Slayer: Black Miracles

by Karen Koehler

  The big slayer with the long black hair and coat had won. Were that him down there, Brett knew he would be retching his goddamn guts out right about now. Jesus, but he could smell the death of the thing even through the closed window, a cool and evil smell that sent his flesh crawling. But instead of retching, the slayer found a wall to lean against and worked on catching his breath. Sheathing his sword somewhere under his coat, the slayer started to explore the wound in his arm. It looked damp and painful and infected, even from what Brett could see of it.

  Then it occurred to Brett, the way the slayer was turned, all the thing had to do was glance up and he would catch clear sight of Brett and his camera. What the hell was he thinking? Almost frantic now as the paralysis of what he had witnessed let him go, Brett hit the stop button on the camcorder.

  The slayer looked up. He had heard the switch of the button through the glass.

  Jesus God.

  He was staring right at the goddamn thing. Right into its eyes. It had brown eyes flecked with crimson. Nothing had eyes like that. Goddamn nothing. It looked right back at him, right into his eyes as if seeking something, and Brett started to shudder inside and out so badly he nearly lost his hold on the camera. No, nothing had eyes like that. Nothing at all. Dead eyes, they were. The eyes of a natural-born killer used to preying on Brett’s kind. Used to preying on whatever crossed its path.

  Move, goddamnit! Brett ordered himself. Fucking move it!

  The thing blinked balefully up at him, and then Brett was moving. Tearing his eyes off the thing—he didn’t want to, what if it followed? How could he watch it and get away at the same time?—he bolted for the Porsche at the end of the drive. It was behind him, Brett knew it was. Right there, breathing down his neck quite literally, and when it caught him it would be the sword Brett would know, that sword and those eyes. He would know them both all too intimately.

  Brett was whimpering by the time he reached the Porsche. Thank God he had left the driver’s side door open. He didn’t think he could manage the keys. Pulling at the door so that he nearly ripped it off the car, he threw himself inside and shut it with the sound of a vault being slammed.

  Silence.

  Brett was trembling so badly he could barely grasp the steering wheel, yet grab it he did. He fumbled with the keys for a full half minute before he got the motor running, all the while not looking through the driver’s side window, certain that a katana was going to come crashing through the glass at any moment and shiv him through like a side of beef. He could see it happening.

  Brett wasted no time. Grinding the gears and stomping on the gas, Brett took off like the proverbial bat out of hell. He didn’t dare glance in the rearview mirror until he was off the unpaved drive and onto River Drive

  again. Then he looked.

  The slayer was there, standing on the rocky drive, limned in a narrow halo of illumination from the security lights. His coat burned as if with a blue flame and his hair shone crimson in the weird lighting. And there was something else, something flashing under his very long coat—the stainless steel of his sword, Brett supposed. The slayer had not gone very far from the warehouse but it was watching him with a kind of animal-like curiosity, head tilted slightly, burning white eyes narrowed.

  Brett wondered two things at once: he wondered what the expression on its face meant and he wondered if he would see it again, someday, someday soon.

  8

  The horror was immortal. A sheet over her face blocked her vision and the temperature around her numbed her to the bone. Cold. She was so fucking cold. She was hardly breathing so there was nothing really to smell, but she knew, despite the utter deprivation of her senses, that she was in a morgue. She had heard its cold echoes on arriving, had felt herself slide into a drawer and heard the door close like a seal. Now, as she lay listening, she heard the hum of the refrigeration units around her while she dreamt nightmares and wished the police had not found her body. Maybe then she might have awoke in a dark alley somewhere and been able to crawl back to life, or death. Better that than to have been found by the idiot cops and the bastard coroners and now lie here in this hated purgatory of stainless steel and pray to God that someone found her before she froze to death. She prayed Lilly would not have to see her like this.

  Lilly…

  But before she could even complete the thought, another took its place. There might be an autopsy. She felt her entire body contract with fear. Was this what death was like? And what would it feel like, to lie naked in running water on cold steel as she was sliced from neck to groin and her body turned inside out?

  Her heart thrummed with fear. Her heart! But that meant she could not truly be dead. But it hurt, her heart. Every beat was its own separate agony, sending out ripples of fresh new clenching pain throughout her body. She felt every inch of herself. Every bone and every vein and artery. She was a network of never-ending throbbing pain.

  She cried but it was a tearless weeping. She had no tears. She had nothing. She could not even move, her body too leaden and broken around her. Who had done this to her, who…?

  The cold… the waves of pain…

  She made a strangled sound in her throat, but it did not come from her mouth. Instead it seemed to hiss from her very throat, a wretched noise she associated with people who smoked through tracheotomies. Jesus. Her body… what had become of it? She didn’t know, couldn’t remember, but whatever it was, she was still alive, and lying in a morgue locker and dying again, this time of the pain and cold. Could she attract attention by pounding on the door?

  She tried, but she could not move. Could she hang on until they took her out for the autopsy? She tried to stay alert, thinking that by doing so she could fight off hypothermia, but she must have dozed because the motion of the drawer sliding out startled her. She had not heard the door open. Light blinded her as the sheet came off.

  “Would you look at that?” came a scouring male voice, musing to itself. “Fucking goddamn shame. I could do a girl like you, sweetheart.”

  Someone touched her face, then ran an invading hand over her breasts and then between her legs. The violation triggered something, a memory, but too dark and vague for her to hang onto for very long. A fleeting image… eyes like diamonds… a pain splitting cattycorner through her womb and another at her throat… being absorbed… being food for some beast… and then pressure built inside her and all she had was the pain and the resulting anger, the immortal rage… rage… rage…

  “Do me,” she said, hoarse.

  Silence.

  She had said that. She had. Now that she had someone’s attention, she opened her eyes. A gasp sounded just above her, but she hardly noticed. Just above her was the most intriguing thing she had ever seen. She stared up at the morgue attendant, at the cords of blue under the hairless white skin that grew just under his ear. Except they were not properly blue. They were stained by a pattern of shifting crimson. All of him was, as if she had stared into the sun too long. The brilliant webwork bobbed as the man swallowed in surprise and tried to back away. Heat. She felt his heat, tasted it, saw it, and his heat seemed to animate her.

  Her body acted on its own, with no mitigation whatsoever on her part. She sat up and put her arms around his shoulders, her face in his throat. The skin was tough but her teeth seared it open on the second bite. And then her mind went all glittering darkness as his enormous red heat filled her body and brought the pain to a boiling point at her throat and groin and every violated place before washing it all away in a sore red flood. Her body was pulling the threads of heat from the morgue attendant’s body, stealing it. Her body was taking it in steaming mouthfuls that exploded inside of her mouth and throat and stomach like spasms, each one making her hands clench that much tighter around the attendant’s neck. Finally, the bones crackled under the pressure of her fingers and she feared she was doing something irreparable to him and let him go.

  He dropped to the floor, grey and lifeless like an empty bag, the gaping red maw of
a wound where his throat had once been.

  She trembled, but not in shock. She touched her mouth where the warmth remained. It had spilt down her throat and over her breasts. Her hair was clotted with it. But even as she watched the crimson stains grew fainter and less distinct as her skin absorbed it like the sun evaporating a spill.

  Absorbing it… why? Because it had needed it?

  Because it—she—was not human?

  The panic returned, and with it only one prerogative—no matter that she may or may not be human any longer, no matter the crime she had just committed, she most certainly could not stay here. She had to go. Had to. There was a dead man on the floor, a man she had killed. A man she had feasted on like the beast in her memory had feasted on her. And if she were convicted of his murder she would lose Lilly. She knew she would. She would lose everything.

  Lilly. Where was Lilly?

  She slipped off the gurney and nearly fell to the floor. She had enough strength to stand but her head ached with a migraine and the lights made her eyes simmer and burn. Despite the strength and the warmth in her stomach, she still felt sluggish, lost and old. For a moment she looked around the refrigeration unit and wondered what to do. The body. She had to get away from the body. She had to think straight. Pulling the sheet about her for warmth, she went to the swinging door and pushed it open. The rest of the morgue was silent, but she could hear voices from the opposite end of the corridor, where the autopsy room was located. She started down the corridor, then veered off toward another door that read EMPLOYEES ONLY. Something told her there were clothes there to stave off the chill. Orderly whites. She found some in a size much too large for her but wrapped herself in them nonetheless. There were no shoes so she padded barefoot from the room and kept moving down the corridor until she saw a crash bar to the outside. The voices began to call down the hall, to call for Phil. Phil the dead morgue attendant.

  Phil, whom she had killed.

  As if in a daze, Irena pushed against the door and out into the world.

  Time passed. And she walked within and without it. She was so cold. She found a ratty old coat in a Dumpster somewhere along the way and wrapped that around her as well. Now, looking like one of the faceless legion of the homeless, no one questioned her or even looked her way. She continued down the streets, picking them seemingly at random until she realized where she was going.

  She climbed the wooden steps of the project to the fifth floor and found the apartment door by running her hands along the numbers. Her eyes would not focus. She was so tired she thought she might fall asleep where she stood. But in time she found the right door. Locked.

  “Lilly,” she called softly, staring at the peeling layers of paint on the door.

  No one answered.

  “Lilly.” Louder.

  Nothing.

  Because Lilly is not here.

  No! The thought terrified her. She has to be here!

  Does she? The police and the child welfare people probably have her. You did such a wonderful job of protecting her, Irena.

  She narrowed her eyes at that snide inner voice. Yet she could not refute its logic.

  She went back downstairs and made her way out and down the street to the club, the filthy coat pulled up tight around her and smelling of only God knew what. Evidently it was enough to keep any more attackers away because she made it to the club without incident and wove through the door and across the floor as if in a haze, the music a muted roar in her ears, the stink of blood and sex making her feel doped beyond reason. She sat down heavily at a table.

  It was early evening, almost near the shift-change, and she didn’t know any of the girls. But if she stayed here long enough she was sure to be spotted by Erebus or Jean Paul. She asked herself if that was what she wanted. Maybe not, but she certainly could use Bess right now.

  Could use Bess for what? So she could tell her best friend how she had murdered a man and torn his throat out? What would Bess tell her to do? Turn herself into the police, more than likely. She shivered. The panic was back and more powerful than ever. Something was wrong with her, and she could deny it no longer.

  She wasn’t human anymore. She was something else.

  She was like Mr. Bellerophone. He had done something to her, and she thought she knew what it was. It was impossible, utterly impossible, yet she could think of no other rational explanation.

  Unless she was dreaming and none of this was real.

  Her stomach cramped up as if someone had laid a fist into it, proving that all of this was very real indeed. Too real. Irena doubled over and felt the sweat bead up on her face and hands. This couldn’t be happening. Things like this just didn’t happen in the real world. Things like this didn’t exist. She forced herself back into her seat and made herself take a long, deep breath. There was one way to find out, she thought, and ran her tongue over her teeth. But whether her teeth felt sharper in her mouth or not she could not tell; they ached too badly for further inspection. Her body ached. Her being ached. And it must have showed, because one of the waitresses she didn’t know came by, looking concerned.

  “You want something, honey?”

  She asked for water, except the taste of it when it came was like chlorine and burned her tongue. She needed something, but she doubted what she needed was on the menu. Then she thought of other places in the city that catered to weird fetishes, places like Dracula’s Den up in the Harlem Heights. But that was so far. And anyway, just because a place had an odd name didn’t mean anything. The whole idea was ludicrous. Except for the fact that it gave her a better idea. She hoped.

  She called the waitress back over. “Looking for someone,” she whispered. “Tall. Black waist-length hair. Leather longcoat. Have you seen him?”

  The waitress cracked her gum. “I seen him, but not tonight.”

  Another cramp made Irena’s eyes mist over. “You know where he lives?”

  “No.” The waitress paused. “I think a few working girls know, though. Velvet does. He beat the shit out of her pimp a few days ago.”

  “Velvet… where…?”

  “Can’t help you, sweetheart. I don’t know the beat anymore.”

  The waitress, looking uncomfortable, found some new customers to wait on.

  Irena rose from the table, steadied herself, and moved toward the door. It was better she had some air anyway. The cramped smoggy air of the club was choking her, making her sick. Outside, the snowy night air tasted wonderful. Velvet. She knew where some of the girls hooked outside the club; many of them took their coffee breaks in the café across the street from Club Bauhaus.

  She asked a few girls if they knew where Velvet was. A few had no idea, but a few more did. Thank God for the network, Irena thought as she forced herself to keep moving down the avenue. Velvet was working Times Square these days, one girl said. Irena found her easily enough after that—she was mahogany dark and trussed up in a red velvet cat suit. Velvet laughed when Irena asked her about the man, the one they called Count Dracula.

  “No, hon. They wrong. That’s the Slayer.”

  “Slayer?” For some reason the word jammed the raw edge of fear deep within her.

  Velvet nodded and smiled cheekily. “He’s the patron saint of whores. Ain’t a pimp or hustler on the East Side who’ll mess with us girls, not unless they want a three way with his pig sticker.” Velvet went on to say he lived in the old Victorian house on Castle Hill. She also had a lot of other nice things to say about him but the house was the important thing. After Irena knew where it was, she thanked Velvet and headed toward Castle Hill.

  The house wasn’t hard to find. There were few on the street like it: a three-story crouching stone Victorian surrounded by a tall wrought iron cemetery fence. There were carvings on the gate like serpents. Again, Irena felt a stab of fear.

  What if he wasn’t what she thought—hoped—he was? Or worse yet, what is he was and he saw her as an enemy, someone invading his territory? She would be delivering herself right i
nto his hands.

  But she couldn’t let herself believe that. He might be like her, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was a killer like her. He had helped Velvet on at least one occasion, and according to the other hookers, he kept an eye on the working girls in this whole area. An evil man wouldn’t have been bothered.

  Satisfied that she had convinced herself, Irena let herself through the gate and walked down the stone path to the grand porch. There was no doorbell, nothing to indicate habitation at all. Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, she used the doorknocker fashioned like a coiled dragon to rap four times on the door. She had to believe this would work. He—the Slayer—was the only one she knew of who might be like her. He might be able to give her answers. At least then she wouldn’t be alone with this.

  She didn’t have long to wait. No lights came on in the house—she supposed he didn’t need them—but after a minute or so the doorknob turned and the door opened.

  The Slayer. It was him. She knew it. The tall lanky height, the eyes like opals, the hair like black velvet. The face as beautiful and seamless as that of a white angel, a saint. Like JP he was a priest, but one done all in warm silk black, not white. Then she thought it odd that she should see him so clearly in such a dark corridor. It was the last thought she had before she collapsed into his arms from exhaustion.

  9

  … dhampiri,” said J. Stephan Paul, and it was the only word Brett Edelman had heard in the last half an hour.

  Crushing out his third cigarette of the meal, Brett looked up and said, “What was that?”

  Jay shrugged in his seat. He was a ponderous man so the seat—a wooden captain’s chair that complimented the nautical setting of the Overlook Café but hemmed Jay in like a barn animal—squealed in response. John Stephan Paul—or Jay to his friends—was in his mid-fifties, overweight and out of shape like a lot of people who made their living on their asses in front of a computer. He had scant brown hair that he liked to comb sideways over his pink scalp and a pink face and chubby little pink hands. He always reminded Brett of what would happen if they decided to make a male counterpart to Miss Piggy in the Jim Henson Workshop. Jay’s suits were always pressed and he never looked unkempt, yet Brett had the nagging suspicion that at home, behind closed doors, Jay was a certified slob. Brett, of course, would never openly hint at such a suspicion.