She reached for the bedroom light and flicked it on, filling the pitch-black darkness with a harsh, artificial glow. The bulb buzzed and spattered for a moment, but then light became steady. Last night was starting to feel more like a dream than something that had actually happened, but it had happened. Werewolves had attacked her in the middle of the street, Murdock had kicked her out of his bar, and Lionel had refused to help her deal with the problem.
She had rushed out of the club and taken to the streets in a mad dash for blood before even the worst bars in all of Ashwood could spit their clientele out for the night. As luck would have it, she had stumbled upon a drunken man staggering into the backseat of his car to sleep the booze off, and hadn’t hesitated in taking what she needed. In the euphoria of drinking the warm, sweet blood from out of a human’s neck she had forgotten just how much she despised the idea of feeding from humans who didn’t look like they had much, but the buzzing bulb in her bedroom had shed its harsh light on just that thought.
“Christ,” she said to herself, running her fingers through her messy, thick hair. She dragged the back of her hand across her mouth and licked her dry lips. The taste of copper stirred and made its presence known.
Pixi headed for her bathroom and washed her mouth out with water from the faucet, replacing one metallic taste with another. When she was done, she grabbed something to wear from her dresser—a black tank top, cut up black jeans, and her steel-capped boots, then threw her scuffed leather jacket over it and headed out into the stairwell, grabbing a couple of $20 bills from a roll she kept under her bed.
The couple a door down from her were arguing again, this time with their door wide open, their voices spilling out into the echo-chamber. As she walked past she noticed a lamp-shade flying across the living room and smashing into a wall.
Pixi walked past the door and headed into the night. Cool, crisp air caused her hair to stir. She stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets and walked with her head down in the direction of her tattoo parlor a couple of blocks down. Cars rolled along on the street, their wheels hissing on the wet roads. A man and a young girl sat up against Pixi’s building, a blanket spread out on their laps with a sign that simply read ‘Recently lost job and house. She’s hungry and cold. Please give what you can, if not for me, then for her.’
The girl had her eyes closed and was cuddling up the man. By the resemblance, he must have been her father. Pixi dug into her back pocket, pulled her wallet, and grabbed $40 out of the money she had brought with her, knowing she would see him again. She knelt in front of the man and handed it to him.
“Oh man, thank you,” he said. “Thank you so much.”
“This is the third night I’ve seen you out here,” she said, “Isn’t there any room at the shelter?”
The girl stirred slightly and opened her brilliant eyes. “No… I mean, the shelter’s closed. We had to spend a few nights there this week but it closed down a couple of days ago.”
“Closed down? Did anyone tell you why?”
The man shook his head and held his daughter more tightly, clutching the $40 like it was a lifeline.
“Alright,” she said, pulling another $20 from her wallet. “Take this, too. There’s a motel two blocks down that way. You can get there in ten minutes if you walk fast. Check in for a couple of days. The streets aren’t any place for a little girl.”
“I… I can’t,” he said, his eyes glistening. In them she saw a man who had been failed, dramatically, by a government that didn’t care. A man who desperately wanted to keep his daughter warm and fed, and couldn’t.
She pressed the money into his hand. “Please,” she said, “Take it. Check in. Don’t make her wait another second out here.”
The man took the money and nodded. He started rousing his daughter immediately and got up like he had a purpose. She was about to walk away when she turned to look at the man again and asked “What’s your name?”
“James…” he said, “James Elliott.”
“Check in under that name. That way I know how to find you.”
He nodded, thanked her again, and Pixi smiled at him and the girl. She watched them start hurrying down the street before putting her hood up and continuing along the path to the shop. She cared about this neighborhood, but she couldn’t help everyone and she knew it. Not in any meaningful way, at least. And yet, as she walked, her cold heart ached for that little girl. Her angelic little face had been burned into her eyes the way fire scars shapes into the retina.
This was the place the world had forgotten, and the people who lived in it were the wretched, the cursed, and the damned. Pixi among them. But tonight, they would sleep well. In a couple of days, she would check on them again, and that was good enough for her. It gave her another reason to get out of the house.
She reached her tattoo parlor and opened the metal shutters a little earlier than she normally would have, then stepped inside and prepared to open up to the public. Darryl would be coming back tonight, or at least she hoped he would. If he came back, she would be able to focus on her art and let her memories of last night drift away into the dark spot in the back of her mind.
The first train of the night rumbled overhead, causing the ceiling light to sway and the walls to shake. Ignoring it, she headed into the back room and flicked the lights and the laptop on, then grabbed a pair of gloves and began setting the tattoo station up—draping a clean, plastic sheet over the chair, taking her instruments out of the sterilizer and setting a hip-hop and rock music playlist to fill the room while she worked. When she was done setting up, she grabbed a sketchpad and pencil and began to draw the first thing on her mind.
A picture of a little girl and her father. Instead of the word help written on the sign they were holding between them was the word hope. People died on the cold, hard streets of Ashwood every single night, and there was little she could do about that, but something had changed inside Pixi. Maybe it was that her close encounter with Wraith’s pack and her resolution to fight for this neighborhood—not for her sakes, but for the sakes of the humans living within it—had awakened a fire to warm her still veins. Whatever it was, she wanted to help people in a meaningful way.
Starting with James and his daughter.
Glass suddenly shattered with a loud crash followed by a thud. A shower of tiny, sparkling fragments went crashing into the wall opposite the front window. Pixi sat bolt-upright, dropping her pencil and turning her eyes to the reception area just beyond her studio, her chest tightening. When she got up to check what had happened, she noticed a brick sitting on the floor in a halo of glittering glass. Outside, a car screeched on its wheels and pulled away from the scene.
She headed outside as fast as she could and caught not only the back of the car as it sped off, but the face of the man who had slammed her with the baseball bat yesterday. He had his tongue out and was making devil horns with his fingers.
“Fuck you, vamp bitch!” he howled as the car pulled away.
Pixi, her eyes wide and her throat burning with rage, grabbed her keys from the counter, stepped into the street again and yanked the metal shutters down hard. She fastened the padlocks and started to walk, not stopping until she reached the edge of the district and Murdock’s bar. The red, neon light shining on top of the small building cast its glow on the row of Harleys and choppers parked in a row in front of it. A single man stood sentry tonight, tresses of smoke rising from the cigarette sitting between his lips.
No sign of Wraith’s car.
The sentry tensed when he noticed Pixi approaching. Instead of turning around to call for backup, he flicked his cigarette into the road and stepped off the porch and onto the street. A biker chain dangled from his jeans, swaying with each long, hard stride he took toward her.
“You’d better get out of here right now,” he said in a gruff voice.
Pixi didn’t reply. She sharpened her vision on his throat and lunged, digging the edge of her hand into the soft flesh with blinding speed. The
werewolf coughed and hacked, then doubled over and fell to his knees. Pixi grabbed his head with both hands, screamed, and dug her knee into it, breaking the werewolf’s nose and sending him to the asphalt on his back.
She continued on without giving him another look, quickly taking the steps toward the bar and pushing through the doors in her stride. Werewolves turned their heads when the door opened, but she had moved toward Murdock so quickly no one noticed she had walked in until she was on his table, crouching in front of him, with one hand on his meaty throat and another poised and ready to dig itself into his face. Her wickedly sharp claws gleamed even in the dimness of this smoky, old bar.
The werewolves at her back began to mobilize, and in her periphery she noticed one man coming at her, his face twisted in anger, teeth sharp and jutting out of his jaw, and pronounced ridges all over his face. Pixi thrust her right foot back just as he approached and caught this one in the throat, sending him staggering into the wall, holding his neck and hacking
She turned her eyes on Murdock again and let him see her fangs through her snarl.
“Stand down,” Murdock said in his gravelly voice, not once breaking eye contact. The werewolves around Pixi stared at each other, but did as they were told and didn’t approach.
“That’s twice I could have killed you,” she said.
“Stronger men than you have tried hundreds of times, but I’m still here. What do you want?”
“I’m sick of your punk friends thinking they can shit all over my turf. It’s time you started showing me the respect I deserve.”
Murdock shifted his neck around Pixi’s grip. “You think coming in here, guns blazing, gives you respect? This is the stupidest thing any vampire’s ever done.”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?”
“Only because I allow it. One word from me and they’ll tear you limb from limb, but I don’t need any of these pussies help to kill you. I’ve been fighting my own battles longer than you’ve been alive.”
“Enough with the tough-talk. I was born a wolf. I should have become a wolf. It’s not my fault some asshole vampire decided to take me into the night. Tell me what it is I have to do to earn my place.”
Pixi tried to hide the desperation in her voice, but it was impossible. She had held onto this for too many years, had been silent for too long. Too rough for the vampires, too cold for the wolves. Her voice broke, just a little bit, but that was all it took for Murdock to hear.
“You can start by letting go of my neck,” he said, after a pause.
Pixi hesitated, then released him and slid off the table, bidding her claws to retract into her fingers. “Tell me what I have to do,” she said.
Chapter Six
Pixi took to the rooftops on the way to her target, bounding silently from building to building. From up there she could travel unseen with a good view of the street, like an owl hunting for prey, using the night as cover. Vampire or no, she didn’t want to be seen out here, and with good reason, too.
The area Murdock had sent her to was only about ten blocks away from the bar, but it may as well have been in another world entirely. Ancient apartment buildings huddled closely together as if trying to keep warm on this cold night. This made the alleys and streets seem tight and almost claustrophobic; a poorly lit, labyrinthine tangle of streets and backstreets. Even from up here, the stench of waste and old trash was inescapable.
She approached the ledge of the low-rise she was standing on and checked the street below. People hustled past, no one made eye-contact with anyone else, and not a single voice could be heard—not even the inevitable couple’s squabble or the barking dog. There was a pervasive feeling of mind your own business here, and Pixi was inclined to accept that mandate.
When she spotted her target, she began her descent by taking to the fire escape on the side of the building and climbing down it. Murdock was right when he said his wolves couldn’t come down here without getting noticed. Werewolves were loud, obnoxiously so, and in this place silence was key. She was perfect for what he wanted, of course he didn’t exactly use those words. He never would. But that was okay.
Do this for him, get what you want, she thought.
She let herself fall to the ground level from the lowest point on the fire escape, landing gracefully in the alley below. A cat jumped out of a small box, hissed, and went running into the night, disappearing like a phantom into a cloud of steam gushing out of a nearby vent. She checked around to see if anyone had heard. No one had. Not even the vagrant sleeping in the space between the dumpsters across from her.
Pixi approached the edge of the alley and pressed herself against the side of the building to peer around it. While she was up on the rooftops she had noticed only three out of the twelve street lights out here were working. That would provide all the cover she needed to get close without being spotted. She slipped out of the alley and into the shadowed street, walking with her hands inside of her pockets.
Up ahead, at the end of the street of low-rise apartment buildings, a single near-derelict structure stood apart from the rest. It was a small building which looked almost like an inner-city chapel enclosed inside a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, with only one door and one visible window on the front. Murdock had told her it had at one point been used as a staging ground for a small chapter of neo-Nazi’s who used to run a fight-club in the basement when they weren’t out beating on minorities.
Now the single window was boarded up, as were the other windows around the sides, but the Nazis were gone. Murdock had said they had been run out of the neighborhood by a cartel with more bodies and guns than what they had. He said the place was being used to cook meth, now, and that he wanted Pixi to sneak inside and scare the owner out of the place so that he and his wolves could move in and take it.
He didn’t want to use it to cook from; he and his wolves weren’t into the drug trade, even if they were aficionados of the product. But they would be able to gut the building and use it as a staging ground into the next district down—one of the freight harbors he suspected was being used as an entry point by some of the cities’ most notorious drug lords.
Pixi waited until she was standing opposite the building before crossing the street. No one was around. The area was quiet, save for the occasional caw of a watchful crow. She went to open the chain-link gate, but it was locked. The padlock looked new, as did the chain, the metal shining against the incandescence of the nearest streetlight.
Again, she checked her surroundings. Clear. She moved back a few paces, took a running jump, and bounded over the chain link fence and into the yard, landing on a wooden board with a quiet thump. No one had seen. Inside the house, no one was stirring. At least, not that she could see or hear. In fact, she couldn’t hear anything coming from inside.
This wasn’t surprising.
Murdock had told her the owner wouldn’t be home right now. That he always took a drive at this time of night and was usually gone for an hour or two. Pixi only needed to find a quiet spot inside and lay still until he came back. Not a problem for someone who didn’t need to breathe or go to the bathroom.
She stalked closer to the building, bypassing the front door entirely and heading around back. The house had a small porch and appeared to be built on an elevated foundation, at the back of which was a tiny window leading to the basement. Pixi pushed it with her boot but it wouldn’t budge, so she sat down on the wet earth, lined her foot up with the glass, and kicked it in with a single shove, sending the panel crashing into the basement.
A heavy, chemical smell came wafting out from the open hole, assaulting even her dead nostrils. If she was bothered by it, she could only imagine how a human might react to a smell as powerful as this.
Careful not to get her jacket caught on the window frame, which was barely large enough for her to crawl through, she slipped into the basement, felt around for a sturdy place to plant her foot, and slipped down. Pieces of glass from the window she had just kicked in cr
unched beneath her boot. She looked around and saw the gleam of metal and glass containers all around. An instant later, her eyes adjusted to the near total darkness.
This was a drug lab, alright.
There were beakers and flasks of all shapes and sizes sitting on countertops, surrounded by pots, pans, and an array of tubing and thermometers. There were burners and large plastic tubs all around. The air in here was heavy with that chemical smell she had detected immediately upon entering; it was everywhere, and it insulted her senses.
Pixi was about to check under one of the countertops to investigate further when she heard a click, and light spilled into the basement. It was coming from the stairs on the other end. A silhouette broke the light, and Pixi stiffened. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone here right now. She was supposed to have time to figure things out and find a good place to hide.
Shit. Someone must have heard the window crash.
She backed up into a counter and knocked a glass flask over. It toppled, rolled, and fell to the floor, smashing into pieces. So much for being quiet. The silhouette at the top of the stairs suddenly bolted. Pixi cursed and ran toward the stairs and the light, pushing herself as fast as she could go and focusing only on the sound of the beating heart she was bearing down on.
“Vicky, get into the bedroom! Go!” the silhouette’s owner yelled.
“What’s going on?” a second voice sounded.
“Just go!”
When Pixi caught him, he had been reaching for a crowbar he kept beside his door. She grabbed his shoulders, spun him around, and pinned him against the front door. But instead of a sunken, grizzly looking meth cook about to collapse from partaking of his own supply, she cast her eyes on a young, relatively vital looking guy. And instead of anger at someone having trespassed onto their lab, she saw fear reflected in his deep brown eyes.
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 72
