by P. T. Phronk
“We need to find him first,” Stan said.
“One thing I’ve learned,” Paul said, “is that this town is small enough that secrets don’t last. It’s like … it’s like playing hide-and-go-seek in a one-bedroom apartment. There might be a closet or two to hide in, but it’ll get opened. Eventually, it’ll get opened.”
“Great inspirational speech, Paul,” Stan said.
Paul smiled. “It’s the best I got. I also got knowledge of where those closets are. This is my town, and this pine-knocker Wilcox ain’t hiding in it long.” He sat down on the bar beside Stan.
“So, we’re, um, good? You’re, uh, back in the fold?” Stan asked.
“Fucking fuck,” said Bloody. “I’m not even human and it makes me cringe to watch you two try to apologize to each other. Paul, Stan is sorry for being an asshole to you. Stan, Paul is still your friend and he’ll help you murder your enemies. Good now?”
Paul gave Stan a sideways glance and nodded.
“Yup,” Stan said.
Bloody rubbed her temples. “Great. Now, let’s figure out what happened to your mother and kill the guy who did it to her.”
It was Monday, and Annie had a job to go to. Annie. Not Bloody. So she took off her clothes and put them in a plastic bag. Big snowflakes fell from the air, melting when they touched down on her skin, lasting a moment longer when they got caught in a patch of fur. She found a little pond in the woods, not far from the lodge, and sat her naked butt down on the damp earth.
Bloody closed her canine eyes to concentrate. Normally, turning back into a person was as easy as bringing back all those annoying human thoughts that defined personhood. A few worries about how to pay the bills, or a plan to navigate a tricky social situation, and she’d wake up as a person. Except that wasn’t working this time. There was something missing—like a shadow where that nervous human was supposed to be. Maybe Wilcox had scooped that part of her brain out with his thumbs.
She dug her clawed hands into the mud around her, willing them to transform. Mist rose from her skin. The cold of the Earth reminded her of being homeless in New York, scrounging through garbage bags for food outside a restaurant where people spent more money than she’d ever made on a single meal. Maybe some would think that was animal behavior, but to her, it felt uniquely human. With a muffled click, one of her claws snapped off, and a fingernail began to painfully push its way through her hand.
It was easier from there. Fur-covered skin sloughed off. She vomited a few liquefied dog organs. Her canine eyes rolled down her face, then were replaced with brand-new human peepers.
After passing out for a few minutes as her brain rearranged itself, Annie—not Bloody—woke up shivering in the cold. She forced herself to wash off in the freezing pond, dried off with the towel she’d found in one of the lodge’s guest rooms, brushed her hair, put on her clothes, and headed to the grocery store for the first day of her new job.
The shagg squinted in the light of Stan’s flashlight. “You tried to kill me,” he said. “Can I at least get your name?”
“We weren’t supposed to kill you,” it—she—said. Her voice was muffled under the water, like listening through a bad cell phone connection.
“Oh, is that right? Great, fantastic, I’ll just let it go. Bashing my head in and trashing my childhood home? It’s all forgiven, if you weren’t technically trying to kill me.”
Paul nudged Stan aside. “Christ, Stan, when did you become so miserable?” He kneeled beside the bathtub, and pushed the flashlight away so its beam didn’t shine directly into her eyes. “Look, we just want to know why you attacked him. We’re not doing this to hurt you. You know who I am, don’t you?”
Behind the silverware-and-rope cage, from under a foot of water, her dark, cloudy eyes scanned Paul’s face. “You’re the police man. You and your spouse provide us with food.”
“Yes,” Paul said. “You can call me Paul. I believe I know your mother. You look just like her.”
“Ruth.”
Stan kneeled on the other side of the tub. “Your name is Ruth?”
“My mother is Ruth. I am Miriam.”
“You have a mother?”
“Not the same type of mother your community considers family, although I had one of those too, long ago. My new mother is the one who introduced me to the rivers. Who gave me life.”
Stan remembered Dalla talking about her father; probably the same type of father as this shagg’s mother. The vampire had gotten in a fight with her father, and blamed her stress from that fight for the car accident that introduced her to Stan. In a way, this whole thing was his fault. Dalla had her own nontraditional offspring as well—Letterman, whose features had twisted so that he resembled his mother.
“I have a mother too,” Stan said. “I look just like her. I believe the man who hired you to kill me—or kidnap me, whatever—has hurt my mother.”
Miriam sighed, causing the surface of the water above her to ripple. She mumbled in her muffled voice: “He never mentioned that.”
“So you were sent by him? This Wilcox fella?” Paul asked.
“My mother talked with him. She never did mention his name. He came and said he needed our help. He said he needed protection from what is coming. A demon, he said. He said a demon is coming.”
“Was he talking about me?” Stan asked.
The shagg laughed, the water bubbling. “You? Bless your soul. No, the demon has not arrived. But he said that you summoned it, and if we brought you to him, perhaps we could stop it from doing more damage.”
“Christ. He’s making up stories just to get these things on his side.”
Paul squinted. “Wait,” he said. “What do you mean more damage?”
“The foul water. The mist that arises from it. All the work of the demon. It made us very confused. We could no longer find our family, or our prey. Some of us wandered aimlessly. Some of us fed on people, even though pacts forbid it. We were very confused.”
Stan slammed his hand on the side of the tub. “He’s making it all up. That fog is what’s messing with Bloody too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s the one behind it. He made up a demon and then he hurt your people to convince you it was real. All so he could get at me.”
“What makes you so special?” Miriam asked. In her faraway voice, it didn’t sound like a rhetorical question, but genuine curiosity.
“I …” Stan began, but he couldn’t quite form a response.
“She has a point,” Paul said. “Why would Wilcox kidnap your mother, conjure up some fog, and brainwash these folks just to get to you?”
“I did stab him.”
“Revenge isn’t usually so complicated,” Paul said.
Miriam closed her dark eyes. She turned her head. “I know not if this chaos is the Wilcox man’s doing, a demon’s, or yours. I only wish to go home to my family.”
“You and me both,” Stan said, his voice shaking.
Paul hefted himself up using the side of the tub. “You rest, okay?” he said to Miriam. “We’ll get you home when we can figure out how to do it without causing a war.”
The shagg’s puffy lips shook like she was about to cry. Paul ushered Stan upstairs.
Stan jumped up and down in front of the fireplace, shivering off the cold of the basement and the chill that the conversation with Miriam placed in his gut. “A war, Paul?”
“The town’s relationship with the shaggs has always been delicate. This could push it over the edge. Hell, I wish Linda were here. She always knew what to do to smooth things over.”
“Mom knew about these shaggs?”
Paul nodded. “She wrote the pacts that kept the shaggs from eating us.”
“How did I miss all this?” Stan asked.
“Most people in town do. This darkness has always been there, under the surface, but people go about their lives, seeing it in the corners of their eyes and never botherin’ to turn their heads. Remember the council meetings? Give ‘em Hell, Linda! They used to
shout that at your mother when she stood up for folks. Most of them didn’t know it, but she was standing up for the shaggs too. By standing up for everyone, she was protecting everyone, even those who didn't know they needed protecting.”
“But now she’s gone,” Stan said. “Who knows where. Maybe killed by Wilcox. Maybe with help from these shagg people. All to get to me.”
Paul sighed. He gripped Stan’s shoulder, his fingers digging in so hard that it stung. “Stan, I know I’ve told you this a few times, even way back when we were kids. But you need to be reminded once in a while: not everything is about you.”
(THREE)
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER TOWN CONVERTED. This one was home to two vampires, but only one shared his blood. The other one was a new guy, Rick, who was so cruddy at being a monster that there were two ongoing murder investigations in the very town he inhabited. It should’ve been obvious to any appropriately cautious blood-chugger: murder is a tool. Killing just to get a quick snack was a threat to every vampire on the planet—evolutionary history had proven that prey always developed defences against known predators. Apparently Rick wasn’t aware of that.
Dalla’s father hadn’t even planned to spend the day in town, but some damage control was needed. So he found his family member, Warren, who was apparently the distant offspring of the Highgate Vampire—that goofy cousin who messed with the media in the seventies and gained some brief fame. Fame that resulted in dozens of offspring.
Dalla’s father asked Warren a few key questions, and the answers provided enough information to get the ball rolling. If Rick was dead and buried, Warren could step up to produce evidence that connected the rogue vampire to the recent murders. Some bribes to the sheriff, some whispers in the ears of local criminals, yadda yadda yadda, and Warren would control the biker gang that controlled the town. Another family member with a bit of power, set to grow into more power, if he was smart. But first, Rick needed to die.
Rick tasted like crap.
“What kind of frickin’ bloodline is this?” Dalla’s father asked.
Rick tried to fly away. He was strong enough to rip off his own arm to escape the vampire’s grip, but not quick enough to fly away before the vampire tossed him back to the earth by his remaining arm.
After licking more blood from the meaty stump, Dalla’s father asked again: “who created you?”
“My father did,” Rick said.
Dalla’s father rolled his eyes behind his mask. “Well, duh. Who was your father?”
Rick went into a long-winded story about how his family had attempted, for generations, to increase their strength, by only passing on their blood when they were in peak physical condition. Rick did have bulging biceps, but that purifying of their bloodline didn’t seem to work on the brain, because alongside several other verbal blunders, he used the word “prodigy” several times when he probably meant “progeny.”
Dalla’s father interrupted the boring story by yawning, then ripping Rick’s other arm off.
Rick begged for his life. He prayed. It was always like this, human or vampire. Whether he was whispering threats in the ear of the right person or ripping the head off a sloppy vampire, they all saw him as a demon. If the shoe fits …
So like a demon, he possessed Rick. Really got inside of him. He scooped Rick’s useless insides out, then brought him to Warren, and did a little puppet show with Rick’s hollow, armless corpse. Warren laughed and clapped like a little kid; that goofiness ran in his family, it seemed.
Done. On to the next town for some more damage control. Revenge, like murder, was a tool. It was a communication tool, that, when wielded properly, sent a message to people strongly in need of a message. He squeezed the stake in his pocket. The man who had killed Dalla surely had connections. Those connections needed the message he was about to send: don’t mess around with family. Especially don’t mess around with the family of a demon.
15. Something In The Air
BEFORE WALKING THROUGH THE AUTOMATIC doors of the IGA grocery store, Annie flicked a glob of skin off the collar of the simple blouse she’d worn for work. She’d forgotten to check for stray bits of skin left in her hair after she’d become human. Her stomach grumbled. Another thing she’d forgotten: she was always starving after a transformation.
But she had a job to do, so food could wait for now. Hopefully. She took a deep, quivering breath, then walked inside for her first day of her first real job.
Her manager was a perky woman named Kimmy. Kimmy’s voice had tones so high that Annie thought maybe her ears hadn’t fully transformed yet. The computer thing made a funny beep when Kimmy scanned the same chocolate bar, over and over, to demonstrate how the machine worked.
“Beep!” Annie said.
“Mmm hmm! Exactly,” Kimmy squeaked. “Then you press here, then here, enter, ka-ching, this comes out, give out change, and you’re all done.”
Annie nodded. It was almost a bit possible that she’d be able to do that on her own. “Now,” she said, “what about that chocolate bar? You’ve bought it now, right?”
“Yep! That’s the whole transaction. If I were a real customer, the chocolate bar would be mine, all mine!” Kimmy giggled.
Annie squished her face in thought. “Ah hah, yes, but for real, since you just put money in there, that chocolate bar, it actually for real belongs to you, correct?”
The smile on Kimmy’s face didn’t falter, but some of the perkiness left the crinkles beside her eyes. “I … it was a demonstration … but I suppose it is—”
“Can I have it though?”
An odd groan escaped from Kimmy’s smile. “What?”
“Could I maybe have your chocolate bar? I, uh, forgot to eat breakfast, and I could really use a Butterfinger.”
“Oh! Oh, I … yeah, no harm in that.”
Annie chomped on the chocolate bar as Kimmy showed her around the rest of the store. It was really fun to learn about all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes at a store, like how there’s a whole room behind the milk, and how the bakery can put new icing on a cake to extend its expiry date. She even got to meet the free sample lady.
“I’ve heard of these,” Annie said to the sample lady.
“You’ve heard of Bagel Bites. Congratulations,” the sample lady said.
“No, I mean I’ve heard of free samples. I never got to try them before though. They’re … they’re free?”
“You work here now,” Kimmy said.
Annie wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that. Oh, she meant that because she worked here, all the food was free, really. That must’ve been what she was getting at earlier: she didn’t really need to pay for that chocolate bar, because she worked here.
The first Bagel Bite was down her throat before the sample lady even noticed. She grabbed another and ate it a little more cautiously, not wanting to be rude, then licked her fingers.
Kimmy stared. “Oh! Yeah, that’s okay, that’s okay. That’s what they’re there for! I suppose.”
The sample lady scowled. “Kimmy, who the hell …”
“Language!” Kimmy said. The two of them began to squabble, their voices getting higher and higher with every word until it hurt Annie’s ears.
“Well, this is awkward, sooo … I’m going to go stand over there,” Annie said, though they didn’t seem to hear her.
There were so many different boxes of frozen food. Most of it looked more like plastic than food to Annie, and some of the boxes even had pictures of characters from movies and pop stars on them. Plastic people selling plastic food. She barked a laugh to herself.
“Ice cream always gets me rolling on the floor laughing too,” a voice beside her said. She turned. Ahhh, Dean.
“I thought I smelled you,” she said, smiling.
“I guess I deserved that.” He carried a basket full of cheap snacks that she recognized from behind the bar at Ducks. It was just her luck that she would get a job to gather info, and the first person she ran into was the only town
ie she already knew. Aside from Paul, Dean was the only one she could really call a friend.
“Sorry about the other night,” she said. “I … wasn’t feeling very well, so I had to take off.”
His face did something she couldn’t read; his eyes crinkled behind his lopsided sunglasses. “No worries, bud. You go home with whoever you want. Stuff happens. Beer happens. I’m not one to judge.”
She felt her face go red. “It wasn’t like that, but I guess I had a few too many. Do you remember anything from Saturday night?” Maybe she could get some info from him after all. Her memory of the night was still missing large gobs of time, thanks to Wilcox’s mindfuck fog.
“Sure, yeah. Regular night at Ducks, all things considered.”
Was he lying? Surely his mind was fogged too. Sometimes people lied so they didn’t have to admit they didn’t know something. Stan did it all the time, even when Annie was a dog and he talked to himself around her, thinking he was alone.
“Regular night,” she echoed. It was far from regular. She could still feel the arc of Wilcox’s thumbnails in her eyes. She shook her head.
“You made it home okay though?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she lied. “Oh, I found a new place too!” She felt something she hadn’t felt in a while, here at her job, bragging about a new place—pride.
“Whoa. You must’ve signed a lease, then. Does that mean you’ll be sticking around town?”
The crinkle around his eyes and hopefulness in his voice made her heart skip a beat. “We’ll see. The rats who own the abandoned lodge just outside of town aren’t very good landlords, but they didn’t make me sign anything. Or pay.”
“Ah,” Dean said.
“Yeah.” She looked around the cavernous store. Pictures of trees and moose and a waterfall adorned the walls above the rows of shelves. “Oh, but I do have money! I’m working here now.”
Dean whistled. “Wow, look at you. A week in town and you’ve already got an apartment and a job. Half of the drunks at the bar whine that there’s no work here. I’ll have to tell them about you to give ‘em a kick in the ass.”