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The missed calls were from me.
It figures. The first night I decide to go back home so I could check on Veronica, this shit happens. I thought I’d start my night out checking in on her at ICU while keeping my cell phone handy in case Dominic tried to reach me. Rules say you’re not supposed to bring cell phones into ICU but obviously that doesn’t apply to me. Rules are for the living.
Not that I ever made it over there. I was barely out of my coffin when I saw Dominic’s text. I rushed out, trying to make it over as soon as I could, but between the traffic on the Jersey Turnpike, the George Washington Bridge, the Cross Bronx, the Whitestone Bridge, and the Cross Island Parkway, fuck, I could have flown in from Hawaii and gotten there sooner.
I arrived at the abandoned hospital about two and a half hours after I got the text. Once I crossed the iron gate, I smelt the death bleeding through the bullet holes Dominic blew out through the boarded window. When I got inside, the kid was probably still adapting to his new undead state, standing at the doorway with eyes on Dominic. He never saw or heard me coming.
I stepped over the fallen Goth kid and knelt beside my brother-in-law, stroking what was left of his hair. “I have to take you to a hospital,” I said.
Dominic shook his head. Logically, I knew he was right, but what was I going to do, just leave him there? I reached out to pick him up.
“Don’t you put a fucking hand on me,” he lashed out.
I insisted.
“NICK!”
It wasn’t a shout of anger. It was a shout of horror. What caused such a reaction? I didn’t know—not until I felt the axe, which nicked me between my neck and shoulder, sending me evasively scurrying across the room. Weakened from her exposure to the unfriendly rays of the late afternoon sun, the scorch-blackened figure struggled to maintain her balance as she attempted to raise the axe above her head. The charred skin on her face was sliding off her skull the way barbecued ribs come off the bone at Tony Roma’s. Me? I had a nice, carved space between my neck and shoulder to go along with the holes in my head, face and chest, courtesy of Roberto and Dominic. It was all out to see after the axe knocked away my more human-like projection.
Simone’s capabilities were pretty much cooked away by her encounter with the late afternoon sun. She blindly swung with the axe in the darkness, hoping the blade would find me. The first swing got some undead skin. But caught off guard as I was, I knew I had to recover fast to dodge the erratic hacks that followed.
This was not the controlled Scarlet Widow—the one that brought death and heartache with such predatory disregard. This was a frightened, cornered animal. She made a futile attempt to control my mind but all it did was help me sense her panic. The power wasn’t there. She couldn’t make me do what she wanted.
She swung again, high and hard, like an undisciplined minor leaguer trying to impress a scout. I caught it. I caught it with both hands and easily yanked it from her grasp.
I then sensed it! And saw it!
Fear!
Fear in the devil’s eyes!
And then she saw it.
That’s right, bitch. Now I’m your fucking predator.
The last time she was victimized by a predator had to be when she was sired, whenever that might have been. Allow me, you Satanic whore, to bring back the memories of being on the other side.
I swung the ax towards her midsection. It was a nice, smooth level swing that would have made Mike Piazza proud. The force sent Simone to the floor close enough for Dominic to offer a labored kick to her head. Not satisfied that it was over, I followed my first swing with a series of ferocious hacks, sending pieces of Simone flying in every direction.
For every life she ever took and every family she destroyed, I swung with a vigor built from every heart she had ever broken. There was no such thing as overkill in this case. I couldn’t destroy her enough.
Incredibly, when I paused to see what was left of my hacks, I saw that her burnt eyelids were still fluttering, almost defiantly.
What the fuck?
The next series of hacks came down with such a tenacious fury that I didn’t stop until I severed off the top half of her head, dividing it at the cheekbone. Still not satisfied, I followed her fractured cranium, which had rolled a few feet away. I then picked it up by its singed red hair and proceeded to smash it against the wall repeatedly, cursing each time. Only when fragments of her skull, face and brains were hanging from her hair like ornaments on a Christmas tree, did I decide it might have been okay to stop.
Dropping what was left of our redheaded tormentor, I looked back at Dominic. My projection had come back, making me look less like an extra from a George Romero movie. His head was off to the side; his eyes were closed. Damn it, Dominic, why couldn’t you have just let it go? You didn’t need to enter this world.
He took a short breath and exhaled. “Is she dead?”
I tried to hold back but I couldn’t. I burst out laughing. He smiled too, that son of a bitch.
“Yeah, I think so,” I replied.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed that hard, but I’d been willing to bet that Dominic would have had something to have done with it. He opened his eyes, still smiling. Dominic hadn’t smiled at me in over twenty-seven years.
“Do it,” said Dominic.
I knew what he meant but I stalled. “Do what?”
His smile faded. “Do it, Nick.”
“Dominic—”
The mood quickly turned. “¡Mira, hijo de puta! You think I want to be like you? Stake me, damn it!”
I knew he was right but couldn’t wrap my mind around doing it—not to him. “No way, Dominic, I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“For what?” he growled. “What are they going to do?”
Again, he was right. What was taking him to the hospital going to accomplish? What kind of questions would he have to answer? And what would happen if he died and turned right there in the hospital?
A tear crept out from the corner of my eye, a new, unfamiliar feeling. “Dominic, please...”
“¡Empujalo en mi pecho, maricón!” Like I said before, he now had the venom of two different members of our species in him. On top of that, there was also Gunder’s serum, which has traces of the organism that lives in us. “Nicky, I want to be with God. Do this for me and maybe God will forgive you for what you’ve become.”
No chance of that, Dominic. I’ve taken lives. Most of them were scumbags, but a few of them, like me, were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. They might have been tainted enough in my eyes that I could rationalize my feeding, but they were lives, and they weren’t mine to take.
I pulled out my stake and tentatively pressed the pointed end against his heart. So now Aida and Penny are going to have to lose their father, too. And what about Artie and Ramona, they lived this long to see both of their children die within less than a month? You should have left it alone, Dominic. There was nothing to prove. I was dead. You should have left it that way. Now you’re not going to see how awesome the Mets are going to be next year with that tremendous pitching staff, you fucking idiot.
After nodding his approval, Dominic took hold of my wrist. “I know you loved her, Nicky. She knew too.”
It was all I needed. For that brief moment, he was talking to Nicky, his brother-in-law, not a child of Satan.
Dominic closed his eyes and went into prayer.
“¡Dios mìo! ante el trono de tu adorable Majestad me postro pidiéndote la última de todas las gracias: una feliz hora de muerte. Muchas veces, en verdad, hice mal uso de la vida que me diste; pero a pesar de ello te ruego, me concedas la gracia de terminarla bien y—,”
I didn’t let him finish the prayer.
I thought it would be better doing it while his mind was distracted. His stunned gasp filled the barren corridors of Greenwood as I pushed the stake deep into his heart with both of my hands. His eyes then opened to see tears moistening the cracked flesh underneath my eyes. His chest heaving, Dominic struggled to take his last breath, with eyes fixed on the Filipino blade sticking out of my jacket.
He nodded.
I knew what I had to do.