The Children
Michael’s voice was hushed but still overloud in this dungeon. “What do you see?”
They were on their knees, sweating already, and Dez took a moment to peer at their surroundings. Uncomplicated layout, long room. Only twenty feet deep but close to forty feet wide, storage along the walls to go with the broad center rack that ran nearly the length of the room. The gruesome scuffle between the vampire children was taking place on the other side of the center rack, maybe a dozen feet to their left. Reluctantly, Dez found a gap in the antediluvian equipment to watch the children. Despite the fact that one child had the other’s skin flap in its teeth, they’d both paused to listen, were still peering in Dez and Michael’s direction. Dez peered through the gap in the equipment – the stack against which he pressed appeared to be comprised of football shoulder pads and jerseys. Unwashed, judging by the odor. But the sight of the vampire children blotted out every other thought.
Cassandra had called them abominations, and as far as words went, abomination would do. But these creatures were even more grotesque than he’d imagined. Permanently changed, their maws stretched from nearly earlobe to earlobe, their eyes huge and glassy and constantly swirling with black and orange. Those eyes reminded Dez of tiger marbles. The children’s noses were little more than twin slits, their brows furrowed into cunning Vs, the teeth inside those gaping lips long and hooked. The children wore discolored Jockey underwear, so there was no way to discern their sex. Their ivory bodies were completely hairless.
“Either scoot your ass over,” Michael said at his ear, “or tell me what you’re seeing.”
Wordlessly, Dez moved aside.
Michael took his spot, squinted between the shoulder pads, and his mouth fell open. Dez could relate. The vampire children precluded speech.
Dez pushed to standing – it was awkward with his wrists bound – and crept to Michael’s left. He found another gap in the equipment and peered at the vampires in time to see the nearest one let the sheet of skin sag from its teeth. The vampire child who’d been bitten scuttled backward and clutched the flap of skin to its body. Dez couldn’t be positive, but he suspected this sort of wound was commonplace for them; further, he guessed the wound, gory though it was, would be healed by nightfall.
Michael returned Dez’s gaze, then shrugged. Dez didn’t trust himself to whisper quietly enough, so he glanced at Michael’s bound wrists, and Michael nodded, began casting about for something to cleave the ropes. Dez did too. If they’d had time, he had no doubt they’d be able to find something here to free them – the array of antiquated athletic equipment resembled a museum of medieval torture devices – but they had no time, no time at all. Once the vampire children realized they were not alone, they’d attack, and Dez had no idea how he and Michael could repel them.
Dez looked up in time to see Michael shuffling toward the doors. For an agonizing second Dez was sure Michael would try to barge through them, which would be about as fruitless and tactically dangerous as any action they could take. Not only were the doors steel and locked fast, the noise would attract the children.
But Michael wasn’t stopping at the doors; he was stopping before a shelf full of what looked like track-and-field equipment. He glanced at Dez and twitched his head for Dez to get over there, fast. Dez complied, moving as stealthily as he could. He didn’t like letting the vampire children out of his sight, but an irrational part of him was happy not to be staring at the creepy little fuckers anymore.
He pulled up next to Michael and understood what Michael had in mind. The device was a starting block with steel footholds. What could help them, though, was the fact that the footholds were adjustable and that each notch on the block amounted to a steel tooth. Michael turned his back, clearly meaning to saw his ropes on the steel teeth. Dez snatched up the block and held it firmly before him. Michael didn’t start sawing.
“Go ahead,” Dez whispered.
Out of the corner of his mouth, Michael whispered, “What do you mean, go ahead? You go ahead.”
Dez realized this made more sense. With his wrists bound behind him, Michael couldn’t even see what he was doing. Dez could. Michael braced his feet apart; Dez brought the cutting teeth close and began to saw. The ragged scritching sound caused Dez to freeze. Way too loud. Jesus, like an overdone movie sound effect.
From the other side of the center rack came the slither of movement. Michael turned to Dez, eyes wide. More slithery movement from the other side of the rack.
“Fuck it,” Michael whispered. “Just untie me.”
Dez placed the starting block on the floor and worked his fingers into the thick knot. A wave of desperation roiled through him. The vampires had cinched this bastard tight; it could take all day to work Michael’s hands free. Dez had always been shitty with knots anyway. Couldn’t tie them, was horrible at untying them.
Padding footsteps came from the other side of the rack. Nearly even with where they stood. Michael jerked a furious nod down, and Dez began working at the knot again. He bared his teeth, exasperated not only with the knot, but with the clumsiness of his own bound hands. He’d have a difficult time getting Michael free with the full use of his hands, but like this?
Michael bounced a little on his heels, which didn’t help, but Dez dared not say anything. If the vampires weren’t already aware of their position, speaking aloud would certainly do it. He was getting absolutely no traction with the knot. His fingers were frail, useless—
One of the ropes loosened.
Yes!
Dez worked his fingers under it, pulled, and felt it slide another inch. The knot was still taut, but if he could loosen this rope, the rest would come, and then Michael could use those glorious hands of his to incinerate these fiends, and he and Dez could fight their way out of here, get Iris and Levi—
Michael had inclined his head to stare at something. Dez looked up and discovered a vampire child atop the steel rack, on all fours, crouched between shabby basketball uniforms and the chipped-paint ceiling. The uninjured vampire child—the one Dez suspected was the alpha—stared down at them.
“Uh, Dez?” Michael said.
The vampire child sprang.
Michael dove left, Dez right. The child crashed into the steel rack face-first and scrambled around to face Dez, and in that moment Dez registered several facts. One, the child had leapt at them with such power that it had split open the flesh of its forehead against the rack. Secondly, the impact was so ferocious that an entire shelf of objects – shot puts, discuses, even a javelin or two – had clattered to the floor near where Michael lay. And last, that the vampire child was hardly fazed by its injury, that despite the blood sluicing over its brow, it was fixated on Dez.
On the hunt.
How often do you get live meat? Dez wondered. How often do they feed you real people rather than whatever the hell is in that slop bucket?
Whatever the case, the alpha vampire child appeared ravenous. It prowled toward him on all fours, its tiger-marble eyes aglow and its upper lip quivering. Dez crawled backward on elbows and heels, his gaze never leaving the bloody-faced horror. There was no thought in the creature’s eyes save hunger and perhaps a desire to inflict pain.
The vampire child crept closer, its ghastly leer widening.
Definitely a desire to inflict pain.
To hell with this, Dez thought. He scrambled to his feet and sprinted down the aisle, the clatter behind him a nerve-jangling accompaniment to his. He had longer legs, but so what? That thing moved like a goddamned water bug, and it would be on him at any moment. He neared the end of the aisle, reached out to grab the steel rack, and half skidded, half swung himself around the corner. He expected to come face-to-face with the other vampire child, the one with the gory flap of torso skin, but he didn’t see anything ahead except the bloody mess on the floor where the kids had fed and fought. Dez bounded up the aisle, and ahead a knee-level shelf detonated outward in a flurry of volleyball uniforms and kneepads.
The alpha vampire child had dived through the rack of equipment to cut him off. Dez backpedaled, and, snarling, the vampire child kept pace. Dez reached the corner of the rack again. He knew if he retraced his steps the vampire child would simply repeat his trick and dive through the rack ahead of him. What he needed, dammit, was the full use of his hands. If he could use his hands, he could at least try to bludgeon this creature with a blunt object instead of fleeing.
Dez froze, glanced at the rack, and before the vampire child could draw closer, Dez seized the bracing rod and heaved with all his might.
The rack groaned, wobbled, then crashed down on the vampire child.
Dez didn’t take time to assess the damage. He shot a look down the long aisle and discovered Michael on his feet at the far end, his hands in constant motion as he tried to work the rope behind his back free. Dez started to hoof it toward him but Michael looked up, froze, and began to backpedal. Dez didn’t need to see to know what it was. The other vampire child. Probably not healed already, but even with its torso flayed open, fearsome enough to kill them.
Shit. Michael backed toward Dez, and sure enough, the other child rounded the corner, insatiable need on its feral face. Just as bad, Dez heard the racket from his left as the alpha child attempted to work free of the overturned rack.
The injured child prowled toward Michael, and as Dez watched, disgusted and fascinated, the flap of chest skin yawned wider, revealing the pinkish musculature beneath. That the child didn’t seem to notice the wound was maybe the worst part. The creature only knew hunger.
As Michael drew even with Dez and Dez set to working on Michael’s knot, the realization of their situation sank in. These were children, yes, but Dez and Michael would absolutely have to kill them if they wanted to survive.
So much blood. So much death. This was just more of it. To think otherwise, to pause even for an instant, meant the end for him and Michael. Maybe for Iris and Levi too.
“You almost done back there?” Michael asked through his teeth.
Dez glanced up from the knot. The wounded vampire child was ten feet away. Striking distance, if it decided to leap. Dez gripped Michael’s rope with sweaty fingers, pulled. It slid another inch, but not enough. The wounded vampire child was closing. Eight feet. Six.
“Motherfu—” Michael began, but before he could complete the word, before the wounded vampire leapt, something slammed into Dez’s side, something whirring and snarling. He stumbled and fell as the alpha vampire beset him. The hideous teeth snapped and Dez felt a flare of pain in his earlobe. He shoved his bound hands against the vampire’s chest, but the child was inexorable, the eyes like bonfires. The alpha darted at him, and something stung Dez’s chin. Fear of transformation, of becoming like this godforsaken creature, flashed through his head, but the fear was fleeting, insubstantial next to the prospect of having his face torn off. The snarling was guttural, like a beast ten times larger, but the vampire child’s quickness, its lightning-strike lunges, kept Dez jerking and twisting his face away. He had no idea how Michael was faring; all he knew was he himself was in deep shit. The alpha vampire lunged again and Dez whipped his head to the side just in time. The hooked teeth clicked together, and, clutched with a sudden panic, Dez rocked his face closer to the creature, then rolled back, bringing his knees up and leg-pressing the little bastard as forcefully as he could. The alpha vampire sailed through the air, toppling, and Dez scrambled up and darted toward Michael.
And immediately saw how it was. Michael was limping backward, his eyes riveted on the forward-creeping vampire. This creature, whether because of its disposition or its wounded chest, was a more deliberate hunter. But it had already attacked Michael once. Judging from the glistening patch on Michael’s jeans, the vampire had wounded him just above the knee.
Is Michael infected?
Dez cast the thought away. Little good it did. Hell, Dez might be infected too. He’d been grazed two or three times. And by the way, the savage son of a bitch is probably coming already, so hurry your ass up!
Dez reached the wounded vampire, said, “Hey,” and when the vampire turned, Dez kicked it in the underjaw as hard as he could. The wounded vampire somersaulted backward and Dez felt not the slightest pang of guilt. He drew even with Michael, almost tripped on the strewn track-and-field equipment, and set to working on his bonds.
“Dez,” Michael said, and Dez pivoted in time to see the alpha vampire loping toward him. The thing moved like a cat. A demonic hellcat with orange fireballs for eyes.
Dez looked around and grabbed the first thing he found. He spun with it just as the vampire child hurtled at him. Dez plunged the javelin at its face. The steel point slipped between its open jaws and punctured the back of its head, an inch of blood-slicked steel protruding from the base of its skull. The alpha vampire tumbled sideways, scrabbled to unseat the javelin, but Dez reached down, grabbed a heavy shot – 12 lbs, it read – and slammed it down on the side of its head. The child’s temple imploded like a stomped melon, a splat of cherry-red blood spuming out in a messy fan. Its white body spasmed and trembled, but Dez was pretty sure he’d killed it. Decapitation was the only way to be sure, but they had no time for that. The other vampire child…
…was watching its fallen mate in amazement.
“Ropes,” Michael said, and backed closer to Dez.
Dez again got to work on the ropes, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the child with the torso wound. Any moment he expected the thing to attack them, to exact vengeance for what Dez had done. Or maybe it would toss its head back and wail in sorrow.
Dez just about had Michael’s hands free when the wounded child crept over, bent, and began chewing on the alpha vampire’s ruined face.
“Ah, Jesus,” Michael said. “Seriously?”
* * *
Dez felt his gorge rise and forced himself to look away. The little fiend was gobbling up the squirts of brain and tissue like a hungry dog at his food dish.
“We gotta go, Dez,” Michael said.
Dez’s tongue poked from the corner of his mouth in concentration. The damned knot was almost undone. “Just…one more….”
“Guys,” a voice from above called.
Dez almost pissed himself. He and Michael stared up at the slot in the ceiling through which the vampires had been fed. There was a missing tile there.
“It’s me,” the voice continued. “Levi.”
Michael glanced back at Dez, mouth open. Dez finished untying Michael, then the two rushed around the center storage rack to the other aisle. They peered up at the black square through which the bucket had been lowered. The lighting was bad, yet they could see where a steel plate had been slid aside, and above that, a familiar face.
Levi looked like shit. Cheeks puffy, lip split, nose trickling blood. Whatever had happened to him since they’d seen him last, it hadn’t been pleasant. Maybe the vampires had tried to extract information from him, and he’d resisted. Dez smiled. Tougher than I thought.
Behind them, someone banged on the hallway door. “What the hell’s happening in there?” a voice called. Siddu.
At Siddu’s voice, the vampire child’s chomping and smacking stopped. Dez imagined the little monster peering over at the door and wondered what it was thinking. Was it aware these creatures had imprisoned it? Did it realize how wretched its existence was? When this was all it had ever known?
“You alone up there?” Michael whispered to Levi.
“For just a second,” Levi answered. “They’ll be back any time.”
They left him alone, Dez thought. Why?
“Then lower that damned bucket,” Michael said.
Levi nodded, went away.
“Will the rope hold?” Dez asked.
“It’s got to,” Michael said.
Pounding on the door, more urgent this time. “You two still alive?” another voice called. Jemila. Was the princess out there? And if she was, why hadn’t she opened the door?
There came a shiver-inducing crunch, the vampire child resuming its repast.
“God,” Michael muttered.
There was a clanking sound that made Dez suck in breath, then the bucket began its descent. From the creaky sound accompanying its movement, Dez guessed it was attached to a winch Levi was cranking. Made sense. You’d want the slop bucket to glide smoothly, gradually. And you wouldn’t want to lose your hands when the vampire children overturned the bucket.
Now there’s only one child, he thought. As if to accentuate this thought, the feasting child burped.
Michael caught the bucket and held it steady as Levi lowered it. The rope, Dez was heartened to see, was stout. The kind people used to water-ski.
Dez peered up at the open square. “We gonna fit through there?”
Michael grunted. “Don’t flatter yourself. Your shoulders aren’t that broad.” He stuck a foot in the slop bucket and looked up. “Go ahead.”
Slowly, laboriously, Levi cranked Michael up. As Michael made his convulsive way higher, his head almost to the ceiling, Dez whispered, “You sure we shouldn’t try the hallway? You could ignite them.”
“My power’s fucked-up,” Michael answered.
“Huh?”
“Those trolls,” Michael said, head above ceiling level now. “I flexed too hard on them. I’d been sick and wanted to prove I could still do it.”
“You’re like the out-of-shape Little League dad who gets injured demonstrating something to the kids. Bit off more than you could handle.”
Michael grabbed his crotch just before it disappeared into the ceiling. “Right here’s more than you can handle.”
Dez chuckled.
The hackles on the back of his neck rose. He turned and discovered the surviving vampire child staring at him. There was a gap in the football pads, and in this gap the child crouched, watching.
Dez put his bound hands up and hoped to God the vampire’s appetite had been sated. He didn’t like his chances against this whirlwind of teeth and agility. The javelin impalement had been a stroke of luck, and luck ran out eventually.
“Hey, little guy,” Dez said. “Was your brother…sister mean to you?”
Instead of answering, the child’s giant eyes shifted to the ceiling, where the bucket was being lowered for Dez.
Savage beating on the steel doors. “Answer me, one of you!” Siddu shouted. “Are you alive in there?”
Dez realized with amazement there were no camera domes in the ceilings. Probably the vampire children had been dumped here as a last resort, and no one had possessed the foresight to include a nanny cam. Which meant they probably thought Dez and Michael were dead.
Perfect.
The vampire child watched the bucket descend. It licked its lips. Oh shit, Dez thought. It thinks it’s feeding time.
Dez reached up, got hold of the bucket, and tilted it down so the child could see it. Blood dregs dribbled out and a wad of meat the size of a pear slice smacked the floor. The child darted for it.
“Raise me,” Dez hissed. He hoisted himself up so he could wrap his legs over the top of the bucket. Then, feeling absurdly like Mother Gothel in that Rapunzel movie, he began to rise.
“We’re coming in!” a voice from the hallway shouted. Not Siddu or Jemila. Another man, Buzz-cut maybe. Dez’s head was near the ceiling when he heard a growl. He craned his head and found the vampire child peering up at him, its eyes more black than orange now.
Dez stared down at it, totally at a loss.
The vampire’s growling intensified.
“Dez?” Levi asked from above. “Is that you?”
The vampire child leapt at the bucket, its fingernails grazing the underside before it landed lightly on the blood-soaked floor.
“No,” Dez said to it.
The child snarled at him, its lips curling back to reveal moon-white incisors.
“Take it easy,” Dez said.
His hips were almost to the ceiling. A click from across the room. A key wiggling into a lock. The vampires were entering the storage room.
The child threw a hectic glance at the door, looked up at Dez, then bounded toward the wall, leapt, shoved off it, and flew toward the bucket.
“Don’t,” Dez started to say, then the bucket jostled as the vampire hooked the top of it with its claws.
“Hold still, dammit,” Michael snapped.
“It’s not me,” Dez answered, “it’s the kid.”
“You mean the vampire?” Michael answered. “Get the little fucker off!”
“Just pull me up,” Dez said.
“Help me with this stupid thing,” Michael snapped. Dez heard the shuffle of Levi’s feet, and then Dez rose more smoothly and rapidly. Soon his head breached the crank room floor, and he realized they were in a janitor’s closet, the entire claustrophobic space six-feet-by-eight.
Below them, the door to the equipment room crashed open. A throng of voices. The bucket shuddered as the vampire child clambered up it, and by the time Dez’s shoulders and chest reached floor level of the janitor’s closet, the vampire child was clinging to his legs. Dez steeled himself for the vampire child’s bite.
Still cranking, Michael glanced over his shoulder at Dez. “Hey, asshole, you can help any time you want.”
Dez got his elbows on the concrete floor and began wriggling his way up, which was not at all easy with his wrists bound and the vampire child grafted to his thighs.
Levi gasped, and Michael said, “What the hell is that thing doing?”
Dez finally heaved his lower body into the closet. Levi slid the steel plate into place, his astonished eyes never leaving the vampire child. Michael set to work untying Dez’s bonds.
Levi gawked at the child. “It’s not attacking us.”
“Who gives a shit?” Michael said. “We gotta get out of here. Where’s Iris?”
Levi looked away.
Dez stared at him. “Levi?”
“She’s staying,” he said.
“She’s what?” Dez snapped. “There’s no way—” He grimaced, tapped the vampire child’s milky pate. “You can let go now.”
The child released his leg but continued to stare up at him with baleful eyes.
Michael finally got Dez’s knot loose, and Dez tore his hands free. God, it felt good.
Michael eyed the vampire child. “You realize that thing could kill us at any moment, right?”
Dez grabbed Levi’s shoulder. “Iris.”
Levi said, “They gave her a choice: go free by herself or stay here and help take care of Cassidy. She chose to stay.”
Dez shook his head. “She’s not thinking clearly.”
Levi looked miserable. “She was, Dez. She wants to be with her daughter.”
And wouldn’t you? a voice asked. If you could be with Will, wouldn’t you do it, no matter the circumstances?
The thought of Will’s face, the smell of his corn-straw hair, made Dez feel hollowed out. He passed a shaking hand over the back of his neck. “She can’t stay. They’ll kill her.”
“This is all really heartrending,” Michael said, “but we’ve got to get the fuck out of here. They’re coming.”
Shouting from below. The pounding of feet on concrete.
“Dez?” Levi said.
Michael didn’t wait. He tore open the door, said, “Right or left?”
“Right,” Levi said. “The exit’s just down the hall.”
Michael set off that way. Levi backpedaled to the doorway. “I’m sorry, Dez. I tried to talk her out of it, but it’s what she wanted.”
Dez’s windpipe had narrowed to a capillary. “I can’t believe it.”
He glanced at the vampire child, whose head was cocked, listening. It was growling. Dez moved to the door and once in the hallway began to run. He didn’t check to see if the vampire child was following.