by Peter Dawes
“I haven’t had a decent feed in weeks,” he said.
One eyebrow perked, with me tempted to turn my head and glance at them while I lifted the glass of Scotch to my mouth. I swallowed a healthy amount and took a deep, steadying breath. The room gained color again, the assassin waking and scheming once more. Demetrius continued with a sigh. “The last one felt forced. You know, when necessity is more the motivation than actual hunger?”
“You’re thinking about things too hard,” offered one of the females.
“I just wish I could get lost inside a human for a few hours and forget about all of this other nonsense. Feels like forever since I could do that without worrying.”
“Did I just hear you issue a last request, Demetrius?” I murmured, soft and into my glass of Scotch before polishing off its contents. At once, the tumblers fell into place, the lock engaged and the door of opportunity swinging open before me. Matthew was smart, having them assemble in groups, but I was much smarter and knew the feeding habits of our kind. Demetrius could not summon the resolve to claim what he desired on his own?
Perhaps mortal company could persuade him otherwise.
I glanced up at the bartender – a fetching young lady with brown hair and matching eyes – when she walked past. Summoning my most fetching smile for her benefit, I caught her attention when she glanced at me. She exchanged the grin, walking closer to where I sat. “Need a refill, handsome?” she asked, reaching for my glass.
“In need of so very much more than that,” I said. Quicker than she could react, I grabbed her wrist and held her in place while staring deliberately at her. Her eyes widened and my expression sobered when she attempted to claim back her hand, but I tightened my grip. “I could break it, Pet, but then you would hardly be any use to me. Listen closely, and I promise to let you go.”
She nodded while our gaze remained locked, though I saw enough evidence that she might scream for one of her compatriots if I did not make this brief. The tendrils of my thrall crept up the hold I had on her, through the lenses of my dark sunglasses and when her body relaxed, I knew I had her hostage. “Tell me, are you an actress?” I asked, gently setting her hand on top of the counter.
Lazily, her head bobbed up and down. I imitated the action as a mockery. “Certainly need a few of those neck bolts tightened, love, if you call that a nod. You shall have to do much better than that.” I perked an eyebrow and tilted my head in the direction of the table behind me. “Do you see the four rather pale people seated behind me?”
The bartender nodded again. “Good,” I said, reaching into my coat for my pack of cigarettes. Lighting the end of one, I slid an ashtray closer with the hand holding my cigarette while pocketing the pack. “Now, the dark-haired one…the one who looks like he failed his audition for Miami Vice. Do you see him?” When she responded with a single nod, I reciprocated, raising my nicotine crutch to take a long drag from it and exhaling a sizeable plume of smoke in her direction. She flinched a little in response. “He is having a poor time of it with his friends. I find that troubling, do you not?”
“Yes, it is,” she said, her voice dreamy.
“I am delighted that you agree.” After another draw, I tapped ash into the tray and sighed. “You seem the type to flirt. Are you good with seducing?” The brunette offered her customary silent response and I chuckled. “Of course you are. How foolish of me. And you find him attractive. I can tell you as much. You think he is the most intriguing man who has ever walked into this establishment and you are willing to pull out all the stops to get him alone. Am I right?”
“He is pretty cute,” she said. Another smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
“No doubt every woman in here agrees. Even those other ladies, the ones sitting with him. They might get jealous if you try to lure him away, so you have to be determined. Do not allow them to dissuade you, am I clear?”
“What about the other guy?”
“A very good question, Pet. You are not very interested in him. He looks like he picked his clothes out of an attic from the last decade, anyway, and we cannot abide by that, can we?”
She wrinkled her nose and I chuckled. “There we are,” I said. “Ask the other one his name. The ‘cute’ one. Act natural from there.” Pausing for a brief moment, I patted my coat in search of a pen and snapped my fingers at her when I spied one tucked into her pocket. She glanced at where I gestured and passed it to me when I motioned for it. I tapped the ash from my cigarette with one hand while the other took a napkin and jotted the address of the unoccupied house we had passed, again thanking the demons who seemed to be playing host to my endeavor.
“You are going to tell him this is your house,” I said. “I shall have the door open so you can get in. Do not be pushy, Pet. Let him convince himself to come along with you. Just be your usual, winsome self.” Leaning closer to her, I lowered my voice all the more, placing the napkin in her hand with a smirk. “He wants to be alone with somebody. He wants it to be you. He simply does not know it yet.”
“Okay.” The bartender nodded a final time, then turned away from me, studying the napkin and slipping it out of sight as she emerged from behind the counter and walked over to the quartet. I reached to extinguish the cigarette, humming softly to myself until I heard her voice issue its opening salvo to Demetrius. The others at the table acknowledged her with curt politeness at first, but whatever my enthralled accomplice could read about the Greek vampire, she seemed to know the right strings to pluck.
“I’m sorry, I don’t normally do this.”
“Do what, Dearheart?”
“Come onto strange guys. Wow, listen to me. I just actually said that out loud.” An innocent giggle. A deep breath and a loud exhale. “I just wanted to say, I’m getting off work now. If you’d like to go somewhere and just…you know. Hang out?”
It took an additional exchange and a few words of protest from the other three, thinly veiled for the sake of the human and responded to by Demetrius with an aggravated grumble. “You said I’m thinking about things too hard and you’re the ones trying to tell me to be careful,” he said, a genuine and yet, irrational amount of frustration evident in the words. I was tempted to muse on his tone when it changed, indicating his attention back on the brunette. “I’d be delighted to go with you.”
The assent was all the prompting I needed. Standing from my seat, I wove around the bar while the murmur of objections filtered from his compatriots. “Don’t walk alone, brother. Please,” one of the females said, and in my mind I filled in the image of her reaching to stop him.
I also saw him smile in a calm, reassuring manner, like the unsuspecting sheep he was. “I’ll take a cab home if it makes you feel better, Constance,” he said. His tenor changed. “Good night, all of you. Please tell Matthew I’ll return well before dawn.”
“Who’s Matthew?” The bartender’s question was the last thing I heard before I exited earshot and hustled my way out the door. Yes, I could have killed the lot of them, but even if it would not have angered my Mistress, pragmatism dictated I make this as clean as possible.
As such, I exited the nightclub without any further incident.
While my enthralled bait and her hapless conquest finished their goodbyes, I retraced the steps of our journey, turning a corner two blocks up the road and blending into another well-traveled path for tourists. I moved with the ebb and flow of humanity, darting around a small collection of college-age mortals and finally situating myself behind a taller, athletically-built man until I needed to veer back into the residential neighborhood. With a faster pace, it did not take me long to reach the house we had passed and force my way in through the back. In the time it took for me to enter, Demetrius and the bartender caught up. I heard their voices echoing up the walkway while unlocking the front door.
“You’re selling your house?” I heard him faintly ask.
“Yeah, I’m getting out of the neighborhood,” she responded. “Have a new place in Fishtown.” T
he ease with which she issued the lie made me wonder if I had enthralled her that well, or if she made a regular habit of lying to people. They paused at the foot of the front stairs, giving me all the prompting I needed to turn around and head toward the back. Whoever had the house for sale had kept a few pieces of furniture in it, for the sake of show. This included heavy curtains, which had been pulled closed and left the downstairs so dark, my sunglasses handicapped my vampire sight more than I cared for, considering the task at hand. I reached up and slid them from my face, a calculated risk, but one I considered better than turning on a light.
I pocketed the glasses, slipping through the living room and dining room and stopping back in the kitchen again. Along the way, I only counted one window on the north side of the house, one in the front room, and another beside the back door which made the odds of not being blinded much more in my favor. The kitchen’s entryway had been carved out of the far right side of the room and beside it, a shut door led downstairs to the cellar. I gingerly twisted the knob and swung the door open. Then, I pressed my back against the wall and waited.
The duo made a raucous amount of noise when they entered, a surge of laughter accompanying the sound of them slamming the front door shut. I perked an eyebrow at the strange wave of silence which followed, until I heard her pulse race in tempo. Whatever unspoken exchange was taking place, it left me tempted to peer around the corner, if just to make certain the night’s festivities had not begun already. A soft chuckle broke the silence, however, originating from the Greek vampire.
“You’ve turned coy,” he said, his tone flirtatious. A hitch in her breath followed sound of his hand brushing against the fabric of her shirt. When I heard a faint click, I winced, waiting for a flash of light and the inevitable pain to follow. That it did not told me I needed to hurry things along. “Huh. The power out?”
“I don’t know,” the bartender said. “We don’t need light anyway, do we?” Tempted though I was to answer in Demetrius’s stead, I looked around the kitchen, searching what remained for what I could use to my advantage. There were no knife blocks or impromptu weapons, though I made note of the table and chairs arranged in a corner nook. All that left was the back door, which I had secured as much as possible. Still, the broken lock meant I could not allow him any chance to use it as a means of escape.
The basement it was, then.
Extending a leg, I pushed at the cellar door slow enough for it to creak when it opened further. As I lowered my foot, I made certain to tap the tile, then paused as if I had become aware of somebody else in the house. Whatever they had been doing prior to this, I could tell the minute Demetrius took notice. He paused mid-sentence, and the bartender’s pulse wavered just enough to indicate an abrupt change in tenor.
“Are you alone in this house, Elaine?” Demetrius asked.
The bartender – who must have divulged her name along the way – did not answer him at first. She stammered, and I groaned internally, wondering if the enthralled Elaine and the lucid one were at war with each other. “I…I don’t think anybody should be home. There was this one guy at the bar…”
‘Damn it.’
“… but I don’t know…”
“Someone at the bar was giving you trouble?” he replied, taking one, tentative step toward where I stood. Scenarios spread like wildfire across my thoughts, painting a hundred different things which might transpire in the next few seconds alone. He could run. Or come charging in, spoiling for a fight. He could send her in ahead of me, or even ignore it in favor of forcing me to make the first move. Another footstep padded closer and stopped. I lived the next moment on the edge of a blade.
Finally, Demetrius sighed. “You stay here. I’ll go and take a look,” he said.
“Are you sure? I could –”
“Stay right here, Dearheart.” The intonation of his words carried a familiar undercurrent to it, adding another command to her thrall and apparently winning over her complacency. I heard nothing further from her, filling in the space with the visual of her head nodding while the footsteps resumed.
They remained cautious through the living room, and slowed all the more when he reached the dining room. He had to have been confused by that point, as I knew what I would be thinking. A door creak, but no pulse. Not even the tiniest cadence of a small animal. There had been no further sound, so whatever was in here had to still be there. No doubt he presumed this would require an expedition into the cellar.
If that was what he assumed, he could not have been more correct.
I held steady. Waited. Another footstep followed. One more, and he would be within reach. My useless breaths were stilled, my vampire instincts in full bloom as I knew what I had planned would take every inch of my neophyte years to do swiftly enough. I saw the flash of his side when he crossed the threshold and did not hesitate. Grabbing his arm, I swung him around and twisted with him in the direction of the stairs.
He floundered, his other hand extending on reflex while inertia lifted him off the ground. My final shove before releasing him gave him no chance to compensate. Demetrius tumbled while flailing, the sight of his twisted body and scrambling limbs making the downward descent look unwieldy and gruesome. When he hit the bottom, I pivoted to face the staircase and jumped, landing beside where he lay. He groaned and I smirked, straightening to a stand and pacing around to regard him.
“You look as though you have seen better days, Demetrius,” I said, nudging at the fallen vampire with my foot. “For a moment there, I thought you might actually make this a sporting chase through the neighborhood. I am so very glad your sense of self-preservation remained quiet.”
“Who the hell is that?” he asked, half-moaning the words. He attempted to roll onto his back, but I lifted my foot and pressed it down on top of his side.
My smirk blossomed all the more at the pained noise which rumbled from his throat. “I am the angel of death, sir. Come to pay you a visit.”
“The…. What?” He fought against me, forcing my leg to lower. As he twisted in an attempt to stand, I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, bringing him upright enough to sling him toward a few boxes stored at the corner of the room. He did not make it all the way. His body bounced off the hard concrete of the unfinished room, rolling twice before he reached out to try and stop himself. I charged for him while he brought himself up to all fours.
Swiftly, I kicked him in the stomach. He slipped, but caught himself. Watching him attempt to scramble to his feet, I rewarded his efforts with another grip, and another fling toward the opposite wall. He anticipated this, however, and managed to stop himself from sailing, his feet touching the floor and half aiding the effort until he ran face first into the foundation of the building. I pulled a dagger while he turned to face me, both hands lifting and balling into fists.
Lunging forward, I swiped the blade at his hand. It cut into skin, but he aimed a knee for my gut, forcing me to twist away from the blow and lessen its impact. He dodged when I attempted another jab, and dove for me, knocking my center of balance off and forcing my back to hit the ground. It was my turn to experience my own slice of agony, served up when my head hit the unforgiving concrete.
The likelihood of him lasting to an interrogation had just diminished exponentially.
Rather than going in for the kill, Demetrius spun around and dashed for the stairs. I clamored to my feet, racing for him and catching his heel with him halfway up to the main floor. He kicked at me, causing me to slip, but I swung the blade across his Achilles and felt my fangs extend when the delicious sound of his wails reached my ears. He still fought, however, clutching onto the railing with both hands and liable to drag me up the stairs if I would have let him. I lifted my dagger, apt to jab it at his other foot when he twisted around, turning to face me.
His gaze was frantic. I smirked at the expression, lifting the dagger up. “This is not going to go well for you, no matter what you attempt,” I said.
“The assassin.” He breathe
d the title in a state of disbelief, but I sensed more to it than the normal reactions my confrontations elicited. Whatever had knocked him briefly from the fight for survival got visibly shoved into a corner of his mind. He kicked at me, forcing me to let go, and when another kick hit my hand, it almost knocked away my knife. I reestablished my grip on its hilt, but the second delay gave him ample chance to turn and clamor forward. Demetrius could not be deterred, not even when I cut across the back of his left thigh, adding another wound to an already gimped leg.
He powered forward just the same.
Pure force of will brought him closer to the top of the stairs. Acting on reflex, I flipped the dagger, taking hold of its blade and tossing it at his back. It plunged into him a mere few centimeters from what would have been a killing blow, but brought enough pain with it that he finally tripped and spilled out onto the floor.
I rose to a full stand and stalked forward, pulling out the other knife. “Now, you should know better,” I said. “Nobody sees me and lives.”
Demetrius crawled into the kitchen, blood from his wounds smearing across the linoleum. “You’re the reason he never showed up,” he said in response.
“Why who never showed up? Oh, that is right. You were probably expecting my brother.” I laughed when he tried reaching around his back to pull out the dagger. Whatever I had managed to hit internally had him slowed significantly – he still crawled forward, and even attempted to stand, but floundered forward and hit the door to the cellar in the process.
Meanwhile, I finished climbing the stairs. Reaching for the dagger still lodged inside him, I pulled it out with no gentleness and chuckled. “How much do you know about the spinal column, Demetrius?” I asked. Before he could respond, I drove the knife into his back at the waistline, feeling it hit the resistance of bone and producing the unholiest of screams from my target. His legs gave out, sending him to the floor spilled out in an unceremonious manner.
