Of Moons and Monsters

by P. T. Phronk

  Fox saw the stake’s potential. When he was desperately searching for weapons to take with him to go retrieve his stolen child from Dalla and Lightfoot, and Wilcox was presumed dead, he saw the stake, said “nice stick,” and took it with him.

  The stake took a ride in the silky interior of Fox’s coat. The ride got bumpy as Fox got in a tussle with the vampire, but the stake had been through many tussles, so it wasn’t surprising when the vampire got the upper hand over Fox, as vampires do, and the stake somersaulted through the air, then hit the yellowed linoleum floor of a Walmart. It only rested there a moment before being picked up again, by Stan Lightfoot, who held its needle-sharp point to his own wrist and threatened to feed Dalla his blood. That was a new strategy.

  He never did feed her, but Lightfoot took the stake and the vampire away, where he said some very meaningful words to her, before raising the stake, then plunging it down.

  As it had so many times before, the stake’s needly point slid easily into the vampire’s sternum, but in the hands of an amateur, it got stuck as its widening shaft wedged against bone. With a bit more weight behind it, the point found the sternum’s other side, and finally that pure muscle of a vampire’s heart. It plunged through layers of it, the fibers giving it a warm hug as the blood rushed past, finally free, filling in the stake’s cracks with much-needed moisture. Its purpose was once again fulfilled: replacing a draining spring of unnatural evil with the purity of nature.

  The upset human killer wasn’t proud of himself, and he left the stake there, wedged in the burned lump of dead vampire flesh. Abandoned again. Nobody even picked it up as more vampires arrived, and more scuffling occurred, until there was silence. Just like in the early days, when the stake had been shackled to a tree in the English countryside.

  The silence broke when another upset person arrived. Except this one wasn’t human. And for the first time, against all the laws that govern both nature and monsters, the stake was picked up and owned by a vampire.

  Maybe it finally was the end of the world.

  Stan’s heart raced as he filled in the later details of the story, and John tensed. His hands were still invisible in the reflection in the window, but Stan thought he saw a glimmer of movement where they would have been.

  When John described how he had come across the stake, the details clicked into place, and Stan finally understood what this was all about. When Annie said she sensed Dalla’s blood approaching, Stan couldn’t help but get a rush of excitement at the impossible prospect of seeing her again. So he couldn’t help but be disappointed now, seeing who Bloody actually detected. “You’re Dalla’s father,” he said.

  John didn’t answer, but Stan kept going anyway. He had nothing to lose; if he was right, he didn’t have long to live. “She loved you. I could tell by how she talked about you.”

  “You talked with her.”

  “Yes, quite a bit.”

  “And you think she was capable of love?”

  Stan felt like the stake was lodged in his heart. “Yes.”

  Wilcox cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt, but let’s take a ten-thousand foot view of this problem. It’s simple. Using some tracking ceremony—was it the Puthoff Procedure? I surmise it was—you were able to follow the stake that killed your daughter to its previous owner, me. Yet it has now become clear that it was not me who killed your daughter, but Stanley Lightfoot. Can we get this over with?”

  “I tracked you down because your initials were on the stake, you idiot. And, if you think this is simple, golly, you haven’t been paying attention.”

  Stan stayed silent. The more they bickered, the longer he had.

  “I don’t appreciate being called an idiot,” Wilcox said. “Now, kill him.”

  “And I don’t appreciate orders, from anyone, and I’ve already had too many talking dogs in my life. Should I make it one less?”

  Stan felt a switch happening. The attention was toppling away from him and falling back on Wilcox. It just needed a nudge. “You’re not innocent here, Wilcox. Should I remind John about when you tied up and tortured Dalla? Oh, and by the way, I saved her from taking revenge on you that night, even though, in hindsight, that was probably a bad idea. So while we’re talking about things we don’t appreciate, I don’t appreciate being thrown under the bus.”

  Wilcox quipped back, and Stan countered him, until they were shouting over each other, and whatever advantage Stan had became muddled as they bickered like children.

  John slammed his fist on the table, rattling the empty dishes. “Enough.”

  Stan and Wilcox fell silent. They were both out of breath.

  “It’s not a simple situation, but let’s cut it down. I came here for my daughter’s killer. It’s clear who that is. Stan, come with me.”

  Here it came. The end. At least Annie, Paul, and his mom were alive, and probably better off without Stan complicating things. At least he’d had an interesting life.

  John stood. Stan joined him.

  “I’ll come back for you later, if necessary,” John said, scratching at the fur behind the wolf’s ears, dominating Wilcox in a way that sent shivers down Stan’s spine.

  John took Stan’s hand, and led him toward the back of the diner. They passed Bree in the kitchen, who was shivering, and had a gun she thought was concealed behind her back. Her eyes questioned him—what should I do?—in a way that was familiar from when they had been children together. “Just protect them,” Stan said, pointing back toward his friends outside.

  John opened the back door and held it open. “Thank you,” Stan said, as he stepped out into the cool air.

  “You’re welcome,” John said. “Let’s do this.”

  It must have been over very quickly, because Stan didn’t even feel any pain before he started ascending into the heavens.

  27. The Outsiders

  WITH A BIT OF TIME to breathe, Bloody got a whiff of the air around her. John’s scent was so familiar. Dalla. He smelled just like her.

  She thought back to her conversation with Wilcox, about how they were pretty much family. That dude in the diner with Stan had Dalla’s blood, and judging by the way he moved, he wasn’t one of her half-assed offspring. John was the father Dalla always talked about.

  Joey, Miriam, and Paul were talking on the steps of Town Hall, their voices getting increasingly frantic. Guns and claws pointed every which way.

  “We need to make a move,” Bloody whispered to Linda and Mike. “This powder keg has five different wicks flirting with fire.”

  “What move?” Mike asked.

  “No comment on that amazing powder keg metaphor? Whatever. Okay, you pick up your gun, and—”

  Mike shook his head and looked away.

  “Come on, if you haven’t noticed, violence isn’t really avoidable here. We need to take out Wilcox first chance we get. He started all this, he’s keeping it all together, so, cut off the head, and … well, I forget how the rest of that metaphor goes. Let’s cut off his head though.”

  “We don’t need to kill,” Mike muttered.

  “Normally I’m with you there, but Wilcox? Him, we do. Killing him will serve a specific, necessary purpose.”

  “Was there a purpose in killing Dean?”

  Bloody’s jaw dropped. Mike cringed, staring at her jagged teeth. “No … wait … you think I killed Dean?” She thought back to when she’d come downstairs, covered in blood, and left Dean behind. “Ohhh okay, now I see how you might think that.”

  “You said he’s in a better place.”

  “Yeah, his bedroom.” Bloody patted Mike’s shoulder, careful not to let her claws touch him. “I didn’t eat Dean. He and I have … had … a complicated relationship that developed very fast, and things got hot and heavy, and yeah, it involved some blood, you know how it is. I’m a monster, Mike, I can’t fuckin’ hide that. But it ain’t all or nothing. If you shoot that gun, you don’t become a monster and never go back. Sometimes you gotta let the animal out, and other times you
gotta get those smart human calculations going. Killing Wilcox is human. It’s an equation. Him or us, one or zero.”

  “Dean’s alive,” Mike said. The kid couldn’t hide the relief in his face if he wanted to.

  “He’s a hell of a lot safer than us right now. Shaggs would’ve smelled his blood and assumed he was dead, same as you did.”

  Mike picked up the gun from the ground. Joey was caught up in arguing with the others, not paying attention to the trio hiding behind the concrete garbage thing anymore.

  Linda watched. Her moose-sized lips tightened, her face somehow still mother-like in its cautious approval of what was happening.

  Bloody peeked up to get a glimpse of what was going on in the diner. John and Stan stood; Stan looked pale, defeated. They headed to the back. Okay, so first order of business, save her best friend. That would leave the second order, the main course: kill Wilcox.

  “Linda, get in front of us, so they can’t see us leave, then block the front door of Tweed’s. Mike, come with me. We’re ending this.”

  Linda nodded, then clomped a few steps out from behind cover. A few of the shaggs looked her way nervously, but then turned their attention back to the bickering at Town Hall. Linda grunted, then Bloody and Mike used her mass as cover to scamper around the side of the diner.

  Bloody told Mike her plan, which was still in the process of transforming as she said it. Mike nodded his approval. The gun became steadier in his hand.

  But the first part of the plan was thrown off the rails when they rounded the corner of the diner, expecting to see Stan and John coming out the back door, and instead, saw nothing. They couldn’t have had time to go anywhere else. The door was still open, and they weren’t in the back room either. Stan had completely disappeared off the face of the Earth.

  A familiar cold, and a familiar urge to spill the meager contents of his stomach, hit Stan. Gravity had been reversed, and he was falling up. Unlike with Dalla, he wasn’t being carried; John only needed to keep a hand on Stan’s shoulder to launch him into the cloudless sky.

  “We’ll be alone up here. Unless any migrating ducks run into us. Quack, quack,” John said, then mimed being hit in the face, and pretended to spit feathers out of his mouth.

  “Hey Stan, what do you call a cat that swallowed a duck?”

  “I … I don’t know,” Stan said.

  “A duck-filled-fatty-puss!”

  Stan exhaled a cloud of vapor.

  “Get it? They used to call cats puss, or pussy. That has a more vulgar meaning now.” When Stan failed to react, John just sighed and twirled them in the air as they rose higher.

  Below, the residents of the town bickered with the residents of its surrounding waters. It would probably end in more blood. It always did. His mom, Bloody, and Mike were nowhere to be seen; maybe they had escaped and left Stan behind. Good.

  “Just drop me,” Stan said.

  “No can do.”

  They kept rising. Stan’s ears popped as they got high enough that the air pressure under the pull of the Earth’s gravity was a little less crushing.

  “Then tear me apart. Whatever. Eat me, drink me.”

  John slowed their ascent, then stopped it. He leaned close, his breath temporarily thawing the edges of Stan’s ear. “Okay, a little nip, if you insist,” he said.

  John floated behind Stan, then gripped the back of his head. There was a tinkle as John unbuckled his mask. Stan cringed at the sound. Then a sharp, familiar pain sunk into his neck. Perhaps it was his imagination, but Stan thought he could actually feel John’s blood mixing with his own, in that primal exchange of power that would allow John to track his own blood wherever Stan ran to, if he ever got a chance to run again.

  “I taste her inside of you,” John said, after swallowing, licking his lips, then replacing the mask on his face.

  “Your daughter, you mean.”

  “Yes. Oh, I miss her.”

  Stan’s heart hurt. “I miss her too. I wouldn’t admit it to the people down there. But I miss her.”

  “Ah, Stanley. I believe you. There are not many people who could share blood with her and survive, let alone survive long enough to fall in love with her.” A cloud drifted across the sky above and covered the moon, leaving them in darkness. John turned Stan to face him. Only a dull silver glint lined the outline of John’s mask, and the wetness in the eyes behind it.

  “You don’t have to let me live,” Stan said.

  John chuckled. “The fact that you understand that is what keeps you alive. I came here looking for revenge, and instead I found…” He paused and snorted, as if hiding tears. “This is like a speech from one of my movies. But it’s true; I found a piece of my daughter living on. I found family.”

  Stan shook his head. “Come on, man. You just met me. And don’t even think of turning me into one of you.”

  “Dude, I didn’t even offer. That’s the rudest thing you can ask a vampire, you know that? God.” His eyes twinkled when the moonlight returned. “I wouldn’t turn another, not after Dalla, but you will wish I did. I’ve learned that my trip here wasn’t about revenge at all, and wasn’t entirely about family either. Dalla died because of what she was. What I am. We slither in the darkness, and the moment we hit the light—I’m talking both literally and figuratively here, Stanley—we perish. That needs to stop.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Stan said. His breath billowed out in clouds, frost formed on his eyebrows, and he felt like his brain was crystallizing.

  “You will. You’ve seen it here, haven’t you? It’s not just people that can be turned into monsters. A town has a soul that can be shifted, same as any person’s. I’ve shifted a few of my own. What I’ve seen here, with Mister Wilcox, is a shifting—this town wasn’t always like this, I assume. And his unique methods for accomplishing this shifting … yes, I think those will prove useful in what’s coming.”

  Stan shivered. “What is coming?”

  “Spend time with your mother, Stanley. Get to know your friends better. Do all your human things before this planet shifts.”

  Stan’s teeth chattered.

  “You’re scared. I wouldn’t admit this to the people down there, but I am too. I’m scared of losing more family. Fear has made me who I am, and fear will drive me further down that road. I’m not proud of that, but none of us can escape fear. Now that our confessions are out of the way, let’s get you warmed up and back to your family.”

  Stan watched where John gazed when he admitted that he was scared. Where the eyes fell while describing an emotion was a detail that gave away the source of the emotion—an old paparazzo trick for picking out secret affairs just from old video footage. John looked not toward Wilcox at the diner, nor the river full of shaggs, but toward the humans at Town Hall.

  The restaurant where Bree had broken Stan’s heart lay north. The bar where Joey had beaten the shit out of him lay south. At Town Hall directly below, his mother had been humiliated by political and legal trickery. At the church to the east, under the guise of trading Tupperware for candles, wives and mothers met to compare paychecks and front lawns, in a silent but bloody competition to attract a life better than anyone else’s. And somewhere in the darkness just beyond the edge of town, there lay the lodge where Stan himself had captured and tortured Miriam.

  “We don’t mean to be monsters,” he said.

  John chuckled sadly. “Yet, here we are. Fangs in our necks, stakes in our hearts.”

  What could Stan say to that? He wanted a drink. He wanted to be back at the hidden mansion he’d taken from Dalla, so disconnected from the world that he could barely be considered human. Or maybe, instead of lowering him to the ground gently, he’d have preferred if John dropped him, letting him connect with the world a little harder.

  “Well, we move on to the second part of the plan then,” Bloody said.

  Mike hesitated, stamping his feet on the concrete like a reluctant horse.

  “I’m worried about Stan to
o, but our priority right now is him,” Bloody said, pointing through the back door of the diner, to where Wilcox waited. “Remember our plan?”

  He nodded and raised his gun, then followed Bloody into the diner. She smelled Bree in there, but couldn’t see her. Maybe she was dead. That wouldn’t be such a loss, Bloody thought for a moment, but pushed the animal thought from her head, then opened the door between the kitchen and the diner.

  The next moments happened very quickly.

  Wilcox was pacing around the dining room, huffing and puffing like The Big Bad God Damn Wolf. His breath left foggy spots on the shiny checkerboard floor. When his back was turned, Bloody burst in. “Hey, motherfucker. How you like me now?”

  He turned around, and Mike started firing, following the loose plan that Bloody had relayed earlier: I don’t know if the silver bullet thing is true, but I do know one thing first-hand: if a werewolf’s eyeballs explode, a werewolf can’t see shit. Her eyes had watered, remembering Wilcox’s thumbnails jabbing into them.

  The first few shots bounced off the werewolf’s thick skull, but Mike was a surprisingly good shot, and one bullet found its way into his right eye socket. That’s the side Bloody approached from.

  Wilcox tried to turn, but was too late. Annie swiped at his nose, tearing most of it off with her claws, forcing him to retreat back toward the windows.

  He swiped back, a whirlwind of claws and teeth keeping Bloody from getting any closer.

  Four more shots rang out, forcing Wilcox to cringe. Then five, six, seven shots. Mike’s gun didn’t hold that many bullets.

  Bree was firing from the kitchen, her elbows resting on an abandoned plate of soggy fries. Wilcox roared, but his other eye had exploded, and he was paralyzed by the rain of gunfire.

  That gave Bloody her chance to slide in.

  “Ghostbusters,” Mike muttered to Bree.

  Bloody ran, jumped, and landed on her butt, sliding along the shiny floor, underneath Wilcox’s blind flailing. When she got close enough to his vulnerable belly, she ripped and tore, slicing through skin, sending tufts of fur puffing into the air. Wilcox retreated further, closer to the front of the diner.