by D. N. Hoxa
I came out on the other side of the building, still running, when I heard them moving at my sides. Unfortunately, when I looked, I saw nothing. When I listened closer, I heard the steps coming from above.
And then I saw them. Four vampires, two on each side, running on top of the buildings lining the sides of the wide road I was running in.
Stupid. It was so easy for them to catch me. They could just jump off the buildings right in front of me. I realized my mistake too late. I stopped and turned around. They didn’t waste a single second. I did exactly what they were doing. I jumped on the roof of the closest, lowest house I found. Running below them was too dangerous. But if I was level with them, I maybe had a chance. What a joke.
I had to get up. So high that they couldn’t smell me anymore. I had to get up and freeze and stand still until tomorrow. I was already going back the way I came, and there was this one building I’d slept in the first night in Chicago, mostly broken but very high.
The twentieth floor had but one entrance: through the broken window. It was easy to climb up there. The closest building was far, but I had no other choice. I jumped, hoping I’d make it as I had that night, and I did.
I hid in the hole I’d made under thick pieces of concrete. If you didn’t know it was there, the hole was impossible to see. The others came and went for a few minutes around it. They never spoke, but I heard their footsteps.
And finally, they disappeared.
XI
I don’t know what pushed me to go back to that place the next night. I’d escaped. They couldn’t find me anymore, I was making sure of that. I only stood on tall buildings and only used roofs to move from one place to the other.
Maybe I went back because of the alcohol. Maybe because I wanted to know who the rogue they were talking about was. But it didn’t matter when I found myself inside the doors, my ears strained.
Quiet. A long time passed before I heard a faint noise. A step, two. The unmistakable sound of a gulp and then another voice. But this didn’t seem like a man’s. It seemed artificial, somehow. I should’ve just gone back and disappeared, continued on my way to Dublin’s Doyen. But for a reason I couldn’t explain, I kept on pushing, step after step, until I heard every single movement the vampire above me made. I smelled him, too. I knew he could smell me, yet all he did was laugh every few seconds at whatever another man with that artificial voice was saying.
“Yeah, right.” I recognized the voice as Jordy’s.
He seemed to be alone. The others were probably out there searching for the rogue. There were stairs, wide and broken, that could lead me to him. Stairs I took with care. I’d found a knife in one of the buildings, a big knife I could maybe use just in case someone caught me. After the stairs were done, a huge metal door separated me from the vampire.
I was going to have to open it to get to him and when I did, the hope that I’d sneak up on him would be lost. He would definitely hear it.
It was horrible to think that way, to know that I was most probably going to end up dead.
But then again, what did I have to lose? Nothing. No Mama, no sisters, no one. I was all alone and sadly, nobody would miss me. So I probably did the dumbest thing I could do and pulled the door open.
What I saw first were shelves lined with bottle and bottles of what could only be alcohol. Heavens, they could’ve lasted a whole lifetime. Second, who I assumed was Jordy was right in front of me. He was big, bigger than me, and wider. His head was huge, and he grinned to show me crooked teeth. They would’ve looked better if they weren’t so white.
“Newbie,” he breathed before his fist connected so fast with my face that I fell backwards and almost to the stairs. I wasn’t injured. I stood right up and I ran to him. I’d only ever fought two of my cousins before. And one thing I’d learned from Pedro was that if you put your shoulders forward and hit your opponent on the stomach with them, you could knock him down easily.
Unfortunately, Pedro had never fought against a vampire. So when my shoulder hit his stomach and I attempted to throw him back, he laughed. He grabbed my shirt and he spun me, throwing me inside the room. I barely missed one of the shelves. I grabbed a bottle and broke it to the wall behind me. This only seemed to make him laugh harder.
“It’s been a while since I sparred with a newbie,” he said. “Nothing better to make you feel high and mighty.” He walked slowly to me, so I had more than enough time to see the six pieces of thick, round iron rods. His fist connected with my jaw faster than I saw him moving, and I fell against the wall again. This time, I slid intentionally to the floor.
His feet came next. “Come now, newbie. Take off that mask, will ya? Who’s your Doyen?” he said.
I slid and slid and let him hit me while I reached for the rods. And I realized in all that craziness that the artificial voice was coming from a small black box, barely bigger than my fist.
“Newbie, bad newbie,” Jordy laughed and then before I knew what happened, his hand grabbed my mask and took it off my face.
He froze. I froze. He looked at me for a short second before his eyes grew wide. Perfect. I didn’t know why I didn’t think of that before. He thought I was Hammer, too.
There was my chance, painted prettily in front of me. Before he could shake the shock off, I reached to the side and my fingers wrapped around three pieces of iron. I pulled them towards me and took one in each hand before I jumped up. Jordy took a step back.
“Fucking impossible,” he breathed. I was going to hit him in the head from both sides as hard as I could. “You son of a bitch!”
His fist came fast, but this time, I was prepared. I moved away and hit him in his stomach with my new weapons. He fell back and started to laugh. “Mohg’s gonna piss his pants!”
“Who’s Mohg?” I said. “And who’s the rogue you’re after?” And why, I wanted to ask but I didn’t want to come off too childish.
“Fuck’s sake, drop the act. And what’s with the mask? I’m sure your face missed my fists.” All of a sudden, he didn’t seem too eager to come at me. It was the weirdest thing—he seemed almost hesitant.
“Who are you after?” I asked again. And with the stupid bravery I’d gathered by watching him slowly lean back, I stepped forward.
“Listen, Hammer, we’ve had our differences in the past, but we’re all on the same team now, don’t you think? I even spoke to your girl a few nights back. And let me tell you, there are no hard feelings left between us.”
His eyes, so fast I barely missed the movement, jumped from my face to his left and back. When I looked, I saw another rod, one with a handle made of leather, something like a sword. But as soon as I saw the metal, I knew it. It was silver.
He jumped to it so fast that it took me a second to collect myself. I jumped after him, and when he hit me with the silver, I blocked it with my iron. He was stronger than me, yes, but he was afraid now. I could see it.
Did I really look that much like this Hammer guy? Who the hell was he to make a vampire like Jordy afraid?
He spun his silver and I spun my iron for a few seconds, before I fell on my knees and hit his elbow with all my strength. His arm took a weird angle, and the silver fell from his hand. He made for it with his other hand, but I was closer. I missed the leather handle completely at first, and it burned my skin completely.
But once I had it right, I faced Jordy again. It was easy, like playing swords with my cousins when we were little. And like in the game, I buried the silver in his stomach, but in reality, it went right through him, and came out his back.
Jordy fell to his knees, screaming. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”
“Who is Mohg?” I repeated. The expression on his face showed how much pain he was in, but that if I pulled the silver out of him, he would heal, and at some point I would run out of luck soon.
“Quit fucking around—”
“Who is he?!” I shouted and pushed the silver a little deeper.
“It’s Mohg!” he cried. “Damn it, man,
come on, stop playing, Hammer.”
“I’m not Hammer,” I spit. “So tell me who the hell is Mohg?”
“Shit, this is…this is crazy. Are you like Hammer’s brother or something?”
“Tell me who Mohg is or I’ll cut your head right now,” I said.
“Right, okay, jeez, man. Come on.” He moved as if to try and find a position in which the silver inside him wouldn’t hurt so much, but he failed. “He’s the Doyen. The Doyen of our Doyens. The boss, I don’t know. Like the president or something.”
“So you work for him?”
“We all do,” he breathed. He was losing too much blood. “Can you get this out of me now?”
“Who’s the rogue you’re after?” I asked.
“If you remove this thing from me, and let me take you to Mohg, all of this will clear, man. I swear,” he said. But could you trust a man’s word when he was in so much pain?
No, you couldn’t. He would say anything to make the pain stop.
“Tell me first,” I said.
“Okay, fine. It’s Dublin and his gang. Mohg wants to talk to him. Something about Everard and Trinidad and whatever,” he mumbled.
Dublin. He was after Dublin. And the others were out there now, looking for him. I didn’t know why I felt like I owed the guy something. Probably because he’d been the only person kind enough to give me a few minutes of his life to explain things to me. Things I would’ve died without knowing.
It was a moment’s decision. I took the silver out from his stomach and I pushed it into his neck. Jordy’s eyes became two silver balls. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. And he stopped moving altogether. I dropped the silver when his body fell to the floor.
My hair got tangled in my fingers somehow, and I pulled as hard as I could.
What have I done, what have I done, what have I done…
But it was Dublin. Dublin who had given me the map and showed me how to be safe. I had to protect him. I owed him. Yes, I did. I owed him, and I was going to cut Jordy’s head off, and then kill the others as well, if they came back. I owed him.
I grabbed a bottle from the nearest shelf, and without a second thought, drank whatever was inside until the very last drop. The craving erased itself from my mind, and I thought more clearly. I saw more clearly.
Jordy had turned completely white, and blood dripped from his stomach and neck. He looked beyond dead. If I pulled the silver out, would he heal?
I couldn’t take that risk. I found the knife I’d lost when Jordy had punched me by the threshold and closed the door. The black box kept speaking, but I didn’t care to listen.
I went to his body and fell to my knees. I didn’t know if he could see me or hear me, but his eyes were open. I was going to pull the silver rod out by the leather handle, and I was going to cut through the remaining flesh and bone of his neck.
I felt sick. I wanted to throw up, but I couldn’t. I was on my knees looking down at him for a long time. I was crying. It didn’t matter that there were no tears in my eyes. I cried like a baby while I did it. And I did it, because I owed Dublin. He had saved my life. He was the only vampire who had bothered to talk to me. I couldn’t forget about that.
I took the pieces of his body outside. I couldn’t burn them—I didn’t know how, but I put his head on one building, and his body on another, far away from the first. Like that, he could rot in peace.
I went back to the room with the alcohol. I drank another bottle of what I thought was wine, though I’d never tasted it before. When I felt the sun begin to rise, I didn’t bother to move. My body wouldn’t ache, anyways. I welcomed the unconsciousness.
XII
For two nights I felt like I should hurt, but I didn’t. For two nights my head spun with the image of the vampire I’d killed, the humans I’d drank from, and the face of that girl. That girl with the blue eyes like the blue sky I would never see again. I tried to come to terms with it. This was who I was now. I tried not to think about what my mama would say if she saw me, if she knew. I was who I was, and the fact that I hated it didn’t change it. So I had to be strong.
On the third night, they came back.
With what I knew, I’d managed to prepare a trap for them. I could only hope that it would work. It hadn’t been hard to make myself stay in that building and wait for them. After all, the plan had changed. I wasn’t going to Yukon. I had no chance—I was modest enough to admit that I’d be dead, if not in the next place I went, then in the one after it. So I was going to go back to Dublin. And he wouldn’t turn me away if I killed those people who were after him. If I saved him.
So that’s what I needed to do. I needed to kill those vampires and then go back to Dublin, tell him what I’d done, and ask him to take me with him. Teach me, whatever. Just so I wouldn’t need to be on my own.
When they came, the room was ready. The best weapon I had was the silver rod. I had searched the place in the hope of finding another, but I hadn’t been so lucky. One would have to do.
When I heard their steps outside the iron doors, I realized why Jordy hadn’t reacted. I had smelled him from the outside, but for some reason, I couldn’t smell the others from in there. Jordy hadn’t been able to smell me, either. And if I hadn’t heard the steps, I wouldn’t have known they were even there.
I hid myself behind one of the shelves as well as I could, and I waited. The ghost of my heart beat on my chest with fear. If my trap didn’t work, I was dead. I was already dead if I ran out of there, so I really didn’t have much of a choice.
The iron door opened. The other vampires were laughing at something, speaking in whispers when they stopped dead in their tracks right at the threshold. Good thing the door was huge, and they all fit inside. They stopped right where I needed them to, on the wooden panels I’d broken last night, The panels gave under their weight, and they went down.
It was a matter of speed after that. The iron rods I’d tied together with leather pieces from Jordy’s clothes were under the chair right next to the hole. I flew to them and pulled the leather ties to the other side.
It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, because the vampires down there immediately jumped up and tried to kick the makeshift bars out of the way. I was a bit faster—maybe because I’d rehearsed the move a hundred times.
When it was done, I looked down at them with my silver rod in hand. I showed it to them. They were cursing loudly at me, but I only began to understand their words when I calmed down a little bit.
“Fucking bastard newbie,” one of them said.
“Caging us like fucking animals?!” the woman growled.
“Who the hell are you?”
The woman disappeared from my view. Probably to look for a way out. Good thing the old building’s foundations were pure concrete—closed on all four sides. There was no way out of there but up.
But, unfortunately for me, she’d gone just a little farther and was trying to break the wooden panels of the floor, same as I’d done to make that trap.
I didn’t have time to think through the panic. I fell on my knees so fast that I didn’t even feel it, and my arm went through the bars. The silver in my hand went through the cheek of a vampire.
Another grabbed my hand. I pulled my arm up, but he didn’t let go. His head came out of the bars.
I hit him hard, but he didn’t budge. His hands were around mine on the silver leather handle, and he was trying to pry my fingers open. The other one hit me where he could through the bars, jumping up every half a second to reach me. My fingers felt like ice. I moved my hand as much as I could, hoping that the silver would touch the vampire somewhere, and he would let go of me. I almost gave up before it did.
The woman had almost broken through the floor. With both hands on the leather handle, I pushed the rod down and up as fast as I could through the bars.
It didn’t do much damage, but one of them fell back. The one with the hole in his cheek hadn’t recovered yet, but he would if I didn’t cut his h
ead soon.
I reached for the knife in my back pocket. I pushed through the bars with the silver as hard and as fast as I could, and I hit the remaining vampire on the head at least twice. He fell back, but the one I’d gotten before him was already healed. Bloody, but healed. So I hit them again. I could do little damage.
It wasn’t until something threw me all the way to the other side of the room that I realized what a stupid idea this had been. I’d made a trap, and I’d fallen in it myself. The woman had broken the floor, and it was only a matter of time before the others came through, too. I was done. I should’ve just given up.
Unfortunately, my body moved on instinct, and when she came at me with silver eyes and sharp teeth hanging from her jaw, I still fought with a kitchen knife on one hand and the silver rod on the other.
She gave me the kick of my life, but I managed to hit her quite a few times with the silver. Nothing that did any real damage, though.
So that was it. I was going to die, which was fine. My eyes kept wandering to the hole the woman had made, and I wondered why the hell the others had not come out yet. I could hear them moving down there. They were being loud, and the woman kept shouting things at them, but I couldn’t make out their words.
Finally, my rod fell from my hand. I was done, I knew it. Maybe it was better that way. Maybe that way I would get to see…to see…who?
A foot on my head. A loud noise in my mind. I screamed. The pain was excruciating. What the hell had happened?
I tried to open my eyes, but I saw nothing. Nothing at all. I felt a hand on my neck. I felt the mask move, but it didn’t come off completely. No, because the next thing I knew, my hands were around an arm, the same arm that was holding my body above the floor, against the wall.
And I did something to that arm. I twisted it, and my legs moved, and they wrapped around the vampire’s hips.
My hands moved from her arms and to her neck, chest, hitting, moving so fast I would be dizzy if I could see.
