Season of Sin

by JL Caid

“They’re here,” Kyran says.

  “Who is here?” I ask.

  “We stand our positions,” Seth says.

  “She can’t be here,” Darick says. “Too risky right now. She hasn’t fed. She doesn’t understand herself yet.”

  Seth shows his fangs in anger. “Fuck.” He punches the table and two chunks of it break away, showing the cut out of his massive fists.

  “If we don’t answer, they’ll come in,” Layre says. “I can hold them off for a minute, maybe two.”

  “I’ll get the weapons,” Kyran says.

  Darick grabs Kyran’s shoulder. “I have a plan.”

  “Speak now,” Seth says.

  My eyes are darting all around the table.

  “My plan is… you can’t know.”

  “What?” Seth asks. “We need to know…”

  Darick turns and faces me. My body stiffens.

  His eyes flash a very dark brown color. He opens his mouth and hisses at me. He reaches for his leather jacket and takes out a pair of black sunglasses and places them on his face. He jumps at me, wrapping his strong arms around me, putting his jacket around me.

  I want to scream but can’t.

  Darick then whispers to me, “Let’s go for a ride, babe.”

  CONFESSION

  1.

  It’s like I fade out of an image or something. Almost like the way Darick moved me in and out of the wood carvings that were in the hallway. Only now, the first thing that comes to me is the sound of an engine. It’s growling, working hard. I can feel the growl, the rumble, and I realize my body is pressed tight to Darick’s. My chest to his back. My hands around his waist, fingers interlocked tight. My head resting against his back as my eyes finally open and I realize where I am.

  Sort of.

  The world is flying by us.

  I’m on the back of his motorcycle.

  I lift my head and I look around.

  We’re riding really fast on a road.

  The motorcycle is really loud. The wind is whipping all around us.

  “Where are we going?” I scream at his ear.

  “For a ride, babe,” he yells back.

  He’s not wearing a helmet, which is probably stupid and dangerous, but we’re already dead. So why not live on the edge a little?

  Something happens though. I have this feeling in the pit of stomach. My head tingles and throbs and it’s like a box is opened and I have more memories. The first thing I remember is that I’ve been on motorcycles before. A few times. That’s how I know how to hold onto Darick and that’s why I’m not afraid. The scenery is familiar too. The road. The trees surrounding us. The smell of the air.

  I feel like I’m home. Or I stepped into a memory.

  More of it comes rushing back to me.

  There’s a party. A big party. A party in the woods. At a house near the top of a mountain. I was invited and decided to go at the last second. When I get to the party, some drunk dude in a sleeveless tee with gym muscles asks me my name. I can hear myself saying Astrid with an eye roll. The guy tries to write my name but can’t. He’s too drunk. So I grab the marker and write my own name. He then peels the sticker off the backing and presses it firmly to my left breast.

  I break away from Darick a little bit more and look down. I’m wearing the name tag. The sticker. The one that was in my jeans. Wait… my jeans. My clothes. They were bloody, right? Ripped up and bloody. I’m not wearing those clothes now though. Even though I have the sticker.

  What’s happening?

  The memory stays fresh in my mind.

  I wander around the party for a little bit, bumping into some people I know. Small chit-chat, nothing important. Someone comes up to me and asks if I brought my camera. They want me to take some pictures of everyone. That makes me feel like a geek. Like I’m there to be a photographer. But I tell myself fuck that and I decide to get drunk and hook up with someone.

  The motorcycle rumbles louder and we pick up more speed.

  I break away from the memory and look over Darick’s thick shoulder. There’s a bend coming up. I feel uneasy about that bend. Like something bad is going to happen. I want to tell him to slow down, but I can’t bring myself to actually speak the words. I can only stare, holding on tight to him.

  As we come around the bend, the light all around us starts to fade. It’s like going from day to night in ten seconds. Except it doesn’t exactly get dark. Just dusk. The headlight on the motorcycle shines, shooting a white light forward.

  Darick suddenly makes a quick move, going into the opposite lane of the road. I shudder, fearing another vehicle will come and hit us head on. I wonder what would happen though. If the motorcycle did crash. If we both hit the ground and started sliding against the unforgiving pavement. Would it rip our skin off? Would we heal quickly, just like Darick and the others had done before? What about me? What would happen to me?

  I never get answers to the silent questions.

  I soon find out why he moved to the other side of the road.

  There’s someone standing in the road up ahead, right in the middle of the lane that we’re supposed to be in.

  Before I can even attempt to pull myself forward and ask Darick why he isn’t stopping… I realize something.

  I know who it is.

  I know the person standing in the middle of the lane.

  Waving her arms.

  Looking beat up.

  I see… myself.

  2.

  Shock ripples through me as we speed by… me. It’s me standing there. Just like the memory I had of myself. Missing one shoe. Out of breath. Tired. Scared. Waving my hands, hoping for help. Except in my memory, there’s a massive white light that consumes me and the memory stops.

  We speed by me and I turn. I make eye contact with myself and it’s the most chilling thing I can experience. Locking eyes with myself for a split second before it breaks and I have to turn my head to see myself. When I do, I’m turned back around, facing forward, waving my hands, looking for help.

  I keep trying to look back, so much so that I release my interlocked finger grip around Darick. Now I’m just holding him with my left hand. My right hand reaches around for the very back of the motorcycle. I have a better view of myself now, even if it’s stupid and risky. As we start to go around another bend, there’s a bright white light that shines behind us, and I can no longer see myself.

  I’m finally able to scream.

  I shut my eyes and scream.

  I have no idea why I’m screaming, and better yet, why I only scream for a couple seconds and stop. I suddenly feel nothing. No excitement. No worry. No fear. I feel… nothing. I can’t even say there’s a sense of relief because it’s literally nothing. I feel dead.

  “Dead,” I whisper.

  “Had to see it,” Darick calls out. “Hang tight, babe, we’re not done yet.”

  He eases to the right, crossing into the lane he belongs in. The motorcycle roars louder and we pick up even more speed. The ride lasts another minute or so before we start to slow down. And it’s a very dramatic slowdown. When I look forward, I see silhouettes. Figures standing side by side, at least twenty of them. Whatever they are. I can make out their shapes, but it’s like their arms are all connected together somehow.

  It’s strange to me and I guess it rattles Darick because he slows, puts his right foot down, and turns his head a little.

  “Hang tight, babe,” he says. “You don’t want to get eaten up by those guys.”

  “What are they?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer me. Instead, he throttles the motorcycle, the back tire begins to spin, cutting against the pavement with a smoky cry. When he releases the brakes, we dart forward, off the road, into the trees. There’s a very narrow path, meaning that Darick needs to know exactly where he’s going. Which means I have to trust that he knows.

  I feel a prickly sensation on the back of my neck, almost like someone scratched me with a wired grill scraper. I glance back and the figu
res are right there. Inches away. Black wisps of what looks like razor blade shaped fingers reach for me. I swing my right hand back and punch through them, making them dissipate. There’s a quick pain in my arm and I see cuts. Millions of cuts on my arms.

  I gasp as panic instantly begins to set in.

  “Darick!” I cry. “They’re following us!”

  “Not us, babe,” he calls out. “Following you.”

  That wasn’t exactly the reassuring thing I needed him to say right then.

  We’re barreling through the woods, the motorcycle probably not made to be ridden like this. And there are all these black figures trying to grab me.

  When they touch me, its sandpaper rough and there’s a hissing sound, like the sound of air being released from a tire. The smell is like sulfur, enough to sting my nose. I quickly miss the warm smell of Layre’s cinnamon skin and Seth’s minty aura and Kyran’s beautiful lavender.

  I half expect the three of them to appear and start fighting in my honor.

  But they don’t show.

  The silhouettes get closer now. I see tiny white beads that I can only assume are their eyes. There’s a wind that rips my hair in all directions. The rotten egg smell makes me gag and makes my eyes water. They’re all around me now. Left. Right. Back. And I fear that if they come over the top of me, they’ll not just grab me, but they’ll do something to the motorcycle and we’ll crash.

  I swing my right arm again. It’s gooey as I punch through the air and break up the figures, but there’s nothing on my arm or hand. Except the cuts. More of them. The figures are hissing wildly now. In all directions. Trying to confuse me. But I keep my eyes locked on one of them. Whatever the thing is, I focus on the tiny, white beads.

  “Die, motherfucker,” I growl.

  I widen my eyes and open my mouth. I’m acting as though I have fangs. I hurry to lick my teeth and check… nope, no fangs.

  The black silhouette makes a darting move, toward my mouth. Twisting and curling, looking as though it wants to go into my mouth. My mind flashes with stuff I’ve seen in movies. Going into someone’s mouth and then taking over their body.

  I should really shut my mouth, but I don’t.

  I stand my ground.

  The silhouette gets close enough that my lips feel icky with the sulfur and rotten egg smell. I then chomp down as hard as I can and growl.

  The black silhouette explodes with a sparkling blackness that fills the sky. The others try to get near me, but I open my mouth and wave my hand. This time, they’re afraid of me. They all stop at the same time. With Darick going as fast as he is, they all start to fade pretty quickly. They’re all just standing there, like they were before, no arms showing or anything, just figures with white beads that I still assume are eyes.

  I’m not sure if I should feel proud or not. I have no idea what just happened.

  My left hand has a really firm grip on Darick’s jacket. I feel my hand sweating, my fingers curled so tightly that my bones are aching a little. I look at my right arm and see nothing but blood.

  “Blood,” I whisper. “I’m bleeding.”

  “You’re fine, babe,” Darick says. “You just escaped the lefties.”

  “The what?” I yell.

  Darick just laughs.

  His laugh rumbles like the motorcycle engine.

  I’m not in the mood to laugh though.

  Truthfully, I’m fucking irritated.

  I had been sitting at the table with the four of them, eating delicious pizza. They were all starting to talk. Then there was a heavy pounding at the door. They all panicked. And Darick brought me… here. And I didn’t know where here was.

  I feel like slapping Darick in the face and seriously start to consider it.

  That’s when the trees open up and we’re… here.

  There’s a house in the woods.

  I know the house.

  Darick has brought me to the party where I was last alive.

  3.

  “Let’s check that out,” he says as he leans against his motorcycle, looking totally cool.

  The sky above us is an odd purplish color. It’s not dark. It’s not bright. There’s no sun. And there are no stars. There’s enough light that I can see a good distance ahead and around me.

  When I see my arm and all the cuts, my knees wobble.

  Okay, I don’t like the sight of blood… yet I’m with four vampires… how is that going to work out?

  Maybe it’s just the sight of my own blood.

  “They’re the leftovers,” Darick says as he holds my arm.

  “What?” I ask.

  “What happened back there. There are certain lines we’re not supposed to cross. Not sure how to explain it… different boundaries of life, death, judgment. All kinds of fun shit, babe.”

  “What do you mean by leftovers?”

  “Souls that couldn’t cut it,” Darick says. He begins to rub my arm. His rough fingers hit the open wounds and it hurts really badly. “They were taken, lost, not needed. But they can’t cross over to another place because they have no attachment to a body. To a heart. To memories. See, everything about us connects. The living puts too much into one thing rather than understanding how it all works together. Take my motorcycle, babe. I can ask you what you think the most important part is… and you’d be right and wrong. Gasoline, right? It won’t run without any. But what if I have gasoline but no tires? Or what if I have gasoline, tires, but no steering? See what I’m saying there? The heart. The mind. The body. The soul. It’s all part of something greater than anything you can believe.”

  “You have no heart, Darick.”

  “You’re not the first beautiful woman to say that to me,” he says with a grin.

  I smile back. “You know what I mean. I have no heart either.”

  “We’re different, Astrid. The lefties are just the devil’s bitches. They block barriers and fight hard. They try to get inside you and twist you up. Nasty fucking things. But you fought off an entire horde. Unscathed.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. My arm…”

  I look down and my arm’s healed. One hundred percent healed.

  I pull my arm from Darick and study it.

  “How?” I whisper.

  He touches my face and puts two fingers under my chin, forcing me to look at him. “It’s not about how… it’s about why… and the why is simple. You own me, babe. You own the four of us. Probably more.”

  “Where are we?”

  “I had to jump around in time to protect you.”

  “I saw myself on the road.”

  “Yes.”

  “And this house is where the party was the night I…”

  “I know,” Darick says. “You’re going to remember it all. You were being watched the entire night. I’m sure you felt it.”

  I nod. “It was strange. I wanted to get drunk and fool around with someone. Everyone wanted me to get my camera and take pictures. I remember it a little.”

  “Did you talk to anyone?”

  “Probably.”

  “Did you take pictures?”

  “I think so,” I say. “But I don’t know where my camera is.”

  Darick looks at the house. “Let’s go find it.”

  He pushes from his motorcycle and puts his hand out. I want to argue, but I have this new sense of power. A new sense of life, even though I’m dead. Which is strange.

  “Darick, who showed up?”

  “Back at the house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That comes with time,” he says. “Most important is to protect you.”

  “Me? Or my blood?”

  Darick pauses. He pulls me close to him. “Look, babe, your blood is the single most important thing in existence right now. So I won’t lie. But you… your lips. Those eyes. The smell of your hair. The taste of your skin. The way your pussy feels sheathed around my cock, squeezing it into submission. Making me explode with a fury…” He curls his lip and shows his fangs to me. “I want
to fuck you right now. I want to put you on your hands and knees and make your pussy beg for me as you rock your hips into the air, dripping with need.”

  That sounds like a fantastic idea.

  I ease my hands forward, touching between Darick’s legs. He’s firm, thick, growing against my touch. My right hand cups him, well, tries to cup him. My hand is too small for what he has between his legs. But I know a place where he fits just right.

  “Don’t worry about back there,” Darick says. “Your time will come to face all the questions and answers at once. Start here. With me.”

  I nod.

  My fingers find the zipper of his jeans.

  I start to tug, imagining his powerful cock slamming deep inside me. Then I hear a giggling to my right.

  I turn my head and see a guy and girl racing right toward us. Some preppy jock looking guy is pulling the arm of a blonde girl in a white tank top, her boobs almost bouncing out of the shirt. They’re both holding red plastic cups.

  “Come on, right here,” the guy says.

  They plow right into me and Darick. I step back but realize that they don’t know we’re there. It’s like what Darick did before with those wood carvings in the hall. We can see them, but they can’t see us.

  The guy takes the girl to a tree and smacks the red cup out of her hand. He throws his red cup over his shoulder and attacks her. Hands to her hips, holding her against the tree. She puts her hands up in submission. He kisses her neck and goes right down to her chest.

  “Making you a little warm, huh?” Darick’s voice whispers right against my ear.

  “Shut up,” I say.

  “Come on,” he says.

  He takes my hand and we walk toward the house.

  I can’t help but look back, watching as the guy and girl start to take each other’s clothes off. I’m addicted to it. When he takes her bare left breast into his mouth, I suck in a shuddering breath. I imagine Darick is doing the same to me. I trip and almost fall, but Darick catches me.

  “Easy,” he whispers. “Don’t lose your sight.”

  He’s fucking with me. He set this all up I bet to mess with me. To get me so turned on that I feel angry.