by Logan Keys
“How?” he asks, sitting up, realizing he’s become corporeal.
Then he folds over, hugging his stomach, groaning in pain.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, choking on the words. “It’s going to hurt. Probably for a while.”
Joelle puts a hand to my shoulder. I owe a debt now. “It’s time,” she says.
I shrug her off. “No,” I say, too worried to leave him while the change is this fragile.
“Yes,” Joelle says firmly, and she nods to other vampires, two of them, who come forward and help Shade rise.
“Take him to my rooms,” she orders, motioning for me to follow her.
I rise and move to stand by her side. “Shade,” I say. “Go inside. Just rest. I’ll be back.”
He seems so confused, but he lets them guide him away. And I follow Joelle out of this side of the divide, and into the men’s side. I walk as if I am in a fog. I find Lotte and relay the orders that I hear inside of my head.
Woodenly, I say, “Bite anyone without a red ribbon or red scrap of fabric.”
Lotte nods and races off to tell the others. The screams will fill the night like it had not long ago in Ironwood. Only, Lotte and I will be on the vampire’s side this time.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Liza
Cory simply barges in. “Mind if we join you?”
The man lifts his shotgun at us in answer.
Cory waves a hand like he’s swatting a fly. “Put it down.”
The man hesitates but eventually listens. Interesting. Cory’s power is truly waning because there had been a definite pause. I plan my escape with quick thoughts, hoping he’s distracted, but he frowns across the fire at me. Not too distracted then.
The man warily rises. He doesn’t understand why he hasn’t shot at us yet, it’s apparent by the confused glare. “My daughters and I were just leaving.”
He goes with retreat.
Smart man.
He begins to douse the fire.
Cory drops a backpack from his shoulder. “We’ve got food.”
The pack’s spilled open, and out roll cans of vegetables, even a soda falls out.
Two girls aged from high to low teens, and one younger child who can’t be more than ten, lean forward, eyes wide, their mouths watering most likely, as mine has begun to. The littlest darts a glance at her father, but something in her gaze catches me sideways.
Instead of running, I find myself inching down to sit on the log across from them all.
Watching them.
Seeing things.
Cory nods to the girls. “Go ahead.”
But the father snags the pack away, and shoulders it himself.
Cory’s gaze narrows on the father. “Now that wasn’t polite. At least let them share the soda. How long has it been since you guys have had something like that?” He squats down, and I try to see beyond the seemingly kind eyes that take in each and every dirty face.
Then I try to see what they must. This is easier. Cory is charming, handsome, and his gaze is quite a copy of genuine concern.
But the father charges forward at Cory, only to get hung up on an invisible leash.
Cory rises and waits for the man to try again.
“Alright,” the man says, clearly befuddled. “I’ll let you get warm in trade for these goods, but then you two be on your way.”
Warm? I just now realize it’s cold. Freezing almost.
The girls are huddled near the fire, their sweaters threadbare, their faces pinched with chattering teeth. I’m in a tank top and a skirt, and I’m not even slightly cold.
Cory must have dressed me. The thought makes me shiver where the weather doesn’t.
“Your clothes were ruined and wet,” Cory supplies. “I found what I could. Don’t worry. One of the skulls changed you, a woman, not me.”
How kind of him to make sure my modesty stays intact physically while he’s rummaged through my mind. Does he think that this makes us even?
I take in my newly assigned apparel. My skirt is red, not too short, but not nearly long enough for the weather. A white tank top, that’s thin, short, above my navel, and tight.
“You’re like me now,” Cory says with a smile. “Can you feel it? We’re impervious. I think it’s Spirit. She gives us an extra oomph to our power and things like weather, food, drink, even the bathroom, haven’t they all just faded away?”
He’s right. When I’d been with Tommy, I’d been ravenous.
Since coming to remember myself, I’ve not even thought of food until now.
This whole time, the man has gaped at us in shock. Two people just stroll into their camp, and they discuss things that make no sense.
The girls too, they’re staring at me now.
Cory laughs. “This is what it feels like to be part god, right? Their world, none of that matters to ones such as us. You are like the goddess of war with that sword. I am like Hera perhaps. Ordering Heracles to kill his family.”
I shudder and look at the girls. Please, no.
“I almost forgot!” Cory strides over and yanks out an item from the pack the man has on his back now. “This is actually for you.”
It’s a leather strap with a few snaps.
“For Spirit," Cory says. “You can strap her onto your back with this. She’s already got a scabbard. Is that the word? Scabbard? I need to look up that one, but you can fit it to your size. Found it in some house that had a ton of old swords. None as nice as Spirit.”
“No,” I say, agreeing that there would be none as nice as Spirit in all the world.
“Nemesis!” he barks, and I jump. “That’s who you are. A goddess of revenge. You’ll make all the humans pay for their lack of sacrifice to us.”
He smiles, but I can tell he’s only half joking.
I busy myself with putting my arms through the leather straps with shaky hands before winding it around my torso. Snapping the buttons until it’s fitted, the sword and her sheath hug Spirit tightly between my shoulder blades.
“Perfect,” Cory says once I am finished.
The tank top is cut off so that my back should be frozen solid with the wind hitting it dead on, but I feel fine, and with Spirit there now, I feel as though I’ve got a guardian to my rear should any attack. As if she would warn me.
At least my shoes are practical.
The man steps forward as if waking from a dream. “You two get warm and then leave.”
The eldest girl’s eyes flit to mine then away like a bird that’s been shooed one too many times, and so is wary to land any one place. Her bones too, birdlike, thin and frail, but what keeps my attention is her fading gaze. Glazed over, not quite right. Then I notice the scar across her forehead.
“This is Nora, she’s not all there, mind you,” the father supplies. “She fell and hurt herself a long time ago, and we don’t exactly have a doctor on call. Sadie, and Cameron, these are the smart ones.”
I don’t think I imagine Nora’s stiff shoulders at her father’s words.
Pain.
That’s what I see, and I look to Cory who nods subtly. He’s proud of his pupil: me.
“I’m Liza,” I try softly, but the middle girl looks at me and I flinch from the glare.
Rage. Pure, animalistic rage, and then it’s gone.
Anger. Leagues of it.
What’s wrong with them, I wonder, but Cory doesn’t answer. Not inside my head or out loud.
“Name’s John,” the man says, but he’s lying, as if by knowing his name would give us some sort of control over him.
Little does he know Cory can influence him to tell the truth.
The littlest glances at her father then away. So, he’d given their real names but not his own.
The man, eager to search the pack, sits and digs through it. He begins to eat but doesn’t offer any to his children.
My body stiffens much like Nora’s had.
Hunger.
Starvation.
I see so much of everyth
ing all at once.
With a furious movement, I snag the pack from his grip and turn and hand it to the middle girl who takes it reluctantly. She checks her father who finally nods his okay, he’s got his food.
She can’t open the can. She’s too weak.
When I reach over to help, she flinches back so hard, she trips over her own feet away from me.
Bruises.
I see so many bruises on her arms. I have to breathe through my nose, loudly, as I work at the can, to avoid unleashing pent up anger, and frustration, and hatred, I’ve felt while locked back in Bodega out on this man.
I glance up. Cory watches me, a small smile on his face. He’d wanted me to see and I am seeing far too much.
My hands begin to shake so hard that I drop the can twice. Looking into Sadie’s eyes, there’s deep sorrow there that threatens to swallow me whole. Like salt to a wound. Cory decides it’s time to show me more.
She’s not a person anymore, not as she should be. These children are a shell. It’s one thing for a person to harm you who would be put on this earth by one evil or another, but to be afraid of your own father? He’s starving them. He eats first and beats them if they try to take any for themselves.
He’s brutally vicious.
The eldest has hit her head so hard that she’s never come back to herself fully… I watch her fall in my mind---images from Cory---the cracking sound of her skull hitting the ground as her father throttles her…
“Enough,” I scream, and Cory lets me go.
Spirit clings to my back, only, instead of warmth there, it’s an embrace of the cold and deadly.
Protection she pulses, justice my hands throb longing to grab her, revenge the letters burn brightly from their place across my arm.
It is as if they’re not synonymous things, but choices, rather.
Cory rises. He turns to leave.
When I try to follow, his hand goes up, motioning for me to stay. “You’re free, Liza. Free as a bird. Do you run from me now, or do you give these little ones another chance at life?”
“What’s the catch?” I ask.
“You promise me here and now that you will never leave my side, and I’ll give you something no one else can.”
“If I refuse?”
He smiles. “You never help these. You never help the others. But if you choose me, we go to Anthem together. You swear to me, and I can see if you’re lying, remember that, but you will swear a loyalty to me above all else.”
“Why? What do you want?”
“Because the rules are only what we make them to be now.”
“Couldn’t you just make him go away?” I motion at the father.
“I could.”
“Then…”
Cory comes over to me in long strides. He places hands on my shoulders. “Because, Liza, it’s time you act on your blessing. Or curse. Whichever. I’m not sure what these powers are, but we’re no longer part of their story. See how separate we are? And how easy we can shift their fate? We are above it. And we determine their lives now. Why waste an opportunity such as that? Embrace it. It doesn’t have to all be evil.”
“Why the island?” I ask, pulling away, hugging my arms around myself. “What does it have to do with this ‘embracing’.” Cory knows I am asking why I’d been mentally imprisoned there for so long. What purpose did he have making me relive it so many times?
“I am trying to show you. Help them. Help these. Help everyone. Liza, what if I told you that it’s all connected? Join me. I will set them free.”
My mouth drops open.
“If you do as I ask,” Cory says. “This is a test. If you do it, without question. Without hesitation. I will give you a gift no one else can. I will give your island people their freedom. You know I can do that.”
I’m stunned. His gift is the most gruesome of gifts. Because it has strings attached, long and bloody, making me a lifelike marionette, him the puppet master. Life and freedom for those on the island is the prize.
Death at the hands of Spirit for this man. Feed her, he’d said. See, he’d said. See evil that is far worse than Cory, is what he must want.
Cory nods at my thoughts.
“The islanders would be completely and totally free?” I ask, hating myself for every word that is a step closer to doing what this person demands of me. “But first, I must concede, agree to murder?”
Cory sighs. “You make it all sound so deviant. Are these not suffering? Are the ones on the island too, not suffering?”
I steady myself. “How can I trust you? That you’ll keep your word?”
“You can't. Devil’s in the details. And the devil’s deal is all you can make, hoping he sticks to what he’s promised. But, Liza, I can swear to you that this is real.”
I huff a laugh of no humor. “A deal with the devil. But you’d once said you were just a man. And you lied then, too.”
“Can a man not be worse than a devil? Here is what I’m trying to teach you. There are other things for us to join together to fight. We can do good. Even if you don’t think it, I can see a point in saving your fellow prisoners.”
And with those last words I feel myself agree. I sense it before my brain understands because there can be no other way.
I nod agreement.
I step into action, pulling my sword.
I hold her in front of me, pointed at Cory. “You better keep your side of the bargain.”
Cory steps back into the woods. “Touché.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Dallas
The night is awash with blood and chaos. The specials who didn’t want to follow Joelle, most of these were quickly subdued by the angry male vampires who’d been forced into hiding before. While our own ranks fell immediately under an assault of weapons and artillery, they too fell swiftly under teeth and claw.
Vampires can die if they are burned long enough, and flamethrowers were aplenty on the men’s side. They have blazed a trail through the street of charred carnage. What were once my brothers and sisters of darkness, now they had finally found a resting place be that heaven or hell. It was for God to decide.
But those who chose to fight back in their human bodies, they were not ready for the wave of the dark hearts that overwhelmed them despite their firepower. And I got a bird's-eye view of what it had been like to swarm Ironwood and rain madness down on its people.
It did not pass me by, the hypocrisy of this decision on Joelle’s part. Had Pike not attacked all of us and demanded our fealty?
Despite this, our leader is ravaging soldiers, moving so fast she’s a black blur weaving around the fires below. She strikes out at one who is running toward the larger group in retreat. His backup fires at her zig-zagging form, missing. She beheads the one with the largest gun, biting another on his right. Death in the form of a girl. Do they know it to look at her?
I drop from the second story building with a soft thud. Flanking my leader, I let my darkness take over and squash my conscience down as far as it will go. I won’t let them hurt Joelle.
My vision becomes flashes, a reel of the fight. My teeth sink into their first victim, and he screams out in pain from the poison running through his veins. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, but am caught in the shoulder with a bullet that will only remove itself if I feed.
And I do. I fill myself full as a tick on the blood of those who don’t wear the scarves or carry a flag of surrender.
I watch Joelle work her way to the one holding the flamethrower. He smiles and opens what looks like the bowels of hell to these sore eyes onto her form. The orange blaze is nearly blinding. But Joelle does not pause. She gets singed all along her arm, her dress catches fire, and still she walks into the flames.
“Joelle!” I cry, watching my leader go up in sparks.
But like a phoenix rising, out of the smoke, she glides. Joelle grabs the weapon and thrusts it aside. She lifts the one who’d burned her by his jacket---burns that are healing even now---and she holds him
high up toward the moonlight. “Our fight is not of flesh and blood,” she says. “but against the powers of this dark world.”
I shudder as she casts him aside. She does not claim him or make him ours. Joelle has broken his neck.
That single kill slows the momentum, and the fight is over within minutes. Since the majority were wise enough to wear their ribbons/scarves around their arms, we had a force that was triple the size now thanks to this evil night. I’d even helped Lotte surround a group of men I recognized as Shade’s infamous Raiders.
“You’ll join us?” I ask.
“We have the red fabric,” one replies.
There are nine of them total.
The Raiders watch me with the glare of the defeated, and it is true, before the end they too will be under our rule.
After losing half our numbers, we’d still taken out enough of them with bites to grow our army into an endless stream of vampires awakening with new eyes. They were given some of Joelle’s blood to complete the transition. Despite the great loss it was a heavy win.
The carnage of bloodied streets put me in a frenzy, but I forced it down, and the specials mostly accepted their fate. I tried to ignore the guilt I felt for this assault. But when those who were bitten changed, and if they were too out of control, they’d be destroyed. Joelle saw this as a mercy.
Every part of the men’s side was filled with gore from the fallen, but we’d held onto success.
Success isn’t the right word.
We conquered, ransacked, and pillaged the male forces. We did everything we hated others for doing at the fall of this civilization we call humanity. They all will be under our little queen’s control.
After she was sure Shade, a special, could be changed, nothing could stop us. If specials even could be transformed, then so be it… is her thought.
Most of the specials, lucky for them, had chosen to wear a ribbon or scarf, or whatever they could find. Most had not falling under our teeth. They wouldn’t risk their powers. Somehow it spread that while Shade was now a vampire, he’d lost his special abilities.
