BlueK Dynasty: The 1st Seven Days (5 page)

The bushes gave way as she
stepped out from the lawn of the park onto the stone floors that
made up the museum’s entrance. There, as she had remembered, were
the gargoyles that protected its occupants from evil. Their faces
were smashed in and ugly. Kurma hoped they would keep out as many
people as possible.
  

She silently walked
through the tight entrance. When she was a child, the place had
seemed huge, but now that she was older and her body was bigger,
she realized it wasn’t so big and grand after all. The stairs to
the left that led up to the second-floor balcony was old and
decrepit. The steps were chipped and crumbling from years of usage,
and Kurma feared the noise would give away her presence.
 
  

On the second floor, her
own shadows frightened her. They made her body look even more
morphed, and her wings were expansive. The moonlight amplified her
transformation against the stone walls, and in agony she tried to
tell her body to change back. She could feel her old bones breaking
and her muscles ripping even as she thought about the change over
and over again. Sweat coated her forehead, and when she tried to
wipe her face she felt tiny, hard scales that she hadn’t noticed
before.
  

Repeatedly she told
herself to change back into her old self, who didn’t have scales,
and metal daggers, and wings. Finally, on the eighth try, while she
crawled on all fours, her bones listened to her demands and bent
her legs back into place. She felt her skin tighten
underneath
 
her arms and her wings disappear into her skin, though she
could still feel the rubbery spots where the wings used to be. She
had all five fingers back, and her toes looked normal. She felt her
face, and her skin was clammy and moist.
  

Pushing her hair back from
her face, she tried to stand and could barely keep her footing. She
was cold; at least in her hairy form she hadn’t felt the damp air.
Naked and tired, Kurma curled up in a ball to keep the night air
off her body.
  

High up on the top balcony
overlooking the park, there were no bums or homeless people to her
knowledge; there were only mice that scurried away from Kurma and
bugs that crawled over her. She watched the stars outside and
wondered about her family, and what Santino was doing at that exact
moment. She knew he was lost to her unless there was a way to
reverse his condition, as she had somehow done. Kurma didn’t see
how their old relationship could work any other
way.
  

She never felt so alone in
all her life. In a world where space was limited and people lived
on top of one another, Kurma only wanted to be a part of it all,
but she couldn’t. She wasn’t normal anymore. She could morph and
change on command, but she was the only one of her kind that she
knew of. No mother, no brothers, and no Santino.
  

6.

These teeth were made for
biting
  

The fall was high and
dangerous, but Santino zeroed in on the ground below and jumped
anyway. His senses were intensified; the air swirled around him as
he saw the ground coming closer and closer. The impact was
groundbreaking. The sidewalk broke up around his feet and cracked,
and he could feel his heels sink into the dirt below the cement.
The blood in his
 
legs thinned out as the velocity of the impact rippled
through his body. Still he was unhurt, and rose from the ground
silently.
  

Screams and yells of panic
met his ears as his eyes adjusted to the change of scenery. The
crowd tried to part around him, but Santino didn’t want space. He
wanted
 
them
, to eat and to drink. He wanted
to stop this urge he had; however, the need to satisfy his basic
instincts had to come first, otherwise he would only become more
irrational.
  

Santino sensed a man
coming near him in an attempt to assist him. Wrong move. Santino
slashed his sharp nails at the man’s head and connected with his
neck. Soft and tender, it was no match to Santino’s newfound power.
He ripped the man’s head clean from his shoulders. The corpse
dropped to the ground. Santino heard the dead man’s knees hit
first, and then the rest of the carcass
followed.
  

The blood, the gore, the
flesh, and the stuff in between clung to Santino’s fingers and arm.
Something urged him to eat it. He bit into the man’s face, and all
around him chaos erupted: women screamed, men ran, glass shattered,
and feet beat the ground. Santino couldn’t believe the taste. This
was his food now; the blood was his water. He didn’t want to think
that he had become some type of animal that ate human flesh raw,
alive, still beating. Still he took another bite from the forehead.
His teeth sliced into the skin like it was made of butter, but the
bones was a bit thicker. Santino realized his many rows of sharp
teeth had come in handy. With a little force, the man’s forehead
broke open. Santino crunched the bone between his teeth, and the
brains oozed into his mouth.
  

A blow struck his head and
sent him forward. Santino turned to face his assailant and dropped
the head on the ground. It rolled and cracked open like a coconut,
its contents spilled and wasted. Santino roared, and blood and
brains sprayed from his mouth onto the men in
front
 
of
him. There were more of them than there was of him, but Santino
wasn’t afraid. His thoughts were clear. If these men wanted to be
heroes, then they could die heroes—after he had his fill of food,
of course.
  

Four men tried to jump him
from all sides. Santino had to admit they were brave, unafraid, and
determined to take him down. Nonetheless, he swiped at the first
man, who hit him with a metal pole, and knocked him unconscious.
Santino cracked the next man’s back in half, and felt a third man
jump on his back while he punched the fourth man in the nose and
watched it split in half. His fist rammed twice, until there was no
nose at all.
  

Santino flung the man from
his back into a parked car. He lay lifeless. As Santino walked over
to claim his prize, he stopped. He heard a familiar gasping sound.
Too familiar, like the exact sound he had made when he couldn’t
breathe in Kurma’s room. Like that tight feeling that you get when
your throat closes up and you have to wheeze every breath in.
Santino turned and saw the man with the pipe crawling on all fours,
gasping for breath, his eyes bugged out.
  

Sirens blared, and the
streets emptied. Never had Santino ever seen them so barren, even
on Sundays. He knew the police were coming to try to put him down.
Would they call in the RAID team, or would they have amateur
officers—rookies who would be dumb enough to put their lives on the
line?
  

Santino had to think
quickly. He didn’t want to be captured, didn’t want to be thrown in
jail for murdering innocent bystanders, and didn’t even want to
think about the consequences of killing more people. If he stayed,
there was a high probability that he would take down as many as he
could; Santino had been too brave and too proud before becoming
this thing, and now it was ten times worse. However, he wasn’t
stupid. If he didn’t leave, the police would shoot him on sight
just for looking the way he did, covered in dirt and blood and
flesh.
  

The guy by the car moved
an inch, moaned and groaned, and tried to catch his breath. There
it was again: the gasping sound. The two guys Santino hadn’t killed
were acting as he had when he’d first transformed. Maybe whatever
was in him was highly contagious—and dangerous.
  

Quickly he hauled the man
from the car and pulled the first guy up from the ground, and
dragged both to a nearby apartment building. Inside, people ran for
cover. He screamed and threw whatever was around until they got the
message: stay hidden. He was hungry, but first he needed to see if
these men were going to change as he had.
  

The foyer was empty but
too open, and there were security cameras. Santino pushed the
elevator button and tried to duck out of sight. He could hear the
police; they had reached the apartments. The hysterical witnesses
outside probably had tipped them off. Santino could hear the cops
taking the safety clips off their weapons and loading their
shotguns. He was amazed by his hearing, and by how many cops there
were—at least twenty-five standing outside, afraid to come in.
Maybe, he thought, he should roar to intimidate them a little
more.
  

But then the elevator
chimed, and Santino hurriedly dragged the barely breathing men
in.
  

“
Top
floor, buddies,” he said. His voice was very creepy to him. Was it
the blood that made it change like that? Santino pressed the button
for the twenty-fourth floor and waited until he reached the
twenty-first to press the emergency
button.
  

Santino noticed the men’s
fingers had changed colors as his hand had, so he knew their
transformation was almost complete.
 
Minions
, he thought. He would have cronies, underlings, followers.
Or would they be more like babies, smaller extensions of him?
Santino waited for the men to grow their teeth—in his opinion the
worst part of the whole ordeal.
  

When it began, the two men
wailed as if awoken from a fitful dream. Like a father to a son,
Santino instructed the first guy to try to get up. Santino helped
him unfold his broken body and assisted him to his feet. The man
gasped for air, uncurled his fist, and examined his new claw-like
nails.
  

“
What am
I?” asked the man. Before, he’d had cream-colored skin and thick,
dark eyebrows that enhanced his inky-green eyes. His features had
grown dark in his transformation, and everything, including his
lips, was now a shade of dark purple.
  

“
You are
me,” responded Santino. He tried to pry open the man’s mouth, to
get a better look at his teeth, but was met with a nasty
bite.
  

“
Whoa
. I’m not going to hurt you,”
said Santino. “Open your mouth and let me see your
teeth.”
  

“
Why do
you want to see?” asked the man hesitantly. “I feel funny. My
throat hurts, my gums hurts, my back hurts… I want to be left
alone.” He eyed Santino. “What’s your name? Where am
I?”
  

“
Not so
fast. I’ll tell you everything I know, which isn’t much, but only
after the other guy finishes. I don’t feel like repeating
myself.”
  

“
My name
is Kosner, and I’m a plainclothes police officer. If you let me go,
I promise, I won’t tell anybody what happened or whatever it is
you’re doing. I swear it. Just let me go. I have kids,
man.”
  

“
Enough,
dude. You’re older than me, and you’re acting like a little girl,”
Santino yelled. He wanted this guy just to shut up and listen. It
was as if he hadn’t heard a word Santino had said. “How do you
think your daddy feels about you sniveling and begging in front of
me right now?”
  

“
My
dad’s dead, man,” Kosner said in a hurt tone. He quieted down,
though, and slid to the floor next to the other man, who was
trembling in the corner.
  

Santino wanted the other
guy to hurry up. The police had to be outside still, or even worse
taking the stairs up and preparing an ambush. If he had to, Santino
would use his new minions to block the bullets. Self-preservation
ran strong in his blood, or it could have been this new animal he
was, wanting him to stay alive. Either way he wasn’t going to take
any chances. It was better to have more of him than one of him.
What if they didn’t have his strength, and could only eat human
flesh? Then they would be worthless—just two more mouths to
feed.
  

Quietly the last man came
out of his deep coma and unwound his body from the tight ball it
had been in. Santino remembered the man with the pipe well. He was,
after all, the reason why Santino had been so riled up in the first
place while he was outside. The man had a stocky build and big arms
with tattoo sleeves. He rolled on all fours and braced himself
against the elevator’s walls. Slowly he stood up and cracked his
neck, then his back, then stretched his arms real smooth, as if
nothing had happened.
  

Santino swelled with
pride. Maybe this guy wouldn’t be such a wimp as the other guy.
“Kosner, take notes,” he said jokingly, and then turned back to man
number two. “You okay, man? What’s your name?”
  

The guy’s eyes were almond
shaped and pitch black, rimmed with a deep blue color. His
oversized, sharp teeth hung over his dark, thin lips. The tips of
his nose, his earlobes, even his chin were a dark-blue color. His
hair had fallen out of his head, and his skull gleamed in the dim
light.