the guy’s narrow, pimpled face. Glancing up and down the street, he came to the conclusion that getting rid of me was the best way to proceed. He grabbed the knife, pulled it out then stabbed me repeatedly until he was panting with the effort.

  “Are you done?” I asked when he staggered backwards and armed sweat out of his eyes.

  Dazed and blinking in confusion, he stared down at the knife and at the sluggish, dark blood coating the blade. “Why aren’t you dying?” he asked me stupidly.

  “Because I’m already dead, moron,” I told him then punched him in the face. I grimaced at the sight of his caved in nose. Blood, bone and brain coated my fist. He dropped the keys as his legs buckled. I caught both his body and the keys before they hit the ground. Popping open the boot, I folded him inside and threw the knife in after him. It wouldn’t do for the cops to get a look at my blood on the blade.

  Checking that no one had witnessed the altercation, I wiped the gore onto his t-shirt then quietly closed the boot. My own stolen shirt was now riddled with holes. It was dark enough to hide the bloodstains.

  Driving west for a couple of hours, I stopped beside a river and waited for a lone car to pass before dragging the dead gang member out of the car. I searched his pockets and found a tattered wallet. Inside were half a dozen credit cards, each in a different name. The cards went into my pocket and he went into the water with an unceremonious splash. His corpse bobbed along merrily and eventually disappeared from view. The knife followed him into the water with a small plop and sank straight to the bottom. My blood would be washed away without a trace.

  Resuming my journey, I drove until dawn neared. I’d chosen a route that took me through rural areas instead of through the larger cities. It seemed prudent to avoid places where vampires might gather in numbers. If they could all be controlled by the First then it would be safe to assume that any vamp could now be my enemy.

  Cars passed me regularly during the long drive. I wasn’t confident that I would be safe from discovery if I parked beside the road and hid in the boot. I decided I’d have to be more careful from now on when bedding down for the day.

  Nosing my ride onto a dirt road, I drove until the faintest hint of light touched the sky. Instantly, my eyes began to sting and steam rose from my flesh. I wasn’t hurting yet but if the sun’s rays touched me, I’d begin to boil. Since I’d already experienced what it felt like to be half skeleton, I was keen not to repeat the process.

  Hiding the car in a thicket, I pulled my pack from the back seat and hurriedly changed into one of the black leather suits.

  In the deepest part of the thicket, I dropped to my knees and began to dig. Dirt collapsed into the hole behind me as I made my way into the earth, hiding me from the light before it could scald me. I didn’t stop tunnelling down until I was a good twenty feet below the ground. Only then did I burrow out a small hollow and pack the entrance with dirt. The backpack served as my pillow and I made myself as comfortable as possible considering I was sharing my rough bed with bugs.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  This time, I allowed myself to sleep. If I dreamed, I didn’t remember it. Tunnelling my way back to the surface, I halted when I sensed someone standing above me. Urging my senses upwards, I encountered four more beings waiting for me. There was something strange about them, they didn’t feel like normal vampires. Maybe they aren’t vampires at all anymore, I thought grimly.

  Still about ten feet beneath the ground, I began digging sideways instead of straight up. After having so much practice moving beneath the earth, it was easy enough to dig a good fifty feet away. Rising almost noiselessly, I wasn’t particularly surprised to see five misshapen imps crouched in a tight circle above the hole I’d made. All held swords or axes ready to hack me to pieces. Been there, done that and I’m not doing it again.

  I didn’t know how they’d tracked me in the first place but slinking away wasn’t an option. This could give me the perfect opportunity to find out where the First was hiding. Maybe I wouldn’t even need to visit the Comtesse to torture the information out of her at all.

  Ignoring the stab of disappointment at that idea, I judged the distance between me and the nearest monster. I quietly pulled both swords free from the pack and then their sheaths. My chosen target’s grey skin glistened wetly in the shadows. They were all sweating heavily and the smell wasn’t pleasant.

  Shouting a warning would have been more sporting but it was five against one so screw fairness. I launched myself at the closest imp without a sound. Orange eyes flicked upwards then widened as one of the other imps saw me. The creature in my sights didn’t have enough time to react before I was on him. My twin swords pierced its neck. Crossing my hands over, the sharp blades overlapped, severing its bald head easily. So, normal weapons can kill them. Good to know.

  As the body fell to the ground, twitching and jutting steaming blood from its neck, the other four stared at me stupidly. “Where is your leader hiding?” I asked the group. “Tell me where he is and I might let you live.” Yeah, sure I will.

  “If we told you, he’d kill us himself,” one replied. Its voice was guttural and the words were in what I suspected was our father’s alien language but I understood it perfectly.

  “How did you find me?”

  “You know how,” another responded almost contemptuously.

  That exhausted our conversation and all four attacked me simultaneously. Working as a team was completely foreign to the small group. While hacking at me, one accidentally axed its colleague in the back of the head. The imp went down, leaking blood and brains and twitching uncontrollably. The offending monster gave its companions a sheepish look and shrugged its slumped shoulders. Not quite dumb enough to fall for its false contrition, they turned on their ally.

  Moving out of range, I watched the remaining trio attempt to massacre each other. They’d completely forgotten about me in their frenzy to do away with their rivals. Minutes later, only one imp remained. Slashed in several places, it held up its gore ridden axe and howled at the sky in triumph. The hairs on my arms stood to attention as I had a vivid flash of what earth would be like with these things in charge. I’d just had a firsthand view of their need to kill. The earth would become a dead wasteland if they were left to run free.

  Staggering in a circle, the monster spotted me and went still. The orange eyes were puzzled as it tried to remember why it was there in the first place. Intelligent it wasn’t and no recognition flared within its brain. Hurt badly, possibly dying, it started towards me. The urge to kill was stronger than its need to survive. One of my swords went into its throat and the other slid into its heart.

  Dropping to its knees, the imp grasped the sword in its throat and tried to pull it out. Even kneeling, it was almost eye to eye with me. Obliging its unspoken wish, I pulled the sword free. “Tell me where the First is,” I urged the creature.

  “Won’t,” it spat. Dribbles of black blood ran from its mouth, down its neck and onto its chest. Clothed only in a filthy loincloth, I noticed this monster was chestier than the others. Jesus, it’s female! I wasn’t sure why that shocked me so much. More than a few of the da
mned I’d dispatched had been women. I guess the imps were so huge and unnatural that I’d assumed they became androgynous when they changed into their new forms.

  Twisting the sword still in the thing’s chest, I winced as she screeched. Startled birds burst out of the trees and winged their way to freedom. “Tell me where the First is!” It wasn’t a question this time but a demand.

  Falling onto her back, the imp succeeded in freeing herself from my sword. She crawled a few feet away then fell onto her face. A convulsion hit her as I reached her side. She was dead before I turned her onto her back. Glazed, unseeing eyes stared up at the trees.

  “Well, that was unsuccessful,” I said then bent to clean the swords. A more thorough cleaning could wait until I stopped for the night. For now I simply wiped the blades on the loincloth of the dead monster.

  It was a surprise to see that none of the fallen had turned into mush yet. Worried that humans might stumble across the carcasses, I spent an hour hiding the carnage. I turned the tunnel I’d slept in into a grave, digging it wide enough to hide all five bodies inside. It was obvious someone had been digging by the time I was done but at least the burial site was hidden beneath the trees.

  Before driving off, I changed back into my civilian clothing. I’d have to fill up the car with petrol soon. Wearing the tight black leather outfits would make me stand out far more than I wanted to.

  As I drove away from the battle site, I mulled over the small amount of information I’d gleaned from the imps. One had told me I already knew how they’d managed to find me. Either I didn’t know or I didn’t want to admit that I knew it. Passing an abandoned van about two hundred meters down the road, I guessed it had been their mode of transportation.

  When I stopped for fuel in a tiny town, the answer to how they’d found me became too obvious to ignore. The bright lights of the service station glared down at me and my shadows stood out baldly on the concrete. All three of them overlapped, filling up the shadow car on the ground with a shadowy petrol nozzle. I knew I wasn’t the only one who could see them when I entered the shop to pay for the fuel. A kid of about two or three pointed at me and tugged on his mother’s dress. He was babbling nonsense words but my freaky mind even managed to translate his speech easily.

  “Look, Mummy, look! The lady has three shadows,” the kid was trying to get across to his parent. Lucky for me, she couldn’t understand his words and patted the kid on the head absently. I couldn’t believe a child that young could count accurately. It showed just how little I knew about kids.

  It wasn’t necessary to pay for the fuel after all. The guy behind the counter fell beneath my spell and I sauntered out with his spare cash and one of his credit cards in my pocket. I had quite a collection of plastic to choose from now.

  Climbing into my stolen ride, I pretended not to see the toddler waving at me from his seat in the back of his car. His mother was fussing with his seatbelt and threw a look over her shoulder to see who her son was waving at. All she saw was the side of my car as I drove away.

  Now I know how they found me, I thought dismally as I resumed my trek westward. I was becoming one of them, that was how. Not only could I sense them, they could apparently sense me in return. God only knew how many of the deformed alien demi-god’s spawn were on my trail. Would I find them waiting for me each time I rose for the night? I doubted they could stand direct sunlight but they could obviously move around during the day if they’d managed to get into position to ambush me before I’d risen.

  I’d encountered five of the aberrations and had come out of the fight unscathed. Mainly because they’d been too busy trying to kill each other to attack me. It would be wishful thinking to believe I could count on them infighting every time I came across more than one at a time. They might be disorganized and confused now but they might also learn how to unite as a team. Then I’d get to use my fighting skills for real. It wouldn’t be a fight to first blood then but a fight to the death.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  My theory was finally tested when I was roughly halfway back to France. I was holed up in the cellar of an abandoned farmhouse in an unpronounceable country when guttural voices woke me from my light doze. I hadn’t slept very deeply for several days now and was feeling cranky and out of sorts.

  I’d taken to changing into my black leather suits during the day and keeping my weapons close at hand when I slept. I was glad I had now that the offspring were making their next move. I’d felt them following me from a distance for the past couple of nights. Now they were ready to put whatever plan they’d worked out into action.

  I’d chosen this remote place to hide for the day in the hope that they’d take the bait. The cellar was about fifty feet square. Racks of shelves, some still holding the remnants of canned food, should hinder their movement. Right now, I was hunkered down near the back wall behind one of the racks. Two hulking imps were hunched over, due to the low ceiling. A bright flare of sunlight dazzled my eyes as the trapdoor was opened. Yet another creature dropped inside.

  As I’d guessed, direct sunlight wasn’t their friend. The newest arrival shucked off a heavy cloak that had covered it from head to toe. The black cloak, steaming lightly, landed on two others just like it. Now I had three monsters to deal with.

  This lot already seemed to be cleverer than the last mob and were far more organized. One directed the other pair to split off and begin searching the cellar. They moved as silently as seven foot creatures could with heavy, shuffling footsteps and soft, eager grunts. Their mistake was to assume the sun still had the power to make me die during the day. I have news for them and it isn’t good, heh, heh.

  Picking my first victim, I stayed low and moved to meet her. Slightly smaller than the other two, she was just as ugly and muscular but her head had a definite feminine cast to it. I wasn’t under the delusion that this made her any less dangerous than the other two. She was simply closer so I went for her first.

  Sneaking far more quietly than the offspring, I waited for her to round the shelf. My sword went into her eye and she jittered on the spot before crumbling to the ground. “Did you get her?” the lead imp asked eagerly. “Is Mortis dead?”

  “Technically, yes,” I responded and was gone before he rushed over to see what had happened.

  “I thought new vampires had to sleep through the day,” the third intruder complained.

  “There is nothing normal about this bitch,” the leader growled.

  “You’ve got that right,” I agreed as I popped up beside the third monstrosity. Since it had worked so well last time and he was hunched down low anyway, I stuck a sword into his eye.

  Cursing in his alien language, the remaining fiend backed into the open space beneath the trapdoor. Unfortunately for him, I’d snuck in behind him and removed the cloaks. It would mean certain death if he opened the door and tried to escape.

  “I’ll make a deal with you, vampire bitch,” he said. From the shadows, I could read rudimentary cunning in his twisted, batlike face. A long, forked tongue flicked out and licked his chops.

  “I’m listening.”

  “If you let me go, I’ll call off the others. You go your way and we’ll go ours.”

  Yeah, I believe that about as much as I believe the earth is flat. “What about the First? Won’t he be unhappy that you’ve defied him?”

  “He doesn’t control us completely.” I heard an unspoken ‘yet’ in his words. “We are able to think for ourselves. If we promise to leave you alone and you prevail against our leader, I only ask that you leave us alone afterwards.”

  “Leave you alone to do what? Live peacefully with vampires and humans?” I didn’t bother to hide my disbelief.

  “We know how to remain hidden and to hunt wisely.” He sounded desperate now and was clutching at straws. We both knew he and his brethren had no intention of lying low and remaining in hiding. They would go on a rampage and murder as many humans as possible.

  “Ok, you have a deal.” Surpris
e didn’t sit well on that misshapen face. “Here’s your cloak.” I threw it towards the creature and was on the move before he caught it. It might be considered unsporting to attack while my enemy’s guard was down but I did it anyway. My sword speared through the cloak and into the throat of the monster. A long gash appeared as I sawed sideways. Now he had two gaping mouths. One dribbled saliva and the other gushed rank smelling blood.

  After the second failed attack, the imps took a break for a couple of days to regroup. The third time they came for me, they’d come up with a much better plan. I inadvertently helped them by sticking to the less popular back streets.

  I sensed them suddenly drawing closer even before I saw headlights racing towards me in the rear view mirror. Then three vans were zooming in close to box me into a trap. Squashed inside were creatures far too large to fit into conventional seats. Leering faces sneered at me and then half a dozen guns were being poked out of the open windows. Seeing such modern weapons in the hands of things that looked like they had crawled out of hell was weird. Maybe they raided a gun store. I could imagine the look on the human’s faces when they got a load of these customers. They’d have about five seconds to be terrified then they’d be dead and most likely eaten.

  Slamming on the brakes, I was rear ended by the van behind me. My ploy worked and I escaped the hail of bullets that had been intended for my car. Slow to react, the imps to either side of me sprayed each other with their automatic weapons and both vans veered away. One hit a tree and exploded. The other screeched to a halt, leaving several feet of burning rubber on the road.