by ST Branton
“Oh, don’t be afraid of that rat!” Rocco barked. His voice was harsh, a far cry from the smooth, manipulative tones I’d heard from him during our jaunt to the docks. His face was shellacked in a thin sheen of sweat, and although he continued to talk a mean game, he didn’t move an inch. “She ought to have drowned in the river days ago. Clean her up!”
“Come on, boys.” I smirked. My tongue ran across my lips. “You heard the boss. It’s time to do his dirty work.”
They didn’t appreciate my taunting. The hulk on the left knitted his brows. He took something out of his pocket. The gesture gave me flashbacks to Pencil-Boy and his silver gun, but this one had a wide, flat barrel, square and painted neon yellow. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had seen something like it just recently.
My memory suddenly kicked in. This dick had a taser. Probably because he didn’t want to kill me. He had been instructed to torture me first.
Getting tortured was most definitely not on my agenda.
“Shoot!” Rocco commanded from the background peanut gallery. “What the hell is wrong with all of you today? I swear, it’s like all your cocked-up brains are on the same shitty wavelength.”
The man sure had a way with words. I tuned him out as my focus homed in on the guard’s trigger finger. Of course, it was possible that they both had tasers, in which case, I’d get hit full force as soon as I lopped off the first guy’s hand.
That meant I’d have to take care of them both in one fell swoop, just to be safe. You know, no big deal.
Actually, since I had this radical sword, it really wasn’t that big a deal. I didn’t even have to draw back that far to start my swing, and the blade still connected before he had time to do anything with that sad little taser. His hand flew away in a blur. The other guard stopped to watch it catapult off into another part of the room. All three of us heard it land with a distant thud.
The taser went off, and I laughed.
“Little late on that,” I said.
His mouth dropped open at the delayed revelation that he was now in need of a prosthetic. But instead of blood, rough dust poured from the stump, coating the sleeve of his black suit and dotting the surface of his shirt. He grabbed his wrist with his good hand, but there was no stemming the tide.
Was this just a clubhouse for vampires?
I chopped off his other hand. I didn’t even have both of mine on the sword. It felt about the same as cutting a pat of butter for pancakes. No effort. No fuss.
A lot more screaming, though. The dude had finally found his voice, and he was using it to full effect. I caught a few choice words in there, but it was mostly unintelligible. His life force was draining from two grievous amputation wounds now, and since I’d carelessly cut off more of his left arm than his right, his balance was off as he wheeled to face his beloved boss.
Rocco didn’t look away from the spectacle, but his face was pale as a sheet. He pressed his lips together until they almost disappeared. The guard fell to his knees. “Boss,” he whispered. “B-Boss…” He teetered and fell back into the spreading pool of dust. It billowed up around the outline of his body.
Somehow, through all of that, he was still wearing his sunglasses.
I expected him to turn to ash, but he didn’t, not quite. His body stiffened, turned white, and crumbled into bits of stone.
Well, would you look at that. What the hell was going on in this place? Not that I cared if the bastards died different, as long as they all died.
“Next,” I said. My poker face remained completely undisturbed. The feeling of horror I had gotten from murdering Pencil Boy and his two unfortunate colleagues was far away, a barely recognizable sliver of human emotion. I was a human heart encased in a machine. Maybe this would all matter to me later. Maybe I’d be horrified by what I had just done and what I was about to do.
But right then, I felt nothing except the vague satisfaction of checking items off a list. One goon down, one to go. And then, the literal boss battle.
Assuming he didn’t duck out on me first. Rocco still hadn’t budged, but it was clear he’d been thinking about it ever since his guy lost a hand in less than the blink of an eye. He looked over at the remaining bro-guard. I did, too.
Bro-guard stood more or less frozen where he’d stopped when the sword came out, jaw slack, his reflective gaze directed toward his mangled buddy.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” I told him. He turned to me as if he didn’t speak the language. “And that you had to become collateral damage. I’d let you live, but that wouldn’t really be fair to your friend, would it?”
The dude’s mouth moved, but nothing came out. He adjusted his sunglasses with the side of a shaking finger. If my emotions hadn’t all been sucked into the tide of hatred that overtook me every time I was anywhere near Rocco Durant, I might have felt bad. Then again, he was probably just going to burst into flames the second his body hit the floor. Or turn into an ice sculpture, or some crazy shit.
These people were not people. At this point, I was ready to bet my life that neither was Rocco Durant.
Finally, some sound came out of bro-guard’s craw. “I’ll see you in hell, bitch!” he shouted.
Hardly original, but I couldn’t blame him. He’d been through a lot in the past few minutes. Lucky for him, it would all be over soon. I gave ground as he charged me, but only so I could better line up my shot. There was a minor snafu; I had misjudged either his distance or his speed, so his massive shoulder struck me in the upper chest.
All of the breath pushed out of my lungs. I could already feel the area bruising, but that wasn’t enough to stop the indomitable blade of my magical sword from penetrating clean through the center of his chest cavity. He choked and grasped wildly at the protruding end of the sword. The parts of his hands that touched the shining blade were vaporized into nothing, not even ash.
He started to slide toward me. A flurry of panic kicked up in my chest. This guy was probably at least two hundred and fifty pounds, on the conservative side. I’d be totally screwed if he managed to pin me under his dead weight. Securing my other hand on the sword hilt, I drew on all my powers of adrenaline and thrust forward with a mighty yell.
Instead of simply levering him off me like I’d intended, the extra force split the guard almost in two. As I’d predicted, he dried up and crumbled the way his cohort had done. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t lessen the impact somewhat. It made it easier to kill them knowing they were real-deal monsters.
I did not look at the horrible mess the two-part fight had made. There was no blood or gore on me or the sword. I guessed it was part of the god magic or something—or the fact that no one but me seemed to have blood at all. But I had single-handedly managed to return the old slaughterhouse to its roots.
I wasn’t through yet. My eyes locked onto Rocco Durant. “Your turn.”
He pretended to ignore me. He had long since averted his eyes from the ultimate fate of his bodyguards, and as I moved up on him, he lit a fancy cigarette with a gold lighter. “I suppose we can’t talk about this, can we? Make some kind of deal?” He chuckled, his throat dry. “Nah, who am I kiddin’?” He made a motion with the burning cig toward the remains of his goons. “You weren’t into that last time, and something tells me you’re not gonna be into it now.”
“Nope.” I summoned my trusty blade. “And I came equipped to get even more up close and personal. Aren’t you glad your boys left some for you?”
I got no answer, but he didn’t look glad. He looked like the coward I’d known him to be since the day he brought his gun into a check cashing shop and emptied it into my parents. I’d known he was a coward since he went back to burn down the store, so scared of getting caught that he was more than happy to pile crime on top of crime.
I hoped he was scared to die.
“This is gonna come back and bite you someday, dollface,” he said. “You know that, don’t you? Little bitches like you don’t just get to come in and mess wi
th the big dogs any way you like. Even if you bring whatever the hell that thing is to the table.” The sword cast his face in an orange-red glow. I brought it closer. His façade of bravado crumbled a little more.
“You always struck me as more of a cat person anyway, Rocco,” I said conversationally. “On account of the way you kept slipping through my fingers before. But it looks like your nine miserable lives have finally run out.”
The edge of the blade hovered inches from his bare skin. Its ambient heat burned his throat. Rocco winced. “Wait.” The word was more like a croak as it left him. The veins in his neck and forehead stood out. “Wait a damn second.”
“Give me a real good reason,” I told him.
“Sure.” He licked his lips. “You kill me, and your friend in the getup dies.”
What the hell did he mean by ‘the getup?’ I frowned in consternation, and then I recalled whose sword I was holding in the first place.
Vic Stratton, Friend of the Year.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Rocco grinned, the definition of shit-eating if ever I saw it. “I knew that would get your attention,” he said. “Gotta say, toots, you don’t look like the type who’d be into older men.”
“I wouldn’t push your luck.” I jabbed the sword at him again so that he flinched. “Show me. If I find out you’re lying, you don’t get a second chance.”
I backed off just enough to give him room to move. Rocco straightened his shirt and jacket and adjusted his gaudy tie. “You know, you mighta done real well in the mob,” he mused. “You know how to drive a hard bargain. And you’re a stone-cold bitch.”
Now that he had some leverage, his cool was back in place. I wanted very badly to remind him of the man he’d been only minutes ago, who had watched his two underlings die without lifting a finger to help.
Instead, I exercised a mammoth amount of restraint and let him lead me toward a door that opened on a stairwell. “Your buddy’s up on the factory floor,” Rocco said. “At the top. I think they brought him up there so that if he kept giving them trouble, they could just toss him off and be done with it.” He chuckled at his own joke.
I said nothing. Why was he talking to me like we were business associates and not mortal enemies? The effect was a little disquieting. Did he think he could finagle a way to turn me to his side? Because I would rather have swallowed the sun.
We emerged onto the second floor, which was even more open than the first. Hunks of broken machinery littered the walls and floor, among them a few pieces that looked like they might still work. Vicious meat hooks hung from a section of the ceiling.
I was looking at them when Rocco Durant turned to me and asked, “Why can’t you just let this go?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Are you serious?” I glared at him, rethinking the choices I had made which allowed him to live long enough to ask me a question like that. “You fucking murdered my parents, and you want to know why I can’t just let it go?”
If I’d expected him to be contrite, I was in for some disappointment. Rocco shrugged, raising his eyebrows.
“Your parents had it coming. Dad was weak. Running a damn check-cashing joint and he didn’t even have the balls to skim a little off the top. Complete fucking waste. He went down without a fight. But your mom…”
I clenched my teeth. “What about my mom?”
His laugh was pitying, which pissed me off even more. “Your mom was a real fighter. Who do you think gave me this scar?” He pointed to the red line running down his face. “She was like you, just couldn’t let things go. Doing her in was a real pleasure, believe me.”
My blood was boiling, but I resisted the urge to run him through right here. Marcus was waiting. I brandished my sword at his back. “Keep walking, Durant.”
He obliged but did not shut up. “Don’t get me wrong on this. I love women. You’re all beautiful, angelic little slices of heaven. But you’ve got the jaws of a pit bull. You need to learn to let things go. Know what I’m saying? Release that negative energy.”
To illustrate his point, he made a fluttering, releasing motion with his hands while I looked on in total disbelief. Who in the seven hells was this guy? I’d spent so much time building him up as my nemesis, imagining the final showdown in loving gruesome detail. Then, I got here after years of unimaginable pain, and he just told me I needed to release my negative energy? This felt even more surreal than all the god stuff, times a million.
“Hey, I got a question for you,” I said, mostly to direct the stream of his incessant word vomit somewhere other than the topic of my parents. I didn’t think I could stomach hearing any more of his bullshit without killing him, and I really wanted to get Marcus back. It seemed easier than trying to get him to shut his trap entirely.
“Shoot,” he said.
“Funny you should mention that. Remember the bullet wound I gave you in the leg as you were running away like a huge asshole?” He acknowledged it with a grunt. “What happened to that? You’re not limping even a little bit. You seem fine. There aren’t any bandages or blood. What gives?”
He grinned. “Good question, and since you’re already on a backstage tour, I’ll show you our little secret.” The grin widened. “In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s where they took your friend.”
My stomach dropped. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “Pick up the pace,” I said. “No more stalling.”
Rocco held up his hands. “Relax.” He pointed to a pair of heavy double doors set into a thick wall. “We’re almost there.”
“Good.” I hoped that my clenched jaw did enough to disguise my apprehension. Whatever I was going to find behind those doors, I already knew it was going to be bad.
I just didn’t know how bad.
An incongruously high-tech pad was mounted to the wall. Rocco laid his hand on it. It beeped, and an industrial lock disengaged. “Get ready,” Durant said. “The show’s about to start.”
He turned the handles and pushed with both hands, letting the doors swing open through the force of their own considerable mass.
An intolerable noise assaulted all my senses. I clamped my hands over my ears to try and stifle the unearthly wailing, but it was no use. “What the shit is that sound?” I yelled at Rocco. He did not seem disturbed in the slightest.
On the contrary, he was obscenely delighted.
“It’s the sound of progress!” he shouted back. “Don’t stop now, sweetheart. You’re already in over your head!”
With that, he continued into the next chamber, and having no alternative, I followed him. I guessed very quickly that the walls in this section must have been soundproofed. Maybe that was why the rest of the place still looked like a dump. But why did they need that? And seriously, what was that sound?
In the next two seconds, I found out and immediately wished I hadn’t.
Rocco led me farther into the room, and I realized we were standing on a platform above a recessed pit, which was the source of the earsplitting cacophony. Why? Because it was stuffed full of screaming, writhing people.
“What…” I lost the words mid-sentence and had to stop to find them again. “What the literal fuck is this?”
“Welcome to America’s first vampire factory,” Rocco Durant said.
The words took a long, long time to register in my brain, but that might have been due to the fact that time had apparently slowed down since I laid eyes on the pit. I simply couldn’t comprehend it on a basic level. The people down inside it twisted in ways I didn’t think a human body was physically able to contort, and they seemed to be lashing out at each other with wild abandon.
“What are you doing to them?” I whispered the question. Rocco heard me anyway. He leaned in close.
“Nothing they didn’t ask for. Well, maybe they didn’t know exactly what their reward would be, but every person in that pit wanted something. To serve a higher power. To escape from their miserable lives. To gain power. It’s a service we now provide. Those
lucky scrubs down there are in the process of becoming Grade-A, top of the food chain, bloodsuckers. You know what I’m talking about, right?”
“Yeah,” I said absently. “But how? How could you do this?”
“You wanna talk mechanics?” Rocco raised a brow, plainly impressed. “All right, we can do that.” He raised a hand to signal one of the workers around the pit. “Hey, Louie! Cover that shit up, would you?”
Louie yanked a lever. I stared, dumbstruck, as a retractable lid began to roll out over the mass of bodies, plunging them into darkness. When it was fully extended, the cover dropped the noise level significantly, but it still left me feeling sick.
“You just… leave them in the dark like that? To fight each other?”
“Light levels don’t matter,” Rocco said dismissively. “Improved vision in all conditions is one of the first effects to manifest. They can see just fine. And I wouldn’t call it fighting,” he added. “This batch is brand new. They got a few days to go before the final result. So, they don’t know shit about who they are or what they’re doing in there. We don’t even know if they can feel pain at this stage. So…” Again, he shrugged. “It’s not an issue of humanity. They ain’t human anymore.”
I blinked, urging my brain to process the unthinkable thing I’d just heard. This was so far beyond anything Rocco had ever done to me or anyone else—and he was doing it to dozens of people at a time.
“You give them something?” I asked. “To start it?” My language capabilities were failing me on a grand scale. I could only form short, easy sentences.
It made me think of the way I’d been in the days immediately following my parents’ murders. But instead of the crushing, soul-rending pain, I was just numb. Unbelieving. Despite it happening literally right in front of me.
