DEVIL’S ROW

by Serafini, Matt

  Her eyes sparkled with renewed amusement, a maddening sight to behold.

  What did it take to humble her?

  The child whimpered and crawled off to the side, too terrified to move any further.

  “Know what I like most about my kind?” Her voice was thin, but she pushed it above a whisper.

  He hated her one blue eye and wanted badly to gouge them both. When he didn’t speak, drowning in revenge fantasies, she continued.

  “You never know how the animal will affect you during the Turning. In some cases, our hunger prevails. That would be best for our little friend over there. She has already suffered so much…”

  She lifted his hand along the lines of her slender stomach and guided his middle finger to the bloody rivet above her breast, circling the wound.

  His finger was thick with crimson and he salivated at the touch. Tunnel vision took over. He needed that blood and pushed himself up, moving closer to it.

  She shook her head like a scolding mother and urged him back onto the floor. “No, no, no.” She gave a slap to his cheek that was somewhere between playful and insidious—just enough to snap him from the trance.

  Timothy opened his mouth and pushed his tongue out, hoping to catch a bead of the blood that dripped sporadically off her.

  “Will you give her a quick death?” She asked. The child’s wails beat his ears like drums. “When your instinct takes over, you’ll do anything to sate your hunger. Anything.”

  Timothy was like a puppy desperate for table scraps. Every thought dropped off until a singular compulsion remained. Blood. He no longer drew breath, but gasped for air anyway. It was a nervous tick that pronounced his anxiety.

  “Fine,” she said and allowed him to suck his finger clean. Then she touched two of her fingers to her wound and traced one of them around his lips, laughing as he lapped the remnant blood.

  It was degrading but he didn’t care. He tasted the drops with eagerness, nabbing every last bit from the sides of his mouth. The flavor was suddenly sweet, no sign of the bitterness that had dominated this taste when he’d been human.

  Timothy was reminded of sipping his father’s ale as a boy, pretending to like it because that’s what men drank. As a teenager, he learned to savor it for real, washing down every meal with a frosty mug.

  He had grown to like this as well.

  “Please,” he said and reached for her middle finger. It was daubed in shimmering ruby blood. His mouth dangled like a hungry newborn eager for a nipple.

  “Okay,” she purred and placed the wet finger against his tongue. He closed his lips around it and sucked, fellating it up and down until the hunger receded. She wiggled it in mockery and her laughter was precision cruel as he got every last drop off her.

  “More,” he said. “Please.”

  Elisabeth nodded and slid off his hips and onto his torso. Her buttocks glided across his abdomen and warmed his cold flesh through his shredded shirt. She leaned in so that her wound ran directly into his mouth.

  He took her in his hands. The folds of her flesh were soft, pleasing to touch even for his deadened senses. It was almost arousing as his mouth rubbed against her toned belly on the way to the feeding. The smell of spilled blood was an aphrodisiac that ignited his senses.

  His tongue slipped into the creased cut and he slurped it. His strength grew and soon he lapped the errant trails that spilled down her body. He would loathe himself once these desires had been serviced, but he didn’t care about that now.

  Her hand ruffled his hair, a touch that was almost caressing. Her moan grew into more snickers as she came forward to show her killing face, signaled by a serrated smile. Inhuman eyes swirled blue and yellow, bursting and crazed. Teeth resembled incongruous spikes, slicing through runny gums and raining blood all over. His appetite shriveled as tufts of matching black hair burst from her smooth-as-silk skin.

  The wolf attacked his neck, stealing a hunk from it. She shifted and wavered again, trading the animal’s features for chiseled human cheekbones. She chewed his meat, swallowing with a look of discomfort.

  “For you, maybe other urges will win out,” she said with another hard swallow and deep breath. “You struggle to repress certain desires as all men do. Whatever your fantasy, you may feel compelled to act on it now.”

  “Kill me,” Timothy’s voice was barely there.

  “Oh, no. Never.” She laughed again. “I needed you to be strong. That is the only reason you fed from me, parasite. Without my blood for reinforcement, your undead flesh would’ve buckled. Your head would’ve been torn completely off and that would never do. Trust me, crusader, I want you to survive my bite.”

  Timothy tried pushing her off but she was stronger. No matter how impossible it seemed, her sleek frame belied her might. Her arms tightened and kept him pinned.

  “Maybe you’re already one of…them, but do you want to know what happens to a parasite after he’s bitten by a varcolac? You inherit our strengths and weaknesses…and that’s double the ways for you to die. Try harming yourself, and you’ll succeed only until the wolf sets in and heals you. Suicide is not something that we understand.”

  Raven took Timothy’s chin and guided it in the direction of the child. The kid looked on with miserable eyes.

  “No matter what you do to her, you will become a far greater monster than I ever was. And you’ll have no choice but to live with it. Hero.”

  Timothy scrambled out from underneath her, standing. Raven was faster, delivering a shove that hurled him across the room. His head bounced against a stone slab. Heightened vision wobbled and dimmed; then darkness.

  A child screaming in it.

  Hurried feet rushing off.

  He picked his head up and sprung forward without a plan as the door swung closed in his face.

  Balled fists rained against it but the wolf woman was powerful enough to resist. The door came pushing back, bouncing against his chin as it scraped alongside the stone jamb. A mist of shaved grit kicked up and clouded his eyes as it wedged shut.

  There was no way to get it open while he was this weak.

  A sweeping panic attack took firm and he came away from the door a defeated man. The wolf’s bite had not, as of yet, affected him as it had others he’d seen. Throughout the earliest wing of their journey, they’d found several wearing it and the symptoms were constant: terrible infection, attached to a domineering fever that prompted maddening and incoherent hallucinations.

  He felt nothing of that sort and was glad for small favors.

  Until he realized it was because he was already dead.

  Timothy’s hands fumbled for the secret entrance that had delivered him to this demise. It was so obscured from this side that he wondered if it’d ever been there at all. He pushed against the masonry and hoped the wall would depress and slide open. No use.

  What other purpose did this passageway serve if not a secret entrance back beneath ground? There had to be an access panel in here somewhere, some way to get it open.

  He carried out a whirlwind search, burning through his energy as he explored every possible cranny. Pried sarcophagi gave way to skeletons spun in cobwebs. They greeted him with toothy smiles as he spread their bones in frantic exploration.

  Once the crypt was ransacked, and evidence of their entrapment was apparent, stomach acid sprayed past his lips as he dropped to the floor and groaned.

  Across the room, the little girl lifted her head and stole a slight peek. Tiny eyes glistened in the space between her knees and arms. Fear governed her.

  Timothy’s immediate instinct was to offer comfort but he resisted. Comfort would inevitably bleed into something worse, and there would be no stopping it.

  He couldn’t muster empty assurances when the worst was yet to happen, so he rocked back and forth, hoping to stave off the gnawing intrusion until he thought of a way out. The vampire’s thirst was present, but its demand lacked prominence, temporarily stunted by the wolf’s bite. His innards shifted once mor
e, creating a monster beholden to two sets of rules.

  The delayed thirst was certain to return, and it would be on top of something else.

  The hunger.

  Just a few drops of blood off the wolf’s fingers had been invigorating. A little more would give him the necessary strength to un-wedge the crypt door. A child’s blood wouldn’t pack the same punch, though, and he realized he’d need to drink a lot more of it.

  He felt his features blacken and was glad the child couldn’t see him leering at her from between the cracks of his fingers. His sharpened teeth were little more than protruding nubs as his thoughts stretched into the unholiest places he’d ever gone.

  How much can I drink without killing her? Without turning her? I just need strength.

  This consideration killed any altruism he still had, eroding the person Timothy Hackett once was. His thirst grew in the face of her tears, taunting him. Sapping her was the only way they could get free before the wolf took hold and ripped her to shreds. Maybe she died beneath his bite, but there wasn’t an alternative where she wasn’t at risk.

  “I wish there was another way,” he said. It was more for his benefit than for hers. But he rejected the thought as soon as he’d decided upon it. His hand slammed against the floor and he cursed his misery aloud. It spooked the child into screaming. He sprung up in frenzy provoked by her wail.

  “I’m trying to help you,” he screamed.

  Her pitch wrapped around him and squeezed. He didn’t think voices could carry beyond that door, but her hysteria was potent enough that he considered it.

  Someone may come looking for her. If they got close enough, they’d hear something, surely.

  “We’ll just wait,” he said and leaned against the center slab. “How does that sound? You go ahead and cry as loud as you have to.”

  She did. He shut his eyes and tried to think. Couldn’t focus on anything but her agony, though. He stood reborn, a resident of waking nightmares. Satanic images tunneled endlessly through his consciousness.

  These desires were intruders on the brain, startling enough that he nearly joined her in screaming. But that horror faded as he slipped away from the crypt’s realities, his mind crafting a comfortable world of classroom lectures to inhabit. His old friend Thomas Hobbes had labeled this type of willful ignorance the kingdom of darkness, cautioning against what Timothy now craved. It was the only state-of-mind that offered asylum.

  His humanity would hold out for as long as it could, but resistance felt like a fairy tale, unattainable comfort that wouldn’t spare the girl in the end.

  She cried louder, as if sensing the only thing left for her to do was die.

  This was Timothy Hackett’s life now.

  He took an instinctive breath and sighed.

  This was hell on earth.

  ***

  Elisabeth slipped into the dead mother’s clothes. The corpse looked like chewed paper and she discarded it as such, kicking it from her path. Even that was a struggle. Blood-seeped and tattered ribbons covered her body with enough modesty to help her reach Constanta without suspicion.

  She didn’t walk as much as wobble toward it.

  There should’ve been something more than what she felt. Ambling away from the graveyard, she could only wonder about all that she’d accomplished.

  Thinking that she hadn’t accomplished very much.

  Survivor would be a wolf in a matter of days, and the child would most likely be dead before sunrise, a victim of parasitic thirst. That was the preferred outcome, because he wouldn’t be able to blame the animal for it.

  If a hypothetical rescue were to occur before then, it was merely a prelude to a massacre. The details of whom he’d kill and why didn’t matter, just as long as he found it impossible to live with the aftermath.

  Condemning him to an eternity of torment had been her masterstroke. As with any art, improvisation was often the catalyst for pure inspiration.

  She smiled at the thought, but the gesture was empty and forced.

  Was this the smartest course? Allowing him a life of any kind guaranteed that his bloodlust would eventually catch back up to her. As had been the case with the vampire, and even the familiar one before him, it was something that would bite her when she least expected. A vicious circle with a closed, binding loop.

  Elisabeth willing to take that chance when it was the only way left to hurt him.

  Her ratted hair hung in her face and her arm crossed against her chest, keeping pressure on her runny shoulder while holding the torn clothes in check. She laced through a host of early morning crowds, unable to focus on anything. The dagger and spine hung in her hand and she was much too tired to care about how this looked to the bustling masses.

  Unsurprisingly, most of them were happy to avoid her completely, crossing to the other side of the street, or averting their eyes as they feigned sudden interest in the ground.

  She evaded whatever eye contact happened to drift her way. The St. Matthew’s steeple reached up over the cityscape in the distance, still smoking, but without flame. How great it would’ve been if the order’s final defense had set the city ablaze.

  This was her thought as she knocked against the wall. Her head swiveled and sleep became an irresistible lure. The ground at her feet swayed and the contents of her hand spilled.

  “Are you okay?” A young woman burst from the crowd and knelt in front of her. Samaritan hands inspected her bloody and torn rags with a gasp. Her touch was appropriately gentle, as only a woman’s could be. Elisabeth felt warm fingers tilt her head back. She spoke quickly in her native tongue, allowing Elisabeth to catch only a few words.

  She tried a few more questions. When Elisabeth didn’t answer a single one, she took matters into her own hands. Samaritan guided her upright and Elisabeth snatched for her discarded belongings. Even in this sudden haze, the spine was important. She called it “a trophy,” hoping to alleviate any suspicion.

  The Samaritan took it in between two fingers and wretched. Elisabeth grabbed it from her and then dropped all of her weight against the girl.

  “We don’t have far to go,” she said.

  They disappeared into one of Constanta’s many alleys. A back door creaked after several knocks and they were inside a house. Another pair of hands lifted part of her weight and Elisabeth's toes brushed along the floor and then some stairs.

  Female voices spoke, but remained hollow.

  Awareness came and went as cool water cascaded down her body. Cloth daubs refreshed her wounds. They might’ve dressed them, too, though her eyes didn’t feel like opening to confirm the sensations.

  At last, things were quiet and she slept.

  Until the moon glow came through the window and roused her. Her legs were restless and she kicked them to vanquish the stir. A woman in a white bodice rose from her chair and rushed bedside. She took a glass of ice water from the night table and tilted it against Elisabeth’s lips. It was revitalizing, and she smiled at the stranger’s unnecessary display of care.

  “Here, drink it all,” her voice was comforting. “I cannot imagine how thirsty you must be.”

  “How long,” Elisabeth paused mid-question to cough. Her throat still burned, even though the water temporarily cooled it.

  “Three days,” the woman said. “We thought you were dead. Do you remember who did these things to you?”

  Elisabeth wanted to laugh at the question. To mock the conclusion that some boorish drunkard or repressed politician could’ve done this to her. But she didn’t feel the mood was right for antagonism and let it slide.

  She searched for the native tongue that she’d long abandoned, dusting off its syllables with hesitation. She took the thick and comfortable blanket off her legs and found that they’d slipped a light blue gown over her. She pulled the V-neck away from her chest and found that all of her wounds had, in fact, been bandaged.

  Her shoulder ached from where the axe had struck, but if three days had passed, then it was surely heal
ed and she was grateful they’d wrapped it. It spared awkward conversation in the event they checked it again and discovered that it’d vanished. Her eye was also confident once more. She pushed up on the mattress and rearranged into a sitting position, touching her cheek and smiling as she felt only faint scars where bullet holes had been.

  “We have never seen you before,” the girl said. “Emilia knows all of us…tradeswomen.”

  “It is a big city,” Elisabeth said and took another drink of water.

  “Which is why your presence is surprising. I mean, the bathhouses are one thing. Massage boys selling sex behind those walls, little girls brought in to relax the men who crave them. Disgusting. But outside those terrible places? I assumed that everyone worked for Emilia.”

  “Not everyone does.”

  “But everyone should,” this was another voice. Elisabeth turned as the Samaritan entered the room. Her features were less kind in the moonlit glow. She offered Elisabeth a cursory glance before joining her on the featherbed, pressing her palm against her forehead as she sat. “Lest you find yourself on the receiving end of another animal who doesn’t wish to pay for his urges.”

  “I can handle myself.”

  “I have no doubt about that. You clearly know what you’re doing, which again, is why you should work for me. My services extend to every part of this city, even beyond it if the price is right.”

  Elisabeth tipped her head and stared at the moon. “I think it’s best that I leave this life behind.”

  Emilia tsked her tongue. “A shame. I could make a lot of money for you. And these girls are under my protection. What happened to you will never happen again.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “Think on it, then?”

  “I already have.”

  “Better to spread your legs than work your fingers to the nub hauling fish from the ocean.”

  Elisabeth considered this and decided that she agreed, if forced to choose between the two extremes. But only if a woman was free to select her patrons by hand. Emilia might’ve been offering asylum, but the immediacy of her proposal illustrated how she viewed Elisabeth: an investment opportunity, and probably nothing more.