BlueK Dynasty: The 1st Seven Days (9 page)

“
You
down, Kosner?” asked Santino.
  

“
Doesn’t
look like I have a choice,” he said in a sullen
tone.
  

Goodwill was on the way to
the gym, and Santino didn’t see any harm in breaking into the
store. If it was closed, then there was less of a chance for the
guys to attack anyone, or worse touch anyone and cause another
transmutation.
  

Santino and the guys
walked around the back of Goodwill looking silent and deadly.
Santino led, and Kosner and VIN followed. Santino’s eyes darted
here and there to make sure there were no eyewitnesses around. He
knew there would be security cameras, but he didn’t look the same
as he used to, so someone possibly figuring out that he had broken
into a store was his last concern.
  

Fog and the city’s
underground heat created the perfect hazy cover. The lights were on
but dim in the back of Goodwill’s loading dock. VIN climbed the
railing and checked to see if the coast was clear. He signaled to
the others, and Santino and Kosner quickly closed the gap between
the street and the building’s employee access door. There was a
huge gate nearby that the trucks backed up to, and VIN was already
at work trying to pry it from its hinges.
  

“
It’s
locked for a reason,” Kosner tried to whisper to VIN, but VIN
wasn’t paying attention. “You’re going to have to break the chain
or the lock itself.”
  

VIN stopped and looked to
him with death in his shiny, black eyes. “You wouldn’t happen to
have a lock cutter in your back pocket, would
you?”
  

Kosner didn’t understand
the question. “No, of course I don’t.”
  

“
Well
then shut the hell up and stand back, and watch a real man
work!”
  

Santino blew air out of
his mouth at VIN’s response, and knew not to get in his way. He
watched as VIN tried countless times to break the bulky lock and
chain. The more VIN tried, the more noise he
created.
  

“
Let me
try,” said Santino when he’d had enough of the ruckus. Sooner or
later the cops would come to investigate.
  

VIN looked irritated as he
stepped back. Santino approached the gate and peered up the chain
to see how it kept the gate closed. The contraption was difficult
and intricate. He thought it would be smarter simply to rip the
employees’ door off its hinges, rather than mess with the loading
gate. He jumped from the platform and walked the short distance to
the back door. He wiggled the knob to see if it was locked, and it
was. Santino steadied his grip on it and looked to VIN and Kosner,
who were still up on the loading platform. He wanted them to see
how it took two seconds for him to figure out a better plan,
compared to the five minutes VIN had spent trying to muscle his way
into the gate.
  

Santino pulled the
doorknob clean through its hole. He took his pointer and middle
fingers and hooked them in the gaping hole, and pulled the door
away in a soft swoop. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how it’s
done.” He smiled at the other two.
  

“
Yeah,
whatever,” VIN said under his breath as he jumped to the
ground.
  

Kosner was the last to
jump, and then he followed the other two in silence. They were in a
small, completely dark hallway when he realized he could see
everything as if he had on night goggles. In the dark he saw VIN
pause and feel out into the open space.
  

“
Do you
think we could get some light?” VIN
asked.
  

Kosner realized VIN didn’t
have the night vision he had. He saw Santino walk around tables and
chairs over to a wall where he reached for a light switch, and his
hope diminished. It seemed that everything he had, Santino had as
well and more. Well, at least he could see in the dark and VIN
couldn’t. That was better than nothing.
  

“
You
couldn’t see, VIN?” Santino asked. He could see fine in the dark.
Everything was on a grayscale instead of pitch
black.
  

VIN’s eyes adjusted to the
light, and he saw that he was in a break room of some kind. “It was
pitch black man, like no one paid the light
bill.”
  

Santino found that odd. He
looked to Kosner, who seemed fine—he wasn’t blocking the room’s
light with his hands as VIN was doing. Santino realized Kosner
could do things VIN couldn’t, and VIN had abilities Santino had but
Kosner didn’t.
  

“
Let’s
just get the stuff,” Kosner said as he walked to a refrigerator.
“I’m starving. Like, eat-my-own-hand
hungry.”
  

He opened the fridge and
peered in. He saw old leftovers and a wrapped turkey sandwich.
“Yahtzee!” he proclaimed, then ripped open the sandwich and tore
into it.
  

Santino watched and waited
to see if maybe he could eat regular food instead of human
flesh.
  

“
Aargh
. What the hell?” Kosner
frowned at the food. He sniffed it. “It smells okay.” He took a
bite from the other side of the sandwich and frowned again. “Okay,
the meat must be bad.”
  

“
What
does it taste like?” asked VIN.
  

Kosner grimaced. “Like
vinegar, and grass with a hint of salt and old, spoiled
eggs.”
  

VIN laughed. “Well, I
guess it’s like the guy said—only raw meat for
us.”
  

“
My name
is Santino,” he said.
  

“
Wow,
you know, this whole time I never even knew your name,” said Kosner
as he dropped the sandwich on the floor. He held his stomach and
made his way to the front of the building, into the main shopping
area. “Food’s on hold for a while. I’m not sure I want to just take
the teenager’s word on what I can and cannot
eat.”
  

Santino and VIN followed
Kosner into the store. Santino thought it looked creepy with all
the odd things hanging from the ceilings and walls. “Look at all
this old crap,” he said.
  

VIN darted from aisle to
aisle, looking for the men’s section.
  

“
Stay
away from the windows,” warned Santino.
  

“
They’re
over here guys,” Kosner yelled across the
room.
  

“
Sshhh,”
said VIN in a hushed voice. “I hear
something.”
  

Santino’s sixth sense
perked up, and he scanned the room for anything out of the
ordinary. He saw stairs leading up to a second level and a light
coming from a little room that seemed to be an
office.
  

VIN growled under his
breath. Someone was in the store, and that meant food. He hadn’t
let on how hungry he was because then he would have to believe that
Santino was telling the truth about eating people. That was his
last hope—that whatever he was, he was not a carnivore that preyed
on humans. But his mouth went right on salivating. His breathing
slowed down as he listened intently to what was going on upstairs.
He could hear music and voices. His empty stomach growled, and his
feet seemed as if they had their own mind. They led the rest of his
body toward the stairs. His eyes stayed focused on the room’s
light, never leaving their mark.
  

Santino smelled it too:
food. He saw Kosner try to sneak around the side to join VIN. Even
though he was hungry—starving even—he had to be smart about it. If
VIN or Kosner
 
mistakenly touched someone then that person too would turn
into a Phantom—unless they killed him, and that would lead to more
police, and Santino’s plan to stay off the grid would be ruined. He
would have to stop them before they went too far. They weren’t
there to eat, after all, but to get clothes so they could get from
point A to point B.
  

Just as VIN and Kosner
made it to the first step, Santino reached out and pulled them
back. Kosner hissed at him and bared his teeth. His ears drew back,
and his eyes turned reddish black. VIN didn’t even pause, but shook
Santino’s arm off him and continued up with a quickened
pace.
  

Santino had no way to
control the two unless he used real physical force, and he didn’t
want to hurt his protégés. He felt helpless as VIN and Kosner ran
up the stairs, making a ruckus as they went, following the warm
scent of food.
  

VIN was the first to reach
the room and tore the door off as if it were a butterfly wing.
There were two people in the tiny room. One was a female, and the
other was a male who must have been the manager of the store since
he had a huge set of keys on his hip. The two were in the middle of
something—the guy’s pants were down, and the lady had her shirt
unbuttoned.
  

VIN charged at her. A
bloodcurdling scream erupted from her mouth. Kosner rushed and
knocked the guy over a table in his attempt to join VIN in the
feast. The woman’s hands went up to protect her face, and VIN
played with her like a cat with a mouse. He grabbed her arms and
squeezed them tight. Santino, who was frozen in place, heard her
bones cracking. He looked on in horror. Was this how he’d looked
when he’d attacked Kurma?
  

VIN licked the woman’s
face, and she cried out in disgust and pain. Kosner wasn’t into all
that; if he was going to eat, then that was what he was going to
do. Breaking arms, pulling out hair, licking faces and all that was
not his style. He came from behind VIN and grabbed
the
 
woman by
her throat, squeezed tight, and snatched her head clean off her
neck. He felt the meat’s last pulse as the blood poured on the
floor, bathing his shoes in red. Her mouth hung agape, and her
eyelids closed slightly. Kosner felt his lips slide back over his
teeth. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth
wide.
  

VIN snatched the head from
Kosner and bit into it. Kosner was taking too long with the thing,
and he was starving. Kosner flared up and let out a growl, then
lunged for the head.
  

Santino watched as the two
wrestled for the prize. He looked over to where the man had fallen
unconscious. He wasn’t dead; Santino knew this, and shook his head
at the thought. Another mouth to feed and another man to follow
him. Santino could see the pros and cons of the situation. He
walked over to the man and kicked him. The man was in his late
twenties, white, with sandy hair and an eyebrow piercing. Santino
watched as the transmutation took place. Fortunately the man slept
through the pain. Behind him VIN and Kosner finished with the
woman’s head and tore into the body.
  

“
Save
some for this guy,” said Santino.
  

Kosner looked up from the
floor where he sat biting into the carcass’s chest. “For who? Don’t
you want some?” He held the woman’s hand up for
Santino.
  

He wasn’t worried about
the food anymore. “You can’t touch people. Whatever is in your
blood, or whatever it is that is making us like this, is highly
contagious. Kosner, you knocked this guy over trying to get to his
girlfriend and didn’t kill him, therefore he has been
exposed.”
  

“
Basically I turned him into us.” Kosner wiped blood from his
mouth. “Dude, are you hearing this?” he asked VIN, who was busily
tearing into a chunk of flesh. He only growled in
response.
  

Kosner stood up from the
dead body and instructed Santino to try to eat. “We don’t know when
we’ll have another opportunity. I’ll watch out for him until he
wakes up.” Kosner had eaten his fill, and was thinking more clearly
than before. His throat felt ten times better, and his head had
stopped spinning. He walked to Santino, patted him on his back, and
parked himself on the overturned table. “Don’t worry. As soon as he
comes to, I’ll let you know. Eat something,
Santino.”
  

He
 
was
 
hungry. The scent of the
woman’s blood was intoxicating, and he was thirsty. “Alright,” he
agreed. “VIN, slide over.”
  

Santino dropped to his
knees and then on all fours. He dipped his fingers into the pool of
blood that had collected around the body. He bent his head and
sniffed. He took a long slurp and breathed the metallic smell in
deep. Next to him VIN slowed down his eating, and Santino pushed
him out of the way. VIN fell over like an overstuffed teddy
bear.
  

Santino inspected the
woman’s remains and saw there was a leg, an arm, and her torso
left. Everything else was a bloody mess. He went for the torso
first. He dug his sharp nails into the ribcage, reaching in to the
heart. It felt lukewarm and soft and squishy. Santino pulled it
from its dead owner and put it in his mouth. He chewed quietly,
savoring the flavor. He took another bite, wiped his mouth, and
smacked his lips.