It’s Monday, and Chapter Three’s all ready for you! I hope y’all enjoy it, and be sure to tell your fellow romance and horror lovers!
After Alex left her conquest for the day, she headed for her bed. But a full day’s rest isn’t on the menu, making for a bad case of introspection . . . and some unpleasant travels down Memory Lane . . .
Author’s Note: Axes and Echoes copyright 2012 by J.S. Wayne. Reproduction or creation of “fan fiction” or other derivative works without prior written authorization by the author is a violation of author’s copyright and will be prosecuted. Reblogging and reposting, with proper accreditation and ONLY in the work’s entirety, is permitted and encouraged. Enjoy!
Chapter Three
May 13th, 2012
3:50 p.m.
The echoes of my own shrieks ripped through the veil of my dreams and dragged me back to the waking world. Panicked, I tore open the drawer on the bedside table and clawed for the cool rubber Pachmeyer grip of my nine-millimeter revolver. As soon as the contoured rubber pressed into my palm, I drew the weapon and flicked the barrel around the familiar surroundings of my bedroom, well lit by early afternoon sunshine.
In moments I verified the room was clear and no fanged menaces waited to snack on me, but my body refused to heed my mind’s assurances. My pulse galloped with fright and my waking screams continued to pummel the bottom of my throat, clamoring for release, although I had managed to mute the cries to alarmed whimpers. With my left hand I reached up and wiped away the cold sweat of terror from my brow.
The dream had been so vivid: an instant replay of the warehouse from the night before, only this time the ending had been different. Instead of coming out of the encounter alarmed and looking like I’d spent some time banging erasers after class, the vampire had battened onto my neck and ripped. The icy shock of its fangs puncturing my flesh felt so real I feared to look in the mirror, because the horror of seeing two ragged wounds above my carotid artery would have stolen any courage I still had.
Swallowing hard, I got my whimpering under control and sagged back onto the pillow, shaking with adrenaline. A few seconds later, it occurred to me to put down the revolver, and I laid it gently on the wood surface of the lamp table. Scrubbing at my sleep-heavy eyes, I peered at the clock. 3:51 p.m., according to the luminous green display.
I groaned. Usually I didn’t get out of bed until six, after going to bed at between seven and ten. This morning’s bedroom acrobatics had kept me out later than usual, and I had collapsed gratefully into my soft cotton sheets about ten thirty. Unlike most people I knew, I could function on short sleep if I had to, but the orders from Above were direct and to the point: Less than eight hours’ uninterrupted sleep, don’t bother coming in.
I knew these rules had a sound purpose. A tired hunter was an unwary one, easy pickings for vampires, who seemed to have an uncanny knack for determining who was well rested and physically up to snuff and who was not. Like any other predator, they would attack the easier prey first given a choice in the matter.
Grimacing, I picked up the phone and dialed a two-digit speed code. The ring tone chirped about half of one time before the annoyingly perky voice of Maria, our dispatcher, answered.
“Hi, Alex.”
I didn’t bother asking how she knew it was me. Her phone had caller ID and enough complicated bells and whistles that if she’d wanted to make a long-distance call to Saturn, I was pretty sure she could do it and hear “Blzzzzweeept!” on the other end. (Offhand I don’t really know if Saturnites . . . Saturnians . . . whatever the natives of Saturn are called actually talk like that, but I’ll go with it until I have conclusive evidence to the contrary.)
“Hi, Maria. I need to call out tonight.”
“You sick?” She asked, not with real concern, but like someone marking off a box on a checklist. Maria could be described a lot of ways, but maternal wasn’t an adjective that could fairly be applied to her.
“No. I went to sleep at around ten forty-five and I just woke up.”
A moment of silence ensued while she did some rough mental math. “So, just over five hours. You’re sidelined for the night, unless you can get some more sleep.”
“Not likely,” I muttered, rubbing my throat where the chill feel of the vampire’s fangs persisted.
“Okay. I’ll mark you as off duty tonight. Try to get some rest.”
From most people, the parting salvo would have sounded warm and concerned. Maria was all business, all the time, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn she had a microprocessor where her heart should have been. She wasn’t anyone’s definition of a people person, but she did keep order with an iron fist.
“Thanks,” I replied, but she had already cut the connection. Hanging up the phone, I stretched and considered what to do next.
Breakfast? My stomach performed a lazy barrel roll at the very idea of food at such an ungodly hour. Exercise? Every muscle in my body tensed, prepared to explode into fully realized cramps if I did anything more strenuous than turn the pages of a book. Cigarette?
Ah.
Thirty seconds later, a Camel smoldered away between my fingers. Turning to my left, I perused the bookcase. Most of the books belonged to old me: bodice-ripper romances, seasoned by some spicier fare from a small publisher few people had ever heard of. There were a few horror books, some drier analyses of folklore and myths most people refused to believe . . . or claimed they did, at any rate. Nothing sounded good enough or educational enough to justify the effort of reaching over and grabbing one, so I contented myself by flopping onto my back, fluffing the extra-soft pillow beneath my neck and staring up at the ceiling.
Old me.
New me.
Who the hell was “me,” anyway?
Six months ago, I could have told you with ease. “My name’s Alexandra Morrissey, my pastimes include shopping, parties, and barely skating by in college, I have three guys who’d all like to get more serious with me, and I know everything there is to know about what celebrity’s wearing whose couture this week.”
That was old me. About as deep as a teaspoon, flitting along on the surface of life, making as few impressions as I possibly could. As long as I kept my grades above sea level (snicker) and didn’t get knocked up, I pretty much did as I pleased. I had a part-time job in a pizza parlor which, while it wasn’t exactly intellectually stimulating, paid my few bills and gave me a little pocket money. Unlike many of my peers at UW, Mommy and Daddy weren’t footing my college bills, so I had to keep my grades just high enough not to jeopardize my financial aid.
The demarcation between old me and new me gleamed sharp and jagged as the fractured edges of a shard of glass.
I’d let the new, very cute busboy, Rob, take me out to his car after closing one night. I didn’t mind getting into a necking session with him, but I hadn’t entirely decided I wanted things to proceed much past second base. God, I was so young and naïve. What a difference six months makes.
He was lying almost prone atop me in the front seat of his Ford Escort, nuzzling the neckline of my uniform polo shirt in between expert attacks on my lips, when the passenger window exploded, raining safety glass all over the interior. Even as I started screaming, Rob vanished with a yelp, his pale face twisted into a terrified mask.
I stared out into the gloom, still screaming, as his attacker pushed Rob’s head to the side and buried his—her?—face in Rob’s neck. He stiffened, but it was too dark to see any more than that.
The sucking sounds came to me as clear as crystal, bestial, thirsty draughts as the monster did its work. In a few moments, it shoved Rob violently away as if discarding an empty beer can. Rob tumbled back and down, out of my line of sight, as if all his bones had liquefied simultaneously.
For one moment, I glimpsed a moon-pale face and empty black eyes, the mouth and chin smeared unevenly with darkness. Then the creature turned away from me and hissed.
My bladder let go, soaking my panties, my work slacks, and the upholstery.
The next few moments of memory are fragmented, stop-motion images captured by my subconscious.
The monster freezes. A shadowy figure appears in front of the monster, off to the right, just backlit enough for me to make out a male form. A voice rings out, a challenge that no doubt was spoken clearly and confidently but reaches my ears as a garbled drone. The monster crouches. The man aims something at the monster. The monster shrieks, the sound reminding me of the wail of my mother’s copper tea kettle with the porcelain spout. A moment later, the monster vanishes into an untidy pile of powder. No, that can’t be right. It was a person, right? People don’t do that.
Time snapped back into a regular flow instead of jittering stills from a horror show. The man, clad in a black uniform like a Special Forces soldier’s, leaned down into the broken window, his rugged, handsome face concerned and cautious.
“Are you all right, Miss?”
I shook my head, cowering back against the driver’s side door.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Guys didn’t just wander around dressed like that for kicks, and I tried to tell him as much. All that emerged from my throat was the barest ghost of a scream.
“Did that thing bite you?”
I shook my head again, reflexively. His manner was that of a zookeeper soothing a frightened animal. In retrospect, I don’t blame him. That’s probably exactly what I looked like, right down to the pool of rapidly cooling urine soaking my front.
He nodded as if he understood. For all I knew, maybe he did.
“Your boyfriend—I’m sorry about him. I wasn’t fast enough.” The words grated out past his square, even teeth, and for just a moment, a ghost of remorse flickered over his face.
“You mean Rob’s . . . “ I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.
He inclined his head a fraction of an inch, his jaw tightening with emotion. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.
Violent death was a new experience for me. Like just about everyone of my generation, I liked a good horror movie as much as the next girl, but the deaths in those movies were . . . I don’t know, safe somehow. Clean, no matter how gory the actors and the makeup people decided to make them. There was nothing safe or clean about this real-life horror, nothing dramatic or darkly glamorous in it. Just a dead body that minutes before had been a horny college kid, a guy dressed like a Navy SEAL, and one very frightened, very confused almost woman with wet pants.
He opened the door slowly, keeping a low stream of calming nonsense up as he leaned inside. “Here. Let me help you.” His patrician nose wrinkled, at the sharp acidic stench of my pee no doubt, but he held out his hand nonetheless. Palm out, fingers spread, a gesture one might make to a cowering, half-feral dog.
After a pause that stretched into eternity, I reached out and clasped his warm, dry flesh. He pulled gently, not enough to budge me if I didn’t want to be budged, but enough to coax me out of my fear-stupor. “That’s a girl, come on,” he mumbled, easing me out of the car.
I looked down to make sure I didn’t step in anything, and noticed an oddly misshapen pile of gray dust on the ground roughly where the monster had fallen. Beyond that, maybe ten feet to the left, a sprawled broken doll shape, roughly Rob’s size, lay on the asphalt in a pool of deeper shadow.
“Don’t look, sweetheart. Let’s get you looked at and patched up.” The man’s voice was gruff but kind, and I responded to the kindness in that voice by bursting into hysterical tears. He held me close, ignoring my stink, and petted my hair and shoulders awkwardly, whispering soothing assurances that only made me weep all the harder.
Finally I pulled away and sniffled.
“What’s your name?” I hiccupped.
“My name’s Murphy.”
Sirens sounded in the distance.
“Come on, sweetheart. I’ll tell you everything you want to know about me in the car.”
I blushed, embarrassed. “You may not want me in your car right now. I peed myself.” At that moment, I could have crawled into the nearest gutter and died without so much as a whimper of protest.
Murphy gave me a half-smile. “I’ve seen, smelled, and had worse in my car. Never mind that. Let’s go.”
As the sirens drew closer, Murphy hustled me down the alley and into an overly macho muscle car of some kind. He started it up and we drove into the night, a veteran hunter and a girl who would never, ever be the same again.
