by Casey Lane
Breathing deeply, he entered her mind as he hummed in a low, imperceptible tone. In a bid to seek her thoughts, swirling patterns of vengeance circled him as he entered. Red tides of anger lashed at the walls of her mind like a choppy ocean. The colors of her thoughts were green and yellow, and smelled of putrefaction. Madness. At every turn, madness.
Mordecai turned his thoughts and mind to Draegan—the strange rogue locked in his glass dome. The powerful vampire paced the length of his dome, hunched over in his own form of repetitive madness. Hihands reached in and out of his pockets, compulsively, as if picking imaginary threads. His mouth moved, but his words were silent.
Distracted by Draegan’s movements, the hold on Karina weakened, and her rage increased ten-fold. Under her own power, she fled from the room.
“Karina!” shouted Mordecai.
She ran toward the laboratory, faster than any human woman he had ever seen, and with her full force, she smashed into Draegan’s glass prison. Her body sunk to the floor, limp as a rag doll. Her bones had snapped, sounding like sparks popping from a fire. Her head had cracked, smearing streaks of blood down the glass. A tidal wave of blood oozed around her outline on the hard parquet.
Slowly, the crimson flow found its way to Draegan underneath the glass wall.
Mordecai watched in shock as Draegan bent down and swept his hand through the puddle, then licked each of his fingers with prolonged and rapturous delight. His tongue stroked the flesh between each digit and dug underneath his talon-like fingernails. Karina’s blood continued to coagulate around her, glistening on the white floor like rubies on ice.
“Get rid of her,” commanded Mordecai, and the guards sprung into action, picking up Karina’s limp body. “Do not drink from her. Her insanity may have nested in her blood.”
Mordecai paced up and down his office in a fit of anxious concern. “Ten women. All insane. Ten infants. All stillborn.” His voice bellowed through the room, shaking the portraits along the walls.
The High Table understood the implications—genetic engineering had failed again.
“Every subject in the trial? All ten?” asked Castille.
“Indeed. Every one.”
“Perhaps they were exposed to some other carcinogen, something outside of the Society’s control?”
“Unlikely, Castille. The common denominator between all the subjects is Draegan’s vaccine for chromosomal alteration, extrogenX. And it’s a retrovirus.”
“Viral? Do you mean contagious?”
The room fell silent. Mordecai was rarely uncontrolled with his anger. “I do. And if that’s the case, we have inadvertently infected the general population, by releasing these women to their homes. They are spreading their virus, polluting the streets with their insanity!”
“We should perhaps not have sent them back so quickly after their delivery. But maybe their madness stems from the loss of their child,” added Castille.
“It is more than post-partum distress, Castille! Look at the facts. Draegan’s vaccine must cause mental instability. Probably from the unnatural manipulation of the fetal hormones and absorption into the brain.”
“What are we to do about Draegan? Obviously, he is no longer stable,” added Castille.
Mordecai sat silently as his mind hovered over the contents of Draegan’s mind. He knew something was amiss. He had scanned every one of Draegan’s thoughts in the past month, and had seen every dream; all he could view was swirls of madness and impulsive energies. But where and what the energy was, try as he might, Mordecai could not see it or feel it.
A barrier to reasonable thought existed in Draegan’s mind, and Mordecai could not push past the superficial layers of his thoughts. He could not peek into the deep recesses to see what had taken over Draegan, for there was no doubt that the vampire had changed.
A flash flew through Mordecai’s mind. Draegan, standing under the glass dome, his fingers covered in Karina’s blood, licking them hungrily.
Dear God, Draegan is infected too.
The evenings in the genetics laboratory were cold and empty. The old building lay deserted and forlorn with inactivity. Draegan sat on his cot, staring at the glass Karina had rammed her body into. A few thin, spider-webbed marks now made their way across the glass, about an inch in circumference.
Following the individual cracks with his eyes, he remembered his encounter with Astrid, and he could almost recollect the taste of her blood on his tongue. He felt her skin break under his teeth and the warm gush of human blood entering his mouth. He heard his brother’s voice echoing through the alley, desperate and pained, calling out to Astrid.
After sifting through the memory, he realized two things. One, his brother was in love with Astrid, which was an unspeakable abomination. Two, Draegan’s greatest desire was to hunt down and destroy this human woman.
Luca stood, attacked by Draegan’s lurid accusations.
“You are a whore-monger,” hissed Draegan.
“I came to visit you, as a courtesy to our familial bond.” Luca’s body filled with anger. “I did not come to be insulted by a detainee of the Society.”
Mordecai had asked Luca to visit his brother, hoping Luca could ascertain any helpful information regarding the infected women from the genetic trials.
“It is better to kill the whores than to fall in love with them,” Draegan sneered, his hollowed face twisted into a grimace. He stared at Luca, daring him to deny his words. “Tell me,” he continued, pushing his dark hair from his eyes, “how does it feel to love a woman? How can you not consume her?”
“You know nothing, Draegan.” Luca turned to leave. “Certainly nothing about women.”
“Really, brother?” Draegan hung from the inside of his glass like a bat. “Is my knowledge of any concern? No. The real concern is Mordecai’s knowledge. Am I right, dear brother?”
Luca felt the inside muscles of his chest tighten. His breathing quickened, knowing Draegan had him cornered. “What is it that you want? Just spit it out!” His words were an order, a plea to be understood and left alone. As he stood, waiting for his brother’s answer, he felt his heartbeat careen throughout his body, every muscle twitching with anger.
Draegan jumped back from the glass wall and like a flash of lightning, using all the force his body possessed, he pounced upon the glass wall. He banged his head twice against the glass, in the exact place each time.
“I know how to get what I want. And no one can stop me,” he whispered. Thick, blue drops of his blood stuck to the glass and matted his hair. In a final crash, glass shattered and shards flew throughout the room.
Luca closed his eyes for a second, covering them from the glass. When he opened them again, Draegan was nowhere to be seen.
Luca waited outside Astrid’s window like a sentry, perched on her ledge. Astrid was asleep, tossing in her bed. Her dreams of the infant girl and butterfly had continued, almost nightly. He had learned her quiet sounds of distress, and peeked in on her. This time, he saw her clawing at her sheets, shaking her head back and forth, and breathing in quick spurts. Pulling her window open, he sat next to her, resting his head next to hers.
Her warmth and scent filled him as he took her hand. Closing his eyes, he emited a low, almost imperceptible moan. His hand vibrated as it held hers, until his visibly absorbed hers. Luca summoned his strength in a meditative hum, willing Astrid’s anxiety to diminish, pulling it from her and into him.
Still, she woke, starting in fear. However, within minutes, she was calm and quieted. She did not know that her calmness was due to the loyal creature guarding her through the day and night. Luca was ever constant.
Splintered Magic
Aileen Harkwood
Splintered Magic © 2017 Aileen Harkwood
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Splintered Magic
I’ll never know what got Coco. Something nasty, with sharp teeth, and a mouth the size of a watermelon split sideways. At least, that’s what it looked like when I found her.
My grandmother’s terrier lay three feet from the edge of the city parking lot, motionless, concealed almost entirely by bushes. If I hadn’t looked in this direction when I got out of my car, I’d have never have seen her, but something made me turn, a flicker of malevolent energy at my back, running its bony finger lightly down my spine.
I hovered atop one of those long, cement block things they put in parking spaces to stop you from driving any farther forward, gazing down at her body. My throat felt swollen inside like I was going into anaphylactic shock and couldn’t breathe. I wanted to call Coco’s name, wake her up, but I knew it was useless. She was gone and had been for hours, probably since the night before.
My feet curled around the edge of the narrow slab of cement in their thin, rubber-soled sneakers, clinging hard as I rocked gently in distress. Wearing my favorite hoodie, skirt, and leggings, all black, I have no doubt I looked like a spastic vulture with PTSD ready to fall off its perch.
“Isn’t that your grandmother’s dog?” a voice asked.
My face shot up at the sound and I finally dropped off the block, feet slapping the asphalt. Pluto stood next to me, so close it showed how out of it I was not to have heard him walk up.
“It was,” I said.
I’ve known Pluto since the 3rd grade, when his family moved to town and bought the Greely Mansion, a pigeon gray Victorian with gingerbread trim hanging all over it, and a first floor that didn’t look strong enough to hold up two more stories, not to mention the fourth-story towers.
Pluto crouched down, examining the largest of the bite wounds on poor Coco’s body. Even in a squat, his blonde head almost came up to the level of my chest. I’d never seen him bare-chested, but from the way his shoulders and chest filled his shirts I imagined he resembled one of those fitness equipment guys who spend an entire 30-minute infomercial, arms and legs pumping away on the Glute Blaster 5000, or whatever. His perfectly muscled chest would be slicked with baby oil—what was with that anyway? you needed to be oiled to work out?—and he’d never get winded no matter how long he rode his glorified stair stepper into the wee hours of the night.
In fact, if it weren’t for the deformed right brow he could have been a model. Still could, if you Photoshopped that away. He was Scandinavian, with resigned features that said he could take up permanent residence in an ice hotel, two hundred miles north of Oslo in the dead of winter, and not shiver once.
Pluto wasn’t his real name, obviously. No one would name their kid that. It’s a nickname I gave him in junior year of high school. Pluto for plutocrat, a person with so much power either through money or politics or both, that they were royalty in a society that didn’t have royals. Being a poor person, who’s worked a crap job for a crap boss since I was sixteen, I don’t like rich people, and his family is filthy with the stuff. I have also never liked that he’s smarter than me. I don’t like anyone who is smarter than me. After I came up with the nickname I decided to keep it because it fit who he was, a Richie Rich, but back then the word plutocrat showed him, I thought, that I wasn’t some dumb local girl. Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you’re stupid. I hadn’t called Pluto by his real name since.
Following that brief glance to acknowledge his presence, my gaze was pulled back to Coco with the force of a tractor beam.
“Bear, probably,” I said, putting forth a theory.
Anyone with a half a brain cell could see a bear hadn’t done this. Not even a grizzly could have made those marks. We don’t have grizzlies around here since this is, you know, California and all our grizzlies went extinct about a hundred years ago. I was in standard operating, don’t-let-them-think-you’re-a-freak mode, however, and suggesting it was a bear was what I thought a normal person would say.
Pluto gave me a skeptical look. I couldn’t tell if the skepticism was directed at my comment specifically or me in general.
“Or a great white,” I said.
I was unable to keep the angry sarcasm out of my voice. Coco hadn't gone easily. I could see it. He could see it.
“We’re at least a mile in from the beach,” he said in response to my great white comment. Was he really taking my suggestion seriously?
“It’s called hyperbole,” I said.
“Besides,” he continued, ignoring me. “The curve is too flat.”
“What?”
“The curve of the jaw is too flat for a shark.”
In reality, I knew it was neither a bear, nor the rare, improbable land shark, but something much, much worse.
“You didn’t think I believed a great white ate my grandma’s dog, did you?”
“With you, Saige, it’s hard to be sure.”
I hesitated, not sure what to do.
“Pluto, I don’t know–”
“Saige!” My name was shouted from across the street and half a block away.
I turned and looked over my shoulder at the person who’d called out. My boss, Andrea. I wasn’t late yet for work, having pulled into the parking lot a full eighteen minutes ahead of my shift, but you wouldn’t know that from Andrea. She stood out front of Scented Miracles, holding the front door wide open as she gestured manically. Working for Andrea, all I can say was the struggle was real. The woman thought she owned me, and I should gratefully dedicate my entire life to her store that sold handmade aromatherapy candles. They were her candles, not mine, her store, not mine. I was a minimum wage slave and didn’t have a piece of it. Yet, incredibly, she couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to live her dream 24 hours a day. Just let me freakin’ come to work and do my job and leave me alone when I’m not there.
“Saige!” she cried out again. “I need you.”
I wasn’t in the mood for a shouted conversation and dug into my pocket for my cell. Holding it up so she could see, I pointed at it, and then lowered it and texted her.
g-moms dog attacked
Instead of texting me back, the phone screeched out the ringtone I’d assigned to Andrea, the sound of a car crashing over and over again.
I groaned. I should have known texting back would be too much to ask.
“What are you doing standing there?” Andrea said as soon as I answered. “Why aren’t you in here, clocking in? We’re swamped. I need you at the register now.”
For Andrea, swamped meant there were more than two customers in the store at the same time.
“I told you,” I said. “It’s Coco, my grandmother’s dog. She’s been attacked. I just found her.”
“Is she alive?”
“Um, no.” That ugly feeling, the one that had me rocking to myself earlier, raked its claws through my insides. This was more than a tragedy. What had happened to the dog was fundamentally off. My senses cringed at the wrongness of it.
“You don’t need to take her to the vet?” Andrea said.
“No. It’s too late. But–”
“Then isn’t this something you can handle after work?”
I lowered the phone from my ear and looked at her. Hopefully, she was far enough away she couldn't read the expression in my eyes or more importantly fear it. I knew the freak side of my nature peeked out from behind the mask I
habitually lived behind, ready to go to war over Andrea’s callousness. I shook my head at her, ended the call and then turned away.
I half-expected her to cross the street and rush up behind me, demanding I get inside now, and get to work now, but instead her spike heels clicked sharply on the sidewalk, stomping back into Scented Miracles. The string of bells on the shop door jangled as it shut.
My attention returned to Coco and what I’d been about to say when Andrea had interrupted.
“I don’t know what to do,” I told Pluto.
What a pathetic thing to say. The dog had died defending itself from an impossible being with a cruel appetite, and I couldn’t manage something as simple as transporting her body home?
“Wait here,” he said.
He headed to his car, a gleaming silver luxury SUV, popped the back hatch and returned a minute later with a blanket. Gently, he gathered up the dog’s slack body and wrapped it in the blanket, carrying the bundle to his car. I followed in his wake, unable apparently, to think independently.
“Let’s go see your grandmother,” Pluto said. “Leave your car here. We can pick it up later.”
On the ride home, I thought about Coco and the huge mistake I’d made that could have saved her life. The night before, after work, my headlights had picked out a dog trotting along the side of the road. I was driving fast and only got a brief glimpse, but I thought it looked like Coco. Except, I'd remembered her lying by the wood stove in the kitchen when I'd left for Scented Miracles at one in the afternoon. She was a medium-sized dog and I couldn’t see her covering eleven miles in so short a time.
