| |
Rayner
RAYNER SKULKED THROUGH the shadows that muddied the dark sidewalks. People who rushed by as he passed saw what they wanted to see. A man in sweats or in a business suit with forgettable features they thought they might have known once.
They’d forget him a moment after he’d disappeared into the night. A twirl of mist. An after breeze. They never saw him for what he truly was.
He stopped outside the nightclub and slithered up against the entrance wall.
Most humans would call him a vampire. They didn’t know any better. He was an ancient blood demon. There were no vampires, werewolves, or supernatural beings. No true mass murderers or serial killers, either, for that matter. No such things. Only demons.
And he was ravenously hungry again.
The din of humans laughing, singing, and cavorting like mindless children beyond the doors maddened him. They were unaware of the danger so near as he lurked outside in the early morning hours. Waiting for his prey. It was like plucking appetizers off a plate. His victims would be drunk. He’d suck their ninety-proof blood and get tipsy himself. Which is fine with me. Inebriation helps me to forget.
Every noise made his eyes blink. Bouncing from foot to foot, a snarl escaped from his mouth. His hands were clenched fists at his side. He had to fight the urge to smash something, hurt something. Why wouldn’t they stop tormenting him?
Those enraged or frightened faces of his victims, some misty, some clearer, that were everywhere in the air around him. One moment they were there, another they were not...his dead humans. Only recently had they begun to haunt and follow him. Their remnants falling into line behind him must stretch out for miles and miles. He didn’t dare look, but could hear their soft and squishy breathing; their zombie-like footsteps as they tracked him from place to place. He could no longer escape them.
That’d never happened before.
Sliding into an entryway, his eyes peering into the gloom, he waited. He’d already fed, but didn’t yet want to return to his apartment. When he was in silence, alone, the centuries taunted him with their swift passing, their endless emptiness. The everlasting accumulation of years was driving him insane. That and waiting for the final battle with humanity to begin. Perhaps it never would. Perhaps all the legends were lies and his kind had no final purpose. No great destiny at all. They simply existed to kill...kill...kill...and be tormented century after century with the futility of their continuation.
His dead victims stalked him; the voices in his head tortured him. And his irritability was getting worse. It was a sign.
Something big was about to happen. He could feel, sense, and almost smell the carnage, the upheaval coming. The last time he’d felt this way had been the start of a world war. This time the forewarnings were worse. No amount of warm blood alleviated his discomfort, but he kept moving and killing anyway.
It was all he knew.
He drank blood until he could drink no more. It didn’t help. He shoved the troubling thoughts from his mind. It didn’t help. Frustrated, he’d retreat to his lair and pass out until the next night. Then the cycle would begin again.
With what he was, he couldn’t stay long in one place, couldn’t afford to form close ties to anything or anyone. Growing attached was a problem because he never aged.
Soon, he’d be packing and moving on. Forever alone was the story of his existence. Humans were only for sustenance and he didn’t get along with his kind. They believed he was too soft.
And he had enemies everywhere who mustn’t find him.
Often, he questioned why he should go on at all. The melancholy, as he called it, had again captured him. It happened that way. Every few centuries he’d sink into depression between the highs of basking in the spectacles of a new age and the lows of having done everything so many times he was bored silly. Very little surprised or interested him anymore.
I’ve been among the humans too long. Their passivity has infected me.
He’d thought of ending himself–as an ancient one, he knew there were ways–and had been close to doing it many times. But something, the scent of fresh blood, the lust for the hunt, or a new challenge would beckon him back at the last moment and he’d go on until the next melancholy. But truth was, they’d been coming closer and closer together.
He hated his wretched existence.
A lone woman, her steps wobbly, exited the bar and headed for her car. Her skin glistened with sweat. It must be a sultry night, though he couldn’t feel the heat. Oh, how he’d love to be able to feel those tactile sensations of warmth and cold. How he’d love to taste anything but blood. All else tasted, smelled, like cardboard.
In all his time, he’d never experienced love or hope. Compassion or mercy. He was a killing machine that hated, despaired, and, lucky him, could feel physical pain. Some life.
The woman had too much to drink. Past her prime, there was no wedding band on her finger and there was too much make-up smeared on her face. He followed her, spying on her thoughts. She wasn’t going home to anyone. No one waited anywhere for her.
Ah, what a shame, his smile mocked.
Her cat had died the week before.
Tsk,tsk. Too bad, so sad.
He listened to her inner litany of money and love troubles. It made his head hurt. There was something medically wrong with her heart. She was miserable. A throwaway person.
She fumbled at the lock of her car door, humming off key, and he readied to strike.
Then the others of his kind appeared and charged down the street towards him. Moving as swiftly as starving wolves scenting fresh prey.
To a human’s ears, they’d be suspicious noises in the twilight or dark, the shiver of a mortal’s blood-soaked skin; barely shadows.
But Rayner could see them. All four of them.
And they’d seen him.
He didn’t know who they were, hadn’t been officially introduced, though he’d spied them around the area a few times. They were younger than he, wild and impetuous, their actions dangerously risky. Show offs who didn’t play by the old rules.
He didn’t approve of their behavior. They might have been invisible, but their voices and laughter weren’t. And their bloodlust was insatiable. Their kills sloppy.
They ruined it for the rest of them. Alerted the humans to their presence. Made it harder for their kind to remain hidden.
The pack swooped down, snatched the woman, and dragged her into the air screaming and kicking. They broke her neck, he heard the crack loud and sharp in the air above, and drained her of blood, passing her around like a communal cup.
The woman’s broken body was tossed at his feet, an empty husk; another demon commandment shattered as the shadows sped away. Blood drinkers with half a brain knew that after they fed they disposed of the leftovers in a woodsy grave or deep ravine where humans wouldn’t discover the bodies too easily. All the missing people in the world? Well, that’s what happened to most of them. Demon snacks.
The woman’s cries echoed in his head.
Most of the young ones were brutal. For them, the hunting and killing were better sport than the feeding. Stealing the humans’ lives weren’t enough. They had to torture them first. Had he been like that once? He probably had. But it was a long time past.
Once, he would have joined the gang for the rest of the night to feed on whatever mortals they came across and to lord their superiority over the unlucky race.
Not tonight. He didn’t feel like it.
The demons flew over the parking lot and rocketed towards the towering silver arch standing guard before the river. The arch’s metal gleamed in the city’s lights. Called the gateway to the west, it was beautiful. Graceful and shiny. A marvel of architect fashioned by the very creatures he’d always detested. Had detested. Now, he wasn’t so sure.
Once, he’d thought he was a god among them and that someday the mortals would be extinct, except as food and slaves, and his kind would rule the earth...when they won the final battle. It hadn’t happened. Eons had passed and the humans had proliferated like termites, had grown stronger over the millennia, and now dominated the world.
Now, how had that come to be? How had humans, with their frail bodies, weak minds, and unruly hearts become masters of the planet? He didn’t know. Especially since humans were so motivated by emotions. Love. Hate. Revenge. Guilt. So messy.
And they didn’t have a clue to what was coming. Well, most of them anyway.
Something stirred in the bag of bones at his feet and a translucent being, a wraithlike ghostly thing that appeared to be human but wasn’t, escaped the remains and stood up to stare back at him. It smiled and gestured gently with milky hands and gazed upwards as if it saw something he didn’t. Something exquisitely breathtaking. Its see-through face was full of awe, happiness and such peace. It glowed.
Frozen, Rayner felt an emotion he’d never had before. Amazement.
What was this thing? And why was it so blissful? It was dead, after all.
The demon couldn’t understand what the shimmering creature was trying to say to him, though it wasn’t angry or upset. It was so happy. All Rayner could do was watch in astonishment as it drifted upward into the velvet blackness of the vast night sky and vanished, taking all its radiance and his strange emotions with it.
The humans would have called that glowing thing a soul. He’d read about souls. It was something humans believed they had that allowed them to live forever in a place called heaven. Hmm, live forever without stealing blood, without killing other beings. Finally being happy. What a pipe dream.
Had it really been a soul? No, impossible. He didn’t believe in souls. None of his kind did. It was just another myth, a great lie, perpetrated by the enemy to enslave their soldiers. But it fit the description of one. If that was what it had been.
How strange.
Staring up into the sky, the rain began to fall softly and then heavier until the night world was a curtain of water. It washed away the small amount of blood that pooled beneath the woman’s corpse and somehow the pile of skin and bones, left-behind debris, seemed less now. The translucent being must have animated it. Now the body was only a dead thing.
Rayner didn’t know what to do. No matter how he tried to justify it, seeing that thing come out of the body and rise into the skies had shaken him. He wanted to go home and not think about it. Disturbed, he wasn’t hungry any longer.
There were no such things as souls. And demons weren’t supposed to be able to see them anyway. But he’d seen something. What did it mean?
The rain pursued him through the abandoned streets. Steam rose from the sidewalks and wrapped him in a smoky haze. He passed no people. Saw no other demons. He was alone.
Inside the apartment, he made sure the shades were down and the windows and doors were locked before he went into his room, barely more than a walk-in closet, which was part of a larger suite. It wasn’t much, but didn’t cost him a penny. He never paid for anything.
He lay on his single bed and let his gaze rove the tiny, bare, and unadorned space with the empty walls. He’d never spruced it up. It was only a place to fritter the day away in between hunting and slaughtering humans.
After awhile, the divorced stockbroker who rented the apartment, Shelly something or other, came stumbling in. For some reason, he had no idea why, he’d allowed her to live. She wasn’t any trouble and the ruse helped conceal him. People were used to her living there and asked no questions. She traveled a lot and her mind was easy to manipulate. As most humans, she didn’t believe in supernaturals, so he could hide right in front of her. She’d never seen him, never guessed she was living with a demon.
Her hand was on the closet door. Go away, he silently ordered.
She did. It worked every time. Her clothes were strewn all over the apartment because he lived in her closet. Later, the outside door opened and shut. The woman had left again. Probably running an errand or going out for a late rendezvous. She was a restless human.
He wanted to sleep and forget what he’d seen earlier on the parking lot, how unnerved it’d made him feel, but the disquiet had returned stronger than ever and kept him from it.
There was a racket outside his room. Someone was in the apartment and it wasn’t Shelly what’s her name, either. Glass broke, someone yelled, and malicious laughter came through the door at him. There were the mournful cries of a human child.
“Damn, how did they find me?” Rayner growled. He yanked the door open. The demons from outside the bar who’d taken his meal were in the apartment and they’d brought a captive. Cowering in a corner, terrified, was a redheaded human boy of about ten or so.
“We brought him for you, Rayner. A gift,” said the demon nearest him. It wore the empty face of a twenty-year-old mortal with greasy flaxen hair and was dressed in leather from head to toe. In its ears were earrings and in its nose, a ring. Skin was as white as a bottle of milk. It looked like the perfect movie vampire. Oh, the young ones, they liked their little jokes. “To make up for stealing that woman earlier. Sorry, we got carried away. Ya know how it is when the hunger hits?”
Rayner didn’t believe they were sorry for what they’d done, for anything they did. They were there to gauge his strength so they could taunt him. Try to vanquish him. The young ones were forever trying to depose of the old ones; doing so carved vivid notches on their belts and gave them power and higher standing in the demon world.
Ha, they had much to learn, but Rayner wasn’t worried. They didn’t know who they were dealing with. They were more a nuisance than a threat, disturbing his tranquility and reminding him of being stupidly young. He didn’t like to remember those days and didn’t appreciate those who made him remember.
“Please, let me go,” the child begged. “I won’t tell anyone what happened to me. That you took me. I promise.” Blood dripped from the boy’s nose and bruises darkened his tiny face. His fragile body was plastered against the wall. “I want to go home,” he whimpered.
One of the demons walked over and kicked him. The crying became sniveling. Tear-rimmed eyes pleaded for help, full of fear and pain, and fastened on the one being that had not hurt him so far.
Strangely, the boy’s eyes made Rayner uncomfortable. He saw his pain and something rippled beneath his cold skin. He felt swift anger at himself. At the demons who’d brought the child. Why should he care if another human died? Over the centuries, he’d killed thousands. Hundreds of thousands.
One of the demons dropped a lamp and grinned at Rayner as it crashed to the floor. Short in stature, the young one had donned skin the color of dark chocolate and a gaze that glittered with hatred. Being one himself, Rayner could see the real demon behind the façade. Its true form having scaly stygian skin, huge clawed feet, and two sharp tails. Its eyes were ebony stones and its teeth were sharpened spikes.
Damn, he’d liked that lamp. It’d been elegantly expensive. The stockbroker would definitely miss it. Which meant he had to either replace it or tweak her mind so she’d think she’d broken it herself. Or he could kill her.
But, the bottom line was, now Rayner had to move on. He didn’t trust the trio in front of him knowing where his sanctuary was. That made him the angriest. Was he losing his grip that such young ones could find him so easily? That they knew his name? Or had he been marked for termination because of his actions and what he’d been thinking lately? Had some of his older demon kin read his thoughts? Uh, oh.
“I don’t want your peace offering,” Rayner spat. He was watching the blubbering child, who’d realized he wasn’t going to get any help from him. “I want you all out of here. Now!” He pointed at the door, straightening to his full height, which was taller than any of the other demons. “And take your meal with you.”
“Oh, we’re not leaving, ancient one. You can’t turn us out so easily,” greasy hair said. “We came here to pay you a visit and visit we shall.” The demon moved about the apartment, knocking things to the floor. Walking on the shattered glass. It made crunching sounds beneath its clumsy feet. “Nice pad. Much better than where we’re living. Some abandoned decrepit house on the outskirts of town. Mind us crashing here with you for awhile?”
“Yes, I mind. Get out.” It’d been a long time since he’d used his mind control against another demon, but he called on what he had and leveled burning eyes at the three. Willed them to obey.
Their minds were puny and there was no hesitation. They left, dragging the boy behind them, with only their trancelike response reflecting their confusion.
The leather-clad leader glanced over his shoulder, his expression baffled as if to say, why am I doing this? You just wait...we’ll be back.
Rayner observed through the window as they herded the child down the street in the rain. The boy’s eyes, peering up at him, were still begging. Poor human, so young, he’d be dead before the sun rose.
Rayner experienced a rare twinge of guilt at the boy’s fate, then shrugged and turned away. It was none of his concern. Humans were there to feed on. That’s all. Young or old what difference did it make when they died? They didn’t live long anyway.
But he’d killed no children recently. No, not in many years.
The memory of the boy’s pitiful face, those terrified eyes, continued to annoy him as he searched for and located another place to live. He couldn’t shake it.
It’d never crossed his mind to save the boy. Why would he? So it irritated him that the memory wouldn’t leave him.
He found another place to live in a duplex across the street from St. Louis’s Forest Park. He noticed the For Rent sign on a stroll. The woods before him and the city behind appealed to him. It was a place to hide and to hunt all in one. A perfect spot.
Soon, he had the landlady, a fleshy mortal with tinted hair and ferret eyes, thinking he’d already paid six months rent in advance. And she fell for the rest of the fairy-tale: That he was a reclusive writer–one of the many fake covers he used–who didn’t like to be bothered during the day because he was working on his new novel. Under the guise of an eccentric writer he got away with so much.
He moved in, but didn’t meet the young woman next door until he bumped into her late that night. She was coming home around two in the morning as he was leaving.
He’d made himself invisible to human eyes, but she saw him. She actually saw him. That was the first shock. The second was when she stopped, looked at him directly, and said, “What are you? You’re not a remnant, but you aren’t human either.”
He’d stared at her, mouth open, he couldn’t read her thoughts at all, not a glimmer, and then he ran. He fled from her sharp eyes, her special knowing; hoping she hadn’t seen him come from the adjacent house, didn’t know what he was, and that she’d unsettled him.
An awful thought hit him. Had humankind evolved so much that now some of them could see him when he didn’t want them to? Humans see demons and other invisibles? A sarcastic snort. Good grief, wouldn’t that change things?
Truth was, she’d intrigued him. He sensed something different in her than in any other human he’d ever met. She was surrounded by this rainbow aura of pulsating light that he’d never witnessed before.
And for a human, she’d had courage, showing no fear whatsoever when she saw him. There’d been caution, yes, but no fear. As if she’d dealt with his kind before. Odd.
He couldn’t stop thinking about her. It’d been a long time since anyone had touched him in any way and she had. In the dark, notwithstanding the scars on the side of her face her hair was meant to hide, he’d seen she was young and tall for a human female. Her voice had been husky. Strength hid behind her movements as fluid as an athlete’s or a dancer’s. Shoulder-length hair shone softly in the moonlight. Her eyes glistened deep with secrets.
He saw all that and more. The dark hid nothing because he drew power from the night.
After the encounter, he’d returned to skulk through the shadows around the two-story building he saw her go into, trying to peek in. But the blinds were drawn and he wasn’t sure which part of the house she was in. Other people lived there, he could sense them, so he couldn’t run in and drag her out. Not that he wanted to. It’d be foolish to cause trouble close to his new residence when he didn’t want to find another apartment. He liked his rooms, the location. So he went on his way. He had time. Unwise or not, he had to get to know the woman next door better. Find out if she could actually see his kind. And how. Then he’d decide what to do.