Zara's Curse (Empire of Fangs)

by Domonkos, Andrew

  Micah didn’t seem to take offence to the handshake denial. “Oh, yeah. Thanks. One of my faves.” He gestured for Twig and Zara to sit.

  “Your sister might be making me a salad,” Zara said apologetically.

  “Yeah she really enjoys doing that,” Micah smiled and nodded his head. Friday I’m in Love by The Cure had begun to play.

  “I love this song,” Zara said.

  Micah and Zara were staring at each other once again. Micah tilted his head for a moment, and leaning a bit over the candles, addressed Twig.

  “Perhaps you would like to take a walk around and talk to one of these lovely girls,” Micah’s eyes flickered again with variant colors, turning many different shades of blue and purple.

  Twig leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table. “Nah, I’m good here. They know where I’m at. But I appreciate the suggestion, if that’s what it was.”

  Micah grinned and shrugged. He seemed a bit unsettled by Twig’s reply. “Well, if I can’t persuade you, maybe I can persuade Zara to take a little walk and show her more of the house. The balcony is really cool.”

  Zara looked at Twig and said, “No need to babysit me. I already have a shadow, you know.” The words just came out of her. She suddenly felt that Twig was being too protective. Childish even. Was he really trying to derail her one chance for something good? Why couldn’t he just leave her alone?

  Twig looked genuinely hurt and a frown formed under his pointy mustache. “Zara…I just don’t think you’re well tonight…maybe we can just go and—“

  This time Micah cut him off. “She looks fine to me. I can see you’re a good friend and worried about her, but trust me, she’s safe with me.”

  Twig scoffed. “Like she was safe cornered up in the house by that charming DJ friend of yours with the boundary issues? You know he was lurching over her like—” Twig stopped himself. “Well, I think you know exactly who lurches over people like that. I’ll give you a hint: it’s not Frankenstein.”

  Micah’s pleasant smile changed into something of a sneer. “No, I did not hear of that. And believe me, I’m going to have a serious talk with him. As for whatever else you’re talking about, I think maybe you should ease up on the wine. You’re sounding a bit crazy,” Micah stood now and Zara came around to his side. She felt drawn in by a force stronger than gravity. She had to be near him. He put out his hand and she took it. She wouldn’t let go this time.

  “I can get myself home if you want to go,” Zara said absently to Twig, without taking her eyes off Micah.

  Twig stood up and took a step towards Zara. “I’m not gonna leave you here with these— he suddenly stopped himself. All eyes seemed to be on him and a hush fell over the party.

  “I said I’m fine!’ Zara snapped, baring her teeth angrily at Twig, who fell backwards over a chair leg and lay in the grass looking up at her, bewildered. Her face was flushed and her eyes looked wild and delirious and both her hands were balled into fists.

  Zara held her seething glare. A few guests began murmuring and laughing at the spectacle.

  “Of course you are...I’m sorry. I’ll leave you to it,” Twig said softly, getting to his feet and setting his empty wine glass on the table.

  Micah shook his head and gave Twig a little bow. “Goodnight Mister Vanderbilt. Have a safe trip home,” he said.

  Zara and Micah walked off together, holding hands. She didn’t bother to look back.

  9.

  Zara awoke at home to her dad asking her why she was still in bed. She cracked one eye open and looked at the hazy shape of her father.

  “Huh?” was the best response she could come up with. She sat up and the motion made her headache flare painfully. She was sore all over. She lay back down and groaned. “What time is it?”

  “It’s 5pm. I just got in. Are you sick? What’s going on? Did you go out partying all night?” he said, although with no real anger in his voice, only worry.

  “Yes,” Zara mumbled.

  “Yes what? You’re sick or you went out partying?”

  “Yes. Both. I went to a friend’s house and had too much wine. It’s not going to become a habit,” she said defensively. “I’m sure I’m not the first 21-year-old to celebrate her birthday a bit too much.”

  Her father sighed and stood up. He was still wearing his cook’s outfit from work. “Well, I think it’s safe to say your birthday is over. Time to get back to reality, and more importantly your classes. You get this one pass. Shape up kiddo.” He gave her a loving smile.

  “You’re right, Dad. I’m gonna buckle down on my schoolwork. Now, could you please for the love of all that is holy bring me a Gatorade? I’m in agony.”

  “I’ll get ya one…did you go to this party alone? I hope you knew the people—“

  She cut him off, “Twig was there. I think he brought me home.”

  Her father groaned, “You think? Zara…”

  “No, he did. I’m just groggy. Everyone there was harmless. It was more of a dinner party than anything. I just overdid it.” She felt guilty for lying, but didn’t feel like telling him she had blacked out and couldn’t remember much of that night, and she had a growing suspicion that she might have been roofied.

  “Well, I feel better that you were with Twig. He seems like a good guy.”

  “Yeah. He’s okay,” Zara said. She had a hazy memory of her snapping at Twig for something he had said. Had that happened? She suddenly felt very guilty. Did I really drink that much?

  Her father sighed and left the room, then reappeared with a Gatorade. “Sleep it off. I gotta go sleep off my job.”

  She took the Gatorade from his hands as if it was holy sacrament and guzzled it, spilling a good deal on her bed sheets.

  “You do have a drinking problem,” her father said jokingly.

  “You stole that joke from Airplane.”

  “I stole all my jokes from that movie,” he said, and then patted her on the head lovingly and stood up.

  “I know it’s been rough lately with me not being around much and your mom—“

  Zara was far too tired for a conversation about her mother, who had always been an exhausting subject. “Dad. It’s fine. She wasn’t really here when she was here anyway. And I do understand you work so much because you want the roof over our head and all. I’m not that naïve.”

  Her dad nodded. “I could never accuse you of that. A bit dorky, yeah. A little foolish at times, but never naïve.”

  “Thank you, father. That will do,” she said softly. He turned off the light and shut the door. She rolled over and almost immediately fell deep into a dream.

  10.

  Something was calling her. Pulling at her like an undertow. She felt herself drifting through the apartment. Floating. The room was full of moonlight that draped a silvery gleam over all the furniture. The windows had been left open, letting a warm breeze through, making the curtains flow like living things. She could hear heartbeats that thundered like war drums, beating away in the other apartments and even out on the streets and farther. It was symphonic. The sweet metronomic music of blood.

  She felt hungry. More hungry than she had ever been. A thick fog seemed to fill her head. She was being consumed by this primal hunger. She felt loosely in control. She was lunging headlong into the night. She felt inhuman. She felt powerful.

  11.

  When Zara awoke she felt different. She was no longer hung over, and felt pretty good, except for her neck, which still throbbed a little. The strange dream—or nightmare—seemed to linger as she lay in bed. She couldn’t remember the details of it, except for an image of a man, sitting in a chair and casually drinking wine. There was a battlefield too…wasn’t there? With thousands of spikes forming a forest all around him, and a red sky overhead…and…there was….was…then she’d lost it. The vague images vanished like a specter.

  She looked at the clock and saw it was a little past 6 p.m. She had slept the day away. She got up and went to the bathroom to see
why her neck was bothering her. When she looked in the mirror, she saw two tiny dots. She gasped and looked away. There was no way, she thought. This was some kind of gag. She looked again. They were still there.

  Aside from her neck she felt fine. Better than fine. Invigorated. But her mind was spinning. She was undergoing something new and terrifying. She felt it deep inside of her and she was pretty sure it wasn’t covered in the Our Bodies Ourselves book she had gotten from her Aunt Maggie some birthdays ago. While she gingerly touched the markings on her neck, fighting off her growing panic, she suddenly noticed that her own thoughts were accompanied by other voices.

  They were fleeting voices that whispered to her in some strange language. Sometimes many voices speaking in unison to form a sort of chant. When she tried to focus on the words they vanished, leaving her only with her confused thoughts. Am I going crazy? She wondered.

  She went out to the living room and pulled open the curtains. The sun had just gone down, but was still casting a dark red light over the metropolitan skyline of Denver. Standing there, her skin seemed to itch. She closed the curtains and sat on the couch. She checked her phone. Eight messages from Twig. She didn’t feel like a lecture, so she just deleted them all. Wasn’t that what mom did whenever she woke up from a night of self-inflicted embarrassment? Pretend it didn’t happen?

  Her paper was due the next day and she decided it might make her feel more normal if she did a normal thing like homework.

  She went over to the small kitchen table where her laptop was still open, her history book beside it. The voices had all gone silent, except her own, which was busy laying out possible scenarios involving spider or snakebites. She typed a few lines to set the stage for the essay, and then began to leaf through the pages of her book for useful dates and names. She was making some progress when something caught her eye in the book—a painting of a man—and the room seemed to suddenly become airless.

  In the painting, a man clad in ornate armor was impaling a semi-nude woman with a long spear through the chest. The woman was dressed in peasant rags, and appeared to be begging for her life to be spared. But clearly mercy was not being granted to her. In the background a gruesome battlefield smoldered under a blood red sun, and countless bodies were skewered on pikes, left to bake and rot as a warning. The man with the spear was grinning with utter satisfaction. In his other hand he held a long flowing war banner that blew in the wind. The words on the banner looked similar to those that were etched on the plaque on Micah’s front door. She studied his chiseled face and blonde hair. There was no mistake. It was a leer she couldn’t forget. It was Drake.

  Zara closed her laptop. “Shit,” she said. She got up and made sure the front doors were locked, then texted Twig.

  Can you come by in the morning? I really need your help.

  It only took him a minute to respond.

  I know. I’ll be there.

  12.

  Her father had gotten up to make breakfast. Zara was still hunched over her laptop. Although she had stayed up all through the night and early morning searching the internet for more about the painting, she had found very little. The painter was an unknown person of possible Italian origin, and the painting had not been given a title until the 1800s, when it had begun to be referred to by museum curators and in historical art circles as: The Dragon’s Touch. The subject of the painting—the grinning sadist—was rumored to be an unknown nobleman of possible Germanic origin, who, judging by the Ottoman dress of those lying dead in the background of the painting, was a supporter of the Hungarian king at the time during the Ottoman war.

  Zara read the Wikipedia page over and over. The painting was created during an era that was chock-full of cruelty and horror. The page was rich with misery. It was the time of Vlad the Impaler, one of the great pioneers in atrocity.

  Her father was happy to see her so hard at work. He was wearing his other work uniform: the khaki pants and the blue, collared shirt he sold mattresses in. He placed a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of her, which she took no notice of.

  “Long night or early morning?” he asked.

  “I just got up,” she lied. She didn’t want to worry him.

  “You should eat, you look a bit run down. Everything okay?”

  She smiled and closed the laptop, “Everything’s just dandy,” she took a nibble of bacon to appease his fatherly concern. It didn’t seem to taste like anything to her but she feigned delight so he wouldn’t guilt her with the starving kids in China speech.

  Her dad ate his food while standing up, threw the dish in the sink, and sighed. “I’m off. Have a good day at school my darling daughter.” He walked over and kissed the top of her head.

  “I will. Sell some beds.” She waved absently as he left the apartment.

  She printed a copy of the painting and put it in her book bag. Sunlight was coming in strong now through the curtains and she got out her blue neon-framed sunglasses from her room and put them on. Her eyes were sore from staring at the computer all morning, and the daylight wasn’t helping. She sat on the couch and waited, watching the door.

  Twig had barely knocked once before she had leapt to door and opened it. He looked worn out as well, even though his aviators and mustache hid his face well. She grabbed him and hugged him and he hugged her back. She began to cry.

  “What’s…going on with me…everything is so…” she said.

  He pushed her back and took off his sunglasses, and looked her over,

  “What?” She wailed.

  “You’re becoming one of them,” he said calmly.

  “Oh God,” she moaned. She now went over to her couch and sat down. “Don’t even say a vampire. This isn’t even funny.”

  “Okay then: demonic creature of the night. Draculady. Hellspawn. Do any of those work for you?”

  She put her hands over her face. She stopped crying. “No. They don’t. I don’t believe in that stuff. This isn’t happening.” She sounded more like she was convincing herself.

  Twig sat next to her and put his hand on her shoulder. She looked at him and noticed a long cut along his arm that had been stitched up with what looked like dental floss and was red with inflammation.

  “It is what it is,” Twig said. “You know that I’m a born skeptic. But I have seen it. I know what they are and whatever you want to call it doesn’t really matter. All you need to know is it’s not something you want to be.”

  “How long have you known about them?”

  Twig turned his arm and inspected the damage. “I’ve known ever since my father told me.” He produced a pack of American Spirits from one of his pockets, and slid out a smoke and lit up.

  “But your father is…insane. He was put in Whispering Pines,” Zara said, staring at the floor.

  Twig leaned back on the couch, lit his cigarette, took a long drag, and blew a plume of smoke in the air. Usually, she would of spazzed on him for smoking in her place, but given the circumstances she didn’t much find it a priority.

  “My father…was one of the leading Hematologists in the country,” Twig said after a few more drags. “Blood doctor. He was published in medical journals all over the world. They even considered him for a Nobel Prize at one point. Anyway, one day he had been sent a blood sample from some museum in New York. A sealed vial unearthed in Romania. He found things he shouldn’t have found in that sample. When he began to talk about blood that exploded in sunlight, that had seemingly magical properties, he was shunned by the scientific community and fired from his job. He became obsessed, started spending all his time working on some kind of cure for what he thought was a virus. But that wasn’t what made him go mad. They did something to him, those things…something to keep him quiet. They twisted his mind in the same way your new boyfriend has twisted yours. Eventually, they threw him in the crazy house. He refused to see me every time I visited.”

  Zara took a deep breath and let the story set in. “You never talk about your dad. That’s horrible. But why
didn’t you warn me about all this?” This was the first she had heard anything about Twig’s father.

  He got up and walked over to the window and peered out. “Because I needed to get into that house. I needed to know where they kept him.”

  “Kept who?”

  “Him. Their father. Damon Caspari.”

  “But why?” Zara asked.

  “To destroy him,” Twig answered evenly.

  “You want to kill him? Jesus! Do you realize how insane you sound?”

  “Funny,” Twig said with a cynical chuckle, “I said the same thing to my own father before they hauled him away.”