Monster Stalker

by Elizabeth Watasin

  “Yeah, this place is all right. Thanks for suggesting it,” Danica said.

  “Excuse me, but do you know where the girl in this bed went to?” Nico said to Ozzie girl. “The one with the spiked choker and violet eyes. I’m looking for her.”

  “No.” Ozzie girl looked wide-eyed at Nico’s bloodstained state. “I can’t say I know.” Her nose then wrinkled.

  “Low carb diet,” Danica said.

  “The dead guy also liked to eat out of a toilet,” Nico said, and left the room.

  ***

  Cat-eyes girl? Paperback girl? Eton boy? She even looked in the empty boys’ dorm, all its beds made. No girl with violet eyes. Nico went downstairs with the missing vampire’s bag and Id and entered an equally vacant rec room. She searched the bag, looking for anything that might tell her where the girl would go next. Nothing was present that was any different from what Nico had received from immigration. She found no credit chit or social worker’s card.

  She knew to keep the money on herself.

  “She was in shock, not stupid. I don’t think she would have woken up and just left her Id,” Nico said to Bear.

  If her missing vampire had already hit the street, she was long gone. But to where? And what had hurt her? Did it come back? Nico looked at the new Id in her hands.

  “She’d just arrived,” Nico said.

  She was searching in Dorothy on how to properly report the Id and its missing owner to immigration or the Makepeace when Iris appeared at the rec room’s door. She hugged herself, as if cold.

  “Have you seen Tex?” Iris said.

  “I haven’t.” Nico returned her attention to her Id.

  “He wasn’t here when I got up this morning,” Iris said. Nico looked up. Iris didn’t look well.

  Is she having withdrawals? “Maybe he’s out scor—getting you something,” Nico suggested. With cat-eyes girl.

  “It’s not like him to leave me alone. We’re inseparable. What’s that green stuff on you?”

  “Alien stuff,” Nico said.

  “It smells like a dead horse.” Iris laughed briefly. “Once, in the desert, me and Tex came across a horse carcass. We put it in a tree. We thought it needed to be up there, but we were high on peyote.”

  “I can’t do psychedelics; I see demons when I do. Have you seen the girl with violet eyes?” Nico asked. “She wears a choker with tiny spikes on the collar.”

  “Oh, her. She’s pretty,” Iris said. “Me and Tex thought so. No, I haven’t.” She then bit her lip. “I’ll—I’ll see if—maybe they’re outside.”

  Nico didn’t answer right away, having found how to report the missing girl’s Id by using its identification tag. Tex and her missing vampire together seemed farfetched, and not because two of his own women were around. Nico didn’t think he was Violet Eyes’s type. When she nodded, a delayed acknowledgement of Iris’s worry, the other vampire had already left the room.

  ***

  If Nico took the time to indulge in a familiar, sick feeling, she might do so. She kept busy, even if it was a desperate kind of busy. The girl’s disappearance was like old times; her maker kidnapping someone she knew or had just met. Nico would then rush—rush with fear and dread escalating, to find the victim before it was too late.

  “We don’t do lost and found,” Dann declared when Nico tried to give him the Id for safekeeping.

  “This Id needs to be here when or if she comes back for it,” Nico snarled. “And I’ve reported it to the Makepeace, so unless you want me to get one of them to talk to you, you’ll keep this Id for me.”

  “Okay, sure.” Dann accepted the Id. “What’s her name again?”

  Nico stared at him and then left to take a shower.

  How did Violet Eyes get to Darqueworld? Nico waited for her clothes and Mr Bear to finish laundering. If she had somewhere to be, why end up here first? What got to her between here and immigration?

  Nico did not think her missing vampire had carried traumatic history over to Darqueworld. What Nico had witnessed in the girl’s eyes had been a fresh wounding, one the other vampire had called nightmares, but sometimes that was a way of coping. Nico knew. She’d seen that gaze enough in the dying girls her maker would leave for Nico to find.

  Your mirror, Nicky, read one note he’d pinned through a girl’s skin.

  Laundry done, Nico dressed, situated Bear in his harness, and jumped at the sight of her own reflection. She did look and feel refreshed, however, and not at all like she’d been crusty with meat-stinking, Cru’k’s blood all night. Out of curiosity, she hopped on to the sink counter to inspect the window she’d pried open. To her surprise, she found it bonded shut with metal sealant.

  Nico tried to budge it, finding the seal too strong to give, even to a vampire’s strength. She gave the glass a measured bang with her fist to see if it would crack; it didn’t.

  “What is this glass made out of?” Nico said to Bear. The bathroom door opened.

  An African woman entered wearing a black leather car coat and her tied-back hair in long braids. Nico immediately sensed that she was older than even Tex—twice as much. The woman glanced at Nico standing on the sink counter.

  “What’cha doing up there, sunshine?” she said, her accent American. “Go-go dancing?” She approached and washed her hands beneath the sink’s vibronic setting, humming as she did so, then pulled out a lipstick from her pocket.

  Nico hopped down, then jumped again when she saw herself in the mirror. The woman only raised a brow and applied her plum lipstick, the shade matching her nail polish. Nico admired how she touched up the edges of her lips with a critical regard.

  “Hi,” Nico said. “Do I really look like sunshine?”

  “Naw, you look the exact opposite.”

  “It’s great having a reflection again,” Nico remarked. “Or maybe you’re used to it, if you’re from here?”

  The other vampire capped her lipstick and put it away. “A reflection?”

  “Us.” Nico nodded to the mirror. “Seeing ourselves in a mirror.” The woman looked at the mirror.

  “I could always see myself,” she declared. “Which Earth are you from?”

  Nico stared at her. “The invisible one,” she deadpanned.

  “Yeah? Well, welcome back to the visible world, go-go girl. I’m Re’shawn.” Re’shawn smiled, and Nico saw that her fangs were evident—and bigger than Nico’s. “I just got here.”

  “I’m Nico, and this is Mr Bear.” Nico made Bear wave. “You mean you arrived from your Old Earth, not from one of the other Darqueworld cities?—that are planet-side.”

  “Planet-side,” Re’shawn said, grinning. “Whuass.”

  Nico didn’t know what whu-assss meant, but the way Re’shawn drew out the exclamation, she decided it was the equivalent of cool.

  “Yeah, go-go girl, I mean from my Old Earth,” Re’shawn added. She fished in her pocket and pulled out her Id, the label still on it. “Look at this thing they gave me. Is it ugly, or what? I liked my phone better.”

  Her phone, what? Nico wasn’t sure what a phone had to do with anything, and decided to ignore the reference.

  “Have you seen a girl with long platinum blonde hair, violet eyes, wears a choker with tiny spikes?” Nico asked. Re’shawn considered her question.

  “Naw. I’d remember a girl like that. She your girlfriend?”

  Nico’s mouth quirked. “How did you know I liked girls?”

  “Because of the way you said ‘violet eyes’, like it was really dreamy,” Re’shawn answered with an exaggerated expression.

  Nico’s mouth quirked more.

  “I have a dumb question: how did you know this world existed?” she asked. “And space travel. Aliens. Gods.” Nico glanced up at the ceiling in emphasis.

  Re’shawn put a hand on her hip and considered the question. She beckoned to Nico. “Let’s go eat and we’ll talk.”

  ***

  They sat in a hard plastic booth next to the picture window of Shivers,
a fast food burger joint across from the YOBA with cheap food and workers wearing cheaper ball caps and striped uniform shirts. Even in a futuristic society with living gods, banality still existed. Her new acquaintance’s fangs didn’t go away; Nico wondered what that was like, always having one’s fangs out. She herself had an opened paper napkin tucked over Bear’s head. Not that she intended to try any of Re’shawn’s food; not that Re’shawn was about to offer. Nico merely anticipated some sauce splatter. Her companion had ordered a massive blood burger with fries and blood shake, and when Re’shawn bit the burger, its patty oozed thick blood and dripped on to the foil wrapper. The patty looked injected with a load of flavoured simulated, one extra-spicy. The holo menu had called Re’shawn’s burger selection the Flaming Sanguine with Cheese.

  How does a dead stomach process all that? She watched as Re’shawn wolfed her burger down, sesame bun and all. If Re’shawn really was from a different Earth, Nico didn’t want to chance their not having the same vampire physiologies. She had ordered only a chocolate blood shake for herself.

  I hope I don’t have to start using a toilet again.

  “So that girl you’ve been asking everybody about, she just got here too?” Re’shawn asked, after wiping her mouth and hands with a fastidious air, the main portion of her meal concluded. Nico admired her deep plum nail polish again. On the way to Shivers, Nico had stopped at every building to make enquiries about her missing vampire, including the YOBA, and then the employees at Shivers.

  “Yeah. I just have a bad feeling,” Nico said. Re’shawn nodded.

  “You reported her Id missing, right?” Re’shawn said. “Once they look up who she is, and someone starts spending her credit chit, the Makepeace’ll find her.”

  “That’s true.” Nico blew breath. “I could canvas a little more, but I got nothing until someone gets back to me.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, about the gods.”

  “Yeah, the gods. This is how I heard it,” Re’shawn said. “When the gods blasted off Old Earth in their star chariots and sky boats for a place or time they could live in, lesser gods stayed behind, and Other-beings too. Because star chariots cost money. But the story of where them elder gods went and the planet they found was passed down. How did Other-beings know that the bigger gods made it to somewhen? A star chariot would come back. If you didn’t have a ship or couldn’t ride on a visiting one, there were gates—portals—that could get you all the way from Old Earth to here.”

  “Like Stonehenge? The Bermuda Triangle? Atlantis?” Nico said.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Re’shawn mused. “I was thinking more people’s closets, labyrinths, subway tunnels.”

  She is pulling my leg, Nico thought as Re’shawn sucked on her blood shake.

  “So that’s the short of it,” Re’shawn said. “None of the other vampires told you?”

  “I don’t like other vampires.” Nico said, and Re’shawn gave her a look. “I just don’t.”

  “You don’t need to like other vampires to hang out with an elder family, or a clan—you go to network, y’know? How about your local vampire club?”

  “No,” Nico said, emphatic.

  “Takes all kinds,” Re’shawn exclaimed. “You got internal sanguivoriphobia.”

  “I do not.”

  “We’re on a planet where you can get help with that.”

  “Okay, sure. Now how did you get here, again?” Nico demanded.

  “Aw, that. I knew this guy with lineage straight back to ancient times—we’re talking Babylon—”

  “Babylon,” Nico recalled her ancient history studies. “‘Gate of the Gods.’” Re’shawn nodded.

  “Yeah, that. Anyway, he helped me get into Iraq and to Babylon’s ruins. Okay, until then, I only half-believed. But when the ship came, it all became real—the star chariots, Darqueworld. The gods. The stories weren’t only shared among Other-beings, humans knew ’em too; the ones who wanted to get here. Like the magic wielders. The mystics. And the Illuminati.”

  “But most vampires don’t have a clan or lineage,” Nico said. “A vampire made at random can’t know all this.”

  “I guess not.”

  “I rose fifteen years ago. By myself. I was a murder,” Nico said. “I had no one to talk to.”

  “You got lucky, then. Look at this,” Re’shawn exclaimed, and Nico looked at their plastic yellow seats, the dead flies on the sill, and the big S icon peeling back from the picture window. “Blood burgers. Blood catsup. We’ve made it.” Re’shawn grinned at Nico, fierce, then calmly opened a blood catsup packet and squirted it on her fries. The catsup smelled of thickened blood mixed with a touch of tomato sauce and vinegar. Nico sucked on her blood shake and wondered if she’d try French fries next. She could vomit it up again later if it didn’t digest.

  “All this is good. I get that. But I did okay back on Earth,” Nico said. “I went to universities. I worked front desk at a hotel; night shift.”

  “You liked to pass. Pretend.”

  “It made things easier,” Nico protested. “Fake ID’s and black market blood weren’t that hard to get.”

  “Naw. Too much work.” Re’shawn ate more fries. “I did a short job to pay for my passage here. Got shot eight times—once in the head—but it was worth the six kilograms of plutonium I had to acquire. How did you pay for yours?”

  “My what?” Nico sat back in her seat, wary that Re’shawn might be giving off radiation.

  “Your passage.”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember how it happened. I was just here.”

  “Huh, amnesia. Maybe you jumped through. Like into a folding portal. There’s always a chance you don’t reassemble right when you pop out. That’s pretty cool.”

  “What, that my bits might be scrambled?” Nico said, alarmed.

  “Hey.” Re’shawn pointed at her. “No talkin’ about your bits. Cool because it’s so risky. Those gates like at Babylon? They get you here by celestial passages—Hecate’s roads or Persephone’s corridors.”

  “You mean a gravitational space corridor. Or an extra-dimensional corridor. Or are you really saying, ‘wormhole’?”

  Re’shawn gave Nico a look again. “I said Persephone’s corridor. The chariots came that way, I came that way. If you need to blow a hole in reality to get into the corridor, you use sorcery. And because the one travelling isn’t in a star chariot with a weird matter engine, you fold the corridor to pop that person out the other side. Pop.” She snapped her fingers.

  “But you don’t fold a corridor, you fold a—okay, never mind,” Nico said. “I can see why you think that’s cool...and why I might be scrambled.”

  “Naw, there’s more. Guess what makes that kind of portal happen.”

  “What?” Nico said, as Re’shawn paused to suck on her shake. She put her drink down.

  “Twelve innocents. Sacrificed.”

  “What? You mean children?” Nico’s stomach dropped. “Is that how you got here?”

  “I boarded a ship, remember? I’m talking about you and no ship, no spacesuit, and being pushed through—like a birthing baby. But with twelve babies dead because of it,” Re’shawn said. “You need them innocents to feed the corridor demons; they’re the ones who pull you through and then push you out the other side. Before you explode and stuff.”

  “Demons,” Nico said.

  “Yeah.” Re’shawn sucked again on her straw, stirring last dregs. “I thought so too. But a sorcerer called Kepler wrote about it.”

  “You mean an astronom—never mind. Maybe I came by ship,” Nico said.

  With the meal done, Nico and Re’shawn parted ways, but Nico knew very well she didn’t come by ship, landing like she did in that airfield. If she really remembered being content with her Old Earth life, she didn’t understand why she’d kill twelve babies to leave it.

  ***

  “Dorothy, are you sure all hotel work requires a new arrival to be here a moon cycle before applying?” Nico said, exasperated
. She’d already canvassed the hostel area for her missing vampire, checked the morning news for Chasca Vasquez’s investigative reporting of the Royal Bento bust, then decided to start job-hunting. A guaranteed paycheque would mean no longer having to stay at Again Friends. She followed her Id’s holo map to Chaikov’s Collectible Coins & Currencies. Dull, grey clouds filled the sky and muted the sun, making Nico feel she needn’t buy an umbrella to hide beneath. The neighbourhood she presently traversed was iffy; the littered street lined with pre-fabricated, makeshift tenements of precariously stacked living units. Sulphuric steam rose from grates. Bums and hustlers loitered, but Nico still preferred to walk rather than utilise her rail pass or hail a taxi. It was daylight, after all.

  Wonder what got razed to put up this rubbish. I could be anywhere, rather than New York.

  “Dorothy, never mind answering, I know why they have a wait period before hiring,” Nico grumbled. Front desk clerks handled personal information, sensitive documents, and of course, money. She didn’t exactly have references anymore, much less her Curriculum Vitae.

  “Job finder suggests that you apply for ship crews for your skills set,” Dorothy said. “Set sail for the job opportunity of the nebula with Star Queen’s Stellar Cruise Lines—”

  Nico ended the ad. “I think I’d want my new intragalactic citizenship and passport finalised before getting shanghaied into space.”

  “Place your bets,” a holo-girl projection said next to a betting shop. She winked at Nico, and Nico glanced up at the shop sign: Winkie Bets. “Punk Monk Martial Arts Supplies and Weapons Shop sponsors the next champion for Slaughter Spawn.”

  “Teh. Punk Monk,” Nico said, humoured. She crossed the street and left behind the tenements sector.

  The neighbourhood she entered next contained a Jewish deli, Russian grocery store, a Russian restaurant, and a Russian bakery. She walked into the gated, faded storefront of Chaikov’s Collectible Coins & Currencies.