by Dave Ferraro
“We deserve this, Jade,” Jordan had cried to Jade years earlier, not two days after their parents died. “We’ve been so selfish. We never listened to them, did what they wanted. We were horrible to them! We deserve what we’re feeling, the guilt, the… But they didn’t deserve it. They sacrificed everything for us. They were good people.”
“We’re good people,” Jade insisted, kneeling on the carpet in front of the sofa, where he had his knees drawn up against his chest. “It was horrible what happened, but it wasn’t our fault. We’re teenagers. We rebelled, ignored their…demands, but that doesn’t make us bad. We aren’t perfect.”
“I bet Father Ryan would disagree,” Jordan argued, tears sliding down his cheeks. “If I told him…I’m bad, Jade.”
“Jordan…” She’d hugged him tight then, rocking him gently, blaming herself for the stupid things she’d pulled her brother into over the years, the petty fights and arguments with their parents. They’d deserved retaliation often, but she could have shielded her brother from it better, protected him. She should have taken her own advice though. They were only teenagers, and what happened hadn’t been their fault. It wasn’t some cosmic act of karma that had taken their parents from them. It had been a cold, unconnected act of evil.
And I’ve been battling evil since, Jade mused as she cocked an eyebrow at the vampire before her. And evil is now personified before me as a pregnant mirror to the “normal” life I gave up, when I became a hunter, when I came out as gay. No wedding, no children, no mini-vans and soccer practice, PTA meetings. Just dances with Death over and over again, until Death no longer favored me. And hopefully I’ll meet a hot girl along the way.
Mary stepped forward into the light, her shadows deepening. Jade moved.
“Jordan, you don’t have to go to church and torture yourself anymore,” Jade told her brother weeks later, flopping down on their couch casually. “Mom and Dad are dead. They’re not dragging us down there to get bogus lectures.”
“I don’t need them to,” Jordan retorted.
Jade shook her head. “Jordan, Jordan, Jordan. It was all just a farce anyway. Haven’t you realized that? The only reason Mom and Dad took us to church was so they could feel better about being drunks around the house all the time. They were the ones seeking repentance. We retaliated, we talked back because they forced us to. And then they just tried to force the fear of God on us at the same time as they were forgiven for being shitty, inattentive parents.”
“That’s…not true.”
“It is true,” Jade turned on him. “It’s very true. That, or they just wanted to put on a nice show for everyone. The happy fucking family. Take your pick. But don’t you dare condemn our lives anymore, our…anger, when you hold them up to sainthood.”
“Inner turmoil,” Upir sighed. “Haunted by her past and what that means for her now. Very central to the human condition, is it not? A disease that plagues you?”
“You mean conscience?” Shanna laughed. “Conscience is what separates us from animals, from you.”
Upir sneered.
Mary snickered. “You seem rattled, hunter.” She lifted her shirt over her stomach and lovingly ran a palm over the bulge.
Squinting, Jade was able to make out scars all across the bulge. As she watched, the bulge shifted and one section that she imagined was a mass of scars flopped over, letting loose a rivulet of blood.
“Oh, Hell no,” Jade muttered just before the stomach burst open, spilling blood onto the floor amid the hysterical laughter of Mary.
A bloody vampire baby, still attached to its mother by an umbilical cord, launched itself at Jade, stopping within a few inches of the hunter, only because it was at its rope’s end.
“Gugh,” Jade fell back into a wall and quickly scrambled through an open door that adjoined the room, slamming it shut behind her. In the soft blue emergency lights, she was able to make out the porcelain of the bathroom. A gold-rimmed sink, a toilet, a shower that doubled as a bath.
“More hiding?” Upir sighed. “More fear, more concern for comrades? It bores me.”
“At least we’re consistent,” Shanna related with a smile.
Jade tried to erase the image of the vampire baby from her mind, but she found herself unable to comply. It was eerie and disturbing on levels she couldn’t even take into account. Its wide black eyes, its tiny scowling mouth and bald head…it was cute but horrid at the same time. It was just an animal in the end, after all, in every sense of the word. She imagined it suckling blood from its mother’s nipples and nearly vomited. It had been covered in a syrupy layer of blood and…and whatever, as it was. She really couldn’t imagine anything worse than this. However, the curious part of her mind wanted nothing more than to examine the creature, figure out how it lived, its behaviors, its body’s maturity…it really was a miraculous thing.
There was a sharp slam at the door that sent Jade into action. Her real concern was the baby vampire. It was small, remarkably agile, and she probably wouldn’t be able to pin it down to stake it without getting shred to pieces by tooth and claw. She paused. Unless it didn’t have teeth, like the mora. Then she only need worry about its limbs. But was she really willing to risk her safety on a hunch?
Jade had imagined seeing the Devil once, leering at her from the end of her bed. Long ago, during her childhood. It certainly couldn’t have been real, of course. It was her subconscious dealing with something bad that she had done that she’d felt guilty about, something that didn’t matter anymore, than never really had mattered, but had tortured her nonetheless. Church had really screwed her up back then, especially as her sexuality surfaced and became clearer and clearer to her. Jade feared her brother was more screwed up from it than she could ever imagine, blaming some arbitrary sins he’d committed for his parents’ deaths, no doubt. It was bullshit. All of it. But he’d come out all right in the long run. He’d stopped going to church as Jade had distracted him with hunting, and his new purpose in life had come to light. He could focus the anger and resentment of his childhood and the violence of their parents’ death into battling monsters. It was therapeutic, rewarding. It was healthy, in a messed-up sort of way.
“I feel like I was meant to do this,” Jordan had confessed to her the night after their first kill. “Like this was my purpose all along. If Mom and Dad hadn’t died, I never would have come around to this. This world wouldn’t exist to me. Is it bad to be glad of something like that?”
“You’re not glad that they died,” Jade reasoned. “You’re happy that something good came from it is all, right?”
Jordan nodded sleepily. “Yeah. I’m glad we…do this. Thank you for sharing it with me.”
Jade grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. “Hey, it might just be the two of us now, but we’re still a family, you know.”
“I know.”
“Before I had little Ian, I had nothing,” Mary admitted through the door. “I was a crack whore squatting in an abandoned motel. Then I got knocked up and cleaned up my act. I was changed soon after, my reward for a rotten life.”
Jade watched the door warily. “So?”
“So little Ian means everything to me. He was why I was chosen to become what I am. He saved my life. And now I have someone to love, someone to love me. Always. That’s why I’m going to let him be the one to tear you apart.”
Jade shuddered. “You were one of those women, huh? Desperate for love, so desperate you got yourself knocked up so you’d have somebody who wouldn’t, couldn’t, leave you.”
“Shut up!” Mary screamed. “You don’t know what it’s like. You’re not a mother. And now, you never will be.”
Another knock at the door caused the midsection to crack inward.
“Never planned on becoming one,” Jade muttered, pulling a small axe from its sheath at her back, readying herself as the door gave way suddenly amid a shower of splinters. She saw the vampire baby first, as it sailed by her at the mirror, clearly confused upon seeing h
er reflected in it. Seizing the opportunity, she swung the axe at the creature, taking off an arm.
It shrieked and retracted back to the door as Mary appeared, concern written over her face upon the baby clutching her stomach, pawing at the open flaps of skin that hung limply.
“What did you do!?” Mary screamed, blindly running at Jade. In her rage, she failed to defend herself as the axe severed her head and ash took her stead. Her head transformed to dust as it rolled over the floor and crumpled at Jade’s feet.
Jade started as the ashen body suddenly exploded in a flurry, the baby flinging itself into the air, desperate to outrun its own umbilical cord that was turning to ash an inch at a time, a fuse making its way to the bomb that would destroy it. In less than a minute, it was over, however, as it collapsed in upon itself, no longer flesh, killed by the being that had been nurturing it for so long.
“God,” Jade whispered, wiping her brow and venturing back out into the office. She sighed and wondered vaguely how Jordan was faring as she left the room.
“It seems us mere mortals are doing pretty well,” Shanna observed as she looked at Upir and found his eyes fastened upon her face, no humor animating his features whatsoever.
“Enough of this. I can not convince you to join us?”
“Join?” Shanna started. “Join you? You mean, become…?”
“Whatever you like. Vampire, werewolf, witch…it matters not. They are not particular in their request.”
“They are not…? They thought I would…but why?”
Upir shook his head. “I thought not. You’ve made your choice.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Brett put a hand to his head immediately upon coming to. There was plenty of shouting in the room. His ears felt like they were bleeding. But his nose, his forehead - they were so painful that he almost blacked out again. His eyes were blurry, so he couldn’t focus on his fingers when he pulled his hand away from his face right away. But after a moment of intense concentration, things solidified before him and he saw the syrupy blood clinging to his fingertips. He nearly panicked, but before he could really think about it, he quickly focused his energy toward picking himself up, climbing to his feet.
As he groped for something to brace, to help him up, he got a glimpse of the chaos of the room. He was in a cage with Valor and Felicia. The good news was that the cage door was open. The bad news was that demons and vampires were battling the other hunters. Shanna and two men he didn’t recognize were battling the mora. Jordan was fighting a female so pale she couldn’t have been anything but a vampire. A really hot vampire. Brett let out a laugh that was cut short by the pain it brought to his face. More blood poured down his nose, back into his throat. He was swallowing his own blood. Drinking himself. Devouring himself. There was a word for that. Auto-cannibalism? He couldn’t think. He didn’t want to think about such things. If he were a vampire, it would taste good. He wasn’t.
Brett found the bars of the cage and forced his legs to comply, to stand firm, support his weight. They didn’t want to, so he tried harder.
Amelia was out there too, he suddenly noticed. She was face-to-face with another hot woman - a brunette with...with wings.
Brett slumped down amid his distraction and cursed, forcing himself to pay attention to what he was doing. Where was his strength? Where...was the girl who’d done this to him? He suddenly remembered her beautiful face. Lupe. Her psychotic turn...and Natalia! She’d been asking about Natalia!
Brett smiled triumphantly as he finally managed to stand, bracing the side of the cage. But he could barely stand. There was no helping anyone in his condition. What did he expect to do? The others were on their own. He had to...
Brett suddenly doubled over, pain running slowly down his back from his face. He put a hand up to his face again and cried out. There were things moving on his face. Slimy, wriggling. He pulled his hand back to study the limb before his shaky vision and gasped as he regarded a little green worm squirming in protest amid his blood. There were worms in his wounds! He gasped as he realized that they were deep in the lacerations, causing new pain that overwhelmed his body.
He looked down at Valor and Felicia, who lay still on the cage floor, donning no visible wounds. They weren’t infected with parasites as he was.
And then he noticed the laughter. It was infuriating that amid the chaos, amid the pain and weakness, someone was laughing. Beyond his pain, Brett tried to locate the laughter - the childish giggle of a girl. But the laughter was in his head. Someone was mocking his pain through his mind.
It didn’t take long to realize that the laughter came from the fish tank across the room, however. The woman in it - the half-woman, half-fish, swam right up against the side of her prison. Her mouth moved with the laughter, though it wasn’t audible to anyone. It was like she was being dubbed. It was an eerie effect that sent shivers of dread through his body to join those of pain.
The worms began digging into his wounds with more ferocity as he moved along his cell to the open door, his eyes focused upon the tank.
***
“Always nice to meet a fan,” Scarlet purred, her hair flowing behind her like a cape as she darted out of the way of the dagger Jordan used to swipe at her. He knew that a dagger wouldn’t be much use against a vampire. Something wooden would be needed in the end, no matter how much blood he drew. He had a small club attached to his right leg, underneath his formal attire, but not the one they all carried. Jade had been inspired by the standard club that The Agency utilized, for something a little different. A small button at the top extended the club into a bo. Jordan loved using a bo. It whistled, actually whistled, when he cut the air with it. And he looked damn good wielding one. However, he wouldn’t be able to just ask Scarlet if she would mind pausing for a minute while he retrieved it. For the moment, he was stuck with what he had. Which wasn’t much.
“Why do you do it? Why do you kill humans like you do, with The Crimson Rope? You have bars where you can get human blood. You can feed off of people and let them forget if they’re not hunters. Why do you put on such a show?” Jordan demanded, circling the vampiress carefully.
“Why? My, it’s just more fun killing in an all-out battlefield. Very reminiscent of the gladiators of the Colliseum, you know. And…well, La Faer Noir allows it, protects our sport, therefore, we indulge again…and again…and again.” She laughed tauntingly. “And you can’t suppose that all of the blood that goes into those bars is kill-free, can you, Darling? It is a lot of blood. A lot of intoxicated blood. The Black Fire would lose a remarkable amount of money without our…contributions.”
Jordan moved in to slice at her arm and nearly grazed her shoulder with his blade, proud of his skill.
“So brash, so daring,” Scarlet sang. “No wonder Noel is so intrigued by you. It won’t last however, Darling. I know young Noel too well. His affection for you will wane and wither and you will be left out in the cold.”
“A little cooler than where you’re headed,” Jordan countered, actually getting very close to Scarlet’s arm with a surprise maneuver. “Heard of Hell before?”
Scarlet scoffed. “Fire, brimstone, damnation....these are human devices to make things seem fair in the end. Nice people are rewarded with Heaven and happiness, bad people condemned to flames. It is so...human to assume that things would end up so tidy and just. No, those places do not exist, Dear. It is simply humanity clinging to a sad hope, to a sad God.”
Jordan’s eyes flashed and he swung in for a deep cut, meaning to draw blood, not caring what else became of her, this vile woman who walked and talked like a human but was mere perversion. The organizer of The Crimson Rope, the butcherers. She deserved to bleed. She deserved Hell. People like her would always have a Hell to go to whether they believed in it or not.
Scarlet moved quicker than before, letting Jordan know as she elbowed him in the back of the head that she’d been toying with hi
m, letting him get closer to her than he ever could have gotten, building his confidence.
And then he was on the ground, staring up her milky legs that pinned him like a butterfly to a tray, a halo of blood framing her face in the distance to create the effect of a real monster. She was a force of nature, like a volcano. She was death.
“Such a hero.” Scarlet leaned forward, adding pressure to the leg that held down his right shoulder. “If you hadn’t convinced your friend Shanna to join your group, she would be dead by now, no doubt. You should rest easy with that knowledge.”
“I-”
Scarlet kicked his face and smiled as his eyes rolled up into his head. “I said rest. You’ll need that strength.” She pulled a cigarette out of her nearby purse and fit it into her cigarette holder, lighting it quickly. She looked over the ensuing battle, then down at Jordan, before blowing a cloud of blue-gray smoke into the room and stepping back into shadows.
