Authors: Jamie Wahl
Bell leapt out of the clan’s grasp and grabbed ahold of Michael’s abandoned rigging. She swung and kicked off the back wall, fangs bared as she launched after Tanish. She hit him hard, tackling him into the wall under Michael’s feet. The tech booth shook from the impact below.
“Randy!” Michael jumped down from the top of the ladder without a thought. He knelt next to Randy and tried to find his pulse. He had to duck as a flash of red shot over his head. Bell landed atop the last upright table, sending glasses and half-finished dinner plates crashing to the floor, poised to strike again.
“There’s your little obsession now,” Tanish smirked, standing and smoothing his tailored jacket. He walked up, flashed that familiar brilliant smile at his posse, and kicked Michael hard in the ribs. All the air was forced from his lungs. He landed hard on the left side.
“Back off, Tanish,” Bell hissed.
Michael’s head spun. He flopped onto his back, waiting for the pain to recede.
“Look at him, Bell,” Tanish stood over him, the charm replaced by disgust. “He’s still clueless. What possible reason could you have for keeping him alive this long?”
“I’m warning you, Tanish-”
“Oh, you don’t like that?” he kicked Michael again. A sharp snap rang in a spectacular pain in his side. Michael’s eyes watered.
Bell flew at him. Tanish dodged, and in the same motion grabbed both of Michael’s ankles and spun, throwing him like a javelin onto the stage. He landed face-first on the painted plywood, the rough wood tearing his skin. New pain in his head replaced the receding pain in his middle.
When he caught his breath Tanish was standing above him, along with the rest of the clan. “It’s time I did what she should have done that first night.” Tanish’s fangs descended hungrily.
A low, hunting growl vibrated the stage, and Tanish disappeared in a red blur. The curtain rustled as though someone had just passed; he heard a crash and a snarl backstage. The vampires ran after them, eager fangs at the ready. Michael stood and ran down the aisle toward Randy.
He could see him lying there at the end of the row, completely still.
The floor shook with a tremendous thud as Joseph landed at the bottom of the ladder.
Michael glanced at Randy. So did Joseph. Joseph was closer, and they both knew it.
They darted forward.
“Joe!” Tanish called him from the stage. The fight had come back to the stage. Several clan members lay bleeding on the set, glancing at each other as though they were reconsidering their coup. Bell had Tanish in a vice grip, arms and legs wrapped around him from behind. His face was blue as he staggered toward the edge of the platform.
Bell’s eyes burned into Joseph, daring him to intercede. The big man faltered for only a moment, calculating his time. He grabbed Michael by the back of the neck, and they shot across the room onto the stage.
He discarded Michael by the curtain and tore Bell off of Tanish with a giant meaty fist. Blood sprayed as Bell’s claws took as much of Tanish with them as they could. She writhed out of Joseph’s grip and landed hard on her back, her leather glistening red in the theater lights.
Joseph stomped a booted foot on her hair, and Tanish grabbed hold of her ankles. She writhed and hissed, her boot making contact with Tanish’s nose. Blood sprayed all three of them. It stunned Tanish just enough for Bell to free her legs from his grip. She sliced at Joseph’s ankles with her claws and kicked off the plywood stage, flipping over Joseph.
Jessica, Tanish’s flirtatious friend, appeared at Michael’s left shoulder. Her brown eyes shown in the bright lights, full of hunger and rage. She was covered in blood. “Come on!” She yelled behind her. In an instant, a tight circle had formed around Bell. She cut her eyes to the rafters, where several more vampires waited for her to jump.
Bell stood in the center. She snarled her frustration. She knew she was trapped.
Three stocky male vampires caught her around the middle. A fourth rushed in to clamp her wrists together behind her back. She let out a horrifying scream of rage, but she was stuck.
Tanish gestured toward Michael. A blonde man with a square jaw appeared behind him, grabbing his wrists and yanking them backward. His grip was crushing.
Tanish let out a long breath, and smiled at the group. “Finally!”
The circle laughed. Jessica cheered.
“See, Bell?” Tanish said, “Joseph and I are not the only ones who’ve had enough. We all want a leader with focus. A leader with fewer distractions.” He looked pointedly at Michael.
“If you touch him—” Bell began.
“Oh my God! Still?” Tanish pulled a slender silver knife from his jacket and flipped open the blade. “What is so special about this kid?” He marched up to Michael, the blade poised at his throat.
“I wouldn’t do that, Tanish,” all the anger and heat was gone from her voice. Her tone was ice cold. “You don’t know who you’d be crossing.”
Tanish laughed. “Who? Your
father
?” He kept his eyes on Michael, the knife steady and eager in his hands. “You know, Michael, I’ve been Bell’s number two for almost thirty years and I’ve never, not even once, seen this terrifying father of hers. If I was a betting man….” He brushed drywall dust off Michael’s shoulder with his free hand. “…I’d say she’s bluffing.
“Are you afraid of Bell’s daddy, Michael?” Michael felt a trickle of blood running down his collarbone.
Michael didn’t dare even breathe. He could feel the tip of the blade tracing a deadly outline on his skin. Tanish’s hand dug into Michael’s shoulder. That same exhilarated hunger that gripped him in the bar shone in Tanish’s handsome face. Michael fought against his captors with all his strength, but he was too slow to stop the decent of the blade. He braced himself for pain.
But none came.
Tanish was frozen with his fangs bared, knife poised to strike. His eyes were wide with shock and pain. For a moment, no one knew what was happening.
Then Bell began to laugh. A terribly sincere, cruel laugh.
“Tanish,” Bell teased, gesturing into the auditorium, “I’d like you to meet my father.”
They all turned to look. The door to the lobby stood open. Thick, billowing smoke rolled in toward them. The silhouette of a man danced in the smoke, a shifting shadow in a sea of black.
An eerie orange light illuminated the billowing smoke. Michael’s stomach tightened with dread as a bitter chill swept into the room. No one on the stage could take their eyes from the scene.
The smoke itself began to swirl and roil; the light was condensed into four pinpricks in the darkness: two pairs of eyes. The shifting shadows formed two enormous shapes around those eyes. Fangs and fur, with snouts dripping steaming saliva onto the carpet.
Michael knew what these creatures were from countless encounters around his game table.
Hell hounds.
Behind these two hulking forms stood a man in a dark gray suit and black tie. He surveyed the scene, his eyes roaming from Bell’s captors, to Tanish’s pained and motionless face, and then to Joseph. Joseph looked like a cornered rabbit. He turned and made for the stage door, but he didn’t even reach the curtain. With barely a gesture, just a flick of the wrist, Joseph was lifted into the air, the toes of his boots scraping the plywood floor. He hung there as the man in the suit walked slowly down the aisle, flanked by the enormous beasts. Ash shook from their inky fur with every step they took.
The circle of vampires parted to let them pass. The man raised a hand as he walked into the center of the circle, and the dogs sat at the edge of the stage obediently.
Up close, Michael could see he appeared to be in his late fifties. His hair was mostly gray, and his eyes were framed by fine wrinkles, but they were sharp and calculating, and the same clear green as Bell’s.
“It seems,” he said quietly, pulling a slender item from inside his jacket, “that I’ve stayed away too long.” He unfolded the object in his hands. It had two glossy wooden handles and a stretch of thin wire running between them. He walked behind Joseph, who was still suspended like a gruesome marionette. “I apologize,” he said, easily slipping the wire over Joseph’s head.
He crossed the handles at the nape of Joseph’s neck and gave the tool a sharp pull. The razor wire sliced through muscle and bone with ease. His body crashed to the stage in a crumpled heap. Blood sprayed in every direction, peppering the terrified faces of the disobedient clan and showering the floor. The blonde man jumped to avoid Joseph’s decapitated head, which rolled off the edge of the stage and thudded on the carpet.
The man in the suit pulled a handkerchief from an inside pocket and wiped blood off his chin.
“Now then.” He turned and walked briskly up to Tanish, who was as still as a statue, staring, ashen faced, at Joseph’s lifeless body. “You would be the leader of New York’s vampires?” He gave his stylish jacket a disparaging glance.
“I thought she was lying,” Tanish’s voice came out as a plea. “I didn’t know.“
“You didn’t know what?” Bram raised his hands palm-up in front of Tanish’s chest. He rose off the stage just as Joseph had done, dangling a foot off the floor. Tanish’s eyes grew wide as his own arm, still wielding the knife meant for Michael, rose against himself. Bram stepped to the side just as the blade flashed lightning-quick across Tanish’s throat. Michael closed his eyes against the spray of blood that rained down on their heads.
“I am the leader of the New York vampires,” his voice echoed through the motionless room. Behind him, Tanish kept slicing. Michael cringed at the sound of tendons snapping and the nauseating squish of his arteries being severed. “I am the leader of
all
the vampires. The leaders I choose, I choose for a reason. Would anyone else like to debate this point?”
All eyes were on the floor. It seemed no one was even breathing.
“Bell has managed everything so well for so long,” he said, gesturing to her. She shrugged off her guards and strode out to meet him. “I didn’t think I was needed.” He put an arm around her slender shoulders. Bell smiled proudly.
“And now I find she has completely lost control of the New York clan.” Bell’s contented smile vanished. “Vampires fighting vampires. Nymphs running around the city unchecked.
“Perhaps,” he looked down at her, “I put too much faith in her.”
“Father,” she said with injured eyes. “I was—”
“I think,” he said, shaking her gently, “you need to be reminded of a few things. Maybe you’ve forgotten where you were when I found you.”
“Father, please, I—” she pleaded. But his emerald eyes cut into hers and she fell silent.
“Yes, I think so.” He drew his arm away, and immediately Michael saw a change in her. She was smaller, shrinking. The vibrant blaze of hair softened into a strawberry blonde; her muscled limbs withered away into the frail, shapeless body of a malnourished child. Freckles popped up across her cheeks and peppered the bridge of her nose. She crumpled to the ground next to Joseph’s body, writhing in pain as he held his hand over her, forcing her transformation.
“Even in this pitiful form, she was more powerful than any of you. She just didn’t know it yet.” Dark circles appeared under her eyes. A whimper escaped her colorless lips.
“Stop!” Michael heard his own voice cut through the dreadful scene.
Everyone looked at him. Bram’s eyes locked onto Michael’s and he felt as though he had been doused in cold water. There was no anger in those eyes. No regret, no amusement. Nothing at all. His mouth twitched into a smirk. He laughed.
He looked down at Bell. “He is something, isn’t he?” He lifted his hand, and Bell’s tortured body relaxed. In a moment she was herself again, tears stinging her eyes as she panted, her cheek still pressed against the floor.
“Now,” he said, disgust wrinkling his nose as he looked down at his daughter and around at the blood-stained and destroyed theater, “clean this up.”
“Yes,” she gasped, “I’ll take care of it.”
He motioned to the hounds, who had never taken their piercing eyes off their master. Jessica screamed when one bounded straight at her. But the creature stopped short, picking Tanish’s head up off the floor in its mouth. The other trotted down the steps and returned with Joseph’s head, dripping blood across the stage.
When they reached Bram’s side, their solid forms undulated into rolling smoke, and the blackness enveloped his tall form. In an instant, they were all gone. Nothing but the smell of sulfur remained.
Bell’s arms shook as she raised herself up off the stage floor. Her body had returned to its lean-muscled form, but the girl lingered behind her eyes.
When she stood, all that was gone. She smoothed her jacket and smirked at the bodies sprawled on the floor.
“Everybody out!” No one waited even a moment for her to change her mind. The curtain rustled with their passing. The front doors of the theater slammed shut.
“Randy!” Michael jumped off the stage and rushed to his friend.
Michael knelt next to him. He didn’t look good. His right arm lay at the wrong angle from his body. His eyes weren’t closed quite all the way, a sliver of white showed under his eyelids. Michael put a hand gently on his chest.
He was breathing.
Bell appeared by his side without a sound.
“Let me see.” She placed a hand on his forehead. “Did anyone else see him? Besides Tanish and Joseph?”
Michael frowned. “There was the nymph, I guess.”
“Why did you do that?” she asked, gingerly lifting Randy’s arm.
“What?”
She glared at him expectantly.
“Oh,” he said, “With your—“ Michael shifted uncomfortably. He just wanted to get Randy out of there. Why did it matter? “It just wasn’t right.”
She raised an eyebrow and smirked at him. “I can take care of myself.” Her eyes glowed silver in the darkness as she inspected Randy’s limp arm. “He has a concussion, and a dislocated shoulder...those are just the obvious things. He needs to get to the hospital.”
“You mean…you’re going to let me take him?”
“Not like this.” Bell began unbuttoning his shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to get to his heart.”
Michael grabbed her wrist. “Why?” he demanded.
Bell smiled at him. “Don’t you trust me?” Her eyes sparkled in the half-light. “Let’s just say, after this we’ll be even.”
Bell twisted easily out of his grasp. She worked the buttons and opened his shirt. She made a disgusted face and poked one of Randy’s soft moobs. “You should take him to the park or something.”
“What are you doing? He needs to see a doctor.”
“No doctor can help him if he walks out of here with all of his memories.”
“You mean—can you—?”
“Hush,” she chided. She placed both hands on Randy’s sparsely-haired chest and closed her eyes.
Several silent moments passed before anything happened. Bell was muttering under her breath. Michael couldn’t make out anything she was saying. She appeared to be in some sort of trance. Her hands pressed down on his chest so hard that blood was drawn under her manicured nails. She leaned closer, her vibrant hair falling in front of her face.
Hadn’t he seen this before? The alley came crashing in around him: the dark and the damp and the freezing pavement. He remembered a flash of light. Voices from far away. A cascade of red. But it wasn’t blood.
It was hair.
Color blossomed into life on Randy’s cheeks. His lungs filled with a massive breath, but his eyes stayed closed.
“There,” Bell said, sitting back on her heels and gesturing to her patient, “Now you can take him.”
Michael stared at her in shock. The disjointed memory of the alley flashed together like a puzzle. Callista had been there. She stood silhouetted against the street light, flanked by a blonde and a brunette. “My daughter,” she pleaded in a grieved tone, “you must sense the good in him.” Bell’s laugh came to him like the hopeless refrain of the raven. “I sense nothing. Let me show him the world as it is.” The light that danced mischievously in her eyes went out. “There’ll be nothing left of your precious ‘goodness’.”
They had shaken hands over his injured body. He could see that clearly, Bell’s orange nails in sharp relief against Callista’s dark skin.
The night’s overheard conversation flashed before his mind. Michael stared unseeingly at the carnage around them.
It was a bet
, Michael thought,
Bell was the devil…and I was Job
.
He could see it all now.
Pristine white fangs behind soft pink lips. That red hair falling in front of his face as she struck.
“You turned me.”
Those same soft lips parted slightly in surprise. Michael was sure of it.
“You did this,” he said again.
Her eyes narrowed. “Nothing has changed, Michael.”
Michael didn’t wait for her to say more. He lifted Randy off the carpet, and turned for the door.
She appeared in front of him, eyes ablaze. “What are you doing?”
“I’m taking my friend to the hospital,” Michael shook as he spoke.
“You still need the clan,” she said, standing firmly in his way. “You’ve barely scratched the surface of everything we will teach you.”
“I don’t care!” he yelled, sidestepping her and running down the aisle.
“Michael!”
He ignored her.
She appeared in the doorway to the lobby, smirking. “What will you do about the cops?”
“What about them?” he pushed past her. He was clenching his teeth so hard he was afraid his teeth would shatter. Pain seared in his temples. “Clearly you don’t want me killed, and it seems like an awful lot of hassle to kill all the cops that would inevitably discover my secret when they arrest me. So that’s your problem.” He navigated around the remains of a chair and walked out the front door and down the steps. “You’ve got connections. I’m sure you can figure it out.”
She appeared in his path on the bottom step. “Michael, I can’t let you go.”
“Sure you can,” Michael brushed past her. “We’re ‘even’ right?”