…in a land far to the north where the vikings lived, there was a very brave and strong Nordic king. As well as being strong, he was also a wise, benevolent man who only chose war when he had no other choice; and he and his queen were very much in love.
One winter’s day, as the king was hard at work sharpening his sword for a great battle that awaited, he looked out to admire the falling snow and caught sight of a golden apple with an emerald green stem growing from a leafless tree in defiance of the frost. As the king gazed wondrously at the beautiful golden apple, he mistakenly slit his finger on the blade and on to the snow fell three drops of blood.
The instant he saw the blood alive on the snow, he knew it was a sign, so he plucked the golden apple and prayed to the heavens:
“Oh, Odin, All-Father! By this blood, I pray, if morrow’s battle should bring me to thine halls where the warriors drink their mead from thine valkyries, I pray mine wife birth me a child as gold as this apple, as green as its stem, and with all the strength it possesses to defy the icy touch of Skadi!”
After which, he presented the golden apple to his beloved as a gift before setting off for battle.
The king fought valiantly and, though the war was won, the victory was hollow as it came at the cost of the great king’s life. The poor queen was inconsolable, though her love’s prayer had come true and she had birthed him a son with shining golden hair and eyes green as emeralds. She named the young prince Alfvin, after his father.
Many years passed and, by the time Prince Alfvin was twelve years old, he had grown into a handsome and lively young man. Though, unlike his father, the young prince had also become rather spoiled, selfish, and unkind. Nothing the servants, nor his mother did could at all satisfy him. In fact, the only time anyone saw the prince truly happy was when he took the time to toss around and admire the golden apple his father had gifted before his death.
One day, as the prince was playing with his golden apple, it slipped past his hand and bounced into the bucket of a servant boy cleaning the palace floors.
“Your Majesty…” the servant boy said, retrieving the apple from his bucket, “…I’ve found thy golden apple.”
“How dare thee touch my father’s golden apple, servant!” the prince angrily cried out, snatching the apple from the servant boy’s hand, “Thou hast gotten it all wet! I command thee to fetch the finest fabric thou can and clean it completely before surrendering thyself to the guards! Thou art banished from my father’s kingdom forever!”
The queen watched from afar as the poor servant boy did as her cruel son commanded and left the palace in tears. She then ordered a hunting party to travel deep inside the forest to the part of it so dark that the sun’s light could not penetrate even a single leaf.
Several days later, Prince Alfvin awoke to find the hunting party his mother sent had returned to the palace carrying a large, man-sized cage. Inside the cage he saw an impish man with long, messy hair as red as rusted iron, ears that were pointed like an elf’s and the horns of a wild sheep protruding from his head. The strange creature also held in his arms a white, crystal box that seemed to have something glowing inside it like the northern lights!
“Mother, who in the name of Odin is that?” Prince Alfvin asked.
“He is the faerie sorcerer, my son,” said the queen, “The hunters found him dancing upon the surface of a pond in the forest as though it were solid and he ran faster than the wind when they made haste to capture him. They tell me he stopped only when a bolt of lightning struck in his path, as if the god Thor, himself, had ordered him to cease. Hence forth, he shall remain here in the palace dungeon where he can be seen by all.”
From that day forth, the faerie sorcerer remained locked inside the dungeon with only a single barred window looking out into the courtyard. It didn’t take long for the prince to grow very curious about him indeed, especially about the crystal box he kept with him at all times. Some nights, the prince even snuck out at night to see strange glowing lights shining from inside the faerie sorcerer’s cage.
“Why dost thou not order the faerie sorcerer to open his box, mother?” Prince Alfvin asked one day, peering out once again toward the barred window, “Thou art queen, after all, and the power to do so is thine.”
As soon as he asked his question, the queen grew angry.
“Tis good thine father isn’t alive to hear such arrogance from thee,” she replied, “If thou art going to rule our lands, thou must learn to respect the Gods and all who serve them, like the faerie sorcerer. Just as thou shalt some day as king. Thou shouldst take a lesson from the faerie sorcerer who may be locked away, but still hasn’t lost his sense of right nor wrong.”
Upon hearing his mother’s words, the haughty prince became outraged and waited for the sun to go down before sneaking up to the faerie sorcerer’s barred window.
“How now!” Prince Alfvin called to the faerie sorcerer, “Tis thine prince speaking, for I have come to keep thee company if thou whilst share the contents of thine box with me.”
No sooner had the prince spoken those words did the faerie sorcerer suddenly turn his head completely around his body like an owl!
“I cannot tell thee what this box contains, for the Lady allows me not to open it in the presence of others nor speak of its contents,” the faerie sorcerer growled, his voice strangely soft, yet animalistic as he stared at the prince with glowing green eyes like a wolf in the night.
The prince was so horrified by the creature’s inhuman movements and voice that he jumped backwards and dropped his father’s golden apple through the bars!
“My precious golden apple!” the prince cried, “Throw that up to me now, beast!!”
“I am my own man and I follow no one’s orders,” the faerie sorcerer replied, turning his head back around, “Be a good little boy and go back from whence thou came.”
“How dare thee!” the boy shrieked, “I’m the prince and thou shalt do things my way!”
All of a sudden, the faerie sorcerer let out a shrill cackle which sent a chill down the boy’s spine, but remained with his back turned to the window.
“If thou wishest to have thine apple again,” the faerie sorcerer told him, “Thou must come down thyself for it. The door to my cell is just yonder.”
The faerie sorcerer slowly pointed to the cell door with one hand while the other held his crystal box tighter. The young prince looked at the cell door and grew nervous as he tried to offer an excuse.
“But I have no means to open the lock,” he finally replied.
“The key is hidden beneath thine mother’s pillow,” the faerie sorcerer told him, “Thou can retrieve it when she isn’t looking and unlock the door. I promise thee thine golden apple shall remain safe in my possession till thou returns.”
Prince Alfvin nervously thought about what to do. He wanted his golden apple very much, but he feared his mother’s wrath if he were discovered stealing the key to the faerie sorcerer’s cell. Finally, after gathering his courage, Prince Alfvin snuck into the queen’s bed chamber where she lay fast asleep and quietly slipped the key out from under her pillow. He then snuck back down to the faerie sorcerer’s cell and unlocked the door. The faerie sorcerer now held the golden apple in his hand alongside his crystal box.
“I’ve come for my father’s golden apple,” the prince ordered, “Give it to me, beast!”
“Come to me and I shall return it to thee,” the faerie sorcerer said, holding the apple out to him.
The prince swallowed hard before slowly stepping inside to retrieve the apple. All of a sudden, as he reached out, the faerie sorcerer dropped the golden apple and grabbed hold of the prince’s arm.
“Twas brave of thee to come down and retrieve thine father’s golden apple,” the faerie sorcerer said, “But foolish of thee to leave the door open with the key in the lock.”
Prince Alfvin tried his best to pull away, but to no avail. The faerie sorcerer’s grip was as strong as a dozen men’s as he tossed the boy into the corner and made his way toward the door. The frightened prince saw him leaving and frantically threw himself at the impish man, his precious golden apple completely forgotten.
“Nay, Faerie Sorcerer!” the prince cried, grabbing the man’s bare ankles, “Everyone is going to laugh at me when they find out I let thee escape! My mother will have me punished severely!”
The faerie sorcerer looked down at the pitiful young prince and said, picking the boy up and hoisting him on to his back, “Very well. I shall make thee grow up in spite of thyself.”
With the boy on his back, the faerie sorcerer ran back to the forest with the speed of the wind and used one hand to hold Prince Alfvin up while the other held his box. Finally, the two of them reached the deepest, most enchanted part of the forest where the trees had human faces and every mushroom glowed like the full moon. The faerie sorcerer put the prince down and filled a hollowed out tree with moss to make a bed for him.
“Thou can stay here with me, boy,” the faerie sorcerer said, “The trees shall offer thee plentiful food and the spring’s water is sweet and clear, but thou must not goeth inside my secret cave at night. If thou dost enter the cave after dark, thou must leave as soon as the stone sitting across from it is struck by lightning. Is that understood?”
The frightened prince reluctantly nodded before falling asleep in his new bed.
The next morning, Prince Alfvin consumed his fill from the trees and spring while the faerie sorcerer went off into the forest with his box. Soon, the boy grew curious and began following the path the faerie sorcerer had taken until he came upon a cave with a single stone sitting a few paces from the cave mouth.
As the moon shone bright and full, the prince snuck quietly into the cave and saw a strange glow coming from inside, until…
BOOM!
…the prince heard a clap of thunder and saw the stone before the cave became struck by lightning! He quickly ran out of the cave as the faerie sorcerer had told him and watched as the cave magically disappeared leaving only the rocky cliffside in its place.
The next day, Prince Alfvin awoke to find the faerie sorcerer standing over him.
“Thou hast entered the cave,” he told the boy, “I shall let it go this time, but thou must not enter it again. If thou dost enter, thou must leave before the stone is struck by lightning.”
Once again, when the moon rose bright and full that night, Prince Alfvin followed the faerie sorcerer’s path to the cave where the same stone from before was whole again. He then snuck even deeper inside and saw that the glow was coming from a small hut made from the same white crystal as the faerie sorcerer’s box!
“By the All-Father!” the boy whispered to himself, “Tis beautiful!”
All of a sudden…
BOOM!!
…the boy heard another clap of thunder and the stone was once again struck by a bolt of lightning! He quickly ran out of the cave and saw it vanish into the cliffside like before!
The next day, the prince woke to find the faerie sorcerer standing over him again.
“Thou hast gone deeper into the cave,” he told the boy, “I shall be lenient once more, but thou must not go deeper. If thou dost go deeper, thou must leave before the stone is struck by lightning.”
One last time, the moon rose bright and full that night and the boy followed the faerie sorcerer once more to the cave where the stone was whole again before its mouth. He then snuck deeper into the cave until he reached the crystal hut, lifted the crystal door’s latch, and peered inside.
He saw the faerie sorcerer dressed in a cape of brown fur, a belt of white scales, and a headdress of black feathers. The boy then watched as the faerie sorcerer suddenly opened the white crystal box and saw three strange creatures fly out looking like little naked people with insect wings. One blue and black in color, the second yellow and green, and the third red and brown.
“Sprites!” the prince whispered to himself, “They are sprites! Just like the ones I have heard tell of in my mother’s nightly tales!”
The young prince watched in awe at the creatures flying about and the faerie sorcerer dancing around the hut in the wildest of ways. He listened to the shaking, booming music that flowed from the hut until he found himself entrancingly dancing along with it, until…
BOOM!!!
…he failed to hear the thunder rumbling outside and, by the time a bolt of lightning struck the stone to pieces, it was too late!
All of a sudden, the blue and black sprite instantly flew to the prince from inside the hut and swirled around him until the boy was suddenly transformed into a raven! As the other two sprites disappeared back into the box, the faerie sorcerer approached the raven that was once Prince Alfvin.
“Thou hast failed the test and now thou art cursed!” he told the boy, “Thou can only be freed if thou goeth off and become a man. Now away with thee and, if thou should needeth my help, simply come to the forest and call for me three times!”
Suddenly, the cave began to spin around, faster and faster, until the raven prince found himself alone in a forest far from the faerie sorcerer and his home kingdom.
The raven that was once Prince Alfvin walked on his little bird legs and kept tripping over himself again and again, not knowing how to move like a bird. All other birds laughed and jeered at him when they saw him trying to walk like a man. They even told other animals in the forest about the raven trying to walk as if he were human and they ridiculed him as well. Alfvin cried silently day in and day out as he stumbled his way through field and forest, trying to survive as he endured the mockery of the animals.
After many days of stumbling and tears, he reached a large, tall cliff by the sea where he finally laid down near the cliff’s edge.
“I cannot do this…!” he cried to himself, “…I cannot fly, I cannot walk, and the other birds only laugh at me. I am all alone and in such terrible pain. Perhaps I should end it all and throw myself into the sea!”
However, before he could, the raven prince suddenly found himself picked up by the hands of a human.
“Oh, poor creature,” a young man’s voice said, “What has happened to leave thee on the edge of the cliff in such a state?”
Alfvin wiped the tears from his raven eyes with his wing feathers and found himself stunned by the sight of the young man holding him. For he was the very same servant boy he had once ordered to be banished for dirtying his father’s golden apple!
“I am Leif, son of Bjorn the fisherman,” the young man said, “I shall bring thee back to my home and nurse thee until thou art well again.”
And, with that, he carried the raven prince back to his seaside hovel in total ignorance of who the bird truly was.
Leif provided Alfvin with food and water to regain his strength and even a basket near the window to sleep in. Once his strength had returned, he took the raven prince and showed him how to fly by observing the seabirds on the beach. Day after day, Prince Alfvin watched them and slowly learned to flap his wings, jump across the ground, and even take to the air!
“I thanketh thee, my friend!” Prince Alfvin said, “Now that I can fly, I must find some means of repaying thee, Friend Leif, for thine kindness.”
“No need, my friend,” Leif replied, “Thy friendship is all the reward I need.”
However, as time went on, the raven prince began to notice his dear friend suddenly begin to grow sadder and sadder with each passing day, as did his father and mother. Finally, it became too much for the raven prince and he asked Leif why his family and him were in such despair.
“Oh, dear raven,” Leif said, “My family’s purse has runneth dry and we have no catch to sell for more money. Very soon we may be homeless and destitute unless we find a means to obtain more wealth.”
It was at that moment Alfvin knew he had to help Leif and his family. Not merely to repay his friend’s kindness, but to make amends for his own part in leaving them so poor.
“Do not despair, dear Leif,” the raven prince said, “If thou wouldst allow me a day or so to search, I shall find thee a new means to make a living for thine family and much more!”
And, with those words, he flew off in search of salvation for his dear friend.
After spending the entire day flying around and searching, Alfvin finally came to a great castle not too far from Leif’s home. The castle had many servants, but was still in need of more, so Alfvin flew back to inform Leif.
“I shall join thee on thy journey to the castle, my friend,” he said, “If thou becometh endangered or in need during thine work, I swear to help thee however I can.”
The next day, Leif bid his family farewell and set off for the castle with the raven.
Once they reached the castle, Leif was able to get a job working with the palace cook fetching water, cleaning ashes from the stove and serving food to the king and his court. Each day, he worked hard and received praise from his fellow servants while Alfvin flew his bags of pay back home to his family while he lived at the palace.
“Good day, Leif!” Alfvin said many weeks later at the palace courtyard, “I’m pleased to report that thy family is flourishing under thine labors and money.”
“I thanketh thee, for I owe all my family’s happiness to thee, my friend!” Leif said.
Some months later, as Leif was doing a bit of work for the castle gardener, the king made a proclamation: His beloved daughter, Princess Yrsa, had been stolen by a nokken and he would offer her hand in marriage to any man able to bring her back. As soon as Leif gazed upon the princess’s beautiful likeness drawn on the king’s proclamation, he was immediately overcome with love at first sight.
“Oh, dear friend Alfvin, I want nothing more than to rescue Princess Yrsa and marry her,” Leif said, “But every man who journeys to the nokken lake never returns and I fear that I shall fare no better.”
Very soon afterward, Leif grew very sick with longing and Alfvin feared he might die from heartbreak.
That is, until Alfvin remembered what the faerie sorcerer had told him.
“Do not despair, friend,” he said to Leif, “Follow me to the forest for the solution.”
Leif followed the raven prince to the forest and watched as he called out thrice for the faerie sorcerer. All of a sudden, right before Leif’s eyes, the yellow and green sprite appeared and swirled itself around Alfvin until his black raven feathers were replaced with the scales of a white snake! Before the creature disappeared, it also left Leif a rope made of duckweed and a fishing net woven from wild flowers.
“Now thee and I shall be able to save thy princess,” Alfvin said through snake lips.
Together the two traveled to the nokken’s lake and the snake that was Alfvin swam in to see a submerged stone castle at the lake’s center, surrounded by the bones of all those past warriors who had attempted to rescue the princess. The snake prince slithered in through a window where he saw Princess Yrsa in a deep sleep while the green-skinned nokken played music at her bedside.
“Oh, princess! Oh, princess!” the nokken sang, “Thou art mine and, my strings, I play for thee! For I must keep playing till a quarter to three! Thou art mine and, my strings, I play for thee! For I cannot play again till a quarter past three!”
Upon hearing the nokken’s song, Alfvin swam back to the surface and informed Leif who tied one end of the duckweed rope to the flowery net and tossed it into the water. The snake prince then took the net in his mouth and swam back down to the nokken’s castle to wrap it around the still sleeping princess. He then called for Leif who gallantly pulled them both out of the lake with all his strength!
Once out of the water, Princess Yrsa instantly awoke from the enchanted sleep to find herself in Leif’s arms. The moment she saw him, she too was in love at first sight!
Leif returned the princess to her father who offered her hand in marriage and invited his family to come live at the palace. Leif and Princess Yrsa enjoyed their courtship together until the great day they were married. Meanwhile, dear Alfvin was given a secret place in the castle garden pond to swim as a snake. While he watched his dear friend day in and day out continue to fall in love with Princess Yrsa, and she with him, Alfvin couldn’t help but feel a bit lonely without him.
“Dear snake who was once a raven,” Leif told his friend, “I’m walking on air! I love my beloved wife so much and I have thee to thank for helping me save her.”
“Tis the least I can do for the kindness thou hast shown me, dear friend, thou I did not deserve it,” Alfvin said, his heart heavy with unspoken longing as he refused to confess his feelings to his friend.
However, the princess and Leif’s happiness was short-lived, for the nokken who had captured her was angered to find her gone and proclaimed he shall see her retrieved. With the magic of his nokken strings, he enchanted the bones of the fallen warriors at the bottom of his lake and led them like an army to the king’s palace!
Once the king received word of the nokken’s army approaching, he and all of the men of the realm took up arms to defend the castle, Leif among them.
“My beloved Leif!” Princess Yrsa cried, “Thou dost not know how truly sinister and cunning thine enemy is! I must go too and fight beside thee as thou wouldst for me!”
“No, my love! As thine husband, it must be I who striketh the villainous nokken upon the battlefield to ensure thine freedom from him. Be not afraid, for I have no fear of death, and I shall say no more,” Leif told her, and then went off to war.
However, the princess could not help but be afraid, for she knew firsthand the power the nokken had over men as it did over her. Not wishing to lose her beloved to such evil, she ran to the garden pond to seek Alfvin’s counsel.
“Please, dear snake friend,” she said, “Thou must helpeth me find a means of entering the battle alongside my beloved husband, for I know thou loveth him as much as I and, if the nokken were to enchant him as he did the fallen men who came before, then brave Leif shall be lost from Odin’s halls forevermore!”
The dismayed snake prince slithered up from the pond and said to her, “If what thou speaketh be true, dear princess, then taketh me to the wood. There, thou shalt see how I came to be that which I am now, and thou must take up arms just as a man would.”
Princess Yrsa scooped the snake from the pond waters and answered, “For my love, I shall complete this task, for, like him, I too have no fear of death.”
And, with those words, the princess made haste for the forest with the snake in hand.
Once there, Princess Yrsa watched as the snake prince called three times for the faerie sorcerer. All of a sudden, right before her eyes, the red and brown sprite appeared and swirled itself around Alfvin until his white snake scales became replaced with the thick fur of a large brown bear!
Just before the creature disappeared, it left the princess a sword, a helm, and a dress of chainmail. She quickly put them on and mounted the bear that was Alfvin like a steed.
“Now thee and I can join Leif in defeating the nokken,” said the bear prince.
Both the bear and the princess made haste out of the forest toward the raging battle at the icy halfway point between nokken lake and the king’s castle. There, the two bore witness to a series of furious fights between the brave viking warriors and the living skeletons of their fallen brethren before joining in themselves!
With her helm, Princess Yrsa blocked firing arrows and with her sword she beheaded skeletal warrior after skeletal warrior like a vengeful valkyrie bursting from Odin’s halls. As she fought, Alfvin slashed with his bear claws at the skeletons and crushed their bones with his enormous bear-like teeth until the princess and he were reunited on the battlefield with the man they both loved.
“Run away, my two great loves!” he ordered them, “This battle is no place for thee!”
“I may not be human any longer, but I am no coward, friend!” Alfvin said through his bear-like mouth, “If thou goeth into battle, I goeth alongside thee!”
“As do I! For that nokken hath taken me once and shall take nothing else so long as I live!” Princess Yrsa cried as she crushed another skull with the hilt of her sword.
The king’s army battled the skeletal warriors for hours until only Leif, Princess Yrsa, and Alfvin were the only ones left alive. As his two friends continued to fight, Alfvin noticed something they did not: The nokken himself wasn’t fighting at all, but merely playing music just as he had at the bottom of his lake!
That’s when Alfvin knew what he had to do!
The bear prince charged with all of his animalistic rage at the nokken and attacked his great stringed instrument. His great claws splintered the wood and his bear-like jaws ripped at the strings until they were all broken!
Just as the instrument was destroyed, the skeleton army fell limp and dead just as they had been before. However, just as they fell to the ground before the eyes of Leif and his love, the cruel nokken ran Alfvin straight through with the splintered remains of his evil instrument and on to the snow fell three drops of blood!
In horror at the sight of the nokken’s cruel murder, both Leif and Princess Yrsa ran at the nokken with their swords bared.
The nokken took up two swords from two fallen warriors and attempted to fight them off. However, his attempt was in vain, for, like the previous owners of his stolen swords, the nokken fell beneath the shared sword blows of husband and wife!
“Oh, dear friend!” Leif cried, “Thou shalt not die, for like thou hast done for the two of us, we shall save thee.”
Alfvin smiled as a tear fell from his eye and he replied, “Thou already hath done so.”
As the poor bear prince drew his last breath, Leif and Princess Yrsa saw through eyes blinded by tears a strange-looking man stepping out from the forest beyond. A man with ears pointed like an elf’s and spiraling horns like a wild sheep’s. He ran as fast as the wind toward the dead bear and opened his white crystal box to reveal the three sprites of different colors as they swirled themselves around their friend’s body.
“Thou hast become a man, my son…” the faerie sorcerer proclaimed, “…And so much more!”
Once the sprites had finished swirling around him, Prince Alfvin was alive and human again, but not as he was before. Like the faerie sorcerer, he now had a pointed beard, elven ears, the horns of a wild sheep, and was dressed barefoot in a dirty tunic and pants. If not for his golden hair and emerald green eyes, no one would’ve known he was the same man!
“Now, Prince Alfvin, thou hast proven thyself a worthy successor to my power,” said the faerie sorcerer as he handed his crystal box to the prince, “And I may goeth to the land of our Lady, Freyja, who hath been expecting me.”
As he spoke his final words, the sky opened and the goddess Freyja herself flew down on her lynx-drawn chariot to take the faerie sorcerer to the land of Folkvangr!
Leif was in shock to see that his dear friend was indeed the prince who had previously banished him, but embraced him as his friend nonetheless. With the battle won, he, his love, and their magical friend returned to the castle for a great celebration.
Once finished, Alfvin bid his two friends farewell and made haste back to the forest to do his duties as the new faerie sorcerer, but not without promising his return…
…And they all lived happily ever after.
THE END.
The Faerie Sorcerer by Amaya Steveamayastevearts@gmail.com
Joycie and Edie Remember Their Mother by Murphy Adam, Discord: murphy_adam09 Instagram: murphyadam08 Twitter: @Murphyadam09 Gmail : murphyadam809@
“Is it ready, Devaughan?”
A beautiful, fair-skinned woman with blonde hair and green eyes stood in the middle of a suburban house garage in sunny Sacramento.
She spoke with a slight Swiss accent, watching her husband – a tall black man around the same age with a flat-top haircut, mustache and goatee dressed in a police uniform – as he finished taping some black-out bags to windows above the garage door. All of the various bits of lawn furniture, old toys, and yard equipment had all been moved aside to make room for a painter’s tarp. However, instead of paint cans and brushes, the tarp was covered by a balance- beam, trapeze hoops, a treadmill, various weights, and other athletic items.
“All set, Heidi,” Devaughan said, putting up the last piece of tape, “Time to go get the girls.”
Heidi nodded as Devaughan climbed down from the ladder and they both made their way back into the house. The inside was just the kind of open-windowed, nicely-decorated little house a California suburbanite could want. Sitting in the middle of their plush little living room were two young women; one of about twenty-three with long, curly blonde hair and soft-beige skin – that was me! Meanwhile the other girl was about sixteen with curly black hair and darker beige skin. Both of us had the same green eyes as Heidi, our mother.
“Do another one, Edie!” the teenage girl said, sitting on the couch and laughing loudly at my antics.
“Okay, okay,” I said, dressed in an overly large blue, velvety bathrobe.
I paused for a moment before I thought of a good impression. I began punching the air playfully like a boxer and said in my best Sylvester Stallone voice, “Ya know, maybe I’ll fight Apollo and maybe I won’t, eh? Adrian!!!!!!”
My little sis busted out laughing at the sound of my Rocky impression. I felt a rush of excitement at the sound of her sweet laughter, but I felt an even bigger rush at the sound of my approaching father – stepfather, technically – joining in the laughter. Unfortunately, my excitement and warmth was distilled a bit by the sight of my mother’s unimpressed facial expression. I tried not to let it show and instead launched directly into a new impression.
“Eh… What’s up doc…?!” I said, doing my Bugs Bunny impression for Mom, since she actually was a doctor. Or, rather, used to be a doctor.
She just smiled amusingly at my impression and said, “Edith, it’s time to begin.”
I frowned for a second before turning to my sister, Joycie, and said, “Tha-b Th-a-b Tha-b That’s all folks!”
She busted out laughing again as she, Mom, Dad, and I made our way to the garage where everything was set up.
All of a sudden…
RIIIIIIIIING!!!
…the house phone – yes, we still had one of those – began to ring.
All four of us froze. I could feel my heart starting to beat faster and I knew everyone else’s was doing the same. Mom said they were going to call sooner or later, but I had hoped it wouldn’t be this soon. So did she, and so did Dad and Joycie.
“Mom…?” I said, worried.
Dad quickly put his hand on my shoulder and said, “It’s alright, I’ll handle it. You three just get to work practicing.”
As he apprehensively approached the phone, Mom, Joycie and I all hurried into the garage. Mom handed a timer to Joycie as she closed the door, while I made my way to the center of the garage. I loosened the tightener around my waist and let the large robe fall to the ground to reveal an equally large silvery-blue one-piece swimsuit.
“Alright, now change,” Mom said.
I nodded and closed my eyes, taking in a deep breath through my nose and out through my mouth. All of a sudden, I found myself growing two feet taller than before as my soft beige skin turned light-gray and snow-white fur sprouted from every pore of my body. My curly blonde hair also turned white and even straightened itself out as the green eyes I shared with my mother and sister became replaced by a pair of icy blue ones. Finally, a stream of cold steam burst from my lips as if I were in the dead of winter.
“And beauty then discovered that she was the beast” I said, opening my eyes, my new voice deeper, but still somewhat feminine.
“Good,” Mom said, ignoring my words, “You’ve mastered your transforming abilities, but now let’s see what you can do as far as agility is concerned. We need to make sure you’re ready when they come for us.”
I frowned slightly and nodded before jumping into the air. I grabbed hold of the two trapeze hoops hanging from the garage roof and swung from them to and fro; first with both arms and then from just one. I showed off my swinging abilities with first the right arm, then with the left before twirling between them like an Olympic athlete and finally letting go to flip through the air!
“Ta-da…!” I said, striking a pose as I landed.
Joycie applauded me while my mother just gave a slightly satisfied smile.
“That’s a good start,” she said, before pointing to an extra large barbell, “Now let’s see what your strength looks like.”
I rolled my eyes and let out a deep sigh before walking over to the two-hundred pound barbell. With a bend of my knees, I grabbed hold and lifted the whole thing over my head in less than two seconds, too fast for Mom. She and Joycie quickly added another two-hundred pounds to each side, which I had a harder time lifting than the two-hundred, but it was still well-within my range!
“Perfect!” Mom said, “Now let’s see if you can handle this.”
As she spoke, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a shiny gold medallion with Tibetan letters stamped into it and a shard of nirvana quartz embedded in its center. My eyes widened in both surprise and joy at the sight of the medallion. Mom had shown it to me only one other time in my life; she said it was a gift from my birth father. The very thing used by his people to keep them safe from humans for so long.
“Really?!” I asked, a big smile spread across my face, “I get to use it?”
Mom nodded.
“Yay!!!” I said, jumping like a schoolgirl.
Mom handed me the medallion before pulling out an old scrap of paper with some Tibetan writing scribbled on it. She looked it over for a minute and then pointed to a specific character on the paper.
“Touch this symbol and then the crystal,” she said.
I looked down at the medallion and saw the symbol she had pointed to just above the crystal. I tapped it like she said, followed by the crystal and suddenly found myself engulfed in a shimmering white light that lasted only for half a second before disappearing… along with me!
“Edie!?” Joycie said, shocked by my sudden little vanishing act, “Where are you?”
“I’m right here!” she heard my voice coming from nowhere, “I’m just invisible! So cool!”
“Wow!” she said, her eyes wide with excitement.
I tapped the medallion again and another white shimmer brought me back within the visible spectrum.
“Now you see me…” I said.
Tap.
“…now you don’t!”
Tap.
“Now you see me…”
Tap.
“…now you don’t.”
Joycie chuckled, but Mom had her eyes closed as she let out an exasperated breath.
“Edie, please stay focused,” she said, “My old colleagues at the Plum Island Animal Research Facility would do anything to get their hands on you. Or, at the very least, your DNA, as well as my research on it. You have to be ready.”
I tapped the medallion to make me visible again as I whined, “I know that, Mom! I’m just having a little fun. What’s wrong with that?”
“Yeah!” Joycie said, backing me up.
Mom gave her signature furrowed-brow glare at Joycie before turning back to me and saying, “What’s wrong is that you have too much fun, especially when you need to stay focused on the task at hand. Those bastards could be here to take you, or all of us, away any min-”
PLINK!
THUMP!
Suddenly, she was interrupted by a tiny sound of glass breaking, followed by the sound of a body falling to the floor in the other room! We all turned toward the door as the air became heavy with our collective worry.
“Dad…?!” I called out.
I quickly changed back to my human form as all three of us headed toward the door, and what we saw on the other side wasn’t pretty: Dad lying unconscious on the kitchen floor with a red-tufted dart in his neck. Red with alarm!
“DAD!!! DAD!!! DEVAUGHAN!!!” the three of us cried out before…
CLICK!
“Look out!”
…my enhanced hearing picked up another gun click and quickly pulled Mom and Joycie to the floor.
PEW!
Suddenly, another red-tufted dart pierced through the window just like before.
As Mom and Joycie kept their heads down, I looked up and saw – with my enhanced eyesight – a man dressed all in black hidden among the foliage of a nearby tree. He was a tall, thin man with a shaved head, dark red lips and high cheekbones; his skin tone was of a lighter, latin brown and his eyes were as black as the clothes he wore.
“They’re here!”
_
Two months later…
The game was going pretty well.
I was sitting in the corner of the bleachers watching the University of California, Los Angeles baseball team practice in preparation for their next game. Or, at least that’s what I wanted the man standing near the bleachers to think.
He was a tan guy dressed in a navy blue tank-top, white swim trunks, sunglasses, and with a shark’s tooth necklace dangling around his windpipe. To the average person, he looked like just another standard surfer dude – not uncommon here in L. A. – but I knew who he really was and that’s why I was spying on him.
From what I could tell, he seemed to only be watching the game out of morbid curiosity, so I took advantage of the setting sun and picked an area of the bleachers covered mainly by shadows. I had my hood pulled over my long, curly blonde hair with my eyes hidden under a pair of snazzy brown sunglasses as I waited for him to move. If I was lucky, I could maneuver him into a place with no witnesses present, but – knowing the kind of man he was – I’d need to come up with a damn good plan to make that happen.
And that’s when it hit me… almost.
“Look out!” one of the players screamed.
I looked up to see one of their wayward balls darting fast toward the side of my skull. My heart rate skyrocketed as I instinctively jumped into the air and caught the ball with the speed of a snowstorm before it could hit me!
Everybody on the athletic field, including the man I was spying on, stared at me with their mouths hanging open. Honestly, I knew I was supposed to be laying low, but some part of me couldn’t help but smile at the looks of awe I was receiving at that moment.
Keeping my eyes on my target the whole time, I jumped off the end of the bleachers and landed perfectly on my feet. I then began strutting my way towards the baseball players already headed my way. Against my better judgment, I peeled back my hood and shook my curly blonde locks to reveal the full-lipped, soft beige beauty underneath – if I do say so myself.
I looked at my target and saw little drops of sweat forming over his brow from halfway across the field.
Gotcha!
“Nice catch,” said the muscular Latino who was up to bat, “Sorry about that.”
I briefly turned my attention away from my target to admire the batter’s long, scruffy black hair tied back in a short ponytail and his big biceps as thick as my neck. I also noticed he even had a scar going across the left side of his jaw, which, to be honest, kind of enhanced his sexiness for me!
“That’s okay,” I said, handing him the ball, “I can take care of myself.”
He smiled and said, with a little flirtation in his voice, “Yeah, I noticed.”
I smiled back at him.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
That’s when I froze.
“We can’t trust anybody,” I remembered my own words to Joycie, “If we’re going to get Mom and Dad back then we gotta keep a low profile for the time being.”
My eyes darted away from the handsome baseball player for a few seconds, looking for an idea. I stopped for a moment at the man in the corner, who looked like he was about ready to leave. Finally, my eyes landed on a tiny statue of The Virgin Mary in a nearby chapel garden just outside the field.
“Virginia,” I lied.
“Virginia, eh?” he replied, “I like it. I’m Carlos, but most people just call me Carl.”
He held out his hand. I took it and gave him a little jiggle.
“Oh, quite a handshake. You almost crushed my hand,” he said, jokingly.
Call me a sap, I laughed. He seemed like a pretty cool guy, and it didn’t hurt that he was a sexy varsity athlete to boot.
“Hey, um, if you’re not doing anything later,” he said, “Did you wanna maybe go out for a drink or something tonight?”
My heart-rate quickened; now things were going too far. As much as I would’ve loved a date with a handsome college baseball star, it was time to pull the plug. Especially since I noticed my target making a break for it.
“Sorry, I can’t do it tonight. I have a previous engagement,” I told him, biting my lip nervously.
His smile faded a little, but I could tell he was trying not to show it.
“Oh, well, I understand,” he said, pulling a folded bit of paper out of his pocket, “But, in case you change your mind…”
I unfolded the paper, which had his name and phone number on it.
“…thanks,” I said, briefly taking off the sunglasses and revealing my light green eyes underneath, “I’ll think about it.”
He smiled like a little boy whose mom had just told him they ‘might’ be able to go to Disneyland before turning excitedly to his buddies behind him. I smiled at that… until my eyes noticed my target already driving away in his pick-up truck with the surfboard in the back.
Color me surprised.
“Speaking of my previous engagement,” I said – more so to myself than to Carl – as I put back on my sunglasses and hood, “I’m already running late for it.”
“Maybe I’ll see you around-” Carl said.
Unfortunately for him, I was already out of sight faster than his accidental fly ball from earlier.
_
A few minutes later…
The man I was hunting was driving – seemingly without noticing me – through downtown Los Angeles. I was following him on the roof of a nearby building, with the help of my birth father’s medallion.
Suddenly, the pickup truck quickly turned a corner into a wide alley.
“You’re making this too easy, my guy,” I said.
I quickly ran to the other end of the building for a moment before running back in the direction of the alleyway. In the span of only a few seconds, I jumped, grabbed hold of an adjoining streetlight, twirled around it like a pole-dancer, and shot myself down the alley like a pinball in an arcade machine! Of course, the only thing the bystanders saw was a streetlight jiggle a little bit.
“Yeah!” I whispered as I dusted myself off.
Turning a corner, I saw his pickup truck with the surfboard in the back parked in between the back doors of two adjoining restaurant buildings. The man himself didn’t appear to be in the front seat, but I suspected that might be a trick, so I started walking toward the car with the intention of jumping onto the car’s roof when…
CLICK
“Hey babe… lookin’ for me?”
…I was stopped by the sound of a cocking gun and a Californian accent.
“I can see you,” he said, “So you might as well just show yourself already.”
My eyes widened as I turned around to see the guy with his sunglasses still on. I noticed a glowing red light on the bridge of the glasses, which gave away how he was able to see me.
“Infrared… damn it!” I said, pressing the symbols on my medallion to become visible again.
His eyes lit up at my little trick as he began circling around me. He kept his gun trained on me the whole time like a cop in the movies does with the criminal he caught. Occasionally he stopped to pull off my hood first, followed by my sunglasses. Per his demands, I kept my arms in the air as he checked my pockets, pulling out a disposable cell phone and the paper with Carl’s number on it in the process. He stuck both items into his own pocket before finally pointing his gun directly at the bridge of my nose.
“So, tell me, why exactly was a pretty little dudette like you following me…?” he asked, “You a paid assassin? A mob-enforcer…? A surf-groupie lookin’ for a hot date?”
He raised his eyebrows twice with a lustful smile when he asked the last one. I can’t say I was impressed.
“None of the above, actually,” I said, “I’m looking for someone and I was told you might be able to point me in the right direction. Ever heard of a man by the name of Cruz…?”
The surfer began blinking rapidly – a stress response – which indicated to me that he knew who I was talking about. Now all I had to wonder was if he was going to tell me where the bastard was.
“Sorry, don’t know who you’re talkin’ about,” he said, uneasily, as I noticed the fine coating of sweat beginning to seep from all his pores.
That was a big no.
“Don’t lie to me,” I said, “I can tell you’re hiding something.”
He raised an eyebrow, trying to appear unfazed as he said, “Oh, really?”
I smirked like a mean girl and replied, “Yes, really, and I’m only going to give you only one chance to tell me of your own accord before I’m forced to pry it out of you. So, why don’t you just make this easy on yourself and tell me where I can find him… dude!”
Speaking that last word in a voice meant to mock his surfer-boy accent, I delivered my little ultimatum.
After a long moment of silence, he finally said, “Sorry… it just doesn’t ring a bell.”
As he spoke, he pointed the gun barrel right to my forehead, pulled back the hammer, and was prepared to squeeze the trigger, until…
CRACK!!!!!
“Ah!!!”
PEW! PEW! PEW! PEW! PEW! PEW!
The silenced gun shot bullet after bullet just an inch or two from my left ear as I grabbed the hand he held the gun in and squeezed it with all my strength. I felt the warmth and wetness of his blood already seeping through my fingers as I squeezed his hand like a raw egg. I held my fake smile, but gritted my teeth angrily the whole time.
“Stop it! Please!” he cried through the pain as the last bullet shot from his gun.
“Why…?” I said, staring him down the whole time, “Did that monster, Cruz, stop when he was hired to kidnap my parents and use my father to force information out of my mother?”
He let out another yelp as I squeezed harder.
“Did the monsters that hired him stop when they gave him our address and the order to capture me for their own nefarious purposes?!” I raised my voice.
Another squeeze and another painful howl.
“How…?!” he yelped through sobs of pain, “How the hell are you doing this!?!”
I smiled with sadistic glee and said with my fake mean girl voice, “Well, you see, sir, that’s the whole reason why those monsters were after my mother and me in the first place…”
All of a sudden, right before the scumbag surfer’s eyes, my golden ringlets straightened themselves out and turned white as a glacier. The white hair spread from my head all across my body like animal fur as my lovely beige skin turned light-gray. The next thing he knew, I was towering over him as I grew two feet taller and held him a few inches off the ground by his broken, bloodied hand. Finally, I grabbed his jaw with my other hand and pulled him close just in time to see my eyes turn icy blue.
“…because they were looking for a monster too!” I said, as a flurry of cold mist escaped from between my lips.
_
CHA-CLICK!!!
The surfer woke up some hours later to the sound of a spotlight being turned on and blaring in his eyes.
He blinked a couple of times until his eyes adjusted to see where he was: A bluish, freezer-like room filled with cold steam. Before him stood a wall of frozen water pipes with a metallic box next to them.
When he tried to move to see what else was in the room, he realized he couldn’t move at all; his arms were chained in place above his head, as were his feet to the cold floor. That’s also when he noticed he was wearing nothing but his swimming trunks with some bandages wrapped around his broken, bloody hand.
“W-W-What the f-fuck…?!” he stammered as he shivered from the surrounding cold air.
Suddenly, a loud noise, like the sound of a grocery store intercom, blared to life, followed by a voice.
“Esteban Sablo,” he heard his real name spoken over the intercom by a clearly modulated voice meant to sound male, “You have been brought from the streets of Los Angeles to answer some important questions… and walk away with fabulous prizes!!!”
All of a sudden, more lights came on, confetti shot from cannons stuck in the corners of the room, and 80’s-style game show music played over a pre-recorded studio audience applause. The voice even switched from the modulated male-sounding voice from before to that of a teenage girl halfway through speaking.
“Now, here’s… Edie!” the voice said, enthusiastically.
Sablo’s attention was quickly directed to his right where a shimmering glow of white energy brought forth the large, white-furred woman who broke his arm earlier – that being me, of course. His eyes widened in terror as I appeared out of the glowing shimmer of light dressed in a silvery-blue one-piece swimsuit with a microphone in my hand. Neither my outfit nor the microphone seemed at all to dissuade him of his fear. Lucky for me.
“Hello ladies, and gents, and…” I said, before playfully shading my eyes with my hand, “…my god, is that Sasquatch…?! Didn’t think so!”
A laugh track played as I snapped my fingers and pointed to the imaginary audience behind my captive.
“Hey y’all, it’s me, Edith Galloway, the hairiest hostess with the coldest commentary on the air,” I continued, “And, today, we have with us one massive scumbag surfer… Esteban ‘Stevo’ Sablo!!!!!”
The hysterical applause track began to sound as I stepped up to the terrified man with the microphone pointed at his mouth.
“Got anything special you wanna share with the audience, Stevo?” I asked.
His teeth chattered as he spoke, “Wh-Who… What are you?”
I smiled like a cat with a mouse in its paws and replied, “We’ll get to that. But, in the meantime, here’s how the game works: I’m gonna ask you questions and, if you answer them correctly, you can win one of these valuable prizes: Your clothes, your freedom, your limbs, and your life! But, if you fail to answer correctly – or at all – you get… Shower Time!”
Just as I finished explaining the rules of the game to him, another spotlight flashed to life and shone on the metallic box next to the frozen pipes in front of him. It had a big blue button on it with white-lettered writing that Sablo couldn’t make out from where he was chained. At the same time, the box also had ‘SHOWER TIME!’ spray-painted on it in big letters. That he was able to make out.
“First question…” I said into the microphone, “…where can I find your pal, Cruz?”
Sablo gritted his teeth and growled, “Fuck you!”
I threw him another evil smile and said, “Judges…? *BZZZ* I’m sorry, but that’s the wrong answer! So, that means, you, Mr. Sablo, get… Shower Time!!!”
That’s when I clicked the blue button on the metal box. Suddenly, Sablo heard a sound similar to the sound heard just before water comes out of a bathtub faucet. He followed the noise until he found himself looking directly above where he was chained… at a conveniently placed shower head!
As soon as he saw it, he turned back to me, his face stricken with terror as he realized the white lettering above the button read, “WATERING SYSTEM”.
The bastard screamed bloody murder as he was sprayed from above by a blast of ice-cold water!
I watched with semi-sadistic glee as his lips began turning visibly purple and his normally tan body grew paler with each passing second from the freezing liquid. Finally, after about ten seconds of continuous spraying, I took my finger off of the button and the water stopped, leaving the man howling with pain from the water slowly freezing on his skin.
Once he had grown quiet enough to hear me speaking, I continued.
“Now, the judges are saying I can repeat the question,” I said, “So, once again, I ask ‘where is Cruz?’ And, just a reminder, you’re not playing only for your life… but for all your extremities as well.”
Sablo took in heaving breaths as he stared down at his feet to see his toes turning blue.
“I – didn’t do – anything,” he choked out between pants.
“Sorry,” I said with a smirk, “I didn’t quite catch that.”
He gritted his teeth and shrieked, almost desperately, “I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING TO YOU!!!”
I rolled my eyes before my evil grin returned.
“Shower Time!” I shouted, pressing the button again.
This time he swore while he screamed bloody murder, but I just continued holding the button down, this time longer than before. I trembled stiffly from the anger fuming beneath my barely-poised appearance. No matter how much frostbite this bastard endured, I swore that I would get the truth out of him one way or another.
Finally, after thirty seconds of spraying, I let go of the button and slowly walked up to the shivering, pale man before me.
“Whoops! Owed for two!” I said into the microphone, my yeti-face just a few inches from his, “You know what they say in baseball: Three strikes and you’re out! Just one more chance to answer the question right and you can leave with the ultimate prize: Your life. So, once again… where – is – Cruz?!”
The bastard shook as he slowly lifted his head, his long, wet hair froze on his skin. It almost kept his head from lifting completely as his lower lip quivered and he tried to choke out an answer.
“What was that?” I asked, turning my ear toward him.
He swallowed slowly before narrowing his eyes at me in defiance… before hocking a massive loogie into the side of my face! Big mistake!
I angrily wiped the spit from my cheek before stepping back toward the metal box.
“Sorry…! We hope you had a good time on ‘Last Moments Breathing’; as always we’re mostly sorry to see you go, but, luckily, we have some lovely parting gifts for you!” I said.
And, with that, I pushed hard on the button for a full minute as he screamed once more.
A beautiful black secretary with her hair in a braided ponytail was typing away at her desk located inside the Plum Island Research Facility. It wasn’t her ideal job, but it paid well and came with more benefits than she could ask for. The only downside, however, was her boss; Mr. Iblis was a very secretive man with a creepy demeanor and eyes like the Devil to boot!
RING!!!!!!!!!!
Speak of the… you-know-what.
The phone on her desk began ringing and the blinking light on the receiver indicated that someone was trying to contact her boss.
“Mr. Iblis’ office,” she said, clicking the talk button.
“Angelique,” a male voice said, “It’s Darrinson; please patch me into your boss. It’s about Dr. Schiller’s missing biological specimen.”
The moment he said that, Angelique urgently placed him on hold before conferencing her boss, “Mr. Iblis, forgive my interruption, sir, but it’s Darrinson on the line. He says it’s about Dr. Schiller’s missing specimen, and it sounds pretty urgent, sir.”
After a long pause, a gruff, intimidating voice came on the other line and said, “Patch him through.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, clicking a button before placing the phone back on the receiver.
Once that was done, Angelique went right back to typing. However, despite the work she had to do, she still couldn’t help but wonder what Iblis and Darrinson were talking about on the other line. She was especially curious about that biological specimen Darrinson spoke of, and how it was connected to Dr. Heidi Schiller, the scientist who used to work there.
Suddenly…
RING!!!!!!!!!!
…the phone rang again. However, this time, the blinking light indicated it was a call from the boss himself.
“Yes, sir…?” she said, clicking the talk button.
“Angelique, would you mind taking your lunch break now?,” Iblis said, his voice full of mystery, “Mr. Darrinson and I have a very important call to make.”
Just hearing his request made her shudder. Having known Mr. Iblis for as long as she had, when he asks her to take an early lunch it usually means things have gone from bad to worse to completely disastrous.
“Yes, sir. Thank you very much,” Angelique said, trying to conceal her fear.
_
Meanwhile…
RING!!!!!!!!!!
“Don’t you think you should get that?” asked a bearded man with a southern accent.
He was lying naked on a big, comfy California king, while the person he spoke to was lying face down with his head in between the man’s legs, also in the nude. His current partner was tall and thin with latin brown skin with a shaved head, high cheekbones, and dark red lips. Both of their clothes – the young man’s hot pink tank top and black skinny jeans, and the older man’s mall-cop uniform – were strewn haphazardly all across the floor.
Lifting his head up and taking a breath from his previous actions, he retorted, “Do you want me to?”
The handsome man, with heaving breaths, said, “No.”
“Then the machine can get it,” he replied, before putting his head back down.
As he continued, the ringing finally came to an end and his voicemail played before a long beep brought forth a voice he immediately recognized.
“Cruz, it’s Iblis,” he said, “Darrinson has some news that you really might want to hear… it’s about Dr. Schiller’s missing specimen.”
All of a sudden…
“Hey!”
…Cruz was out of his darkened bedroom, down the hallway and had the phone off the receiver all in under ten seconds.
“Tell me…” was all he said.
While Cruz was busy on the phone, the bearded man just laid in the bed, impatiently waiting for him to return. He let out an irritated groan as he slipped his hand under the sheets covering his naked lower half to keep from losing his potency. Unfortunately, Cruz took too long with his phone call and the man’s potency soon left him. With yet another groan, the man jumped to his feet and slipped on his navy blue boxer briefs before heading into the living room where Cruz stood naked with the phone still in his hand.
“Hey, boy, are you coming back to the sack?” he asked, standing in the doorway.
Cruz said nothing as his hand fell to his side and he clicked the end button before the phone fell from his hand. The man’s brow furrowed at the sight of this action before he slowly walked into Cruz’s line of vision and saw a look of infuriated horror on his face.
“Are you okay?” he asked, reaching for Cruz’s hand.
“No!” Cruz replied, his voice lower and more gravely than before as he pulled his hand away, “I’m not okay… I’ve got to go.”
He pushed past the bearded man and headed back to the bedroom to pull back on his clothes as the man stared at him in surprised disappointment. By the time the bearded man had returned to the bedroom, Cruz was back in his black skinny jeans and slipping on his hot pink tank top.
“Wait. Where are you going, babe?” the bearded man asked, “I thought you wanted to have fun with me.”
“Another time,” he said, irritated, “Right now, I’ve got important business to do.”
“More important than sucking me off?” he asked, sounding like a whiny teenager with a grown man’s voice.
“By a mile,” Cruz replied, dismissively.
As he made his way toward the doorway, the bearded man stepped in front of him and placed his hand on the wall to block him from exiting. He looked down at Cruz with a creepy, sensual smile as he used his other hand to rub his own crotch.
“Now you listen here, boy,” he said, trying to sound both sexy and intimidating at the same time, “I was the one who turned a blind eye when I caught you stealing at my mall. And I can just as easily go back on my word if you refuse to give me the ‘hush money’ you promised. You feel me…?”
Cruz looked up at him defiantly with a raging, but cold fire in his dark eyes. Then, in the blink of an eye, Cruz had pulled out his phone from his pocket and placed it in front of the man’s face. The video already playing on the phone made the mall-cop’s smug grin drop like a live hand grenade and his face became instantly stricken with terror. He saw himself in the dressing cubicle of a women’s clothing store with one of the female employees who looked to be in her mid-to-late teens. His belt was open and her panties were down around her knees as he kept pushing his pelvis up against hers; both of them with bloodshot eyes and white powder covering their noses and upper lips.
“And if you don’t get out of my way, the rest of mall security will know you’re the kind of cop who likes powdered pink donuts in their teens. You feel me…?” Cruz said.
The man’s face remained frozen with horror for another moment before turning red as a chili-pepper. That’s when he balled his hand into a fist, pulled it back, and sent it careening into Cruz’s right cheek…
“YOUCH!!!” the man suddenly screamed as the overwhelming pain started setting in.
He held his hand as he observed the redness on his knuckles, as well as a little fold of skin starting to peel off. It looked and felt as though he had punched a wall of concrete with his bare hand, while Cruz just stood there perfectly fine, and almost regal, as he smiled with mischievous delight.
“What in the…?” the man said, looking at Cruz like he was some kind of monster.
“You know, big, burly guys like you might think you can easily knock down skinny little pretty boys like me,” Cruz said, softly rubbing his fingers across his smooth cheek, “But if you got your hands on the kind of skin treatment I use, well, then you might actually pose some kind of a threat… so, if you know what’s good for you, you won’t be here by the time I get back.”
And, with those last words, Cruz marched stoically out of his apartment and down to his expensive black sports car with the rainbow sticker on its bumper:
PROUD AF!
_
Meanwhile…
“They found him,” I said, walking into another freezer room just like the one I had previously held Stevo in.
On the other side of the room was my sister, Joycie, still alive and kicking, just like me. She sat on the edge of a mattress on the floor with two recently purchased pillows and a comforter. The room also contained two duffle bags filled with freshly purchased clothes, a space heater to keep the place warm for her, two lawn chairs and a foldable poker table for dining. Finally, the look was completed by a host of paper plates and plastic utensils.
“Good work, Edie,” she said, “Do you think Cruz will take the bait?”
I gave her a little nod before saying, “We can only hope. Stevo is the only connection we could find to the guy these past few months. Mercenaries aren’t exactly known for leaving easy paper trails to follow.”
“I know,” she said, frowning, “It’s just… I want my sister back.”
As soon as she said that, I shot her a confused look.
“What…?” was all I said.
Joycie remained quiet for a moment before saying, “I saw you down there in the room where we had Sablo chained up. You were doing your usual game show host bit, but it wasn’t the same. You were angrier, almost sadistic. It’s not like you at all.”
I rolled my eyes at her and said, my teeth bordering on clenched, “Are you serious right now? Mom and Dad get taken by mercenaries that Mom’s old boss hired to get a hold of me and my DNA, and I’m not allowed to be angry about it!? I’m not allowed to be upset over that!?”
“Yes, you are!” she said, standing up and facing me head on, “But your comedy bits are the thing that used to bring you, and everyone else, so much joy, Edie. And I don’t want to see you lose that joy, no matter what happens to us.”
I said nothing as I sat down in one of the lawn chairs and let out a deep sigh before responding, “It was also my dumb comedy bits that made me too weak to save them.”
Joycie gasped at the sound of that before running over to me and looking me straight in the eye, “No! It’s not your fault, Edie. It’s the fault of those bastards who took them, that’s it.”
“If I had trained harder, or taken things more seriously, maybe they wouldn’t have been taken,” I said, my voice starting to get all choked up, “I just want them back, Joycie. I miss them both so much, and I can’t stand the thought of what those bastards might be doing to them right now.”
Finally, I let the tears run free as a tiny sob escaped from me and I threw my face into my hands. That’s when I felt Joycie’s arms around me and we hugged for a long moment before she took my cheek into her hand and began wiping the tears from my face.
“Don’t worry, Edie,” she said, “We’ll get that bastard, we’ll save Mom and Dad, then we’ll expose those fuckers to the whole world. And it’s not your fault.”
I hesitated a bit before giving her a nod and drying my tears.
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath.
“Good,” she said with a smile, “And then, after all that, we’ll get back to Hollywood business! Just you and me, remember?”
I chucked at that and rolled my eyes as I said, “You will, definitely, sis! The way you used the lighting and voice modulation during interrogation, you’ll be one hell of a special effects artist.”
“You too, Edie,” she said, playfully slapping my shoulder, “Once I see you get your old joy back, you’ll be one of the best comedic actresses of all time!”
“Yeah, right,” I replied, “Edith Galloway: The World’s First Yeti Comedian!”
She shrugged and said, “It could see it being a thing.”
“Yeah, and Carl the baseball player liking giant women covered in white fur could be a thing,” I said, sarcastically.
Joycie furrowed her brow before saying, “Who’s Carl?”
The moment she said that, my eyes shot wide open and I felt a small blush appear on my face.
“Um… he’s just… nobody,” I lied.
Joycie placed her hands on her hips and said, “Come on, Edie, I always know when you’re lying. Now gimme the tea. Who’s Carl the baseball player?”
I let out an uneasy moan before telling her the story of what happened earlier that day when I was stalking Stevo. As I weaved my tale, Joycie’s face slowly began to light up with a great big smile and eyes wide with joy.
“So that’s what took you so long!” Joycie said.
I rolled my eyes and chuckled, “Stop…!”
“You have his number; give him a call. Ask him out for coffee,” she said.
Suddenly, I looked at her with serious eyes and said, “No! Not when we’re on the verge of getting that bastard and saving Mom and Dad. We’re trying to lay low, remember?”
Joycie folded her arms over her chest and said, “You can’t have one cup of coffee with a cute boy?”
I said nothing and rolled my eyes as I turned my face to the side.
“Come on,” Joycie said as she walked over to my hoodie hung up nearby and took out the paper with his number on it, “Do you really think Mom and Dad would want you to go and sacrifice your own happiness just for them…?”
I turned around to see her hand outstretched with the paper between her fingers and let out a deep sigh as she finished her sentence.
“They wouldn’t have helped us escape from those bastards if they did.”
_
Less than a minute later…
“Hey Carl, you comin’ to the mixer later?” said a handsome jock in the locker room.
“No thanks, man,” Carl said, wearing nothing but his white tank top and jockstrap, “I gotta get back to my room and hit the books.”
“Come on, man, live a little,” his friend said.
“Sorry, bro. I’ve been living a little too much and my gramps will kill me if I flunk my physics test at the end of the week. You go on and have a good time. I’ll see you on the field tomorrow,” he said.
“Okay,” his friend replied, “Good luck with your equations, bruh!”
“Thanks,” Carl said, pulling up his snug jeans, leaving the top of his jock exposed.
Suddenly, he heard his phone ringing.
He pulled it out and saw an unknown number. At first, he was going to ignore it, until he remembered what happened earlier on the field that day. Hesitantly, he hit the green answer button.
“Hello?” he said, half-prepared to cut and run if it turned out to be some telemarketer.
“…Hi Carl, it’s, uh, Virginia…” he heard me say on the other line.
“Oh, hi!” he said, his tone instantly shifting from uneasy to excited, “How are you doing?”
“Fine,” I said, “How about yourself?”
“I’m doing great,” he said, “I was actually afraid that you weren’t going to call.”
“Yeah, well, I got done with my, uh, ‘previous engagement’ and, just when I was heading off to bed, I remembered a particularly handsome man who was up to bat earlier today,” I said, flirtatiously.
He blushed.
“Are you… calling me a man?” he said, his voice a little shaky.
I smiled and said, “Why wouldn’t I?”
Smiling, he said, “I like that… Does that mean you might wanna go out for that drink I mentioned earlier today?”
My heart rate began to pick up the moment he said that. I quickly turned to Joycie and whispered to her what he said with my hand on the speaker. She nodded excitedly for me to do it.
“…sure.” I finally said, after a long pause “A drink with you would be great!”
“Really!?” he suddenly cried out, as if he couldn’t believe I had agreed to go out with him, before he quickly recomposed himself, “I-I mean, uh… cool. How does tomorrow at seven-thirty in the evening sound?”
“Sounds perfect. I’ll see you then,” I replied.
We said our good-byes and then disconnected. As soon as he was off the phone, Carl threw his hands up in the air as if he had just made the best score in the history of college baseball. He had a date with the hottest chick he had ever laid eyes on outside of a red carpet event on TV! This was the happiest day of his life!
That is, until…
BZZZ!
…his phone buzzed from a new text message.
As soon as he saw the message, his eyes instantly widened and he ran out of the locker room with his belt only barely buckled.
_
An hour or two later…
“Your friend has suffered severe frostbite,” the doctor said to the person who had come to visit Esteban Sablo at UCLA Medical Center.
Cruz placed his hands tenderly on the glass window separating him from Stevo. He looked down at his bruised and broken friend resting uncomfortably with machines and bandages all over him. The sight of him in such a state made the bare-headed latino grit his teeth and clench his other hand into a fist.
“He also has several severe lacerations, as well as a broken hand,” the doctor continued, holding an x-ray.
Cruz let out a deep sigh.
“Will he survive?” he asked, pulling out a Red Apple Cigarette from his back pocket and lighting it in plain view of a “NO SMOKING” sign.
“After quite a bit of rest an physical therapy, yes,” the doctor said, using his hand to wave away the smoke being blown in his direction, “But he will definitely never be the same again after a horrendous torture like this.”
Cruz exhaled another long wisp of smoke and asked, “Why would you think it was torture, Senor?”
The doctor said nothing at first and just handed him two close-up shots of his friend’s hands and feet.
“See those contusions around his wrists?” said the doctor, “Those indicate that he was shackled in place for quite a while. Whoever took him wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be running away any time soon. Not to mention what they did to his back…”
He handed Cruz a third picture that made him freeze mid-inhale and almost choke on the tiny puff of cigarette. Someone had taken a blade of some kind to Stevo’s back, but it wasn’t just the random cuts one might make on a man during torture. Instead, there was a single message sliced into his poor friend’s fine, soft flesh:
FOR CRUZ,
BEST SERVED COLD!
-EG
“Who’d do a hideous thing like this to an innocent guy like him?” the doctor spoke out loud.
“Maybe he wasn’t so innocent,” Cruz responded.
The doctor turned and gave him a confused frown. That is until he met the guy’s cold, black eyes and felt a chill run down his spine, which he attempted to suppress. When he saw the guy flash him a creepy smirk, he knew he had failed.
“Um, excuse me, s-sir,” the doctor stuttered, “But, what was your relationship to the patient again, Mr…?”
“Cruz,” he said, shaking the doctor’s hand with a shit-eating grin on his face, “He’s a very dear friend and business partner to me… Gotten me a lot of business over the years.”
The doctor’s eyes widened for a split second as he hesitantly returned the guy’s handshake.
“Anyway… Gracias, doctor,” he said, rolling his tongue as his grin turned into a showman’s smile.
On his way out of the room, he grabbed his phone from his other back pocket. He began dialing with one hand and continued puffing his cigarette with the other.
That is, until…
OW!!!
…he collided into another man in his distracted state.
“Hey, watch where you’re goin-” he began to say until he caught sight of the person he bumped into, “Oh, estu.”
The man was of latin descent, like him, but a few years younger. He had scruffy black hair tied back in a ponytail with broad shoulders and big biceps. However, his most striking feature was the small scar going across the left side of his jaw.
“Hello to you too,” Carl replied, sarcastically.
“¿Qué haces aquí, tonto?” Cruz asked.
“English, por favor,” Carl said, “You know I don’t speak Spanish unless I’m at home.”
Cruz rolled his eyes in extreme aggravation before saying, “I said, what are you doing here, fool? Shouldn’t you be off swinging bats and doing physics equations?”
“Excuse you! Stevo’s my friend too, you know!” he shot back, “Anyway, I take it since you’re here, you’ve already seen him? How is he?”
“Not good,” Cruz hissed, “And no one is allowed to see him. He’s in intensive care at the moment with a lot of work to be done. At most, they’ll just let you look at him from behind the glass. Did you tell his Madre?”
Carl said nothing and just shook his head sadly with his eyes closed.
“Well you might wanna get on that, seeing as you are his emergency contact… Primo,” Cruz said, pushing past the young man.
Carl looked back at him with his mouth open and his eyes narrowed as he called him out, “You say that as if you haven’t known our family since you were like five- years-old. Or do you even care?!”
No sooner had those words escaped from his lips did Cruz stop where he was and slowly turn around. His cold, black eyes were fixed on Carl as his dark red lips pursed with rage. All of a sudden, before he had a chance to say anything further, Carl found the thin guy standing uncomfortably close with his nose an inch away from his.
“Listen up, Carlos, and listen good,” Cruz said, looking him straight in the eye, “I care more about Stevo, our family, and you more than you will ever know. That’s why I work the kind of job I do; I work to make sure our family gets to live long and eat well and to put ungrateful fools like you who reject your heritage through college. So don’t you dare lecture me about not caring. What do you think your dearly departed Mami and Papi would say if they could see you now…?!”
And with those last, shaming words, Cruz gave him a semi-hard punch to the shoulder before leaving. As soon as he was gone, Carl let out a breath he didn’t even realize he had been holding and rubbed the sore spot where Cruz had jabbed him.
“Damn!” he thought to himself, “For a scrawny guy, he hits like a brick wall.”
_
Meanwhile…
As soon as Cruz was outside, he made his way to his car. The moment he was inside, he was about to start dialing the number from before when he suddenly got hit with an intense feeling, like waking up in the middle of the night severely dehydrated.
“Fuck!” he cried as he shut the door haphazardly behind him and reached immediately for the glove box.
The second it was open, a small glass jar tumbled out of it and Cruz barely managed to catch it in time. In a fit of quickness and desperation, he twisted off the lid and began scooping up the contents: a creamy substance that was pale purple in color and speckled with neon green glitters.
Cruz quickly began rubbing the stuff all over his face, arms, and every patch of skin he could reach. After almost ten minutes of continuous lathering, Cruz took in a deep, smooth breath and let it out just as smoothly.
“Gracias, Dios!” he said to himself.
That’s when he looked down and caught the sight of his jar now empty, save for a few creases of stuff near the rim. He rolled his eyes and let out an irritated groan as he scooped up the last bits of the stuff and smeared it on his face. Finally, he picked up his phone and made his call from before.
“Finally,” he said to himself.
RING-RING. RING-RING. RING-RING.
“Mr. Iblis’ office,” said an uneasy female voice on the other line.
“It’s Cruz,” he said, “Transfer me to Iblis, por favor. Tell him I got his message from earlier, and that we need to talk.”
Hesitantly, Angelique said, “Um… s-sorry, Mr. Cruz, but Mr. Iblis is out at the m-m-moment. Can I take a message?”
Cruz gritted his teeth and his head went stiff with barely controlled rage as he replied, “No, Angelique. Just tell him to call me when he gets the chance. We have important business to discuss after my… hospital visit.”
“Y-Y-Yes, sir,” she stammered.
With an angry push of the button, the phone disconnected and Cruz spent almost a full minute staring at the phone in his left hand and gripping the empty jar in the other. He then turned his cold, black eyes to see a loud raven squawking on the hospital roof. A cruel smirk spread across his face as his grip tightened around the jar.
And tightened. And tightened. And tightened, until…
BRKK!
…his angry, shaking hand completely shattered it!
He looked down at the tiny bits of broken glass in his open hand – which remained perfectly smooth and unscratched.
“Oh, look, no blood…” he said out loud, “…I want blood.”
Malcolm and Frida by Madlyne Jean, Discord: madlyneworld Instagram: madlyne_gallery Twitter: Madcreations
Lady Liberty.
That’s where Malcolm was at that moment; sitting on one of the statue’s crown-spikes with one of his legs hanging off and completely invisible to the various tourists below! As he looked out toward the island of Manhattan, he could see all of the wintertime pleasure and pain of its people with his white, eagle-like eyes.
His angel eyes.
Panhandlers asked for spare change as the snow beat down on them, tired families sloshed through the icy streets to get their Christmas shopping over with, romantic couples enjoyed hot cocoa and cookies together, and even a department-store Santa or two rang his bell and wished folks a Merry Christmas. New York was alive! Malcolm smiled at the city’s wonder during the holiday season, but always frowned slightly at the suffering of those in its coldness. As a guardian, he naturally wished he had the time – and the power – to help all those in pain, but he had to keep his eye open for one specific person at that moment.
“Bless you!” he suddenly heard a little girl’s voice yell at her babysitter.
While he still kept his ear open for his charge, he also began watching over someone else: A beautiful young woman with olive skin and long, wavy hair that was black on one side and purple on the other. She had on charcoal black lipstick with matching eyeshadow, a tight black top, black and purple-striped stockings with matching arm-warmers, and a pair of sturdy, black combat boots.
“Gwen!” the gothic beauty growled as she picked up the little girl and playfully threw her onto the couch where she had sat reading her favorite book: The Witching Hour.
The little girl was of Asian descent with silky black hair in two ponytails which were made even cuter by the red and white Christmas-themed outfit she wore at that moment. Her darkly-dressed babysitter had bought it for her earlier that day, along with the little white angel doll she previously held over the goth chick’s head when she surprised her.
“Frida!” she laughed, “I told you I wanna be called Gwendolyn.”
“Oh, is that what you want?” Frida replied, sarcastically, “I thought you and your holy little friend there wanted to ‘deliver me from evil’ or something!”
Gwendolyn giggled and said, “That’d be impossible, Frida, daughter of darkness!”
“And don’t you forget it,” Frida said, smiling as she tickled the girl some more.
Malcolm smiled as the beautiful young woman and the girl played together. It always brought him joy to see Frida’s sweet side, even if the only people she ever seemed to show it to were the little girl and her mother.
All of a sudden…
“MALCOLM!!!!”
…he heard the sound of his charge crying out to him from miles away!
In an instant, he rolled off the edge of Lady Liberty’s head only to vanish in a short flash of light as white as the freshly fallen snow. A white light that, for a brief moment, was in the shape of a pair of wings. That small flash of light was the only sign of his presence that the people of New York saw, including Frida and Gwendolyn.
“What was that?” Gwendolyn asked, looking up at the window from being tickled.
Frida looked to where the girl was staring and said, shaking her head, “I’m sure it was nothing. Just a trick of the light or something.”
As the goth babysitter stood up to make her young charge a snack before her mother got home, her eyes caught sight of the calendar hanging on the wall near the kitchen. She was stopped for a second by the date, more specifically, the little white circle printed in the corner of the date’s square. That’s when she smiled pleasurably before continuing into the kitchen, whispering to herself as she did.
“Full moon tonight.”
_
Several blocks away…
“Father Nicholas… Are you there?”
Cindy Campton took a seat in the confessional booth of her church and waited for the priest to speak. She was a beautiful young woman in her late twenties with auburn hair and dark green eyes. Her modest attire was covered in blue and denim that matched the image of Mother Mary, which was what she had in mind when she dressed.
“Yes, my child,” the priest said after a brief pause, “Do you wish to confess?”
The young woman swallowed hard and stammered out, “Y-Yes.”
“Then do so. Let all your sins be forgiven,” Father Nicholas replied.
After a long, deep breath, she finally said, “I’m sorry, Father, but I’ve given into my temptations. After everything that I’ve been taught from the good book and by you… I was still weak against my own desires.”
Father Nicholas placed his hand over his heart, worried for the woman whom he used to attend Sunday School with when they were children. He wondered what she could possibly have done to need to confess to him. The priest swallowed hard before responding to her the way a good priest is supposed to.
“You’ve no need to apologize to me,” he said, “For it is the Lord whom you must seek forgiveness from. Now, tell me, what vices have set you astray?”
Cindy swallowed hard before answering, “…lust, Father. The sin of lust.”
“Oh, good! That’s my favorite one!”
A sudden voice popped into Father Nicholas’ head as soon as he heard her reply. The voice was sultry and charismatic, but with a hint of creeping predation mixed in. As he heard the voice in his head, the priest’s heart began beating faster and he instinctively gripped the Bible sitting in his lap. He almost reached for the crucifix hanging around his neck when he stopped himself and just let his fingertips linger an inch or two from the shiny, metallic cross, before slowly dropping back down to his lap.
“I see…” he finally responded to her, “…please, go on.”
The woman took another deep breath, much shakier than before, and continued, “It was at my sister’s wedding reception the other day. As I was mingling through the crowd, I accidentally bumped into a man and, I can’t quite explain it, but the moment I touched him, I got this strange feeling. It was warm and tingly; the feeling, I mean, and it seemed to go right to my groin. Especially at the moment I looked up into his face.”
Father Nicholas felt like his heart stopping the moment he realized exactly who Cindy was talking about.
“Oh, you’ve done it now!” the voice said in his head again, “She remembers you!”
As soon as Father Nicholas heard that little comment in his mind, he completely lost all sense of himself and took hold of the cross around his neck! The moment his skin touched it, he felt an intense burning sensation on his skin as though he were gripping something he was highly allergic to because, in a way, he was!
“Urgh!” he grunted, gripping the cross in his hand and silently praying for his Lord and Savior’s protection, though He was hurting him at that moment.
“Father… are you alright?” Cindy asked, trying to look through the grate.
“I-It’s nothing, my dear!” Father Nicholas replied, a little too quickly and loudly, “Tell me more of your sins. What happened after you saw the man’s face? Did he do anything that he shouldn’t have?”
“No, no, Father!” she replied, almost reassuringly, “Nothing like that. I just… I caught a whiff of his scent and it was like… like I was in a trance.”
As she spoke, Father Nicholas heard her sniff the air and his heart rate increased.
“His scent was so… intoxicating,” she continued, suddenly sounding hot and bothered as she slightly licked her lips, “The minute I smelled him, and looked into his eyes, I had to go immediately to my bedroom and… And…”
“You hear that, Father? She was thinking about you as she flicked her bean…! And I thought you were a poor excuse for a priest before!” the voice said cruelly.
“I get it!” Father Nicholas cut her off a little too forcefully before taking a deep breath and calmly saying, “Now, Cindy, I know lust can be one of the strongest urges to fight, but you must fight it at all costs. Especially your feelings toward this man you speak of.”
Cindy frowned, taken aback by his words.
“But, Father…” she began to say.
“Hold your hands in prayer as I absolve you of your sins, my child,” he said, cutting her off again.
The young woman sat frozen in her side of the confessional before hesitantly doing as the priest commanded. Father Nicholas performed the gesture of absolution with his hands – which was harder than usual due to his newly developed burns – and said the prayer.
“May God deliver you from evil,” he finished.
Cindy nodded hesitantly and thanked him before standing up to leave.
Father Nicholas smiled at the faint hope that he had gotten to her. Once he was sure she was gone, the priest took a deep breath and stood up to exit the confessional.
“Please Lord…” Father Nicholas whispered to himself, “…deliver me from evil!”
As Father Nicholas stepped out of the confessional, the faint light from the stained glass windows shone on to his priestly robes, which were wrinkled and stained with sweat. The priest’s dark brown hair was styled only haphazardly, his face was covered in scruff like he hadn’t shaved that day and under his sweet blue eyes hung enormous bags like he hadn’t been sleeping.
The priest turned to a small corner of the church which led into the hallway where his office was. He looked around to make sure no one was there before moving as quickly and quietly as possible. By the time the frightened priest reached his office, he shut the door and then stood panting like a dog in front of the door with his forehead resting on the wood.
“Thank you, God,” he said aloud, a small glimmer of hope welling up inside of him.
Until…
“Don’t thank him yet, Father…”
…his heart nearly stopped at the sound of the voice speaking to him again like sharp icicles scratching against a chalkboard. Only, this time, not in his head.
Slowly, Father Nicholas turned around and came face to face with the beast he had feared for so long. It was he who had been talking to him in his head, and now he sat at the priest’s own desk dressed in red cardinal robes as if he were a man of the church himself! To the average eye, he looked like a regular man with dark hair and a darker, pointed beard on his chin which accentuated his cold, sensual features. However, the most striking feature of all were his pale hazel eyes with shrunken pupils that made him look like a rabid animal.
A sociopathic rabid animal!
“No…!” the priest backed away until he was pressed up against the door, shaking his head and pointing with his finger, “You stay away from me, you beast!”
The man-like creature stood up from the desk and slowly paced across the room. He occasionally turned to look at the priest as he spoke, his eyes blazing psychotically as he did.
“Quit cowering against the door like that; it’s unbecoming of a priest,” the beast said as he took a bottle of holy water and poured it into a coffee mug he took from the desk, “Not that you’ve ever been a good one anyway.”
Father Nicholas felt the beast’s words sting into his heart in such a way that it seemed to suck away a portion of his energy. As he looked at the silver cross still hanging around his neck, he balled his hands into fists at his sides as spoke.
“I’m a good priest,” he said in a low voice, almost as if he were a hurt child speaking more to himself than to the beast before him.
“What was that?!” the beast said, holding up a finger like a scolding schoolteacher, “If you mumble instead of speaking properly then your congregation won’t be able to hear any of those silly sermons of yours!”
Father Nicholas clenched his teeth along with his fists as he suddenly held his head high and declared, “I am a good priest!”
All of a sudden…
SMACK!!!
…the demonic creature moved at light speed as he ran toward the priest and slapped him upside the head like an abusive parent!
“Pride is a sin, Father,” the beast said, standing over him with his mug of holy water still in his hand, “You would think a ‘good priest’ would know something as basic as that, but we both know you’re not a good priest. A mangy hound of hell could never be a good priest, now could he?
The priest’s heart rate increased as he continued holding his still-paining cheek.
“Wha-What are you talking about?” Father Nicholas stammered.
The beast’s eyes blazed wildly again as he raised his hand once again. The frightened priest turned his head and held up his hands to shield himself from his slap. A slap that never came!
“Pfft… Pathetic!” the beast said, lowering his raised arm and taking a sip of the holy water in the coffee mug.
As the demon sipped the holy water, Father Nicholas heard a cracking, sizzling noise emanating from the beast’s mouth. The poor man watched in horror as the holy water burned right through the demon’s mouth and cheeks as if he had taken a sip of boiling acid without even flinching once!
“You know what I’m talking about!” the beast continued, his voice still loud and clear despite his face dissolving and slowly reforming, “A priest infected with lycanthropy – an evil affliction of the Devil himself – is too impure to be a holy man of the church! In fact, with the moon being full tonight, I bet you can feel the disgusting heat building up inside your unholy regions, can’t you…?”
Father Nicholas suddenly went wide-eyed and his hand instinctively went to cover up his groin before stopping. He then looked up at the beast and saw the corner of his mouth twitch like he was holding back a smile.
“What?” the creature asked, almost smug, “Can you smell the dirty smegma that still lingers on your filthy cock…? I do.”
And that, right there, was the priest’s limit.
“That’s a lie!!!” he shouted as he suddenly jumped to his feet, his hands balled into fists as his eyes glistened with unshed tears.
However, instead of shrinking, the beast’s smile intensified and he raised an eyebrow at the priest. As soon as he saw the creature’s expression, Father Nicholas felt his inner terror starting to bubble up again, especially when the creature looked down between his legs. The priest followed his gaze and his eyes widened in horror once again at the sight of what was trying to poke its way through the cloth.
“No!” he cried out in a whispered tone.
“Oh, yes!”the beast said, grabbing hold of the silver cross around the priest’s neck, which burned his skin just like the holy water, “If your Lord and Saviour didn’t hate you before as much as he hates me, then he surely will now… shall we put it to the test, boy?”
That’s when he turned the silver cross toward Father Nicholas and slowly moved it closer to the man’s face. Father Nicholas suddenly felt a cold, horrid shiver move throughout his body as the cross drew closer to him. Finally, the tears burst from him like a rushing river from a blown-up dam and Father Nicholas ran from the demonic visitor in his office. Once he finally made it outside into the chilly church parking lot, the poor priest practically fell to his knees on the icy black top and cried out one single word. One name.
“MALCOLM!!!”
“Father…?”
Just a second later, the priest heard a soft, caring voice speaking to him from behind.
Father Nicholas slowly turned until he was looking into a pair of soulful brown eyes belonging to a handsome man in his thirties. The man had short blonde hair, a strong jaw, and a thin, but muscled physique with broad shoulders. He was dressed in a white martial arts gi with no sleeves, a sparkling silver belt, and matching silver bands around his wrists. Finally, the man’s bare feet looked as though they were still just as soft as that of a newborn’s and unbothered by the cold, hard pavement they stood upon.
No sooner had Father Nicholas seen the man, the fear and pain in his eyes was all of a sudden replaced by hope and comfort.
“…are you in despair, Father?” asked the man.
All of a sudden, the waterworks returned, but much warmer as Father Nicholas all but collapsed into the handsome man’s arms. The priest felt the angel giving off a strong feeling of warmth, but not so intensely that it was hot and dry. It was as if he were being hugged by a tropical vacation, and the man’s scent only added to it. His body odor was like a plate of his mother’s apple pie with a big glob of sweet cream on top.
“Oh, Malcolm…” Father Nicholas said, wiping his tears, “…I didn’t know what else to do. It’s a full moon tonight! And he’s back!”
Malcolm raised both eyebrows at the sound of that, but not by much. He looked up at the sky to the west and saw the sun beginning to set. Then he looked over toward the east and saw the moon slowly making its way up from the horizon. And that’s when he saw him.
“You…!” the beast said, standing in the back doorway of the church.
Father Nicholas slowly looked back, his terror returning at the sight of the beast.
“Colin…” Malcolm said the beast’s true name under his breath as he stared the demon down stoically.
All of a sudden…
“Ouch!”
…Father Nicholas felt a sudden intense pain inside him, like boiling hot liquid settling in his stomach after being swallowed all at once.
The priest looked up at Malcolm and cried, “It’s coming!”
Malcolm then looked up at the demon named Colin and smirked.
Colin went wide-eyed with fear – the first time Father Nicholas had seen him afraid – and he said, “Oh no you don’t!”
He began charging after them before he was stopped by an enormous glow of bright white light shaped like a pair of wings. Colin shielded his eyes from the light and, once it was gone, he saw that Malcolm and the transforming priest were nowhere to be found.
The demon’s eyes turned completely black as oil while the snow and ice around him began boiling away instantly. His enraged scream echoed into the cold winter night.
“I WILL FIND YOU!!!”
_
Meanwhile…
“Wait, Lannie, slow down, I can’t-”
Frida was talking on the phone with her roommate while Gwen sat at the dinner table eating cookies and milk. The gothic babysitter rolled her eyes until she looked at the little girl innocently adjusting the dress on her Christmas angel doll; she worried about how she’d react when Frida told her what her mother was saying on the phone at that same moment.
“Lannie, I can’t come and get you, I still have to babysit your daughter,” she said to Gwen’s mother on the other line, “And, plus, you know it’s that time of the month for me!”
“Please…!” Lannie said on the other line, “I can’t start my car and I just checked with the auto club; they’re two hours away. If you and Gwen leave now, you guys can be here and back in just an hour. That’s enough time, right?”
Frida let out an exasperated sigh before checking the astronomy app on her phone. It showed her what she wanted to know, but the information made her bite her lip nervously.
With a deep breath, she said, “Alright, I’ll be there! But you owe me for this.”
Lannie thanked her multiple times before disconnecting. Frida pulled her hair back from her face as she took in a deep breath and let it all out at once. That’s when she looked over to little Gwen still at the table fiddling with her new toy and made her way over to the chair next to the child.
“I wonder if angels can eat regular food…” Gwen said, looking first at her doll and then at the crumbs on her plate, “…maybe if the cookies were made with communion wafer.”
Frida smiled as she sat down next to Gwen and said, “You’re a funny kid… Come on, your mom’s having car trouble and needs me to pick her up. You think you’d be up to coming with me?”
Gwen frowned and asked, “But isn’t tonight your night?”
The gothic babysitter furrowed her brow and asked, “How do you know that?”
Gwen smiled mischievously and replied, “I overheard you and mom talking about it the other day. You know just because I’m a kid doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s going on in the world.”
Frida narrowed her gaze at the girl for a moment before returning her mischievous grin and giving her a playful pinch which she giggled at. The two of them then got up and started getting ready to go. Frida grabbed a black fur parka hanging on the hook, as well as her keys with the bat and zombie keychains on them. When her young charge returned with her coat and shoes, Frida knelt down to help her put them on as she talked.
“My friend told me that angels also don’t show up in photos, kinda like vampires, only instead of having no reflection, they just show up as white lights in the pictures” Gwen told her.
“What is it with you and angels all of a sudden?” Frida asked, strapping on her shoe.
“I don’t know,” Gwen giggled, “I just think they’re cool… and pretty.”
Frida chuckled and said, “Well, if they show up as light in the photos, they must hate darkness, right?”
“Oh yes,” Gwen said, “But that’s only because it’s their job to fight the darkness.”
“Yeah, and it’s my job to spread it!” Frida said playfully as she began tickling the girl again and making fake growling noises – or not so fake.
The little girl laughed out loud before jumping up and hugging the goth chick.
“I love you, Frida,” Gwen said, “You’re the best babysitter ever.”
Frida smiled sympathetically, hiding a blush as she replied sarcastically, “Oh, let’s not say something that we’ll regret… now say good-bye to your dad.”
Gwen frowned at the mention of him before looking toward a picture on the table by the couch. It showed a beautiful Chinese woman around Frida’s age dressed in a red apron with the name of the restaurant on it in white. Standing next to her was a handsome Chinese man only a few years older dressed like a delivery man with his arm around her.
The little girl picked up the photo and looked at it for a moment before saying, “Love you, Dad. See you when we get back.”
She gave it a kiss before setting it down again. The two of them then headed down past the restaurant below and out the back door. Just as they made it outside, Frida looked up at the sky out the window and grew a bit nervous at the sight of the slowly setting sun.
“Please don’t be early tonight,” she whispered to herself.
_
At that same moment…
“Whoa!!!”
Father Nicholas felt dizzy as he and Malcolm appeared in a shimmer of bright, white light in the basement of a small cabin.
“That was strange,” Father Nicholas said, holding his head, “Where are we?”
Malcolm took a quick look at the wintery woods outside the window before pulling the dark curtains closed and saying, “Van Cortlandt Park. I keep this cabin reserved for things like this. It’s empty, isolated, and comes with all the resources we need.”
The priest furrowed his brow and asked, “What do you mean, ‘things like this’?”
Instead of just telling him, Malcolm gave him a sympathetic smile as he walked over to a dark corner of the room. There was a light switch on the wall nearby, which he flipped on. That’s when Father Nicholas saw a large cell like the kind in a prison, but with thicker, newer-looking bars designed for containing something wild and dangerous. Especially from the aged claw marks on the brick walls inside the cell.
“I’m talking about keeping everybody safe until you learn to understand what’s inside of you,” Malcolm said, “Only then will you be able to control it.”
Father Nicholas shook his head and clutched his chest as he fell to his knees and said to Malcolm, “No! I don’t want to understand it. I don’t want to control it. I want it out of me, Malcolm! Foul demon! If it weren’t for this monstrous wolf-creature inside of me, the beast wouldn’t be after me. I wouldn’t be endangering me, my church, and every- ARGH!!!”
Suddenly, the priest felt another sharp pain inside of him and looked up at Malcolm who had a semi-concerned look on his face.
Father Nicholas, in a panic, practically jumped through the cell door once it was open.
Malcolm locked the cell again and said, “There you go. Now you might want to begin undressing, unless you want your robes to be shredded.”
The nervous man reached for the buttons on his clothes before suddenly stopping and his face flushed red with embarrassment as he stammered out, “Um… w-w-would you mind stepping out p-please?”
With a furrowed brow, Malcolm asked, “Why? I’ve seen naked men before.”
Father Nicholas gulped at the sound of that, his mind going immediately to the worst possible places at the sound of that.
“Well, I-I just don’t want to risk you seeing me that way,” he said, “I mean, after all, I’m a priest, and you’re a… an angel.”
“So?” Malcolm asked, folding his arms over his chest.
The priest gulped again, feeling another painful twinge coming on at that moment.
“Urgh…!” he cried, “…Malcolm, please, I-I’m begging you…”
The angel took in a deep, exasperated breath and let it all out at once before giving his usual sweet smile and saying, “Alright, if you insist, I’ll avert my eyes, but I need to be here to collect the clothes once they’re removed.”
Father Nicholas nodded in agreement as Malcolm turned around.
Despite his back being turned, the poor priest’s face still blushed with embarrassment at having to strip, even though he knew he didn’t have much choice at that moment. Malcolm kept his back turned for the most part, except for a brief instant where he turned his head slightly and caught a glimpse of the mostly naked Father Nicholas looking at the brick wall as he continued undressing.
“He actually has quite a nice body for a man of the church,” Malcolm thought.
“Are you ready?” Malcolm finally asked, quickly turning back to avoid being noticed.
Father Nicholas slipped his folded robes and rosary through the bars to let Malcolm know he was ready. He took the thin stack of clothes and had to hold back a chuckle at the brief sight of Father Nicholas’s underwear. Despite being an angel, he found it funny that a grown man – and an ordained priest too – still wore tighty-whities like a young Sunday school boy!
“Thank you,” Father Nicholas said, awkwardly avoiding eye contact as he handed the clothes over and then tried his best to shield his body.
Malcolm nodded and asked, “Do you want me to stay with you when it happens?”
“No!” he said, a little too quickly and loudly, “It wouldn’t be right for you to see my shameful transformation.”
The angel pursed his lips sadly before turning to leave. He placed the priest’s clothes on a nearby chair and began making his way up the stairs. However, before he left, he turned back around and told Father Nicholas one more thing.
“You know, Father…” he said, “You’re not a monster; you’re just a wolf. The demon wants you to think you’re a monster, and that’s why he’s after you. He wants you to hate and fear yourself to the point of doing… the unthinkable.”
Father Nicholas furrowed his brow, not knowing what the angel meant at first.
“You know of what I speak,” Malcolm said, his tone now serious, like a warning, “If you do it, then you lose your soul forever. You become what your Lord and Savior would call, ‘damned’.”
The moment he said that, the priest’s eyes widened in horrified realization of what he was talking about.
“If I may leave you with anything, it’s this,” Malcolm said, “Try seeing yourself as He does. As He truly does. Not as a monster, but just another of God’s own creations. Think about it.”
And with those final words, he left the nervous priest wondering.
_
At that same moment…
“Hey, Mom! We’re here!”
Gwendolyn called out to her mother as she and Frida pulled up to the delivery car she had been driving before it died on her.
Lannie was a beautiful Chinese woman with long black hair that had red streaks in it, black nail polish like Frida’s, and a set of black spider web earrings. Despite the uniform for her family’s restaurant, she still looked like a badass to Frida. Not to mention her little girl!
“I’m so happy to see you guys,” Lannie said as she gave her daughter a kiss on the cheek through the open window, “Did you have a good time today, Gwendy?”
The little girl nodded and said, “It was so much fun! Frida is the best babysitter ever!”
“Yes, yes she is,” Lannie said, smiling at her friend.
Frida smiled and nodded in return before saying, “Alright, come on. We’ve got a long drive back home. You sure the car will be safe here, Lan?”
Lannie took a quick glance back at the broken down delivery car and replied, “Well, the auto club is still a little over an hour away, but I don’t think that it could get into too much trouble in that time… even in The Bronx.”
With an unsure shake of her head and a little half-smile, Frida started up the car.
“I hope you’re right,” she said as they drove off.
Gwendolyn immediately began yapping joyfully to her mother about the wonderful gifts Frida got for her and all the little bits of info on angels she heard about. Frida smiled at the little girl’s sweet words of praise and rolled her eyes at all the angel stuff.
Until…
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!!!!
…the car came to a screeching halt, luckily just before a red light!
Lannie’s smile quickly vanished as she asked, “Frida, what is it?!”
“Look…” Frida said, pointing at what got her worried – the full moon slowly rising up from the eastern horizon – and Lannie’s eyes widened at the sight of it too, “…and I’m getting that feeling again too.”
Gwendolyn looked confused seeing her mother and babysitter acting so strangely, not knowing what was so special about the full moon.
The two women silently stared at each other before both stepped out of the car.
“What’s going on, you two?” Gwen asked, getting a little worried.
Frida and Lannie ignored her as Frida began tossing her stuff into the trunk.
“Take the wheel and drive home,” Frida said, unzipping her black fur parka, “I’ll find my way home as soon as the moon goes down.”
Lannie took the fur parka from her and folded it up as she asked, “Are you sure you’ll be alright here? I mean, it may be a full moon, but it’s still The Bronx, and that’s when even the human weirdos come out.”
Frida raised her sassy goth chick’s eyebrow and said, “Don’t worry, Lannie, you know I got a form of protection no mugger can compete with.”
She then gave the confused little girl in the back a quick smirk and a raised eyebrow that made her giggle, despite her confusion.
“Unless the mugger decides to keep silver bullets in his gun,” Lannie retorted.
Frida looked back at her with narrowed eyelids before the two suddenly smiled and burst into laughter.
“Just be careful,” Lannie said, giving her a hug, “You never know what’s out there.”
Frida nodded with a confident smile as her best friend got back in the car and sped off with her still-confused daughter in the back seat.
That’s when she looked up at the slowly rising full moon.
Her eyes rolled back into her head as if in ecstasy as she closed her eyelids and took in a deep, long breath of night air through her nose. All of a sudden, every pore on her body stood on end and her skin felt red hot like she had a fever, but she never felt stronger.
As she let out her breath, Frida’s senses suddenly became heightened to an enormous degree. She could smell an old woman smoking a cigarette in a nearby apartment and the whiskey her sweaty husband was downing as he moved his hand slowly into his pants. In the next apartment down, she heard two teenage lesbians losing their virginity to one another nextdoor to a jittery tweaker sampling some of the meth he had just finished cooking.
Finally, she heard what she was listening for: A sexy nightclub full of dancing people in revealing outfits and sipping alcoholic beverages.
Instantly, she opened her eyes to reveal that they had changed from their usual amber to a wolf-like yellow, the rising full moon reflecting perfectly in them.
“Party time!” she whispered to herself.
_
Back at the cabin…
“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
Father Nicholas knelt naked in the cell where Malcolm had left him. His knees rested on top of a small pillow as he kept his head down before the window with hands clasped together in prayer. Still unused to the horrible transformation, he couldn’t think of a better prayer at the time than the one he used to say all the time before bed in his childhood.
“If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to ta- AAAAAAAAAAAAAA HHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”
CRACK!!!
Unfortunately, he didn’t get the chance to finish his prayer as the change began. The terrified man’s body clenched in pain as he looked up at the window and came face to face with the full moon slowly continuing to rise high into the sky.
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
All of a sudden, his heart began pounding like a jackhammer and his entire body from his feet to his forehead turned red hot! Father Nicholas felt his “unholy regions” become hot and stiff to the point of pain before the rest of his body followed suit. By then, it were as if his whole body had become his dirty bauble and his eyes turned yellow and wolf-like.
That’s when the hair came.
Every inch of the man’s body suddenly became engulfed with thick, dark brown hair that resembled the brownish interstellar dust visible in the night sky. The nails on his hands and feet thickened into sharp claws as they became paws and his canine teeth sharpened to a point until they stuck out from behind the black, dog-like lips of his new snout. Finally, his transformation ended with his ears growing pointy and a long, bushy tail bursting from the bottom of his spine!
“AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
The large, man-like wolf that used to be Father Nicholas howled into the night at the beast he had become; now alive and burning!
“Here we go,” Malcolm said to himself, standing outside in the snowy wood.
Suddenly…
“AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”
…his attention was diverted by the sound of another wolf howl just a few miles away in the middle of The Bronx. Only this one was shriller, more feminine.
Malcolm raised a curious eyebrow as he walked barefoot in the snow toward the other howl.
“I wonder…?” he whispered to himself.
And, just like that, he was gone in another shine of white light.
_
At that same moment…
SLAM!!!
“AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”
The doors to the sex club flew open all of a sudden. All the people – even the pole and cage dancers – turned to the burst open doors with either confused or surprised looks on their faces. That is, until they saw who was standing in the open doorway and began either smiling lewdly or gossiping salaciously.
Standing in the doorway was a young woman wearing a tight black top, a short black skirt, and black and purple-striped tights with the ends cut off and matching arm-warmers. A mass of half-black and half-purple hair fell on her shoulders, but the most notable thing about her was her face! It was furry with a black, dog-like nose and lips that had sharp, canine teeth sticking out from them as sharp as the claw-like nails on her fingers and toes!
The mysterious wolf-woman slowly made her way toward the bar, strutting past the various people as she did, many of whom either winked or nodded at her or otherwise avoided her gaze. Finally, she reached the bar and tapped her claws against the glass with a loud plinking sound. The bartender turned until he was staring right into her yellow, wolf-like eyes, but he was only surprised for a second before he smiled.
“Nice costume!” he said, “We don’t get furries here very often, but anyone willing to spend money and enjoy the show is welcome. Now what can I get you?”
She smiled sensually and said, “A bottle of Jack Daniels and a rare steak. Very rare.”
The bartender chuckled as he turned around to get the order ready. While he was busy doing that, she turned around and leaned her back against the bar to look out over the club of dancing people. As she looked around, she saw a couple of guys raise their glasses to her. She shot each of them a sexy glance and licked her lips thinking of how hot it would be to engage in a little group action with them.
However…
“Hello, Frida.”
…her moment of sexy fantasizing was interrupted by a man standing next to her at the bar. A man who wasn’t there before.
Frida, for the first time since she became a wolf, was caught off guard as she froze at the man’s sudden appearance before her. Slowly, she looked up into the man’s face from his white cloth-covered torso until she was staring him right in his chocolatey brown eyes, which seemed to sparkle in the club’s strobe lights.
The surprised she-wolf was mesmerized by the man’s beauty for a moment before she blinked a few times and said, “Do I know you?”
The handsome man smiled and let out a small chuckle before saying, “Not quite. We bumped into each other around the city a few times, but you never seemed to notice me. You can call me, Malcolm.”
Frida was taken aback. How could she have not noticed a man like him?
“I-I, um…” she stammered, her wolf-like cheeks blushing as she coyly brushed her hair behind her ear, “I doubt I would fail to notice a man as handsome as you… Malcolm.”
As soon as his name rolled across her tongue, an immense feeling of warmth and fuzz filled her up inside. Noticing this, Malcolm’s proud smile intensified and his eyes seemed to sparkle even more so than they already were. So much so that Frida actually had to look away due to the blinding shine of them, and she couldn’t think of a better place to look than the rest of his body. By the time she reached her favorite place to look – the groin – she realized that, no matter who else was available, she had to do it with him tonight.
“So, uh, you come here often?” she asked, “Got any special plans for tonight?”
Malcolm raised an eyebrow as his proud smile became a confident smirk and he took her chin in his hand with his thumb and finger as he said, “I might… if you can catch me.”
And, just like that, he was gone!
Frida’s eyes widened and she raised a surprised eyebrow, that is until she saw the man turn back for a split second and give her a wink. That’s when she realized what he was doing and smiled with mischievous excitement before bolting out of the place, totally forgetting the steak and Jack Daniel’s being brought out for her at that moment. Luckily for her, Malcolm had already put down some cash and a note telling the bartender to take it home for dinner.
Once she was outside, Frida sniffed the air until she picked up his scent. At first, she was put off by the pleasing, sweet scent he was giving off, until she smelled the hearty, robust undercurrent of masculinity accompanying the sweetness. The instant she picked that up, she bolted into a nearby alleyway, following the scent.
“I’m not going to lie,” she said aloud, knowing he’d hear her, “Up until now, I haven’t had a man be willing to let me chase him.”
Suddenly, she heard his voice echoing through the maze of buildings.
“Well, there’s a first time for everything, right?” he hollered, “How am I doing, so far, huh? Having fun, are you?”
Frida’s eyes glowed yellow amidst the darkness of the dimly lit alleyway as she once again sniffed the air and her pointed ears perked up. She could not only smell him, but hear him breathing softly and even the faintness of his steady, relaxed heartbeat. It was a bit weird to her; she figured his heart rate would’ve gone up with just a little excitement. Unsure how she felt about that, she continued on.
“I’ll let you know when I catch you, handsome!” she said.
Suddenly, she heard the sound of his heart flutter a bit. He was excited after all, just a little it seemed. Frida’s smirk intensified as she took in another deep breath of his scent until she was sure she knew where he was.
“Gotcha!” she thought to herself as she spotted the tiniest shimmer of his silvery belt sticking out from behind the corner of a brick building.
However, instead of going right up to him, she decided to take a few silent steps back and sneak around the other way. As for Malcolm, he could sense what she was doing and he welcomed it, closing his eyes and smiling with restrained excitement, until…
“GRAWR!!!”
…Frida burst out from the other side of the building with a loud, playful snarl!
Malcolm let out a fake cry of surprise before Frida grabbed hold of his sleeveless shirt and pulled him into a deep, passionate kiss that was more lewd than romantic. Frida fell back into a chain-link fence as she pulled Malcolm closer to her and the two of them went at it, rubbing their pelvises up against each other. The angel flicked his tongue up and down the inside of her mouth, moving in tandem with hers.
Unfortunately, his pleasure was suddenly brought to an almost screeching halt when he opened his eyes for a brief moment to catch a glimpse of her feral beauty and saw him.
On the other side of the chain-link fence and across the street from them, he saw the same beast in red cardinal robes he had seen earlier that day with Father Nicholas. The beast he had called Colin stared at them with eyes black as oil and a malicious smile. The kind of smile that only comes from a man who knows he has something precious to another.
“Interesting,” he heard Colin’s whisper in the wind.
And, just like that, Malcolm’s soft brown eyes turned silvery white like a bald eagle’s before he and Frida vanished in a shimmer of bright white light.
“Very interesting.”
_
The next morning…
“Mmm… so warm.”
Frida woke up with disheveled hair and a face covered with yesterday’s make-up. She let out a long, moaning yawn and stretched out all of her limbs. Normally she felt better after a good lay on the night of a full moon, but nothing compared to how she felt at that moment.
That is, until she opened her eyes and froze at the sight of her surroundings.
The nervous goth chick found herself lying in a soft, comfy queen-sized mattress in an old log cabin. She smelled freshly cut wood, laundry detergent, and something cooking over an open fire. Something with meat in it! The still-lingering wolf in her practically drooled at the delicious smell, but since it was morning, her human brain was more in control as she stepped out of the bed wrapped in a blanket to cover her naked body.
“Don’t worry,” she thought to herself, “If anyone tries to do anything, I’ll scratch at them as hard as I can, or maybe grab a knife if I have to.”
Finally, she followed the smell down a short hallway and into a small living room space where a soft couch stood on top of an old, but extravagant rug before a crackling fireplace. She noticed the clothes she had on the night before were cleaned and well-folded on the couch, but that’s not what got her attention. Kneeling before the crackling fireplace with a skillet in one hand and a spatula in the other was a man dressed all in white.
“Good morning, love,” he suddenly said, not looking away from the fire.
The moment he spoke, Frida felt a sudden warmth well up inside her like the feeling a child gets when they return to their own bed after an overnight field trip. He then stood up and turned around and she finally got a good look at the blonde-haired hunk before her with his chiseled chin and sparkling brown eyes which glittered in the early morning sun. She was in such awe of his beauty, she almost dropped the blanket she was wrapped in.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked as he shifted the contents of the skillet to a plate on a nearby wooden table, “You really seemed to enjoy our time together last night.”
Frida’s heart seemed to flutter uncontrollably as the handsome man’s words registered in her mind. She was with him last night. That explained – at least to her – why she seemed to feel so much better today than she ever had on the night after a full moon. Plus, the scent of a man cooking breakfast for her seemed to help. However, she tried her best to resist her primal instincts long enough to get some answers.
“Um… how did I get here?” she asked, sitting down to eat as she spoke.
The man cracked some new eggs into the pan as he said, “Oh, I brought you here. I figured you’d be more comfortable doing it in a bed than an alley.”
Frida furrowed her brow. She didn’t remember getting into a car or anything last night, but, then again, she was more focused on him last night than anything else. As she slowly sat down at the table, she kept going through the events of the night over and over again in her mind. She remembered chasing Malcolm into the alley, catching him, they began making out and then the next thing she remembered was lying in a bed peeling off her clothes. It was like a quick transition scene in a movie.
“Um… if you don’t mind me asking, how exactly did you bring me here?” she asked, trying to resist eating the food just in case it had something in it.
Malcolm’s smile faded slightly for a brief moment before returning more vibrant than ever.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Frida,” he said, moving back to the fireplace to cook some more, “I mean you no harm and, plus, I know a gal like you can certainly take care of herself.”
Frida’s heart suddenly shuddered at that answer.
“What do you mean ‘a gal like me’…?” she asked, “And why aren’t you answering my previous question?”
The man closed his eyes and his smile drooped again slightly as he said, “What I mean is I know that you’re a gal who can take care of herself is all.”
Frida’s eyes closed slowly and she let out a silent breath of relief.
Malcolm’s smile then quickly returned as he added, “And I know that that predates your initial change into a werewolf from two years ago.”
The goth chick’s eyes shot wide open as soon as she heard him say that and her heart began racing like a NASCAR.
“What did you just say?” she asked, her voice more pissed off than worried.
His delightful smile intensified as he removed the pan from the fire, stood up and began moving the new batch of food onto another plate nearby, “Yes, Frida, I know what you are and, rest assured, your secret’s safe with me. In fact, part of the reason I brought you here is because I have a friend who I really want you to meet. A friend whom you have something in common with.”
Frida said nothing at first. She sat frozen at the table, completely unsure of how to respond to the bomb he just dropped on her. However, the next sound both she and Malcolm heard pretty much summed up everything she was feeling at that moment.
The moment of silence was interrupted by a scream coming from the cabin’s basement. Frida and Malcolm both turned toward the basement door.
“Whoop! That didn’t sound good. ” Malcolm said, maintaining his cool, calm and collected composure, “I’ll be right back.
All of a sudden, just as Frida turned back to him, she saw Malcolm’s eyes had gone from a soft brown to silvery, avian white. That’s when he vanished in a flash of bright, white light shaped like a pair of angelic wings that moved in the direction of the basement door. Frida was blinded momentarily by the brightness and saw that both the man before her and the other plate of food were both gone!
Frida’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open at what she had just witnessed.
“What – just – happened!?!”
_
Meanwhile…
“I must keep running… before he catches me!”
In his mind, the still-sleeping Father Nicholas was running through a dark forest filled with dead trees and its floor was covered with crinkly brown leaves. The leaves poked and scratched at the priest’s tender bare feet as he ran for his life, naked and vulnerable.
AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The beast whom he was running from – or thought he was running from – let out a blood-curdling howl that pierced the frigid night air like a murderer’s blade. Father Nicholas nearly had a heart attack the moment he heard the howl and tried to quicken his pace when he was suddenly stopped dead in his tracks by something in front of him.
Something that he thought he was running from.
“You…!” Father Nicholas said aloud.
Standing before him in the middle of the woods was none other than a wolf! Only it wasn’t the demon wolf he thought it would be. He was just a regular wolf, almost no different than the kind he’d see on a nature documentary with bushy, grayish fur and yellow eyes.
The wolf slowly moved toward Father Nicholas. The priest stayed frozen, too afraid to move a muscle as the wolf moved closer and closer to him until its nose was just an inch from his right hand. Father Nicholas swallowed hard, worried that the beast might bite him if he even so much as twitched a finger. That wasn’t an experience he was ready to have again anytime soon.
However, he didn’t have to because…
BRKK!
…he was hit from the side by the creature he was truly running from!
Father Nicholas and the creature rolled down a small hill until they finally landed with the poor priest on his back and the creature sitting on top of his scratched-up, naked body. As soon as his eyes adjusted, Father Nicholas found himself face to face with a ten-foot-tall beast that was shaped like a man with fiery red skin and giant black horns!
“Hello, Father!” the creature said, the demon, Colin’s, voice escaping its lips.
The terrified man froze with even more fear than he felt when the wolf was near him, not knowing what, if anything, he could do. The demon reached out a big, red finger with a sharp black claw and rubbed it against Father Nicholas’s bare chest, leaving a small, thin cut across his left pectoral that stopped just before his nipple.
“Ouch!” Father Nicholas croaked out, “Stop, please!”
“No, Father…” the demon said, “…you must be punished for your sins.”
Father Nicholas felt tears welling up in his eyes at the demon’s words. Some part of him felt what he was saying was true, that he deserved to be punished.
But, then…
RAWR!
…the demon was knocked away from Father Nicholas by another creature pouncing on him.
The priest opened his eyes and was shocked at the revelation of what jumped on the demon: The wolf! More precisely, his wolf.
The wolf bit and clawed angrily at the demon, like a dog protecting his master. Father Nicholas watched as the wolf did battle with the demon, and actually found himself rooting for the animal. So much so that when the demon tossed the wolf off of him, Father Nicholas cried out in concern for him.
“No!!!” he screamed.
Suddenly, the wolf turned to him and said, in the priest’s own voice, “Run, Father.”
Father Nicholas nodded and got to his feet quickly before running away. That’s when the demon jumped to his feet and gave chase.
“Come back, you bastard!” he bellowed as Father Nicholas let out a terrified scream.
All of a sudden, Father Nicholas got the sudden feeling like he was falling for a split second before he woke up, safe and sound in the cell he had been locked in the night before.
“Father, are you alright?” Malcolm asked, kneeling beside him, a hand on his back.
Father Nicholas took several deep breaths as he closed his eyes and placed his hand over his heart in sweet relief.
“I’m not sure,” he replied, “I just had the strangest dream in my life.”
Malcolm furrowed his brow, curious as to what the man had been dreaming of, especially considering how terrified he was last night. He kept his hand on the man’s upper back, allowing his energy to seep into the priest and allow him some clarity.
“Well, I was just coming down to wake you up,” Malcolm said, “I also brought you breakfast.”
The naked priest looked to where the angel had gestured and saw a plate of delicious food sitting next to his priestly robes all fresh, clean, and folded for him.
Father Nicholas nodded and thanked the angel as he wrapped himself in a painter’s tarp left in the cell with him so the holy being wouldn’t see his naked form. He looked around the cell and saw that the whole room was covered in dirt, grime, and claw-marks. The priest would’ve lowered his head in shame at that before, but instead he just turned to the window and began his morning prayer.
“Amen!” he whispered some time later as he finished praying.
The priest then turned toward the plate of breakfast food Malcolm had set out for him and instinctively licked his lips like a dog before pulling himself together. Malcolm watched as the priest sat down quietly, still wrapped in the painter’s tarp, and ate his breakfast without a fuss.
“Malcolm…” Father Nicholas said, still eating.
“Yes, Father?” Malcolm asked.
The priest took a deep breath and said, “I want to tell you about my dream.”
The angel raised a curious eyebrow before saying, “Go right ahead, Father.”
Father Nicholas nodded and said, “In the dream, I was being chased through a forest by something. At first, I thought it was the wolf chasing me, but then I came face to face with him before the beast actually chasing me attacked me, and it wasn’t the wolf. It was a demon, like the ones I had heard stories about as a child. The demon tried to harm me, but then the wolf attacked him, like he was trying to protect me.”
Malcolm’s eyes widened with surprise and he smiled.
“I see, Father,” Malcolm said, “What do you think it means?”
The priest shook his head and replied, “I’m not sure… but I think it’s a sign that you might be right about the wolf. Maybe it’s not the monster I believed it to be.”
Malcolm closed his eyes and kept his smile before saying, “I’m glad you feel that way now, Father. Now you finish your breakfast, get yourself dressed, and then I request that you come upstairs. I have someone very special for you to meet. I think she may be able to offer you a helping hand with understanding the wolf better.
Father Nicholas stopped midway through a bite of bacon as soon as he heard that and looked at Malcolm wide-eyed.
“She…?” he asked, a bit of a worried tremble in his voice.
Malcolm smiled as he nodded and opened his mouth to say more, until…
SLAM!!!
…they both heard the sound of a door closing from the room above.
The angel frowned before turning back to Father Nicholas and saying, “Don’t worry, I think she’s just going for a run. I’ll fetch her.”
And, in another wing-shaped flash of light, he was gone.
_
Ten minutes later…
“I cannot believe I really let bacon and eggs go to waste!”
That’s what Frida thought to herself as she finally finished running all the way back to her apartment above the Chinese restaurant. It didn’t take long for her to get her bearings as soon as she realized she was in Van Cortlandt Park, and then she ran all the way back from there, not caring that she was running at wolf-speed through the streets of New York. All she cared about was getting as far away from Malcolm as possible.
“About time!” she said to herself, exasperated.
She stood panting by the backdoor of the restaurant, her face all furry and wolf-like again. With a deep, calming breath, she shook her head and all the wolf-like features quickly disappeared from her body. She then clicked the button on the speaker box and there was a loud buzzing noise.
“Lannie, it’s me, please buzz me in,” she said into the speaker box.
There was a momentary ringing like that of a phone before the building door unlocked itself with a heavy jolt. Frida thanked her friend through the speaker box and then walked inside past the restaurant entryway and up the stairs to the apartment just above the bustling eatery.
As she turned the unlocked door knob and stepped inside, she proclaimed, “Lan, girl, you are not going to believe what hap-”
However, before she could even finish her sentence, she came face to face with the last person she wanted to see at that moment. He was sitting on the couch as the nearby radio played Rod Stewart’s cover of a certain Jimi Hendrix song.
“Hello, Frida,” Malcolm said, smiling, “It took you long enough to get here.”
Frida stood still as a statue for a brief moment before she became filled with so much rage that she could even feel her wolf getting angry with her.
“What the HELL are you doing here?!!” she growled, “And how did you get here so fast…!? What even are you?!”
He smiled, almost condescendingly, and said, “Isn’t it obvious? I’m an angel.”
The goth chick’s eyes widened slightly as she took a moment to process what he just told her.
Finally, she scoffed and said, “An angel…? Yeah, right.”
Malcolm raised an eyebrow at her and held up a mirror. It was Gwendolyn’s tiny toy mirror made of pink plastic, but it was enough to illustrate Malcolm’s point as he turned it slightly and a white light reflected in Frida’s face. She squinted her eyes for a moment, her eyes adjusting to the light, when she finally saw what it was he wanted her to: Her own image reflected in the glass with a shimmering white light in the corner where Malcolm’s reflection was supposed to be.
“What the…?” Frida said, dumbfounded.
“Yep!” he said as he put the mirror down and stood up, “Believe me now? That little girl you live with is smarter than you give her credit for.”
The instant she heard him mention the little girl, Frida’s head jerked upward in sudden worry.
“How do you know about Gwendolyn?!” she cried.
Malcolm smiled almost flirtatiously before answering, “Well, I’m an angel, it’s my job to watch over people, especially folks like you who I have important business with. That is, if you’re willing to hear me out.”
She furrowed her brow and turned her head slightly as she said, “What are you talking about?”
“Well, I’m afraid this business I’m talking about won’t be nearly as pleasant as last night,” he said, giving her a wink, “But that doesn’t mean we can’t ever do that again.”
Frida growled angrily at him, fists clenched at her sides again.
“Don’t you growl at me,” he said, “You’re the one who wouldn’t stop saying yes to me all night.”
“Urgh! Stop it! It wasn’t that great anyway,” she growled, “And, plus, how the hell did we even do it last night? I thought angels were supposed to be like ‘pure’ or something, right?”
“You say that as if physical intimacy, sexual or otherwise, somehow isn’t pure,” the angel replied, “Anyway, I didn’t just bring you to my cabin for hot sex and breakfast in bed. I also brought you there because I have someone hiding out there who needs your help pretty badly. Someone that you have something in common with.”
She furrowed her brow, not knowing what he meant until it clicked in her mind.
“Was that the guy I heard screaming in your basement earlier?” she asked, “He’s a werewolf too?”
Malcolm nodded and said, “Yes, but unlike you, he was turned by a bite rather than a scratch, so he doesn’t have the ability to transform at will like you do. Not to mention his terrible religious fear keeps him rejecting his gift. I thought you might be able to help him learn to understand it better.”
Frida folded her arms over her chest and scoffed at him saying, “No fuckin’ way! I got better stuff to do than help some Christian nutjob deal with some self-esteem issues, even if we do have something in common. Speaking of which, why do you even give a shit about him? Since when do werewolves have guardian angels?”
He paused for a moment, pondering whether or not he should tell her. Whether or not she’s ready to know. Luckily for him, she wasn’t very knowledgeable about angels.
“I could tell you, but it’s pretty complicated,” he said, reaching into his pocket, “In the meantime, I can see you need some time to think it over. I’ll give you that time, as well as a clue to help you decide. Look up this name and call me when you’re ready.”
He dropped a bit of paper on the couch separating them and then vanished in another flash of white light. Frida shielded her eyes from the brightness of his exit and then, once he was gone, she looked down at the folded up piece of paper and opened it up. All there was on it was a name, one that sounded vaguely familiar, and a number.
“Thiess of Kaltenbrun,” she read aloud, “712-4003.”
She let out a tired breath before rubbing her aching head and looking at the clock.
“I need coffee.”
_
An hour or so later…
Frida sat in her favorite gothic coffee shop sipping a mocha latte as she looked up the name Malcolm had given her on her black charcoal laptop.
“Thiess of Kaltenbrun, The Livonian Werewolf,” she read off her laptop screen, “In 1692, a Livonian man by the name of Thiess of Kaltenbrun was placed on trial for heresy as he proclaimed in his eighties that he was a werewolf. Although he was accused of attempting to turn people away from the church, the man insisted that he was a ‘hound of God’ who had ventured into Hell with other werewolves to do battle with the Devil and his legions.”
All of a sudden…
“Is this seat taken?”
…her train of thought was interrupted by someone standing before her.
Frida looked up to see a man dressed in a dark red suit with caprine-horn designs all over it, as well as a black shirt and tie. The man had pale hazel eyes with shrunken pupils and dark hair that matched his pointed beard. Frida couldn’t understand why, but she felt a shiver run down her spine at the sight of him.
“May I…?” he asked again.
Frida looked around quickly and saw that all the other seats were taken. She gestured for him to go ahead and went back to reading as he sat down in the chair across from her.
“Thiess further claimed that he and his pack of ‘holy werewolves’ routinely brought back the earthly goods stolen from people by the demons of Hell and that, as a werewolf, his work was more good and holy than any a priest had done. A statement which was not at all well-received by church leaders and judges of the time,” she continued to read.
“Has he made you the offer yet?” the man sitting across from her suddenly said.
Frida looked up at him with a raised eyebrow and asked, “What?”
The mysterious man took a sip of his coffee and answered, “Malcolm, of course. Has he made you the offer yet…? To become one of those ‘hounds of God’?”
As soon as those words escaped his lips, Frida felt a cold shudder run down her spine and she all of a sudden felt giant butterflies in her stomach. She slowly closed up her laptop and looked the man straight in the face like a frightened animal frozen by a predator’s gaze.
“Who are you?” she asked, dead serious.
The man flashed her an evil grin and said, “Now that’s what I love to see; a predator on edge at the realization that she’s become the prey.”
Frida gritted her teeth as the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. If this was what being the prey felt like then she didn’t want any part of it. In fact, she was prepared to bolt for the door depending on what next came out of the man’s mouth.
With fists clenched on top of her computer, she once again asked through gritted teeth, “Who – the – Hell – are – you?”
With another evil grin the man said, “‘Who the Hell am I?’ That question is more appropriate than you realize. My name is Colin and Malcolm and I are old friends. Well… frenemies, would be more accurate.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and asked, “Are you an angel?”
All of a sudden, the man threw his head back and let out a loud, ear-splitting cackle as if he had just been told the world’s funniest joke. The scary part though, is that no one else in the coffee shop even blinked an eye at the sound of his laugh.
“Far from it,” he said, a semi-serious expression coming across his face, “I… am a demon, Frida.”
That made Frida freeze even stiller than before. She didn’t know which was scarier, the sudden realization of what she was up against, or the fact that he knew who – and what – she was.
Either way, she didn’t want to stick around any further.
As fast as she could, Frida grabbed hold of her laptop and tried to make a run for it, spilling what was left of her latte in the process. However, before she even had a chance to get past the table, she found herself being grabbed firmly by the wrist, but not by Colin’s hand. He had grabbed her wrist by his tail!
“What the- Help! Somebody help!” Frida cried out at the sight of the demon’s deep red, arrow-shaped tail in the hopes someone would notice.
Unfortunately, the entire coffee shop didn’t move a muscle. At first, Frida thought everyone was just ignoring her, until she noticed the steam from one of the coffee machines was literally frozen in midair. She looked around and the rest of the shop was the same: Book readers stopped halfway through turning pages, a baby frozen through shaking her rattle, and even one guy frozen mid-sneeze into a black handkerchief.
“Sorry, but I’m afraid they can’t help you right now,” Colin said.
Frida looked around horrified at the world on pause and said, “What did you do to them?”
Colin let out a cruel chuckle and said, “Actually, it’s not them I’ve done something to, it’s us. As far as the rest of the world can see, we’re not even here. You and I are currently moving so fast that time appears frozen to us. So long as I keep my tail on you, that is.”
Her eyes widened and she turned immediately to his demonic appendage. The first thing she thought of was trying to bite it off like a trapped coyote. She turned her eyes yellow, ready to do some serious damage with her wolf-teeth.
“Don’t bother!” Colin suddenly said, as if reading her mind, “I’m not here to harm you, I’m here to talk.”
As he spoke, his tail slowly led Frida back to her seat and sat her down without letting go of her. She clenched her free hand into an angry fist, defeated but defiant.
“You know what I am, you know what Malcolm is, and both of us know what you are,” he said, “I’m honestly surprised that he hasn’t tried to recruit you yet, but, don’t worry, he will, in time. Just as he’s trying to do with the priest. I’m sure you know about him.”
Frida said nothing.
“Oh, the silent treatment,” he said, chuckling, “No problem, you can give it to me as long as you want, but just know that I can hurt you in so many ways. Ways that even your gothic brain can’t fathom.”
His tail moved as he spoke, gripping Frida’s arm tighter until she noticed something slowly slipping out of the arrow-shaped point of his tail. It was sharp and black and shiny like oil. It reminded Frida of an insect’s stinger, which made her heart rate increase, but she still tried her best not to let it show.
“Why do you want him so badly?” Frida suddenly asked, trying to avoid telling him anything.
Colin raised an eyebrow as if to say ‘nice move’ before answering, “For the same reason I want every wolf that Malcolm and all of his other little angel buddies try to make offers towards. I want him because, if Malcolm convinces them to join his cause, that’ll be one more ‘hound of God’ to contend with. Get the picture?”
Frida still said nothing and just raised an eyebrow of her own.
“Quid pro quo,” Colin suddenly remarked, “I told you why I want the priest, now you tell me where I can find him. Okay…?”
The goth chick, somewhat more confident than before, shook her head and said, “We never made that arrangement.”
All of a sudden…
CLANG!!!
… the angry demon grabbed hold of the table and knocked over to the side violently!
He pulled Frida closer to him with his tail until the two of them were face to face and his hazel eyes blazed with animalistic rage. The rest of the world remained blissfully unaware as everything was still frozen, but Frida was breathing heavily, barely keeping her terror under control as she stared into the eyes of what felt like the Devil himself.
After a brief moment of staring angrily at her and squeezing her arm hard enough to almost break it, the demon finally began to soften his grip and relax.
“Very brave of you, girl,” he said, “Being willing to protect a man you just met when you don’t have to. It’s a sign of nobility on your part, but it won’t help you. Just know, I don’t just have the power to hurt you, I have the power to hurt those closest to you too.”
And that was when Frida felt her heart nearly stop.
“Think about that,” he said, and then he was gone.
Suddenly…
“Hey!”
…all of the noise in the coffee shop came flooding back into Frida’s ears.
“If you’re going to knock over the table, we’re going to have to ask you to leave,” said the disgruntled barista.
Frida looked down at the spilled latte and toppled-over table; she apologized to the barista before she began cleaning up the mess. The table was small and light, so she had no trouble getting that back up. She then grabbed some napkins and began soaking up the liquid on the floor. One of the employees even went over to help her.
“Thanks,” Frida said to the pimply teenage goth boy who helped her.
He blushed sheepishly and continued cleaning up, until he found a card on the floor near Frida’s table. He picked it up and examined it with a raised eyebrow.
“Um, excuse me, is this yours?” he asked Frida.
She furrowed her brow as she took a look at the card. What she saw written on it made her skin crawl.
“For when you’re feeling more communicative, come here: 666 13th St., New York, NY”
“You okay?” asked the teenager.
Frida looked up from the card and said, “I, uh… gotta go!”
She picked up all of her stuff and left as fast as she could. Frida ran through the streets of New York City at normal human speed, trying not to draw attention to herself. As she ran, she kept repeating to herself that she had to get home, but she had no idea how that would help her in any way. In fact, part of her felt that the only way she’d be able to get this situation resolved, was by asking for Malcolm’s help.
And the worst part is that she wasn’t sure whether she was angry about that, or excited.
“Fucking fuck!!!”
THE END… for now!
Frida and Malcolm by Lisa Robson, Instagram: @fantasylotusart Twitter: LisaRobson22
The elevator door opened to the office above the Black Crocus Hotel & Casino, which prompted everyone in the room to turn and see who it was.
As the doors slid open, out stepped a tall, strongly built man with red-brown hair and brown eyes. He was dressed in a dark red suit with a black bolo tie and matching cowboy boots. However, the most striking thing about him was his black leather cowboy hat, which had a rattlesnake skin band wrapped around it.
“Howdy, Boss Belikov,” he said with a Texas accent, pushing in a wheelchair that had a man tied to it dressed all in black, his head covered by a sackcloth.
All around the room stood tough-looking men wearing pin-striped suits with matching fedoras. At the front of the room sat a mahogany desk with a big black chair turned to the window behind it so the person in it could look out over the shining glory of the Las Vegas Strip amidst the early morning dark. Slowly, the chair turned to reveal the boss: A beautiful, fair-skinned woman in her mid-thirties with icy blue eyes, long strawberry blonde hair and dressed in a dark gray suit with an onyx brooch on her lapel.
“Mr. Aidikoff,” the woman said, her voice accompanied by a Russian accent.
“Please, ma’am, call me Anton,” the cowboy said, flirtatiously, “There ain’t no need for a good-lookin’ gal like you to be formal with me.”
She narrowed her eyes at him just as one of the men in the room said, “Or she could call you ‘Snake-Oil’! After all, the rest of us do, right guys!”
Anton frowned with annoyance as the rest of the room burst into malicious laughter at his expense. Even the boss’s lip twitched as she stifled a smile at the Texan’s embarrassment over his nickname.
“Moving on” she finally said, “What have you brought for me?”
“Your Pandora job was a bust! So says this varmint,” he said, yanking the sack off of his captive’s head.
He was a heavy-set, brown-haired man with a black eye and blood seeping from his nostril onto the duct tape covering his mouth. Boss Belikov frowned, while the rest of her men all gasped with surprise at the sight of him.
“I roughed him up a little bit for you,” Anton said, tearing the tape from the man’s lips, “Now, Erik, tell them exactly what you told me.”
“Okay… okay…” Erik said, catching his breath between words, “Me and my boys; we were carrying out the operation like you told us, boss. But then, we were ambushed… by them!”
A mist of dread seemed to descend over the whole room. Everyone knew who he was talking about, and what that meant for his ‘boys’. Even Anton seemed quite perturbed by the mere mention of them, unlike the impatient crime lady. She just folded her arms and raised an eyebrow at the master lockpick tied up before her.
“I see…” she said, “And, pretell, how did these two vigilantes manage to beat such a skilled thief, such as yourself?”
Erik gulped as he looked over at Anton. The Texan glared, urging him to tell her.
“They came in through the skylight,” he explained, “They were incredibly fast… and strong. They had glowing red eyes and floated above the ground as if gravity were nothing as they attacked my boys.”
“Attacked them…? With what?” she asked, “Knives? Guns?”
“Teeth… ma’am!” Erik blurted out, “Big teeth.”
Anton raised an eyebrow at such a fanciful idea. The men in the room whispered to each other in various tones ranging from fearful to skeptical. Suddenly, Anton noticed that the corner of the boss’s mouth twitched – as though she was holding back a smile.
“Teeth?” Boss Belikov asked, almost rhetorically.
“I’m serious, ma’am!” Erik said, trying not to have a tone.
For the next few minutes, the room remained completely silent. Eventually, the boss stood up and leaned her hands on the edges of the desk. She looked sternly into the eyes of every man there – save for Anton’s. His gaze she avoided, like always.
“Here’s how it’s going to go, comrades. As you know, the police have been honing in on our connections at the University of Las Vegas Biochemistry Department,” she said, before looking directly at Erik, “Mr. Rollins, you have experience gaining access to their administration offices. You get all of these fine men inside, and they’ll make sure all the files pertaining to us are destroyed… And, this time, don’t forget to make it look accidental!”
Erik nodded his head a little too fast and said, “I swear, boss, it will be done.”
“Good,” she said, “I want a nice, clean operation this time… You all remember what happened to Sergei.”
All of the men simultaneously took off their fedoras and placed them over their chests at the sound of their fallen former boss’s name. Boss Belikov held back tears as she turned the white gold wedding ring on her left hand.
She let out a quick sniffle and said, “Comrades, this meeting is adjourned.”
The men put their hats back on and all headed towards the elevator while the boss remained in her seat. Anton untied Erik, who rubbed his chafing wrists while keeping his head down the whole time as he followed the others out. As soon as they were all inside the elevator, Anton gave a quick wink to his bodacious boss as the elevator doors closed.
An uncomfortable shiver ran down Boss Belikov’s spine as she stood up and walked over to the bathroom in the corner. She locked the door behind her and quickly reached behind the toilet where a small, pager-like device was taped; it was black with a symbol on it drawn in red paint. A symbol like that of vampire teeth.
Irina: University of Las Vegas Biochemistry Department. Tomorrow evening at midnight, in the Admin. Offices. Rollins will be there with three armed men… As will Aidikoff. I would strongly recommend dispatching him this time!
…
B&F: Thanks for the tip. We’ll see what we can do.
How much longer until I’m free of that snake? she thought to herself, rolling her eyes at the return message.
She taped the pager back behind the toilet before turning on the shower. She stripped off her dark gray suit and the black blouse underneath before stacking them in a neat little pile on the toilet seat lid. The last thing she took off, hesitantly, of course, was her white-gold wedding band.
“I’m doing this for you, misha,” she said, staring at the ring between her two fingers.
Finally, she gave the ring a small kiss and placed it in a tiny, porcelain dish by the sink before stepping into the shower and washing herself with the curtain wide open.
B
Meanwhile, in the middle of Las Vegas’ Valley of Fire National Park…
A lone peccary was snuffling about the rocky sands looking for something to munch on. Some part of it knew that it was dangerous to be out at night, but it was hungry and it had its tusks and special noises in case a predator came around.
Unfortunately, unbeknownst to the poor beast, there was a predator out in the desert at that moment that wasn’t afraid of its tricks. Actually, there were two predators.
YIP! YIP! YIP! YIP!
The creature suddenly froze at the sound of the first predator’s signature noise. It was a coyote! A lone scout, standing atop a slight ridge just a few yards away and announcing to the rest of his pack that he’d just found them a meal. The peccary began making his signature noise to scare off predators, but the coyote had already spotted it and was now leaping and bounding toward his prey to bring it down before the rest of the pack arrived.
…the canine-like creature was smacked right in its ear by a high-pitched call similar to that of a bat’s sonar!
Suddenly, as the coyote was still in midair, it was hit by a shadowy figure that held on to its body with superhuman strength. Once they both hit the ground, the shadowy figure became visible: It turned out to be a stocky, muscular man of about twenty-three with olive skin, dirty-blonde hair hidden beneath a black bandana, and a patch of stubble on his chin. He was barefoot and wore a black leather tank top, red tripp pants with a belt buckle shaped like vampire teeth, fingerless gloves, a kato mask, and a collar around his neck with a metallic letter “F” on it.
That was my best friend!
“Sorry, the kitchen’s closed, Fido!” he said in a somewhat snarky tone.
That’s when he opened his mouth and his canines suddenly grew longer and sharper as his eyes turned blood-red. He sunk his newly sharpened teeth into the creature’s neck and began to suck its blood! The frightened peccary saw all of this happening and tried to make a run for it, only to run face-first into a pair of legs. It looked up and saw that the legs belonged to a leaner young man of about twenty-two with light-brown skin and black hair – also hidden under a black bandana – wearing the same exact clothes. The only exception was the “B” on his collar.
That was me.
“Hey, look… pork!” I said, my teeth and eyes changing just like my buddy’s as I then descended on the peccary.
Part of me was saddened to see the poor pig die, but, then again, I was never a vegan anyway. Plus, as my bud says, ‘better a poor, defenseless pig than a poor, defenseless human’. I felt the hot blood running down my throat and the dry, painful ache in my mouth, esophagus and stomach almost immediately began to vanish away. I savored every drop of it until the poor beast was completely drained, which is when I finally let it fall to the desert floor and let out a pleasurable moan as I rubbed my fingers all across my blood lips.
“Shall I leave you two alone, B?” I suddenly heard my buddy say jokingly.
I opened my eyes to see him staring at me with a smirk and a raised eyebrow. At first, I said nothing in response to his snarky comment, but then finally a smile began to form on my face. That’s when the two of us began laughing simultaneously.
“No, Fang, it’s fine,” I said, finally getting a hold of myself, “It’s just… dinner always seems to taste better when we have it together. Don’t you think so?”
He paused to think about it for a second and said, “You know what? You’re right.”
I smiled warmly at his answer.
Suddenly…
BEEP, BEEP!
…the pager on his belt beeped.
“That must be Irina,” he said, a little too eagerly.
I rolled my eyes and sighed as I dusted myself off and headed over to him to see what she wanted. It’s not that I didn’t like her help in taking down the Belikov crime syndicate, it’s that Fang was always a little too eager to hear from her, and that got me worried.
“What does she want now?” I asked, looking at the pager.
He shot a confused look at me and said, “She’s got another job for us, next evening at midnight.”
“Where?” I asked.
“The Admin. Office at the U of LV Biochemistry Department,” he replied, “Aidikoff will be there.”
“Oh, great!” I said, sarcastically, “She still requesting we kill the fucker?”
“Yeah, when doesn’t she?” he said.
“Well, I’m definitely in favor of thwarting whatever it is their planning to do,” I told him, “But what do we do about Aidikoff?”
He took a deep breath and let it all out at once before responding, “I guess we’ll have to do what we always do; tell her we’ll see what we can do about him and then conveniently make sure he doesn’t end up dead. I hate to do it, but we don’t really have much ch-”
“But, why?” I interrupted, suddenly, “I mean, she wants us to get rid of him. We don’t like having to deal with him. Why not just kill him?”
Fang then took a deep breath, and placed his hand on my shoulder.
“B, I hate that guy too, but we made a solemn vow when we chose to do this that we would kill only to feed…” he said, “And we vowed to never feed on humans, even bad ones.”
I said nothing at first before rolling my eyes and sighing.
“Yeah, I know,” I said, begrudgingly. He was right, as much as I hated to admit it.
He smiled and gave me an approving nod that I rolled my eyes at. Suddenly, I stopped and my eyes went still like a dog hearing something outside. Fang quickly noticed my sudden change in demeanor.
“What is it?” he asked, “What do you hear?”
That’s when my bare feet suddenly lifted off of the ground and, right before Fang’s eyes, I began floating into the air as if the gravity had disappeared from around me. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath of night air with my arms outstretched like a crucifix. My vampiric ears heard everything from the lizards, scorpions and rattlesnakes moving about in the desert to the various sounds of the Las Vegas Strip. Crowded streets, music playing in the lobbies and ballrooms of resort hotels, cards flipping and dice knocking in casinos, as well as slot machines rolling and money flowing out of them like water.
Finally, my eyes shot open at the sound I was listening for.
I turned my eyes back down to Fang and said, “I hear trouble.”
He smiled, almost eagerly, before jumping into the air and floating just like me.
“Well then,” he said, “Let’s get to it, partner.”
F
At that same moment…
“HELP! SOMEBODY HELP US!”
A flying helicopter full of tourists was swerving wildly between the various casinos and resort hotels lining Las Vegas Boulevard. The tourists were all screaming in abject terror as the pilot was trying his hardest to regain control of his vehicle. Unfortunately, the defective helicopter wasn’t responding to anything he did, and worst of all, it was headed right for the Bellagio Hotel & Casino!
Beneath the helicopter, a massive crowd screamed in absolute terror as the runaway chopper swerved from side to side. Its rotary blades nipped at the sides of a few buildings, sending bits of glass and debris raining down on a few terrified bystanders. Most of the folks below feared the chopper would crash at any given moment and they wouldn’t know where.
Until…
“Look!” shouted a little boy in a Jack Skellington T-shirt, “It’s Blood and Fang!”
…B and I suddenly flew through the sky with the speed of a falling star.
We both landed on the helicopter’s landing skids. Blood hung upside-down like a bat, preparing to open up the hatch at the bottom, while I went in to reassure the people inside.
“Stay calm! Everything’s under control,” I told them.
All of a sudden…
CHING!
…the helicopter’s tail blade broke free and sliced its way through the air toward the screaming crowd below. The people ran for their lives, all except for the boy in the Jack Skellington T-shirt, who was too busy looking at us in awe to see the oncoming death blade.
“Billy, look out!” his mother screamed, but she was too far away and he couldn’t hear her over the noise of the crowd.
“No!” I cried, jumping into action.
“Fang, what are you-” Blood began to say before he noticed where I was headed.
The blade was only ten feet away from the kid when I managed to swoop down and scoop him up just in time. The blade sliced its way through a nearby car before coming to a halt in the side of a brick building. When the boy opened his eyes, he was floating twenty feet in the air. He looked up into my face and saw my blood-red eyes staring down at him – along with a friendly smile.
“Thank you, Mr. Fang,” the boy said sweetly.
“You’re welcome,” I replied, showing off my sharp, white fangs as he spoke.
“Cool!” the kid whispered just before I set him down.
The boy’s mother quickly embraced him as soon as we were back on the ground, but then I noticed her looking at me with suspicion and fear. Jesus, lady, I just rescued your son from a killer helicopter blade, the least you could do was not judge a guy by the color of his eyes or the sharpness of his teeth. Hopefully her kid will be able to set her straight.
“Fang! I still need a little help here!” I suddenly heard Blood screaming at me, still clinging to the helicopter’s underside.
I quickly looked back at the boy with his mother and said, “Uh-oh! Gotta fly!”
I gave the kid a quick salute – which he returned – before flying off after the chopper.
Suddenly, I heard the burning circuitry in the underside of the helicopter let out a small explosion, which set off a similar explosion in the cockpit. The poor pilot’s sleeve was now on fire from the sudden burst, so I sped up my flight.
“May I borrow this?” I said, grabbing a tourist’s jacket and using it to pat the burning pilot down, “You’re okay! Everything’s gonna be okay! How’s it coming down there, B…?!”
He quickly flew up to the cockpit and said, “No good! The main power cable is dead; it’s completely frayed through! We need to find some way of stopping this thing fast before it crashes!”
The tourists inside with us began panicking even further than before, and one man with a cross around his neck even fell to his knees in frightened prayer. Blood and I looked around in every direction before we both noticed the Planet Hollywood Resort Hotel and the Eiffel Tower replica on opposite ends of the helicopter.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” he replied.
We each grabbed onto a device attached to our belts – like miniature grappling hook shooters – and jumped out of the chopper, pointing them at our respective structures on either side. The two of us each clicked the button and shot the mini-grapplers before clipping them onto the landing skids. Suddenly, the copter jolted as it came to an abrupt stop in midair with the rotary blades still moving. The tourists inside were a bit bruised and shaky, but very much alive. Finally, we began pulling them out two at a time, flying them to the ground below.
“Fang!” I suddenly heard Blood’s voice as he pointed upward.
I looked up at where he was pointing and panicked a little at one of the cables on the verge of snapping!
As quickly as I could, I finished setting down the last two tourists and shot back into the air just when the cable snapped. The broken cable whipped against the resort hotel as the copter was almost pulled into the Eiffel Tower replica by the intact cable. Luckily, I grabbed hold of the tail and was able to steady it with my supernatural strength.
“I got it!” I called to Blood, “But I don’t know for how long!”
“Gimme a minute!” he yelled back, trying to think of a solution.
I held on as hard as I could, but the dashboard suddenly released another small burst of flames. Now, not only was the dashboard on fire, but the pilot seat and cockpit floor as well. And, worst of all, the fire was spreading quickly toward the side of the chopper – where the engine and fuel lines were!
Suddenly, as he was staring fearfully at the spreading flames on the side of the copter, my buddy’s gaze was drawn to the Bellagio Hotel at the end of the block. More specifically, to the colorfully lit fountains in front of the hotel.
“That’s the ticket!” he said.
Quick as a flash, he flew around the front of the chopper and shattered the windshield glass with two punches. He quickly spun out of the way as the flames jumped forward from the new source of oxygen he had provided. As he quickly flew to the other side of the copter, he placed his hand on the other cable to release it.
“Fang, I’m about to release the other cable!” he called to me, “When I do, we need to try and aim the chopper toward the Bellagio Fountains so the water can put out the fire and short-circuit the controls! Do you understand…?!”
“Just do it!” I responded, already straining from holding the damn thing in place.
Blood nodded and clicked the button to release the remaining cable. As soon as he did, I let out a loud cry of pain as I lifted the copter’s tail boom to begin steering it toward the illuminated waters below. I then felt Blood join in pushing the air vehicle from the side with all of his might.
CRASH!
The next thing I knew, the fire was out before it could reach the fuel lines and the two of us were up to our knees in water. That’s when the rotary blades finally stopped as the water sprayed in through the broken windshield and short-circuited the controls just like Blood said.
I finally let go of the tail boom and rested for a minute in the waters of the Bellagio Fountain, which is when Blood strolled over to the tail boom and knelt down next to me.
“How’s the water?” he asked, sarcastically.
I looked up at him and exhaustingly answered, “Fantastic…! I cannot believe we just did that!”
“I know, right?” he said, smiling with both amusement and pride at the sight of the busted helicopter in the middle of the major Las Vegas attraction, “Man, I love this job!”
With a proud smile, I replied, “Me too.”
Suddenly, a massive applause came from the crowd that had gathered – unbeknownst to us – all around the fountain. The two of us smiled at each other before standing up in the waters, taking each other by the hand, and bowing like stage actors to our adoring public. The crowd went even more wild to see their heroes acknowledging them graciously.
As we finished our bow, I noticed the sky on the horizon starting to grow lighter.
“Hey, B,” I said, nudging him and pointing, “The sun’s coming up. We’d better go.”
He frowned with disappointment and said, “Oh, very well.”
We let go of each other’s hands and bolted into the sky back toward the bleak, Nevada desert where we had come from.
“Rock and roll!” we both hollered as we flew over the still-screaming crowd.
B
Some time later…
We went back to the cave in Las Vegas’ Valley of Fire National Park.
It was a small opening in a mass of giant boulders, which led to a hidden underground chamber. Etched into the rock wall opposite to the entrance was a large, Mayan-style symbol depicting the head of a bat with a trickling pool of blood-red liquid just beneath it!
Near the red pool were two duffel bags containing our daytime clothes.
It was here, in this very cavern, that the two of us became what we are now.
Fang and I looked to the east, which was on the other side of the boulders, and saw the sun slowly beginning to rise. We both took off our masks, and looked into each other’s glowing red eyes.
“Vinny?” he called me by my real name.
“Sam?” I called him by his real name.
He frowned and said, “Fun’s over.”
I let out a sigh and replied, “Yep, time for bed.”
Sam took off his shirt and stuffed it into the duffel bag with his initials on it. As he took off his pants, I couldn’t help but let my eyes drift to the naked butt peeking out from his jockstrap. It wasn’t the first time I took a moment to admire him, but he never once noticed. I know because I always made sure he didn’t, mainly due to fear of how he might react if he did catch me.
Suddenly, as I was staring, Sam removed his collar and I caught sight of the thin, red scar across his neck. Just seeing it, I instinctively reached down to a similar scar on my thigh, just above my femoral artery. They were the scars that forever marked us as what we are now, as well as reminded us of a day I doubt either of us could ever forget.
“Hey, Vinny!” I suddenly heard Sam say, “Is this the life, or what?”
I smiled, almost nostalgically, and said, “Oh, yeah…! Serendipity sure is a wonderful thing when you think about it.”
He turned to me with his brow furrowed and asked, “What do you mean?”
My smile intensified as I replied, “Well, we originally found this place all because we got cocky from our military training and chased after some mobsters that were more difficult to handle than we thought. Strangely, if it wasn’t for all of that happening, we never would’ve been chased all the way out here, found this cave, and gotten ourselves slashed and left for dead in the pool by those fuckers.”
I pointed toward the pool of blood-red liquid nearby as I finished my explanation. He turned his gaze toward the pool and then back to me.
“So… what did you mean, again?” he asked, still confused.
I playfully rolled my eyes and said, “What I’m saying is that our mistakes that day lead us here. So, in a way, they gave us a better outcome than we ever would’ve gotten just being members of the police force. It was like it was meant to be.”
He thought about it for a second and then smiled as he said, “Yeah… I suppose you’re right, V. Although, it doesn’t exactly improve my relationship with my old man.”
We both frowned at that and said nothing… before bursting into shared laughter.
“Yeah, true that,” I said, still laughing.
That’s when Sam’s gaze was drawn to the opening of the cave and the slowly rising sun in the distance.
“Come on,” he said, pointing to my duffel bag, “We’d better get started.”
I frowned, not too keen on what we had to do next as I reached into my duffel bag and pulled out two fresh syringes, as well as a large bottle of garlic extract. We both put our clothes into our duffel bags, I handed a syringe to Sam, and the two of us began filling each one with the garlic extract in nothing but our athletic supporters – not that I minded.
“This is the one part of this whole thing that I hate,” he told me, strapping his leather belt around his big, meaty bicep as a makeshift tourniquet.
“Me too, buddy” I said, sticking the garlic syringe into my own tied up arm, “At the same time, we can’t exactly go to our day jobs looking like this, am I right?”
He looked down at his pale skin and long, sharp fingernails before nodding.
“You’re right,” he replied.
I smiled and said, “That’s the spirit. Now let’s get this over with.”
He nodded and replied, “You don’t have to tell me twice.”
I pushed down on the plunger and the liquid went into my veins. Already, I could feel the intensity of my barely beating heart being reinvigorated to life, while my cold, clammy skin began heating up. In addition to that, I felt a pain in my mouth, fingers, and toes as the fangs and claws shrunk back to normal teeth and nails. Lastly, my eyes began to gloss over with tears as they changed back to their normal brown color.
“You ready?” Sam asked amidst a painful yelp.
I nodded, barely seeing him through my tear-filled eyes as I said, “Yep.”
That’s when the two of us left the cave and headed toward Sam’s 2015 silver Ford pickup truck parked behind some nearby bushes. By the time we reached the truck, I noticed the two body bags lined with bedding in the back beneath a large wrestling mat.
Sam and I put both of our bags in the truck before starting it up. We drove a little until we were at the right angle for the sun to hit us. That’s when Sam shut off the truck and both of us got into the back, kneeling on top of the wrestling mat with the body bags at our sides and our backs to the sun.
“How long do we have until it hits us?” he asked me.
I looked behind us and saw the sunlight slowly creeping our way.
“Just a few minutes,” I told him.
As soon as I said that, he began to squeeze my hand tighter than before in anticipation of what was to come. I did the same as the two of us braced ourselves for the inevitability of the brightest star!
“Here it comes!” he said, taking a quick glance at the moving rays, “Hang on!”
I squeezed my eyes shut and counted it down in my head as I cried out, “¡Adelante, señor Sol!”
The pain was like being burned alive by radioactive fire.
There’s literally no other way to describe the feeling, and I knew that Sam could feel it too. Not just because his agonizing scream mirrored my own, but because he gripped my hand so tightly that it felt like a steel vice slicing into my flesh right down to the bone.
Finally, the intense, burning pain began to slowly, but surely subside as the garlic did its thing. Both Sam and I fell face-first onto our respective body bags and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sam laying next to me, panting hard like a beached elephant seal. I also saw the color returning to his cheeks and his eyes were their normal mossy green color again.
I smiled in relief knowing that we had once again survived our painful ordeal, which we were forced to endure every morning since we changed. Finally, I became overcome with sleep as the last remnants of vampiric nature were burned out of me, at least until tonight.
And the just thought of having to do it all over again without my buddy, Sam, by my side…?
Two words: Simply unimaginable.
F
Eight hours later…
“OVERSLEPT!?!”
I screamed as I jumped up out of my body bag like Nosferatu emerging from his coffin. I caught sight of my wristwatch and it had 11:30am plastered on it. Vinny and I were supposed to be at work in half an hour.
“V, get up! It’s 11:30; we slept in!” I said, ripping open his body bag.
Vinny rubbed his dark brown eyes as he levitated out of his body bag like I had before and began getting ready. Both of us quickly pulled everything out of our duffle bags to get changed into our daytime clothes: A black Slipknot shirt and ripped black jeans for Vinny, and an open navy blue Hawaiian shirt with army green khakis and a white undershirt for me.
“You ready, bud?” I asked, once we were both in the car.
“All set,” he said, giving me a nod.
The two of us took a deep breath as I slowly began driving the car out of its shadowy hiding spot and into the sunlight…
“Yeesh…!”
I groaned from a slight burning sensation in my skin, like the kind one gets from falling asleep in a tanning bed. It was painful but bearable, thanks to the garlic that Vinny and I stuck into our veins earlier this morning. It’s what protects us from burning alive in the daylight; which is a lesson we both had to learn the hard way.
“You good?” I asked, my voice still a groan from the pain.
Vinny took in his signature deep breath to gather his strength and said, “Yeah… I’m good, for now.”
I nodded as the Ford pickup slowly made its way out of the Valley of Fire. As soon as we reached the road, we sped quickly towards Joel’s Hunk Bar on the outskirts of The Strip.
“Joel is really gonna blow a gasket today,” Vinny said.
“Yeah,” I replied, “When doesn’t he?”
My truck swerved past curve after curve as we made our way back to the city. All of a sudden…
RING, RING, RING!
“It’s Joel,” Vinny said, looking at his phone.
Oh, great! I thought, rolling my eyes as he answered the call.
He clicked the answer button and then guiltily said, “Hiiiiiiiii.”
“Vinny! Where the Hell are you and Sam?” I heard Joel’s gruff voice yelling on the other line, “No, no, don’t tell me. You two were out all night ‘saving the world’, right?”
“Nope,” Vinny said, before turning to me with a mischievous smile, “Just the city.”
I chuckled as I kept driving as fast as I could under the speed limit.
Joel gave a sarcastic laugh and said, “Good one. Now get down here or you two are fired. I mean it this time.”
“We’re in Sam’s car, right now, and should be there in five,” Vinny told him.
“You had better be,” he said, “I didn’t go through the trouble of hiring you guys just so you can throw it away by being late all the time.”
I closed my eyes with worry at the sound of that, while Vinny began to argue, “We’re not always late, you kno-”
“Just get here soon!” Joel interrupted him, then hung up the phone.
Vinny rolled his eyes and sighed as he put his phone away.
“Great!” he said, “We’re gonna lose our jobs.”
“No, we’re not. Joel is all talk, remember? He always threatens to fire us, but he never actually does it,” I tried to assure him.
“Pfft…” he said, not so assuredly, “God, I hope you’re right.”
Finally, ten minutes later, we arrived at our destination.
On the outside, Joel’s Hunk Bar was a large, two-story building constructed from dark gray bricks. The roof was lined with purple neon lights, as were the doors in the front, which had the place’s name above it, along with a blue neon speedo and a green neon margarita.
I parked the car at the back of the joint, near the employee entrance.
“We’d better hurry,” I said, as we stepped out of the car.
“Duh!” he said, closing the passenger door.
We hustled quietly inside the building. In the center of the place was a big platform dance floor dotted with dancing poles for the employees. The platform was surrounded by various booths and tables waited on by shirtless waiters – like we were – plus purple-carpeted floors, two bathroom doors tucked away in the right hand corner near the front entrance, and a large horseshoe bar at the back of the room lined with every kind of booze known to man.
Vinny and I tried to sneak our way into the employee lounge, but once we had opened the door, we were immediately met with a disappointed look from a tall, muscular black man in his early-to-mid forties. He had a flat-top haircut, broad shoulders, and a strong man’s chin, as well as a thin, pencil mustache sitting firmly above his lip.
“DeLuca! Rodriguez!” he growled, his hands crossed over his chest.
“Oh, uh, hi Joel,” I said, sheepishly.
“You call that five minutes or less?” he asked.
I looked over at Vinny who replied, in an irritated tone, “Sorry, I underestimated the time.”
“Yeah, you two hot-shots seem to do that a lot,” he said, “Fourth time this week!”
“Joel, we’re really sorry,” I tried to explain, “Vinny and I had a really tough night last night, we overslept this morning and-”
“I don’t want to hear your excuses,” he interrupted, “Both of you hang up your things and get your asses out there. We’ve got a lot of college girls coming in today, and I want you two stud-muffins to show them a good time.”
“Yes, sir!” we both said simultaneously like two privates in the military.
The two of us ran quickly into the employee lounge, put our stuff away in our lockers, and changed into our work uniforms: White collars with black bow ties, black leather pants, boots, and white shirt cuffs amidst our bare torsos. I pulled out a stick of deodorant, while Vinny took a bottle of mouthwash to the bathroom nearby. I smelled my own breath in my hand and grimaced at the lingering scent of coyote blood. Figured I might as well swish too.
“Hey, Sam! Your gal is on,” Vinny said, pointing at the flat screen nearby.
I turned to the TV fast enough to make a motorcycle look slow.
“This is Carmina Florez for KTNV 13 Action News,” said a gorgeous latina reporter with mocha-brown hair, sparkling black eyes, and lips coated with glistening peach lipstick.
“In other news, Las Vegas’ two mysterious heroes have done it again!” she said, with a big smile on her face, “Late last night, the duo was seen by multiple witnesses rescuing a defective helicopter full of tourists – plus their pilot – from certain death.”
That’s when we both looked at each other and smiled proudly.
“We did it, man,” Vinny said after spitting out the mouthwash.
“Hell yeah, we did,” I said, placing my deodorant back in my locker and taking the mouthwash from him.
“But now,” Carmina continued, “We’re pleased to announce that we have received exclusive footage of this breathtaking occurrence from an anonymous source who was happy to share it. Let’s roll it again.”
As the footage began to play, Vinny and I saw the helicopter starting to go out of control and the tourists screaming for help. Suddenly, the tail rotor broke free like before and the boy in the Jack Skellington shirt shot into the air – seemingly all by himself – and he floated there for a minute before lowering back down and running to his mother. That’s when the two cables shot out of midair beneath the helicopter and held it in place before the people inside began floating down to the ground below the chopper.
“Truly amazing!” Carmina said, as the footage cut out.
“Yes we are,” I said, blowing a kiss at the hot reporter, “And you sure are pretty.”
Vinny rolled his eyes at me before saying, “Kiss her on your own time, dude. We’re already late enough as it is.”
I frowned as I reluctantly turned off the TV and said, “You’re right, V. You and I have a busy day ahead of us… Not to mention an even busier night tonight at the University of Las Vegas’ Biochemistry Department.”
That’s when Vinny frowned and nodded before saying, “Yeah… right.”
_
Twenty-four hours later…
Irina Belikov strutted her way down the hallways of the city morgue; her heel-clicks echoed off the cavernous walls as she made her way toward one of the exam rooms. She was dressed in a pin-striped business suit and skirt with her long, strawberry-blonde hair draped beautifully over her shoulders as she followed the old coroner whom she had bribed to escort her in. She got the news this morning that her snake-tongued associate from Texas was dead, and she wanted to see the body with her own eyes.
“Are you sure you want to see him, ma’am?” the old man asked, “It’s quite an ugly sight; one of the worst I’ve ever seen.”
Irina’s eyes narrowed and the corner of her mouth twitched as she suppressed a smile of pleasure and said, “Believe me, comrade, I’ve seen my share of ugly sights. This man was a very important member of my ‘staff’, so I must confirm him, no matter how gruesome the sight.”
The old coroner nodded uneasily as he unlocked the door and the two of them stepped inside. The exam room was cold and gray with metal cabinets for bodies on one side of the room, as well as a cremation chamber on the other. All over the place were tools for cutting open dead bodies, urns filled with people’s ashes, and a big, metal table in the center of it all. No sooner had Irina and the old coroner stepped inside that the man locked the door behind them and headed toward one of the metal cabinets.
“Someone ran him through with a bladed weapon, piercing his heart,” the old coroner explained, pointing to a nearby metal tray, “That’s it, right there.”
Irina looked over to where he was pointing and recognized Anton Aidikoff’s hunting knife. However, unlike before, it was now bent into a boomerang-like shape and covered with gouts of coagulated blood and rattlesnake venom.
“What the…?” the old man suddenly said.
Irina turned to him and said, “Is there something wrong?”
She looked over the old man’s shoulder to see the cabinet shelf he had rolled out was littered with bits of pale, dead skin and some splotches of blood. The old coroner did a quick double take of his sheet to confirm it was the right cabinet.
“Um… nothing, ma’am,” he said, trying to hide his nerves, “The body just appears to have been moved without my knowledge. I need to reach my superior, I’ll be right back.”
The old man stepped past Irina and began unlocking the door to find his boss as his visitor looked around with her back to him. That’s why she didn’t notice the poor old coroner getting silently snatched up to the ceiling by a strong arm covered in peeling skin and scales! All she heard was the clicking of the door lock and the jingling of the man’s keys, at least that was what she heard at first.
CHIT CHIT CHIT CHIT CHIT
She then heard a new, stranger sound similar to that of a rattlesnake’s tail.
When she turned around, all she saw was the half-opened door and the coroner’s keys swinging about with one of them still in the lock. She walked over to the door and took a peek out in the hallway; the old man was nowhere to be found.
“Dr. Vinnors…?” she called out to him.
She heard no response, but then felt something dripping onto her shoulder. Irina froze at the feeling of wetness seeping through her jacket and blouse before slowly looking to see a drop of blood on her shoulder. It splotched some of her strawberry-blonde hair red on its way down.
“What…?” she said, tapping the drop with her finger.
Finally, she realized where the blood was coming from and slowly began to look up at the ceiling. What she saw was quite possibly the most horrifying thing she had ever seen in a decade of being part of a crime syndicate:
Dr. Vinnors was on the ceiling with his eyes rolled back into his head and his skin was as pale as a ghost! Not only that, but his blood was being slurped disgustingly from his neck by a beast that looked like a naked man that had blood-red eyes with slit pupils and patches of brownish-gray scales beneath its peeling dead skin!
“Howdy, Boss Belikov,” the monstrous creature said, with a Texas accent.
Upon hearing him speak, her eyes widened even further than they already were as she recognized the voice. It was raspier than before, but it was undeniably him.
“Aidikoff!” she gasped.
He smiled maliciously at her as he dropped the dead body of poor Dr. Vinnors and saw him go splat on the floor right next to his old mob leader. As soon as he did, she took advantage of the still open door and ran as fast as she could, kicking off her six-inch heels in the process. Unfortunately, she didn’t get far as she suddenly found herself tripping in the hallway from the monster that used to be Anton Aidikoff. He literally slithered like a serpent into her path at lightning-fast speed.
“I don’t think so, Boss!” he hissed, looking down at her fallen form as she looked up at him in defiance, “Well, what do we got here…?”
She narrowed her eyes in confusion, until she followed his gaze and her eyes widened instantly. It seemed her fall caused her purse to fall open and its contents to come spilling out; including a now-broken pager with a certain red symbol on it. Like that of vampire teeth.
WHOOSH!
Before she had a chance to reach for it, the beast slithered back down and grabbed it from her. He then grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up to eye level, warranting a loud scream from her in the process. Finally, he pulled her in close and took in a generous helping of her feminine scent with a few flicks of his new forked tongue.
“Ah, Irina,” he hissed, speaking her name with his best Russian accent, “It’s so nice to finally smell you.”
She grimaced as his forked tongue briefly lapped at her skin and she caught a noseful of his disgusting, death-like breath. Suddenly, before he had a chance to stop her, she slipped a concealed knife out from her sleeve and stuck it right in his neck!
All he did was chuckle.
“Nice try, darlin’,” he said, ripping the knife out and taking a stray piece of old human skin with it, “But you can’t kill me, I’m already dead.”
Irina stared at him in abject terror; she had no way of getting away from him now and no way of calling for help from her two heroes. Worst of all, the worst person she had ever met was back to life as a horrible monster.
“Now I take it you’re the one who’s been tipping them boys off about our operations, right? Did you tell them to kill me too? If so, why? I’d like to know,” he asked.
She said nothing, trying to maintain her defiant composure.
“Tell me!” he screeched and jerked her closer, nearly making her gag from his breath.
“I did it for Sergei!” she cried, hoping he would pull away from her.
Luckily for her, he did, but more so out of confusion than mercy.
“Your late husband?” he asked.
“Da!” she said, her voice angry and defiant, “My misha never wanted to be in charge of this mob. For as long as I’ve known him, he resented his family for being a part of it. And, worse, he hated having to become its leader after his brother died. It took years for us to plan our takedown and escape, but then he died before we could go through with it. I was merely honoring his memory by continuing with the plan, and those two ‘heroes’ made for a perfect means of accelerating the process.”
Aidikoff raised an eyebrow at her story. Despite how ridiculous it sounded, he found himself impressed. The leader of the mafia was the mole trying to bring them down the entire time. How ultimate. That’s when he got a particularly poisonous idea that would give him his revenge in more ways than one.
“Well then, I know the perfect way to get you what you want,” he said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her phone, “I just need to get your boys – all of them – together in the same place. And, with my new powers, they’ll do exactly as I say or watch you die.”
Irina’s eyes widened at the sound of that as she said, “How in the name of God did you become… this?”
He shot her a malicious smile and replied, “Ask the leaner one.”
B
Twelve hours ago…
SLAM! CLICK-CLACK. SLAM!
In the admin offices of the University of Las Vegas’ Biochemistry Department, Anton Aidikoff was standing before a gang of men in pin-striped suits. Erik Rollins was among them; he and the others were all hard at work either pulling open file cabinets or copying and pasting online documents onto flash-drives before permanently deleting them.
“Hurry up, boys!” Aidikoff ordered, rubbing his thumb across the shiny, metal handle of his large hunting knife, “We gotta get all this stuff done before security can find out we’re here.”
“Or worse,” Rollins said, pulling his flash-drive from the computer.
As soon as he said that, a sense of dread fell upon all of the remaining goons as they continued their work. Aidikoff rolled his eyes in disbelief at their fear.
All of a sudden…
CRASH!!!
…Aidikoff and the others were interrupted by a sudden noise like the sound of glass shattering!
Erik and the others all froze where they were as the room fell so quiet that Aidikoff swore he could hear their hearts speeding up. He raised an eyebrow as he turned to where he heard the noise coming from.
“Get back to work!” he growled at the frightened men, “I’ll see what that was.”
He removed his hunting knife from its holster and slowly tiptoed out of the room into the hallway. The only sound to be heard as he moved was a few small drops of yellow-green liquid – rattlesnake venom – seeping from the tip of his blade. As soon as he was out of the room, the other men got shakingly back to work.
“You don’t think that noise was them do you?” asked one of the goons, directing his question at Rollins.
“With what they’re capable of…?” Rollins replied, “You can bet your ass it’s them.”
“Do you think this is a problem?”
All of a sudden, the men were interrupted by my voice as I swung down from where I was hiding. Every goon instantly turned to see me hanging like a bat from the ceiling above with my arms crossed over my chest.
Erik Rollins let out a blood-curdling scream as he and the others released a hail of bullets at the ceiling where I hung. However, by the time they stopped, I was gone with only a cloud of plaster-dust left in my place. They all began frantically looking about to see where I had gone, especially Erik Rollins, who was more jittery than the rest of them. He was also the only one of them wisely keeping his back to a wall, which allowed him to see me floating up behind one of the guys.
“Look out!!!” he cried, pointing the man’s way.
The poor man quickly turned around to see my blood-red eyes staring at him from behind my kato mask. That’s when I grabbed him by the lapels of his pin-striped suit and flew up to the ceiling where I banged his head against it, knocking him unconscious. As the men all turned their guns toward me, they were suddenly pushed from the side by a speeding shadow that knocked half of them down like dominoes.
“Good work, Fang!” I said, dropping the unconscious goon and flipping through the air behind the three remaining goons.
All three of them let out more shots as they followed me flipping over them. Once I had landed, I grabbed two of the goons’ guns and broke them both in half with my enhanced strength before pushing the two men back. They slid across the floor and hit the wall behind them, both knocked out cold.
Suddenly, instead of more gunshots, I was surprised to see the last goon’s fist slowly moving toward me. Well, it was moving slow to me as I moved out of the way with the speed of a bat’s wings.
“Too slow!” I said in a cheeky tone of voice as the big goon threw punch after punch.
The guy was getting angrier and more tired with every punch as he saw me smile at him and raise my eyebrows suggestively whenever I stopped. Finally, he was stopped by my buddy, Fang, jumping quietly behind him and knocking him out with one karate-chop to the back of the neck.
“Come on, B, stop playing around,” he said, before turning to Erik Rollins who was still cowering in the corner with his gun trained on us, “We’ve got work to do.”
I smiled as we both made our way slowly toward the frightened criminal.
“Stay back, demons!” he cried, tossing his gun aside and pulling out another weapon in its place… a cross that previously hung covertly around his neck.
Fang and I raised our eyebrows as we looked at each other before throwing our heads back in hilarious laughter. Poor Rollins was terrifyingly taken aback by our response; I heard his heart beating even faster than it had been before.
“Sorry, Rollins,” I said proudly, edging closer to the man, “If you wanna go up against a real vampire, crosses and other religious symbols ain’t gonna cut it.”
Fang nodded in agreement with a half-amused, half-sympathetic smile on his face.
“No, but this does…!”
Suddenly, I saw something splash against Fang’s arm that seemed to sizzle like butter thrown into a hot pan and he howled with pain as he fell to his side, almost into me!
“Fang!” I cried, just before some of the liquid that touched him also splattered on my fingers, “Ouch!”
I cried in pain as I felt the same sensation on my skin, which was like the feeling we experience during our morning ritual, only worse! Looking down at my own fingers, I saw a red, blistering second-degree burn forming where I had been splashed. That’s when I looked up to see the source of the liquid: Aidikoff!!!
He stood confidently with an alcohol flask full of the mystery liquid in one hand and his large hunting knife in the other. A knife that he now had poised directly over Fang’s heart.
“Buddy…!” I cried, ready to jump to his defense.
“Ah!” Aidikoff said, holding up a finger, “Move a muscle and I drive this baby right into his heart…!”
Fang struggled to get free, but could barely move from the pain of his burns.
I said nothing, just standing still as I took in the horror of what I was seeing before I finally said, my voice shaking with anger and fear, “What the hell did you do to him?”
The bastard opened his mouth to speak when he was interrupted by Erik Rollins who had perked up with a smug smile on his face and said, “Looks like he just got the best of you two spawns of Satan. Holy water, right, Aidikoff…?”
The tired Texan rolled his eyes, saying nothing as he slipped his flask back into his pocket and immediately replaced it with a tranquilizer pistol from inside his jacket. In the blink of an eye – to me and Fang’s horrified surprise – he shot Rollins right in the neck! Poor Rollins clutched his neck and fell backward, slowly falling unconscious.
“Finally, he shuts up,” Aidikoff said, putting the tranq gun back in his jacket.
I shook my head in horror at what I had just seen. I remained silent at Aidikoff’s cold and immediate attack on Erik Rollins like the venomous snake his hat strap used to be. Sam did the same, staring at the unhinged man in absolute shock.
“Actually, this here is sun-water,” the Texan continued, “Put some water in a jar, leave it out in the sun all day; makes for an easy, do-it-yourself method against suckers like you.”
If my heart was still beating, it would’ve stopped right there at that statement of his.
“You know what we are…?” I finally croaked out.
Aidikoff smirked and said, “Of course. When Rollins there told us all about how you handled him and his boys the other night, especially the part about the big teeth. Lucky for me, you boys ain’t the first suckers I’ve come across.”
My eyes widened at the sound of that. Fang and I weren’t the first vampires he’s encountered before. That must mean there were others out there. I always hoped so, ever since we first changed, but I could never be sure. Not until that moment, and I could still scarcely believe it. And Fang noticed.
“Don’t listen to him, Blood,” he groaned, “He’s bluffing.”
Suddenly, the crazed Texan let out a blood-curdling cackle and said, “Trust me, boy, I don’t bluff, especially when it comes to suckers.”
I knew he was telling the truth. It couldn’t be just a lie or a bluff; if it was, Aidikoff wouldn’t have used the sun-water on Fang. Nor would he have been holding his large knife directly over Fang’s heart.
“Well, even if it is true, who says you can hurt us?” Fang said, still trying to sound cavalier, “You’re just a human.”
“Ha!” he said, mockingly, “Look where I got my knife pointed, boy! It’s not exactly a wooden stake, but it should still be effective in getting the job done. Shall we put that theory to the test?”
As he spoke, Aidikoff gripped his knife tighter and it began to pierce ever-so-slightly through Fang’s shirt at the soft flesh beneath it. Instantly, all the emotions I was feeling at that moment flowed directly to my eyes; that’s when I learned that even the undead were capable of adrenaline rushes.
I let out another ear-splitting shriek so loud that a couple of windows and other glass items all shattered!
Aidikoff and Fang both winced, which is when I saw my opening. I quickly grabbed Fang by the arm and ripped him away from Aidikoff’s grip before I charged at him, knocking both his flask and the knife from his hands. With a lightning-fast spin, I caught the falling blade in midair, bent it into a boomerang shape with my strength and, finally, drove it through his heart! I didn’t even notice that I had sliced off both the middle and index fingers from his right hand in the process.
The bastard looked horrifyingly into my eyes with absolute shock. They say never to look into the eyes of those you kill, but I did more than just look. I quickly moved my tongue around behind my closed lips before finally reeling my head back and releasing a split-second stream of blood-red saliva into his eyes! He let out a painful howl before I let him fall limply to the floor, dead as a doornail.
“How’s that for a broken heart, you white-trash hood!” I said, almost sadistically.
I took in and out tired, shallow breaths – one after the other – as I tried to recover from what just happened. That is, until I suddenly froze; I felt two eyes staring at me from behind, which is when I saw Fang laying on the floor, barely able to hold himself up as he stared up at me in horror.
That’s when the realization of what I had just done began to sink in.
I looked down at gouts of Anton Aidikoff’s blood on my fingers, right next to the tiny burns from the sun-water. I instinctively began taking in one of my long, deep breaths before choking and coughing halfway through as a new scent and taste entered my sinus.
That of human blood freshly spilt.
F
“Ah! Oooooh…!”
The two of us made it back to the cave in a daze. Blood and I left the scene exactly as it was while he flew us both back. I was still in too much pain to fly myself.
At that moment, he was pouring blood-red liquid onto my wound. He had scooped it up after dipping his own semi-burnt fingers into the pool beneath the bat-head etching, which made his burn slowly disappear as soon as he touched it. Now he was at work spilling it on to me. I yelped in pain before the pain immediately gave way to cooling, soothing relief.
“Thanks, V…” I said as my burn began to heal rapidly, “Now, would you mind telling me what happened back there?”
He didn’t reply, avoiding eye contact the whole time. Also, from the glassy look in his eyes and the way his chin quivered ever-so-slightly, I could tell he was holding something back big time.
“Come on, talk to me,” I probed, trying not to sound like I was rushing him.
He closed his eyes and let out a very heavy sigh, but all he said was, “I don’t know.”
The heaviness in his voice was loud and clear. Before I could continue probing, Vinny stood up and turned away from me to begin taking his stuff off as if it was any other night. I slowly stood up, still in a bit of pain, and faced the back of his head, not giving up.
“I have to know,” I finally said, “We both made a vow never to kill a human, and you just broke that vow. Are you planning on doing it again?”
He suddenly froze after pulling off his mask and said, after a brief pause, “No.”
“Oh, yeah? Then why did you do it tonight?” I asked, trying not-so-successfully to not sound accusatory.
Vinny suddenly smacked his mask against his hip and turned to face me.
“Why does it matter?” he growled at me.
I rolled my eyes and put my hands on my hips as I said, “Because I want to make sure you’re okay, Vinny…! You’re my best friend. We’ve been together since high school; not to mention the two of us both died and came back right here in this cave together. And after all that we’ve been through, V, are you really just not gonna tell me why you suddenly decided to kill a guy?”
He stood completely still and said nothing.
“Come on, buddy,” I said, softening my tone, “We’re best friends. You don’t have to be afraid, I promise.”
Finally, he closed his eyes and asked, “You want to know why I did it?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding, “I want to know why.”
He took a deep breath and, without letting it out, he answered, “Okay… this is why.”
Suddenly, before I even knew what had happened, Vinny had run right up to me with his shirt still off, grabbed the sides of my face and kissed me right on the lips!
I froze completely, my eyes widening as I was swept up in a sudden feeling of shock, like getting a slap to the face without warning. After that, I felt my heartbeat in my ears like I was alive again, followed by a weird twinge in my groin like one of those naked-in-public dreams. That’s when the realization of what was happening finally hit me: My best friend was kissing me on the lips!
Finally, our lips parted and Vinny stepped back, avoiding eye contact with me for just a moment before looking back at me with only his eyes. I didn’t know how to respond; I only stared into space with my eyes wide with surprise and my mouth hanging open. That’s when Vinny perked up, realizing what he just did. His face then went red, and not with pleasure.
ZOOM!
All of a sudden, before I had the chance to say anything, Vinny had sped out of the cave in a flash, taking his stray clothes and duffel bag with him. As quickly as I could, I ran to the cave mouth to see my truck shaking as if someone had pounced on it hard; by the time I got to it, I saw only one body bag in the back. I then looked up in the sky to see him flying away with the body bag wrapped around him to protect him from the quickly rising sun.
“Vinny, wait!!!” I called out to him, but he just kept flying, “Damn it!”
B
Later in the evening…
“Damn it! Damn it!! Damn it!!!”
That’s what I had on my mind pretty much the whole day, which I spent avoiding Sam and all the usual places he’d look for me. I didn’t even bother calling off work, nor did I care to. At that moment, I was in too much of a horrified, depressed haze to do anything except sit at the end of some hole-in-the-wall gay bar that I figured Sam wouldn’t be caught dead in.
BZZZ! BZZZ!
“Shut up, please,” I growled under my breath with a gravely sigh.
I pulled out my phone and saw yet another call from Sam that I ignored. That was his ninth time calling; Joel gave up after the fourth.
CLICK!
“Rough day?” I heard a voice say.
Looking up from my phone, I saw the bartender looking at me with his arm extended and his lighter lit. He was a friendly looking man in his forties or early fifties with dark hair flecked with gray and a nice five o’clock shadow all over the lower half of his face.
I smiled, slightly amused as I said, “You have no idea.”
He nodded and put away his lighter before saying, “I can always tell. Is it business or domestic?”
“Both,” I said, almost instinctively.
“Damn!” he said, only a little surprised, “You and your partner work together…?”
“Yeah…” I said, still hunched over my drink, “Except he’s not my partner, at least not in the domestic partner sense of the word.”
The bartender paused for a moment, understanding what I was hinting at.
“Ah, I see, unrequited love, huh?” he asked, which I nodded at, “So, what is it; you let him know how you feel about him and he freaked out?”
I looked up with a deadpan expression and said, “How’d you guess?”
“We get it all the time around here,” he said, “Poor bastards falling in love with their straight bros, then they decide to let them know and, the next thing they know, they’re sitting right where you are, shooting whiskey like a country music singer.”
“Story of my life,” I said, “God! Sometimes I wish the two of us had never met; that he hadn’t stood up for me against those douchey jock friends of his back in high school. Why couldn’t he just push me down and give me a wedgie like the rest of them? At least then none of this shit – any of it – would’ve happened.”
The bartender furrowed his brow with curiosity.
“He stood up for you…? Against other jocks?” he asked, “That sounds to me like he’s a pretty caring guy, especially towards you.”
I looked up at the man, taken aback by what he had just said to me.
“You think so?” I asked.
He handed a customer and her girlfriend their drinks before saying, “Yeah, totally. He stood up for you against his friends back in high school, right? Well, I’d say that’s pretty rare as far as teenage boys are concerned; many of them are too concerned with showing off to the girls to give any thought toward other guys. Especially the guys who are considered different or social rejects. Sounds to me like you might’ve had a keeper on your hands if he hadn’t freaked out at you.”
That’s when I stopped to think about it for a moment, realizing what I was just told.
“Sam didn’t freak out when I kissed him,” I thought to myself, “He seemed surprised, yes, but he didn’t push me away or tell me to get lost; I left before he had the chance. I did all the freaking out, not him.”
Upon that realization, I felt a new, scarier heaviness in my heart and knew I had to find him. I quickly finished my drink and got to my feet.
“Thank you,” I told the bartender, tenderly.
He just raised an eyebrow at me in confusion as he cleaned a glass with his rag.
Just as I pulled out my phone, preparing to call him, I was suddenly stopped by the sound of people clamoring. When I looked up to see what they were fussing about, I saw everyone in the joint rushing as fast as they could toward a big TV hanging in one of the high corners of the bar.
“This is Carmina Flores reporting live from outside Las Vegas’ Black Crocus Hotel & Casino where its owner, identified as Mrs. Irina Belikov, wife of the late Sergei Belikov is being held in an apparent hostage situation by a strange-looking man in a red suit,” said Sam’s favorite reporter as her cameraman kept turning back and forth between her and the building’s roof.
On camera, Irina stood perilously close to the edge of the building with her hands bound together via zip-tie and her mouth duct-taped. She was staring at someone with a look of defiance in her eyes, though there appeared to be no one there… aside from a bent hunting knife being held to her throat by some kind of invisible force!
The rest of the bar fell into uproar at the sight of her, except for me. I just stared at the television with eyes wide in terror at what I was seeing. Little did I know, it was about to get a lot worse!
“And now he appears to be kicking open some kind of cloth tarp on to the side of the building!” Carmina continued.
The camera stayed fixed on the side of the building as she spoke. Whoever was there nudged a large, rolled up paint tarp with some kind of message painted on its white surface in blood:
“Blood & Fang,
Come save your dear irina by midnight
Or she’ll be dead…
After the rest of the city.
Count on it!!!
Instead of a name, the bottom right corner was signed with a rather ominous drawing of a snake sitting coiled up in a cowboy hat. My eyes widened in terror at the sight of the sign before finally giving way to narrow, defiant eyes and gritted teeth.
As if I didn’t already feel guilty enough as it is about killing him.
F
Less than thirty minutes later…
“Come on, B, where are you?” I whispered to myself as I sped my way through the air toward the Black Crocus Hotel & Casino.
I spent all day looking for him after he ran away early this morning. Well, nearly all day, since I needed to take some time to figure things out after what happened between us. I wish I could say I did figure things out, but I’d be lying. It took time, but I eventually realized that I needed Vinny to figure things out completely.
“Look! There they are!” I heard a few members of the crowd saying as I got closer to the building.
However, those comments were quickly followed by them saying, “No, it’s just one of them. I thought they were supposed to be together.”
I ignored the comments as I finally landed on the top of the building where Irina stood right in the middle of the rooftop. She was still restrained like I saw on the news – thank god for electronics stores that still leave their TVs playing in the window – but now the blade held to her throat was gone.
“Irina, are you okay?” I asked, pulling the tape from her mouth.
“It’s a trap!!!” she immediately cried.
CHIT CHIT CHIT CHIT CHIT… BRKK!
All of a sudden, I heard a scratchy rattling noise like a rattlesnake’s tail before being viciously pushed away by a strange figure in a dark red suit. I slid across the roof and finally stopped hard when I crashed into the lip on the roof’s edge.
“Ow…!” I said, my brain still rolling around in my head from the impact, “That’s the worst quarterback sack I’ve ever had.”
“Well, ain’t that good to know,” said a raspy, Texas-accented voice out of nowhere.
That’s when I looked up toward the source of the voice and my eyes widened in terror at the sight of Irina being held in the arms of the mysterious, red-suited figure. He was a tall man covered in brownish-gray scales with slit, reptilian pupils and two ribbed growths – like rattlesnake tails ending in sharp, black stingers – in place of his middle and index fingers!
CHIT CHIT CHIT CHIT CHIT
He twitched his rattle-like fingers and made the scratchy rattling sound from before as he said, “Howdy, partner. Remember me…?”
“Hi there, boys,” the snake-like man said, “Long time, no see.”
My eyes widened and my mouth fell open when I realized who I was looking at.
“My god!” I said, “Aidikoff!!!”
He smiled like the cat that swallowed the canary and said, “Actually, as of early this morning, I decided to go by this gal’s little nickname for me… Call me: Snake-Oil!”
As he said that, he opened his elastic jaw inhumanly wide, showing off his snake-like fangs and extending his forked tongue. The slimy tongue creeped over to Irina’s cringing face and slowly wrapped itself around her jaw, leaving a trail of yellowish spit all over her neck!
“Argh!!!!” I angrily growled as I jumped up at super-fast speed, charging at the gross bastard.
Suddenly, before I could reach him, the snake-man spun Irina away and slunk down to the floor before slithering around me and grabbing me from behind! He then grabbed me by the neck and threw me down onto my back, where he held me down as he knelt over me.
“Nice try, boy,” he said, “But thanks to your murderous friend, I don’t need sun-water to stop you, now that I’m just as fast as you. Hell, I’m faster!”
I growled at him and said, “You won’t get away with this, Aidikoff!”
He squeezed my neck tighter and said, “Snake-Oil, please… And it don’t matter to me if I get away with it or not. I’m just here to get my revenge on your little friend who killed me… as well as my old boss who set me up to be killed.”
As he said that, he turned toward Irina lying unconscious nearby. My eyes widened at the realization of what he was gesturing toward.
“By the way, where is your little friend?” Snake-Oil asked, “It ain’t like you to come alone to a fight.”
I felt my heart grow heavy, knowing that I had no idea where my old buddy had gone.
Until…
“He’s not alone!”
…I heard an all-too-familiar voice say from behind Snake-Oil.
He turned to see my dear buddy, Blood, standing confidently over the snake-man with clenched fists. I didn’t even realize that my face had lit up at the sight of him, but he certainly did as his eyes sparkled upon looking into mine.
“Now get off of him!” Blood said, jumping into the air to give the bastard a good old flying dragon kick.
That is, until Snake-Oil stopped him in midair!
Blood and I went wide-eyed at the sight of his ankle being held firmly in Snake-Oil’s hand. My buddy struggled to try and free his leg before the bastard moved too fast for either of us to do anything about it. The next thing we both knew, Snake-Oil was gripping Blood by his neck with his rattle-fingered hand, while his black cowboy boot was on my chest holding me down!
“So pathetic,” Snake-Oil said, “Then again, I’d expect nothing less from a murdering bastard like you.”
Blood gritted his teeth as he struggled to get free to no avail. That’s when Snake-Oil reached into his jacket and pulled out a new weapon. A weapon that made both of us gasp at the sight of it:
A wooden stake!
“Thanks to you, boy, I now know from personal experience that any given weapon in the heart won’t do,” Snake-Oil said.
I could feel my undead heart beating in my ears – I didn’t even know that was possible – as the bastard pointed the stake at Blood’s heart. Just then, I heard Blood say something I half expected to say myself.
“Do your worst, snaggletooth,” he said, his voice strong, but with an underlying sense of fear just beneath the surface.
Snake-Oil grinned maliciously and said, “With pleasure.”
With that said, the evil snake-man reeled his arm back with the stake aimed directly at Blood’s heart and, as fast as a rattlesnake’s tail, he plunged the wooden stake…
“URGH!!!”
…right through me!
Blood’s eyes widened in shock and horror as the stake dug right into my soft flesh and my own vampiric blood began spilling on to me. Snake-Oil turned to him and smiled with pure sadistic cruelty.
“You told me to do my worst…” he said, looking back down at me, “…so I did my worst.”
Finally, he threw Blood to the ground next to me and stepped back to see the painful sight unfold.
“No, no, no, Sam!” he said, quickly taking me in his arms and shaking me, “Sam, stay with me! Stay with me, buddy, please! I can’t lose you!”
My breathing became shallower and shallower with each breath I tried to take, as if I were being constricted by a giant snake. A snake named Anton Aidikoff! Suddenly, I became overwhelmed by a strange feeling of fuzziness and warmth, like when the pain of a charley horse finally begins to subside.
“Blood…” I choked out, a small trickle of blood pouring out of my mouth as my eyes began to droop, “…I-I’m so…”
“No, buddy, no,” he said, his eyes glistening with unshed tears, “You have nothing to be sorry for! This is all my fault, not yours. If I hadn’t killed him, then none of this would’ve happened.”
“So true!” Snake-Oil chimed in.
Blood ignored him as he reached his free arm under both of my knees, preparing to carry me. But then, before he could, I put my hand on his cheek to stop him. He looked down at me and gripped the hand I had on his cheek as we stared into each other’s eyes; his were now filled with tears on the verge of falling.
Finally, I croaked out one final statement:
“Vinny… brother… don’t – be – afraid.”
He shook, like he felt a sharp pain somewhere as the tears finally fell from his wide eyes. And that’s when I closed mine, letting out my last breath as the world fell away.
Irina Belikov was shocked awake from her unconscious state by a sudden ear-splitting shriek that shattered every glass thing within earshot.
She turned around on the rooftop floor to see Blood kneeling down with Fang in his arms while Snake-Oil stood over them looking more viciously proud than ever. The screech seemed to be coming from their direction, which is when she noticed something: Snake-Oil was reaching back into his jacket for something. Something sharp!
“Actually, boy…” the bastard said to Vinny, “…be afraid. Be very afraid.”
As he said that, he pulled out another wooden stake he had concealed in the other side of his jacket. Unfortunately for him, he was about to realize what a big mistake he had made as Blood looked up at him with tear-filled eyes full of pure hate.
That’s when a new noise entered the building’s earshot, like wings flapping. Millions of wings.
“What in the hell is that noise?!” Snake-Oil said, confused.
Blood ignored him and just gave his poor friend a small kiss on the forehead before saying, “This is for you, bro.”
Finally, as he let his dear friend fall limply onto the floor, Blood stood up to face the monster who killed his brother in arms. As the noise grew louder and ever closer, the broken hero clenched his fist and lifted it high into the air as he, himself, began to levitate.
“Come on, boys…!” he cried into the air, “…let’s feed!”
All of a sudden, the still-gathered crowd at the ground level – as well as Irina – were all widening their eyes and mouths in awe at the sight of them: Bats! Lots of bats! At least a million of them came swarming in from all directions outside of the city. Cave bats, spotted bats, big brown bats, little brown bats, even a handful of Mexican free-tailed bats! Every bat able to hear Blood’s howl of pain, was suddenly flying to his aid, right into Snake-Oil.
The bastard screamed in terror as Blood charged at him along with his little friends.
Irina watched with a mixture of pride, joy, and pure awe as Blood and the gathering swarm all snatched Snake-Oil, flying him at lightning speed into the urban canyon below. She smiled, savoring the moment as she felt Anton Aidikoff finally got what was coming to him.
That is, until her gaze was drawn by poor Fang lying in the middle of the roof. As she looked at him sympathetically, she then noticed Snake-Oil’s bent knife just a few feet away.
Meanwhile…
“Incredible!” cried Carmina Florez, still reporting live, “One of our two heroes has just carried the mysterious man off of the building with the aid of an entire swarm of bats! I can only imagine what they’re doing inside that cloud of creatures!”
Inside the swirling swarm of bats, Blood was punching Snake-Oil in the face, causing his hat to fly off and into the gathering creatures below him. Snake-Oil tried unsuccessfully to drive the stake he was still holding on to for dear life into Blood’s heart, only for Blood to break it in half and throw it away. Once that was done, Snake-Oil hissed at him and slithered under Blood, coming up behind him and holding him in a headlock. He spread his fangs, which dripped with venom, ready to bite directly into Blood’s skull before being knocked back by a reverse headbutt.
Snake-Oil spit some bloody venom out of his mouth and said, “Not bad, but you can’t win this.”
“Shut up!” Blood cried, his eyes full of fire.
Blood lunged at him again, only for Snake-Oil to slip out of the way – and out of the still gathering swarm! The young vampire looked from side to side for him before waving his arms in an ‘enough’ gesture and letting out another ear-splitting screech. And, just like that, the swarming bats began to dissipate, revealing Snake-Oil on the roof of a building below.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Blood growled, flying down to him at breakneck speed.
The cowardly snake-man was trying to, literally, slither his way out of the fight. Just as he was about to slink away down the side of the building, Blood crashed into him, sending bits of debris from the edge of the roof flying down with them. The two of them fell onto yet another roof just beneath the first and rolled around together until they finally stopped…
…with Snake-Oil on top.
“Oh, yes, I do,” he said, “Like I said, you can’t win this fight, boy.”
Blood growled and groaned as he tried his hardest to get free. Unfortunately, just like his dear friend before him, it was all in vain.
“Hmmm… you remind me of your boyfriend in this position,” Snake-Oil said, “Is that why you want me dead so badly? You didn’t like me threatening your poor, dead buddy, huh? Well, don’t worry, I can just about guarantee that you’ll be joining him in sucker-hell pretty soon, boy.”
As he said that, he looked over to another area of the rooftop. When Blood looked to see where he was looking, he saw a pile of wooden casks stacked neatly in a corner.
“Bingo,” Snake-Oil said, grabbing Blood by the shirt and dragging him over to them.
Blood struggled to try and free himself to no avail. That’s when Snake-Oil dropped him to the concrete and held him down with his boot like he previously did Fang. He grabbed one of the wooden boards making up the cask and snapped it off before breaking it in half to make a new stake.
He then took the stake in both hands and held it over his head before saying, “Now… time for you to suck this, bitch!”
Blood gritted his teeth in defiance and closed his eyes, awaiting the deadly blow.
Until…
“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”
…both of them went instantly wide-eyed at the sound of an all-too-familiar voice.
“Hey, B!” said Fang, holding up Snake-Oil’s arms as he looked down at his friend on the floor.
Blood stared up at his newly restored best friend, unable to believe it was really him at first. However, as soon as the realization set in, his lip began to quiver and his eyes began to glisten with new tears. As for Snake-Oil, his reptilian eyes were wide open and unblinking with confused terror; he even dropped the stake he held, his confusion overriding everything else in his head.
“It’s not possible!” he said, more to himself than either of the two young men.
Fang turned to him with his own hint of sadistic glee and said, “Actually, it is… with a little help from your old boss.”
“Wh-What!?” Snake-Oil stammered.
“Let’s just say she did for me what she always refused to do for you…” Fang replied, licking a small bit of blood from the corner of his mouth, “…she said yes.”
Snake-Oil gritted his teeth with pure rage, just as Fang kicked him in the face. As the snake-man fell back and slid across the rooftop, Fang turned to Blood, still on the floor, and extended his hand. Blood quickly took it, not taking his eyes off of his buddy the entire time, as if he’d vanish if he stopped looking for even a second.
“Are you okay, B-” Fang began to ask before being stopped by his buddy grabbing hold of him in a tight, loving embrace.
Fang was surprised at first, but then he smiled and hugged him back. He felt his dear friend shaking as he sobbed over his reappearance.
“It’s okay, bud,” he said, “I’m okay. You don’t have to be sad.”
Blood slowly began to let him go and wiped away his tears as he said, “I can’t believe it’s really you… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I ran away, buddy. It’s just… I was afraid. After what happened between us in the cave, I didn’t know if… I wasn’t sure that you’d-”
Before he could finish, Fang put his hands on his shoulders and looked directly into his eyes as he said, “Hey, you are my best friend! And I care about you, no matter what!”
As he said that, he gave Blood a kiss on the forehead, which made him smile tenderly.
“Awww… isn’t that sweet!” Snake-Oil’s voice came from the side, “Maybe I oughta stake you two pussies at the same time to preserve the moment.”
Just then, Snake-Oil lunged at the two of them, going for the stake he had dropped at their feet. As he lunged, Fang had covertly slipped something into Blood’s hand – it was the bent hunting knife left on the other rooftop – and gestured for him to go ahead and use it. He was hesitant at first, that is, until he remembered what happened the last time he did it.
“Yeah, let’s preserve the moment,” Blood said, whirling out of the way at super fast speed and finally delivering the knife directly into his back!
Snake-Oil’s face froze in horror as he fell limply to the floor again.
Blood and Fang stood on either side of him, looking down at his body before looking up at each other and hugging once more.
Some time later, the police stormed the roof where they had left him. The body was still there, the hunting knife in the back keeping him dead long enough for them to take him into custody. They even left a note explaining how to handle him once they had him.
“Do not remove the blade until he’s locked up. Inject daily with garlic extract to keep him in check, and keep him away from sunlight. -B&F”
As for the boys themselves, they were busy flying a nearly dead Irina Belikov into the Valley of Fire National Park. By the time they reached their intended destination, Blood and Fang stood before the blood-red pool in the middle of their cave with her in Fang’s arms.
“You sure about this…?” Fang asked.
Blood nodded and said, “Well, we both broke our sacred rules in the past two days, so it’s only fair to give her a chance. Besides, I know what it’s like to have a human life on your conscience. It ain’t fun.”
Fang nodded in agreement as he threw her into the pool and they both watched as she began sinking to the bottom. Blood laid his hand on his shoulder as they looked at each other.
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