Monster Stalker

by Elizabeth Watasin

  A baby could break this thing.

  Nico tried the key in the locker and opened it, but she did so more to make a sound. The girl huddled atop the last bed did not glance her way.

  Nico closed the locker and slowly walked over. Her dorm companion wore a lace decorated, sheer black mesh over her black top, the shoulder openings revealing pale skin. She had the perfect, powder-white complexion that would be the envy of any Goth girl, her black brows thin. But her black lipstick was worn and needed reapplying, and her kohl-lined eyes were smudged. Her clothes seemed askew, as if she’d put them on in haste, or someone else had dressed her. At her throat, she wore a thin leather choker with small steel spikes.

  She looked up, her violet eyes wide, and Nico thought her pretty, and—

  Like my expression in the mirror.

  “Hi,” Nico said, her tone quiet. Had the other vampire been violated? Or was she simply touched in the head, in need of more than what sympathetic company could give: correcting medications, professional guidance and supervision. It was possible she was both conditions; harmed and unbalanced.

  Nico didn’t think her own mental stability was too sound, so she wasn’t about to judge another vampire’s fragility. She drew closer, and when the girl appeared to not want her to go away, she sat on the bed.

  “I like your choker,” Nico said. “It’s pretty.” She gazed into the girl’s eyes and thought her about her own vampire age. They might have died at the same human age too.

  “Do you want to stay?” Nico asked softly. “I can help you find a friendlier place.”

  I know you’re damaged, she wanted to say. And that follows wherever you may go. But you deserve care. Nico would spend the credit needed if the other vampire wanted to leave. The girl’s lips parted.

  And Nico became aware of a sensation; one that touched her mind and seemed to smooth a psychic finger down the white blankness within. When the girl spoke, Nico strained to catch her words.

  “Die Albträume sind so schlimm,” she whispered.

  The nightmares are so bad.

  “Ich weiß,” Nico said. I know. She brought out her breath mints tin and opened it. She offered one.

  The girl accepted and put it in her mouth, revealing black polish on her nails. Nico retrieved her Id and typed a request for the nearest 24-hour victims shelter willing to accept vampires.

  “I remember,” the girl softly said. “I must tell someone.”

  Nico looked up. “I’m listening.”

  She waited while the girl’s focus withdrew, her gaze unseeing. Then Nico’s Id pinged.

  Dorothy found a place Nico thought a good match, and Nico requested directions. When she raised her head, the girl was asleep where she sat, completely passed out.

  Vampires slept like dead people, but Nico could tell the other vampire wasn’t going to rouse. She carefully laid the girl down in a more comfortable position, covered her up, and then left for the showers. She would check on her again in case she woke, or her nightmares began.

  ***

  The bathroom and shower facility lacked tile and looked like a sedately lit bedroom. It contained two closed stalls and two open ones. Nico saw herself move in the mirror above the sink counter.

  Nico pulled her knife, then realised the reflection was not a doppelgänger.

  “Don’t get me,” she warned it, pointing her blade at her other self.

  She noticed the narrow, rectangular window above the mirror, facing the street outside. The rooftop holo board across the way played its advertisement, sending dim streaks of colour through the glass and to reflect on the bathroom’s upper wall and ceiling. She turned for the stalls.

  Nico nearly jumped out of her skin again when her twin appeared in the full-length mirror hanging on the far wall.

  “What is this, a gang?” she demanded, and resisted challenging her full-length self with her knife. With a deep breath, she put her blade away, took off her harness, and went to hang it and Bear on the full-length mirror so he could block it. Then she aimed Dorothy around the room.

  “Dorothy, tell me what’s in here,” Nico said. Her Id began holographically labelling as Dorothy spoke.

  “Two vibronic showers,” she said. “Two lavatory stalls. Three laundry cleaning units.”

  Nico walked over to the cleaning units, situated as door hatches in the wall. “Oh good. They don’t need coins.” She pulled down one hatch and peered at an interior where she could hang garments for a dousing of ultraviolet light.

  Nico locked the bathroom door, took off all her clothes, and loaded a cleaning unit. She entered an open stall and experimented with vibratory shower settings. Her nasal passages immediately tickled.

  Sneezing, she set the vibrations for lower. She then retrieved Bear and gave him a fluff in the shower.

  While her clothes continued to be doused, Nico decided to face the full-length mirror. She brought down her harness and held Bear as she and her reflection stared. Then she looked at her other self’s body.

  Her body had been her maker’s plaything before she finally died that cold, lonely night in the woods, the stars above the forest canopy the last things she’d seen. He’d carved a message into her flesh, on each limb and down her chest, words that made certain she wouldn’t reveal her body to anyone else once she rose, and she hadn’t. She could never wear a short-sleeved blouse. She also never wanted his words read, copied, or photographed, and not because she didn’t want to explain them. What he had cut into her should remain forever silent on her skin, and she would burn herself up in the sun if she had to, to keep it so. Nico turned and viewed her back for the first time.

  There, like a necklace at the base of her neck, the last of the carved verses began, then continued with his name in large letters, starting between her shoulder blades and running down her spine for the small of her back. A word cut between her Venusian dimples ended the message. Rising from death had ensured permanence to the raised scars, and as long as Nico lived, her undead body’s pristine state would be a monument to his memory.

  “He sucked as a poet,” Nico told Bear. The cleaning unit chimed, and Nico retrieved her freshened clothes and dressed.

  But it was while putting on her oxfords that she noticed how they looked; the outer soles chunkier than she would have liked, and also made of rubber. It was a surprisingly vulgar style she would have never chosen. And when did she get this particular pair, one studded with tiny spikes?

  Nico tapped the reinforced bottom of one shoe. Gripping, non-slip design.

  “Just like you and your harness, Bear, I don’t remember,” she said. She finished dressing.

  Minutes later, Nico stood at the bathroom counter, ignoring her pensive reflection and musing on the items she’d laid out from her security wallet. She’d been carrying both her British and American passports with student visas for Russia, Germany, and France, a second credit card, deutsche marks, francs, British pounds...and a little black book.

  She couldn’t recall keeping the book and opened it, wondering if she’d begun writing down women’s names and numbers. A list of crossed out Russian names in her handwriting filled the pages. She’d written them in Cyrillic. The last four names that had not been crossed out read: Zadorozhny, Grishin, Anikanov, Fedosov.

  What happened to my apartment? Is that why I don’t have keys? Where is my hotel employee ID? Why did I plan this exit strategy?

  Because it was a lousy strategy if she’d intended to come to Darqueworld. Her passport, visas, and currencies were of no use.

  She typed a request into Dorothy to find all four surnames in Again NewYork’s directory, then opened the tin of breath mints and put one in her mouth. Beneath the sharp peppermint flavour, she tasted a familiar bitterness.

  She spat the mint out and activated the sink’s water tap, splashing her tongue. She slapped the tin away from her, scattering the mints on the floor. Nico back-pedalled from the rolling mints and fell, her back to the wall.

  The taste of xylazi
ne, the horse tranquilliser, was unmistakable. Nico searched, frantic, expecting her maker to open the locked door—come through the window. Her undead lungs heaved as she pulled out her knife, her hands shaking.

  The holo board outside played out its advertisement twelve times while Nico knelt, watching both the window and door. Her chest rose and fell.

  He’s dead, she reminded herself. This is exactly his trick, but I’m the only one who duplicated it.

  Nico’s lungs stilled. What if—? She might have pressed the xylazine herself. She’d obtained a steel tablet punch back when she’d stalked her maker, intending to use the same trick on him.

  He’s dead, she reiterated.

  Nico went to her knees, her hands still shaking. She gathered up the fallen mints and put them back in the tin.

  ***

  Immigration had done a bio-scan of her—including one where she’d been frisked. They had to have known her tin wasn’t full of mints.

  She could almost understand being allowed her switchblade, especially after seeing Other-beings carrying around their weapons. Disguised tranquillisers seemed a more insidious possession, but Nico knew she wouldn’t have prepared them unless she’d thought having them was a good idea. She couldn’t remember pressing them or for what purpose, but she would trust the Nico locked up behind the blank in her mind that for whatever reason, that Nico had thought it important to have them.

  She closed the tin, deciding not to flush the tablets, repacked her passport wallet, chucked the pamphlets and her welcome bag, and squirrelled away the tissues, coupons, snack pack, and toothbrush in the back storage panel of Bear’s harness. She straightened out herself and Bear in the mirror, and then exited.

  Back in the girls’ dorm, the girl she’d drugged was still unconscious in her bed, and if she dreamed, she would remember none of it upon waking. That was the nature of xylazine. Nico hung her head, ashamed. A young vampire would not shake the effects of a horse tranquilliser until the morning.

  “I hope it brings you some peace,” she said. A soft footstep sounded and Nico turned to look.

  Three vampires entered, one of whom wore a black ruffled dress and silver buckled, pointy-toed boots. She was half Nico’s age, while the two who followed felt younger—barely five years un-living. Nico looked at the first one’s strong nose and jaw and thought her a boy transitioning to female. She carried a thick, paperback novel.

  “You should hurry down, the snack bags are nearly gone,” the paperback owner said in a smooth contralto as she and the others headed for different beds. Her gaze was deliberately distant, indicating no desire to provoke. One of the vampires yawned, her tongue piercing glinting, and plopped back on a bed with her Id projecting a holo star magazine. She sucked on a straw stuck in a snack pack as she read.

  The free blood at 21 hundred; Nico looked at the knocked out girl once more while the third vampire approached the bed next to her. She wore a Sushi Hut uniform with nametag, and placed her ball cap, apron, and shoes on her locker top. She then laid down on the bed, crossed her arms over her chest, and closed her eyes. Nico turned to the one who’d spoken to her, the girl already seated on her bed and reading her novel. The title read: Middlemarch.

  “Okay, thanks,” Nico said.

  ***

  The evening news blared from the holo programme playing in the rec room when Nico descended and looked in. Six vampires were present, sucking on the straws of blood packets and loitering or sitting on the couch and armchairs before the holo unit. A white translucent box with a lid sat on the coffee table. The logo on the side was of a single drop of red blood. Before the table, a thin male with craggy face, dark brows, moustache and goatee lounged on the sofa with his arm wrapped around a skinny, purple-haired girl. He wore motorcycle boots, tight black jeans, and a black work shirt with rolled up sleeves over a white tee. Nico assessed him first, for blocking her way with his long legs to the only vacant armchair and for his age, which felt a few years older than herself. She was second eldest in the room, and everyone else seemed barely five years. Nico was a little perturbed to be in the presence of so much freshness.

  Like “new car smell”, except with vampires.

  “Introducing the latest Faering from Vahalla,” a deep-voiced narrator said while a holo commercial of a sleek road vehicle played. “Fast, smooth, impenetrable, on the road and in the water. The Shearwater.”

  The curvy girl in the corset and black clothes seated next to the purple-haired girl turned to look at Nico as she sucked on a straw. The entirety of her eyes was light green, with pupils of black slits.

  Is she wearing contacts? Nico didn’t think so. Cat-eyes girl had the pallor of the undead, but Nico suspected she had been a were-cat—full or partly—when alive.

  “Your shoes are diesel,” cat-eyes girl said.

  “Thanks,” Nico said. The guy with the motorcycle boots glanced her way.

  “Ay,” he drawled. “Tex. Iris.” He nodded to the skinny girl in his arm, and Iris smiled. “Delores.” He indicated cat-eyes girl.

  “Nico and Mr Bear,” Nico said.

  “Diesel,” Tex said, and returned his attention to the holo display.

  “Who wants another?” a brunette girl announced airily, and she rose from her armchair to take off the box’s lid and pass out more snack bags. “They’ll only go bad if we don’t finish them.” She wore sandals, comfortable, boyfriend jeans, and a sunny, yellow tee that made Nico think of too much time spent in sand and surf, except the girl was a vampire.

  What accent is that? Nico’s first thought was “Sydney.” The girl handed her a snack bag. She had a pretty face, one with a benign friendliness that could easily reel in victims.

  “You rocked up just in time,” the girl said, smiling.

  “Ta,” Nico said.

  “No worries,” the girl said.

  “You’re a long way from Oz,” Nico remarked.

  “Aren’t we all?” Ozzie girl replied. “Does your bear need a snack?” She looked at him curiously, as if expecting Bear to answer.

  “No thank you. Mr Bear doesn’t drink blood.”

  A boy as dark-browed and broody as Matt Dillon’s Dally stepped up to toss the scrunched pack he’d sullenly sucked dry into a trash receptacle, accepted a new one from Ozzie girl, then returned to lurking in the shadows. Another boy with wavy, brown hair, tortoise shell glasses, and a tweed jacket over a knitted vest stood with his back against a wall. He perused immigration pamphlets in one hand as he concentrated on sucking his snack bag’s last drops, his cheekbones prominent. Nico thought of Eton boys and of Britons who’d gone through wartime rationing.

  Eton boy stepped forwards and also accepted a second bag from Ozzie girl. The blood was inviting, but Nico didn’t feel greedy. She’d practiced fasting. Willed deprivation had been her attempt at taming an appetite that saw all humans as potential meals, and her rewards became the living blood women gifted. She’d been rewarded quite handsomely already, even if only by Shayla’s kettle.

  Blood is earned, Nicky, her maker said. Go on and get it, girl.

  She stepped over Tex’s legs and put her blood pack back just as Eton boy smiled and approached.

  “Hello,” he said, his British accent cultured. “Are you a recent arrival to Darqueworld, or?”

  “I’m a chrono-immigrant,” Nico said, moving to the side and out of the way of the others watching the news. “You too?”

  “Oh, I’m a chrono-refugee,” he said, cheerful. “I’m so glad to be here. I lost all my books, though. My only regret. I’m a poet.”

  “I knew a poet,” Nico said. “He would always kill something or somebody when he left me a poem.”

  “Oh,” Eton boy said. He smiled, nervous. “Well, not me.”

  “That’s good,” Nico said. “Excess is stupid.”

  Eton boy nodded, then went to stand by the wall again.

  Darn, I wanted to ask him why he still wore glasses. Nico sat in the empty armchair by Delores and pulled out her Id.<
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  “Tex! Use the straw,” Iris exclaimed, then giggled. Tex had sunk his fangs into the snack pack, causing it to leak. He removed his mouth.

  “Straws are for the toothless.” He stifled Iris’s mirth by kissing her with his messy, bloodied mouth.

  Kiss me, Nicky, her maker said, his mouth bloodied. Or I kill her.

  One of Tex’s eyes remained open during the kiss, and he arched his gaze at Delores, who watched him.

  Delores turned back to the news and sucked on her second pack. She smiled, smug.

  Tex and Iris kissed more, and Nico unconsciously waited for arousal’s signals—the escalating heartbeat, blood flow, and body heat of humans—which she sought when looking for willing girls or women. But nothing seemed to happen in the room that Nico would call “chemistry”, except that the sexual energy of vampires was a different pheromonal sensation. It was mesmerism and will, exerted; it was the commingling of undead blood’s power.

  Vampires are just sexualised dead meat, Nico typed in her virtual journal.

  Say NO to sanguivoriphobia. Stop the Hate, Dorothy responded, and played an anti-discrimination ad by the Vampire Alliance Network.

  “In migration news,” the holo display’s newscaster announced, “the Isle welcomes fresh chrono-arrivals from the druid vessel, Galatia, and the surprise visit of a prime minister who will be returned to his time interval after a warm welcome. Galatia had sustained heavy damage from its latest voyage and will be escorted to Nuit One.”

  “Weren’t you on that boat?” Tex said to Eton boy.

  “Why yes, I was. I had to abandon it for a lifeboat that landed near here. Galatia had borne the brunt of a blitz attack,” Eton boy said.

  Blitz? Nico thought, looking up from her perusal of Chasca Vasquez’s contact info.