by Drew Hayes
Finally, I slowed down and tried to get my bearings. This section of Winslow at least looked a little familiar, and I realized that I’d run to a part of town not far off from Richard Alderson’s office. Ordinarily, that would have been as good as salvation, since the local head of the therianthropes (the general term for all were-creatures) was a client and a friend who certainly would have offered me shelter. Unfortunately, he, along with his young daughter Sally, were also guests at Krystal’s surprise party, which by now had likely kicked off, cake or no. I could try and approach the office anyway, but most therians had a bit of suspicion as far as vampires were concerned. My kind had a bad history of feeding off therians to increase our own power, so I was tolerated only due to my usefulness to Richard.
Of course, there was always the possibility that Gideon, the King of the West, was still in the office. I was never really sure where I stood with him, though. The ancient dragon who masqueraded as a child didn’t appear to loathe me, but I wasn’t certain he’d intervene on my behalf, either. And if I strolled up to the front doors with a madman on my tail, that could put the other therians in danger. There was no way they were going to look kindly on that kind of stunt. But I might be able to talk someone into letting me use a phone, which was still my best bet at salvation.
Eventually, I decided to start heading in that direction, keeping my eyes open for better options. I didn’t want to endanger another innocent person, but I still had no idea how to get to Charlotte Manor outside of using the highways, and someone racing down the road in that public of a spot was bound to be noticed. Scary as Colin the crazed hunter was, I still preferred him to Krystal’s Agency being pissed that I put parahumans in the public eye. They were not well known for their kind or forgiving nature.
As the sound of my loafers echoed through the empty street, I fell into something of a pensive state, my mind no doubt trying to find some solid ground after braving the tidal wave of crazy that was my night so far. I imagined how nice it would be to finally make it back to Charlotte Manor, where everything in the world I cared about currently was. It was strange to think that all of my friends and loved ones were gathered together right now, safe and happy and nowhere near the danger that was bloodying my clothes piece by piece. The oddness was not that I begrudged their being out of harm’s way—it was a far cry better than seeing them in peril—but because it was usually those friends who got me into trouble in the first place. Tonight, however, was completely my own doing. My arrangement with a hospital had been the clue Colin used to find me. If I’d never gone to my high school reunion, never met Krystal and by extension everyone else, this still would have been happening. And part of me wondered, without those friends constantly exposing me to some measure of adventure, how would the old Fred have handled things?
Truth be told, I didn’t think he would have survived that first encounter. Even if they weren’t actually here at the moment, the experiences my odd little family had given me were what kept me alive. It made me long to be back with them all the more, and I finally noticed that I’d unconsciously quickened my step. I was hurrying toward Richard’s building, carried by feet that were too ready to be done with the evening to fear being turned away at the door.
With no other real options, I decided that perhaps it was best just to roll the dice. I needed help, there was no shame in admitting that, and without his car, the odds of Colin tracking me were negligible. Even if he did somehow know where I went, at most he’d have cause to think I went to a big building full of offices, and one garish club, to try and use their phone. At least, that was the thought process I hoped he’d have.
I could see Richard’s building when I was suddenly spotlighted in the headlights of a car pulling out from the road in front of me. My body tensed, ready for Colin to point a gun out the window or try to run me down, but then I noticed the bright yellow color of the vehicle and realized it was just a cab, probably taking someone home from a late night at the bar.
Unfortunately, my tense body turned out to be smarter than my logical brain as the tires beneath the cab began to spin and it lurched forward, trying to turn me into nothing more than a smear on the road. As it raced toward me, I caught a glimpse of the man behind the wheel.
Sure enough, there were the mad eyes of Colin as he floored the accelerator, trying with all he had to run me over.
5.
While in life my reaction speed was always somewhere between “abysmal” and “for the love of heaven don’t let Fred hold anything too valuable,” the turn to undead had sharpened my reflexes significantly. Granted, they were nowhere near as potent as they would have been if I were even remotely physically gifted when alive, but sometimes all you need is good enough. In this case, good enough was allowing me to leap out of the way of an oncoming taxi cab as it careened toward me, only dodging the bumper’s left corner by a few inches.
The screech of tires filled the air as Colin jerked the wheel around, trying to get another run at me, but now that the element of surprise was gone, he had no hope of outmaneuvering me. I began to race up the street again, when a sound unlike any gun I’d ever heard filled the air. Pain, dull and muted but still present, filled me as I looked over at my previously unshot shoulder. Now, the tip of a large metal claw was sticking out, smaller tines already dug into my flesh. Unbidden memories of watching nature documentaries filled my head as I recognized the iconic shape.
“Did you just harpoon me?”
“Modified it a little to cling on to you slippery bastards.” Colin was leaning out the window, spear gun in hand, and that was when I saw the length of metal cord running from the back of my shoulder to the butt of the gun. Not wasting any time, Colin jerked it in, bracing the gun against something unseen inside, and threw the taxi into reverse.
While I might have physically been able to react in time, I was mentally still processing the fact that someone had harpooned me in the middle of the street, which was why I didn’t understand what Colin was doing until the cord pulled taut and my feet went out from under me. I bounced off the road once, then twice, then finally got my feet under me and ran along rather than be dragged. Had Colin floored it again, not even I would have been able to keep pace, but he seemed content to keep the speed manageable. He was leading me, trying to get me to a place without as much room to run.
I tried to pull out the harpoon, but every time I reached for it Colin accelerated, knocking me off balance if not outright sending me sprawling. It still might have been manageable, even with the shifting speeds; however, my own regeneration was working against me. The wound around the spear had almost completely sealed up, meaning that instead of just pulling it back out through the same area, I had to try and rip apart my own resilient vampire flesh.
Much as I disliked Colin, I couldn’t say he hadn’t come up with an effective method for ensnaring vampires.
We didn’t travel far, only a few blocks down the road. Colin backed the cab into an alley behind a closed noodle shop I’d loved to order from before they went out of business, and killed the engine. He stepped out from the cab, dark coat still flapping, showing off the wide array of weapons he had tucked about inside. The spear gun wasn’t one of those, as he left it wedged in the cab even as he stepped away. I was still on a line, and unless I found a way to yank the harpoon out or drag an entire cab along with me, he’d finally managed to take running away off the table.
“You are a tricky one,” Colin noted, pulling out his pistol again. “Silver has stopped every vampire I’ve dealt with, so why didn’t it work on you?”
“Kind of a long story, and honestly, I doubt you’d believe me.” My hands fumbled with the harpoon, tugging at it as I tried to get free. The hooks were made to keep me from pulling it back out, which meant forward was the only option. Of course, then I’d still have a metal rope running through me, and I wasn’t sure my hands alone could snap something like that. There was the option of biting through it—I’d met very little a vampire’s fangs cou
ldn’t pierce—but that was a lot of steps to freedom, and Colin wasn’t going to wait patiently while I did them all.
“You’re right, there; I’d never believe one of your lies.” He reached into his coat with his free hand and pulled out a small squirt bottle, like the kind that go on bikes for long rides. “I’ve hunted a couple of your kind already, but you are far and away the worst of the lot. At least the others had the decency to own what they are. You, you burrowed into society like a tick, pretending to be normal, to be human. You tried to infiltrate us, and that makes you much too dangerous to live, even long enough to interrogate.”
“There is another, far more logical explanation,” I pointed out. “I lived in an apartment because it’s my home, I bought my blood because I didn’t want to hurt people, I kept working a normal job because I love what I do. This is just me. I’m not a monster, just a guy whose life took an unexpected turn.”
“Whoever you might have been is dead. I know what lives inside you creatures, and there’s no goodness there. Just death and blood.” He popped the top off the bottle and took a sniff, his nose recoiling slightly.
“Funny, by my count, you’re the one who shot at an unarmed clerk, tortured a doctor, and, I’m assuming, stole a cabbie’s car at gunpoint.” My hand rested on the top of the harpoon. Maybe I didn’t need to bother with the rope; if I just popped the hooked part off, I could yank the rest out and get free. That was still no easy task, but it seemed more viable than biting through the metal rope. And, more importantly, it seemed faster, which was starting to feel like a very important element in this encounter.
“Sometimes, you have to be a monster to a kill a monster.” Colin stepped forward, gun at the ready, and squirted me with the contents of the bottle. Even if I didn’t have an incredible sense of smell, I’d have recognized the scent immediately: gasoline. He squeezed the bottle until it only spit out droplets and empty wheezes, then dropped the plastic container to the ground.
“Have you ever noticed that not once, despite everything you’ve done tonight, have I attacked or even tried to make a threatening move toward you?” Panic was slipping back into my voice, and with good reason, because while I might be immune to silver, there was no reason I would have any such resistance to fire. I knew for a fact that vampires could burn to death; it was the one death I’d witnessed up close and personally. Though, at the time, Krystal had been the one doing the burning, and the vampire in question was not one I’d miss.
“You sell the lie well, but I’m not going to be fooled.” Colin reached back into his coat and pulled out a silver lighter, the old-fashioned kind without safety measures to keep it from burning without a thumb on the plunger. Behind him, I noticed a shadow move beyond the taxi. It was difficult even for my eyes to see, though, and I wasn’t sure it had even been real.
“Colin, please listen to me, you’re making a big mistake. I get that you hate vampires, I really do, and I don’t know what you’ve had to do to survive before this, but what you’re doing right now is murder. Beyond that, it’s stepping into a world you really don’t want to be a part of. Please, go turn yourself into the cops, do your time for the car theft and the gas station shooting, and then go on to live a normal life.”
“That’s a unique way to plead for your life, I’ll give you that,” Colin replied. He flicked the lighter and a bright orange flame sputtered forth from the top. I took hold of the hook, feeling the sharp blades cut through my palms as I readied to try with all my might to snap it off. This move was a gamble, but it was the best one I could make. If I managed to get clear, there had to be a way to end this without anyone getting hurt. I just needed to think harder.
“You really don’t get it,” I told him. “It’s not my life I’m pleading for. If you do this, there’s no going back. And the people who’ll be coming for you don’t share my tendency to shy away from violence.”
“Why would I want to go back? Especially with such a bright, warm future ahead of me.” Colin reared back to toss the lighter, and I pushed down with all my might on the top of the hook. It bent down at a sharp angle, but refused to break, and in that instant, I knew I was dead.
As it turned out, however, Colin was no more successful with his toss than I with my escape attempt, as a sharp, sudden blow struck him across the back of the head. He crumpled to the ground, the lighter falling through the air for only a second before a pale, well-manicured hand snatched it up and snapped it shut.
“Wow, that guy seemed like a real asshole.” The voice of my savior was soft, with undercurrents of an accent that had long since been worn away by time. She had dark hair trimmed to just above her shoulders, sported a pantsuit that would have fit right in at any office in America, and was as pale as a sheet. If that weren’t enough, she flashed a small grin, just large enough for me to see an extended incisor at the top of her mouth.
For the first time since my own maker had tried to kill me, I was in the presence of another vampire.
6.
A slight groan broke the silent tension between this new vampire and me as Colin shifted on the ground. He was still unconscious, and given the amount of blood coming from his head, it would be some time before he was fully recovered. Actually, unless he had some sort of parahuman ability I hadn’t noticed, an attack like that would leave him with neck, if not brain, damage. It’s hard to understand just how fragile humans are until you stop technically being one.
“Sorry about that. Let’s finish this jackass all the way off.” The woman leaned down, mouth opening wider as her fangs began to extend even further.
“Stop!” I darted forward, spraying gasoline from my flailing limbs as I hurried to put myself between my savior and the hunter who had tried to kill me.
“Oh, my apologies. That was rude of me.” She stopped, still bent halfway toward his unconscious form, then began to rise once more. “You’re the one he attacked and stabbed, of course you should get to have the privilege. Not to mention, it looks like you could use the blood.”
She had me there; the hooked head of the harpoon was bent but still lodged in my chest, tethering me to the car. What’s more, my efforts to rip it off had re-opened the wound, which was slowly oozing a darker blood than normal. I mentioned before that vampires heal exceptionally well, but as I’d begun to learn, all magic came with a cost. For us, it was blood. Just like a human burned calories for energy, we burned blood, and the more strenuous the activity, the more it consumed. After racing around town and healing several gunshot wounds, I was feeling more than a bit peckish. A few nips from Colin’s neck and I’d be topped off, able to easily free myself and heal up.
“Neither of us is drinking from him.” The words were a little more forceful than I’d meant them to be, and the female vampire regarded me more carefully. I quickly tried to explain myself.
“I mean, we need to wait for the authorities. The agents. He’s obviously suffering from trauma or mental illness, and much as I might like to return the favor for this harpoon in my shoulder, I think it’s for the best all-around if we let due process handle this.”
She chuckled a little, a slightly higher pitch than I was expecting from her speaking voice. “Mind if I ask your name?”
“It’s Fredrick Fletcher. But most people call me Fred.”
“Fredrick, a classic name. I rather like those. I am Lillian.” Without warning, she dipped her head and did a small formal bow. From the way her eyes went wide and she quickly sprang back up, I had a feeling it was more out of habit than deference.
“Well, Fred,” Lillian continued. “This is the due process. This man, this human, tried to kill you. Have you committed any crime against him or his kin?”
“I . . . I don’t think so. Not that I’m at all aware of.”
“That doesn’t surprise me; I’ve heard tales of a lone hunter going after our ilk lately. It was on my to-do list, some ways after tonight’s meeting with the therians. At any rate, he tried to take your life, and as an Undead American, t
hat means his life is yours to end. No muss, no fuss, no need for any agents.”
Lillian spat that last word out, which didn’t come as much of a surprise. Since I’d come to the parahuman world as an outsider, and my first friend in it was an agent, I hadn’t been given the indoctrination of fear that a lot of others had. Truthfully, at first, I hadn’t understood why everyone was so afraid of someone like Krystal. Then I saw Quinn, my maker, try to kill her. That sole experience had taught me that, if anything, people weren’t afraid enough of agents.
“So, Colin’s life is mine to take, right?” I asked, making sure I understood the minutia of what was happening. That’s the thing about living in a country partly founded by parahumans: we do have rules about how things go, and arbitrary as they often felt, I knew that they mattered. Because agents existed specifically to deal with those who broke those rules.
“Correct,” Lillian assured me.
“Then I choose not to take it. I spare him. And since he never even saw you, let alone fired a shot, I don’t see that you have any similar claim. If you kill him, it’s murder.”
Bathed in the glow from the taxi’s headlights, swaddled in the sounds of its still barely running engine, Lillian and I stared at each other for a long while. If she made this violent, I was done for. Even if I was normally a match for other vampires, which I wasn’t, an evening of getting the utter crap kicked out of me had left me battered and weary. Unless Lillian was somehow more averse to violence than myself, a notion which Colin’s bleeding head easily dispelled, she’d take me down in seconds. Hell, she was still holding the lighter, which meant she didn’t even really need to get her hands dirty.
“You surprise me,” Lillian said, speaking at last. “Not with your softness—you are far from the first doe someone has tried to turn into a wolf—but that you noticed that detail. I’m impressed. Most in your state wouldn’t be capable of keeping such a calm head. Unfortunately for you, and this hunter, there is one flaw in your argument. I am a vampire, and he is a criminal. That much I heard him confess myself. By the law, that means he is fair game for me to feed upon, and while I’ll certainly try not to kill him, accidents do happen. So tell me, how will you save the hunter this time, Fredrick?”
