Death’s Sweet Embrace

by Tracey O’Hara

  “Not happening,” Kitt said.

  The ex-Venator closed the trunk carefully, her eyes glittering with an almost fevered pitch. “All right, but just keep out of my way.”

  She followed Antoinette back down the alley, the scent of fresh, hot blood now apparent even to her slightly enhanced pretransformed parahuman senses. Human form was the only way she could treat the injured.

  A whimper came from the darkness, weaker than before. Antoinette raised her finger to her lips again. Kitt shifted her eyes to cat form for better vision, triggering the snow leopard fur to sprout along her limbs under her clothing, but she halted the process enough to keep her enhanced senses while retaining human shape.

  The alleyway opened to a small area where a matted-haired male in filthy rags fed on a sagging human man. A few feet away, a skinny female dreniac in a miniskirt with stringy, sandy hair and holes in her fishnet stockings suckled at the wrist of a human woman who sat propped against a Dumpster. The dreniac female had her back turned so she didn’t see them approaching. But the woman did. Her eyes grew round and hopeful, and her mouth worked soundlessly with three simple words, “Please help me.”

  The two human victims were obviously the nicotine addicts from the nearby Department offices. They had unfortunately encountered some addicts of a different kind. But no one expected an attack this close to a parahuman government facility. These dreniacs were unusually bold.

  “Hey, ugly and skanky,” Antoinette yelled. “This isn’t a takeout restaurant.”

  The gruesome couple turned as one, the remnants of their meal coating their mouths and dribbling down their chins. The glassy-eyed male blinked slowly, obviously deep in the throes of a death-high, which meant his victim was beyond help. But the female screeched her frustration, extremely pissed at being interrupted.

  Kitt crept closer to the guy on the ground. She recognized him as one of the lab techs from the fifth floor. They used to say hi in the elevators sometimes. She needed to make sure he was dead or if there was any chance she could save him.

  One look and she knew it was a lost cause. Blood congealed around the gaping neck wounds and the glassy eyes were already clouding in death. His throat was a tattered mess, ripped and shredded for faster feeding. Even if they’d arrived the minute he got his wounds, she’d never have been able to save him.

  She turned her attention to the other human. The throat was still intact and Kitt could maybe save her.

  Maybe.

  They’d have to get that dreniac away from her if they were to have any chance.

  The former Venator stepped up, distracting the dreniac female who turned, baring her fangs at Antoinette and hissed.

  Antoinette just laughed. “Come on—really—is that supposed to scare me?” She tilted her head a little to the side. “You’ve been watching too many late-night undead movies and, Honey, we ain’t undead. And you sure as shit ain’t scary.”

  The couple seemed a little taken aback by her reaction. The male crouched low and glowered at her with eyes ablaze. Antoinette, the ultimate warrior, unsheathed her sword and answered with a homicidal grin of her own.

  A shiver of fear rattled through Kitt. She didn’t know who she was more afraid of at that moment—the bloodthirsty dreniacs or the fucking scary Aeternus who really seemed to be enjoying herself way too much.

  While they were distracted, Kitt moved closer to the wounded human female, desperate to staunch the blood loss from her wrist. Almost without warning, the male dreniac launched himself, catching Kitt unawares and unprepared. She didn’t even have a weapon to defend herself and no way to stop him.

  He moved fast, lightning fast. But Antoinette was faster. The Aeternus leapt high and flipped midair, bringing down her blade in the same moment. One second the male dreniac was racing at Kitt, the next Antoinette had landed in a crouch with one hand braced in front of her on the ground, the other holding the long gleaming sword behind her back—and the blade now sheened with dark blood.

  The male’s head landed with a meaty thud and rolled a few feet while the decapitated body continued to run a few more steps before toppling sideways. Antoinette glanced over her shoulder at Kitt with a disturbing, almost insanely joyous expression. A spray of dreniac blood covered the lower half of her face, adding even more menace to her features.

  The female dreniac screamed in anger and frustration, sending a chill down Kitt’s spine. Like her partner, the skanky addict flew at Antoinette with long talon-like nails.

  The Aeternus waited, not moving a muscle until the last possible second. Then she thrust up and out so the insane dreniac ran straight onto the blade. The sword entered through the foul creature’s open screaming mouth and exited out the back of the head. Antoinette wrenched the blade out and the female dreniac folded like a perverted version of a blow-up sex doll with a puncture.

  Kitt was more than a little shaken, by both the violence and Antoinette’s obvious enjoyment of the kill. The former Venator’s sinister, bloody appearance didn’t help matters much. The almost black dreniac blood covered the front of her white T-shirt. But the thing that really chilled Kitt’s bones was the on-the-edge-of-insanity glint burning in Antoinette’s eyes.

  The snowfall grew steadily heavier, and even though the alley was sheltered on three sides by buildings, visibility was getting more difficult.

  “Take care of the human,” Antoinette growled as she wiped the blade on the fallen female’s filthy shirt.

  Kitt moved to the surviving human female’s side and pulled the winter scarf from around her neck to wrap her torn, bleeding wrist. The poor woman trembled with shock; her eyes darted around, terrified. The falling snow was more a godsend, helping to slow the blood loss as Kitt tied off the makeshift bandage. She heard Antoinette approaching from behind.

  “This should stop the bleeding,” she said as she turned, “but we’ll need to get her to a hospital for a transfusion as—”

  It wasn’t Antoinette. Another male dreniac loomed over her and licked lips already smeared with drying human blood as he eyed the fresh crimson droplets on the fresh snowfall.

  “Hey!” Antoinette yelled from where she squatted beside her dead dreniac female.

  He turned his attention toward the sound, then at the blood-soaked cloth around the woman’s wrist. Kitt could see his desire to run warring with the opposing instinct to feed and kill. She positioned herself before the human. He’d have to go through her first.

  But fear eventually won out. He leapt over the Dumpster to the fire escape above and jumped from floor to floor as he sped to the top of the building. Antoinette raced to Kitt’s side and watched as he disappeared over the top.

  “After him,” Kitt yelled at her. “Don’t let him get away in that state of bloodlust.”

  The Aeternus shook her head. “I can’t leave you here alone.”

  “He’s going to kill again if you don’t catch him. Don’t worry about me. I’ll call Oberon for backup. Now go!”

  Antoinette stepped toward the fire escape and turned. “What if there are more?”

  “Do you think there are?”

  Antoinette sniffed the air. “No.”

  “Then go. Stop him from killing anyone else.”

  And without another word, Antoinette followed the dreniac up the side of the building.

  Chapter 5 - Into the Lion’s Den

  Antoinette breached the top and looked back down at the felian. Kitt seemed to have everything under control down there, and she was right—in his current state of bloodlust, the dreniac was likely to kill the next human he came across if she didn’t get to him first.

  Up on the rooftops the snowstorm whipped around her body, but she no longer felt the icy touch. Excitement pulsed low in her stomach. Her first hunt. Well, the first since she’d been embraced months ago. And oh, how she’d missed the thrill of the chase.

  In the old days when she was still human, there would’ve been no way she’d take on two dreniacs at once; and to have gone on a
hunt without a pistol loaded with silver nitrate would’ve been sheer suicide. But now . . .

  Things are different.

  Now she could rely on her favorite sword, her skill, and her new Aeternus abilities—the ones she’d fought so hard against at first. And for the first time, she was about to find out what she could really do with this new Aeternus body.

  The male was gone, but his foul stench was as good as a neon sign pointing, Bad Guy This Way.

  However, she could quickly lose him in the thickening snowfall if she didn’t move fast. Antoinette crossed the rooftop in half a heartbeat and followed the dreniac stench to the edge of the building and across the twelve-foot gap to the roof of the next. She took a few steps back and ran, her leg muscles bunching to launch her into the air. With ease, she made the distance and then some. Landing on her feet, and without breaking her stride, she was on his trail again.

  Fuck! That was fun.

  He’d turned left and had gone over the side into another alley. Antoinette simply stepped off the multistory building and dropped to the filthy ground below, absorbing the impact by bending her knees. Then she took off at a run. Something else she could never have done as a human.

  He tried to lose her several times by doubling back or moving across more rooftops, but she always managed to stay on his trail. She hadn’t spent ten years as a Venator without learning more about the devious tricks of the death-high addicts.

  After a few more minutes of scaling buildings and dropping into alleys, she spotted him ducking into a back entrance. The roach-ridden fleabag hotel stank with the sour scent of human sweat, stale sex, and incense. It all worked to confuse her senses and mask the trail of her prey.

  A fat balding man sat behind the front counter reading a newspaper, sweat circles and God knows what else staining the once-white wife-beater tank top.

  “Where did he go?” she asked.

  The fat man ignored her.

  “Did you hear me?” She dropped her voice. “Or are you just plain stupid?”

  A laughing Aeternus male entered the hotel’s front door on the arm of a human fang-whore. He glanced up, did a quick double take as he noticed Antoinette, and suddenly seemed to remember he had an urgent appointment elsewhere. It wasn’t illegal to feed from a willing human, but it was to supply blood for spiking. And the fang-whore was definitely a spiker.

  “Why don’t you piss off, cop. You’re scaring away my customers,” the desk clerk grumbled under his breath, turning the page of his supermarket tabloid. “Come back when you have a warrant.”

  Antoinette punched through the latest celebrity sensationalist headline and grabbed the insolent shit around the throat. “Who the fuck said I was a cop?”

  The fat man’s eyes practically bulged out of his head.

  “I am after a maggoty dreniac who came in here not two minutes ago. Now, are you going to tell me where he went or am I going to have to rip your fucking head off and use the blood to draw him out instead?” Antoinette hissed through clenched teeth.

  His eyes grew wide and dropped to her extended fangs. His breath stank and his suffocating body odor made her want to puke, if she’d actually still been able to puke, but she brought her face closer to his vileness anyway.

  “Then again, I could do with a bite myself.” She sniffed up the side of his face. “And all this fear you’re exuding is making you smell rather”—she sniffed him again and fought her gag reflex—“yummy.” She may not be able to vomit, but she could still dry heave.

  She deliberately touched one fang with the tip of her tongue. His already panicky eyes grew even wider.

  Antoinette smiled. “I’m not really into helping myself, but for you I could make an exception.”

  “That’s illegal,” he said.

  The smell of hot, fresh urine stung her nose and she dropped her gaze to the growing damp patch on the front of his cargo pants.

  “So is harboring dreniacs,” she said.

  His eyes darted to a staircase half hidden by fake plants, giving her the answer she needed. Just in case, she reached over to yank the phone out of the socket.

  “Hey . . . th-tha-that’s—” he stammered.

  She pushed him back. The stool groaned under his bulk. She raced down the stairs and stopped dead at the bottom. Without the conflicting odors above, the place fairly reeked with the dreniac scent, both stale and new, plus a hint of fresh human blood. Her prey had definitely come this way.

  The dreniac trail led into the left of two basement suites. Antoinette nearly choked on the rancid odor of the death-sweat; even when human, she would’ve had little trouble scenting out this dreniac lair. They’d been here for some time, by the smell of it.

  There could be no capture or imprisonment for these insane caricatures of the Aeternus. The Venator Guild had tried in the beginning after the CHaPR Treaty was established, but the dreniac’s descent into insanity only accelerated. Without their death-high fix, they tended to prey on each other, or mutilate themselves. With no cure for Necrodrenia, the best and kindest course of action was to put them down. Immediately.

  Only a licensed Venator or an agent working for the Department of Parahuman Security were supposed to hunt dreniacs, and she was officially neither. The guild had revoked her ticket when she stood before the tribunal and accused them of corruption. But, fuck it. He’d killed and would kill again.

  She was right here, right now, and so was he. License or no license, this bastard was hers.

  With one mighty kick, the door swung inward on its hinges, the lock breaking and splintering the wooden frame. Inside was dark—like that was going to stop her. She wasn’t some weak human Venator anymore. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the lack of light.

  She walked into the center of the apparently deserted room, knowing he waited for her behind the door. But she was more than a match for him.

  The door slammed shut. She flexed her hand around the katana before turning to confront him.

  He grinned insanely. The drying human blood was caked on his mouth, making him look like a clown—the kind that sends children screaming in terror to hide under their beds.

  Antoinette slipped the sword from its sheath. “So, Pennywise . . . here we are.”

  Kitt kept the pressure on the wound. It wasn’t as bad as it first looked, though it would depend on how much they’d drained from her. The woman’s cheeks still maintained a hint of color; her lips were blue from cold rather than blood loss.

  Kitt lay the unconscious human down and shrugged off her own jacket to keep the patient warm. With some old boxes from the trash, she elevated the woman’s feet. After she checked the scarf-wrapped injury, Kitt fumbled a cell phone from her trouser pocket with one hand while she kept the pressure on her wrist with the other.

  On the second key press, something smashed into her wrist and sent the phone flying. She spun, ready to defend her patient, covering the human’s body with her own.

  Nothing. No one.

  The heavy snowfall reduced her visibility to a few feet, but the hair on the back of her neck prickled. They were not alone. The woman groaned as she started to gain consciousness. Suddenly her eyelids flung open.

  “Shh,” Kitt said as she moved the human’s unhurt hand to the scarf-wrapped wrist. “You have to press hard on this.”

  The frightened woman’s eyes darted back and forth, sheer terrified panic rising in their depths. Her teeth were chattering from cold fear, and trembling set in from shock. Kitt really needed to get her warm, preferably out of this weather. But no one would hear her, not with this snowstorm.

  “Hey, you’re all right, you hear me?” Kitt said, pushing down her own fear and clicking her fingers in front of the woman’s face. “Here, look. Look. At. Me. It’s going to be okay, I’m a doctor. Do you understand?”

  The human’s eyes settled and focused, her teeth clacking vigorously as she gave Kitt a shaky nod.

  “Good.” Kitt let out a sigh. “Now, keep up the pressure. Okay?”
/>   The human nodded again.

  “I need to call for the paramedics.” And some help.

  Kitt tried to keep her voice calm and her face neutral. She didn’t want to spook her patient. The dark alley felt much more dangerous than it had a few minutes ago, and she wished she hadn’t sent Antoinette away.

  The woman’s mouth opened and shut rapidly, her eyes growing impossibly round as the snowflakes melted on her cheeks. “Please,” she croaked “please don’t leave me.”

  “Don’t talk. I won’t be far.” Kitt climbed to her feet and crossed to where her phone had landed.

  Nothing moved. But the gnawing cold grip of fear didn’t lessen in the pit of her stomach. Her hands shook as she bent to pick up the cell and something slammed her against the wall. The force pushed the air from her lungs and showered her with ice and bits of broken masonry. Dazed, she pulled herself into a sitting position and was roughly helped to her feet before being thrown through the air to smash upside down against the opposite wall.

  It took a few seconds for the flashy stars to stop and her vision to return to normal. When her head stopped spinning, she found the alley empty again and the falling snow had quickly obliterated any footprints.

  Kitt was a doctor, not a fighter, and wasn’t prepared for this. Her terror froze her where she lay. Then with thought of her patient, helpless and unprotected, everything shifted. For the second time tonight, the long dormant wildness inside her awoke—the nature of her family, the very nature she’d fought so hard to suppress since she’d moved away from the reservation to live among the humans. She gave in to it because she had a human life to protect.

  The woman lay a few feet away, her terrified panting breaths so fast Kitt was afraid she would hyperventilate. A lazy female chuckle crept out of the darkness, from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Even with her eyes shifted into snow leopard mode, she couldn’t see where it came from.