Jasper wanted to believe so. But he wasn’t sure.
“What’s wrong, little hybrid? Scared?”
More gunfire.
He feinted toward the exit, and Ivory came running after him, determined to cut him off before he could reach the door, but Jasper was already going in the opposite direction, his eyes shining white with the effort. He sprayed a short burst of suppressing fire behind him, and, with a screech and a sound like a dozen bones breaking, the woman pursuing him burst into a gigantic white spider. Her eight long, thick legs ended in deadly points, and her fangs were dripping with dark black-red venom. He’d never seen a werespider before, not in real life.
Jasper was so distracted by the giant spider on his heels that he did not see the other werespider until he was nearly upon him. The Hunter only had time to see a flash of red eyes, outstretched arms, and teeth bared in a snarl before the spider, still in his human form, grabbed him, hands fisting into his jacket. The spider tried to pull him from his feet, and the two of them grappled for dominance. His back hit a tall piece of machinery, the rusting and rotting metal screeching at the impact. It was so precarious Jasper was sure it was going to fall on the two of them, but the demon’s grip was unyielding, slamming him back again.
The Hunter slugged him in the jaw, once, twice, three times, and the werespider’s grip slipped just enough for him to yank his jacket out. Jasper took several steps back, away from the new spider and the hunk of metal, raising his gun as his eyes searched for Ivory.
There. She was coming at him, a ghost in the shadows, made of snapping teeth and spiny legs. He aimed to fire—
A light was coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once, flaring like a muzzle flash turned up to eleven.
The explosion threw him on his back, the resounding bang hitting his eardrums as his back hit the floor, sucking the air from his lungs. For a moment he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t move. And then the light faded, returning him to the dark factory, the ringing in his ears fading to a tolerable squeal. He looked around, getting his bearings.
The great white spider was scrambling towards him at an alarming speed. He rolled over, got up on his elbow, and, using it as a support, steadied the gun, and squeezed the trigger.
The cartridge clicked empty. There had been no opportunity to reload.
Her fangs bore down towards his face even as something else dropped from above.
The creature’s many legs bowed outward. Her abdomen hit the cement and her fangs struck the floor, cracking away chips of concrete. Jasper pushed himself away from the pool of viscous fluid that the pressure milked from her fangs.
A smaller, darker spider was latched on at the back of her thorax, his long, banded red-and-black legs braced on the floor as he strained to tear her head off. She twisted onto her back, wrapped her stouter white legs around him like a cage, and wrested him free long enough to regain her footing, but the other came scuttling back with force, and the two clashed together with a shared, echoing screech.
Jasper made it back to his feet, slapped a fresh magazine into his gun, and ran toward the thrashing tangle of legs and fangs.
He had never seen any werespider except in pictures, which he realized now was nowhere near the same as the real thing. Their size was surprising, and the way they moved made him want to crawl out of his skin.
The distinct red markings patterned throughout the otherwise jet-black coloration of the smaller spider seemed to speak for themselves. Given their human sizes, he would have thought Crimson would be bigger than Ivory, but that wasn’t the case. The white spider was noticeably larger and stronger. She lashed at him with her legs and fangs, opening gory wounds in his black hide. Crimson was fighting back, getting a few shots in of his own, their many-legged bodies rolling and fighting and hissing together, but as the fight went on, it became apparent to Jasper that Crimson would lose.
Golden bullets were expensive and hard to come by, but Jasper had connections and wasn’t going to put himself in a werespider’s space without some protection. His standard ammunition was a mixed load of lead, iron, silver and, yes, gold. He was a little concerned that he’d hit Crimson, the pair of them were so entwined, though not concerned enough to hold his fire. Aiming for the largest part of the white spider, he unloaded.
Several shots missed, the spiders were too quick, but a couple hit home with a spray of scarlet, shocking against the white. Judging by the unearthly screech the spider that was Ivory gave, he thought one of them was gold.
The segmented legs drew close around her torso. She scuttled back crab-like, wheeled around, and fled for the shadows, leaving a trail of bright blood in her wake. The air was still thick with ash, and he lost sight of her very quickly. He looked towards Crimson… and swore loudly, jumping a step back despite himself.
It was lucky he had unloaded into Ivory. Anything that size would have been terrifying to have in such close proximity, but the spider was a special case. A gigantic monstrosity that seemed to have scuttled directly from an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare. As it stood on the tips of its toes, the creature’s two largest eyes were nearly level with his own. A smaller pair tapered back on either side.
It made a soft sound that contained no words but still sounded like a question. The lower half of its almost-face was two great, curved chelicerae with sharp translucent tips poking out of the tail ends. In addition to the crescent-shaped mark he saw earlier, there was a splash of red in the space just above its huge eerily glowing eyes and patterned throughout its long legs. The little spines tufted near the edges of the second set of eyes were likewise red. It chittered again, still with that upward inflection.
Jasper realized he’d squeezed the trigger of the gun twice, just on reflex.
The spider reared back with its front legs raised. Before Jasper had time to properly panic about what was certain to be an incoming strike, there was a crackling sound. The front legs shortened, the spines lying back then falling flat as the blackened skin underneath lightened to bronze. The fangs slipped grotesquely upward and receded into an upper lip that already seemed too human. While the hair covering the rest of the creature thinned, the tufts on its head grew longer, thicker, and softer. The spare legs bent inward like broken branches. They seemed simply to fold themselves out of existence. In a span of seconds, the spider was no more.
Crimson stood before him, entirely naked. His smooth bronze chest and toned arms were covered in open wounds and still-bleeding gashes. Jasper’s gaze slid down to his muscled abdomen to the dark hair beneath his navel and then, cheeks burning furiously, skipped away. The white spider did not re-emerge from the shadows.
“Alcander,” Crimson said flatly. Jasper followed his gaze. A small shape was huddled at the top of the stairs, unmoving, unbreathing. If this was Alcander, Crimson had exaggerated his height, but only just.
In the surrounding darkness there was another screech.
“Get him,” said Crimson. “Hurry,” he added, striding away from Jasper to pick something off the ground. His long leather jacket. Somewhere nearby something heavy and metal, suddenly disturbed, clanged against the floor.
Jasper sprinted up the steps, grabbed hold of the unconscious man, and hefted him off the floor. Up close, he was almost certainly dead. There was no color in his face unless you counted the blue-black of the veins that shone through his pale skin. Yet he stirred slightly. In the dark it was hard to tell, but it seemed his eyelashes parted a sliver.
“Jasper?”
At the realization that the man recognized him, he felt a cold chill, like icy fingers creeping down his spine, but that was not all he felt. A peculiar little twist he knew too well, strangely soft, hesitant, almost uncertain. And then the realization that this man was no man at all.
His lips moved again, trying to make words, and this time fangs showed.
A fucking vampire.
Behind him, he heard the twirl of a cylinder and the unmistakable click-click of a hammer being stru
ck. Then a booming crash. “Knox and Tybalt,” called Crimson, but Jasper couldn’t tell if it was an explanation, or if he was trying to reason with the others again. Angry at being misled but unable to complain, he scooped the vampire the rest of the way up and made for the exit.
Chapter Seven
—
The Good Doctor
The three of them booked it out of the warehouse and to the car Crimson had left running in the parking lot. Jasper had barely thrown the vampire in the back and gotten in the passenger side before the werespider stepped on the gas, firing them out into traffic, leaving the burning smell of tires in their wake. Jasper slammed his door closed.
“You just left me back there!” Jasper exclaimed, bracing his hand against the dash as they tore around a corner. “That bitch nearly killed me!”
“But she didn’t,” Crimson pointed out. He’d gathered most of his clothes, including his jacket and shirt and jeans, but was missing his boots. For the first time Crimson turned the full force of his brilliant smile at him, and Jasper couldn’t help it, he was smiling back, thinking it was no surprise at all that Crimson could get almost anyone to give him almost anything. Realizing what he was doing, Jasper looked away, checking the side mirror to see if they were being followed. If they were, he couldn’t see them, and he didn’t keep looking for very long.
The wound on the back of his hand was bleeding pretty good, so after Jasper managed to get his seatbelt buckled, he dug around one-handed in his backpack, pulling out a cloth roll of bandages. It would have to be cleaned later, but for now Jasper just wanted to stop the bleeding. He wrapped his hand until he couldn’t see the blood through it and tied it off with his teeth.
“So what the hell was that about?”
“That,” said Crimson, “was the traditional werespider game of Hostage. You should really just be glad she didn’t wanna play War.”
“She tried to kill me,” insisted Jasper. And not just him. Crimson too.
“Yeah, Ivory plays for keeps.”
“Are you hurt?” asked Jasper, because it felt like he should ask, not that Crimson had asked him.
“Oh yeah.” The jacket was torn at the shoulder. A thick, dark layer of scabbed and bruised flesh could be seen through the popped seam. Puncture wounds on the side of his throat leaked a diluted mixture of clear venom and blood. Presently, they stopped and began to scab as well. “Mostly just the one on my face.” It was a black band of poisoned blood on his forehead, a souvenir from the scuffle with Obsidian. He kept pawing the streaming black blood away from his eyes with the back of his hand, like a cat trying to clean its face. “I didn’t expect him to take a shot at my head, y’know? I mean, Ivory, yeah. That’s her prerogative or whatever. But Sid. I’ve known him for millenniums. Usually he’s not such a fuckin’ dick.”
“Oh,” replied Jasper. It took a moment for this off-the-cuff comment to sink in. Charlie said that records of the werespider started surfacing in 1840, so he knew he’d been around for nearly two centuries, which was a longer amount of time than Jasper wanted to imagine living. But… “Millenniums?” he repeated. “Plural?”
“I think he was mad cuz I said he had a Frankenstein head,” continued Crimson. “But in all fairness—”
The man in the back seat groaned softly, and Crimson turned the radio down. “You alright back there?”
No response.
Jasper twisted around in his seat. Vampires came in all shapes, sizes, and colors, but he had never seen one that looked quite like this one. As Crimson had described, he was very small and somewhat delicate looking. At present, he was wrapped in a lab coat stained with grime and dark splotches of vampire blood, a pair of plastic goggles pushed up on his forehead, the band tangled in messy strands of dry-looking hair. He groaned again with the motion of the vehicle and tried to roll over.
The trash underneath him crinkled.
The back seat was a cluttered mess of empty fast-food bags, crushed tin cans, soda-caked Styrofoam cups, and used napkins. One of the napkins was stuck to the vampire’s sallow cheek. He tried to brush it away, but when it continued to stick, his eyes slowly came unclosed. They were the pale grayish pink of a summer orchid in bloom, the whites darted with shocking red veins. They slowly took in the surrounding vehicle. The mounds of scattered trash, the young man twisted around to look at him from the front seat, the cigarette-scarred suede with bits of stuffing fighting through the burn marks.
With an ugly gagging noise, he sat up suddenly and quickly ripped the napkin off his cheek. Then scrambled into the corner of the seat, where the majority of the mess had earlier fallen out of the car. He was attempting to simultaneously move a pile of crumpled newspapers out from underneath him while also grasping blindly for the seatbelt over his shoulder. The swerving dance of rapidly cycling acceleration and deceleration as Crimson wedged the car into every open slot ahead of them and jumped between lanes of traffic like he thought he was in a race wasn’t helping matters.
The vampire asked a dazed question, but his voice was too soft to hear over the chortle of the old engine and the rumble of New York’s rush hour through the open windows. Jasper cranked the radio all the way down to silent and leaned cautiously closer. “What?”
The vampire stilled but for the external swaying of the vehicle. He was gripping the buckle of the seatbelt so hard that the tips of his porcelain-white fingers turned even whiter. “Where am I?”
“Relax, Al, you’re safe.” They came to a section of extreme congestion, and Crimson was forced to slow and inch along with other angry-looking motorists.
Alcander finally managed to snap the buckle.
Cursing, Crimson threw the car in park, popped open his door, and started to climb out.
Jasper realized what he was doing and grabbed his elbow. “Hey, you can’t just leave a car sitting in traffic.”
“Why not? It’s not mine.”
“Well, because! You just can’t. It’s in the way—you gotta at least pull to the side or something.”
Crimson shook off his arm and got out of the car anyway, opening the back door and pulling the vampire out after him. Behind them a driver laid on their horn. Crimson gestured to the extremely frail-looking demon clinging to his arm for stability, then flipped the guy the bird.
Jasper grabbed his backpack and, with an apologetic shrug to the guy now trapped behind the Buick, followed the pair of demons.
They walked several blocks, taking turns at random and cutting through alleys and parking lots. Crimson basically carried the vampire, holding the smaller demon under his arm, pressed close to his side. Jasper didn’t think Alcander was a fan of that based on the shaking and panicked whispers he heard from him, but Crimson did not let him go.
“Hey, where are we going?” Jasper asked. Crimson ignored him, turning down yet another alleyway. Jasper tried again, louder this time. “Crimson, where are we going?”
“Dunno ’til we get there.”
“Seriously?”
“I’m not dealin’ with those two again today. I’m too fuckin’ old for their shit.”
“Why don’t we just go back to your house?” The way Crimson talked about it, the house was a death trap. Remembering the swinging blades he’d narrowly avoided being chopped in half with, Jasper agreed.
The werespider shook his head. “No good, they know too much. Better to lie low somewhere they can’t be bothered to look.”
They entered the lobby of a small hotel, where he shoved the vampire towards Jasper and told them both to wait while he got them a room. Both the Hunter and the vampire began to protest, but the werespider was off to shine his eyes at the pretty brunette behind the front desk before they could get too far.
“Are you, uh, okay?” Jasper asked after a moment.
The vampire was hugging himself tight, visibly shaking. He was even paler in the fluorescent lights, his veins dark beneath his paper-thin skin. The bloodied lab coat and goggles made it look like he was wearing a Halloween costume.
Mad scientist/vampire. Jasper saw now that he had several wounds and gashes on his face and neck, as well as some on his arms and chest, based on the blood darkening the white coat like ink. They should have healed by now or at least been on the way, but they remained open and seeping, and when the vampire glanced quickly at him, he saw that his eyes were still pink. The vampire looked away immediately, almost as soon as their eyes met, and sidestepped to put some space between them.
“I am alright.” He stole another glance in Jasper’s direction, then away again. “Thank you for asking.”
“We haven’t really been formally introduced.” He held out his hand to shake. “I’m Jasper.”
Alcander looked down at his palm like he had just offered him a dead fish, and then crossed his arms over his chest. “Sorry, it is nothing personal. I just do not like to be touched.”
“Oh,” said Jasper, snapping his hand back down to his side. He’d hunted vampires nearly his entire life. They were usually very sensual creatures. Usually being the key word.
This one seemed to be exhibiting symptoms of severe blood dehydration, which he’d only ever seen happen to vampires in captivity. Usually such demons were vicious, bloodthirsty things, incapable of rational thought and driven by killer instinct. Again, usually. “Sorry.”
“It is alright.” He smiled weakly, his lips pressed together to hide the fangs. “Alcander Owen, MD. Most people just call me Al. Since you fall into that category, I guess you can too.” The warmth in his voice was surprising, considering the outward chill of his demeanor.
“You used to be a doctor?” asked Jasper, his eyes going again to the bloody gash on his cheek. For a split second, he thought of the small strange werewolf he had met in The Crystal Ballroom just the night before.
Strangers in the Night Page 8
