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  “I tried,” Darien shook her head. “Nothing. Everything was burned to a crisp. I saw him running through the weeds. His whole body was on fire. There’s no way.”

  “So-what,” Paul looked on in shock. “He was burned alive?”

  Darien only shrugged her shoulders.

  “Jesus,” Paul said. “We never really got along…but…Jesus…And how about Sabine?”

  “She’s not working with the girl. Saw the girl leave with the boyfriend on her own.”

  “I see,” Paul opened the door. “I wish you left the light on.”

  “No worries,” Darien said, leading the way down the staircase. “I’m surprised she doesn’t have an army by now. But she isn’t exactly a good recruiter.”

  Reaching the bottom of the stairwell, Darien flipped on a light switch, revealing Doctor Patel. Bloodied and beaten almost beyond recognition, he groaned as the light hit him.

  “They don’t like the light,” Darien laughed. “None of them do.”

  “Jesus,” the pastor said, looking at Darien’s handiwork.

  “He was like Renfield to her Dracula,” Darien said, looking down at the Doctor with disgust.

  “It always works like that for her, right?”

  “I don’t think they would have bothered with Veronica if she didn’t have some unique, I don’t know, quality that their other little monsters don’t have. We follow her, we get Sabine.”

  The Doctor moaned again, now hostile.

  The Pastor looked up at the bloodied Jesus on a cross that he had hanging on the wall. “Sometimes I wonder if this shit is all worth it.”

  “Time to do God’s work, Preacher.” Darien walked over to the furthest dark corner of the basement and picked up a bucket of water. “And the doctor here is going to find out that certain things are just incurable.”

  The Doctor screamed under the binds tied to his mouth.

  “You’re a dirty old man,” Darien said. “Time to clean you up.”

  The Doctor closed his eyes tight. He didn’t want to look.

  Darien poured the water over the Doctor’s head and watched as he writhed against his restraints, a subdued hiss hitting the air as the liquid made its way down his face and body.

  The Doctor had a delayed reaction. A moment or two passed before he screamed, causing Paul to close his eyes and cringe.

  Steam rose out of the Doctor’s scorched flesh. A smell of burning garbage filled the air.

  “That is so cool,” Darien said.

  “I can’t watch.”

  “Come on, now. You’re going to have to do this sooner or later.”

  “I can’t.”

  “To defeat these monsters,” Darien began to smile. “Takes more than a twenty pound Bible and a gold plated cross. Time for you to cut the tie-lines between heaven and hell.”

  “I know that. I just-”

  “Don’t want to get your hands dirty?” Darien asked. “This is the fun part.”

  Darien reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of pliers. Kneeling in front of the Doctor, she pulled his hair back hard. Steam curled up her victim’s nose and ears.

  “Open wide,” Darien wrenched open his mouth and placed the pliers around his fang.

  Then, she began to pull.

  Guinness slowly opened his eyes. He felt as if he had awakened from a twelve-hour sleep.

  Arising out of the bed, he oriented himself to his environment. The walls were covered in red velvet and he found himself covered in silk sheets. The room smelled like fresh lilacs.

  “This must be a dream,” he whispered, trying to get up when he realized he wasn’t wearing any clothes. Legs feeling like lead, he massaged them until he got some blood circulation going. Feeling his heart race, his palms and forehead began to sweat. “What’s happening to me?”

  The total silence in the room and outside the door unnerved him until he heard the swish-swish of a someone in a dress approaching.

  At the entrance appeared a ravishing woman. Red hair down to her shoulders, her face wreathed with a demonic smirk. She carried a tall glass with a straw in one hand.

  “You’re woke,” she said, lowering her lips to suck from the straw.

  “Yeah,” Guinness looked up at her with angry, bloodshot eyes. “Where the shit am I?”

  “Home,” her smile turned into a happy one. She looked at him as if they were lifelong lovers.

  “Home?”

  Guinness looked to his right and saw his burnt shirt and pants hanging over a chair. Looking back at the woman, he could not help but notice her impressive cleavage.

  “Are you hungry?” she sipped from the straw again, a drop of red liquid sticking to her lower lip. Was it blood?

  “Hungry?” Guinness asked as if he were in a dream. “I don’t even know where the hell I am.”

  “I’d be a poor host if I didn’t offer you something to eat. Your horrible diet will transmute into something else within a day or two. Might as well enjoy it before it disappears completely. I can order some pizza. Extra sausage and mushrooms.”

  “I don’t want any fucking pizza,” Guinness snarled. He tried to rise further in the bed but the room began to spin.

  “Or we can go out for a drink.”

  “You’re drinking right now.”

  “You don’t miss a thing, do you Detective?” Sabine laughed. “I had a cop here once. Long ago. His brain was the size of a mosquito’s ass.”

  “Fuck is this?” Guinness said, rolling over in the bed, still unable to get his legs under him.

  “You’re scared. I know. They all are. I don’t blame you. Don’t blame you a bit.”

  “Fuck scared.”

  “I’ve seen your kind before,” the witch said. “You’re a cop. Father was probably a cop. And his father was one too. But you, you are above all else an actor.”

  “I don’t know what-”

  “You were never comfortable being yourself,” she said. “But you were comfortable acting. Playing the role of a policeman. You got used to it. But when you didn’t have an audience. When you were by yourself. That’s when it hit you. You were faking it. You faked it so much you got used to it. And you lost yourself.”

  Guinness looked up. Seeing a mirror to the side of the room, he didn’t see his own reflection.

  “This has to be a dream.”

  “Then it’s a long time to be asleep.”

  Sabine stepped closer, her bare feet moving soundlessly across the floor. She looked at him with eyes that seemed to be measuring everything about him.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “The angel of the little death,” Sabine teased as ran her forefinger under her ample breast. “You don’t remember?”

  “I don’t remember a damn thing,” Guinness said, more to himself than to his interlocutor. “Really. Who the hell are you?”

  “Your new boss,” Sabine laughed. “I could say master but that sounds too BDSM-y. I could say commander but that sounds like we’re in the military.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  Guinness looked at her searchingly. His police instincts told him to press her for answers. But something about her demeanor made him hold back. Without warning, he felt a tinge of pain in the right side of his neck. He got out of the bed but his legs felt numb as his feet hit the cold floor.

  “What have you done to me?” he said, walking forward like a newborn deer.

  “It will take some getting used to.”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Sabine.”

  Recognition flashed across Guinness’ face before he felt an excruciating pain in his neck.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Just need to tighten a few screws,” Sabine said. “Your blood tastes great by the way. I feel like a hummingbird trying to get that last taste of nectar.”

  Guinness felt the pain in his neck increase. He pressed his hand to his neck and found his palm covered in blood. He looked back
at Sabine. She stood motionless, her long red hair looking like sunlight shining on a field of wheat.

  “Just think of what’s happening to you now as a blessing. A blessing to be savored and cherished.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In the darkness of the hospital room, Veronica watched as Mark remained unconscious. He had one arm above his head as if he were hanging from a branch while his labored breathing had quickly given way to a deep slumber.

  She gently removed the oxygen mask from his mouth and the pulse ox from his finger. He would be whole again, she thought. The man whose physical touch made her shake with desire and whose kiss gave her butterflies would rise again.

  She remembered watching him sleep when he first arrived back from Iraq. Post-coital bliss of being held in his arms followed by being awoke hours later by him talking in his sleep, incoherent ramblings warning the beasts of his imagination to stay away. He would toss and turn then suddenly lie still; his body completely rigid as if listening for any kind of sound in the dark.

  “Mark,” Veronica whispered. “I know you can hear me. I want to let you know that things will be different. I don’t know why I never really expressed how much I love you. It was like something had taken ahold of me. Always stopped me from saying the words I wanted to say.”

  His head moved first. Then his eyes slowly fluttered open.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living,” Veronica said.

  Mark squinted his eyes and squirmed under the bright lights of the room. “Holy shit,” he muttered.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The headache from hell,” Mark arched his head on the pillow as if trying to dislodge the pain.

  “Well, they medicated the shit out of you.”

  Mark blinked hard again and sat up in the bed again, taking in his surroundings.

  “Do you remember what happened?” Veronica asked.

  “Most of it, yeah,” Mark said after a long pause, scooting up in the bed. He seemed to be becoming more alert with each passing moment.

  “Your Mom is here. She’s talking with the doctor.”

  “About?”

  “You. Duh.” Veronica tilted her head at Mark, studying him as if she were looking at him for the first time.

  “Why are you looking at me so strangely?”

  Veronica looked down at her feet, hesitating. Her whole body language a picture of silent dread as she wiped her lips.

  “What is it?”

  “How do you feel?” Veronica looked back up at Mark’s legs.

  “I-I don’t know,” Mark said. “Wait.”

  Movement under the sheets.

  “My legs,” he whispered, his mouth agape. “My legs!”

  Tears formed in Veronica’s eyes.

  Mark rose up, his smile incredulous. “I can feel my legs.”

  “That’s amazing,” Veronica said, her voice flat.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah,” she tried to give him a smile, but it came out crooked.

  “I said my legs are moving.”

  “I had to do something,” Veronica stood up from her seat. She looked back at the door and wanted to lock it.

  “What is it?”

  “The poison. The doctors had given up. There was only one other way. I had to heal you.”

  Mark rolled out of the bed. Looking over at the counter, he saw the mirror on the counter which caught the fading moonlight from the window.

  “Please tell me you didn’t.”

  Veronica put her hands to her eyes, she couldn’t look Mark in the face.

  “My sister,” he said, bring his palm to his neck. “She had written on her wall. Called it an insatiable beast. Something she could not control. Like a snake slithering around in her brain.”

  Getting out of the bed, he rolled over to the hospital room counter, his legs unsteady. His upper body still had the ease and athletic grace of a panther, but his lower body teetered like a foal.

  “You bit me,” Mark’s eyes glazed over with fear.

  “Yeah.”

  “Get out.”

  “I did it for you,” she said. “They call me a Blue Blood. I can heal and-”

  “I don’t even want to look.”

  Mark grabbed the mirror on the counter and threw it against the wall. Veronica shuddered at the sound of the glass breaking.

  “My sister,” he said. “I’ll become just like her.”

  “No-”

  “Get out!” Mark said with ear shattering clarity.

  Veronica turned her back to Mark and solemnly walked away. She opened the door to find Elaine walking in. She had dried mascara tears running down the side of her face, looking as if she had tried to clean up but some of the residue remained. Her complexion was pale, accentuated by the deep purple shadows under her eyes.

  She would miss Elaine. She always looked at her and Mark with a cloud of concern as if she knew something bad would happen sooner than later.

  “Veronica,” she gave a forced smile before noticing that her son was standing in the middle of the room.

  “Oh, my God,” Elaine said, color returning to her skin. “Mark?”

  Veronica looked back. Mark turned away from her gaze while his mother rushed in, putting her arms around him.

  “Mark!”

  Mark hugged his mother, seeing his image in the reflection of the glass.

  Veronica walked down the hall as fast as she could. Elaine’s squeals of joy and surprise faded out as she walked past a tinted window toward the elevator.

  Veronica had to hide. To sleep.

  She got home and dropped her head on her pillow.

  Closing her eyes, she wished she could keep them closed forever and dream about her past life with Mark. Walks along the beach. Kissing in front of a sunset.

  Now, she dreamed she was alone.

  The dark clouds of a storm coming up on the horizon.

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