Darklands: a vampire's tale

by Donna Burgess

  The young girl screamed, and Susan wrapped her arms around her, pinning her.

  “This is not for her to see,” Devin said, and his voice rasped like a wild creature attempting to form words that were unfamiliar.

  Susan pressed her lips to the girl’s pink seashell ear, breathing in the smell of cheap shampoo, last used days ago, and cherry lip balm. “Go on, now. Go and find your way home to your parents. Or you’ll end up dead. Like me.” She let go of the girl. The girl stumbled away, losing her unlaced boot. In a moment, she had vanished into the night.

  “What the hell?” the man said. “You know what you just did?”

  “Actually, I do,” Devin said.

  “You owe me for the drinks. And who are you, anyway? Her father? Some kind of super-fucking-hero?”

  Susan laughed loudly, unsure why it was funny to her. Perhaps it was the liquor. No matter—the man’s terror was comical. This disgusting creature was afraid of dying, afraid of the very same thing that he had planned for the girl. He would have killed her, and he would have violated her corpse until she became too deteriorated to keep. The detective in Susan knew the profile, and perhaps it took a monster to know one. But, some monsters were worse than others.

  Devin vanished and reappeared behind the man, a wondrous trick that Deathwalkers came by easily enough. He threaded his fingers through the man’s thick hair and shoved him with a motion that appeared fluid and easy. The man sailed through the plate glass, shattering the entrance of the grand hotel until it appeared like a gigantic spider web. The man landed in a broken heap in the darkened lobby. Blood ran from him, an expanding pool of black ink in the darkness.

  Glancing back at Devin, he reached up and grabbed the top edge of the front desk. Sobbing, slobbering, groaning, he dragged himself up.

  Devin stepped through the shattered entrance, and Susan followed. The man had shit himself; she smelled him now like a dozen soiled baby diapers.

  “What do you want from me, motherfucker?” he screamed. Blood bubbled from his lips and nostrils.

  Susan felt her adrenaline kick in. She tried Devin’s little vanishing and reappearing trick, but she was still a baby when it came to those ancient ways. Her form wavered a moment before she found herself before the trembling man. She lacked Devin’s concentration when the hunt was on. She was impatient.

  She put her hand up. “Here. Don’t be frightened. Maybe I’ll save you from him,” she said sweetly.

  “Please,” the man whispered. He placed his hand against hers, the warm blood sealing their touch for an incredibly intimate moment. “Sweet Jesus, please,” he pleaded again.

  Blood pumped too hard and too rapidly in Susan’s brain. It thrummed inside the hollows of her ears like a bass drum. It throbbed deep inside her groin and made her nipples harden.

  She smiled demurely and slipped her hand around the man’s meaty forefinger. She snapped it back before he could pull away. The man howled; she twisted the digit around, the bones like twigs underfoot, and then free of stringy meat.

  “Oh motherfucker! Shit, kill me now.” He held his maimed hand in front of his face, the blood creating a shiny crimson glove.

  Susan bit off the fleshy pad at the tip and spat it back into the man’s anguished face. Blood trickled from both ends, thickening to a syrupy, gluey consistency. Reasoning was beyond her now. The creature, this perverted animal, deserved whatever horrible thing they delivered him. She allowed the shackles of her humanity to slip away like an old coat.

  She laughed, and then slipped the dismembered finger into her mouth. The man’s blood was sour, and she knew immediately that he carried disease inside him, cancer, perhaps, or maybe something that would have been contagious to mere mortals.

  No matter, she couldn’t stop now. She drew the bloodied tip along the line of her lips, creating a madwoman’s grin and then casually tossed the rest of the finger back to its owner.

  “Here. You can have it.”

  It bounced off the front of his coat and dropped to the floor. He again put his ruined hand up, looked at it and gasped.

  “I need a doctor, you bitch,” he wailed.

  “You need an undertaker, you fuck,” Susan answered.

  Devin grabbed the man’s face, his fingers sinking deep into the flabby jowls until they disappeared into the depth of fat. Blood ran. The man screamed again, muffled, comical, and pathetic. Devin lifted him as if he were the weight of a rag doll and tossed him behind the front counter.

  Like a cat, he sprang onto the counter and glared down at the fat man. “How do you like being scared?”

  “I-I don’t like it,” the man blubbered. “Listen. I’ve learned. I’ll never touch another one.”

  “Another what? You don’t even know what you were doing wrong. Say it!” Devin yelled.

  “A child. A little girl. Never again.”

  Susan couldn’t see the man now, but she could imagine him lying in a soft heap on the floor among papers and file cabinets. She leapt onto the counter next to Devin.

  “Pedos never stop,” she said. “I used to be a cop, so I know.”

  Devin dropped to the floor soundlessly and loomed over the broken, bloody man. He reached down, lifted the creep by his collar and draped him backward over the counter. Susan leaned over him and showed him her fangs.

  “Jesus, don’t.”

  Devin yanked the man’s head back and exposed his thick neck, offering the vein to Susan. She kissed the man’s bleeding lips, licking away the dark blood.

  “In your heart, you know you deserve it,” she told him. Then, she tore out his throat like a rabid wolf.

  He did deserve it.

  Still, when Susan saw her reflection peering back at her through the shattered glass of the hotel portico, she felt sick. The man’s rancid blood threatened to come up, and she placed her hand to her mouth. The thousand-faced ghost in the glass did the same. She had blood in her hair and blood on her cheeks, like a child with an ice cream sundae. Her clothes were stained black in the weak blue lights that bled from the streets.

  What was she? She sobbed, a foreign sound coming from her lips.

  Devin moved slowly toward her, concerned. With his thumb, he wiped at thin line of dark blood at the corner of his lips.

  “Susan?”

  She fled through the yawning hole in the glass and out into the chill of the winter night. She ran down the breezeway alley between two hotels and toward the beach. Her breath came out like speech balloons in a comic book. Her heart was beating too fast for a dead woman.

  Her eyes teared, and she couldn’t stop rubbing them. At the lapping edge of the water, she collapsed and vomited until her stomach was as empty as her soul.

  Breathless, she washed her hands and face in the icy tide. It numbed her hands and fingers immediately, but she loved the feel of it, the soft foam like lace across the backs of her knuckles, the crash of the waves against her knees as she sank down into the sand.

  She felt so bad, so tired. She fell back on her ass in the cold water. She couldn’t get the little girl out of her head. And why was that? She had seen that shit over and again, and she had never felt anything more than a passing indifference. What had changed tonight?

  Devin? Devin picturing his own child in that situation, perhaps? Herself and her own lost child?

  It was someone’s child, after all. Part of her wished she could take down every single perverted lowlife in this world like the one they had drained tonight, but how much of herself would she lose in the process?

  Devin appeared beside her. He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. He led her up the beach, onto dry sand. From the pocket of his big coat, he produced a half empty bottle of the tequila they had drank in the bar. He plopped down on the beach and pulled her down onto his lap. He kissed her, then offered the bottle. She took it greedily.

  “What’s going on, Susan?”

  She wiped her mouth with her wrist and passed the bottle back. “I don’t know, Devin.”

&nb
sp; He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not growing a conscience, are you?”

  She laughed. “Never.”

  He smiled, gorgeous in the moonlight. “Maybe you should. I know it’s in there somewhere.”

  She lay back on the sand. “How much good is a conscience to a killer, Devin?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  The sound of the waves was hypnotic, and the salty scent of the ocean reminded her of beach trips with Peter and her parents when she was a kid. Above them, the stars glimmered like diamonds on a windshield.

  They remained quiet on the beach for a while, drinking, and her mind meandered, dulled from drink and feeding. She wondered if it was Christmas yet, and she asked Devin.

  “Christmas? I love Christmas.” He laughed. “You’ll know when it’s Christmas, believe me. John is like Father Christmas. Lights. Wine. Gifts. He’s just an oversized boy.”

  Last year’s Christmas with Michael, they had stayed awake most of the night talking, giggling, and for a while, she had felt like she had a long time ago, before Peter’s death. He had held her, and they had watched a cheesy kid’s holiday show.

  She shrugged. “I miss the sunshine, Devin. I miss the warmth on my face. I miss it coming through the window early in the morning.”

  Devin took another drink. “So do I, Susan,” he said. “But you must learn to hold onto things that can drive you on.”

  “Like what? Killing?”

  “Like removing the ones who don’t deserve to be here.”

  Susan took the bottle. The liquor stung her throat, but it was pleasant, salty and a bit sour. Another swallow and back to Devin. “Sometimes I feel like none of them belong. They’re worse than we are, you know. They call us monsters, but humans are the monsters.” She laughed bitterly.

  “It’s the Darklands. That’s what John called it.”

  “The Darklands? What the hell is that?”

  “What you’re going through. This period of uncertainty, of despair. You don’t know what you are, what you should feel, or whether you even have any right to feel. Is it hypocritical to murder in the name of saving another? Or saving yourself? I went through the same thing, but John got me through it.”

  “I don’t need anyone to ‘get me through’ anything, Devin. I’ll work it out for myself.”

  Devin sighed, then leaned over and kissed her temple. “You don’t have to pretend to have no feelings.”

  “It’s not pretend. I just don’t know any other way to be. Why feel anything? It only leads to pain in the end.”

  “Not always,” Devin whispered.

  She turned to him and smiled. “Of course, not always. I know what I feel about you. Right now, that’s all I need.”

  But she did feel, and telling Devin those things created a little stab of guilt in her gut. It was almost as if Michael had never been a part of her life, as if she had always been here in Charlestowne with Devin McCree. It was if she had never lived the life of a cop, never lost a child, never lost a brother, never had parents who wished she had died instead of their beloved son. She felt her old life slipping away, along with awareness of who she once was. It was like the shedding of skin.

  For a moment, she tried to imagine what eternity really meant, but the idea was so vast it was impossible for her to get her drunken mind around it.

  Devin offered the bottle to her again. She shook her head, and he finished the last of the tequila then set the empty bottle aside. He leaned back on his elbow and ran his fingers through his hair. From the street, the music rose and fell like the surf.

  “Devin?” she whispered after a while. “I want to feel again.”

  He turned and touched her face. “You’re not lost, Susan.”

  He played with the top button of her blouse. Blood had dried on it, and he scraped a flake away with his thumbnail.

  “The man’s blood was spoiled. You need to cleanse your palate, I think.” He pressed the inside of his wrist to her lips, and she was surprised by how warm he was. How could anyone think them dead? They were far warmer than any human.

  “No,” she said. She lay motionless for a moment, feeling his blood move through his veins, throbbing as slight as a bird’s breath against her lips.

  “Nonsense. You are what you are, Susan. Now, drink.”

  Sighing, she gripped his arm with both hands and bit down on the inside of his wrist furiously. He cursed at the sudden and unexpected fury of it, and she laughed deep in her throat. His blood spilled into her mouth, and she latched on savagely. She rolled over on top of him, and immediately, she was one with him, her heart in time with his. Salty blood washed between her teeth and dribbled down her chin. She pressed against him like an animal, filled with bloodlust and eager for release. She sucked at the wound until she began to feel slow and sleepy.

  Suddenly, she was pulled back by her hair. Devin had broken her clinging hold, and she straddled his waist, staring coolly down at him. He was already growing pale.

  “Enough,” he said breathlessly. “Damn!”

  Susan giggled and kissed him hard on the mouth. His blood covered her lips and smeared slick and sticky against across her face. He lapped it from her tongue and chin. She nuzzled his throat, licked the coarse stubble of beard on his jaw, then ripped the buttons of his shirt and tore it open, exposing his chest to the freezing air.

  His nipples hardened, and she bit one and then the other until tiny drops of blood beaded against her lips. She moved against him, striving selfishly for her own pleasure. His penis was an iron rod in his pants.

  Frantic, Devin opened her jeans and yanked them and her panties down over her. She kicked them off without hesitation. Roughly, he rolled her onto her back. She tore at his jeans and freed him, then stroked him a moment, wetting her fingers in her mouth and drawing them along the underside of his cock slowly, teasing the pulsing head, until she knew he could no longer wait. He pinned her beneath him and pushed into her quickly. She stared at the sky a moment, at the stars, the clouds passing across the face of the moon, and then closed her eyes. Devin pounded against her, and she climbed the crest of her orgasm almost immediately. In the distance, she thought she heard a baby crying, and the sound chilled her to the bone.

  The sand cut and scraped her naked bottom until she felt raw, but she couldn’t stop moving. Above her, Devin was as beautiful as an angel in the yellow-blue glow of the moon. He kissed her mouth, and then bit her bottom lip, drawing her blood this time. She smelled it and ran her tongue out to taste it.

  When she climaxed a second time, she locked her ankles around his hips and shuddered against him, calling his name again and again. Devin slammed into her faster, immersed in his own pleasure.

  When it was over, he stroked her hair and planted a kiss on the end of her nose.

  “It’s freezing,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

  As she dressed, Susan smiled to herself. ‘Home’ had a good ring to it.

  chapter thirty-eight

  “Joey? Is that you?”

  The voice was garbled with words as loose as sand through open fingers. Frightened out of a light sleep, Michael sprang to his feet. Lying by the fire, he had been as warm as a cat in the sunshine, and now, having drunk more beer than he should have on an empty stomach, he was lethargic and dull.

  “It’s me, Joey. It’s your mamma.”

  Michael determined that the owner of the voice was a woman. He picked up his rifle and thumbed back the safety, but he didn’t raise it.

  He recalled the photos on the refrigerator—Joey and Jeana. “Sandra?”

  “Sandra,” the dampened voice repeated, as if the name was an alien thing. She sounded like a person trying to speak underwater. Michael had heard those kinds of voices from cancer patients after nicotine had corroded their esophagus or jaws and tongue.

  “Yes. Sandra Harp,” she repeated, sounding now as though the name had suddenly triggered something inside her memories.

  She moved toward the firelight, but the movement w
as odd, surreal. She was an imposing creature, looming taller than most women. But closer, Michael was startled to realize that she hovered about six or eight inches from the floor. He had not yet seen this trick of the Deathwalkers. And Sandra Harp was indeed imposing. She was large-boned, but slumped at the waist like a woman browbeaten and tired. Her shoulders were rounded as though a boulder had been placed upon them. Jesus. In his head, Michael had conjured the image of Carol Brady’s 1970s perkiness gone awry, not some Amazon figure dressed in a faded green polyester skirt and a blouse with funky green, white and black doodads. She matched the kitchen wallpaper, Michael thought. He was buzzed, but right now, he hardly felt like laughing.

  “Sandra.” He swallowed. “I’m not Joey.”

  “Not Joey.” Dejected. There was a pause as she stared at him a moment. “Michael.”

  “How do you know? Never mind.” He wanted to wet his lips, but his tongue was as dry as sandpaper.

  “Why are you still here, Michael? She told you to go.”

  Michael frowned. “Wait—how do you—?”

  “A perk that goes with being undead, the mind reading.” She stopped the spooky levitating shit and came to rest on the carpeted floor, but that didn’t make her appear any less frightening. She took a halting step forward, and he could see her face clearly.

  She was the stuff of nightmares, this undead housewife from hell. On the left side of her face, she appeared as he had imagined—almost. There was short, brown hair, styled into what was left of a choppy shag. It was as if she had taken a kitchen knife to it herself. Her face on that side was attractive, if a little harsh.

  The right side was a monstrosity rivaling any Saturday “Shock Theatre” B-movie flick he might have caught on late-night television as a boy. There was no way to comprehend the mess, the misshapen mass where skull and hair and flesh should have been. There were craters in the bone, chunks missing and skin grown over in pitted and scarred patches like that of a burn victim. Worse, however, was her jaw on that side, which was missing. Her tongue moved inside her skull like a writhing creature, exposed, and then hiding as her words formed.