Bohemian Morning 08

By Lydia Manx

Chapter Eight

I was happy to know that more than a few crimes were going to be solved once the DNA came back from their corpses. I took pleasure in the knowledge many unsolved mysteries would be in the news cycles soon as 'solved' with the bodies of these dead men 'talking' forensics, in spades, so to speak. Of course, I smiled at Fred first, knowing he was the leader in this little group after the currently missing Bob. I'd be getting to Bob eventually but one body at a time. Karl's lifeless carcass was quickly cooling above our heads, the not-so-gentle reminder that everything wasn't exactly running smoothly in flannel boy land. Gee darn.

Fred put a hand up, as if warding me off, "Hey, let's talk. There must be something you need. Just let us help you." His voice dripped with deception to my enhanced hearing and his eyes darted back and forth between me and dead Karl. He was used to talking his way out of most situations, but he'd seriously underestimated me and my needs. I wasn't given to finding human males -- or females -- attractive in the least -- even had he been supernatural flavor -- still he was not my type.

"But Fred, remember I am just a bitch?" My tone was pure silk and hunger. I've been told recently-fed vampires sound like sex and desire to the humans hearing us speak. I didn't know because I never bothered to ask, but it was allegedly hypnotic and mind-blowingly delicious to a human. This is where I think the myths sprung up about vampires being in lust or even love with humans. There have been mistakes made and not every human was killed -- sometimes shit happened unexpectedly, allowing a person to survive the encounter -- but those were rare and usually cleaned up quickly by the vampire council or enforcers tasked with keeping us on the downlow. From the puzzled look on his face, I could see my words weren't completely registering as he'd been expecting a different sort of reply. He thought -- still -- that he had the upper hand despite Karl's corpse dangling in front of his very eyes.

Watching him sputter with nonsensical sounds, I saw Fred struggle with what I'd said versus what he asked me, and he was waiting to hear me say how he could help me. Fuckwit number three had huge deer eyes watching us closely for any sign of weakness on my part, and I could see that his strength was coming from his leader. He was enamored by Fred far more than good old Fred knew.

"But lady, you must want something I can give you." His voice was breaking like an adolescent's dancing with the hormones surging through an immature body hitting puberty; I could see that it was dawning on him that I had yet to ask for anything from him but his cell phone. My eyes were gleaming with a definite hunger and a promise of unspoken pain. He'd witnessed Karl's death, but it still didn't seem to register with him that he was actually on the chopping block. Humans were so fucking predictable to me.

Tendrils of fog wove in and out of the broken walls and port hole windows cut into the building. Karl was long gone from this earth while still dangling in plain sight with his blue jean covered ass hanging above us, a visual reminder overhead of my talents, while his severed throat was completely outside the fort allowing the remaining blood to drip slowly into the dirt below the massive oak tree. His body was scenting the air with more than coppery blood. Death is a rather messy business. He was a dog in life, but he'd fed me well and I had to admit that he'd taken the edge off my initial hunger. I was still furious at these pieces of trash who thought that women and girls were only on the earth for their own vicious entertainment.

I hadn't bothered to ask any of them what they'd done, but simply felt it emanating from the worn, disgustingly stained mattress on the floor and I had tasted the stories in Karl's blood when I'd snicked my fangs out and into his throat. From everything that had flooded my mind through his blood, his story was that during his nearly thirty years in the city where he lived, he had spent his time doing nothing positive and only taking everything, and he wanted his interests with extremely painfilled methods. His pack had been rabid long before they'd tried to take me as one of their victims.

All this because Fred's beer had been spilled down my leg when he slammed bodily into me in a local bar that I had mistakenly wandered into earlier in the night. What a damned waste of skin. From there everything had gone far off their usual evening entertainment of drugging strangers and raping them as desired. I savored the irony of human predators encountering a real apex predator, such as myself, when they thought for years that the world was their little oyster.

Fred was still waiting for me to answer. I think I was taking too long because he whined, "Come on lady, there's something I have you need, right?" Oh yeah, he wanted to please me now.

Pathetic much? I kept that automatic reply deep inside my mouth while flashing my rather long fangs instead and simply saying, "Oh, Fred, it seems that you do have something I need. Care to play twenty questions and try to figure it out?"

He then looked at fuckwit number three to see if he had any input before he said, "Not really."

"Oh, goodie! We are totally in agreement then. So, you guys are clear now that we won't be playing twenty questions for this round of fun with fuckwits tonight." Both of them looked hopeful thinking by my phrasing that I meant to keep them alive.

No, I just wasn't going to play that particular game. Instead I reached over and snatched fuckwit number three up into my embrace and slashed his face with the knife I'd taken off William. His sharp blade was entertaining me as I flashed the steel before them, I watched Fred's eyes go wide as it dawned on him where my weapon had come from earlier in the night. The fuckwit squealed as my hand traced a nice thick slice of stupid into his cheek and as a face cut is prone to do blood ran quickly down his face. Holding him in front of me while facing Fred I tilted his jaw and ran my tongue over and in the cut from behind in a mockery of sensuality that mimicked the play these humans had done to many women in the past. The cut had partially healed from my vampiric saliva -- a nice side effect of my kind and as my tongue laved into his cut a bit deeper at the edges - I watched as his knees buckled. His blood was flavored with fear and memories of various different women that he'd raped quite recently.

He fell to the floor crying into his hands saying, "No, don't hurt me anymore. I am so sorry."

"Boys, boys, boys. Think about all the times that you have heard how many girls and women say those exact same words? 'Sorry' and 'Please, don't hurt me anymore' sobbed out from their lips and their broken bodies bleeding out on this very mattress and onto this very floor. Haven't you?" My fangs were out, and my voice was nearly a whisper. Anger laced my question and my eyes directly met Fred's eyes while the fuckwit simpered and tried to disappear into a ball of misery. Impressive, but fairly impossible given the dimensions of the structure. I couldn't quite touch the walls with my arms outstretched but there wasn't a whole hell of a lot more room than that inside the decaying building.

The knife I was holding in my hand flashed as the fog drifted a bit allowing a slice of the moon to hit the bloodied weapon. Using my newly fed vampiric speed, I reached out and popped a button off from the front of the man's red and blue plaid flannel shirt. The button flew through the air and conveniently smacked Fred right between his eyes. I couldn't have scripted it better in a million years. Fred fell back on his ass looking stunned. It couldn't have hurt him as there wasn't much force behind the projectile, but it really shocked the arrogance right out of him -- albeit temporarily, I would guess, but still cute. Hell, the shot had even impressed me. But years of practice kept my face calm and entirely without expression of any emotion. Anyone observing us would swear that I'd intentionally hit Fred with the freed button as an insult if nothing else.

Yanking in an audible breath, I didn't need, I said to Fred, "I think we need to have a discussion."

He nodded frantically while his eyes darted around looking for someone to rescue him for a change. That certainly wasn't going to happen. The abandoned fort was far from anyone or anything who could possibly give a damn about scary noises coming from the chaparral-covered canyon. The heavy fog did bounce sounds around but nothing mechanical or human as far as I could hear bounced back to me. Still listening intently to our surrounding area, I could tell that there wasn't anything in the dark but small rodents, four-legged coyotes and night birds taking out their prey on silent wings. Just like I'd figured; I allowed myself a slight smile and waited for the sputtering from Fred. It wasn't very long before he broke the night's music and pulse.

"Come on, we didn't mean anything by it." The expected whine filled my ears and pissed me off at the insincerity lacing his words.

"Fred, that's a damned lie. I don't even need to drink your blood to hear the lie. Hey, fuckwit, you hear the lie?" I called down to the ball of misery unnamed so far. His whimpering had dropped into soft hiccoughs of wet sobs. My face must have shown something besides my disgust because I hadn't asked anything. But Fred filled in for me, as if I cared. "His name is Chuck."

"Okay, Chuck the fuckwit, can't you hear old Fred's lies in his words?" I made it sound like I actually cared about his input.

He grinned up at me like a beaten mongrel seeking my approval before saying, "No. Fred's lying."

His eager tones illustrated that he thought currying favor was expected to be given, and in case I missed it, he was now fully on board with me. Yay, me. Funny how a fang flashed with a recently healed knife slice could do that -- too bad I didn't need any sycophant worshippers for my clan. Hell, I didn't have a Master and wasn't in the mood to create my own clan because vampire enforcers really frowned on unsanctioned vampires.

Fred's arrogance asserted itself far faster than most -- but then like I'd noticed he was leader-in-training among his chaotic crew of jerks. Bob was the current leader, but Fred had been in his shadow for years, and thought tonight he would assemble his takeover. My interference wasn't anything on his radar, but damn amusing from my side of the table.

"You've had your fun. We said sorry. I'll forget about Karl there, but this here needs to stop." His voice was laced with pride and more than a bit of confidence given the odds were not in his favor. His chest swelled with machismo and thrust out as proud as any peacock.

"Oh, really? You think it needs to stop huh? And how precisely do you see this ending? Am I supposed to simply bend over and take it? Oh, no wait! I've got it! I am going to tuck tail and run away because you decreed it was 'done' now?" Okay, I did laugh while talking, so it took a full minute for him to actually translate my words into a rather large 'no' instead of shivering and shaking in fear at his tone as he was used to from his past victim pool.