Dark Corner

by Brandon Massey

  The prize of the battle in Mason's Corner was David Hunter. Although Diallo had not shared with Kyle how he planned to punish the man, Diallo's sly smile whenever the topic arose made it quite clear to Kyle that the human would curse his unfortunate lineage for all eternity.

  As night sucked away the final threads of daylight, Kyle and Diallo left the sheltering walls of their hideaway and emerged outdoors. Diallo strode purposefully through the grass. Kyle walked in step with him.

  He admired his father's appearance in the black silk shirt, jeans, and polished leather boots. Kyle wore the same clothing himself, he had acquired the tailored garments before leaving Paris. Kyle imagined that together, they resembled vengeful angels who had visited Earth to set matters right between their kind and man.

  He felt Diallo's strength; it emanated from his body like cold air, demanding that Kyle keep a few feet between himself and his father, lest he grow numb from the aura of power. There was no doubt that his father had recovered. Diallo had said that he'd never felt such energy course through him.

  A dome of purple-black clouds covered the world. Thunder grumbled. Lightning stuttered on the horizon and illuminated the vast, weed-dense field through which they walked. Maple trees filled the area, looking like shadowy sentinels.

  Kyle did not know where Diallo was headed, and he had no inclination to ask. He would go wherever his father led him.

  A hill rose ahead of them. Diallo started to ascend it, and Kyle followed, but Diallo stretched out his arm, stopping him.

  "I must do this alone," Diallo said. His eyes gleamed like onyx. "Wait behind, and watch"

  "Yes, Father."

  Diallo marched to the peak, his shirt fluttering in the wind like wings.

  Kyle did not know what his father was about to do, but his hands clenched in anticipation.

  Atop the mound, Diallo faced the west. He knelt, spread his long arms, and tilted his face upward.

  Kyle recalled that his father had assumed a similar stance when he had summoned the first canines that became his slaves. Was Diallo conjuring more hounds? Already, they had dozens of dogs under their command.

  No, this must be something different, Kyle thought. Father is about to perform something wondrous and awesome.

  The atmosphere hummed, raising the hairs at the nape of Kyle's neck. But he was not afraid. He was giddy, eager.

  He felt as though he had lived his entire long life to be ready to vividly experience events like this; the lackluster life of luxury and tranquillity he had lived at his mother's estate had prepared him to feel the proper appreciation for his father's electrifying power.

  A jagged rod of lightning lashed across the sky and cast Diallo's profile in stark relief. As motionless as he was, Diallo might have been the ancient obsidian statue of a warrior god.

  The breeze soughing through the trees picked up speed, branches swaying, leaves rustling. The wind gusted faster ... faster ... faster, the pitch raising from a low moan to an anguished cry.

  The collar of Kyle's shirt flew up. The wind shoved him forward, and he dropped to his knees.

  I did not know a vampire could possess such talents, he thought. Mother had never spoken of influencing the weather. He had thought that the ability for vampires to do such acts was fiction. Once again, Mother had kept secrets from him.

  Squinting his eyes against the cutting wind, Kyle raised his face to watch his father.

  On the hill, Diallo remained still, kneeling, arms outspread, though the gusts tore at his clothing and shredded leaves whirled around him.

  The sky appeared to be boiling, storm clouds churning, shifting, roiling.

  A hundred yards away, a sizzling bolt of lightning struck a tree. Orange sparks flew. The maple, cleaved in half as though hit with a giant axe, slammed against the earth.

  Kyle suppressed an urge to seek cover. His father had ordered him to wait. Nevertheless, he drew up his collar to guard his sensitive ears. But the makeshift hood could not quiet the shrieking wind.

  Thunder roared, so explosively that Kyle feared the ground might open up and swallow him.

  Then, in quick succession, several whips of lightning slashed at the town. Kyle could not determine precisely where they struck, only that they were in the vicinity of the residential area. The sky was ablaze in gas-jet blue light.

  My father is indeed a genius. What better way to stir the humans into a frenzy of confusion and fear before we attack, than by turning the elements against them?

  The howling wind spat leaves and grit in Kyle's face. He reached inside his shirt pocket, withdrew the aviator glasses, slid them over his eyes. The storm-punished land seemed to be drenched in darkness.

  Diallo, resembling a giant shadow, finally rose, and began to descend the hill. The furious winds did not hamper his walk; they seemed to escort him, and for an instant, Kyle thought his father was floating.

  Although Kyle worried that the wind might flatten him, he stood to meet his father. Diallo touched his shoulder. His grip was like an iron clamp, and his fingers were so hot that they singed Kyle's skin.

  Power.

  "Now, our army will arise," Diallo said, "and we will join them"

  Jackson was eager to get away from Jubilee. He never wanted to set foot in the house again. He never wanted to see it again.

  He fleetingly thought of taking Mac's flamethrower and spitting a stream of fire at the place, to erase it from the town once and for all.

  He and the team members carried Bertha and Ben out of the basement. By the time they finally stumbled onto the veranda, night had imprisoned the town.

  While they were in the cellar, Jackson had called Dr. Green on his cell phone and asked him to come to the Mason place, pronto, to pick up their fallen members. They needed to be taken to quarantine immediately.

  None of them spoke as they waited on the porch for the ambulance to arrive. There was nothing that any of them could say that would make sense of what had happened in the basement. Every time Jackson shut his eyes, he saw Deputy Dudu's blood-crazed face-the face of a monster. The lurid image would stay with him for the rest of his life.

  Christ, he wanted to get away from this place. From the anxious looks on the faces of everyone else, they were as ready as he was to get the hell out of there.

  The wail of the ambulance-which normally alarmed him-was the most appealing sound he'd heard all day. It meant he could leave soon.

  Tanya sprinted across the gravel driveway, to open the gate. The vehicle rolled down the path, lights flashing.

  Dr. Green typically would never ride in an ambulance, but he was spending a lot of time in it today. As they had for Jackson, ordinary procedures had been thrown out the window.

  Jackson met the doctor as he climbed out of the vehicle. Dr. Green, normally a robust-looking guy, seemed as though he had aged twenty years in only a few hours.

  Two assistants hurried to where Ben and Bertha had been placed on the veranda.

  "Had a mess up here," Jackson said to the doctor. "Appreciate you coming as fast as you did."

  Green dragged his hand down his haggard face. "What went on in there, Chief?"

  "We killed a vampire. It used to be my deputy, but he wasn't himself anymore. We torched him with a flamethrower. But he bit those two folks before we could take him down"

  "I see," the doctor said. Jackson had steeled himself for a frown, or a disdainful glare, but Green looked thoughtfuland scared. Jackson wondered what the doctor had seen while making his visits throughout town to pick up the ill.

  "I don't know if we'll ever be able to explain this phenomenon scientifically," Green said, "or treat their conditions with medicine. But I believe you, Jackson. I've seen enough myself so that I'm left with no choice but to believe you"

  "Being right doesn't please me none," Jackson said. "Rather be making all this up "

  "All we can do is our best," Green said. He shrugged, as though too exhausted to think of a more profound comment. But he was right. All t
hey could do was give it their best shot.

  They loaded Ben and Bertha on gurneys and lifted them into the ambulance. After the vehicle sped away, Jackson turned to the remaining four people on his team. They looked weary way too weary at such an early stage in the fight. The night was young.

  "I think we should go back to the police station to regroup," David said. "We've got to put our heads together and figure out where the head vampires might be hiding. We have to stay focused on Kyle and Diallo."

  "Makes sense," Jackson said. "We've gotta touch base with the other teams, too, make sure they're holding up ""

  The others murmured their agreement. They trudged down the path, to the gate.

  A breeze had been blowing for most of the afternoon, but then it suddenly picked up speed. Jackson snared his hat before the wind snatched it off his head and hurled it into the darkness.

  Thunder groaned, making the earth tremble. Lightning skipped across the sky.

  All of them began to run down the driveway.

  The gust rose from a moan into a nerve-racking screech. It took the efforts of Jackson and David to force open the iron gate and hold it so that Nia, Mac, and Tanya could get through. When Jackson and David squeezed through it themselves, the gate boomed shut behind them.

  Lightning cracked above Jubilee's rooftops, making the old mansion look like every bit of the haunted house that it was rumored to be.

  David, Mac, and Nia scrambled into Mac's pickup, and Tanya got in the patrol car with Jackson. Jackson stabbed the key in the ignition. The wind punched the car, snuffled at the windows like a creature scrabbling to get inside.

  "Do you think it's a tornado?" Tanya said.

  "Don't know, might be," Jackson said. "Wouldn't be lucky for us, would it?"

  Mac had slammed his truck into gear, performed a U-turn, and was roaring away down the road, heading back toward town. Jackson executed a sharp U-turn, too.

  Dead leaves and weeds, animated by the gale, danced in the middle of the road. The trees swayed, their boughs shaking violently.

  Jackson had seen two tornados in his life-one as a child, one as a man-and these winds were growing closer and closer to reaching that level of destruction.

  He mashed the gas pedal. The acceleration threw him back in his seat.

  Ahead, a fork of lightning stabbed an oak tree alongside the road with an eardrum-splitting crack! Hot branches flew like shrapnel, and the shattered, smoking trunk teetered and began to fall toward the road.

  Jackson floored the accelerator.

  "Watch out!" Tanya said, in a high-pitched voice. She covered her eyes.

  In his peripheral vision, Jackson saw the giant tree falling toward him; it would smash the car to pieces if it struck them. But he could not have stopped if he'd wanted to. Adrenaline propelled him to push the engine to the maximum.

  The oak missed the car's rear bumper by only a foot. The tree crashed against the ground with such force that the car bounced a few inches in the air and rattled his teeth.

  "Are you crazy?" Tanya said. "You could've killed us!"

  "I ain't ready to die yet," Jackson said. "Got too much work to do tonight to have time to die."

  Tanya opened her mouth, and he heard the beginnings of a first-class cussout coming his way, but then she clapped her mouth shut, folded her arms across her chest, and slid down in the seat.

  "Bet you'll ride with someone else next time," Jackson said. He chuckled. Maybe he was losing his mind. He couldn't really see the humor in the situation, but he couldn't stop the laugh from escaping him. He'd heard the saying that when things got tough, you laughed to keep from crying. Maybe that was what he was doing, laughing to keep from crying. Or laughing to keep from dying.

  At home in the den, Jahlil discovered that almost all of his father's firearms were gone. The only ones left in the gun cabinet were Jahlil's own pump-action Mossberg shotgun, which he used for hunting, and a pellet gun that Jahlil had used as a kid to take target practice at soda cans.

  A pellet gun, for God's sake.

  "Dammit!" Jahlil slammed his fist against the cabinet door. "I betcha Dad gave all our shit to the people on those patrol teams"

  "Now what we gonna do, man?" Poke said. His face was greasy with sweat. "I ain't got no guns, my pops took all of 'em when he moved out"

  "Figures," Jahlil said. He chewed his lip. Think! "Okay, look. We're gonna have to work as a team. I'll use the shotgun-"

  "-man, that's bullshit-" Poke said.

  `-I'm not finished, all right?" Jahlil said. "Just listen. I'll use the gun, and we'll make some Molotov cocktails. When we see a bloodsucker, I'll plug him, to slow him down, and then you'll light him up with the cocktail. We'll be like a tag team. Get it?"

  "Hell, naw," Poke said. "I need me a motherfucking gun. Why you get to carry the shotgun?"

  " 'Cause it's mine," Jahlil said. He offered the pistol to Poke. "Use this. It's better than nothing. Carry it for backup. All any of these guns can do is slow down these bloodsuckers anyway, they won't kill them"

  "I'm gonna get me a real piece before we're through," Poke said. His lips curled in disgust, Poke snatched the pellet gun from Jahlil and holstered it in his waistband. "Gimme some ammo, man"

  In the ammunition drawer, the only ammo left was for the pellet gun, and the Mossberg. He scooped up two handfuls of pellets and handed them to Poke, then loaded the shotgun. Once it was loaded, he unzipped his duffel bag and dumped the remaining ammo inside. The bag already held a flashlight, a knife, a first aid kit, and several books of matches. Jahlil wanted to be prepared for anything.

  Thunder rumbled. Poke checked outside the window.

  "What do you see out there?" Jahlil said. Night had fallen, and someone might attack them at any second. "Someone coming?"

  "We got a storm coming," Poke said. No sooner had he spoken the words than a gale of wind skirled around the house. The ceiling light in the den wavered.

  "Go to the kitchen and get some candles," Jahlil said. "They're in the drawer by the refrigerator. We can't be without light. We still have to make those cocktails."

  "Got it." Poke shuffled to the stairs. Did he have to walk so slowly? Jahlil wanted to put his foot up his ass to get him moving. Well, they'd always called him Poke for a reason. He moved like a slug.

  Jahlil was starting to get a headache. It was the same kind of pounding-behind-the-eyes pain that he would get whenever he was taking an exam for which he hadn't studied. It was solely due to stress.

  The screaming gust beat a tattoo against the walls. Thunder steamrolled across the night, and Jahlil saw flickers of lightning coming in through the curtains, as though someone were taking photos outside.

  "Man, hurry up!" Jahlil said. He didn't like being alone down there, not when he understood what awaited them outdoors.

  Poke returned to the den with a single, half-melted candle.

  "Only found one in there" Poke shrugged. "Guess your daddy raided the crib of all the useful shit today."

  "No shit," Jahlil said. "Well, let's go in the garage to make these cocktail things so we can get out of here."

  The door on the far side of the room opened into the twocar garage. Jahlil flipped the light switch beside the door. The light did not turn on.

  Behind them, the light in the den winked out.

  Jahlil cursed under his breath. Could it get any worse? Nothing was going their way.

  "Gimme some light, man, hurry up," Poke said. He was so close that Jahlil could smell the Doritos on his breath.

  Jahlil clicked on the flashlight. He struck a match and lit the candle that Poke clutched in both hands as though it were the Holy Grail or something.

  Jahlil panned the light beam around the garage, searching for the red-and-yellow can of gasoline. It was in the corner, beside the John Deere lawn mower.

  Jahlil picked up the gasoline container.

  It really could get worse for them. The can was empty.

  Junior could not wait any longer. He h
ad to see Vicky Queen.

  Ever since the medical people had pushed Vicky into quarantine and rolled her into the room at the end of the hallway, Junior had been unable to keep his attention away from her door. But it was too far away for him to peek inside. He would have to go back there to get a good look at her.

  He just wanted to make sure she was doing okay, that's all. It wasn't as though his team needed him right now. One woman, named Maria, handled checking in all the sick people, and the rest of the group only sat around, talking about stuff going on in town. Things were going slow, but that might change soon. He wanted to see Vicky while he still had the chance.

  Ron, one of the team members, winked at Junior.

  "You're thinking about that woman, ain't you, Junior?"

  "Huh? What woman?" Junior played dumb. He didn't like for people to know his business.

  Ron smiled. "You know who I mean. Vicky Queen. The finest piece of ass in this town. Don't be ashamed, I've been thinking about her, too"

  "What you mean?" Junior asked cautiously.

  "She's sleep like all the rest of these folks, man. How about we sneak back there and get a look at her titties? She got them nice, big, round titties, nipples like Hershey's Kisses. We can suck on 'em a little bit, you take one, I take the other-'

  Junior seized Ron by his shirt and drove him backward. The back of Ron's head smacked the wall. The guy yelped, like a panicked puppy.

  Junior's nose was only inches away from the man's face. "You stay away from Miss Queen! She ain't no ... no toy. Hear me?"

  Ron's face went tomato red. He spluttered. "Let me go, man. I'm sorry, all right? I was kidding!"

  "You stay away from Miss Queen, you pervert" Junior gave the guy a good shake, making his head thump against the wall again. Then Junior released him.

  Ron moved away, smoothing his shirt with shaky hands. "You need to relax, man. What's wrong with you? We're supposed to be a team. Ain't nothing wrong with joking around"

  Junior ignored him. He was slow, but he wasn't dumb enough to be fooled by this fella. Ron was a pervert Junior didn't realize how he remembered the word "pervert," but the word felt right when applied to Ron.