Fiction Friday, Saturday, and Maybe Sunday

It's another Fiction Friday. I've a short story for you today, and since blog readers (including myself) get a bit antsy when reading more than a few hundred words, I'll break the story into three installments over the weekend. It's about a vampire. And yes, I'm sorry to say, she is conflicted.

The Assassin

by Mark H. Walker

The assassin sat at the bar and watched. It was closing time, but the couple would need to be told, need to be tapped on the shoulder and told. Heck, they would probably need to be separated with some type of pneumatic tool and then told.

You felt that way once, her tiny voice whispered. 

 Several kids shuffled out the last slow tune on the tiny, saw-dust covered dance floor, the braver guys cupping soft parts that they wouldn’t have dared touch four hours and eight beers ago. Others clustered around the thick oak bar. Most of these were guys —the night’s losers who sipped their beer and stared balefully at the shuffling couples. The assassin heard them wishing. Wishing that jerk in the blue shirt would break a leg so they could give the girl in the tight red skirt one last try, or wishing that maybe the guy with the splotchy-ass beard would get sick so that they could move in on his chick in the blue jeans, who wasn’t that good looking, but all women looked better at closing time, or even wishing that the chick at the end of the bar wasn’t such a frigid piece of work.

She laughed at that one. They don’t want to know how hot my blood runs. To know that is to die.

            No the couple weren’t the last folks in the bar, but to each other they were. They sat in a corner booth near an open window where the wind from the mild Sediana night blew through her light-brown hair. The boy sat next to her, now kissing her, now talking, watching her as she laughed, and smiling at her beauty.

            The assassin knew they were the ones. They would be the last to leave, and would have eyes for nothing but each other. The streets outside were dark. Hollis wasn’t a big city, and its inhabitants were ranchers and miners. Folks who rose at the break of dawn, worked hard all day, and went to bed early. Yes, the streets would be deserted, and the streets would be dark. She felt herself moisten.

She hated it, hated what they had done to her. She tried to deny the urgings, deny the genetic manipulations in her body, deny the need. But she couldn’t… not for long. There were good days, days she felt strong, bright, focused. But then it started. A distraction at first, then desire, and the overwhelming, dark, need. Like the junkies on the bad side of Hollis. Human husks, without money, without food, without even a glimmer in their eyes. Living —if you could call passing air through their lungs— for the next fix of crack. Yeah, she was a junkie, but didn’t crave crack, blood was her drug. Human blood, the hotter the better.

          The couple stood, and that simple act sent an electric shock through the assassin. Oh yeah she needed it, needed it bad now. Deep inside, the tiny voice cried out. Oh God, if I could just turn away. Just leave. Just forget it. But the voice was small and her need was large. Yet despite her need she was cool, cool as if she had been bred for this, which —of course— she had been. The boy-man fished in his wallet for the beer money as the girl caressed his back through the light jacket he wore. The sight made her uneasy, but she didn’t know why. Was it that she had once caressed her man’s back that way? He threw a handful of bills on the table —obviously more interested in getting to wherever he and the girl were going than worrying about calculating their bar tab and, without as much as a glance back into the bar, they left, hand in hand.

            The assassin was careful not to notice. The desire was great —blood pulsed in her temples, her heart pounded, her nipples stiffened— but her cunning was greater. The police would have questions tomorrow, they always did, and she didn’t want the bar keeper, or any of his remaining customers, to remember her leaving hot on the heels of the two. She rarely fed in the same town, and if she did, she never did it often enough for the law to connect the dots. Casually, despite the urgency screaming in her veins, she signaled the keep and paid the tab —tipping him well, but not too well. Doing nothing memorable.

             She strolled out of the bar and into the street. She needed only to be still, smell the air and listen to the night, to sense the couples’ heat. North, perhaps 500 meters.

            Go south. Leave, the tiny voice said.

             But she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. She crossed to the shadows on the far side of the street and began to run. Fly might be a better word. Her genetically altered legs propelled her at a blurring speed. The wind whipped through her hair and her vision tunneled, allowing her to better focus on —and dodge— the crates a grocer had left in the street, the dog, who whined as she leapt over it, and the parking signs that jutted over the sidewalk. She was a god, as fast as the wind. Her mouth curled, canines that had grown into fangs white against her evening-darkened lips, tears glistening on her moon-pale cheeks.

to be continued...