Blood Summoned

by N. P. Martin

  “I think that’s all of them,” Scarlet said, staring at the man who had just tried to kill me as he kneeled on the floor in a state of extreme confusion, his bloody face registering his rising panic. “What did you do to him?”

  “Where am I?” Manimal said. “I don’t know who I am—I—”

  I saved him the trouble of trying to remember his own name by putting a bullet in his head. “Fuck that guy,” I said, breathing hard.

  Scarlet threw me a quick smile. “You’re getting on in years, Detective. Maybe you’re not fit for this anymore.”

  “Fuck you,” I said, wiping sweat from my forehead. “Let’s go and get your sister and get out of this fucking rat hole.”

  17

  Dead guards littered the cavernous room as Scarlet and I entered, training our weapons on the man standing next to a bank of computer equipment. A man we presumed to be Jonas Webb. He was tall like his brother, though much leaner, his physicality almost skeletal. A shock of wild, white hair topped his gaunt face. Eyes that were sunk deep into their darkened sockets gave him a ghoulish appearance, as did his pasty white skin, which doubtless hadn’t seen much sunlight during his eighteen-year incarceration. He wore a long, white lab coat with nothing but a pair of black slacks underneath. There weren’t even any shoes on his feet.

  To me, he looked every inch the lunatic they purported him to be. As he stood staring at us, he held a twisted smile on his face, showing teeth that were yellowed and almost black in places. In his wild eyes, I saw very little in the way of sanity.

  “Big sister!” he announced in a voice that made him sound like he had lost most of his capacity for logical discourse. “Big sister has arrived, but it’s too late. Too late, Big Sister! Too late!”

  “Too late for what?” I said as I held my gun on him, but before he could answer, I heard Scarlet call out Charlotte’s name.

  Turning, I looked toward the huge box in the center of the room. I could see now that it was in fact of steel construction, the frame anyway. The rest consisted of thick plate-glass windows and a heavy steel door that opened and closed electronically.

  Scarlet had moved around to the side of the box and was staring through the window at her sister, who was inside, though her form was steadily being obscured by a rising cloud of greenish gas.

  “What the fuck are you doing to her?” Scarlet shouted. “Open the door!”

  Jonas Webb’s response was to laugh crazily to himself. “You’re too late,” he said. “She will become wrath, and no one will stop her. She will carry out my revenge just as I’ve created her to do.”

  I stepped forward and held my gun inches from Webb’s head. “Open the fucking door. Let her out.”

  “I’ve waited eighteen years for this moment,” Webb said as he stared at the box, hardly even acknowledging me or the fact that I had a gun to his head. “Eighteen years of sitting alone in a padded cell, with only the thought of getting my revenge to keep me going. They thought they could break me, silence me, lock me up and throw away the key.”

  He finally turned his head to look at me with his wild, sunken eyes. “They underestimated me. They always have. Now those monsters will finally meet their match. They will have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. My creation will hunt them all, flush them all out into the light and kill every last one of them until their vile species no longer exists. No more innocent blood will they take. No more innocent families will they massacre to feed their disgusting bloodlust.”

  Scarlet was banging on the thick glass, calling her sister’s name. As the gas filled up the chamber, Charlotte fell to the floor and started violently convulsing. “What are you doing to her?” I demanded of Webb.

  “Starting her final transformation,” he said with some pride. “She is becoming the perfect specimen that I always intended her to be. The perfect killing machine. No one will stop her now.”

  “The code for the door,” I said, pressing the gun against his head. “What is it?”

  Webb started laughing as if at some great joke that only he knew about. Then he suddenly stepped away from me, and I saw his hand slide into his coat pocket and pull out a small pistol which he immediately pressed against his right temple. “My work is done!” he proclaimed.

  “Don’t!” I shouted.

  “Time to be with my family now.”

  When Webb pulled the trigger, his blood and brains splattered over the computer equipment next to him before he fell to the floor, dead.

  “No!” Scarlet screamed.

  “Fucking asshole,” I said through gritted teeth, wondering now how the hell we were going to save Charlotte when Webb was the only one who knew the code to open the door to the box she was trapped in.

  Scarlet dropped her bow to the floor as she took a submachine gun from one of the dead guards. She then went around to the side of the box and fired a burst at the glass. But the glass was so thick that the bullets just ricocheted off it. “Stop,” I told her. “Before you shoot yourself.”

  “Fuck!” She threw the gun to one side and grabbed her hair with both hands, her face a mask of helplessness and frustration.

  At this point, the box was completely filled with greenish gas, making it impossible to even see Charlotte inside. With no code to open the door, the only thing I could think to do was to summon the Hellbastards. After speaking the words of power out loud, all five of the demons soon materialized around me.

  Cracka was already bouncing with excitement. “Oh yeah, what’s this place?” he said, immediately running to one of the dead guards to jump up and down on his chest.

  “Cracka!” I shouted. “Stop acting like a kid at a fucking playground and get over here!”

  For once, Cracka didn’t protest and did as I told him. The Hellbastards could see I was in no mood for fucking around.

  “What’s going on, boss?” Scroteface asked me.

  Ignoring him, I looked at Snot Skull. “I need that door open,” I told him, pointing at the box. “Melt the control panel. Hurry!”

  “Yes, boss,” Snot Skull said and scurried over to the door, jumping up and gripping onto the steel with his claws as he vomited acid over the keypad.

  As he did that, I turned to the others. “The rest of you try to break that glass. Go!”

  The other four Hellbastards ran past Scarlet and faced the side of the box. Scroteface then began to punch the glass with all his demonic strength. As he did, Toast shot fireballs from his mouth to try to weaken the structural integrity of the glass. Reggie’s main power was invisibility, which wouldn’t do him much good in this situation, so he joined Scroteface and Cracka in battering on the glass with their fists.

  “How we doing?” I said to Snot Skull as I went to the door. The acid he had vomited over the keypad was eating into the metal, the fumes making my eyes water. Soon, the wiring under the metal casing began to spark as acid and molten metal spat out everywhere.

  Standing back, with Scarlet now at my side, we waited on the door to short circuit and somehow open, but it never did. Even when the acid melted the entire keypad and the electronics underneath, the door remained shut.

  “Why isn’t it opening?” Scarlet said, sounding like she was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. “I can’t lose my sister. I won’t!”

  “Snot Skull,” I said. “Start melting through the door. Go!”

  Obeying my order, Snot Skull climbed up the box to the top of the door and began to puke acid all over the surface. The door was so thick, however, that I knew it would take a while for the acid to eat through.

  Meanwhile, Charlotte was still inside undergoing some transformation that, according to Jonas Webb, would make her into some kind of killing machine.

  A monster.

  Around the side of the box, the other Hellbastard’s were still at it, banging like crazy on the glass, which was now blackened by Toast’s constant firebombing. They seemed to be making some progress, however, as cracks soon started to appear in the glass.

  I was about
to tell them to keep at it when a hand suddenly slammed against the glass from the inside of the box, and the Hellbastards stopped what they were doing to stare at the dark figure now materializing through the green smoke.

  Scarlet came around to stare, her face full of fear and dread now that she knew Charlotte was at least still alive, though in what state, it was impossible to tell at this stage. The hand pressing against the glass appeared to be black like it was covered in some outer coating or second skin, and the nails had thickened and lengthened into claws.

  “Oh Jesus,” Scarlet breathed. “What is she? What has he done to her?”

  The hand pressing against the glass retreated after a moment, pulling back into the thick green smoke where it disappeared for what felt like a long time. Scarlet, the Hellbastards and I could only stand staring at the glass as we waited on Charlotte to appear again, which she did, but not in the way we expected.

  A pregnant silence fell upon the room for a long moment, and then the glass on the side of the box shattered as something came crashing through it, causing the Hellbastards to scatter, and me and Scarlet to jump back in shock.

  In front of us now, amidst a carpet of broken glass and a cloud of slowly dissipating green smoke, was a black figure that appeared to rest on all fours, the limbs stretched and bent in a way that gave the figure the appearance of a spider. If this was Charlotte, she was not the girl she was before. Adding to her grotesque appearance were four legs that came from her back. Black, spindly things that rested either side of her, making her look like a giant spider. Her skin was no longer skin, now transformed into something resembling an insect-like exoskeleton. Her face still seemed human, at least in shape, but her eyes were black as coal, her once blond hair now long and wild and as dark as her skin. When she opened her mouth, she revealed that she had long white fangs that appeared to drip poison.

  “No,” Scarlet said, shaking her head, her mouth open in horror. “Oh God, no—”

  The Hellbastards growled at Charlotte—or whatever she was now—and began to circle her as though they were about to attack, claws at the ready as they snarled at her.

  “Scroteface,” I said. “No!”

  But it was too late. The Hellbastard’s jumped on Charlotte to try to take her down, but in doing so, they put her on the defensive, and she started going crazy. Thanks to the spider legs on her back, she could move across the floor at great speed, grabbing the Hellbastard’s one by one and throwing them away from her.

  When she grabbed hold of Cracka, she held him with both hands and opened her mouth wide so her dripping fangs could extend to their fullest extent.

  Realizing what she was going to do, I raised my gun and fired a shot, the bullet catching her in the arm she was using to hold Cracka. With a screech of pain, she dropped Cracka, and the little demon scurried away from her.

  Charlotte focused on me then, baring her fangs, her black eyes as cold and emotionless as any insect.

  When she ran at me, I raised my gun again, intending to empty what was left of the clip into her, but as I went to shoot, Scarlet dived in front of me, shouting, “No, don’t!”

  But Charlotte had already begun her attack, one of her clawed appendages slicing through the air in a wide arc, a blow intended for me, but which caught Scarlet instead.

  The next thing I knew, Scarlet was staggering back into me, holding her throat with both hands as blood spurted through her fingers.

  “Scarlet!” I shouted, realizing what had happened. “No!”

  Still holding her, I laid her back on the floor as gurgling sounds issued from her mouth. When she took her hands away from her throat, a huge jet of blood squirted from her neck and hit me in the face. With horror, I realized her carotid artery had been severed by the blow. In seconds, the floor around her was pooled with crimson fluid.

  To stem the bleeding, I wrapped both hands around her neck, but the wound was so deep it was impossible to do anything for her. Her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, she stared up at me with wide eyes, and all I could do was stare back as the life ebbed from her at alarming speed.

  As much as I wanted to help her, I knew I couldn’t. I’d seen similar wounds before. Once the carotid was severed, that was it. Without immediate medical intervention, you’d be dead in minutes.

  Scarlet knew this. As I kept my hands clamped on her neck, she gripped my wrists and kept staring up at me as the light faded from her eyes and the gurgling sounds eventually stopped.

  In what seemed like no time at all, she was dead.

  “Scarlet…” I said. “No…oh fuck…no…”

  My eyes were full of tears as I turned my head to stare at the monster that was Charlotte. She had backed off a bit as she glared in my direction, her head moving from side to side as she appeared to take everything in. Her black eyes seemed confused, even a little afraid. Then the blackness on her skin began to peel back, revealing the human skin underneath. As the spider legs on her back retracted, her eyes changed to their former color, the bottomless blackness now replaced with their original dark blue.

  Soon, I was no longer looking at a monster, but at a confused, naked girl with tears in her eyes and grief in her voice.

  “Scarlet?” she said, quietly at first, and then louder as she crawled toward her dead sister. “Scarlet! Oh no!”

  “She’s dead,” I said in a flat voice, still in a state of disbelief myself. “You killed her.”

  Charlotte loomed over her older sister, her face distraught, unable to believe what she’d done. “It wasn’t me,” she said. “I couldn’t …control myself.” She looked down at her bloody hands. “I’m …a monster now.”

  Standing, I left Charlotte to cry over her sister as I crouched against the wall, lighting a cigarette as I stared emptily at the floor.

  “You alright, boss?” Scroteface said, approaching me, the other four Hellbastard’s beside him.

  I shook my head. “No, Scroteface. I’m not alright.”

  Neither of the Hellbastard’s said anything more as they sat down next to me in silence.

  Then, as I stared over at Scarlet’s lifeless form, I saw Charlotte’s spider legs emerge from her back, coming to rest on the floor so they took the full weight of her body along with her two human legs. As she bundled Scarlet’s body into her arms, I stood and said, “What are you doing?”

  Charlotte looked at me with sad, almost innocent eyes. “I’m leaving with my sister,” she said.

  “What? Where will you go?”

  “I’m taking her home.”

  As she went to scurry off, I shouted for her to wait. Going over to her, I gazed down at Scarlet’s bloodied face for a moment, and then leaned down and kissed her gently on the forehead before running my hand over her face to close her lifeless eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Scarlet,” I whispered.

  “Why did you come here?” Charlotte asked with anger in her eyes now. “Why did you bring my sister here?”

  “We came for you,” I said. “Scarlet came here to save you.”

  Fresh tears spilled from Charlotte’s eyes as a mix of emotions passed across her face, and for a second, she looked like she wanted to kill me. “Who are you?”

  “I’m no one,” I told her. “Just a friend of Scarlet’s.”

  At that, she scurried off with her sister in her arms.

  That was the last time I ever saw Scarlet Hood.

  18

  When someone dies, even if they die right in front of your eyes, there’s this sense of disbelief that you can never quite get over, at least not for a long while. The person is still fresh in your memories, and they still feel a part of you. When my wife and daughter died, it took me weeks to fully accept that they were gone. In the meantime, I was left with the sensation that they were still around somewhere, even though I knew they weren’t.

  I felt the same about Scarlet.

  Some hours after her death, I found myself in The Brokedown Palace, sitting at the bar, drunk and alone.
In the dark.

  When I drove back from Jonas Webb’s mountain lair, I decided I wanted to be alone somewhere. For whatever reason, The Brokedown Palace came to mind. I knew it would be empty, and that the bar would still be stocked. So I went there and broke in, taking a seat at the bar so I could drown my sorrows, just like I’d done the night Callie and Angela were killed, kick-starting the process of repressing my emotions, which was all I knew how to do in the face of grief.

  I’m not going to say Scarlet’s death was my fault. It wasn’t. No one could’ve predicted what would happen. No one could’ve known the kind of monster that Charlotte would turn into. I doubt even Webb knew precisely what he was doing when he made Charlotte. If he had lived to see it, Charlotte’s transformation would’ve been a surprise to him too. Or maybe not. We’ll never know.

  Scarlet’s death wasn’t my fault.

  I had to keep telling myself that, because every ounce of me wanted to believe that it was my fault she was dead. Maybe if I hadn’t shot at Charlotte and put her on the defensive? Maybe if I’d been faster in my reactions, I could’ve pulled Scarlet out of the way? Or maybe if I hadn’t let Webb kill himself, he might’ve been able to control the situation and stop it degenerating into the disaster that it was.

  Maybe, maybe, fucking maybe…

  My phone rang. Half drunk and full of Mud, I fished it out of my pocket and saw it was Hannah calling. I had several missed calls from her in the last few hours. She probably wanted to know if everything was alright. If I was okay.

  I stared at the phone until it stopped ringing, before placing it down on the bar. I don’t know why I didn’t want to speak to her. I just didn’t. All I wanted to do was drink and—

  The phone rang again. A different number this time. An unknown number.

  “Fuck off,” I said and rejected the call, before pouring another shot of whiskey into my glass from the bottle I’d salvaged from behind the bar.