The Artist of Ruin

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Right on.” Amy grins. “Yeah, we know her. That’s the odd thing about outcasts. Yeah, we’re trying to avoid that whole society mess, but we keep tabs on each other.”

  “Well, it’s still us against the norms,” says Luke.

  Of course, he means humans, but we’re in mixed company.

  “You’re still kinda young, aren’t you?” asks Dante. “She’s been around the block a few times.”

  “Yeah. Our last meeting didn’t really go much in my favor.” I rub my shoulder. “I’ve got a new advantage tonight.”

  “Which is?” asks Amy.

  “I’m really pissed off.”

  Dante laughs.

  I start to shoot him a hurt look, but when he keeps on grinning, I tilt my head in confusion. He doesn’t seem to be making fun of me. You know, like the kitten trying to be angry but their little growl comes off as cute.

  “Maybe I can help you out a bit.” Dante scratches at his chin.

  Amy scribbles an address on a napkin and slides it to me.

  “Help me how? And what am I going to have to do in return?” I ask.

  He pats the table while laughing. “Nah, girl. I like you. Call it a welcome to this side of life present.”

  “What he means to say,” says Luke, “Is that we’re not terribly fond of this woman either, and the idea that one like you might get the upper hand on her is too delicious an opportunity to waste.”

  Amy laughs, and sinks her teeth into the neck of the woman next to her.

  “All right. So what is it?” I ask.

  Dante holds out his left arm. “I’m a Fury. Take a mouthful. For a little while, your anger will literally make you stronger.”

  “Umm.” I stare at his hand. “You want me to… you know. But you’re… you know.”

  He nods.

  “Won’t that have weird side effects? And is it that easy to just ‘borrow’ stuff like that?”

  Dante leans forward, gazing one after the next at the humans sharing the table. All at once, the people get up to go use the bathroom. Once they’re out of earshot, he shakes his head. “It’s not that simple to take, but we can give if we so choose. I will allow you to taste of the Fury within me for a short time. Were you to simply chomp down and drink, it wouldn’t work.”

  “And no, ain’t nothing to worry about,” says Luke. “You probably heard stories about some of the Academics. They can do funny stuff with drinking blood. Control others of our kind, control mortals, make thralls, and so on. Mike’s blood won’t do anything to you. Or damage your ‘Innocence.’”

  “It’s Dante, Luke.” He smirks.

  “Mike was too plain a name for a vampire,” whispers Amy.

  “All right.” I gently take his arm and bite him on the wrist.

  The taste of blood—actual blood, not some translated food—erupts into my mouth. I almost gag on it, but manage to keep a (mostly) straight face. An unusual electric tingle sweeps over my tongue. That’s new. I didn’t feel that when I siphoned blood off of that vampire bitch who tried to hurt Sophia. Dante nods at me once I’ve taken a few sips, so I release his arm and let the fang holes mend.

  “You’re about to ask me what that Pop Rocks thing was, aren’t you?” asks Dante.

  “No, I’m about to ask you what Pop Rocks are.”

  “Poor, deprived, child,” says Luke.

  “Old candy. They kinda fizz and crackle in the mouth. Anyway, that tingle, that was the gift.” Dante grins. “You’ve got maybe two or three hours. The angrier you get, the stronger you’ll be.”

  The taste of blood lingers, heavy and metallic. I can’t help but grimace at it. They find my reaction cute.

  “You guys taste random stuff, right? Not like blood all the time?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Don’t work on other vampires.” Luke scratches at his chin. “Probably means we shouldn’t feed on each other.”

  “Might make you a little upset in the stomach,” says Dante. “That’s why you only drink a little bit, so you can keep it down.”

  I grab a red drink off the table and slug it. Strong alcohol tinged with cinnamon scorches my throat and turns into a fireball in my gut.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have done that,” says Amy. “Now you’re gonna throw everything up.”

  “Nah. I’m good.” I cough twice, one eye closed. “Wow that burns. I can do food.”

  They all stare at me.

  “Innocent, remember? One of my superpowers is… food eating.”

  Amy and Dante laugh, though Luke rubs a finger over his lips, staring at me with mild jealousy.

  I glance down at the napkin. “Okay. Since I’m on a timer, I should get going.”

  “Happy hunting,” says Luke.

  Amy swats me on the butt when I stand. “Go get her, tiger.”

  I sigh at the ceiling. These guys are going to treat me like I’m a little kid for the next century.

  “Thanks for the info, and the boost.” I wave and head straight for the exit.

  Petra Stanovaya lives—check that, she occupies—a house in Medina, right on the water. It’s like a mini-mansion, but I don’t see any servants or anyone patrolling the grounds. I circle around the place a few times, noting lights on in a ground floor room at the north end of the house, facing the bay. The rest of the house is dark.

  There’s probably an alarm on the door, but a second story balcony with an open window gives me a better opportunity to go inside unnoticed. I land on the patio and step into a bedroom, where a man reclines on a bed of red satin. He’s in his later twenties, movie-star hot with long, brown hair, and the only thing he’s wearing is a steel collar chaining him to the wall.

  Holy shit. This woman is fubar.

  I could break him loose, but that will make noise and he’s probably enthralled, meaning he’d actively fight me trying to set him free. Trying my best not to look at him, I skirt around the bed and head to the door. The upstairs hallway looks like something out of a European castle, complete with suits of old armor holding giant sticks with axe blades on the end. Lovely. Counting various swords on the walls, there’s at least thirty weapons in sight. This hallway looks like the ‘arms and armor’ section of Dad’s D&D manuals.

  He would totally lose his mind in here. My father loves medieval weapons. If I wasn’t such a good girl, I’d be tempted to steal one or two. Anyway, bigger fish. I creep down a long curving stairwell into an atrium. A chandelier of like a million little crystal shards hangs above me at the peak of a vaulted ceiling. It’s not on, but it still catches moonlight in a dazzling display like fireflies on the walls. The faint odor of man-sweat hangs in the air, dueling with lemon furniture polish.

  Petra’s voice, cooing like she’s being affectionate with a dog, emanates from an archway along the wall to my left. I just know she’s got people in there. Probably more guys like the one upstairs, reduced to pets.

  While creeping down the hallway toward a set of dark wooden double doors, I think about the guy who almost burned Ashley’s house to the ground, and what Nicole accused Sophia of doing. When I reach the doors, I don’t bother hesitating. I shove them open hard enough to break the lock and pound the doors into the walls on either side with a bang that echoes like a cannon blast over a large, rectangular chamber with a marble tile floor. Four large columns, also covered in rose marble, stand in the center, amid an epic amount of red silk pillows and Oriental rugs.

  Petra, reclining near the closer column on the left, jumps with a mild shriek of surprise, and whirls to stare at me.

  “Bitch!” I shout.

  Eight men lounge on the expanse of cushions. Like the guy upstairs, they’re all nude, and leashed two per column. None are as smolderingly handsome though. They’re far from ugly, but the guy upstairs is ridiculous. One looks about eighteen, the rest between twenty and thirty. No two are the same ethnicity, but they’re all rather, umm, gifted.

  Petra narrows her eyes at me once the shock of my sudden arrival wears off. I’m not sure what I’m in
terrupting, but her outfit is making statements I’d rather not contemplate. It’s some gauzy almost see-through nightie with a trailing cape, an inch-wide gap open down the front. She’s barefoot, and I’m gonna bet she’s not wearing anything under that nightie.

  For once, I’m not the one who isn’t dressed for a fight.

  “What are you doing here?” snaps Petra. “This is my private sanctum. Since you are so beholden to the rules, you should know coming here and threatening me is going to cause more trouble for you.”

  “Bullshit,” I say. “You’re an outcast. The rules don’t apply to you.”

  It’s a complete guess, but the glower she shoots me tells me I’m right.

  “You’re going to leave my family and friends alone, or I’m going to end this right now.”

  “Ooh, I hit a nerve, did I?” Petra smiles, sashaying toward me, as if I’d be at all interested in those hips. “Perhaps I could be convinced to consider a negotiation. I’ll leave one of your friends alone but destroy the other. You pick which one I forget about.”

  “You twisted bitch.” I clench my fists. “Can’t you like do actual art instead of messing up people’s lives?”

  “Did your father’s new lady friend show up yet?” Petra taps a finger to her lips. “Your stuffy old patron says your family can’t be harmed, but… there are many other ways to ruin than physical injury or death.”

  “Back off, bitch.” I narrow my eyes.

  “Do you think your little siblings will enjoy school once all their teachers despise them?”

  “Fuck you!” I shriek, and launch into a right hook.

  The explosion of rage is so sudden and fast, Petra’s expression doesn’t change until my knuckles mash into her face. She does a spot on impression of a badminton birdie, flying headfirst across the room, legs and arms limp, her gossamer cape trailing behind her. She lands on her chin and tumbles over a few times before rolling to a stop against a cold fireplace.

  Snarling, I storm after her. None of the men react to me, all gazing vacantly into nowhere.

  Petra pushes herself up from the floor. Her jaw hangs on tendons, touching her collarbone, both cheeks ripped open. The arrogance in her eyes has notched down a bit, and her expression takes on a note of wariness. We stare at each other for a long silent moment, her jaw reeling itself back into place. Her face knits back to rights, undamaged, smeared with blood below where the rip had been.

  I can’t help but snarl and breathe in hard rasps. Anger boils inside me, slipping free from my control. Every little thing pisses me off more. The little roses embroidered across the top of her neckline—or chestline in this case, since it’s way low—infuriate me. The red tint in the marble on the floor annoys me. Petra’s damn face annoys me.

  On one level, I understand it’s probably the Fury blood I drank that’s doing it, but on the other hand, I don’t really care.

  “You will leave my sis―”

  Petra zooms airborne, flying at me. Oh, bring it, bitch. I launch myself at her and we crash together in midair. We sail past the columns toward the double doors, rolling over and over. I pound my fist down on her back. Two ribs explode out the front of her chest. She twists to the right an instant before we crash to the floor and go sliding. I grab for her, but she’s faster to her feet and kicks me in the tit, sending me in a backward midair somersault.

  I slap face first into a column and fall on top of one of her feeder slaves. He ignores me completely, even when I grab something I regret touching in my effort to scramble away and get to my feet. When I stand, wiping my hand on my leggings, Petra cackles.

  “Aww, poor little girl never saw one of those before?”

  “Plenty. And I don’t need to use mind control to get a man to come near me. I’m wiping you off my hand.”

  She growls.

  Screw it. I’m pissed. I charge at her again. She ducks my overly telegraphed punch and rakes her claws down my side. Shrieking in pain, I spin toward her and repay the favor. She ducks away from my flailing impression of a cat saying ‘F that’ to a bath, but I leap at her as she turns, planting both hands on her shoulders and ripping ten deep shreds down her back. Her nightie’s cloak comes off in my hands, and there’s not a whole lot left of the rest of it. I did enough damage that fabric scraps fall around her ankles, leaving her wearing only blood.

  Petra screeches, walking up on tiptoe for a few steps before she collapses to the ground, shivering in pain. “I-if you wanted me naked, you should’ve…”

  “Claws hurt, don’t they?”

  I stalk after her as she crawls away, her body wracked with involuntary tremors from the agony of what I did to her back. The four gashes she sliced into my side burn like hell, but I’m up by six if we’re keeping score. This being super angry thing is kinda helpful.

  She drags herself over to one of the men and bites him on the thigh.

  “Oh, really?” I look around. “Is this like the boss fight where I need to kill these guys before attacking you, so you can’t keep getting your health bar back?”

  She lifts her fangs out of him long enough to give me a look like I just spoke Swahili, then resumes drinking. Seeing the guy sit there and take it also pisses me off. But then again, at the moment, the sight of my own claws enrages me, too.

  “Grr!” I sprint the ten or so feet between us and pounce on her back, dragging her away from the guy into a spinning throw that launches her across the room.

  Her pale, skinny, naked ass bounces a few times on the floor and slides to a halt in a puddle of blood. She’s starting to look like cherry vanilla ice cream. Of course, she doesn’t have the decency to roll over and die. After slipping once in blood while trying to stand up, she flies off the ground and comes at me again.

  I dash to the left, but she’s faster by a hair. Her claws dig into my chest at the collarbone. I grab the base of her neck, squeezing my claws in as deep as I can. Blood sprays out both sides of her throat. She screams, more blood welling up out of her mouth. Fangs out, she hisses at me, eyes glowing red. I’m sure mine have been out for a while already.

  Not being the only one in here with fangs pisses me off.

  Having her tits in my face pisses me off.

  What she’s doing to my family pisses me off the most.

  We spin around a few times before her eyes bulge in panic at the amount of force I’m squeezing into her neck. She distracts me with a quick claw flick to the nipple. The instant the unexpected pain in a sensitive place makes me cringe, the bitch flings me into the wall. As soon as my shoulders hit, she swipes at my face. I duck; she rips out a handful of plaster that rains down on my head. I spring at her, claws going for her face, but she gets her arms inside mine to block and grabs me by the throat. Before I can savage her abdomen, she lifts me off my feet by a two-handed strangulation grip. In a moment of trapped panic, I kick her square in the groin as hard as I can.

  Petra flies straight up like a rocket, bounces off the ceiling, and crashes down a few feet away, cradling her crotch. A long, low moan comes out of her.

  Remind me to burn these sneakers.

  At a loud crack from her pelvis knitting back in one piece, my knees go weak in sympathetic discomfort. I almost feel sorry for doing that. Almost.

  “Last warning,” I say, my voice part growl. “Stop fucking with me, or I’m going to end you. You messed with my siblings, and that is way over the line.”

  “The dude abides,” drones one of the men.

  “No…” I pinch the bridge of my nose with my bloody, clawed fingers. “Not that over the line. I mean she went too far.”

  Petra drags herself away from me, heading toward another of her captives.

  Bitch does not get the message.

  I jog up behind her and grab her ankle, dragging her back with a squeak of bare skin on cold marble. She flips over and flies at my face, fangs out. With a startled yelp, I leap backward. She fly-tackles me against the wall, her razor-tipped fingers clamped around my throat again. Gurgling
, I slash at her stomach. Petra howls in agony and grabs my wrists, swings me around, and hammers me into the wall, pinning my wrists on either side of my head. Fangs bared, she goes for my throat. Snarling, I ram my knee into her side, crushing ribs, but it’s not enough. She misses my neck, but still chomps down on my shoulder.

  Pain makes me scream louder than I’ve ever screamed in my life. Her fangs hurt worse than that rebar, like someone’s stabbed two white-hot soldering irons into my flesh and left them there to burn. Desperate to make that stop, I ram my knee into her side over and over again.

  She holds me pinned, our physical strength roughly even. Maybe she’s so close to perma-dead that she’s gone freaky strong from terror. I attempt to speak, but my throat’s too shredded to do more than make this airy whooshing sound.

  “You’re cute.” Petra sneers. “But you’re still just a weak little Innocent. This visit of yours is only going to make me work harder. You like my pets? How about I keep you here like one of them.” Her eyes flare manic, glowing bright red. “Do you know how much it hurts to starve of blood? That can kill us, my dear, but it’s agonizing. And it takes decades. Better yet, when everything you love is in ruins, I won’t let you walk into the sun like you will oh so much want to do. Your precious little siblings will all wind up homeless, on drugs, selling themselves to survive to their next beating. Oh, the things I will send mortals to do to them. Your parents will go to their graves hating each other. And you… you’ll be nice and safe here to enjoy it all. You will suffer for centuries.”

  A spike of rage whistles out the hole in my throat instead of the snarl I wanted. Visions of my family in ruins floods my veins with lava. I force my arms away from the wall, overpowering her hold. She tries to crush my wrists, but I keep pushing her back, glaring into her soul. Her milky-white cheeks darken to crimson in the glow radiating from my eyes. There’s so much I want to scream at her, but all I manage is wheezing puffs or wet gurgles. With every inch I shove her back, her realization that I’m not as weak as she thought changes her sanctimonious expression of victory into one of worry.