Authors: John Urbancik
She hadn’t seen it, didn’t see where it had come from. Its hands were soft, malleable, but solid enough to wrap across her chest and yank her backwards—out of the path of the winged man.
With all her strength, and every ounce of self-defense training she’d ever picked up, she elbowed its chest, making a squishy sound. Its hold slackened just enough for Lisa to duck down, slip forward, and turn to face it.
The golem stood at least seven feet tall. Its face had barely been shaped, more the idea of a man rather than an actual figure. It wore the indentation of her elbow.
No mouth had been marked. It could neither speak nor grin. It lunged with both hands, meaning to choke her. Lisa stepped back at an angle, just out of its range.
A battalion of rats swarmed at her feet, gray, thick as shoes, with long, naked tails and iridescent red eyes. Most ran past her, around her feet or over them; some climbed her calves. One bit behind her knee. Two fell loose on their own; she swept more away while another bit her lower thigh.
Then the clay hands closed around her throat.
3.
Jack Harlow had walked in the dark for years. He’d never seen different creatures working together. The dead man lunging at Nick. The golem grabbing Lisa. Mindless automatons, golems always worked for someone, or something, but were usually employed for protection, not assault.
Jack ducked to avoid the talons of the winged man.
When he turned, the were-bat was fully human, except for its claws, those teeth, and bat-like ears. Like any other lycanthropic thing, it was part human but mostly beast; it was unintelligent and primal and driven by instinct. It was vicious and strong and fierce and relentless.
It hissed, grabbing Jack by the throat. Behind the were-bat, something else. Something big. Twice the size of any of them, bigger even than the ogre.
Burgundy
skin, a single horn in its head, yellow cat eyes, three-fingered hands.
But the were-bat had Jack. Its fingers ripped the flesh of his neck. Jack fell backwards, pulling the man-like thing on top of him. He lost his breath when he hit the sidewalk. The beast hissed.
4.
The rats came as an organized swarm, a small army, a squadron of which had broken from the rest of the pack to focus on Lisa. A half dozen—
at least
—climbed her, their little claws clinging to her jeans and shirt, their teeth—
more teeth
—taking small chunks of flesh. Clay hands tightened around her throat, crushing her windpipe. She kicked, hard, to no avail. Her punches made small, ineffective indentations.
One of the rats reached the clay hands and came at her face. Lisa swung her head one way, then the other, losing the one rat and loosening the clay grip—but not enough. Another rat chomped on her stomach.
She shoved herself forward, into the clay golem, throwing him off balance, backwards, and into the wall. The rats that fell never returned, going for their real target: Jack. The golem lost his grip. Lisa wrenched herself free, and hit something on the ground.
5.
Lisa toppled over the were-bat and Jack. The beast took the brunt of her fall, allowing Jack to finally roll free. But even as he reached his feet again, despite the rats that swarmed around him, he was grabbed from behind. One arm snaked under his arm and around his torso; the other covered his mouth. Her chest pressed to his back, her lips close enough that her breath warmed his ear, she whispered, “Hold on.”
Then she jumped.
Gunshots followed. The were-bat hissed, transforming as it, too, leapt into the sky. The golem looked up. The rats, confused, scattered. The red-skinned demon clenched its fists and raised its enraged face.
Then Jack couldn’t see the street anymore. His captor landed, rough, on the roof, two stories above the street, and pulled him away from the edge.
6.
His hand barely out of the dead man’s chest, Nick Hunter threw a crescent kick—his leg rose alongside his opponent and smashed the side of its head hard enough to crack bones. The thing stumbled aside, dazed, dropping the gun it had just taken from Nick’s hands.
A second kick snapped the dead man’s neck. The head lolled to one side, hanging by threads of rotted flesh. Nick brought his elbow up under the head, smashing the ear, tearing the last sinews and knocking it into the air. The head rolled into the street; the body dropped.
Nick found his gun and shot twice at the vampire carrying Jack. The vampire landed on the roof. The were-bat followed. Nick shot twice more, then once at the were-bat.
Every shot missed the vampire, or was useless, but he hit the were-bat in the small of the back. From his angle, that meant the bullet probably went up through the heart, exiting near the throat. The bat crashed, hard, into the golem. Rats scattered. Blood rained from its wound.
The demon might have been the devil himself, except Nick always thought there’d be
two
horns. No pitch fork. A tail, yes, and a forked tongue.
It hissed, having watching the vampire’s leap, and vanished in a hot red cloud.
The golem slumped, already splattered and deformed, and began to melt. The rats disappeared in every available crevice. Neither the were-bat nor the walking corpse moved. Lisa managed to stand again.
Jack was gone.
7.
Lisa stared up the side of the building. She hadn’t even seen the thing that grabbed Jack except as a blur.
A half dozen rat bites burned under her skin. Tears stung her eyes. She was muddy with clay. And helpless. “Can we follow it?” she asked. But she knew the answer. The coordinated attack had succeeded; Jack was already dead.
She wouldn’t accept that, though.
She picked up the bag, in which a laptop computer contained all the secrets Jack had recorded. A database of the dark, of
evil
, of vampires and ghosts and—and maybe she could find something about the crimson behemoth, the creature who’d orchestrated the attack.
“We’re not safe here,” Nick said. She didn’t even look at him. “We’re being watched. Examined. They might attack us again.”
“Let them,” Lisa said. It was a two-story brick building, a nightclub. She’d been on its roof before, dancing to a reggae band. The club might be locked, but she knew exactly where to find the stairs. “Can you open this door?”
She looked at Nick. Glared at him. Challenged him to say
No
. Instead, he pulled the gun out of his waistband and shot the flimsy lock. The door shuddered, swinging inwards perhaps three inches. “There,” he said.
She stormed through the door, into the pitch black of the club. Didn’t look for the ghost. Didn’t peer into shadows. Didn’t care what else might lurk inside, didn’t even look to see if the hunter followed.
In the very back of the club, past the bar and down the hall toward the bathrooms, absolute dark hid the staircase. She’d climbed them before, presenting I.D. to a bouncer at the base of those steps. Smiled prettily. Flirted. Followed Liz to dance under the moon. Not a spell, no ritual, no rite—just two women, among a hundred, looking for a good time.
She’d had it then.
The memories felt pale now, and thin.
The night wasn’t so completely dark. Outside, ambient light spilled from everywhere, even the clouds. The moon had been visible for a while. There were streetlights, headlights, windows, signs.
Inside: nothing but the red exit sign, no brighter than the numbers on Lisa’s alarm clock.
The door at the top of the stairs was locked. Lisa twisted the knob, cursed, and kicked it. She shoved it with her shoulder, almost knocking herself back down the stairs. “You still with me, Nick?” she asked.
He said nothing, but gently pushed her aside. He knelt at the door, played with the lock a moment, and then turned the knob.
It opened onto the roof.
8.
Jack
Harlow’s
vision swam in and out of focus. They flitted over rooftops, jumping effortlessly from one to another, across alleys and streets, and then to the higher buildings of downtown. Bank names shined from the peaks. From the two-story club, to a five-story glass and brick building three blocks away, then to the side of a ten-story building, and finally atop one of the bank spires.
The rooftop around him was primarily gravel, tiny white rocks with stone walkways leading from a building entrance to the main air-handling unit, a metal storage shed, and various vents and grills.
The ascent had been dizzying. It was colder here. The wind blew more harshly. They stood on a two-foot-wide concrete ledge maybe six feet above the gravel rooftop—and twenty stories over the street. Jack saw no details below. His eyes watered, blurring everything. He felt weak, and cold.
He didn’t quite know what had happened. He’d been stolen from the life he never got to live. His captor, if she chose, could just shove him over the edge. He’d splatter.
She held him from behind, one arm still curled under his shoulder and across his chest. Her hand was cold as the wind.
Jack waited for death. Hoped for something quick and painless. Wished he could have been with Lisa instead, down on the street; how would she and Nick survive against that demon?
All thoughts fled when the vampire lowered her mouth to his neck. Warm lips—moist and soft. She licked from his collar bone to the base of his jaw, pausing to suckle, to drink the blood that had spilled from his wound. The were-bat had done that, hadn’t it?
His head tilted back of its own accord—or
she
did it. He couldn’t tell where his body ended and hers began. She must’ve supported him, because all strength seeped from his legs as her mouth moved across his throat—kissing, sucking gently, licking. His body trembled. Eyes rolled back so all he saw were pinpoints of shimmering light. Heat rose at his neck, and spread.
Jack tried to lift his arm, to at least touch the hand that held him, but his limb was heavy and unresponsive.
She slipped around his side, snaking her arm behind him, bending him backwards with the intensity of her kiss, one hand behind his spine and the other at the nape of his neck. As she supped, pulling blood from his wound, his senses faded—all but touch. She’d come around to his left side, her kiss crossing over his jugular and windpipe and carotids.
In a final burst of strength, he managed to reach behind her back. Tried to grasp her. Hold on. But when he tightened his fingers, his grip slipped, and then so did his consciousness.
If Jack Harlow dreamed, it was of the endless kiss of a vampire, and of the bliss her victims felt in their final moments. Life slipped away effortlessly, without pain, without panic—nothing but euphoria. In those last moments, when Jack existed only in his mind—where he expected to find eternal darkness—he instead felt an ecstasy unsurpassed in human experience. Complete. Body-wracking. Mind numbing.
The universe dissolved to her two lips on his throat, even in his dreams. With what he knew were his dying thoughts, he wished it was Lisa’s kiss.
1.
Nick Hunter followed Lisa onto the rooftop.
A stage stood in one corner, bathrooms to the side. There was a full bar behind a rolling, chain-link (and padlocked) fence. Rooftops to three sides were a matter of hopping four feet of bricks; the wall to the front was taller and overlooked the street.
There were plenty of places to hide, but Nick doubted the vampire used any of the nooks or false walls. She wasn’t behind the wooden bar, nor on the other side of the shack-like bathroom set-up. The adjacent roofs were barren except for typical industrial vents and storage sheds; she wasn’t there, either.
The roof had been converted into a bar, as wide and deep as the downstairs, with a makeshift dance floor and colored lights—all dark—hanging on poles. Cheap but functional.
Lisa circled the outer edges of the rooftop. The stairs that led them here were attached to a small, shed-like structure opposite the larger restrooms. When Lisa disappeared around the side of those, Nick scanned the other rooftops.
Another long building was behind the club, as if they’d been built as twins, but it was empty and unused. Beyond it, past what was probably a road, were some trees and, not too distant, I-4.
To Nick’s right, north, again there was only one building before the street. The store in the opposite corner was three stories high, so he couldn’t see the roof. For a vampire with her demonstrated agility, that was not an impossible leap.
To his left, the rooftops continued, some higher or lower, with a dull regularity: one after the other, all the same, stretching maybe a hundred yards before ending abruptly. Across the street, the climb was much higher, five stories.
“He’s not here,” Lisa said, coming again into view.
“No,” Nick said, nodding to the north. “They went that way.”
Lisa stared a moment. “Up there?” She pointed with her knife—Nick’s knife.
He walked to the wall separating one roof from the other, seeing no sign of movement. “Not anymore.”