New Dawn

by Sharon Stevenson

  The bruiser grunts.

  “I can’t believe you’re not dead, man.” Mad shakes his head. He turns to the bruiser. “Would you drop him already? I don’t want this to take all night.”

  I jump onto the wall. The drop alone would be enough the kill the guy. There’s an early train scheduled to run in twenty minutes or so if it didn’t quite end him. I know all their tricks.

  “He won’t fucking let go,” the bruiser complains, slapping at the kid’s hands. Mad gets out his switch-blade. It’s time to make my move.

  I jump down, landing between the train-lines and catching the kid when he falls. He’s shaking and pulls away from me to puke his guts up. I catch him and yank him back before he can step on the electrified part.

  “What the fuck, Con?” Mad calls down to me.

  The easy part is almost done. I grab the kid and throw him onto the platform. He groans and I notice the bruises he must have already had on his arm and face. Already taken a beating before they brought him here. He looks as if he could fall asleep on the damned concrete.

  “Get the hell out of here, kid. And find a less dangerous girlfriend.”

  The kid pushes to his feet and runs, surprisingly quickly for someone so banged up. It’s amazing what fear can do to a person. I haul myself onto the platform, knowing I could have jumped to get up there. I’m not quite at the making them piss their pants stage, yet. I run up the steps to the bridge and walk along the high wall towards them.

  “Is this seriously what he has you doing these days?”

  “Man, you can’t just do what you did. You know he won’t take well to that shit.”

  “Aye, well, a dead man’s got to find something to do with his free time.”

  “I’m not kidding, Con. This isn’t funny.” He turns to the bruiser. “Go catch up with the brat.”

  I jump down and grab the bruiser by the front of his shirt.

  “You got a mother, hard man?”

  He frowns at me.

  “Well, so does that kid. So, piss off home before yours is the one with an unexpected funeral to pay for.”

  He glances back at Mad who gives me a what-the-fuck look as he scrapes the stringy hair back from his face.

  The anger that wells up inside me now is potent. I can tell I’m getting close to losing control. And I know if these guys are gone, the family will only replace them with more morally corrupt assholes. What good will killing them do? I have a hard time coming up with any answer that isn’t just ‘all the good in the goddamned world’. Then the bruiser starts to walk away, announcing he’ll get the little fucker and bring him back.

  And that’s more than my rage can handle. I attack with the swift speed of the vampire, punching into his chest and fracturing his ribs. He falls back, eyes wide. His chest has caved in. He can’t have much life left in him. Yet I don’t stop. The sound of my fists slamming into his meaty face becomes background noise to the increasingly shrill protests of my former friend.

  I don’t step back until I know it’s well past too late. The rage hasn’t passed, not exactly. I guess that it shows in my eyes because Mad turns and runs the moment I take a step towards him.

  Chapter Seven

  I used to be like them. Hard and unfeeling. If some guy needed to die for something he did to the family, better him than me. The pleading, the sob stories; they felt like bullshit. Lies to cover up what they’d done. Should have thought twice about it in the first place then.

  Things change. For me, it was when I became the sobbing, pleading mess about to be dragged to his death. It was then that I saw how shitty the life I’d been leading had really been.

  Our rivals, The Blackburns’, had a secret, and I got to find out about it first-hand. The eldest son, Rory, was a vampire, and he wanted to try out making another.

  Seeing that face, the twisted features of something demonic, that was the last time I prayed. I guess it was too late for those prayers to be heard, or I’d shed too much blood already. The feeling of abandonment didn’t last long. The pain didn’t either. I became a monster, thirsty for blood in more literal ways and easy for my new master to manipulate. The demon I now shared my body with was greedy about using it. He killed innocents, and the line between guilty and innocent became blurred in my own thoughts. Too fuzzy to ever really know for sure.

  Who was the man I’d killed tonight? He’d been a killer, ready and willing to murder a teenager for falling into bed with the wrong girl. What else had he been? A doting father? A faithful husband? I’d never know. It hadn’t mattered. All that had mattered was feeding the rage his actions had filled me with. True monsters only care about their own needs.

  My master was gone now, the Blackburn brothers having been killed a few months ago. Their empire had been slow in rebuilding, but there were cousins’ eager to establish the same powerbase, men who wanted to grab the chance to become Kingpins.

  Daybreak is coming and I still simmered in the anger that had been stirred by the actions of my old family. If nothing else, it held Tristan at bay. He wasn’t awakening. I couldn’t feel him pushing at me, trying to assert his dominance. I had to wonder if he’d felt Nisha’s removal from her host. He never allowed me this much control, never.

  Chapter Eight

  The overcast day makes it easier to slip out and check on Dawn. Just making sure she leaves town. Ignoring the twinges of possession and desire that seeing her stirs, I watch from a distance as she brings her things down to a taxi. She’s wearing more clothes than Nisha ever had, smiling like that bitch wouldn’t. The girl is going to be okay.

  I step out of the shadows as her taxi moves. Her gaze catches mine, surprise and something else there as she waves to me, as if I wasn’t the monster who’d caused her a lifetime of trauma over the past few months. I suppose I was only one of two monsters.

  Walking home, I can’t help wondering about Nadine. She hasn’t seen me in a long time. For all she knows, I’m dead. For all anyone knows, anyone but Mad now.

  The door to my apartment is busted open. I walk in and see the kid from the night before lying motionless on the floor, his eyes wide and his throat slit open.

  Caution is warranted here. I can’t sense anyone else in the flat. The closest beating heart is coming from the floor above. Closing the door, I use the deadbolt. The lock is broken, something I would need to take care of later, if I decided to stick around for this fight long term.

  This is a message, a clear one. Don’t fuck with the family. Too bad I’m in the habit of ignoring people I don’t agree with.

  I kneel next to the kid. He’s still warm, his death recent. He doesn’t deserve this, and there’s at least one thing I can do about that. My face contorts as the monster hidden under my skin pushes to the surface.

  “This is a double-edged blade, kid. But we don’t have another choice.”

  Chapter Nine

  My demon hung back while I made my first vampire. He hadn’t fought me for control since I drove Nisha from her human host. I couldn’t assume it had hurt him. Presuming anything would be dangerous. All I know is he hasn’t decided to take me over for a few days. It doesn’t mean he’s gone forever. If anything, I’m becoming more and more suspicious about what it means. It had gotten so I could barely feel his presence any more. Had to be a trap. He’s up to something. I just don’t know what that something is.

  I grab Rob back as he moves beside me. He frowns at me and I shake my head. The girl he was about to go after was young, too young. I don’t want him to get a taste for that. It would only spell trouble.

  The alley is dark and situated across the street from a nightclub that’s closing in an hour. I’d come here before to pick off women. At least, Tristan had. He’d disposed of the bodies in one of the skips behind the building.

  I point to a woman in her mid-twenties who’s crossing the road, looking a little worse for wear. The kind of girl who wouldn’t seem any worse off when she was down a pint or two. He nods and moves towards her.

/>   I watch from the shadows, moving closer to listen in.

  “Hey, gorgeous, want to come into this dark alley with me?”

  If he wasn’t using compulsion to make her agreeable I’d be trying to sharpen his pick-up line. She nods and follows as he grabs her hand and brings her into our hiding place.

  The drunk blonde doesn’t waste any time in pulling my newly created vampire off to the side to get off with. He doesn’t complain, but I’m not here to watch teenagers suck face.

  Get on with it, I tell him, intruding on his thoughts to remind him why he’s here.

  He pulls back from the girl’s eager embrace and does as I tell him. His monstrous face only appears after he’s compelled her to relax. He bites into her throat and I breathe a sigh of relief. Counting down in my head is the harder part. It’s a rough guess to know when to stop, when it’s coming close to too much. Tristan has drained enough women for me to know what the point-of-no-return actually is. It isn’t quite so easy to judge from a distance.

  Stop, now, I tell him.

  He stops, obeying my order a little bit too hastily.

  Seal the wound, I remind him.

  He does so and she makes moaning noises that I don’t want to hear. The girl is still amorous, apparently.

  Can I just… I mean, I won’t bite her again or anything…

  Meet me at home.

  I leave the alley the back way so I don’t need to walk past them. The kid is okay, but he has zero self-control whenever it comes to women. I suppose I should have known that considering it was what got him killed in the first place.

  At least now I don’t need to worry about him dying. As much. As long as he doesn’t hurt any humans, there won’t be any demon tracker types coming after him. And as far as the family are concerned, he’s already dead.

  Walking home, I find my second unpleasant surprise waiting in my basement apartment in as many days.

  “So, you’re alive,” Mad tells me, smiling brightly.

  Chapter Ten

  When a best friend is someone who hides evidence for you, it’s kind of hard to call them an arsehole. Unfortunately, Mad is as unpredictable as his nickname would suggest.

  “I should have moved.”

  He laughs as he lounges on my couch. His mangled brown and yellow teeth are as disturbing in a grin as they’ve ever been. His sparkling blue eyes have always been his only redeeming feature, but whenever he smiles their glint becomes menacing.

  “Aye, I’d say so.”

  “Too bad I didn’t think of that.”

  “Did you get your little welcome home present?”

  “That was your handiwork, was it?”

  I feel the smallest spark of anger burn within as he nods. The thought of killing him turns my stomach. We’ve shared so much. He’d been almost like a brother, at the beginning, at least.

  I’m not sure I’ll have any choice. The monster within will decide, if the conversation goes any further south.

  “We’ve all been wondering how you pulled off that little disappearing act. Plyers already pulled half Allan’s teeth out, trying to get him to admit he’d lied about what he saw that night. The night everyone said the Blackburns’ ripped your head off.” Mad shrugs. “Turns out he wasn’t lying. So, what does that leave?”

  “It leaves a man who wanted out, being pushed to come back in.”

  He laughs. “You think the family want you back?”

  “They don’t?”

  “You were suspected of working for the Blackburns’. Kind of confirmed by the fact that they killed you.” Mad leans forward. “What do you think it looks like now? After you tried to save one of theirs?”

  I move closer. Revealing myself as a vampire isn’t something I want to do. I won’t, not until the very end. My thirst has been slaked tonight, showing Rob how to hunt, how to feed. But I have one more trick up my sleeve, something that will stop the family from coming back after me, something that will stop me from having to do something that would kill a part of me.

  Mad stands up, pulling the sheet off the coffee table unintentionally. The reflection of my face in the mirrored surface is monstrous. I know that without looking. I keep my gaze on his face. He glances down, jumps back and stares at me. His eyes bounce back and forth.

  My smile is slow and deliberate before I shed my human features and show him the monster lying in wait.

  “Holy fucking shitting fuck…” he rushes around the table, trying to get away from me.

  I stick my arm out and knock him back, grabbing him by the throat as he starts to fall. His eyes are bulging as he stares at me, shaking his head.

  “You’re going to go back to the family tonight and you’re going to tell them you slashed my throat, and you saw me die. My body went in the river.”

  He mutters the words back to me, my compulsion working its magic. Of course, it won’t be enough. So, I use one of my sharp nails to slit a wrist and position it to bleed onto his cream shirt. It heals quickly, so I cut myself again, and again until he’s bloody enough to make it look convincing.

  “Where’s your knife?”

  He points to his pocket. I take it out and slit my arm again, getting it bloody. The blade is rusty and gross. If I wasn’t immune to human disease I might have thought twice about cutting myself with it.

  I stick it back in his pocket and let him go. Chances are, the family will send someone else to check Mad isn’t lying. That he isn’t covering up for his old pal. I have to leave.

  Making sure to leave a bloody mess on the floor, I take a quick glance around the room. There’s nothing I’ll miss, besides how convenient a basement apartment is for a vampire. The carpet is fucked.

  “Goodbye cleaning deposit.” I walk out, thinking at my vampire as I left. Don’t come back to the apartment. We’re leaving town.

  New Dawn: Part Three

  Shadow Stalked - Dawn

  Chapter Eleven

  A few days as a clerical assistant, and I’m beginning to feel somewhat normal again. I mean, as normal as a girl can feel when she’s getting over the trauma of sharing her body with a murderous psychopath.

  Nadine has been a godsend, but she’s bound to be getting sick of me taking up half the space in her flat. My room was her brother’s for a while, she told me. He’d never had a lot of stuff, apparently. The only real hint at the room ever belonging to a guy was the blue bedspread.

  I can’t help being curious about him. I know he must be Tristan, or Tristan is his demon. Confusing as it is, it makes sense to me. Or maybe I just really want to see Tristan again. I must be insane.

  Sheila sitting across from me in the office mutters a sad little, “Oh, no.”

  She has a habit of sifting through the news websites for the saddest stories imaginable and bemoaning humanity for them. I don’t want to even ask. But Donna, the petite brunette who sits next to me, can’t stay quiet, “What is it?”

  “This eighteen-year-old guy has been missing for days over in Hollow Grove.”

  I breathe out a relieved sigh. The death and misery she spreads around is normally much worse than that. I don’t know how much more of it I can take. The flashbacks she’s been giving me are horrendous.

  “Oh no,” Donna says. “That’s awful. Do they know what happened to the guy?”

  Sheila shakes her head. “He just went missing one night. Never been seen again.”

  The conversation dies a quick death. My day passes quickly with a steady workload and idle conversations about men and housework. When Donna asks if I’m seeing anyone, I think about Tristan and shake my head. I’m sure the flush in my cheeks tells a different story. She smiles at me knowingly. I have to get over the guy already. It’s not like he was ever really mine.

  “Hey,” she says as she picks up her bag, “There’s this night club in town that’s kind of cool. Want to try it out?”

  I nod slowly, the thought of a night out actually sounding kind of good. It would definitely take my mind off things. “Wh
en do you want to go?”

  She grins. “Tonight, they have an all-night happy hour.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Nadine is wearing headphones, running on her treadmill when I get home. She jumps and takes them off when she sees me. I notice her skin looks different, but she snaps on a bracelet, mutters something under her breath and it goes back to the pale creamy colour I’m used to.

  “Um, what was that?”

  She laughs nervously. “That was nothing.”

  “Seriously?”

  Rolling her dark eyes, she puts the headphones down on the coffee table.

  “I’m hitting the shower.”

  “Do you have freckles?”

  She winces.

  “Sore point?” It’s weird. This is the first time I’ve noticed Nadine being self-conscious.

  Sighing, she shrugs. “I have really dark freckles. I was teased about it all through high school, so I just… I figured out a glamour spell that I didn’t need to concentrate on to maintain. That’s all.”

  “Okay,” I told her, shrugging back as I put my bag down. “I was surprised, that’s all. Didn’t know.”

  “Well, now you do.”

  “I’m going to go out tonight.”

  “Office night out?”

  I nod, though it’s only me and Donna. I realise I need to check the meagre funds left in my purse. I think I have about fifty pounds left to my name. It’s barely enough for a night out, but the weekly pay checks in the office mean I only have one more day to wait to be paid.

  “Have fun!” Nadine tells me, heading for the shower as I go into my room.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nerves kick in as I get ready to go out. I steal a smidge of Nadine’s vodka supply while I’m getting ready. Considering what happened the last time I went for a girl’s night out I’m suddenly regretting agreeing to this.