Monster City

by Kevin Wright

  “Redcaps.” He chucked his cigar away.

  He started shooting into the mass of man and redcap that fought, struggling and clutching and biting and gnashing on the floor, a twisted pretzel of demon and man.

  Kade Valentine’s weapon of choice: the shotgun. At close range, there is no substitute.

  Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!

  The tough hides of the redcaps were no protection as Kade Valentine blew away flesh and bone, pumping the gun after each shot, reloading it. He reloaded it and shot and reloaded and shot until there were no shots left, until the air was thick with the acrid smell of gunpowder, until nothing moved, nothing screamed.

  Kade Valentine slid an arm inside the door, stepped in, and closed it, glancing both ways down the hall quickly before he did so.

  This building held no secrets from Kade Valentine. He dealt death, and he dealt with the dead. Its mark had been made privy to him. These halls, these apartments, were full of it, coursed with it. The sole consolation to Kade Valentine: the cry of death and destruction in this building was as mundane as the sound of loud televisions in other apartment buildings.

  He locked the door and reloaded his shotgun. His eyes scanned the pile of corpses heaped at his feet, the dead kid in the corner, watching for any movement, signs of life, of unlife. Dexterous fingers slid round after round into the slot of the gun until it was full. He pumped it once.

  Sliding forward, he pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and collapsed into it, shotgun across his lap. He fingered the grenade at his neck, breathing, rasping deep.

  As the adrenaline wore off, it became harder to breathe, and his limbs slackened to the jelly state that was the norm. Deep breaths he took, gurgling as he did so. He wiped his wet crimson chin with his handkerchief.

  The shotgun was lead and sagged in his arms.

  “Shit.” He recognized the sound coming from the other room. It had been just background noise at first; now it was the only noise. Running water. The shower! He was on his feet when something beneath the redcap heap shifted, and one rolled off the top, clattering on the linoleum.

  Sawed-off shotgun in one hand, Kade Valentine yanked a redcap by his beard, tumbling him limp from the pile onto the floor. It squished; then he dragged another. He kicked another, but its jaws and iron talons were firmly latched onto the arm of a … a man. A man buried at the bottom of the pile. The man Kade Valentine had been sent to find: Peter Reynolds.

  About twenty years old, his head had been freshly shaved, smooth as glass, except for a few nicks at the top where it was scabbed over.

  Kade Valentine, knelt, peering closer, shotgun barrel inches away from Peter’s face. He was not a vampire, yet, then. “Mr. Reynolds,” Kade Valentine whispered, and then he looked up.

  The shower had stopped.

  * * * *

  “MOMMY! MOMMY LOVES ME! OH GOD!” James Perry the third screamed at the top of his lungs as the claws slid between the vault door and its frame, as the dented door began twisting, buckling, shuddering.

  Then he stopped screaming. A man’s voice was audible, shouting, behind the grunts and snarls and howls.

  It was Detective Winters. In the dark, the mayor’s eyes locked on the Chief’s. He recognized the voice, too.

  “Shit.”

  Then hinges bent, rivets popped, and a huge yellow eye peered inside the small room that the Mayor, his wife, the Chief and his wife, and Mr. Farnsworth had made it to.

  Mr. Farnsworth was screaming; they were all screaming, but to be fair, but Mr. Farnsworth, being an opera buff, seemed to have an edge.

  * * * *

  “Hello … sugar?” The voice was wind chimes, music, symphonic.

  A dead weight was lifted from Peter’s chest, then, literally; he sucked air into his lungs and lurched up in a half-crouch and stumbled back until his back hit something solid.

  It was a door.

  His gun was drawn.

  Blinking, he shook his head.

  The dead weight was a dead redcap, very dead.

  The something that had lifted it off him was a woman. An incredible woman. The woman. “Holy shit,” Peter gasped. “Pussywillow.”

  There she stood before him, Aphrodite, Venus, hair flowing disheveled across her bruised face, her bruised, lovely face. A fluffy white bathrobe, spattered red with blood, hung loose off one shoulder. She opened her smooth hand and the redcap corpse clutched to her bosom smacked to the ground. From her mouth, she brushed a long strand of blond hair. Blood speckled her long legs, and she was still dreamy.

  “Please don’t aim at me, sweetheart.” Pussywillow shied away from the gun. “I’m not your enemy.” Her voice was quiet, seductive, even, but animal fear lay deep within her eyes, riveted to the gun.

  “I’m sorry.” Peter blinked. The gun, trained on Pussywillow, shivered slightly in cold anticipation. “But you tried to take it.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment then opened them. “Yes,” she said, “I tried. But in the spirit of helping you. Helping you gain your freedom.”

  “You? Me? Help? Yeah right, like you helped my father?” said Peter, snapping to. “Where is he?”

  “I did help you,” Pussywillow soothed, her voice a caress. “Who killed these redcaps? What would have happened to you if they were allowed to live? Can you imagine? Being in the thrall of such lowly devices? If they took you back to their murder holes? What they would have done to you? And they would have, too. They are not so loyal as dogs.”

  Peter glanced around at the corpses littering the kitchen floor.

  “I did it to help you,” Pussywillow pleaded, “to save you. You don’t deserve such a fate. Not now. Not when you’re so, so close. So close to me. I haven’t dreamt since my rebirth.” She seemed suddenly bashful. “But I dreamt last night, dreamt about you. About feeling you, touching you, holding you against my skin. Last night in the club, when you touched me.” Her hand lit like a sparrow upon the bruise at her lip. It detracted naught from her beauty. “It was unlike anything I’ve experienced. Such … such…”

  “Where is my father?” Peter straightened. He took a deep breath. “He’s here somewhere, isn’t he? I could just shoot you and — and find him after.”

  “No, you need me.” Pussywillow enveloped herself in her own arms. “You’re mine. You were meant to be mine. A long time it has been in your coming. Years we have waited. All of us. Hoping, yearning. She wants you for her own, but she — she can’t have you, because I want you, just for a little while, before She drags you down into Her dark, awful, clumsy dungeon. Don’t you want to be with me?” Her voice was a little girl’s vulnerable squeak, but it turned to a kitten’s meow, then a lion’s purr. “You’re so powerful, now that your brother is gone. You could have anything, anything. Don’t you want to have me?”

  Peter’s arm relaxed, but the gun did not falter, did not waver. “Look, I do want you, but … my brother?” Peter raised an eyebrow. “I don’t have a brother.” Peter froze when it struck him. She’s talking to the gun…

  * * * *

  Scrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeach!

  The vault door squealed back, screeching in impotent protest. Men and women cried from within; the werewolf lord howled from without.

  The police called for more backup.

  Through the door and into the bedroom Detective Winters slipped. He sprang onto the bed and bounded off. Flinging the shoulder strap of the Tommy gun over the werewolf’s head, Detective Winters landed cowboy style on Brudnoy’s hackled back. The gun strap bit deep into fur and bucking diaphoretic flesh as he twisted it around tourniquet style.

  “Beowulf’s Thunder!”

  Like a Brahma bull, Lord Brudnoy reared back, almost bucking Detective Winters off. A yellow eye glared back at him as the werewolf wrenched his head back and, quite unlike a bull, howled!

  “HHHHOOOOOOWWWWWWWLLLLLLL!”

  Teeth jarring as the werewolf slammed into the wall, Detective Winters nearly lost his grip and his tongue. He dug his hand
tight under the shoulder strap of the Tommy gun as, legs clutching, bounding up and down and into the ceiling, he drew one pistol and shoved the barrel inside Lord Brudnoy’s ear for leverage.

  Lord Brudnoy bristled, rumbling.

  “Silver bullets,” Detective Winters grunted as the werewolf reared back, and the Tommy gun sprayed fire randomly across wall, ceiling, and floor.

  “Open fire!” the police yelled.

  Detective Winters slid off Brudnoy’s back, still holding the shoulder strap, as the police opened fire from the doorway. Lord Brudnoy was broad-sided by a barrage but didn’t seem to mind, intent as he was upon Detective Winters.

  Twisting around in a circle, Brudnoy’s snapping jaws clamped shut always just out of reach of Detective Winters’s dancing legs. His yellow eyes still glared up at Detective Winters, who kicked his heels off the wall and pulled himself back onto the slavering beast’s back.

  “Get out of here!” Detective Winters yelled as another volley of lead screamed past, grazing, and thudding into flesh.

  Lord Brudnoy glared back at the vault and then roared off, growling and howling as he sprung snarling from the bedroom, bowling police aside and bucking the detective strapped to his back.

  * * * *

  “He loathes you, Peter,” Pussywillow said, her eyes finally drawn away from the gun, looking Peter directly in the eye. “He hates all things, but you, especially, he hates. His loathe of you, I can hear it. I can smell it. I can taste it. Pulsing, it grows, radiates warmth, heat, so warm, like the sun. I remember the sun.”

  “Wh-what are you talking about?” Peter asked, though he already knew. “Who hates me?”

  “Have you killed, Peter?” Pussywillow asked. “Have you murdered anyone, yet? Anyone at all?”

  “No. I haven’t, I think.” Vinks’s face flashed before Peter’s eyes, him lying on the ground, blood streaming from the side of his head. He was still alive…

  “You’ve wanted to, though. Have you felt the soul whisper warmth through yours as their flesh falls limp?” Pussywillow sauntered forth. “Felt that last warm breath upon your cheek when their flesh turns as cool as your own, and you take that final ounce, that final taste of life, of joy, that most precious nectar, from their bodies?”

  “You sound like Winters.” Peter raised the gun slowly.

  Pussywillow stopped. “That is all we have, Peter, that warmth. You will learn that. Accept it, cherish it, the need. The act.”

  “Shut up. Where’s my father? Tell me now, or I swear I’ll start my killing spree with you.”

  “He’s not here, Peter,” Pussywillow said. “Feel free to take a stroll about, though. I’ll even give you a tour. We could start in the bedroom? After all, you’ve seen the kitchen. I’m sorry it’s such a mess; redcaps are so hard to train, especially when they’re dead.” She looked down at the massacre at her feet. “But the bedroom is much nicer, much nicer, indeed.”

  Peter followed her gaze as his stomach growled, and against every instinct, his mouth … his mouth began to water. He swallowed, disgusted, enthralled. How long had it been since he had last eaten, since he had last eaten and was satisfied. Something smells so, No! The redcaps? Not human. It wouldn’t be … they’re foul, though — Stop. His stomach growled again, and he put a hand to it. His senses pulled him past the redcaps. In the corner lay the body of a man. He looked vaguely familiar. Last night? Frat boy. As repulsed as he was by the thought of it, images choked his mind like weeds, and he wasn’t repulsed. Yes. Peter was powerless. He couldn’t fight it again, sinking his teeth slowly, NO. He wouldn’t. Couldn’t. But, he’s already—

  “Dead,” Pussywillow said, reading his thoughts. “You’re no killer, Peter. That’s why he loathes you so. But, then, you don’t have to be. You wouldn’t be killing him, now, would you? My redcaps had that simple pleasure. I would have, but I have plans, and besides, he was just a frat boy.” She turned. “I could just leave you two alone? Privacy does sometimes make all the difference. ‘Behind closed doors,’ they used to say. You’d just be feeding, staying strong, surviving. It’s just protein, Peter, sweet delectable protein. Men have done it before. To stay alive.” When she smiled it radiated sex. “I know what you want, Peter. You want a way out. We all wanted it, once. I wanted it, too, once. I wanted … it doesn’t matter what I wanted, Peter, because I was wrong. I got more in the end, Peter. So much more.”

  “No.” Peter’s voice cracked. Stay strong, focused, eyes on the … but … don’t I? If I’m weak? I can’t save him. I can’t … save who? Peter could feel the saliva flowing, the smell was, he couldn’t describe it, divine, satisfying, intoxicating. It was everything he wanted, everything he needed to be whole again, until the next night, and then the night after, and the night after that.

  “You may as well, Peter.” Pussywillow stepped gingerly to the man’s corpse. “Give yourself a going away present. Yes, going away. The sunset tonight was your last. Poor, poor, Peter. You will never gaze upon her beauty, nor feel her warmth again.” She put her hands on her hips. “Six days is impressive, Peter. Most don’t make it three. You must accept it. I promise you won’t miss her. Not after long.” She sank low in the pool of blood, careful not to stain her robe further, and dipped the tip of her finger in the crimson pool. She held it up to him. “You want it, Peter. I can tell. Just a taste. Just one little taste.”

  Peter’s knees wobbled as he nudged a step forward and stopped. No. He drew himself up and raised the gun. It felt heavier than before. “No,” he said. “You took my father. You lie. No.”

  Pussywillow raised a hand in protest, but Peter cut her off.

  “You took him,” Peter said. “Don’t deny it. Don’t tell me you’re sorry. Just tell me where he is.” He could see the fear in her eyes again, fear of the gun. The facade of confidence shattered like china. It was fear, now, and uncertainty that danced about her eye.

  “He’s not here.” Pussywillow’s hands fiddled with the sash holding her robe together.

  “Let’s take that tour, anyways, shall we?” Peter said. “Get up. Now. After you.”

  “Oh my, such a gentleman.”

  Peter herded Pussywillow out of the kitchen at gunpoint and followed her into a living room plastered with animal heads. And then the bedroom.

  “I told you he’s not here. It’s just you and me.” Pussywillow turned as she stood by the bed, and the robe slumped and fell from her shoulders, slipping in a soft half-moon clump at her feet. She turned. Magnificent.

  Peter gasped.

  “What do you want, Peter?” she asked. “Say it and it’s yours.”

  “Uh…? What do I want?” Peter echoed, his gun once more wavering, his knees once more turning to jelly. For a moment, he glimpsed a cowboy wraith, shotgun in hand, standing in the bathroom adjoining to the left, but he forgot it in an instant as Pussywillow slid forward quickly and placed a finger on the tip of the now trembling gun.

  “I’ll give you what you want,” she said.

  Peter’s eyes slid down involuntarily.

  “But, it will cost a bit, just a tiny, tiny bit.” Pussywillow grinned, sliding a hand around Peter’s neck and pulling him toward her parted red lips.

  Tomorrow, Peter would be a ghoul, but today, as of right now, he was just a man. Powerless to stop, even if he had wanted to, he didn’t. Gone was the hunger, the pain, the loss. Gone was his father, his friends. There were only those wanting eyes and that hungry body pressing against his. He gasped as her hands caressed him, then froze.

  They froze because someone had knocked on, and then opened the front door to the apartment.

  * * * *

  Shotgun blasts echoed in their ragged wake through the sea of dark blue shirts and shining badges. The wail of the sirens and the blazing blue lights were dwarfed by the howl of the mad werewolf lord and the gleam in his terrific yellow eyes.

  He tore through them, and they pursued close down the hill and into the city, screeching around corners in their desperate bid
to keep up through the claustrophobic alleyways. As close as they kept in the chase, none were as close as Detective Winters, who clung still to the werewolf’s back by nothing more than a vinyl strap and a grip bull riders might envy.

  * * * *

  “What in damnation are you doing?” Pussywillow hissed as she yanked Peter back and held him like a shield before her.

  The Count, with a flourish of his Batman cape, stepped into the bedroom. “Ahhhuuuurrmm!” He cleared his throat. His bloodshot eyes glowed wide in ecstasy as they lit upon her bare frame, wriggling, and sliding, infecting and suffocating those soft curves and smooth expanses like a coarse, smallpox-infected blanket.

  “Velcome,” the Count announced in a voice so deep it echoed. Whisking his cape back and over his shoulders, he strode into the room a prince, a prince of darkness. Black roses in his fist he thrust forward. “For you, my dearest, my Pussywillow, my … Juliet.”

  Pussywillow covered herself like Eve, “Robert?”

  The Count dropped forward in a dramatic sweeping bow. “Lady Pussywillow, I have come for you. Surely, I am velcome, if these things are.” He straightened from his bow. Madness simmered in each eye as he glanced first at the boy, and then the man, shotgun in hand, standing in the bathroom. Both stood statue-like, enthralled.

  “Surely, they will not be required, this evening,” the Count said, his fist crushing the rose stems until they wilted over.

  “Bob,” she hissed like a cat, snatching her robe, wrestling it on. “I can’t deal with this now. I’m busy.”

  “You invite men, entertain them, cast upon them lovings of a most fell nature, and yet I am not amongst the chosen?”

  “I didn’t invite them, and I certainly did not invite you.” Pussywillow yanked her sash tight.

  “Ah, a VAM-pire is powerless,” the Count raised a finger, a twinkle in his mad eye, “and at the mercy of his host if he calls uninvited. I am at your every whim, Lady Pussywillow.”

  “Leave then.”

  “Ah, ah, ah, the lady, she jests, yes?”

  “No.”

  “But then, she is so coy,” the Count said, conspiratorially to the boy, who, enthralled, did not blink, did not move, did not register. The Count winked at Pussywillow and brandished his most ravishing set of jagged orange teeth.