I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2)

by Tony Monchinski

  The third woman got in the backseat next to the other one, the black cat hopping in the car with them.

  The black cat.

  Sarafina should have known.

  “Say hi Isabella,” suggested Emmanuela.

  “Hi Isabella.” Isabella no longer smiling.

  Sarafina looked at Emmanuela in the rear view.

  “Don’t pull the terrorized senior citizen act with us.” Daniella poked the submachine gun towards her. “Priestess.”

  Sarafina took her eyes off the mirror, locking them on the woman across from her.

  “Daniella,” Emmanuela said. “There’s no call for that. Tell me, Sarafina,” there it was, they knew her name. Sarafina wondered what else they knew. “Are you going to answer our questions here, or do we need to go someplace?” Emmanuella swung the amulet in her hand like a pendulum.

  “Ask.”

  “For starters, what kind of magic did your mistress invoke?”

  Sarafina smiled. She wasn’t going to tell these girls anything.

  “See?” Daniella said to the two women in the back, never taking her eyes off the old woman behind the wheel.

  “Let’s go someplace then,” said Emmanuella.

  The black cat meowed.

  The Oldsmobile rumbled to life, backing up and pulling out of its spot.

  Up the block, seated in his folding chair, Lou watched it go. That Sarafina had some friends or nieces or whatever they were. These young girls today, built like...And that Sarafina wasn’t bad herself. Not at all. Kind of quiet, Lou thought. He watched the car’s rear signal flash and the vehicle turned from his sight.

  Kind of quiet, Sarafina, but Lou liked that in a woman.

  Up on the third floor of the apartment building in which Lou lived, the cat named after LeRoi Jones batted his tail back and forth, eyes half lidded, intent on the street. Olga Coyle hovered behind him, a forearm planted on either side of the windowsill, listening to the rumble of Sarafina’s Olds fade in the distance, receding among the street noise of a Wednesday afternoon in Queens.

  The next move was theirs.

  33.

  8:20 P.M.

  “Some of the team were worried you’d miss the flight,” Pomeroy was saying as Boone stripped down.

  “I told him I’d be here.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Boone had returned to the building before the appointed time, Pomeroy greeting him inside the door. The pompadoured vampire telling Boone he needed to take his clothes off, make sure he wasn’t smuggling anything back in he shouldn’t be.

  “Hey, let me ask you a question, girlfriend.” Boone noted the way Pomeroy watched him undress, the interest the undead fag took in his disrobing, figured he could use it to his advantage. “You there when I got my guts ripped out for me?”

  “I was there.”

  “You were there, taking your notes.” Boone had his shirt off, flexing the muscles in his arms, running his hand across his chiseled stomach. “Helping Rainford write his biography or whatever.” Boone fingered his stomach. “Can’t even tell now, can you?” Saw the way the vampire was watching him. “You play up that princess act for me, right sugar?”

  “Oh, behave.”

  “Got that Stray Cats strut, don’t you Papi?” Before Pomeroy could respond, Boone unbuckled his pants. “Don’t worry. I won’t let Halstead catch us talkin’ sweet.”

  “I may sport a Madame de Pompadour, but I’m no queen.”

  “Whatever you say, sista. I got no problems with you cause you queer.”

  “Then what exactly is your problem?”

  “You’re a dead fuck.” Boone pulled his pants down. “I can’t stand you bloodsuckers.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is what it is. You guys were smart, you’ll kill me before I kill you.”

  “Is that what you think?” Pomeroy watched him standing there in his underwear, the vampire seemingly intoxicated.

  “Know what I think?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You fucks won’t kill me.” Boone turned around, arms raised at his side, let the vampire see he wasn’t concealing any weapons on his upper body, his legs. “You’ll try to use me to do your dirty work, but you’ll see—I’ll get free.” Boone faced Pomeroy again, dropped his drawers. “And I’ll come back, pay each of you a visit. Warn you now I won’t be so nice.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  “You want me to bend over? Make sure I don’t got a stake up my ass?”

  “No, that will be all. Put your clothes back on.”

  “I want to talk to the man,” Boone lifted his chin, indicating the upper levels of the building.

  “What if he doesn’t want to talk to you?”

  “Tell him I just want to listen.”

  “Listen?”

  “He never finished his story. Tell him I’ll be quiet and pay attention.”

  “You can’t be serious?”

  Boone gave him a look that let Pomeroy know he was.

  “Fine. I’ll talk to him. If he grants you an audience, I’ll come and get you.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  The Dark Lord’s Tale, Part 3

  How is one to distinguish a demon should it appear? How is one to recognize its temptations as the surety of evil, as tidings of woe and nothing more? Many will warn of the cleaved foot or horned carapace, of the unholy merging of the human and the animal in one perverse form. Huwawa towered like the Cedar Mountains of which he was sentry. And his face: a horrific disarray, ropy coils of intestine. His breath alone enough to kill. Undoubtedly Gilgamesh and Enkidu knew what they faced as they slew the fiend.

  But enough of demons supernatural. What of a man who comports himself in evil ways? What then of a vampire? And how are we to react when the one we thought we knew reveals his underlying malevolent nature, acting such to realize malign intent?

  The abhorrence with which we behold evil in its many and sundry forms.

  I imagine Elizaveta’s husband would have felt something of the same for his wife, had he suspected her complicity in the act that cost him his family. And for a week following our act, I thought perhaps he did suspect. For a week after the children’s bodies washed ashore I did not see her. Elizaveta dared not steal from out the house. To all who came by to offer their condolences, she feigned grief. Her husband’s distress was genuine. I watched all from my place, ensconced atop their home in the shadows after dusk.

  And having thus spoken I return to where I last began, the exordium of this dispositio.

  The mourners arrived, strangers in the dead of night. Lady Hawthorne she called herself, along with her “brother,” though they bore no familial resemblance. The lady was given to plume-covered hats and bell-shaped gowns flattened in the front, rounded in the rear. The purported brother, English as she or so it appeared, cast an observant eye to his surroundings. He wore a knee-length frock coat over a buttoned vest and trousers. His leather buckled gaiters similar to those worn by the Swiss army. His ruddy face and lean, muscular physique seemed at odds with his trappings.

  An Arab accompanied them, a gentleman of medium height who stood out for the turban he wore above his dark suit and upstanding collar. With the Arab was a boy, apparently his son. Also travelling in their company, a Russian Orthodox clergyman replete with greying beard, attired in the black robes of his station. In my mind, I immediately dubbed him the patriarch.

  A wagon bore their gear and, at one point, when the servants of the house went to offload it, Master Hawthorne quickly intervened. He admonished the household staff, instructing that the goods born should be transferred into Elizaveta’s grandmother’s house the following day. He replaced the tarp that had been partially removed as he spoke, but not before I glimpsed strange appurtenances—contraptions foreign to my eyes, and bear in mind my eyes had seen much.

  I watched all this from my place among the eaves. It was there I witnessed the house’s preparations for the burial; there I s
pied upon the husbands’ near catotonia, the man frozen with grief; and there that I befriended the Arab’s boy. He appeared on the roof one night, quite unannounced. I must admit he took me by surprise. If my presence equally startled him he showed it not.

  What are you doing? He asked me.

  It is here that I sit and watch, I replied. Without the least trepidation he joined me on the lip of the roof, staring down from the height to the grounds far beneath us.

  His name was Aalam and he was a lad of eight years, the picture of a miniature Victorian gentleman. His suspenders held twill knickers in place, and though he chose to forego a jacket in this chill evening air, he wore a straw hat. He clutched this straw hat to his chest on the lip of the abyss, less an errant gust topple it from his head and send it spiraling to the grass. To him, I appeared also a boy, perhaps a year older than himself. Did he mistake me for the offspring of some servant? He did not say. A sense of adventure had drawn him to this roof, a place he should not be, and he was delighted to have found another whom he adjudged like-minded in his mischevious ways.

  I am unlike other children, Aalam confessed. I told him that I was also unlike other children he might meet. I inquired if the Arab was his paterfamilias and he confirmed it. My father is not like me. Thinking of Vinci, I concurred that my father and I were equally disparate. Aalam smiled upon hearing this, imaging he had found a kindred spirit. I asked him of the others with whom he travelled. He went on at some length about Lady Hawthorne, marveling upon her beauty and the fine silk of her dresses. I enquired if he knew the Lady and her brother from England, to which he confessed the man was no true brother to the lady. Oh really?

  He spoke of the man, of Master Hawthorne occupying himself in the day, whittling in his room. Whittling what, I asked. Whittling lengths of ash into spiked ends. Aalam spoke of the crossbow the man kept and a quiver of bolts whose heads glimmered in the light. And it dawned on me, that these were not mourners, but hunters, and they were come to Petersburg to hunt me. These then, were the ones my brother Viktor had warned of. The fearless vampire hunters.

  Looking at the boy, I wondered how much he suspected, how much he knew. How easy it would be to reach out, a minor thrust all that was needed to pitch him from the roof. Leonid, he asked me, dispelling my suspicions, would you be my friend? He was sincere and knew nothing of the pursuit that had delivered him with his father and the others to this city of Peter. I told him I would consider myself lucky to have such a friend as he. Aalam beamed and we spoke for another hour, of the places he had been with his father, of the funeral preparations and the grief that had fallen of the house.

  I asked him if he had any knowledge of the demise of the poor children and he averred roustabouts were suspected, though their identities momentarily alluded the authorities. The grandmother, Aalam told me, spent her days confined to her bedchamber in the grip of dementia, calling out for her departed husband.

  When Aalam yawned, he bid me farewell. I smiled at him, promising I would come inside myself momentarily, saying I hoped we should run into one another tomorrow—during the day—and that if we should cross paths our midnight rendezvous would be our secret and ours alone. He agreed, much taken with the spirit of adventure and conspiracy, returning to the house to take his rest.

  I spent that day in our own domicile, thinking of Elizaveta and our unborn child, of the strangers and this boy. Aalam would prove useful, I thought, a conduit of information for the goings-on inside the grandmother’s home. Elizaveta and I would have to leave Petersburg; that much was evident. Alone, I believed I could avoid the hunters. Accompanied by Elizaveta, we would be much more conspicuous. In her early years, as she adjusted to her new nature of being, we would be especially vulnerable.

  As in my early years, constant movement and vigilance would be called for.

  So be it.

  We would be together.

  Of course, Vinci would not suffer the news gladly, so I chose not to inform him quite yet. Of late, he had kept to his rooms and his own divertissements, whatever they were.

  The hunters tipped their hand the following evening. Returning to the house where my Elizaveta dwelled, I found it fortified against my kind. The windows to the grandmother’s room were locked from within. I believed I discerned a figure seated beside the woman as she slept. Even with the windows secured, the stench of garlic from the room wafted out into the night air to my perceptive nose. At another window I spied Elizaveta at her dressing table, brushing her hair, her stomach full with our child. The man who called himself her husband stood behind her, hand on her shoulder. Master Hawthorne and the patriarch patrolled the gardens, Hawthorne with the crossbow the boy had mentioned at port arms. I easily avoided their detection.

  Aalam awaited me on the roof.

  Prey tell, I asked the child, fixing him with my gaze, why are Master Hawthorne and the priest out and about at this hour? Aalam related something he overheard his father and the other men speaking of, that the devil is afoot and haunts these grounds.

  And what of the nature of this beast? I further pressed.

  It is a devil in human form, the child answered. One that feeds from the living, robbing them of their vitality, sapping them of their spirit.

  I asked Aalam if he believed such nonsense.

  My father, his reply solemn and reflective, has all my life related tales of such a fantastical and otherworldly nature.

  Would it not be better, I attempted to persuade the boy, to marshall said forces in tracking down the one responsible for disappearance of the children?

  That is their present task, responded the boy. They hold this creature responsible.

  I broke my hold of him then, allowing my gaze to wander. Aalam blinked his eyes rapidly and rubbed his temple. I waited for him to regain his senses. You m—must forgive me, he stammered, I feel as though I have come out of a feint. I gestured over the lip of the roof, Best not to swoon at this height, though I would steady you by my hand. I clapped him on the shoulder and he smiled, trust in his eyes, guiled by my wiles.

  We continued our conversation, picking up from the night before. Aalam with no clue as to my nature. I listened to his every word, most of which concerned his travels in distant climes with his father. Yet my mind was elsewhere. Elizaveta. We need take leave of this place and its peoples. Petersburg had been good to me, sustaining me for decades. However, just as surely as the armed men below hunted me, the city I held dear was now compromised.

  Tell me Aalam, where does your father believe you go at night? I asked him another night.

  He tucks me under my blankets, and lays a kiss upon my head before joining the other men.

  And what of the lady of the house, how is she?

  Bereaved. She spends her day pining as for the lost.

  Perhaps we could alleviate her dolor, I suggested, with a game.

  A game, excitement in the child’s tone, do tell!

  In the morning, when you see the lady, find a moment to speak to her alone, and tell her an old friend wishes a word with her. Tell her he will meet her where they first met at the appointed time.

  What type of game…? The child looked at me, not comprehending.

  Tell no one else, I stared again into his eyes, deep into his being. The lady will ask you no questions. Neither will you pursue the topic. Do you understand what it is I ask you?

  He said he did and I freed him from my psychic embrace. Yes, this child would serve me well.

  And we would have met each other at the Lion’s Bridge the next night, my Elizaveta and I, if not for the intercession of another.

  Many are the ways we deal with grief. Some forget trauma, expunging the details from memory or repressing them in the unconscious. Not I. The scene I came upon that night, a grotesque tableau lain before me at the foot of the bridge…it remains with me despite my better efforts to forget. To this day I recall clearly every minute, grisly detail.

  Elizaveta came to the appointed spot before me.

 
; She found Vinci waiting for her.

  Perhaps a minute or two, surely not more, separated our arrivals. In those few moments, all my dreams evaporated, every hope rendered futile. When I happened upon the scene, my affianced lay unmoving near the railing. Her eyes stared blankly at the world, the spark within them extinguished. Her lustrous black hair was tousled about her, soaking up the blood in which she lay. The blood, her own, a vast puddle of cruor dripping into the Griboedov Canal below. Her throat appeared untouched. She had been opened at the stomach, her viscera discarded about the walk.

  Vinci crouched a meter away, besides the nearest cast-iron lion housing the bridge’s supports. His head lowered, he feasted on the small form he clutched in both hands. An umbilical cord draped from his tiny victim to the cobbles of the street, the cord jerking in mid-air as Vinci imbibed greedily. Sensing my presence, he looked up, his mouth and cheeks ensanguined from my child.

  Damn you!

  I flew at him, pure impulse and rage. We clashed as two snarling beasts, a terrible altercation. Locked together we rolled on the street, enraged, lashing out at each other, our fangs exposed. Though I was not yet powerful enough to dispatch him out of hand, he no longer possessed the strength to defeat me. Ultimately the advantage was mine, and I saw in his eyes that he recognized such. We struggled until I gained the upper hand, pinning him beneath me at arm’s length.

  You despise me at this moment, he growled.

  And for all that follow! I promised, looking down on a being I no longer recognized. With his knurled and veined hands he attempted to press my mouth away from his throat, a struggle he lost with each passing second, my head lowering inch by inch.

  You despise me and you will for some time to come, he promised something I knew with certainty. But you will come to understand my actions.

  I owed him nothing, he who had taken all from me.

  You will come to follow, he pressed back against me, my jaws lowering.