TITLE: "Ride"
AUTHOR: zero
E-MAIL: [email protected]
DISTRIBUTION: Uh... okay. I don't even care if you want it on a page of
stories that suck. Just let me know where it's going so I can go ooooh and
ahhhh.
SUMMARY: Hitching at night is never a good idea. Picking up hitchers
isn't, either. See, it's a life lesson!
RATING: R for language and violence.
CLASSIFICATION: It kinda defies it. Just Spike, I guess.
DISCLAIMER: Everybody's mine except Spike. And I'm not sure I want to
claim responsibility for our female lead...she belongs to other authors
and please god I hope I've never used her before and never will again.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic comes from pondering the question... can you write
fan fiction where the main character is the author's invention and *not*
Mary Sue the sucker? Well, yeah, Laure can do it, 'cause she's like...
good and stuff. So I guess the question is can *I* do it. I still don't
know, but I tried. Steve? Cassandra bribed me into telling you :--o: I
have no idea what it means, so I hope it's not some sick inside joke.
Cassandra? Time to pay up. Get writing. As always, this is available with
all my other fiction at www.zeroimpact.com
RIDE
by zero ([email protected]
My ma, when she was around, told me that nobody should ever hitch. You
hitch, you can get picked up by some psycho who'll bludgeon you with a
crowbar and stuff you in his trunk. I found out that night that there are
plenty of worse ways to travel. I already knew that there were worse ways
to die.
I was on some rural route, and there was rain slashin' down like God was
just fuckin' *pissed*, and the side of the road was more mud than
pavement. So I just walked down the middle. I'd only heard vehicles
approach a few times; they always flashed by, ignoring my outstretched
thumb, and I had to jump aside to avoid being run over. Most of them were
movin' like it was the Indy, even though the roads were so wet that their
tires probably weren't even eating up pavement so much as water.
I'd been walking for hours, since my last ride had wanted more of a
*ride*, y'know, and I wasn't into that. Having the flight or fight
response in a car usually results in flight winning out, so I'd jumped out
while the car was still moving, and had the wounds to prove it. And that
fat fucker had had the nerve to *laugh* when I fumbled with the door
handle, trying to escape his pawing hands and "suck me off" insistance.
Yeah. Fates worse than death. The next car to approach was actually moving
at precisely the speed limit, and pulled over almost daintily. The window
on the station wagon rolled down, letting out a plume of warmth into the
cold night air, and the driver leaned over the passenger seat to eye me.
"Well just look at you," the driver said in a voice that must've been an
attempt at pleasantly throaty. "You look like a drowned rat, dear. Hop in.
And don't worry yourself about the upholstery."
She popped the door open for me from the inside then leaned back behind
the steering wheel. I only considered the car's interior for a few minutes
before pulling the door all the way open and climbing inside.
"Thanks," I mumbled, tugging the door closed and slumping in the seat.
She smiled and stuck out her hand at me. "My name's Mary, honey, what's
yours?"
I looked at her askance, then took the hand she offered, shaking it firmly
and noting her weak grip. "John," I told her.
She smiled a purely matronly smile, though she couldn't have been more
than twenty, and ordered with excruciating politeness that I buckle my
seatbelt before she'd move the car forward. I did as she told me, though I
was uncomfortable with belting myself in when I'd so recently had to make
a fast getaway, and she pressed gently at the gas pedal until we were
moving forward again at a purely legal pace.
When she asked why I was hitchhiking at that time of night, I said my car
had broken down and I was going to call for a tow. When she fussed over my
various scrapes and gashes, I told her I'd fallen on a slick slope. And
when she started telling me about her nice little hometown and her mom and
her brothers and her dog and how she was Squash Queen last year or some
stupid shit like that, then I just tuned her out and took the time to
study her instead.
She was a looker, I could give her that. Pale skin, vibrant red hair
falling in little ringlets around her smooth, round face. Big green eyes.
Pouty lips. The kind of body a guy would usually love to have a go at.
You'd have to tape her mouth shut, though; that whiny voice and inane
babble was enough to make one's performance suffer...
"I was always the most popular girl in school," she said, recapturing my
attention. "Some of the other girls hated me for it, but that was okay. I
dated the quarterback. And I am *so* much better looking than Janine, so
she was always mean to me..."
I just let her keep talking, silently filing away the information that she
was one of those uppity bitches I'd hated in high school. Me, me, fucking
me; that's all it was with those cute empty-headed types. And they always
expected you to like them, right off the bat, even though they had nothing
going on behind their cute little faces. I spent at least ten minutes
chanting in my head, //Shut up, shut up, shut up...//
Oh yeah. There's definitely worse rides to hitch than a psycho with a
crowbar. I made a mental note not to climb into any more sedans driven by
horny fat bastards or station wagons driven by Martha Stewart.
Her babble finally trailed off when we spotted the lights of a truck stop
burning through the gloom, and she excitedly informed me that she was
going to give me change to call a tow truck, and buy me something to warm
me up, 'cause I was "shivering like a leaf". She pulled the car into the
nearly empty lot and parked between a beat-up blue Rabbit and a beat-up
black DeSoto.
Mary ushered me through the doors into the nearly-empty diner, tugging me
toward the counter. The waitress behind it, who was leaning on her hands
and half-asleep, was how I imagined Pollyanna would look in her forties.
There was a flannel-clad trucker seated alone at a well-lighted booth near
the windows, and a dour-looking man in a dark suit slumped in a corner
booth, sound asleep with his head on the table.
I slid onto a stool at the counter and ordered hot chocolate from the
waitress, who'd come awake enough to look at us accusingly for
interrupting her almost-rest. Mary smiled hugely, as if proud of me for
not being a slave to caffeine, and ordered the same. Then she pressed a
dime and quarter into my hand and asked the waitress where the payphones
were.
The woman pointed me to the rear of the diner, a narrow hallway that led
back to the bathrooms, and I slid off my stool to retreat into the crowded
space.
At the pair of phones, I chose the first, and picked up the handset,
propping it between my ear and shoulder and randomly punching numbers. As
the recorded voice informed me nicely that only a moron would attempt to
make a call without dropping some coin first, I slipped the meager amount
of money into my front pocket and listened patiently for a moment, then
told the uncaring recording that I needed a tow truck, which, of course, I
didn't.
After hanging up the handset, satisfied that I'd faked it well enough not
to raise the suspicions of anyone who might've been able to hear, I moved
further down the hallway and shouldered aside the door to the little boy's
room. I was surprised to find someone else inside.
The room was cramped: two stalls, and a single sink. There was someone
leaning against that sink, feet crossed at the ankles, facing the door and
inhaling deeply from a smoldering cigarette.
He nodded curtly to me, the single bare bulb overhead casting deep shadows
over his eyes and even deeper ones in the hollows of his high cheekbones.
I stopped just inside the room, letting the door fall shut behind me,
uncomfortably aware of how trapped I was in that room and what an easy
posture the other man held, telling me that he sure wasn't as scared of me
as I suddenly as of him.
"You're totally creeping me out," I told him, for no apparent reason. The
words just lept out of my mouth.
"That's nice," he said, sounding bored. There was a faint tinge of accent
on his voice, but I couldn't place it with just two words.
"Whatever," I grunted, moving past him toward the nearest stall. I closed
the door behind me, took a deep breath to steady the beating of my heart
-- which had suddenly and mysteriously become erratic -- and answered the
call of nature.
When I emerged again, he was still there, at the edge of the sink, his
cigarette nearly burned away. He didn't look at me, but tipped his head
back, closing his eyes, as if he were dead tired. I wasn't fooled. I'd
seen tired. And I'd seen born predators. He belonged only to the latter
group.
I tried to ignore his proximity when I slipped up behind him to wash my
hands, and ran my fingers through my hair, which was tinted a darker brown
and plastered to my head by the rain. It was only when I was drying my
hands with cheap paper towels and looked up into the dingy mirror that I
was given pause.
He wasn't there.
Or rather, he *was* there. Beside me, ominously close. It had somehow
escaped my notice that his head had turned, and I looked over to see him
staring at me with a small smirk on his lips. There should have been a
clear image of his reflection staring at mine in the mirror. Except that
my reflection was there, and his wasn't.
"That's pretty fucked up," I told him, letting calm cover my fear. Just
what kind of guy didn't have a reflection, for Christ's sake? It's not the
kind of thing you just turn off. But I tried to appear unphased, because
he was leaning casually between me and my only escape route, and I had
this funny feeling like he was a lot faster than he looked. And he looked
pretty goddamn fast.
"Yeah," he answered with a small shrug. "I guess so."
Some part of my brain pegged the accent as English. The rest of me didn't
really care.
"So uh... how do you bleach your hair?" Stupid, stupid, stupid. It just
kinda popped out. And nothing else came to mind except "oh shit, don't
kill me," and that didn't sound quite right...
"Used to have a girlfriend who did it," he told me, probably sensing my
panic and amused by it, but giving no indication either way.
"Oh yeah? What happened to her?"
"She dumped me for some other demon." He sighed heavily, almost
theatrically.
"That's rough, man." My voice was coming out a bit too strained for my
liking. I was sure he heard the panic there. But he didn't say anything.
"So you're going to let me out of here alive, right? This isn't like some,
'I'm a Billy Idol wannabe and I'm going to kill you violently in the
bathroom' kind of thing? 'Cause of all the places I thought I'd die, the
bathroom ain't one of them. Though I did have a dream once that I was set
on fire in the French Quarter by an Elvis impersonator..."
His laughter came out in a short bark, and he stepped aside, leaned
against the wall. It cleared me a path to the door, though I wasn't sure
if I wanted to step by him to take it. But after only a split second of
hesitation I stepped quickly forward, grasped the cool metal doorknob, and
made my escape. The smell of nicotine rushed out with me, but the guy
didn't move to attack or follow. I snapped the door shut behind me and
hurried toward the safety of company again.
Mary was sitting at the counter, already halfway through her foamy mug of
hot chocolate, when I slipped back onto my stool without a word.
"Tow truck coming, honey?" she asked with that brightly grating voice.
"Yeah," muttered, picking up my own hot mug and bringing it to my lips.
"Your hands are shaking," Mary said. She frowned.
"Yeah," I said again. Way to state the obvious.
When I sat my empty mug back on the counter, I looked up and surveyed the
diner with a quick glance. The trucker was still in place, nursing his
third cup of coffee. The businessman who had been asleep at his table
stood just as I looked at him, rubbing a tired hand over his sagging face
and heading for the restrooms.
The bottle blond without a reflection was still back there somewhere. I
bit down on my lower lip to keep myself from warning the suit; what did I
care what happened to him, anyway?
The guy disappeared into the narrow hallway. I had a funny feeling I'd
never see him again. Not alive, anyway. I was suddenly anxious to get the
hell out of there, but it would seem odd for me to suddenly go without
waiting for the arrival of the tow truck... which would never come. The
waitress had moved to the other side of the room; our bill was already
paid. The trucker didn't seem to have noticed we'd ever arrived in the
first place. We could both disappear without notice.
Mary afforded me the perfect opportunity to get the hell away when she
stood, smiled, and said, "You keep warm here, dear, and wait for your tow
truck. I've got to get going if I want to get to my brother's by tomorrow
morning."
I nodded, standing as if I were some kind of gentleman and saying, "I'll
walk you to your car."
Her smile was delighted, as if she'd managed to teach an ape manners. I
didn't care. It was a means to an end. If I played it right, I'd get out
of there with a bit of money and have a ride without the conversation.
After the torture she'd put me through on the way there, I figured she
deserved whatever I gave her.
As soon as we cleared the door, I steered her left. The windows were to
our right, but the left side was a solid brick wall... and the security
light was broken, casting the area in darkness. I didn't want to hear her
squeaked, confused protest... so I clamped my hand hard over her mouth and
drove her up against the wall, pinning her between me and the solid
structure. Her struggles were flailing and ineffective, her fingernails
scratching uselessly at my arms.
I restrained her easily with one hand, bashing her head back once against
the wall before wrapping my hand around her throat, maintaining enough
pressure that she couldn't breathe, so she couldn't cry out. Pulling the
knife from my pocket was a move I'd made a hundred times, as was flipping
it open to reveal the long, slim blade. I did that one-handed as well, and
kept my hand at her throat as I slipped the blade into her stomach.
Her flesh was as soft as her hair, which brushed lightly at my knuckles.
The knife slid in easily, buried to the hilt with one thrust, and when her
blood bubbled out it splashed over my hand. I paid no mind to the gore,
and drew the blade out again, plunging it into her body several times
until she slumped and stilled. I pocketed the knife and slipped my
red-stained hand into her back pocket, grabbing her wallet and keeping it
in my hand as I let gravity claim her body.
She fell to the pavement at my feet, and I took half a step back to keep
the blood off my boots; they were dirty enough already without making a
sticky mess of them. I flipped the wallet open and found her driver's
license inside, smirking at her extra-perky smiling picture.
"Thanks for the ride, Mary Sue Darwin," I whispered, and punctuated the
statement with a small chuckle. I tucked the license into my pocket, and
eyed the fairly thick wad of cash in her wallet before stuffing the entire
thing into my other pocket. A quick dip into Mary Sue's pocket turned up a
key ring, and I clutched it in my hand, straightened, and turned to walk
back to her car.
He was there when I turned, so close behind me that I should have felt the
heat of his body, heard him breathe.
"Shit!" I yelped, surprised at his sudden appearance. I stumbled back a
pace, and my knife seemed to jump into my hand of its own free will, as if
it wanted to defend itself, too. The keys dropped from my grasp as I
opened my other hand to contribute to the fight to come.
He just stood there, feet spaced at shoulder width, his head cocked
slightly to one side as he looked down at the body.
"Not bad," he said, with a slight sniff. I could've sworn he was savoring
the pungent odor of her blood. "A little messy, but there's no cover
here... so the rain's going to wash away any real evidence. Too bad
there's a witness."
I didn't snarl in anger or sputter threats. Instead I lunged smoothly at
him, my attack in fair form. He sidestepped easily, but I'd learned long
ago to improvise; a slash to the side caught him in the abdomen. It was a
scoring wound and nothing more, but with most it would be enough to
confuse and frighten.
Not with this one. That didn't surprise me, though. A man with no
reflection who calls himself a demon... most likely, he is one. I was
curious to find whether a demon could be defeated with a long switchblade.
And I wasn't afraid to die. I actually sort of wondered what would happen
if I did.
He seemed surprised that I'd managed to land a hit at all, and even more
surprised when I pressed in further, reversing my hold on the knife so
that the blade emerged from the bottom of my fist, and pulled him in
close, trying to drive the knife into his back.
My blow was stopped short by a fast grab and a grip that threatened to
crush bone and did more than threaten with my nerves; the knife dropped
from fingers suddenly bereft of blood. His other arm wrapped around my
back as if I were a long-lost old friend, drawn into a loving embrace,
though it crushed me to his chest and drove the air from my lungs.
"You've obviously done that before," he continued, conversationally, as if
my sternum weren't on the verge of cracking. "But you've still got a lot
to learn. Lesson one --" He dropped my wrist and used the hand he'd freed
up to yank my head to the side. "-- is that there's always something
bigger and meaner out there, just waiting..." Two sharp teeth scraped up
my neck, and he finished his statement in a murmur, with his lips pressed
to my throat. "To eat you."
His bite was hard, and punishing, but he withdrew his teeth almost
immediately to clamp his mouth around the wound, drawing my blood out and
drinking it down eagerly. I struggled, but I was far too weak to escape
his grasp, and I quickly learned that attempts to free myself would result
only in a more crushing hold.
When he finally let me go, my legs refused to support me; I felt as if I'd
been laying down for days and then tried to leap to my feet. Dizziness
left me confused and disoriented, and I clutched at his legs to keep
myself from falling all the way to the pavement. My right hand, which
still hadn't returned much feeling, curled around his left knee, and my
left hand wrapped into a fist around the material of his black jeans.
"You've a lot to learn," his voice repeated, floating down from somewhere
above me. His hand caressed the back of my head in a gesture that was
almost loving, cradling my head against the outside of his thigh. "But
you've certainly got the skills and the style. You're better than a lot of
my kind, and you don't even have a demon urging you on."
He stooped, and his arms wrapped around me again, though their embrace was
much more gentle then than they had been the first time. He pulled me to
my feet, and tugged my arm around his neck, his going to my waist, as if
he were helping a drunken friend to a taxi. He guided me past the station
wagon to the black DeSoto, and opened up the passenger side door to place
me inside, then slammed the door and walked around to the driver's side.
Next to the building, a slight steam rose from the contact of hot blood
and cold rain. I shuddered uncontrollably, but I knew it was more from
being soaked with freezing water than it was horror at what I'd done. I'd
thrown up the first time, and cried the second. By the time I killed Mary
Sue Darwin, my response to death -- at least, other people's deaths -- had
degenerated to a derisive smile, which I happily granted the body from the
dry shelter of the car.
The other door opened up to admit the leather-clad body of the lean blond
whose name I didn't even know. He settled comfortably in, shot me a glance
with icy blue eyes, turned the key in the ignition, and threw the car into
reverse. I wasn't able to do much more than slump, my head resting against
the back of the seat, as he pulled out of the parking lot and roared off
on his course.
He glanced at me again, and yellow eyes flashed from beneath a ridged
brow. The DeSoto's engine rumbled like a growling cat, and rain slammed
down on the car with an impotent fury only God could muster.
"Don't worry, mate," he said in a reassuring voice, belied by a smirk that
revealed slivers of two long teeth. "I'll give you a ride."
THE END
-----------------------------------------
Mission accomplished? You tell me!
[email protected]
-----------------------------------------
AUTHOR: zero
E-MAIL: [email protected]
DISTRIBUTION: Uh... okay. I don't even care if you want it on a page of
stories that suck. Just let me know where it's going so I can go ooooh and
ahhhh.
SUMMARY: Hitching at night is never a good idea. Picking up hitchers
isn't, either. See, it's a life lesson!
RATING: R for language and violence.
CLASSIFICATION: It kinda defies it. Just Spike, I guess.
DISCLAIMER: Everybody's mine except Spike. And I'm not sure I want to
claim responsibility for our female lead...she belongs to other authors
and please god I hope I've never used her before and never will again.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic comes from pondering the question... can you write
fan fiction where the main character is the author's invention and *not*
Mary Sue the sucker? Well, yeah, Laure can do it, 'cause she's like...
good and stuff. So I guess the question is can *I* do it. I still don't
know, but I tried. Steve? Cassandra bribed me into telling you :--o: I
have no idea what it means, so I hope it's not some sick inside joke.
Cassandra? Time to pay up. Get writing. As always, this is available with
all my other fiction at www.zeroimpact.com
RIDE
by zero ([email protected]
My ma, when she was around, told me that nobody should ever hitch. You
hitch, you can get picked up by some psycho who'll bludgeon you with a
crowbar and stuff you in his trunk. I found out that night that there are
plenty of worse ways to travel. I already knew that there were worse ways
to die.
I was on some rural route, and there was rain slashin' down like God was
just fuckin' *pissed*, and the side of the road was more mud than
pavement. So I just walked down the middle. I'd only heard vehicles
approach a few times; they always flashed by, ignoring my outstretched
thumb, and I had to jump aside to avoid being run over. Most of them were
movin' like it was the Indy, even though the roads were so wet that their
tires probably weren't even eating up pavement so much as water.
I'd been walking for hours, since my last ride had wanted more of a
*ride*, y'know, and I wasn't into that. Having the flight or fight
response in a car usually results in flight winning out, so I'd jumped out
while the car was still moving, and had the wounds to prove it. And that
fat fucker had had the nerve to *laugh* when I fumbled with the door
handle, trying to escape his pawing hands and "suck me off" insistance.
Yeah. Fates worse than death. The next car to approach was actually moving
at precisely the speed limit, and pulled over almost daintily. The window
on the station wagon rolled down, letting out a plume of warmth into the
cold night air, and the driver leaned over the passenger seat to eye me.
"Well just look at you," the driver said in a voice that must've been an
attempt at pleasantly throaty. "You look like a drowned rat, dear. Hop in.
And don't worry yourself about the upholstery."
She popped the door open for me from the inside then leaned back behind
the steering wheel. I only considered the car's interior for a few minutes
before pulling the door all the way open and climbing inside.
"Thanks," I mumbled, tugging the door closed and slumping in the seat.
She smiled and stuck out her hand at me. "My name's Mary, honey, what's
yours?"
I looked at her askance, then took the hand she offered, shaking it firmly
and noting her weak grip. "John," I told her.
She smiled a purely matronly smile, though she couldn't have been more
than twenty, and ordered with excruciating politeness that I buckle my
seatbelt before she'd move the car forward. I did as she told me, though I
was uncomfortable with belting myself in when I'd so recently had to make
a fast getaway, and she pressed gently at the gas pedal until we were
moving forward again at a purely legal pace.
When she asked why I was hitchhiking at that time of night, I said my car
had broken down and I was going to call for a tow. When she fussed over my
various scrapes and gashes, I told her I'd fallen on a slick slope. And
when she started telling me about her nice little hometown and her mom and
her brothers and her dog and how she was Squash Queen last year or some
stupid shit like that, then I just tuned her out and took the time to
study her instead.
She was a looker, I could give her that. Pale skin, vibrant red hair
falling in little ringlets around her smooth, round face. Big green eyes.
Pouty lips. The kind of body a guy would usually love to have a go at.
You'd have to tape her mouth shut, though; that whiny voice and inane
babble was enough to make one's performance suffer...
"I was always the most popular girl in school," she said, recapturing my
attention. "Some of the other girls hated me for it, but that was okay. I
dated the quarterback. And I am *so* much better looking than Janine, so
she was always mean to me..."
I just let her keep talking, silently filing away the information that she
was one of those uppity bitches I'd hated in high school. Me, me, fucking
me; that's all it was with those cute empty-headed types. And they always
expected you to like them, right off the bat, even though they had nothing
going on behind their cute little faces. I spent at least ten minutes
chanting in my head, //Shut up, shut up, shut up...//
Oh yeah. There's definitely worse rides to hitch than a psycho with a
crowbar. I made a mental note not to climb into any more sedans driven by
horny fat bastards or station wagons driven by Martha Stewart.
Her babble finally trailed off when we spotted the lights of a truck stop
burning through the gloom, and she excitedly informed me that she was
going to give me change to call a tow truck, and buy me something to warm
me up, 'cause I was "shivering like a leaf". She pulled the car into the
nearly empty lot and parked between a beat-up blue Rabbit and a beat-up
black DeSoto.
Mary ushered me through the doors into the nearly-empty diner, tugging me
toward the counter. The waitress behind it, who was leaning on her hands
and half-asleep, was how I imagined Pollyanna would look in her forties.
There was a flannel-clad trucker seated alone at a well-lighted booth near
the windows, and a dour-looking man in a dark suit slumped in a corner
booth, sound asleep with his head on the table.
I slid onto a stool at the counter and ordered hot chocolate from the
waitress, who'd come awake enough to look at us accusingly for
interrupting her almost-rest. Mary smiled hugely, as if proud of me for
not being a slave to caffeine, and ordered the same. Then she pressed a
dime and quarter into my hand and asked the waitress where the payphones
were.
The woman pointed me to the rear of the diner, a narrow hallway that led
back to the bathrooms, and I slid off my stool to retreat into the crowded
space.
At the pair of phones, I chose the first, and picked up the handset,
propping it between my ear and shoulder and randomly punching numbers. As
the recorded voice informed me nicely that only a moron would attempt to
make a call without dropping some coin first, I slipped the meager amount
of money into my front pocket and listened patiently for a moment, then
told the uncaring recording that I needed a tow truck, which, of course, I
didn't.
After hanging up the handset, satisfied that I'd faked it well enough not
to raise the suspicions of anyone who might've been able to hear, I moved
further down the hallway and shouldered aside the door to the little boy's
room. I was surprised to find someone else inside.
The room was cramped: two stalls, and a single sink. There was someone
leaning against that sink, feet crossed at the ankles, facing the door and
inhaling deeply from a smoldering cigarette.
He nodded curtly to me, the single bare bulb overhead casting deep shadows
over his eyes and even deeper ones in the hollows of his high cheekbones.
I stopped just inside the room, letting the door fall shut behind me,
uncomfortably aware of how trapped I was in that room and what an easy
posture the other man held, telling me that he sure wasn't as scared of me
as I suddenly as of him.
"You're totally creeping me out," I told him, for no apparent reason. The
words just lept out of my mouth.
"That's nice," he said, sounding bored. There was a faint tinge of accent
on his voice, but I couldn't place it with just two words.
"Whatever," I grunted, moving past him toward the nearest stall. I closed
the door behind me, took a deep breath to steady the beating of my heart
-- which had suddenly and mysteriously become erratic -- and answered the
call of nature.
When I emerged again, he was still there, at the edge of the sink, his
cigarette nearly burned away. He didn't look at me, but tipped his head
back, closing his eyes, as if he were dead tired. I wasn't fooled. I'd
seen tired. And I'd seen born predators. He belonged only to the latter
group.
I tried to ignore his proximity when I slipped up behind him to wash my
hands, and ran my fingers through my hair, which was tinted a darker brown
and plastered to my head by the rain. It was only when I was drying my
hands with cheap paper towels and looked up into the dingy mirror that I
was given pause.
He wasn't there.
Or rather, he *was* there. Beside me, ominously close. It had somehow
escaped my notice that his head had turned, and I looked over to see him
staring at me with a small smirk on his lips. There should have been a
clear image of his reflection staring at mine in the mirror. Except that
my reflection was there, and his wasn't.
"That's pretty fucked up," I told him, letting calm cover my fear. Just
what kind of guy didn't have a reflection, for Christ's sake? It's not the
kind of thing you just turn off. But I tried to appear unphased, because
he was leaning casually between me and my only escape route, and I had
this funny feeling like he was a lot faster than he looked. And he looked
pretty goddamn fast.
"Yeah," he answered with a small shrug. "I guess so."
Some part of my brain pegged the accent as English. The rest of me didn't
really care.
"So uh... how do you bleach your hair?" Stupid, stupid, stupid. It just
kinda popped out. And nothing else came to mind except "oh shit, don't
kill me," and that didn't sound quite right...
"Used to have a girlfriend who did it," he told me, probably sensing my
panic and amused by it, but giving no indication either way.
"Oh yeah? What happened to her?"
"She dumped me for some other demon." He sighed heavily, almost
theatrically.
"That's rough, man." My voice was coming out a bit too strained for my
liking. I was sure he heard the panic there. But he didn't say anything.
"So you're going to let me out of here alive, right? This isn't like some,
'I'm a Billy Idol wannabe and I'm going to kill you violently in the
bathroom' kind of thing? 'Cause of all the places I thought I'd die, the
bathroom ain't one of them. Though I did have a dream once that I was set
on fire in the French Quarter by an Elvis impersonator..."
His laughter came out in a short bark, and he stepped aside, leaned
against the wall. It cleared me a path to the door, though I wasn't sure
if I wanted to step by him to take it. But after only a split second of
hesitation I stepped quickly forward, grasped the cool metal doorknob, and
made my escape. The smell of nicotine rushed out with me, but the guy
didn't move to attack or follow. I snapped the door shut behind me and
hurried toward the safety of company again.
Mary was sitting at the counter, already halfway through her foamy mug of
hot chocolate, when I slipped back onto my stool without a word.
"Tow truck coming, honey?" she asked with that brightly grating voice.
"Yeah," muttered, picking up my own hot mug and bringing it to my lips.
"Your hands are shaking," Mary said. She frowned.
"Yeah," I said again. Way to state the obvious.
When I sat my empty mug back on the counter, I looked up and surveyed the
diner with a quick glance. The trucker was still in place, nursing his
third cup of coffee. The businessman who had been asleep at his table
stood just as I looked at him, rubbing a tired hand over his sagging face
and heading for the restrooms.
The bottle blond without a reflection was still back there somewhere. I
bit down on my lower lip to keep myself from warning the suit; what did I
care what happened to him, anyway?
The guy disappeared into the narrow hallway. I had a funny feeling I'd
never see him again. Not alive, anyway. I was suddenly anxious to get the
hell out of there, but it would seem odd for me to suddenly go without
waiting for the arrival of the tow truck... which would never come. The
waitress had moved to the other side of the room; our bill was already
paid. The trucker didn't seem to have noticed we'd ever arrived in the
first place. We could both disappear without notice.
Mary afforded me the perfect opportunity to get the hell away when she
stood, smiled, and said, "You keep warm here, dear, and wait for your tow
truck. I've got to get going if I want to get to my brother's by tomorrow
morning."
I nodded, standing as if I were some kind of gentleman and saying, "I'll
walk you to your car."
Her smile was delighted, as if she'd managed to teach an ape manners. I
didn't care. It was a means to an end. If I played it right, I'd get out
of there with a bit of money and have a ride without the conversation.
After the torture she'd put me through on the way there, I figured she
deserved whatever I gave her.
As soon as we cleared the door, I steered her left. The windows were to
our right, but the left side was a solid brick wall... and the security
light was broken, casting the area in darkness. I didn't want to hear her
squeaked, confused protest... so I clamped my hand hard over her mouth and
drove her up against the wall, pinning her between me and the solid
structure. Her struggles were flailing and ineffective, her fingernails
scratching uselessly at my arms.
I restrained her easily with one hand, bashing her head back once against
the wall before wrapping my hand around her throat, maintaining enough
pressure that she couldn't breathe, so she couldn't cry out. Pulling the
knife from my pocket was a move I'd made a hundred times, as was flipping
it open to reveal the long, slim blade. I did that one-handed as well, and
kept my hand at her throat as I slipped the blade into her stomach.
Her flesh was as soft as her hair, which brushed lightly at my knuckles.
The knife slid in easily, buried to the hilt with one thrust, and when her
blood bubbled out it splashed over my hand. I paid no mind to the gore,
and drew the blade out again, plunging it into her body several times
until she slumped and stilled. I pocketed the knife and slipped my
red-stained hand into her back pocket, grabbing her wallet and keeping it
in my hand as I let gravity claim her body.
She fell to the pavement at my feet, and I took half a step back to keep
the blood off my boots; they were dirty enough already without making a
sticky mess of them. I flipped the wallet open and found her driver's
license inside, smirking at her extra-perky smiling picture.
"Thanks for the ride, Mary Sue Darwin," I whispered, and punctuated the
statement with a small chuckle. I tucked the license into my pocket, and
eyed the fairly thick wad of cash in her wallet before stuffing the entire
thing into my other pocket. A quick dip into Mary Sue's pocket turned up a
key ring, and I clutched it in my hand, straightened, and turned to walk
back to her car.
He was there when I turned, so close behind me that I should have felt the
heat of his body, heard him breathe.
"Shit!" I yelped, surprised at his sudden appearance. I stumbled back a
pace, and my knife seemed to jump into my hand of its own free will, as if
it wanted to defend itself, too. The keys dropped from my grasp as I
opened my other hand to contribute to the fight to come.
He just stood there, feet spaced at shoulder width, his head cocked
slightly to one side as he looked down at the body.
"Not bad," he said, with a slight sniff. I could've sworn he was savoring
the pungent odor of her blood. "A little messy, but there's no cover
here... so the rain's going to wash away any real evidence. Too bad
there's a witness."
I didn't snarl in anger or sputter threats. Instead I lunged smoothly at
him, my attack in fair form. He sidestepped easily, but I'd learned long
ago to improvise; a slash to the side caught him in the abdomen. It was a
scoring wound and nothing more, but with most it would be enough to
confuse and frighten.
Not with this one. That didn't surprise me, though. A man with no
reflection who calls himself a demon... most likely, he is one. I was
curious to find whether a demon could be defeated with a long switchblade.
And I wasn't afraid to die. I actually sort of wondered what would happen
if I did.
He seemed surprised that I'd managed to land a hit at all, and even more
surprised when I pressed in further, reversing my hold on the knife so
that the blade emerged from the bottom of my fist, and pulled him in
close, trying to drive the knife into his back.
My blow was stopped short by a fast grab and a grip that threatened to
crush bone and did more than threaten with my nerves; the knife dropped
from fingers suddenly bereft of blood. His other arm wrapped around my
back as if I were a long-lost old friend, drawn into a loving embrace,
though it crushed me to his chest and drove the air from my lungs.
"You've obviously done that before," he continued, conversationally, as if
my sternum weren't on the verge of cracking. "But you've still got a lot
to learn. Lesson one --" He dropped my wrist and used the hand he'd freed
up to yank my head to the side. "-- is that there's always something
bigger and meaner out there, just waiting..." Two sharp teeth scraped up
my neck, and he finished his statement in a murmur, with his lips pressed
to my throat. "To eat you."
His bite was hard, and punishing, but he withdrew his teeth almost
immediately to clamp his mouth around the wound, drawing my blood out and
drinking it down eagerly. I struggled, but I was far too weak to escape
his grasp, and I quickly learned that attempts to free myself would result
only in a more crushing hold.
When he finally let me go, my legs refused to support me; I felt as if I'd
been laying down for days and then tried to leap to my feet. Dizziness
left me confused and disoriented, and I clutched at his legs to keep
myself from falling all the way to the pavement. My right hand, which
still hadn't returned much feeling, curled around his left knee, and my
left hand wrapped into a fist around the material of his black jeans.
"You've a lot to learn," his voice repeated, floating down from somewhere
above me. His hand caressed the back of my head in a gesture that was
almost loving, cradling my head against the outside of his thigh. "But
you've certainly got the skills and the style. You're better than a lot of
my kind, and you don't even have a demon urging you on."
He stooped, and his arms wrapped around me again, though their embrace was
much more gentle then than they had been the first time. He pulled me to
my feet, and tugged my arm around his neck, his going to my waist, as if
he were helping a drunken friend to a taxi. He guided me past the station
wagon to the black DeSoto, and opened up the passenger side door to place
me inside, then slammed the door and walked around to the driver's side.
Next to the building, a slight steam rose from the contact of hot blood
and cold rain. I shuddered uncontrollably, but I knew it was more from
being soaked with freezing water than it was horror at what I'd done. I'd
thrown up the first time, and cried the second. By the time I killed Mary
Sue Darwin, my response to death -- at least, other people's deaths -- had
degenerated to a derisive smile, which I happily granted the body from the
dry shelter of the car.
The other door opened up to admit the leather-clad body of the lean blond
whose name I didn't even know. He settled comfortably in, shot me a glance
with icy blue eyes, turned the key in the ignition, and threw the car into
reverse. I wasn't able to do much more than slump, my head resting against
the back of the seat, as he pulled out of the parking lot and roared off
on his course.
He glanced at me again, and yellow eyes flashed from beneath a ridged
brow. The DeSoto's engine rumbled like a growling cat, and rain slammed
down on the car with an impotent fury only God could muster.
"Don't worry, mate," he said in a reassuring voice, belied by a smirk that
revealed slivers of two long teeth. "I'll give you a ride."
THE END
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Mission accomplished? You tell me!
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