Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead (26 page)

She laid her head against his chest and trembling, clutched his body against hers. Clutched him with her new hands, with long taloned thumbs.

She could hear every think-voice in the room. Each one was clear, sharp. None of them had her ability. In fact, when it came to telepathy, they were…

…blind as bats.

I’m a new kind of vampire,
Chelsea realized, the revelation calming her.
I have more power than any of them, than all of them.

She considered the desolate landscape of the city and the refugees that hid beneath it, starving, desperate as the vampires that surrounded her now.

The world is mine,
she realized.
I will rebuild it.

I will have revenge.

* * * * *

Born and raised in Northern British Columbia, David Tocher, now lives in Montreal, Quebec, where he’s currently at work on a novel. He appreciates literature which explores the paranormal and the dark side of human nature. He also loves heavy metal music. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association and International Thriller Writers. You can find his recent short story, Letters from a Dead World, in the Dreamspell Nightmares anthology, published by L & L Dreamspell.

Blood That Burns So Bright

By Jason S. Ridler

Knuckles? What Ned taped together was closer to jagged turtle shells hiding under torn, red calluses. Sakura’s hand remained calm and still in his palm while the tape made its long way around.

“You shouldn’t have called time out,” she said, voice a thin mist in the fetid air. “I had him.”

“Deep breaths,” Ned said. “Remember to breathe.” She complied while he pulled out another a stretch of tape. “Fine, my bad. Make him eat my words when you get back in the cage.”

“Tighter,” Sakura said, legs dangling over the edge of the ancient massage bench, body still and poised despite the agony. It made Ned’s silent heart ache. Chains of sweat dropped from her chin, past her boots, and turned the dirty floor into a fresh mess. Each drop hit with a rusty echo. This was the change room for a slaughterhouse, once upon a time. Fitting, Ned thought.

Down the hall around the killing room floor, the frenzied crowed hungered for the last round.

“You want a little flexibility,” Ned said, as the tape made another lap. “So the impact has somewhere to escape besides your wrist. And you need a grip to grapple.”

She exhaled hard now, controlling the pain. Crooked fingers flexed like a dying critter. “Thumbs are all I got that work on their own. Tighter.”

He chuckled. “Fine. Full mummy treatment, minus the thumbs. You know he’ll try a submission now.”

The tape did another lap around her tortured hands. “Try and fail.”

He forced a smile. Outside the deadbloods howled from the stands as the time-out burned like a fuse. “You should be proud, child. Those boos? That’s a kind of cheer. They hate that one of us is getting beaten by one of you. But they love a good fight. And loud as they boo, the cheers in the Scrum amongst your kind must be shaking the roofs. Turncoats will be having their hands full tonight!”

“Only if I win,” she said, chin dripping, voice clearer. “Any bets on that happening?”

He stopped taping. “I never bet on my talent until they win one, so you should feel righteous for making me lose. Sure you don’t want to grapple?”

Sakura’s glare was steady as a cat’s, and just as heartless. He’d hurt her. And it twisted his guts, wishing he’d believed in her then as he did now. “Then make a fist,” said Ned.

Trembling, her fingers tried retracting into the knuckle-bombs she’d dropped on every deadblood she’d fought on her short rise toward arena glory, bombs harder than steel, enough to rupture a deadblood’s brain stem.

Impossible bombs and speed for a brightblood.

And yet here she was. Still alive, but—

“Ned?” Sakura grunted. Her fingers shook like a dying spider. “I can’t—”

“Easy, child.”

Slow, strong, and steady, he taped her hand into a boney hammer. The pain had to be cosmic, but she just breathed in and out like a bellows. As he reinforced the tape at the wrist, his finger hovered above her vein. Her pulse shivered like it belonged to a meth head cornered in an alley, heart burning out and melting down at the same damn time.

He cut the stray tape with his thumb nail. “Give me your other hand.”

She did. It was worse. God, they’d been pristine last week, when he’d watched her for the first time. Tough and strong, but healthy, like deadblood fighters after they’d eaten their kills in a mob match.

But not Sakura. She wasn’t like Ned, or the elders, or the monster Gregor starving for the last round, or even the chump-ass brightbloods normally torn apart by deadbloods. Whatever she was, she was—

“Ned?”

“Right, right.” He began the wrap. Sweat hung off her chin. “Finish some water, but not too much. No sense fighting dry.”

“Ned?”

He looked up.

Eighteen, she’d said. Eighteen and now with the face of a career grinder, starved of blood. He wrapped slow, head down. “Don’t let him rush you,” he said, “but if he does, keep the elbows hammering on the back of the skull, like you did yesterday.”

“Who’d you bet on?” Sweat dropped.

“Child, you have two minutes before Gregor tries to eat your spleen while you watch. Focus.”

She stole her hand back faster than he could sense it, she was that quick. “Damn it, Ned. Who?” she seethed, chin wet, body vibrating. “Who?”

He straightened the frayed lapels of his red sports coat, brushed the dust and stains off. Damn Wallace for shooting off his big, stupid mouth at the last fight. He knew it would rattle her cage. She needed an angry focus, but not on Ned. And he couldn’t lie about it, like he had with Wallace. Just to make everyone feel good. Not again. “Child, either way I lose.”

“Coward,” she grunted. “You really think I can’t take this fangjob out? That it?”

He took the slang-shot. “We wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t. And that’s coming from a fangjob.”

She slid off the bench, the white hammers at the end of her arms hung like a gunslinger’s pistols. “Then say who you bet on.”

Ned pushed his hands tight and down in his coat pockets. “You want to wail on me, spar on my mush, go right ahead, child. You hate us. You have every right to. We’re butchers and slave masters and have turned your kind into chattel and chum. That hate has carried you a long way in a short time. From the first moment I saw you in the mob fights to the roar of that crowd out there. Hate’s made you who you are. Maybe it will carry you all the way.” He shrugged. “Maybe not. Unless you go in packing a little heat.”

Sakura stepped back. “Don’t even think it.”

He ground his teeth. “Listen, child. It won’t hurt, I promise.”

“Don’t say it.”

“Just want to help.”

The punch drilled him quick as a bullet and nearly shattered his skull. Ned hit the tiled corner like a heap of trash. Deadblood surged and mended the damage. Her gnarled hand snapped out of the tape, gripped his throat, and pushed him against the wall. “Help? You call turning me into a fucking fangjob help?”

He gripped her mangled fingers and squeezed hard.

She dropped his ass and backed up, pain coiling her face as she nursed her hand.

“Idiot move,” Ned said. “Like we need to breathe? And if he knows your hand is busted, he’ll tear it up like a rat on a bleeding baby.”

Her back hit the bench. “Asshole!”

He stood, slow, sure, unthreatening, but his voice trembled. “Damn right, and you know why? Because I’ll tell you the truth. Win or lose, you ain’t coming out of that fight alive. We both know it.”

She hissed.

“However you do what you do, it’s being flushed out with every swing. Each fight, each victory, each miracle sucked out a few years here, a few years there. You only got one fight left.” Nausea ran through him worse than hunger, one symptom that blood could not cure. “Don’t you get it? I’m losing you tonight unless—”

“Ned.”

She’d regulated her breathing. Forcing strong breaths in and out. Calm. Cool. Focused as a razor on a wrist. Maybe she’d heard him. “Yeah?”

She spit a pink stained gob on the floor. “You’re right. About me … burning out. About the boos. About the cheers in the Scrum. Why they’re listening. Because a brightblood is doing the impossible. Fighting back.” She swallowed hard. “So this is what’s gonna happen.” She held out her exposed wrist, tape hanging off. “Ned?”

Ned’s tongue rubbed his incisor.

“Tape me up.”

His jaw clamped like a nail in soft wood. “Yeah, child.”

When it was done, Sakura boxed the air faster than any human could, each swing with the force of a nine-pound hammer cracking into a spike. A buzzer sounded. The crowd’s savage roar peaked.

“Time’s up,” she said.

“Sure is.”

Her lip pouted out. “Last question?”

Here, on the wire, his resolve crumbled. He couldn’t lie to her about the bet. Not now. “Ok, shoot.”

“Why’d you decide to train me?”

He smiled. “I know a sure thing when I see it, child. Now go on. Your fans await.”

She snorted, but smiled. And left.

He stood and connected the dots on the mildew-stained walls, sucking in the smell of old blood and the cool air of decay. She needed to walk out alone. When the boos pitched, he strolled to the door, heading for his place in the stands.

The stink of a familiar brightblood halted him, a strange mix of old smoke and wet sugar.

A Turncoat filled the hallway, long, black rain slicker too big for his frame, chewing gum. One arm was folded to make sure his lost appendage was clearly noticed, just as much as the giant pink scar on his neck and the red eye patch. “Howdy, Coach.”

Ned removed his fists from his jacket. “You quit smoking, Wallace. Good for you.”

The Turncoat chewed. “What was it you used to say? Be harder on yourself than your enemy, and over a thousand battles you’ll be victorious. Too bad we both lost that bet, huh?”

“I don’t have time to hold your hand down memory lane, Wallace. Get to the point, or get out of my way.”

Wallace smiled, still chewing. “Easy, Coach. We need to chat.”

“I won’t miss this fight.”

Wallace chewed. “Afraid the Lords disagree. Feel like you might try and play foul. Best to let the new girl meet her fate her own way.” He chewed. “Not yours.”

Ned scratched his face, hard. “How long you been listening?”

“Long enough. Trying to turn her before this big mixed-race fight? Jesus, the only reason anyone cares is because she’s not one of you. Course, that’s also got the Lords worried. Though, I must say, it made me wonder why you never made me this tasty offer. Unlike Ms. Sure Thing here, I sure could have used it.”

Ned tightened his fists. “You were good, Wallace. And the day you fought out of the mob, you were great.”

Wallace’s smile flatlined, Adams apple caressing the pink wound on his neck. “And you’re a sucker for a lost cause. I was feed compared to what your cherry bomb can do.” He chewed until his smile returned. “Christ, hear that? Those fangjobs want her torn into gristle so fine it sluices through their teeth. You should see the Scrum. Brightbloods hovering over stolen laptops. Waiting. History in the making, they say. Revolution in the air. If she wins.”

The boos and screams shook the air, filling the greasy halls and walkways of the old slaughter mill. She must be already in the cage.

“You always talked too damn much,” Ned said. “What do you want?”

“Answers.”

“Do I look like a fucking library?”

“About her.”

“What difference does it make?”

“Lords don’t know what she is.”

Ned growled. “Bullshit. They tested her, prodded her, damn near committed her before agreeing she could fight our kind. All results came back. She’s human.”

“Bullshit.” Wallace spat juice with his words. “We can’t do what she does. If we could, you and every fangjob would be shrieking back to the dark side of the Balkans or wherever the fuck you came from.”

“Jersey.”

Wallace snorted, cheeks chubby, gum juice on his wet lip. “Funny man, that’s our Coach Diamond. See, I think I know what she is. And why you’re protecting her like a mother hen.”

The crowd cheered and Ned wanted to die.

Wallace spat out his gum, peeled off the silver foil wrapper on a new piece, and shoved it into his mouth. After three long chews, a word fell out. “Bastard.” He chewed hard, swallowing the juices. “Mutant, half-breed bastard.”

Ned bristled, and a deeper pit opened in his stomach. “We can’t carry your brood. And your kind die if they carry ours. Along with the babies.” So all that’s left is the daddy, alone and wounded and crushed with eternal memories of their passing as fresh as they day it happened, memories like a demon shackled to his heels. “It’s impossible.”