Wight

by Dorien Vincent

  The strobe lights coming in across different dance rooms and corridors, and the laserlights, both making depth and time interminable and totally finite all at once.

  He was smothered - he could not locate anything definitely by sound, by smell or even by sight.

  Of course, as he made his way down the entry corridor, slightly sloped, paint of deepest reds and fuchsia, mirror-lined, no one noticed him, either.

  This brought him some harsh comfort and he swept into the many basement rooms to get a lay of the land and count his quarry.

  And best plan their demise.

  He scoped a total of thirteen vampires - meaning this was a large coven. Thirteen wandering demons squatting and making a home. Including the several he'd killed during his escape.

  There were two elevators labeled 'Love Suites' where the vampires may take their meals. None were upstairs, Tset had checked all the rooms.

  In killing this coven, he would have to be stealthy - not only could one witness him and flee, to spread his name, but it just felt right that his prey would be unawares until the deathblow was delivered.

  They were easier to kill once they'd fed - warmed and bloated on stolen blood, they would relax. But Tset hated the sightless stares of the poor dead, their glassy eyes and torn throats. Their cries and words, laughs and sobs, silenced forever.

  Not that it even reminded him of Jessie - there were only pangs there, but these people were all innocents as far as Tset would judge them. Even if he found them annoying or repulsive, each was their own glimmer and own person, none meaning or capable of any great harm to anyone, none deserving of the status of cattle or slaughter.

  Tset would be fast - killing each of his own prey before they had theirs.

  He grinned when he passed the 'out of order' sign on one of the two men's rooms. The commercial toilets did well to flush away the gallons and gallons of blood the vampires carried within their bowels, and only one needed to work.

  Tset had a thought that maybe he had been at this a little too long, but he was only joking with himself. He chuckled, "Thirteen to go."

  His first choice sat on a couch directly beneath one of the booming speakers, enjoying the pound to its bones and a selection of sometimes-pretty young women who danced nearby.

  Tset stood, patiently, behind the couch, trying to keep his eyes open through the pain of the beat.

  The vampire stood up, and Tset sat it back down, but not before puncturing its heart from behind.

  It thrashed little, an unforgiving hand over its forehead and the cushions soaked up the small amount of fluid to escape the blackened wound. Tset checked around - below head level, no one even noticed or sent a look his way. They were more blinded by the lights and sound than he was, and drugged.

  He snickered and closed its eyes. It looked as if it might be sleeping. Tset used one of his own bloody fingers to pull up a hardened lip, giving it the appearance of being sated and lazy to any of its kind who looked.

  'Twelve.' He pulled his gloves back on.

  He slipped away and made another quick, quiet round, staying behind clusters of people and out of sight of the pallid ones he was stalking. That two of them were women would make things easier.

  One vampire, Hispanic in his previous existence, with a strip of hair running back from its forehead and piercings in its face, was luring a pretty girl towards the bathrooms. She was totally under his spell, and the spell of alcohol.

  Tset got to the bathrooms first, and hid in the doorway to the out-of-order men's.

  The vampire, hand above the rump of the woman he was bringing to eat, shouted, "I'll be in in a minute." With a wink. He pointed to the door of the other men's.

  As soon as the door closed behind the grinning girl, the vampire stuck a razor blade under his tongue.

  But when he shifted forward to step, a powerful arm wrapped around his neck and dragged him into the overbright fluorescents of the unused bathroom, and before he could call out, a sharp stiletto gouged his throat as he was further pulled into a stall and rammed face first into a toilet.

  The stiletto came back in and cut a second grin across his neck while his attacker jerked his 'hawk. Tendons snapped and the grin widened to a laugh. The vampire, ruptured beyond hope, couldn't fight back as his life drained into the steel bowl.

  Tset kicked the limp arm over the flusher and the raging font flowed unhindered into the depths of the sewage system, a thick pouring sound of pressurized liquid.

  'Eleven.'

  A quick spin check in the filthy mirror above the stinking, rot-filled sinks showed Tset his hair, skin and clothing were clean - the spin carried him out the door and back to the partial blindness. He drew his coat back over his shoulders before stepping into the crowd.

  He didn't have time to stop - the elevator across from him was just shutting up, with a vampire and a girl inside. They were already locked together; the vampire cold and waiting, playing along, and the woman eager, rushing.

  Tset pushed through the throng and jabbed another elevator button. The doors dinged open and he went inside.

  As the door shut before him, he spotted another vampire, angry that someone would go to the 'love suites' without a partner in tow. The vampire shouted something that Tset didn't hear.

  And he was on his way, too late to do anything about it and necessity spurred him further.

  When the doors opened on the upper floor, Tset jumped to the other car and managed to get to the first elevator's doors before they closed.

  When they hit the end of their track, he tore off a handrail inside the booth and put it between the doors. They slid closed an inch, struck the metal beam, and popped back open.

  He did the same for his elevator and then ran off down the hall to his left - keeping his ears perked above the incessant sound of the elevators and muted beat from below.

  He needed a clue, which he got very soon - light tear of flesh, gasp of pain. The sound of their delicate feeding.

  He tracked that sound and pounded on the door to Suite 10 for several seconds, but nothing came of it. With a grunt he forced the lock - normally easier to draw the vampire away, such as to answer a door, but he didn't know how much time he had.

  Grace gasped when the teeth cut through the soft skin of her neck.

  Her back arched, drawing her quivering body closer, and she gaped at the pain of his incisors, she felt death as her blood was sapped.

  Then a distant pounding, coming closer and becoming sharp as she realized someone was at the door - her senses came back to her and her hope.

  She prayed it was someone coming to stop this monster, who was now leaving her to shiver and shake and be sick alone on the bed while she tried to protect herself with the coverlet. The bleeding from her neck was stopped by a poison that had swollen the bite closed, but the wracking eddies made her cold and hot at the same time.

  The pounding ended just as the creature reached the door.

  The lock broke and someone came in - fast and violent, slamming the evil man to the floor and coming down on him.

  There was no sound, only some struggle, and a flash of glinting metal.

  The newcomer stood up from the floor and closed the door, replacing the doorknob, then he turned to her.

  She tried to scream and couldn't - his eyes were deepest wells of black on nearly paperwhite skin. Worse than her original captor. He slid a pair of sunglasses on and started forward.

  Something caught in her throat and she made another go at screaming for help, for anything, but the other man, the newcomer, was sitting beside her, roughly clasping her mouth with a gloved hand, his other on the back of her neck. She could barely breath and her death-threatened senses told her he smelled like tobacco and steel.

  The look on his face petrified her - like he would murder her right there, tear her apart. The intensity of the black eyes had had her totally transfixed with terror and was still felt through the lenses, but his words came to her, "I need to help you but I need to mak
e sure you don't scream, under any circumstances."

  She barely thought a moment, sluggish, but jiggled her head under the press of his hands.

  He removed his hand slowly, glowering at her, and she tried to hold ultimately still, her stretched shirt, hanging off one shoulder, fluttering with her heartbeat and shiver.

  He stood and went to the door, checking the hallway, then he came back, "Do you know what's going on?"

  She shook her head, still a terrified jiggle but from side to side.

  "This chump," And a boot slammed into the pelvis of the obviously dead one, "Is a vampire."

  He lifted his sword to clean the blood off of it and then dragged the body into the meager bathroom, leaving it in the shower stall.

  "And he bit you. Dig?" Tset had decided, even if it took him an effort and made him weary, he wouldn't contribute through omission to the vampire population.

  She shook her head, slowly, still transfixed.

  Tset sighed, "It's a viral gene they pass on, though that probably doesn't mean much to you. Either way - anyway, this is going to hurt, but it's better than the alternative."

  She didn't know what to say, his threat of pain didn't appeal to her.

  He searched the bed frame, eventually coming up with a pin. He tasted it. "Iron, good."

  He went to the body and pulled out its wallet, tearing the bills and plastic out of it, then he offered it to her, "Put this in your mouth. Bite down on it when you feel like crying out. There's more of these around, and they can't hear you or you're in trouble again."

  She didn't take it.

  He shook the leather at her, "Dig?"

  At his insistence, she put the wallet in her mouth, feeling somewhat stupid.

  She looked up to see him heating the iron pin with a Bic butane lighter.

  "What - what are you doing?" Her voice was only a rasping whisper, mumbled, first, around the billfold.

  He sighed, and looked pityingly at her, "Just, hush, keep your eyes closed. Really."

  The sudden change in emotion, the sympathy clearly shown in his features, taking ten years off his age and making him look twenty or so, got across to her, and she nodded, closing now-streaming eyes, her breath rapid.

  He sat down on the mattress behind her and gripped her tightly, pinning her arms and legs with one each of his own.

  There was a hiss and she bit down on the wallet, suppressing the inevitable scream. Her arms resisted his and her legs flexed, trying to stomp, but he held her firm.

  The feeling of the pin in her wounds was an odd one, and discomforting, but in minutes it was over.

  The pin clunked to the carpet, followed by a spit-covered wallet.

  After a few more moments, he let her go and stood in front of her, "You gonna live?"

  Her sad half-smile, and a nod.

  He made her a bandage from his coat lining.

  "Don't open that door after I leave. I'm going to bring cops down on this place and burn it to the ground, but I'll swing by and grab you if I make it that far."

  She nodded again, crying now, but Tset had nothing else to say.

  'Must be hard.' But he felt little empathy.

  On his way out he closed the bathroom door.

  'Ten.'

  Downstairs, Octavio found dead Hugh, on the couch. He didn't move him much, not wanting to disturb the rest of the cattle crowded in the place, but the wound on the back was a silver one.

  He bit back a shout of anger and went to hunt for the intruder and warn the others, leaving Hugh to sit and smile.

  Tset made for the far stairwell, charging loudly to attract attention.

  Five vampires came after him, meeting him at the furthest end of a corridor right near the other door down.

  Tset slowed and one went for a grab, "Excuse me, punk." It was the one who'd spotted him earlier.

  The stiletto was out, agleam white, and then agleam red. The vampire hung by a twisted arm, now limp, with a wound in its back. Tset dropped him, "Excuse me."

  'Nine.'

  The other four jumped in to assist and fell to the same stiletto, the wounds black, bleeding little, altering lines in faces, necks, chests.

  His stiletto and bullets kept the blood in, but Papillion let it flow, as Tset had found.

  Tristram had told him it was the Japanese silver that did that.

  He didn't care - he had uses either way.

  When the brawl was done he checked his clothing - his coat sleeves were slashed, but no wounds on his arms remained. Otherwise he couldn't find anywhere else they'd gotten him.

  "Five." He said.

  He made his way down the stairwell, jumping landings.

  When he got to the bottom, he bashed a grey-looking red-headed girl with the door.

  She started but was unhurt, putting her finger to her lips and looking curiously at the stranger, and he, realizing what she was, backed into the stairwell, holding her gaze. She came with him smiling in anticipation. She hadn't fed yet.

  Before she could figure out precisely what had happened she lay paralyzed in a shadowed corner of the bottom landing, her heart punctured and her vision dimming.

  'Four.'

  Tset checked the men's room immediately after, no one was in there.

  He paused a moment and then burst into the women's room - the second vampire girl was applying lipstick in the mirror, alone.

  "Excuse me?" Was her final quip and Tset didn't bother to hide the body.

  'Three.'

  Now Tset had to figure out how to create a loud enough disturbance to empty the club. He chewed over this problem while he checked every nook and cranny for sleeping or incapacitated people.

  It struck him as he'd half-finished his round and he rushed to the DJ's booth.

  "What the fuck do you need, man?"

  "Dude, someone stabbed your girlfriend in the bathroom."

  The man's eyes opened wide, "What the fuck you mean? In the mens', man?"

  "No, womens'. She's still in there."

  "How you know she's my girlfren'? I ain't never seen you before." By this time the turntables were just playing something industrial, without the mix, the music was already quieter and less intrusive.

  "You were hanging out with her earlier."

  The DJ definitely paled, "Oh shit... that was my sister, dude! Get outta my fuckin' way! Who stabbed her? Who?"

  When the DJ was gone, Tset rifled through the meticulously organized LP albums and put on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, low. The lights, keyed to automatically match the music, swirled in rainbow colors.

  He broke the key off in the lock as he exited.

  Immediately people were upset, but he didn't meet their glares and some just danced along anyway.

  Tset snickered as he walked past the bathrooms, hearing the DJ say, "Who is this bitch? What happened to the music?"

  Tset was heading for the two doormen he'd passed earlier. They stood near the entrance of the main dance room and were waiting for their turn to eat.

  Tset lit a cigarette before stepping into their sight, having a thought that he'd lost track of one of the other vampires.

  "Sir, you can't smoke in here." The vampire grimaced at him, thinking him a fool.

  "Fuck yeah I can. I gotta VIP pass. Gives me three smokes."

  "What?" Said the other.

  Tset grinned like they were stupid, "I'll demonstrate." Tset was already catching glances from around the room for having a lit cigarette, 'Perfect. An audience.'

  "One smoke." He indicated his cigarette and flicked it into the air.

  The two other sets of eyes snapped to it.

  Before it had gone far from his hand Tset reached under his coat and tore his .45s out roaring.

  The blood doused his grounded cigarette and casings clattered. "Two. Three." He counted to the two now-dead vampires.

  There was a second or two of silence and Beatles, ending when the partygoers started screaming and rushing to get out. Someone was knocked into a fla
ming pyramid of shot glasses, which fell behind the bar.

  Tset stood in the chaos and drank it in. He loved it, but not for the fear, not for the screams, for the sheer mass of effect he'd created.

  About the same time the liquor bottles started bursting, the flames creeping to ceiling, the lights were killed.

  In all of this Tset had merely stepped into the crowd and pushed deeper, tallying, 'Just ooone left.'

  He felt a cold feeling when he thought maybe the last one had gone upstairs to finish the job in room 10.

  But no, he caught sight of the face, coming out of the electrical closet, murder in its eyes.

  It had shut off the lights, apparently having found a few of Tset's other victims.

  'Thank God I'm quick.'

  It pushed through the throng, angrily knocking some partyers to their knees, searching every face for the hunter in his club.

  Its last thought was, 'My club!' When Tset's stiletto went in under the base of its skull.

  Grace whimpered when she heard the door open, but it was the stranger, "Someone started the party early, so we gotta get out of here. Fire's going. Cops'll be on their way. You decent?"

  She nodded, in the pitch, thinking herself stupid, but, strangely, he replied, "Good. I know lighting's not great, but we'll be out of here soon."

  She felt her hand taken in his and she was gently - 'Gently?' she wondered - led from the room, through a corridor, down the stairs, everything taking a nervous eternity in the black.

  An eternity that lasted until they reached the club floor - she didn't see any bodies, but there was a good blaze going.

  The stranger pulled her along past it, up the smoky entry corridor, her eyes streaming and her lungs aching, and out into the fresh night air.

  She hadn't noticed but he was carrying a clean blanket from the suites, he threw this over her shoulders, "I leave you here dressed like that, you'll go into hypothermia."

  His grin was nice enough, if a bit cynical. She smiled, looking at her short skirt and boots, shivering all the same, but she felt hot as well.