Remnants
Unfinished business can be a bitch.
The wino shrieked as the vile-smelling creature set upon him, biting into his flesh with twin fangs and jagged teeth, while massive, claw-nailed hands held him in place. Red gore spurted in all directions, and the creature emitted a guttural snarl of pleasure as it guzzled down the screaming wino’s alcohol-polluted blood. The creature ripped at the man’s thick shoulder, tearing away chunks of meat in a fervent quest to get more blood, and the mortal’s struggles turned to a frenzy as he flailed around, desperate to get away from the creature that had suddenly emerged from the ruins of the old hospital mere seconds ago.
He punched and clawed at the creature’s twisted, bearded face, unable to look away from its blank white eyes, and he pissed himself when a gout of his own blood splattered across the monster’s features. When the other creature, this one with a narrower and hairless face, appeared behind the first one and growled hungrily, he simply lost his mind.
The first creature turned around and grunted at the second one, offering the still-struggling wino to her, and she eagerly chomped down on the man’s arm and pulled on it until it ripped free, spraying blood everywhere. They then hunkered down together in the shadows of the old hospital and enjoyed a peaceful meal together under the stars.
* * *
When the sun came up, the two creatures instinctively sought out the darkness of the lower levels of the hospital, and as they sat in the perpetual underground twilight, they entered their own private worlds, snapping and snarling as the memories flitted through their heads, as intangible as ghosts. And that’s what they were: the ghosts of who they used to be, until Tempestia had gotten hold of them.
“Tempessssstia,” growled the revenant that had once been an accountant named Arthur Yancy, putting his clawed hands to the sides of his shaggy head as he rocked back and forth on the floor. The memories of the mad would-be goddess were the strongest, and when either of them tried to follow the echoes of who they were, they kept coming back to the black-haired megalomaniac who’d taunted and tormented them before and after she’d twisted them from regular people into mindless monsters with her evil blood.
The woman formerly known as Anne Harling, schoolteacher, snarled viciously at the sound of the vampire’s name, and she shook her head of long, matted blonde hair angrily. She vaguely remembered servitude to Tempestia’s Crimson Order, where she and Arthur, along with dozens of other revenants, had been telepathically bonded to other vampires to make it easier for the savage creatures to carry out the Order’s dirty work. During that time she and the other revenants hadn’t been self-aware, and were creatures of animalistic instinct tenuously guided by the revenant masters; any thoughts or feelings they might have had were effectively suppressed by the telepathic cloak hung over them by the masters and Tempestia herself. But something had happened.
“Tempesssstia,” repeated the former Arthur Yancy, clawing at the broken floor tiles, not even aware of what he was doing.
He had the barest recollections of a massive battle in an enormous cavern, getting knocked out of a huge hole in the wall, and then tumbling down a steep hillside with Anne until they’d ended up in a forest. The two of them had been controlled by the same revenant master, and he’d been killed just after they’d been knocked out of the cavern, freeing them of his control, but not Tempestia’s, so they’d begun to ascend the hillside again, seeking her out. Then Tempestia herself had fled the cave, flying across the sky towards Los Angeles, and they’d obediently followed after her, plunging through the forest all night, trying to catch up with their mistress.
Just at dawn, however, the bond to Tempestia had been violently broken, leaving them both roaring and thrashing in agony and confusion until instinct had taken over and they’d dug under to get away from the rising sun. After that, they’d trudged back to L.A., mindlessly following the last impression left in their heads, slowly starting to regain hazy senses of self-awareness, not enough to give them their identities back, but more than enough to endlessly torture them.
“Tempesssstia,” echoed Anne, punching at the paint-flecked bricks of the wall. “Tempesssstia!”
The rage in her voice agitated Arthur, and a brief burst of memories ran through his head, showing him flashes of being violently dragged away from his car in the office parking lot by a group of hooded vampires that threw him in the back of a truck and knocked him unconscious. He sprang to his feet, momentarily consumed by memories, and clawed and swung at the air, fighting off his remembered attackers, and he kicked and punched at the walls, shattering the brick with his huge fists, trying to break free. “Tempesssstia! Tempesssstia!”
Anne was set off by Arthur’s fit, and within seconds she was also up on her feet attacking the walls in a blind fury. After several minutes had passed, the two confused revenants sat back down in the corner, huddling together for comfort, their minds slipping away from them again.
* * *
“You said you saw two of them?” Brandi asked, crouching down low to the ground and examining the bloodstain on the cracked concrete. She sniffed at the dark splotches, her vampirically-sharp nose telling her that they were fresh, from within the last 24 hours. She glanced around, noting that there were others scattered around the weedy expanse of the parking lot, though from the looks of them, they weren’t as new.
“Yeah, two of ‘em,” answered Richie, a frown across his dark features. He pointed at a nearby rise in the land, where a park bench overlooked the old Sturgeon hospital, which had been abandoned in the 1960’s. “Mick ‘n I were chillin’ up on the bench, just hangin’ out, tryin’ to figure out what we were gonna do for the night, and we saw everything. The bigger one jumped this old wino, started tearin’ into him, then the other one popped out, and they ended up sharin’ the poor fucker.”
He pointed to the emergency room doorway, which was located right next to the yawning entrance of the underground ambulance garage. “They came outta there. We almost went down and got into it with ‘em, but we didn’t know if there were any more or what, so we figured we’d bring you guys back tonight. Revenants ain’t somethin’ I wanna fuck around with casual-like.”
The big vampiress turned and looked back at the young black half-vampire, pushing some of her long red hair from her feline features. “And they didn’t fight with one another?”
“Not at all,” said Mick, the lean half-vampire standing next to Richie, his hands in the pockets of his black leather trenchcoat and his eyes unreadable behind his black sunglasses.
Richie’s dark eyes, however, held more than a hint of trepidation. “Yeah, they got along just fine. No fightin’ or nothin’.”
“Not standard behavior for revenants,” said Tommy, warily looking around the parking lot, and Brandi made a noise of agreement, as did Richie.
“When I was stuck with the Crimson Order, the masters could hardly keep ‘em in control when they weren’t sendin’ ‘em after somebody,” said Richie, referring to the brief time he’d been held under the Crimson Order’s thrall during their invasion of Los Angeles. Like many of the city’s population of young vampires, he’d been an average joe until he’d been kidnapped and forcibly turned into a vampire by the Order, and he counted himself lucky he hadn’t been one of those unfortunates that had been turned into revenants.
The redheaded vampiress nodded. “They can’t stand each other, unless they’re being acted upon by some outside agent. When I was younger, I got rid of more than one revenant by luring them into close quarters with another, and just letting them tear each other apart.”
“So . . . you think this means that those two were being acted upon by an outside agent, as it were?” asked Mick.
“Quite possibly,” Tommy answered, his hand unconsciously straying to the .45 Magnum he had strapped to his belt. “We may not have been as thorough in eliminating the remnants of the Crimson Order as we thought we were. Some may have slipped through the cracks.” Brandi growled softly at the notion, scowling.
“Well, it’s not like there wasn’t a lot going on at that point in time,” said Anton, a baldheaded mortal with a mustache and black goatee, who was a friend of Tommy’s and fellow scholar of the supernatural. “You all had your plates full, as I recall. I had to go investigate a couple of spook houses by myself, since my partner in crime was otherwise occupied.”
“No excuse,” Brandi said, drawing herself back up to her full height of 6’ 4” and slowly scanning the exterior of the dilapidated hospital with her bright green eyes. “Just a single cell of the Crimson Order running around is a major problem, especially if they’ve got revenants, and could fuck up everything we fought for last spring. Too many of us died during that shit for it all to be ruined after the fact.”
“Then why didn’t we bring any heavy artillery with us?” asked Richie, sounding concerned. “Like that Wade dude? He’s one scary motherfucker when his back’s to the wall, and I’d sure like to have him with me if shit gets bad.”
“Because we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves and possibly start up a panic or lynching posse unless absolutely necessary,” answered Tommy, his voice instinctively shifting to professorial mode as he replied to the younger vampire’s question. “Though the dust has settled from the clash with the Order, it hasn’t been very long since that time, and there’s still enough leftover tension in the vampire populace that things could explode if we’re not careful. And I also have no idea where Wade is right now. Besides,” he added, gesturing towards the Valkyrie standing ahead of them, “I tend to count Brandi as some very heavy artillery.”
The big vampiress glanced back and gave the other vampires a smirk. “Heavy as hell, bub,” she said, “And my pup isn’t any slouch, either.”
She raised her head slightly and made a sound eerily similar to a low wolf call, and several hundred feet away, a shaggy blonde head popped up out of some rubble, looked over at Brandi, and returned the call. The muscular girl, looking like she was about 19 and clad in a black tanktop and baggy blue jeans, hopped out of the debris of a collapsed overhang and hurried across the parking lot on bare feet, her movements smooth and wolflike despite her very human appearance.
She regarded the big vampiress, who was a good half-foot taller than her, expectantly for several moments, and Brandi asked, “You find anything, Lupi?”
The young woman’s facial features twisted in disgust, and she said, with hostility in her husky voice, “This place reeks of the eyeless ones. The scents are fresh, too, and I am certain they’re still here.”
The Valkyrie nodded curtly. “That’s what my nose told me, too. Can you tell how many?”
Lupi’s nose twitched. “Two, like Richie and Mick said.”
“You’re sure?”
The young werewolf squinted one of her eyes so that it was nearly closed, an unconscious sign that she was annoyed at being questioned. “Yes. Their scents are so thickly laid that they are very clear. If other revenants have been here, it was some time ago.”
“What about the scents of other vampires? I haven’t been able to pick any up.”
Lupi gave a quick negative shake of her head. “No, nothing recent. I found something interesting, though.”
“What is it?”
“Come!” the werewolf said, the word nearly a bark, and she spun around and galloped off across the parking lot towards the rubble pile.
“Lupi, hold up!” snapped the vampiress, but the young woman didn’t slow down in the least.
Anton chuckled. “Even when the rest of the world fears her, it’s all right to defy her if she’s your mother-figure.” Tommy grunted a reply as he pulled out his psychokinetic energy reader and waved it around the area, checking for anything else out of the ordinary.
Richie poked Mick in the ribs with an elbow. “’I Was A Teenage Werewolf,’ eh, dawg?” The other vampire, whose spiky hair was an unnaturally bright shade of red, smirked.
Brandi ignored all of this and growled, “Damned kid. Stacey’s bad influence is already showing up.” She set out across the parking lot, striding confidently but warily, looking like a great deal of trouble in her black leather jacket, Slayer t-shirt, ripped jeans, and combat boots. The others took off after her, hurrying to keep up with her long-legged pace.
“Kids will be kids, whether they have a lunatic for a faux-stepfather or not,” remarked Anton, and Tommy rolled his eyes and muttered something about the mortal being too nice.
Brandi grunted. “Thank the stars he’s off with Steele and Clarisse at that rock festival in Laguna. I don’t even want to think about what’d happen if he were tagging along right now.”
“Laguna?” echoed Tommy. “I thought he got banned from Orange County entirely after an ugly . . . incident at the Crystal Cathedral Christmas parade.”
“No, that was Donita. Stacey’s just never supposed to set foot in Yorba Linda again,” answered Brandi, sounding slightly weary at the memory.
“What’d he do?” asked Richie, sensing that an interesting story was close by.
But the vampiress didn’t particularly want to go into detail over that particular incident, so she replied, “What he did wasn’t all that bad in the grand scheme of things, and I think they really overreacted. He thought he was paying a clever tribute to Richard Nixon, but nobody else felt that way, so he was asked to never come back, under threat of tarring and feathering.”
“Whoa, they still do that shit?”
“Stacey has a way of forcing people to make exceptions for him,” Tommy said.
“Damn. That dude’s cracked.”
“I’d kill him if he wasn’t so damned cute,” agreed Brandi, “And if not for the fact that he’s the best there is at what he does. Especially when it comes to putting a smile on my face.”
Tommy made a sound of mild disgust. “Let’s not get into that, shall we?”
Before Brandi could make a reply, they’d reached the rubble pile, where Lupi was excitedly hopping around on top and pointing at something on the other side of it. “Over here!” she exclaimed.
Everybody mounted the pile, and when the big vampiress reached the top, she cuffed Lupi none-too-gently on the shoulder, nearly knocking the werewolf over, and then growled at her, sounding like an irritated she-lion. “When I tell you to hold up, you hold up, got it?” she snapped, her voice laced with enough authority that the young werewolf visibly squirmed, and everybody else unconsciously stood up a little straighter and did their best to look innocent.
Lupi looked downwards, shook her head several times in a lycanthropic show of embarrassment, and sheepishly said, “I am sorry, but I wanted to show you what I had found.”
“That’s all well and good, but I don’t want you isolated if those revenants are nearby.”
The werewolf looked up at the vampiress, her blue eyes determined. “I do not fear the eyeless blood-feasters, and I will not be cowed by them.”
Brandi jabbed a finger at the she-wolf. “Fine. But if you keep disobeying me, you’re going to have a lot more to worry about than revenants. Your uncle trusted you in my care, and I will not have you getting hurt because you’re fucking around when you should be keeping in line. Understand?”
Lupi nodded curtly. “Yes.” She then waited a few moments before asking, “Now may I show you what I found?”
“I think everybody else has already gotten to that,” replied Brandi, looking at the four men peering over the side of the rubble pile. None of them appeared to be particularly pleased with what they were seeing.
Hundreds of human bones were scattered around the expanse of concrete at the bottom of the rubble and beyond, going all the way over to a vine-covered wall, creating a makeshift boneyard that gave both Richie and Mick, the least experienced of the six, serious pause.
“Holy shit,” murmured the young black vampire, shaking his head for entirely different reasons than Lupi had been a few moments before. “Reminds me of stuff I saw in history books.”
“Hmm, probably not any history books on revenants,” said Tommy, glancing back at Brandi before heading down towards the bones. She gave him a nod, and he immediately set down the side of the rubble pile, Anton moving right along with him. Everybody else followed, and the vampire professor said, for the benefit of Richie and Mick, “Like cooperating with one another and sharing a victim, this is something that is unheard of in revenants. Usually when they devour their prey, they eat everything, bones and all. If their hunger is sated before they’re finished, they’ll either take the remains of the carcass with them, or otherwise bury it to come back to later. Though savage and mindless, they are also brutally efficient, and making sure that other revenants can’t share in their sustenance seems a paramount concern to them.”
“This pair seems determined to defy convention, don’t they?” asked Anton, and Tommy nodded in agreement. “This is definitely something to worry about. A creature that makes its own rules is a dangerous creature indeed. Especially if it’s a flesh-eating, super-powered vampire monster.”
When everybody reached the bottom, Brandi motioned for them to fan out and conduct a search of the immediate area, and Tommy, Anton, and Lupi immediately started rooting through the bones, giving everything the best once-over they could manage. Richie and Mick weren’t nearly so eager, however, and they were clearly hesitant as they walked around, taking care not to step on any bones.
Brandi ignored the bones for the time being and instead prowled around the area, which had once been a loading dock for supplies, but had become hemmed-in by the rubble, which completely covered the entrance ramp leading down to the dock from the parking lot. Due to the fact that the loading dock was on a level well below that of the parking lot, the exterior walls of the hospital and the edge of the parking lot itself, which was a sheer drop-off and was high above their heads now, the loading dock was enclosed on all sides, save for overhead, which put the Valkyrie on alert. Being enclosed also bathed most of the area in heavy shadow, though there was just enough light from the glow of the surrounding city and the moon overhead that everything was clear to her. But even with minimal light, place like this could be bad if things got ugly, as revenants could be a pain to deal with in closed areas, and while she knew that she and Lupi and could hold their own against a couple of revenants, she wasn’t very confident with the others’ chances.
She kept her eyes on the open door above the raised concrete loading platform, her nose constantly sniffing at the air for the telltale dead-meat smell of revenants. The problem was that the area was so saturated with their scent, she might not pick up their approach right away, so she compensated with her eyes and ears. She growled softly, irritated at how it seemed as though the terrain itself was conspiring to give the revenants an advantage. Grinding her teeth as her fangs unconsciously slid down into place, she murmured, “You can have as many advantages you want, and I’ll still get you fuckers.”
Though vampires instinctively hated revenants, Brandi felt an intense hatred of these particular revenants, despite never having even seen them. To her, they were a lingering reminder of just how close the vampires of Los Angeles had come to oblivion, and how much pain had been dealt upon not only herself, but those she loved the most. She’d never liked the Crimson Order and similar groups in the past, but when the Order had tried to destroy her home and had nearly killed her best friend and her lover, it had become intensely personal, and she’d vowed to obliterate anything related to the Crimson Order wherever she found it. But Steele, one of the people she respected most, had been the lucky one to slay Tempestia, the mad leader of the Order, and the Valkyrie’s hatred of the Order had been left unfulfilled, so she took what she could.
Following the destruction of the main body of the Order, she’d led packs of werewolves and vampires through both the wilderness and the city, brutally hunting down any straggling survivors of L.A.’s would-be conquerors. She thought she’d gotten them all, and the thought that she’d missed a pair of revenants, who were still devouring innocents within the city, infuriated her to no end. She prided herself on the fact that when she did something, she did it well, and her failure at finding this pair sooner burned brightly in her gut like a cancer. A cancer that she intended to excise as violently as possible.
Not only that, but how long would it be until the revenants decided to give up on mortals that happened onto their territory, and decided to go after vampires instead, if they hadn’t already? Though revenants had a tendency to find a place and stay there, mindlessly and viciously defending it against all interlopers, they also moved around on occasion, and what if these two ended up somewhere closer to the heart of the city? What if other vampires died because she hadn’t completed the job she’d set out to do? What if somebody she cared about got hurt or died? That wasn’t going to happen and she was going to make sure of it. She was going to hunt these two bastards down and annihilate them with her bare hands, and nothing was going to stop her.
She glanced back at where Tommy and Anton were quickly and quietly sorting through the bones, discussing their findings in the rapid-fire manner that she’d seen scholars doing since before either of the two had been born, and she suppressed a smirk at how Lupi was fluidly prowling around nearby, clearly at attention and ready to defend the others if necessary. Though headstrong and sometimes problematic, the young werewolf was tremendously reliable when push came to shove, not to mention fiercely strong, and Brandi knew she’d been wise in bringing her along.
As for Tommy and Anton, they were experienced, smart, and dangerous in their own ways, and she didn’t mind having them along for the time being, as they could very likely uncover something useful for her. If anybody could figure out if there were more revenants in the area, it was them, and she wanted them there to gather as much information as possible, just in case. They also knew when to get the hell out of the way, though she could count on them for backup if things got ugly.
But she wasn’t so sure about Mick and Richie, who were uneasily watching Tommy and Anton. Though they were good kids and had been smart to come to her about the revenants, she wasn’t very certain about their abilities under fire. Richie was street-smart and tough, and Mick was going to be very formidable once he’d gotten a couple more decades under his belt, but right now they were still kids who were getting involved in something they might not be ready for. They’d wanted to come along, and she’d consented after they’d argued a bit, as she knew they had to get some real-world experience in things that they wouldn’t encounter under normal circumstances, but the longer they were here and the more she smelled the revenants’ presence, the less she wanted anybody but herself and Lupi here. She didn’t want to have to care about anything but obliterating the revenants and putting an end to the threat they posed.
She glared at the dark entrance above the loading platform, wanting to know exactly what lay in the shadows beyond, and she felt every fiber of her body drawing her towards it. Somewhere in there lay carnage and battle, something that she understood intimately and was supremely comfortable with, and she nearly barked orders for everybody but Lupi to clear out, but she forced herself to keep quiet, at least for the moment. First she’d let the two supernatural scholars discover anything that needed to be discovered, and then they’d move on to more satisfying matters . . . like ripping revenants limb from limb.
* * *
Arthur awoke in confusion, snarling angrily as his mind struggled to comprehend what tax returns were and why the Bromen account was so important. The fragments of the dream swirled around his mind, tauntingly just out of reach, and he growled, “Ssssure thing, Misssster Bromen!”
He shook his head, and then reached up to feel the tangled hair that brushed against his shoulders, making a noise of surprise at how long it was. How had it gotten that way? He snarled again when he felt the matted beard that hung down his chest: he was a mess! The revenant hopped to his feet and looked around the ruined room, wondering where he was. A shocked cry escaped his cracked lips when he saw the filthy monstrosity that he’d been laying up against, and he started to flee when a faint smell tickled his nostrils, causing him to stop short and throwing his ghostly dream-memories to the winds.
He knew that smell! His other senses fed him even more information, and he growled again, this time in both hunger and anger. “Tempesssstia!”
Arthur turned around, crouched, and shook the other revenant awake. She awoke flailing around, roaring, “Quiet, classss! Ssssettle down!” She struck at Arthur with her clawed hands several times before she realized that she was no longer teaching her rowdy 4th hour algebra class. “What’ssss the ansssswer to number ssssix?” she asked, her thick voice slurring the question to the point where it was almost unintelligible.
Arthur grunted at her in annoyance. “Tempesssstia!” he said, his voice harsh and insistent.
She immediately got to her feet and started sniffing at the air. “Tempesssstia! Tempesssstia!”
The pair shambled out of the room and started their way through the pitch-black hallways towards the source of their agitation.
* * *
“Are you sure?” Brandi asked as she stepped over to where everybody was crouched around a pile of bones.
Tommy held up a fanged skull whose cranium had been smashed in by a tremendous force. “Sure as sure can be, I’m afraid.” Richie, who’d never seen a vampire’s skull before, looked extremely uncomfortable, and Brandi couldn’t really blame him. She’d felt much the same way when she’d been confronted with the fact that even though she was immortal, that didn’t mean that she couldn’t end up as a desiccated skeleton someday. But at the moment she had far greater concerns than whether or not Richie was feeling ill.
“How recent?” she asked, feeling the anger inside her building to even greater heights.
Lupi, who was holding a femur bone, sniffed at it and then delicately tested it with her teeth. “Several weeks, a month or two, I think,” she answered before handing the bone back to Anton. “It is hard to tell after awhile. It was a young one, though, I’m sure of that.”
Tommy nodded. “I concur.”
Brandi scowled. “So they’ve already gotten to one of us.”
“Unfortunately, it was more than one,” said the vampiric professor, and Brandi wasn’t able to totally suppress her growl.
“How many?” she demanded, her green eyes flickering red for several seconds.
“We think we’re looking at three, all of them young, if our field analysis is right,” said Anton, pointing to the shattered remains of two other skulls, which he’d been roughly reconstructing when Tommy had called the big vampiress over. “There’s such a tangle of bones scattered around, it’ll probably take us a day or two to get all of these orphan bones reunited with their brothers and sisters.”
“Three,” Brandi repeated, clenching her fists. “Three more of us that the Crimson Order’s claimed. Motherfuckers.” She spun back around and glared at the loading dock entrance, knowing that the culprits were somewhere beyond it. “You got anything else for me, Tommy?”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” said the dark blond vampire with a sigh. “There are two distinct bite patterns Anton and I have identified on the bones, so I’m certain there’s at least two, but beyond that I can’t tell you anything else. Not unless Anton and I get these back to the lab and start thorough analysis.”
“No time for that,” replied the big vampiress. “This has got to end tonight, before anybody else gets killed.” She turned towards the blonde-haired werewolf. “You ready to hunt?”
Lupi wuffed, sounding more like a wolf than a person. “Always.”
“Then let’s go.” Lupi was immediately at her side, eager and ready to go; one of the things she shared with her foster mother was a hunger for combat and impatience with waiting for it to start. Brandi looked at the other four. “The rest of you go and regroup at Tommy’s car and wait for us. Nobody else goes in but us, got it?”
When she turned to go, Richie spoke up. “So that’s it? We gotta go back ‘n sit with our thumbs up our asses while you ‘n Lupi go take care of business? That’s shit, man. I want a piece of those fuckers, too.”
Brandi turned back and fixed the half-vampire with a piercing glare, and to his credit, Richie didn’t back down. “This isn’t fun and games, kid. This is serious, dead serious.”
Richie snorted, glaring back, his fists clenched at his sides. “Shit, I know that! Me ‘n Mick had to watch those two chew up some poor guy last night, and I’ve been waitin’ all day for a shot at ‘em. Not only that, but you might remember that I was stuck workin’ for the Crimson Order not all that long ago! Those motherfuckers kidnapped me when I was on my way back from night class, turned me into one of them, and then controlled my thoughts through that telepathic shit Tempestia had goin’! Maybe the Crimson Order fucked with you guys pretty bad, but at least they didn’t enslave you!” He stepped up and thumped himself in the chest angrily and said, “Nobody makes me their bitch! Maybe I can’t get back at Tempestia herself, but I can take a shot at a couple of her pets!”
Everything was silent in the loading dock as Brandi regarded Richie, mentally weighing her options, and then listening to what her heart had to say. She glanced over at Mick, who was standing expressionlessly with his arms folded over his chest. “And I suppose you want to go with your buddy, huh?”
The half-vampire gave a curt nod. “If he’s stepping into something dangerous, I intend to back him up. He’d do the same for me.”
Brandi sighed and shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do it. Richie,” she said, trying to be as gentle as possible, “I understand what you’re feeling. I really do. But I’ve seen vampires with hundreds of years of experience get shredded by revenants in a matter of seconds, and even though it sounds insulting to say so, you’re still just a kid. Mick’s got a few years on you, but it’s the same thing. Neither of you are ready.”
Richie glared at her as though wishing he could make her head explode just by wishing it, and his dark eyes blazed red with fury. Tommy cleared his throat and said, “If it’s any consolation, I don’t view myself as being adequately prepared to face a pair of revenants on their home turf, even when backed up by Brandi and Lupi. I fear I’d be more of a liability than anything else.”
“Particularly when one takes into account that these revenants appear to be aberrations of some sort,” Anton added. “There’s no telling what surprises may be in store. I’d even go so far as to advise Brandi and Lupi to hold off until they’ve got a couple more heavy hitters with them.”
Brandi growled. “No chance. Nobody else is gonna die because of those two.”
Richie snorted. “Yeah, I see how it is. It’s all right for you to take risks, but not us dumb kids, huh?”
“When you can lift a Buick over your head, kid, you can take some pretty big risks,” said the vampiress.
“What about Lupi? I haven’t seen her do that lately,” asked Richie. Lupi cringed a little bit, and Brandi knew that this was hard on her, because she was friends with the two half-vampires, and this argument was putting her in the middle.
“Revenants have always had a hard time with werewolves, because they can’t track werewolves’ emotions like they can vampires’ and mortals’, and also because werewolves can match revenants when it comes to sheer ferocity,” said Brandi, unable to totally keep the irritation out of her voice. “And furthermore, I don’t have to explain myself to you, kid. Whether you understand it or not, I’m doing this for your own safety, and if you don’t like it, tough shit.”
“They’ve been learning magick from Donita,” said Lupi, sounding conciliatory. “I’ve seen them practicing, and they’re very good. Maybe they could—“
“No,” snapped Brandi, letting her ivory fangs slide down into place to underline her words. “They can play Harry fucking Potter all they want, but magick isn’t worth shit against revenants in close-quarters unless you’ve got the kind of experience Donita has or the power Katheryne’s got.” She raked everybody with her eyes and snarled warningly. “And furthermore, this isn’t open to debate! I’ve been crushing revenants since before any of you were even thought of, and what I say goes! If you don’t like it, fuck off!”
Richie glared at her for a few more seconds, and then growled, “Fine, mommy. I guess I’ll go home and play video games like a good boy, huh?” He turned and stalked off, heading back the way they came, and after lingering for a few moments, Mick followed after him. “Maybe Kimmie ain’t as full of shit as I thought,” Richie muttered to Mick as they started up the rubble pile, moving towards the parking lot.
Lupi whimpered and nudged at Brandi’s shoulder with her nose, and when the vampiress looked down at the werewolf, the latter’s eyes were plaintive and Brandi sighed. “Go ahead, but make it quick.”
The young werewolf yipped and hurried off to catch up with Richie and Mick, and the three stood and talked on the rubble pile for a short time, Lupi speaking very animatedly, while Richie was far more sullen. Mick offered a comment now and again, but said little else.
While Brandi waited, she said to Tommy and Anton, “Keep an eye out for those two. I don’t want them sneaking into things and getting themselves killed. Let them leave if they want to, but keep them out of the building, no matter what.”
Tommy nodded as he deposited a batch of the vampire bones into the duffel bag he’d brought along, and Anton smiled slightly at Brandi. “You’re a good mother, I think.”
The vampiress shrugged. “I do my best. I know this little tiff couldn’t have been easy on Lupi, since she spends a lot of her free time hanging out with those two and their friends. She’s in the position of having the strength and experience to hang with the grown-ups, but she’s got a lot more in common with the kids, and I hate getting her stuck between those worlds, but sometimes I don’t have a choice.”
Anton nodded knowingly. “Being a parent myself, I know that it’s far from the easiest prospect in the world.”
“Tell me about it,” said Brandi. She raised her voice and called out, “Lupi! Come on!”
Quickly saying good-bye to her friends, Lupi turned and scurried back down the rubble pile and hurried over to Brandi. Richie gave Brandi one last furious glance and then set off up the pile and out of sight, Mick right along with him.
“Richie is very angry with you,” Lupi said matter-of-factly. “He thinks that you’re overstepping your bounds and that you shouldn’t be telling him what to do when it involves something like this.”
“Cry me a river,” snorted Brandi. “I’m not here to win a popularity contest, I’m here to make sure nobody else dies, and neither one of those two is ready to fight a revenant, much less two, on its home territory. If Richie doesn’t like me, I could care less, because I’d rather have him hate my guts and still be alive than have him loving me while he’s getting killed.”
Tommy zipped up his duffel bag and he and Anton got to their feet. “We’re going to head back to the car and keep an eye on things from out here. You sure you’re going to be all right?”
Brandi laughed. “I seem to recall you asking me that same question not too long ago, right after I took down three revenants at once, by myself.”
“It would have been four, but I ran that one over with Dorian’s car,” said the vampire with a grin. Then he scowled. “And I’m still hearing about it from Dorian.” He reached inside the pocket of his denim jacket and held out a walkie-talkie to Brandi. “Want to take this with you, just in case?”
The vampiress shook her head. “Nope. You and I both know it’ll get broken as soon as the hostilities break out.”
Smiling knowingly, the professor returned the walkie-talkie to his pocket. “You take care of yourself in there, and Lupi, too.”
Chuckling, Brandi said, “Why Tommy, I didn’t know you cared!”
“If anything happens to either one of you, I’ll never hear the end of it from Stacey, and that’s a fate I’d like to avoid if at all possible,” said the vampire, rolling his eyes.
“I’ll make sure we make it out in one piece, just so that doesn’t happen,” said Brandi, “Don’t worry.” She turned to Lupi and said, “C’mon, kid. Night’s wasting, and we’ve got revenants to kill before the sun comes up.”
The she-wolf nodded eagerly, and the pair started off towards the abandoned hospital.
Anton called out after them, “Bring me back an ear!”
As they walked away, Brandi looked back and said, “We’ll bring the bodies back with us and let you take what you want.”
“Fair enough.”
“Oh, and Tommy?”
The professor met eyes with Brandi one last time. “Yes?”
“If we’re not out by sunup, bring back Wade and Steele.”
“Definitely.”
The two women leaped up onto the loading platform, sniffed at the air for a few moments, and then disappeared through the shadowy door, out of the two scholars’ sight. “I just hope it doesn’t come to that,” Tommy said to Anton, who nodded in agreement.
* * *
After climbing the stairs to the upper section of the hospital, Arthur stopped and sniffed at the air: the scent was closer. He reached out with his other senses, searching for their emotions with his mind, but beyond hearing a few faint mental murmurs, he could detect nothing else, which confused him. He and Anne had been able to easily find the others that had approached their lair, but this was different, and he couldn’t understand why, which set him ill-at-ease.
After moving through the dark labyrinth of the hospital for a few minutes, Arthur reached out and caught the other revenant by the shoulder, growling warningly. She stopped and looked at him in askance, and he attempted to articulate what he meant, snarling in frustration when she didn’t comprehend. But he persisted, and she finally understood.
* * *
Brandi moved through the hospital hallways slightly ahead of Lupi, keeping her mind as clear as she possibly could, using all of the tricks Stacey and Clarisse had taught her to keep her emotions cloaked. Revenants could track emotions like radar, and in the past she’d always stood out like a sore thumb to them, because her emotions were always very close to the surface. But her lover and her best friend were both extremely gifted in empathy, and she’d picked up a few techniques from them over the years, proving that old dogs like her could learn plenty of new tricks. She’d used those techniques to sneak up on a number of revenants during the conflict with the Crimson Order, and she hoped they’d hold her in good stead tonight, as the thought of walking into the home of two revenants was enough to give even her pause. She especially didn’t like how this pair of revenants seemed to differ from others she’d encountered in the past, as the creatures were dangerous enough as it was, and she didn’t like the idea of them finding out new ways to be deadly.
She could just hear barely hear Lupi slinking along behind her, despite the sharpness of her ears. Werewolves were even more naturally stealthy than vampires, and the young she-wolf was so good at it that she made Brandi feel loud and clumsy next to her. Lupi had shifted over into her wolf form just after entering the hospital, making her quieter and even more formidable than she was in human form. She’d seen Lupi in battle before, and despite the werewolf’s young age, she already exhibited the skills of a seasoned warrior, and Brandi was certain that the she-wolf was going to be impossible to stop once she got a few more decades in. That was the only reason she allowed Lupi to come along with her while she’d left everybody else outside, and even Lupi would get the boot the moment Brandi thought she was in over her head. The vampiress was all for throwing herself into perilous situations, but she was a great deal more hesitant when it came to dragging others along with her, especially her loved ones.
Brandi brought herself to a stop, allowing Lupi to catch up with her, and she glanced back at Lupi, whose blue eyes seemed to glow softly in the darkness. Since she’d come to Los Angeles and had gotten into the habit of wearing clothes and other accessories, the young werewolf made for quite a sight when she was in wolf form. Lupi had taken to purposely wearing baggy clothes which wouldn’t be shredded by her transformation, which increased her size in addition to causing thick white fur to spring up all over her, so while Lupi looked like a hip-hop fanatic when in human form, her attire made perfect sense when she was wolfed out. The piercings that Brandi and Lupi’s uncle Lassic had grudgingly agreed to also carried over when Lupi shifted, and when the Valkyrie looked back at the she-wolf, she was greeted by the sight of a white-furred, upright wolf clad in hip-hop clothes and adorned with several gold hoops in her alert ears, as well as a gold ring in one of the nostrils of the black, wet nose on the end of her snout. The kid was something else, that was for sure, and Brandi adored her to no end. Holding back a chuckle and forcing her mind back on track, the vampiress softly hissed, “Anything?”
Lupi’s reply was a harsh whisper, her voice having deepened with her transformation. “It stinks of them in here. Hard to say. I can hear small sounds, but the whole structure is not stable, and shifts with our movements, so I can not tell.”
The vampiress nodded, having reached the same conclusion, pushing down the frustration and bloodlust she felt rising up within her. They were so close, in the belly of the beast, as it were, and she could feel the need to rend, mangle, and destroy surging through her blood. Repressing it, even for the sake of camouflage, was extraordinarily difficult.
She snarled involuntarily when she heard distinct, uneven footsteps from somewhere in front of them. Lupi also heard, and her growl mingled with Brandi’s. Instincts taking over, the two of them moved forward as one, their powerful eyes penetrating the darkness effortlessly, while their ears and noses fervently searched for any additional bits of information they might need.
Their feet silently came down upon the cracked and warped tiles of the old hospital’s hallways, and long-dead wiring hung down from the partially-collapsed ceiling like vines in a jungle. They swiftly hopped over or stepped around toppled chairs and gurneys as they followed the source of the sounds through the twisting and turning hallways, and they were wary of the open doorways that led to the empty shells of patient rooms. As Brandi moved along, it struck her that the revenants had found themselves an excellent place to hole themselves up in, as the old hospital was extremely treacherous. More than once she almost stepped into an opening in the floor, leading down to who-knew-what dark depths, and she decided that she was going to burn the whole place down when this was over.
They reached an intersection, and Brandi raised her hand, signaling for Lupi to stop. When the she-wolf halted behind her, the vampiress sniffed at the air, not liking the way this was going. It felt less like a hunt than a corralling, and she hadn’t even given it any thought until this very moment, because she’d briefly forgotten that these revenants were different. The other revenants she’d encountered in the past hadn’t been clever enough to do something like that, but what about these? Richie and Mick had said the two had ganged up on the wino together, and said that they got along perfectly fine. So just how well did they get along? And what were they capable of?
Just as Brandi started to whisper something to Lupi, one of the revenants appeared in the doorway at the end of the hall directly ahead of them. It roared furiously, the sound rattling in their bones, and when it charged towards them, Brandi’s instincts to not only demolish her prey but also to protect Lupi completely overrode her more complex thought processes, and she matched the revenant’s roar and rushed towards it, her eyes blazing like torches and her fangs gnashing at the air.
But just as she passed by an office door, something slammed into her side like a runaway tank, hard enough that it actually hurt, and smashed her through the wall on the other side of the hallway. They tumbled through the plaster wall as though it were made out of paper, pummeling one another in a blur of fists, claws, and fangs. They rolled across the floor of an empty patient room and slammed into the opposite wall, hitting it so hard that the wall collapsed on top of them. To make matters worse, all of the excess weight from the wall on top of the struggling combatants was more than what the aging floor could handle, and it gave way beneath them with the shriek of breaking timbers.
The vampiress and the revenant fell into blackness, still viciously tearing into one another, and the Valkyrie barely heard Lupi’s distressed howl of “Brraandi!” as she and her attacker plummeted through the internal structure of the hospital. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She’d been snookered right into a classic ambush, and now she’d been separated from Lupi because she’d underestimated her opponents.
The unexpected trip came to a sudden stop when the pair crashed through the ceiling of an operating room and awkwardly landed on the operating table, which immediately buckled under their combined weight. The revenant snarled furiously as Brandi landed a punch directly between his eyes, and he grabbed at her with his massive clawed hands, sinking his talons deep into the flesh of her shoulders. “Tempesssstia!” he bellowed, sounding almost frantic. “Tempesssstia!”
Just the fact that the son of a bitch was speaking was enough to surprise the hell out of Brandi, and even though it only slowed her down for a second, it was enough to give the revenant the opportunity to fling her away. Her flight across the room was painfully brought to a halt when she collided with a glass cabinet, driving large shards of glass into her back and shoulders, causing hot blood to course down her back.
Letting the pain drive her, she shoved away from the wall and charged towards the revenant, who was coming right at her. She leaped into the air and stuck her arm out, clotheslining him with a forearm in the face, completely flipping him end-over-end in mid-air before he crashed to the floor. The vampiress snaked one of her arms behind her, yanked out a long shard of glass from her back, and then rushed at the revenant as he got back to his feet.
With a growl she drove the glass deep into the meat of the revenant’s shoulder, punching him in the stomach at the same time. The revenant yowled in pain and knocked Brandi away with a blind backhand punch, and as she stumbled backwards, she shook her head: this revenant hit harder than any of the others she’d fought in the past, by a decent margin, at that. She crouched as the revenant ripped the glass from his shoulder, and when she galloped towards him with intent to spear him right through the brick wall of the operating room, he sidestepped and drove the glass downwards into her back, opening up a well of white-hot pain that caused her to involuntarily cry out. But her cry was cut short as she plowed into the wall headfirst, going right through it like a rocket-powered bulldozer, and she ended up going through another wall before she could stop herself.
It was the revenant himself that ended up stopping her, as he pounced on her back and slammed her into the grimy floor. She howled in fury when the revenant sank his fangs into her abused shoulder and started guzzling down her blood. Riding on a wave of pain and anger, she got up onto her hands and knees and shot an elbow backwards into the revenant’s face. She heard and felt his nose shatter beneath her elbow, and she hit him again, again, and again, until she was back on her feet. Shoving backwards, she drove the revenant into a wall, slamming him with another elbow shot at the same time, finally loosing him from her shoulder, and she spun around and drove a knee deep into the creature’s gut.
“Nobody . . . does . . . that . . . to me!” she screamed as she wrapped her hands around the revenant’s throat and started bashing his head against the wall. “NOBODY!”
She pinned him up against the wall and lifted him off the floor, effectively hanging him with her steely grip, and the revenant’s filthy tongue stuck out as she throttled him. “Motherfucker,” she growled as she bored into his sightless eyes with her own, digging her thumbs into his Adam’s Apple. “I’ll kill you!”
“Tempesssstia,” hacked the revenant, glaring back at her with his eerie white eyes.
“Tempestia’s dead,” snarled Brandi, “And so are you!”
A piercing, bestial shriek filled the air, emanating from somewhere above them, and both combatants stopped short, looking upwards. The triumphant howl of a wolf then sounded out, long and extremely loud, echoing through the entire hospital.
Brandi grinned as the revenant froze up, a shocked look on his coarse features. “Sounds like Lupi’s got your pal on the ropes, asshole!”
Another shriek sounded, and the revenant suddenly started struggling like he’d been hit with a live wire, wildly flailing around. He kicked and punched and clawed so furiously that Brandi lost her grip on him, and he hauled off and slammed her in the head hard enough to make her see stars and knock her up against a wall yet again. “Help!” roared the creature in his savage, mangled voice. “Help!”
She braced herself for more blows, but none came, and she gawked in surprise when she looked up and saw the revenant running away from her so fast that she could barely see him. He ran through a set of heavy-duty wooden double-doors so hard that he blew them off their hinges, and when he galloped up a flight of steps, Brandi cursed.
“Shit! Lupi!” She shook her head to dispel the cobwebs, and set off after the revenant.
* * *
Arthur hysterically ran up the stairs, following the sounds of Anne’s distress, and he could sense her fear and pain, which only drove him on harder. The wounds inflicted on him by the big vampiress seemed as nothing now, and he didn’t care how much she’d hurt him, because he was far more concerned for his companion. Since they’d escaped from the Crimson Order, Anne had been the only source of comfort in his life, even more so than food, and he felt terror gnawing at his heart at the concept of her being taken away from him. These intruders couldn’t take her away! He wouldn’t let them!
He bounded up the last leg of the staircase and charged into the hallways, his empathic radar leading him right towards her. The revenant twisted and turned through the corridors, calling out, “Help! Help!” until he came upon Anne, who was frantically struggling with the white werewolf and clearly losing.
Blood dripped from the werewolf’s jaws as she bit into Anne’s arm and furiously worried it back and forth, looking as though she was trying to rip it off. The assailed revenant screeched in agony as she backpedaled, trying to avoid being put flat on her back by the werewolf, who swiped at her with thick, inch-long black claws.
“No!” yelled Arthur, lunging at the werewolf. “No!”
The she-wolf let go of Anne and fluidly moved backwards, dodging Arthur’s attack with a ferocious snarl, and she took a chunk out of his thigh with a slash of her claws. Arthur backed off for a few seconds, ignoring the throbbing in his leg, and he shook his head as voices from a dreamlike past assaulted his mind.
“Hit ‘em low, Yancy! Hit ‘em low! You wanna make the squad or not?!” bellowed a belligerent voice, thick and gravelly from years of smoking cigars, and it painfully echoed through his head. Squad? What squad? Was that Coach Anderson? He would’ve liked to have played football in high school, but he hadn’t been able to make it because he just wasn’t big enough.
“I wanna make the ssssquad,” growled the revenant, ducking down low and charging forward at the werewolf, catching her by surprise. He instinctively rose up when he hit her, just like the coach had always told him to do, and just like that, the werewolf was flipped over his head like a rag doll. “Hit ‘em low!”
“Steamroll the competition, Yancy! That’s what you gotta do!”
“Ssssteamroll!” He turned around and charged at the werewolf again, not even giving her the time to get back onto her feet again. He hit her hard enough to launch her backwards into a wall, sending her right through it with a crash of broken bricks and plaster. He threw his fists over his head and screamed, “Defensssse!” He paused for a few seconds, waiting to hear Coach Anderson’s praise, and when none came, he looked around in confusion.
The past suddenly fell away and was brutally replaced by the present when his eyes fell upon Anne’s severely-injured form laying on the floor of the hospital. She twitched and shuddered from her wounds, her dark blood collecting on the soiled tiles, and her white eyes looked plaintively at Arthur. “Hurt,” she groaned. “Get the sssschool nursssse.”
“Help,” said Arthur, carefully scooping her up and holding her close. He looked around as though seeing the hospital for the first time, and he suddenly remembered another place like this one, but better, where he’d gotten help one time when he’d been grazed by a car while on his bicycle. “Hosssspital, downtown.”
He heard the pounding of the big vampiress’ footsteps rapidly drawing closer, and the she-wolf was working on getting back to her feet and looking pretty pissed-off, so he took off at a dead run, knowing exactly which way to go to get outside and away from the two invaders.
“Help,” he said to Anne. “Help you.”
* * *
Brandi got there just as the big revenant disappeared down a side corridor, but her eyes were for the young she-wolf, who was angrily extricating herself from the wreckage of a nearby wall. “Lupi!” she exclaimed, hurrying over to help, her heart skipping a beat at the thought of the she-wolf being hurt.
But the werewolf had things well in hand, and beyond a few cuts and scrapes and a fresh coat of grime on her fur, she was fine. She roughly shoved a shattered support beam off of herself and furiously banged her fist against an adjoining wall, growling steadily as her blue eyes blazed. “I am fine,” she said as Brandi helped her to her feet and checked her over for injuries. “But there is something wrong with the revenants! They are acting very strangely, and they are even talking! That should not be!” snarled the werewolf, as though personally affronted by the revenants’ odd behavior.
“I know,” said Brandi, “I noticed that myself, and it worries me; I think Tempesita’s wayward pets have more to them that any of us suspected. C’mon, we gotta catch ‘em before they get any farther.”
They set off after the two revenants, their pursuit confounded and slowed by the confusing nature of the abandoned hospital, and Brandi hoped that they caught them before they made their escape.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t meant to be.
* * *
Arthur kicked down one of the hospital’s side doors and carried Anne out into the open, looking this way and that as he checked for pursuers, and when he saw nothing, he took off, his bare feet scarcely making contact with the cracked concrete. The hospital was located in a dip in the terrain, mostly surrounded by grassy hills, and he started up the side of one such hill after crossing an expanse of overgrown parking lot, not even slowing as he climbed the steep grade. He wasn’t totally sure of where he’d end up at once he was over the hill, but something had told him that leaving the hospital through the usual ways would have been fatal; his antagonists might have brought friends with them. Speaking of friends . . .
He looked down at Anne, who was watching him closely, her harsh features pinched by pain, and the thought of losing her hurt far worse than the wounds the big vampiress had inflicted upon him. Throughout all of this, she had been his only companion, his only friend, and only she understood. Everything was still foggy in his head, but he felt more alert than he had since this whole ordeal had began, and he wondered if things would continue to get better with time. Maybe he would be able to catch the ghosts of memory that always teased him, and if he could do it, perhaps Anne could, too.
“Hurt,” she groaned, holding onto him tightly. “Hurt bad.”
He grunted, unable to find the words he needed to reassure her. Instead, he just said, “Help you.”
She nodded and groaned again. He could feel her hot blood all over his hands and running down the front of his body, and he found that it scared him, something he was unfamiliar with. He supposed he used to be scared now and again before Tempestia had gotten hold of him, and that it was something he’d been used to, but now it was something fresh and terrible, and his heart beat thunderously in his chest. He also felt anger at the vampiress and the werewolf for invading their home, and he was also infuriated that Tempestia had done this to them in the first place.
He blinked as he remembered something the vampiress had said. Tempestia’s dead! Was the vampiress lying to him? But why would she lie to him if all she wanted to do was kill him? As a matter of fact, what was lying?
Arthur shook his head, frustrated at how he could know something one second and then completely forget it the next, and he snarled as he crested the hill, passed through some tall bushes, and then came out on a narrow concrete strip that sat a short distance away from another, much wider concrete strip.
“Ssssidewalk,” he said, looking down at the concrete, his blank eyes taking in more visual information than they seemed capable of. Yes, that seemed right. “Ssssidewalk.”
Anne moaned and twitched in his arms; the werewolf had known just the right places to claw, bite, and rip, and though she hadn’t killed Anne, she’d left her in agony. Arthur moaned in distress, trying to remember where the good hospital was at, wish there was something he could do to ease his friend’s suffering. Then a thought occurred to him. “Tempesssstia’s dead!” he informed the female revenant, and after a few moments, her mouth twisted in a facsimile of a smile.
“Good,” she said. “Hate Tempesssstia!”
“Yessss! Hate Tempesssstia! Tempesssstia’s dead!” agreed Arthur, heartened by Anne’s reaction. That seemed to help his addled mind focus itself, and he once again remembered how to get to the good hospital. He ran across the wide ribbon of concrete, which he recalled was known as a street, and his big feet carried him across the grass on the opposing side as he drew nearer to the more populated parts of Los Angeles.
* * *
“Fuckin’ bullshit,” Richie growled as he and Mick walked down an empty sidewalk that ran along a junkyard. “Where the hell does she get off tellin’ me what I can and can’t do?”
“I heard she actually can lift a Buick over her head,” offered Mick, sounding unconcerned.
Richie rolled his eyes. “Whoop-de-fuckin’-do. And I can make a computer do headstands once I’ve had a chance to get my fingers into its code, so what? You don’t see me bossin’ nobody around.”
Mick shrugged. “We’re kids to them, Richie. I’m in my mid-20’s and you’re barely 20 yourself, and a lot of them are at least three or four centuries old.”
“And just ‘cuz we’re kids means they gotta boss us around when it comes to everything?” retorted the other half-vampire. “How’re we supposed to learn how to take care of shit like revenants and that if we keep gettin’ sent home every time they crop up? Aren’t we allowed to take risks of our own? It’s not like I’m gonna sue her if I get bit by a revenant! Why can’t I just make a fuckin’ mistake and learn from it? Besides, we’re the ones that found those things, and then reported ‘em like good little boys instead of goin’ after ‘em on our own! Doesn’t that count for something? I guess not to them, huh?”
Mick glanced over at his friend. “You’re starting to sound like Kimmie.”
Richie snorted and shook his head. “Y’know, if you’d told me that last night, I would’ve just popped you one and called it good, but now I’m startin’ to wonder . . . Maybe she’s got a point, at least about some things, and some of the ‘grown-ups.’ The ones like Donita, Katheryne, and Dorian, they’re all right, they’re cool. Hell, Tommy’s pretty cool, too, whenever he makes sense, at least. They help us out and show us how to take care of things, and then don’t get all high and mighty with us. They know how it is, you know what I’m sayin’? But those older ones, like Brandi . . . they’re too fuckin’ full of themselves, and think they can just lay it down any way they want, and fuck you if you don’t agree with ‘em.”
“Lupi said that Brandi’s real sensitive when it comes to anything involving the Crimson Order. Brandi and her boyfriend and a lot of their friends almost got killed by them, after all.”
Richie threw his hands up in the air. “And I got fucking enslaved by ‘em! Don’t that get me at least a few shots at some revenants?!”
“Brandi’s got seniority, I suppose,” said the red-haired half-vampire, and Richie muttered something foul. “You did notice that she wasn’t exactly inviting Tommy and Anton to go in with her and Lupi, didn’t you? Tommy’s got seniority on you, and it doesn’t seem like anybody tells Anton what to do, even though he’s just a mortal.” Richie muttered again, still not satisfied. “Well, what can you do? Just let it go, man. Let it be their problem, eh? Lupi can tell us about it afterwards, and maybe we can talk to Donita about getting some of the elders to ease up a bit. She’s very persuasive, you know.”
The black half-vampire sighed gustily and shook his head again. “I know, I know. It’s just . . . I’ve been fightin’ all my life to be independent and be able to write my own ticket, and just when I get goin’ good in college and things start goin’ my way, I get vamped, and all of sudden there’s a bunch of new people who can tell me what I can and can’t do. It bugs me.”
Mick nodded. “I can understand that. But at least they’re not enslaving you like the Crimson Order did, and you’re not under any kind of telepathic control. At least you’ve got the freedom to bitch.”
Richie smirked. “Yeah, I guess there’s that.”
The two walked along for a little while longer, and just when they were getting ready to cross the street and head away from the junkyard, the sounds of pounding footsteps and heavy breathing, as well as odd growlings, caught their ears. The both slowed their walks to a stop and glanced around curiously. The section of L.A. they were in was rather run-down and didn’t have much going on beyond a few bums sitting around a light-pole on the corner and a couple of crackheads arguing back and forth in front of a closed laundromat down the street; the new sounds seemed a bit out of place.
“You hearin’ what I’m hearin’?” Richie asked Mick.
“Yup.” The other vampire seemed nearly disinterested as he scanned the area, but then, that was usually Mick’s style regardless of the situation.
They heard the sounds again, and this time they seemed to emanate from the junkyard behind them, and the two looked at one another. “You don’t think . . .?” asked Richie, and Mick shrugged.
“We’re only a mile or two away from that old hospital. It’s possible, I’d say.”
Then a very human scream came from down the street, making the two jump in surprise. When they turned their eyes to the source of the sound, they saw a huge, hulking figure grabbing at the two laundromat crackheads, who were screaming bloody murder and helplessly struggling against the revenant’s massive hands.
Richie grinned. “Shall we?”
“Shit yeah.”
* * *
On the way to the good hospital, Arthur once again forgot where it was, and he had detoured into something that he foggily recalled was referred to as a junkyard, because it was darker and quieter than the surrounding area. He leaped over the rusty chain-link fence with ease and lightly set down on packed dirt, then charged through the maze of junk-piles, looking around for a place where he and Anne could sit in peace, like they had at the old hospital. “Help yet?” asked Anne, her voice a little stronger, and Arthur noticed that the bleeding had stopped.
“No,” he grunted, frustrated again.
“Hungry,” growled the other revenant.
“Hungry,” repeated Arthur. Would that help Anne? He wasn’t sure, because neither of them had been hurt like this before, and he didn’t know what needed to be done to fix it. He had to stop and think, and maybe he could figure this out.
He slowed his run through the junkyard as he spied a likely-looking place, and he veered towards it. The revenant, breathing hard after his long run, came to a stop and carefully set Anne down in a flat area surrounded by enormous piles of junked cars; it reminded him of their old hospital, and maybe if he were in comfortable surroundings, he’d be able to think better. “Hungry,” insisted Anne. “Hungry!”
Arthur stood up and thoughtfully rubbed his chin through his thick, unkempt beard, and after a few moments he stopped. Why was he doing that? He shook his head: he’d slowly been remembering things since he and Anne had come to Los Angeles, but since he’d gotten into the fight with the big vampiress, it seemed that everything was coming to him much faster now, and it was hard to keep up. Especially since his memories kept fading in and out, and it was driving him crazy. He shook his head again and snarled in anger. Anne growled in response, sitting up and looking at him intently with her blank white eyes. “Hungry!” She started to get to her feet, moving painfully, and Arthur leaned over and cautiously pushed her back down.
“No!” he said. “Hurt!” He pointed at her and struggled with himself for a few minutes as he tried to recall what he needed to say. “Sssstay!” he finally shouted. “Help you.” Though she looked unhappy about it, Anne sat back down and stayed where she was.
Arthur stood by her for a few more moments, trying to reason everything out. If Anne was hungry, she needed food to fix that. So he needed to find food. He grunted. That was something he knew how to do quite well, so that wouldn’t be a problem. “Sssstay,” he said to Anne one more time, to remind her, and he turned and hurried off.
As he ran, he sniffed at the air and reached out with his senses, and after a few seconds he found that there a couple of likely targets. Their emotions were running high, making them stand out very clearly from everybody else in the area, and he ignored the others in favor of these two, despite the oddly familiar