Gossamer: A Story of Love and Tragedy

by Thompson, Lee

  Peter had used his precious recluse spiders on the sleeping vamps, hoping that once the poison was in their system it might kill them while they still slept. But their tissue was already necrotic and only the venom-created holes remained, disgusting, but ineffective.

  Standing before her, fingers still pressed to her wrist, possibly in shock, Natalie stared into her face. The things lips parted as if to speak but the vampire sniffed the air, smelling the blood coursing Natalie’s veins, and wetting the pad she’d taken from her mother earlier in the day and used while in the bathroom of the little shop where Peter had first made his appearance.

  The creature hanging in front of her licked its lips.

  Natalie dropped her hand, or thought she had, but the viselike grip of the beast had closed over her wrist.

  *****

  Brooke thought, I can outrun them, I have to outrun them…

  But the girl she’d mistaken for Natalie took a few strides forward, much faster than she had first appeared, more awake now than she had been at night’s dawning. And Brooke cursed, flicked the lighter and lit the torch. The fire was hot and felt amazingly reassuring for a split second, but the flames destroyed her vision and dark shapes blurred, rushing forward like a tide of arms, legs and bright white teeth.

  She stepped back, uncertain which way downtown was, believing me now, believing me about everything.

  She tripped over her feet, spinning, and hit the ground, banging her elbow.

  As she was pushing herself up, slashing the air with the torch, catching sight of the ghastly, lifeless faces just outside her reach spitting words that made no sense, she heard someone scream.

  Her heart slammed harder and she swung the torch left, to right, to left, to right, trying to drive them back, her eyes full of tears.

  The scream came again and she knew who had to have issued it.

  She screamed Natalie’s name, feeling as if something inside her had shattered, imagining her daughter surrounded like she was yet without anything to defend herself.

  The flame flickered and a gentle breeze cooled the sweat on her arms and face.

  She couldn’t see past the torch and was too afraid to lower it. She just kept backing up, swinging it sporadically at every crunch of earth she heard as they tracked her movements.

  The valley floor had seemed as flat as a table during daylight, but its many hidden peaks and valleys, differing a few inches here, a few there, nearly sent her sprawling several more times and she knew, irrevocably, that if she fell again she they would dive upon her.

  She slowed her pace, increased the speed of pendulous fire, cried out desperately for me to help them.

  But I didn’t reply.

  I only watched, my heart breaking.

  Brooke’s heel hit something solid. She thought, Fuck, groping with her free hand, feeling the siding of a house—she assumed the one her and Natalie had gone into earlier in the day—and she wasn’t certain which way to break, whether left or right. There were no lights downtown.

  The fire she held flickered and wavered and the faces in the mist of darkness flashed forward, teeth snapping, then recoiled once they were too close.

  They issued horrible, broken howls of frustration.

  Brooke would have been screwed without the torch, but there would come a time when the last of her shirt sleeve burned away, and she didn’t want to think about that last wisp, that last sizzle as the fire abated and only one strand of thread glowed dull and hot like a live wire in the gloom.

  She yelled, “Back!”

  A stupid thing to yell, as if they’d listen. And she felt incredibly stupid on top of it. There wasn’t time for any prayers, the creatures beyond petition, their dead eyes not even full of rage, only that need that drove them—for blood, for their thirst to end in this desert place.

  Her eyes stung.

  Her arm was growing tired and the elbow of her free arm felt as if it were swelling from her earlier spill.

  She could just give up, but she didn’t want to go out like that.

  She wanted to hurt some of them, possibly even take a few with her.

  She lowered the torch a foot so that the tip was below the height of her breastbone.

  Those awful, hungry faces rose closer, from the outer darkness where nothing else lived because it didn’t dare to. They clawed the air. Their teeth reflected the light. They studied her, screamed more.

  Gooseflesh riddled her back.

  She said, “Come on, you motherfuckers.”

  As if listening and understanding, a young boy dived in from the main body that pressed tighter on each side and in front of her. The boy came in low, trying to latch onto one of her legs. Brooke kicked him in the face, felt something in her foot snap, but the boy grunted and landed hard on the ground at her feet.

  She set the fire to his clothes.

  He spun around on his back, in flames, trying to bat them out, the other creatures illuminated in his suffering, in her second torch.

  She smiled to herself, but it was short-lived.

  Dirt from above her hit the crown of her head, dashed against her eyelashes and she swung the torch up and saw a man on the wall behind her but before she could react he grabbed her beneath her arms, his wrists like rocks against her sore breast bone, and she dropped the torch as he lifted her from the ground.

  *****

  Natalie tried to jerk her wrist free of the young, plump vampire’s grip.

  Chains rattled. The other one, on the other side of the cross, thrashed against the wall, her gaze locked on Natalie. Her tongue snaked out, over her lips, and she dipped her chin and screamed in anger as she tore at the two chains secured to the collar around her neck.

  Dust fell from the bolts holding the chains higher up the wall.

  Wood splintered.

  The sister thrashed harder and one bolt popped loose and hit the altar and spun in a slow circle. Natalie gripped the handle of the pitchfork. She screamed too, in fear, feeling trapped by the one who held her wrist and terrified that the other one would soon break free of the wall completely. One of her arms already dangled, the loose chain like a whip as she clawed at the collar around her throat, gasping as if she needed air. But Natalie knew that neither one needed air. They were already doomed and the curse they’d inherited through Julian’s sharp kiss had stripped them of humanity.

  She wanted to fight but her limbs felt heavy, and she hurt for them even though she’d never known them and knew she never could, but they were once like her. They were once flesh and blood, dream and reality, and they’d been robbed of their futures.

  But she couldn’t think about that if she wanted to survive, if she wanted to prevent becoming one of them and aborting her own future.

  She took a deep breath, hefted the pitchfork and drove it forward.

  She expected the tines to pierce the girl’s chest easily, but trying to gather any force with only one arm, the girl still holding her other wrist, was ineffective. The tines poked easily through the skin and the girl shivered, but Natalie hadn’t driven nearly hard enough to pierce the breastbone and hadn’t been lucky enough to pierce the thin area between ribs.

  She jerked the pitchfork back, placed her foot to the wall and kicked away from it, hoping she’d be able to use her weight to break the lost girl’s grip, but it didn’t, and all she’d done was hurt her left shoulder joint. She nearly dropped the pitchfork from her other hand.

  The other girl bucked against the wall again and the second bolt holding the chain in place broke loose with an awful screech. The girl landed on her feet, dipped, choking, both pieces of chain trailing down her back.

  Outside, the wind howled, and others like them joined its chorus, distant, but it sounded as if they were drawing closer with each tortured scream.

  Natalie cried, “Let me go!”

  She drove the pitchfork up with all her strength into the girl’s face.

  An eyeball popped, another tine burrowed through her cheek. She whipped
her head trying to tear them free, releasing Natalie’s wrist.

  On the other side of the altar, her sister stood slowly and cracked her back, leaning one way and then another, turning her head, her eyes glowing a dirty brown and her face ghostly white.

  Her lips parted, her teeth bared, her hands raised like claws, she took a step forward.

  The one on the wall went very still. She studied Natalie with her remaining eye for a few more seconds as Natalie trembled, and then the one on the wall went very still, her arms dropped limply to her sides. Natalie thought she may have killed her, that the tine may have gone beyond the eye’s canal and into the girl’s brain, but she didn’t know for certain.

  But it gave her hope that she didn’t have to drive a stake through their hearts. It caused her to believe that she could attack their eyes and the soft gray matter that lay beyond it for the same effect.

  Before she had proof of her theory, or could celebrate her small victory, her time for strategizing and triumph evaporated.

  The sister dove forward at blinding speed.

  Natalie raised the pitchfork at the last second. It stuck into the girl’s left shoulder and Natalie did her best to hold the beast back, but her grip and her footing slipped.

  The sister chopped the handle, barely breaking stride, and the handle snapped in two.

  Natalie swung the three feet of wood she held hoping to slash the vampire across the bridge of her nose, but Natalie tripped at the edge of the altar and fell backwards off the edge. Her fall felt as if it took place in slow motion…

  Her arms batted the air as she drifted back, the hand holding the broken handle like a weight that twisted her body to the right, and her feet rose above the plane of her head, the sister rushing across the empty space between them, filling it, jumping from the altar and into the air, Natalie knowing that any moment now her body would slam against the church floor, and she tucked her chin to keep her head from snapping off the floor and rattling her too much. She exhaled all the air from her lungs, the sister hanging in the air above her, arms spread out, mouth gaping and packed with teeth.

  And then she hit the hardwood floor, hard, and the stake flew from her hand and beneath the first row of black pews.

  Her head snapped back from the impact and bounced off the floor and pain flared through her hips and shoulders. Her lungs couldn’t suck any oxygen.

  And the sister was falling, falling, falling, Natalie raising her arms to protect her neck, her face, and the girl landed on top of her just as Natalie drew in a breath that felt like swallowing a hot coal.

  She grabbed at the sister frantically, one hand on the pitchfork still buried in her shoulder, jerking at it, trying to tear it loose so she could stab the girl in the face.

  A shape moved in the near-darkness off to her right, flashing between the pews and lost in the gloom, but she saw his face—Peter’s—his body hunched as if he was trying to sneak, and her heart thudded even harder, so hard she thought it might give out.

  The sister she held back clawed at her face, and her fingernails broke flesh and streams of blood formed on Natalie’s cheeks.

  That horrible maw opened wide, the body carrying it rocking on top of her, trying to close the distance between them, the fresh blood right in front of her driving her out of her mind.

  And Natalie worried that the others, the ones outside would smell it, and they’d come as soon as they were done with her mother and Angel, which was the last thing she wanted to think about, but it helped. It reminded her that she had already killed this girl-gone-monster’s sister.

  And thinking of her mother made her think of her real father and something he’d done once, when Natalie was four, and the two of them had been walking the streets, enjoying each other’s company and the sunlight until a mean dog came peeling out of a yard and ran straight for them. Her father had met the dog halfway and as it dove in he had crammed his hand and arm inside the dog’s mouth, grabbed its hide with his free hand and he held it from inside and outside, the dog kicking, trying to break free so it could breathe, but her dad didn’t let it. His hand rooted around inside its throat, his arm buried so deep in its mouth that it couldn’t close its jaw. Its eyes grew wide, and it huffed through its nose making an awful strangled noise, until the light from the mongrel’s eyes faded and her dad removed his arm, wiped it off, shaking…

  The pitchfork was cold and hard against her palm and fingers.

  The blood on her cheeks was hot.

  The chunky vampire’s breath seemed to intensify the heat spreading across Natalie’s face.

  She thought, It breathes, everything breathes…

  Peter moved in the edge of her vision again. She turned her head, her arms aching, tiring, as she tried to hold the sister at bay.

  Peter sat in one of the pews, draped his arms over the row in front of him and cocked his head, just watching. It made her even angrier because if Dorothy had told her the truth then the boy was nothing like these monsters and he should help her. Fools, all of them, believing that their problems were other people.

  But the child was tiring quickly and the sister straddling her wore her down further, her face inches from Natalie’s when she turned away from Peter’s blank stare and back to the fury on top of her.

  Low on options she drove her left hand into the girl’s mouth, felt her teeth grate her flesh, and used her other hand to snag the girl’s hair and jerk her head forward against her shoulder, digging deep, her fingers back in the sister’s throat, her forearm tingling, the vampires teeth encasing her forearm, and her terrified that she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life.

  *****

  Brooke kicked and punched blindly as the man dragged her up the side of the house. His grip around her ribcage cut off her air. Her hair whipped into her eyes as she twisted, trying to get away, yet afraid he’d drop her back into the mob that clawed at the siding below them. They trampled the torch but her eyes were quickly adjusting to the lone light of the moon.

  Her captor threw her onto the roof. She kicked hard against the shingles, scooting back on her butt and hands toward the peak, afraid she’d tumble or slide off the edge.

  The man stood, looking over the edge of the roof. He was not large and he wasn’t small. His hair was black, his face and fingers pale in the dim light. His boots were dusty, and as he turned toward her and away from those crying out below, she noticed the crucifix clinking off his chainmail shirt.

  She fought for breath, her mind racing. She didn’t know what he was but judging by the look of him she’d have guessed some kind of warrior priest. He walked casually toward her though the pitch of the roof was steep and she dared not move.

  He squatted in front of her. His eyes were bright, like the moon, like the stars.

  There was an eye in the center of the crucifix and it seemed to close, then open again, and it made Brooke’s skin feel as if it were crawling off her bones. She glanced to the edge of the roof, then up toward the chimney, trying to see the rope he’d used to repel down and grab her, but the roof lay in shadow suddenly, or she felt herself about to pass out, and couldn’t distinguish the line from shingles.

  The stranger said, “Are you thirsty?”

  His voice was soft, even comforting. Especially in comparison to the riot the vampires made on the ground.

  He followed her gaze, looked back to her, and said, “They’ll only get stronger as the night deepens.”

  Brooke nodded, terrified.

  She whispered, her throat sore, “Who are you?” But she’d already discovered who he was, she knew, her knight in shining armor. She couldn’t even make fun of his ridiculous chainmail shirt, and she didn’t want to ask him about the crucifix watching her from his chest.

  A short sword, perhaps only two feet long, hung from the thick belt around his slim middle. Though unintimidating, he had an air of confidence and assurance about him that slowly settled her nerves.

  Being on the roof and out the reach of the creatures on
the ground seemed a dream itself. And she figured she owed him her life, and she’d gladly give him anything—money, promises, sex—in return, because never had living seemed so precious and so precarious.

  All she knew was that for the moment she was safe and she wished the same for her daughter.

  She croaked, “Are there others like you here?”

  The man nodded, “Yes. Lots more like me.”

  He squatted in front of her, reached out, took her hand and squeezed it gently.

  Brooke lowered her head and sobbed, “How are we going to get out of here? My daughter—”

  “Shh,” he said. “What did Dorothy tell you?”

  Brooke wiped strands of hair from her eyes, squinted at him, wondering how he knew the old woman Brooke had only fifteen minutes ago thought insane, but she was afraid to ask about their relationship, able to guess, that he was part of some elite unit (weren’t all knights in shining armor?), so she kept quiet a moment longer, struggling to remember and give her heart time to return to its normal tempo.

  But it was a near impossible task. She was troubled by what he said.