Scarlet Dawn

by Megan J. Parker

  Zane frowned and shook his head, “I’m… I’m not sure. It doesn’t feel like a where; most of the time I’m not even self-aware enough to know who I am! Something just… something called to me now. I suddenly saw a path and knew that you’d be at the end of it.” He shrugged and looked at his hands, moving as though he was about to clap and instead letting one hand pass through the other, “I actually feel like a projection of myself,” he looked back up at her, “but it’s worth it if it means I can see you right now.”

  Serena whimpered and shook her head, “It just… nothing feels the same anymore. I try—I swear I try—but I just feel so hollow and tired. I always feel so weak lately.”

  “Well, that’s your first mistake! Come on, Serena,” Zane’s face widened as he grinned. “You weak? This coming from the cold-hearted bitch who beat the shit out of me less than two minutes after we first met? And now you’re going to let this set you back?” He cocked his brow, “The girl who’d blatantly ogled a picture of a man in a Speedo after we’d just fucked like porn stars feels lost without a single man? C’mon, babes, you could replace me in the time it takes you to bat an eyelash.”

  Serena bit her lip, “I… I never meant any of those things, Zane,” she looked down, “Even when I joke like that now I… I feel like there’s a fist in my gut. I feel like I never got to show you how much I really cared; how much I really loved you.”

  Zane shrugged, “I’d say this is a decent start.” He smiled, “Just don’t let me forget it when I get back, okay?”

  “I’ll never let you forget it,” Serena smiled. “Even when I’m kicking your ass for being a loser.”

  Zane chuckled and shook his head, “Still a hardcore bitch,” he gave her one of his looks, “You are tough, Serena. You don’t need anyone’s reassurance.”

  “How can you be so sure of me?” Serena felt a sting in her lip and tasted blood. Despite this, she kept chewing on it.

  Zane frowned at the sight and shook his head, “Because you’re too stubborn and strong-willed to ever be anybody’s bitch but your own. Believe in yourself.” He leaned back, “So what’s new anyway? Raith treating my body well?”

  Serena shrugged, “I guess. He goes the gym a lot more than you ever did.”

  Zane chuckled, “You were all the workout I ever needed.”

  “Ah, well in that regard the body is going without,” Serena quipped. “As much as it seems to rub Nikki the wrong way—or not at all, I suppose—I’ve been making sure of your ongoing celibacy.”

  “Ouch. All those years being locked in my head and Raith’s cock-blocked the minute he’s out in the open,” Zane pouted. “Let the poor guy take a swing at Nikki. I’m sure they could both use it; not like it’s me in there anyway.”

  “It’s your body!” Serena glared.

  “Said the girl who let her phantom boyfriend possess and date-rape me?”

  Serena blushed, “That… that was different.”

  “Not sure how,” Zane chided her. “If all of this body-slash-no-body shit has taught me anything, it’s that love transcends the flesh. My body is in the other room—my flesh and blood and organ…”

  Serena raised an eyebrow, “You only have one organ?”

  Zane shrugged, “Only one that you wouldn’t sell on the black market for a new car.”

  Serena nodded, “Fair enough.”

  Zane rolled his eyes. “The point is, my body is in there… but this part of me—this… spectral, airy nonsense—is what you’re after; what’s making you laugh and cry and beat the shit out of my three-thousand dollar bed over.”

  Serena frowned and poked the mattress, “You paid three-grand for this?”

  “Maledictus kept ripping up the cheap beds. Finally wrote a message in blood—though we never found out whose—on the walls of the main lobby that if we didn’t upgrade then he’d destroy the city. Your father was pretty quick to special order that.”

  Serena sneered, “He always was a charmer. Not exactly missing him.”

  Zane looked over, “He hasn’t emerged lately?”

  “Not since…” Serena bit her lip.

  “That son of a bitch probably only responds to my rage,” Zane shook his head. “Those clever bastards!”

  Serena frowned, “Who?”

  Zane shook his head, “Don’t worry about it. So how’s the whole ‘Clan Leader’ role working out?”

  Serena shook her head, “Like a jagged dump. The Council approved a new clan in town.” She growled, “Bastards are coming in on my fucking turf.”

  “You tried pissing on a park tree yet? Y’know, if you’re gonna play the whole ‘mark your territory’ game,” Zane laughed.

  “You’re going to be a dick even like this?” Serena glared, “Don’t think that just because I can’t touch you I won’t kick your ass!”

  “Ha! There’s the Serena I came to know and love! Good to see you are still in there,” Zane smirked.

  “There’s nicer ways to console me. Just because a splinter in the balls is hilarious doesn’t mean the laughter is the best medicine to fix it.”

  “Yeah, but you obviously don't love me for my manners. Just like I don’t love you for your finishing school grades,” he laughed, sticking his tongue at her. “So what do you plan to do with this clan?”

  “I’m going to pay the assholes a little visit tomorrow. Show them not to fuck with me and all,” she shrugged. “And I figured while I was visiting, I’d sneak around and see if I couldn’t gather some intel on exactly why they’ve come to town.”

  “Oh? Why do you think they’re up to something?” He looked over.

  “Because the Vail Clan’s been an established force in this area for decades! Then, only a few short months after I yank the title of ‘leader’ from my dick-hole, power-hungry brother, The Council green-lights a totally new clan to build just downtown?” She shook her head, “This is in response to something, and there’s no way it has nothing to do with me or what we’ve been doing.”

  “What you’ve been doing?”

  Serena nodded, “Some small-time rogue rolled in to town last week and everyone seems to think that’s what’s motivating this response. A whole new clan for one rogue; that sound suspicious to you?”

  “Yea, it really, really does actually,” Zane frowned.

  “What do you mean ‘actually’?” Serena glared.

  Zane shrugged, the pale glow over his ghostly form shifting and fading slightly, “Only that you’re rarely that logical. At least on the surface, anyway.” He shook his head, “Normally The Council wouldn’t waste resources for something like this; they’d just send one of their own if they felt the local clan was short-handed.”

  “That’s exactly how I feel,” Serena nodded, “but the others think it’s normal and I should go say my introductions.”

  “You? Introductions?” Zane made a shuddering motion before turning back to her. “I’d like to see that!”

  Serena blushed, “I… I wish you could see it, too”

  “It’s going to get better, Serena. You’ll see,” he smiled warmly and reached out to make a familiar motion. As his ghostly hand reached her chin, she raised her face to allow them both to believe he’d raised her face on his own. “Chin up, babes.”

  “Easy for you to say, phantom-Zane,” Serena giggled.

  “Oh you know I’m just as hot as the real thing,” he stuck out his tongue and his body’s glow began to fade again.

  Serena bit her lip, “Unless I’ve finally gone crazy and you’re just a figment of my imagination. Then you’d look however I’d want you to look.”

  “Nah, then I’d be here as Gerard Butler or Channing Tatum or one of those dry Hollywood queefs.”

  “See?” Serena cast an accusatory finger in his direction, “That’s how I’d talk—though I’d never say an unkind word about my Tatum-tot...—anyway, that just proves that you are just a figment of my imagination!”

  “Tatum…tot?” Zane shook his head, “Look, maybe we’re j
ust a pair of vulgar fucks who are too perfect for one another for the other to believe it could real,” he scoffed. “God damn… You’re still as beautiful as I remember.”

  “O-kay. Now I know that was something my mind made you say!” Serena laughed, falling onto her back and staring at her ceiling. “This has been a nice crazy-bitch dream.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” Zane shrugged it off and smirked over at her, “Either way, I’m enjoying it, too, so don’t wake up just yet.”

  She felt her cheeks heat and sighed, “Even like this you can make me blush!”

  “You know you love it,” he grinned.

  “Psh! How could I not?” She laughed, turning to him as she began to reach out, “I promise to find you soon.”

  “I’ll be waiting. For as long as it takes,” he smiled and moved his hand out to meet hers.

  She wanted his warmth.

  She wanted his touch.

  She needed him.

  As their palms met, Zane’s hand rippled and phased through her skin, the ripple traveling up his arm. As she watched, his form weakened—the pale light fading—and he drifted off like vapor vanishing into the air, leaving Serena staring at the empty edge of her bed.

  Alone…

  She shivered and fell back into the only warmth she could turn to and pulled the blankets over her as she nuzzled her face into Zane’s pillow.

  His scent would continue to haunt her until she found him.

  Whimpering, she finally allowed the tears to fall freely.

  “Zane… you son of a bitch! Where are you?”

  Serena frowned, stepping through the automatic sliding glass doors—the motor groaning against the added pressure of her aura as she forced them to open faster—and stepped into the building that was to be the new clan’s headquarters. She took a moment to look around the waiting room, the scene and décor offering the cover of a typical human office building, and scoffed.

  This was the clan’s headquarters? She hadn’t even talked to the people in charge and she already wanted to line them up for a piece of her mind.

  Smack. Smack. Slu-u-u-urp.

  Serena suppressed a gag as she turned towards the secretary, the source of the repulsive sounds, and sneered.

  Okay, they HAD to be messing with her.

  “I swear to fucking Christ,” Serena grumbled, “if I’m being Punkd right now I’m gonna tear Ashton Kutcher’s heart out and eat it!”

  “Ma’am—smack slu-u-urp smack smack—do you have an appointment?” The lanky sang girl perched behind a FAR-too-large desk called out to her. Starting towards her, Serena became increasingly aware of the painfully thick layers of eye make-up and neon pink lipstick as she blew an equally neon pink bubble of gum.

  All of that artificial personality surrounded in two auras: a puke-orange cloud of overconfident air-headedness and a reeking-yet-invisible layer of syrupy perfume that must have come from the discount rack at K-Mart.

  Pop!

  “Oh I am so ready for supper, Ashton!” Serena growled and offered a silent prayer to whatever deity would listen that she wouldn’t upchuck then and there.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Yea… uh, hi,” Serena looked around again, shaking her head. “Kind of an elaborate hoax you guys are putting up here, isn’t it?”

  “Can I, like, help you with something?” She rested her bony chin on a palm with spider-like fingers that ended in fake nails painted with even more neon shades.

  “How in the hell do you type with those things?” Serena couldn’t hold back a disgusted sneer any longer.

  The claws on the secretary’s opposite hand began rattling an impatient rhythm on the desktop. “Do you, y’know, have an appointment or whatever?”

  Serena blinked at the question, suddenly curious as to how many brain cells this creature must have lost in what she could only assume had been a lack of blood in her diet. “Uh. Yeah… I’m here to meet with whoever’s running this joint. Pardon the phrase, but will you take me to your leader,” Serena frowned.

  “My… leader? Smack pop pop smack”

  Serena suppressed the urge to tear out the girl’s gum along with her tongue. “Yes. Your leader: the head honcho, the big cheese, the man in charge? Am I even making a dent here or is there too much neon paste caked in your skull to hear me? I’m from the Clan of Vail and we were informed that you would be assisting us.”

  More neon eyelid exposed itself as the girl narrowed her eyes, “Uh-huh. Well, let me just see if they’re, like, available.” The secretary turned to her computer screen for less than a second before turning back to Serena. “Oh poo. It looks like you, like, just missed them and junk. But I can totally leave a message for you.”

  “… just missed them… and junk?” Serena frowned, feeling her temper begin to rise, “And you, like, totally don’t know when they’ll, like, be back… and junk?”

  “Nu-u-upe,” the rhythmic clacking started up again along with an increased rate of chewing, “But I’ll totally tell them that you came asking for them,” she snapped another bubble with her gum. “I’m sure they’re, like, sooo wanting to meet Vail Clan Barbie and all.”

  “Listen up, Play-Doh ho! I’m about two red cunt-hairs from leaping this desk and leaving my own personal message for your bosses with your insides. So here’s how this is going to work: I’m going to, like, not kill you—‘cuz I’m feeling generous… and junk—and you’re going to keep that dead meat you call an ass planted on that chair while I go upstairs and check for myself. In the meantime”—she leaned over the desk enough to turn the computer monitor on—“I’ll let you start a personal list of all the ways you just proved all of this”—she gestured to their surroundings—“to be every bit the joke I knew it was!” Serena began to turn away from the large desk and headed towards the elevators as she heard the secretary hit a call button.

  “Security!”

  Before Serena could cross the distance to the secretary to rip her head off, two large therions stepped into the room and took her at each arm, dragging her towards the automatic doors.

  “Really? Is all this necessary?” Serena growled. “I only came to speak with your clan’s leader! If anybody should be getting dragged out it should be My-Little-Bone-Me bitch back there!”

  “The Leader’s out on business at the moment. Try back later,” one of the guards said.

  “Once you’ve had a chance to cool down,” the other finished before pushing her through the doors.

  Serena growled, catching herself as they threw her out the doors and raised her middle finger at them.

  “Up yours, you limp-dick fuckers!”

  “I knew there was a reason I liked you!” A familiar voice called to her.

  Turning, she spotted Axle and rolled his eyes, “You’ve gotta be shitting me! All this nut-fuckery over you showing up in my town and you just—plop!—hang out on the new clan’s goddam doorstep?” She shook her head, “Axle Travers, the elusive therion rogue! Goddam joke! You know what? Fuck it! You and they can go suck a dick! I’m going home!”

  “You remembered my name?” Axle smirked, “The infamous Serena Vailean honors me.”

  Serena glared, “On second thought, kicking your ass might just be the perfect thing to vent my mood right now!”

  She started towards him and sighed as he smirked and turned to run, heading into the alleyway neighboring the clan’s building.

  “Really, numb-nuts? That’s a dead end!” Serena scoffed and rushed after him, only to find the alley empty. “What the fuck?”

  “Up here, buttercup!” Axle called from above her, where he was hanging upside-down from a fire escape rung that he’d locked his knees around, “You’re probably going to want to up your game if you want to vent that mood of yours!” He laughed and pulled himself up and over edge of the ladder, and jumping to the rooftop.

  Serena smirked, “All right, you spritely fuck! Time for some fun!” She jumped onto the fire escape and began to climb up to the roof.

&nbs
p; Axle was sitting on the opposite corner of the roof by the time she arrived. Smirking at the sight of her, he lifted his left arm and pressed the watch around his wrist to his ear.

  “I think my watch stopped…” He mock-pouted.

  “Your pulse is next!” Serena took a step towards him.

  As her foot landed, Axle did a back-handspring that returned him to his feet. Seeing that speed was a factor, Serena decided to cut the play short and simply use her vampire speed to cross the rooftop before he’d even had a chance to blink. Unfortunately, before she even had a chance to shift her focus into overdrive, he’d already taken advantage of a nearby antenna, which he vaulted over to clear the distance to the next rooftop.

  Accepting the obvious challenge, Serena smirked and rushed across the rooftop in overdrive and using the superhuman speed to propel herself after him. Once her feet left the roof, the laws of physics took hold and the once time-frozen world came alive as she dropped out of overdrive to avoid watching the world—and her airborne leap—pass by at a snail’s pace. Slamming onto the other roof, her boots skidded with the excess momentum and she overshot Axle, who’d banked to the left to allow her to pass.

  “Decent moves,” he offered, already standing on the roof’s ledge. “Though that ‘faster than a speeding bullet’ shit won’t do much good in a game where jumping reigns supreme.”

  “Game?” Serena panted, the exertion from jumping in-and-out of overdrive so quickly already taking its toll on her vampire system. “Since when is me kicking your ass a game?”

  “No no,” Axle wagged a finger at her. “You see, you kicking my ass is the prize you win. The game, however, is parkour.”

  “Huh?”

  Axle pouted, “You know, parkour? Free running?”

  Serena tapped her toe, “So jumping reigns supreme in the game of free running? Tell me, you didn’t think this banter through all the way, did you?”