Monsters Within (10 page)

2

Nikki had been gone for at least half an hour before Saul finally got out of bed. He walked into his kitchen, fried up a few eggs and was halfway through breakfast when he sensed the other presence in the cabin with him. He recognized it right away, only there was something different about it now—something sinister. He swiveled his chair and saw the dark figure standing in the center of the living room.

“Benali,” he said. “Back so soon?”

“You’re a fool to be making light of this visit,” Benali said. “I assume you know why I’m here.”

“Yes,” Saul said. “I have a good idea. But I was not breaking any of The Guard’s rules.”

“This is true. So long as you conduct your sexual relations with this human with the utmost discretion and do not harm her, no rules are broken. That does not alter the fact that you have had numerous other issues as of late.”

“About that,” Saul said, standing to face Benali. He walked towards the entity, leaving no more than three feet between them. Saul meant to do it as an act of bravery but he could tell that Benali was not impressed. If Benali chose to do so, he could likely kill Saul without much effort.

“Yes?” Benali said.

“What happened to Nikki’s friend, Jason Eastman?”

Benali’s faceless composure nearly hid the doubt that flared through his body. But Saul knew it was there; he sensed it in the slight hesitation of Benali’s answer. “I don’t know. But The Guard is looking into it.”

“Do you have any initial thoughts?” Saul asked. “Does it make you any more certain that there might be a rival family in Red Creek? Could someone be trying to draw me out for some reason?”

“I’d say that there’s a good chance that rogue parties are involved.”

“Other vampires?”

“That would be my guess, yes.”

Saul said nothing to this. The implications of this were enormous. If there was a rogue family in Red Creek, what was their purpose? And if they were indeed here, why would they kill Jason Eastman?

“I don’t think you have any need to worry,” Benali said.  “If there is indeed a rogue tribe here in Red Creek, they would be committing treason if they interfered with your life here in any way.”

“Let me get this straight then,” Saul said. He didn’t even try to hide the anger in his voice. “If I have sex with a woman, you’re on me in a heartbeat. But there might be a rogue family in this small town, and you can’t locate them?”

“It’s not as easy as that,” Benali said. “I have other suspicions, but none that I can share with you at the moment. These are things The Guard needs to discuss first.”

With an aggravated grunt, Saul stepped away from Benali and returned to his eggs on the kitchen table. “Well thanks for the help. I feel much better now.”

Benali stood motionless in the living room, a living, breathing shadow in human form. “Saul, this girl…does she know what you are?”

Saul didn’t even skip a beat when he lied. “No,” he answered.

It was the first time he had ever lied to a member of The Guard. Being caught in a lie with The Guard could generate terrible repercussions, but Saul didn’t care in that moment. If Benali was keeping secrets from him about Jason Eastman’s fate, then he didn’t see why he couldn’t have some secrets of his own.

“Please,” Benali said. “Keep it discreet.”

Saul only nodded.  He forked eggs into his mouth until he felt the heavy presence of The Guard’s representative disappear from behind him. When he turned and found the living room empty, he let out a loud curse.

Only eight more years before he would be able to feed and hopefully be reunited with his sister. Eight short years…why was all of this happening now?

This made him think of Nikki. He wondered if he should do the right thing and end things with her. It was just too much of a risk. But he knew that by ending things with a human that knew his true identity, he left far too many loose ends. He didn’t know Nikki well enough to know how she’d handle such a rejection.

Of course, if she did go around Red Creek saying that he was a vampire, the town would probably just think of it as another silly rumor about the Benton family. So what did he care?

Saul placed his dish in the sink and headed back to bed where it took him a very long time to fall asleep.

3

The hours at work seemed to float by on a cloud. Nikki was glad that Lily was having one of her more oblivious days. Nikki was having trouble focusing on much of anything. She would start cleaning the windows and vacuuming the lobby floor of the B&B only to have her mind trace backward to last night.

Nikki felt guilty because she knew that her thoughts should have been on Jason. Hell, she really shouldn’t even have been at work today. But she figured working would take her mind off of everything. If she was being honest with herself, that was the primary reason she had slipped into Saul’s bed last night. She had wanted to forget about Jason and what had happened to him.

But then something had happened—there had been some weird connection between her and Saul there in the dark. It had been something more than just the melding of their bodies or the need to shed off stress through sex –  something deeper. She wasn’t dumb enough to think that it was love or anything close, but some sort of internal… clicking together.

Nikki couldn’t place her finger on it, but there was something in Saul’s brown eyes that was otherworldly; it was almost like some sort of electricity wired deep in his body, blooming out through his eyes. Whatever that force was, she felt like it had latched on to her last night.

Her workday neared its end before Nikki quite knew it had even begun. She started putting everything away and did her best to sidestep Lily, avoiding a rambling conversation about Jason, no doubt. Although the murder  was the talk of the town, no one had really known that Nikki was friends with him so she managed to sidestep that awkwardness so far.

Nikki stepped outside shortly after five o’clock. At first, she had no doubts in her mind that she would leave the Red Creek B&B and head directly to Saul’s cabin. But then she thought that it might do her some good to go to her apartment and deal with whatever odd feelings were still tumbling through her in regards to Jason. Besides, when it came to Saul, she liked what they had going. They had not exchanged numbers, nor had they agreed on another time to meet. They’d had sex - amazing sex, at that - and there was a very cool sort of vibe between them. She didn’t want to ruin that by heading to his house whenever she started to feel lonely.

Nikki checked the door to make sure it was locked, as Lily had left early. She did that a lot. Lily usually just farted around town, doing nothing in particular. Nikki didn’t care; it was kind of cool having the B&B to herself on some days.

Nikki walked down the porch and into the gravel lot towards her car. She made it halfway to her car before she saw the dark shape come barreling out of the trees to her right. She had no idea what the shape was, not even after it collided with her and knocked the breath from her. She was knocked backwards, rebounding from her car hard.

She tried to scream but could draw in no breath. The thing was now on top of her, pressing down on her and shoving her hard into the gravel. She fought against the weight of what she now gathered to be a person dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt and dark gray sweatpants. If the strength of this individual was any indication, it was a man. But there was a smell coming off of him that was terrible. It was like road kill in the summer, rolling out of the person’s mouth and into her face in hot waves of breath.

She felt the man pin her left arm to the ground, scratching the back of her hand on the gravel. She tried to pull it away but the man’s grip on her wrist was like that of a vice. She felt her breath slowly coming back to her and the first thing she did was whimper in pain. The blow to her back against the car had knocked the air out of her and hurt like a bitch and now her left hand was being ground into gravel.

The man on top of her said nothing. He fought rather easily against her, now searching for her right hand to also presumably pin to the ground. She swung her right arm madly to try to prevent him from getting it. She screamed as loud as she could, feeling a pain in her chest and back.

Then, out of sheer instinct, Nikki grabbed Lily’s keychain in her right hand, holding it like a small knife. She felt the key to the B&B’s front door, long and metallic against her palm. She let it slide out a bit and then moved her right hand down onto the man as he groped for her wrist.

He caught her hand too late, only partially blocking her attack; Lily’s key had already sunk into the side of his neck. The man screamed a guttural howl, more of anger than pain. Still, he let up just enough for Nikki to slide out from under him. As she did she slashed out again with the keys, catching him in the face that was still mostly hidden beneath the hood of the sweatshirt.

She then opened her car door and fell inside. She reached out for the door and managed to pull it closed just before the man’s arm could stop her. She slammed the lock down and shoved her keys into the ignition. As she did, she caught a glimpse of the man’s face in her peripheral vision.

But that couldn’t be right…that made no sense. It didn’t look like a man at all. It looked like a demon, some monster straight from hell. Nikki began to shake as her car roared to life and reached down to throw the car into drive.

That’s when her driver’s side window exploded.

She felt hands on her shoulders at once and she was then being pulled through the shape of her window. Glass fragments scraped and pierced her as she was dragged from the window. She barely had time to register these pains before the world was falling away from her and she was thrown violently to the ground. She once again felt gravel at her back but that was the least of her concerns.

The thing in the hooded sweatshirt was on her again, this time straddling her chest. She threw punches to its stomach but they did no good. She saw its face, hellish and unfathomable. It was contorted and its eyes were solid black. Its nose looked almost bat-like and was slightly sunken.

It was the exact face from Jason’s grainy video footage.

Nikki screamed. Then, almost as if on cue, the creature opened its mouth and revealed twin rows of yellowed teeth, sharp and crooked. It let out something that sounded like a mixture of a roar and a chuckle before plunging its head down towards her exposed neck.

Nikki closed her eyes and waited for the pain—waited for her neck to be torn open by this ghoul that was perched on her chest. But the pain never came. Instead, less than a second before the creature’s teeth would have ripped into her flesh, the parking lot of the Red Creek B&B was filled with the sound of gunshots.

Nikki heard three shots ring out; the thing on top of her shuddered and jerked at each one. It tumbled backwards but stood up right away. Its head was concealed by the overhang of the hood it wore but Nikki still saw its horrid face. It leered at her, let out a screech, and then went running for the cover of the forest.

Another gunshot rang out from behind Nikki. If it hit the creature, it did no good. Nikki sat up and wheeled around toward the sounds where the gunshots had come from.

Kara Humphrey stood in front of her patrol car at the very end of the driveway. Behind her, the main road was mostly hidden behind the trees that encompassed the B&B grounds. Seeing that Nikki was getting up, Kara started walking towards her. Kara was visibly shaking as she closed the distance between them.

I wonder if she was shaking like that when she fired off those shots
,
Nikki thought.
 
My God, how close were those bullets?

That thought was chased off by the fact that Kara Humphrey had just saved her life.

“Are you okay?” Kara asked, her eyes darting from Nikki, to the woods, and then back.

“Just some scratches,” Nikki said, realizing that she was still catching her breath from colliding against the side of her car.

“Who was that?” Kara asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. She hesitated before adding: “I didn’t see his face clearly.
”
She had no idea why she lied. Given the fact that some indescribable monster from Hell had just attacked her, she didn’t see how she could possibly tell the truth.

“I hit him with at least two of those shots,” Kara said, dumbfounded. Now she stared blankly into the forests, as if looking for the body of the thing along the edge of the trees. “Didn’t I?”

“I think you hit him all three times,” Nikki said.

“One of them was right above the heart,” Kara said. “No one could get up and run away after something like that.”

Nikki said nothing. She kept seeing that demonic face and had no problem assuming that it could shrug off three gunshots as if they were nothing.

Kara slowly returned her pistol to the holster on her belt. Nikki felt bad for her; she looked like a little girl playing dress-up. She knew the deal with the Sheriff being ill and how Kara had basically been forced into taking the role. Her reluctance for the position showed in that moment.

Regardless, Nikki was just happy as hell that Kara had showed up when she had. Nikki watched as Kara hunched down and studied the ground.

“No blood,” she said. “None at all. How in the hell is that possible?”

Nikki played dumb as well as she could and simply shrugged. But when she pictured that ghoulish face, its mouth of razor teeth aimed for her neck, she wondered just how well she’d be able to keep it to herself.

Suddenly, she very badly wanted to be back at Saul’s cabin. It seemed too coincidental: this evil-looking thing attacking her after she had bedded someone of Saul’s peculiar lineage. Surely he’d know what was going on and why that thing had attacked her.

“You sure you’re okay?” Kara asked.

“Yes. Just shaken-up.”

“Come on,” Kara said, that blank look still on her face. “Can I give you a ride somewhere?”

Nikki saw the shattered glass of her driver’s side window and nodded. “Sure.”

They walked towards Kara’s patrol car, both taking quick glances back towards the rear of the B&B property where the thing had retreated into the forest.