FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #7

She's a local.

                She’s a local. The words ran through his head, like a prayer, a childhood mantra similar to, there’s nothing under the bed. How wrong simple words could be. Every question he’d asked, every nameless query he had made had led him to this terrifying moment.

                Dusk had settled in on the beachside town only hours before, but like so many places near the vastness of the ocean, day clung defiantly to her glory, sharing every single last ray of sunlight with the bronzed and beautiful people enjoying summer like a drug. Between a local nightclub and a sinking music shop was a dimly lit, rarely passed walkway. This was where he was sprawled on his back with a stiletto heel in his gut and something sharp to his throat. This was where light had abandoned for fear of the things in the unnatural dark ensconcing him.

                “You have five seconds to tell me why you’ve been following me before I help relieve you of your blood right here on the street,” the wind chime voice said. He trembled and tried to swallow past the lump of fear and excitement in his throat. Adrenaline was a tricky, slippery thing, encouraging him to follow the rumors here, all the while knowing this… woman… he had encountered was not human and would end him.

                “I’m sorry. I wasn’t going to hurt you,” he rasped out blindly. It seemed like night had fallen artificially around the two of them, the shadows swimming with terrifying things which the mind was unready or incapable of understanding. When she laughed, for just a moment, light reflected on that face. Predatory eyes reflected like a cats and razorblade teeth glinted. The moment passed into darkness again.

                “That’s not an answer,” she said simply, leaning more weight on the heel uncomfortably pushing into his gut. “That’s not what I asked.”

                “I just wanted to talk to you!” he said desperately. “I’m a reporter. I follow stories all over the country. I heard there was… something… here. I wanted to see for myself…”

                He paused and took a deep breath, weighing the risk of a gamble.

                “I can see you,” he whispered. “I…. I can see what you are.”

                She drew back abruptly and the shadows lightened. Her face had smoothed into that of a young woman again with creamy café au lait skin and riotous peacock-hued curls, though the intelligence in her dark eyes and the tilt of her neck belied the illusion.

                “I should snap your neck right here and now,” she mused aloud. He scuttled backward.

                “Uh, no you shouldn’t.”

                She moved, only, it was as if reality didn’t quite move in time with her. Her face and hand seemed to move a blink faster than they actually did. As if time had to catch up. It was dizzying watching her. “Leave here.” It was a dismissal, a command, and an expression of disdain all at once. She turned her back away and disappeared faster than he could stand.

 

                Lance trembled with impotent rage as he stood cursing steadily under his breath on the ugly shag carpet of the hotel room, running a brush gently through her multicolored wet hair. She hummed a wordless tune to herself and sat with her eyes closed, facing the open balcony and soaking up energy from the waves crashing in the starry night.

                “You should have just killed him Kayla,” he snarled. She smiled peacefully and looked up into his young face surround by tousled dark hair and decorated with small metal studs.

                “You keep telling me it’s time to move soon anyway,” she responded. Her brow furrowed, “that’s why we’re living in a crappy motel.”

                “You still need to feed. He already knows too much. Look at you!” he exclaimed with exasperation, “You’re molting. I know you like the energy you get from the water, but it’s not enough to sustain you and you know it. He shouldn’t have been able to see anything different about you. You’re putting yourself at risk my love.”

                Kayla sighed as her wings unfolded and stretched, staying a deep cerulean to reflect the water energy she absorbed. A few feathers as long as her forearm drifted to the floor before she sheathed them again.

                Lance scooped her in his arms.

                “At least take some from me,” he said softly, walking her toward the Jacuzzi he had run for her. Defiantly, she shook her head.

                “No. It’s too big of a risk.”

                Stepping gingerly into the water, she immediately began playing with the energy swirls in the steam rising around her, oblivious to anything else. Lance snapped his finger.

                “Earth to Kayla.”

                When she turned her head, it was with alien eyes that she met his, sharp teeth displayed in a grotesquely childish smile.

                “Did this guy touch you at all?” he asked, trying to hold her attention. She shrugged and stuck her leg out on to the edge of the tub, indicating a small mosquito bite on her ankle.

                “Shit…”

                Lance waited for her features to smooth again before approaching her. “You have a tracker, love. I need to cut it out. Now.” In his hand was a small scalpel, which he deftly inserted just under the skin, popping out a small computer chip, no larger than a tic-tac. Without another word he left the room.

 

                The club was packed for a Wednesday night, the floor a seething mass of decorated people. He watched her drift through the crowd effortlessly as if she were floating: a kiss here, a hug there, a slip of energy the passer never noticed. She was exquisite to watch, the way she melded into society as if she belonged in that element. The staff smiled and greeted, offered her anything she needed, and watched out for her with over protective eyes.

                He ground his teeth, absently rubbing the bruise to his mid section as he watched her. She was impossible for him to figure out. He scratched away notes in the sheaf of crumpled paper that never left his side, checking and discarding attributes. Nothing he knew about the paranormal was making sense. He only saw her after dusk, but she seemed to eat human food, which led him away from a vampirism tendency. She didn’t seem to become absent during specific moon phases, nor have any aversion to holy objects or silver. Unless threatened, she was mostly calm, rarely reacting with violence. He only noticed the energy siphon quite by accident and the movement through long term study.

                “I’ll have vodka straight up and get him whatever he’s drinking,” a voice said near him. He turned, quickly shoving his notes into his breast pocket and preparing a polite rejection.

                “You might want this back,” the man continued, sliding a small computer-chip across the counter towards him. The reporter’s eyes grew wide.

                “I…I…I…I….I” he couldn’t seem to stop stammering.

                “You…you…you…you,” the other man mocked him, “are going to stay far, far away from her.”

                The man stood after paying generously for the drinks and stopped at the reporter’s shoulder. “Or I’m going to kill you myself,” he added congenially.

                The music suddenly roared back to life, as if it had been holding its breath, and the man was gone, leaving the reporter more determined and mystified than when he had arrived in town. There were more players to this than he’d imagined, and for all the talk of how she was a local, there was something purely bone-chillingly terrifying about her.

                As the room spun confusingly, he stumbled from his stool into the foggy outside air and lit a cigarette with shaking hands. The bouncers watched him the way a pack of wolves watched an intruder on their territory or a threat to a pack female; they would tear him apart if they got the chance. The usual comforting habit of drag and exhale did nothing to settle his nerves, especially when the street light overhead shattered in a brilliant display of sparks.

                Fear gripped him so hard he started stumbling across late-night traffic and laughing groups of people in desperate search of his car, all the while hearing warped laughter and deadly wings in every shadow. He ran faster, getting turned around, losing all notion of where he was or how to get to his car.

                Adrenaline gave him speed, but fear made him lost. Eventually his aimless feet found the boardwalk and from there, the soft sand reflecting the moonlight. The beach smelled of bon-fires and booze. Did those fires really smell like cooking flesh? He threw up where he knelt in the sand.

                Not twenty feet away, near the edge of where the water met the sand, she stood, head tilted curiously as she watched him with alien eyes. He cried without knowing why, upset and shaking as he stared at her. Inexplicably he was drawn towards her, crawling across the sand towards her.

                “What are you?” he cried out.

                She tilted her head to the other side, still watching him studiously. He saw a hint of her wings, a hint of fangs and claws, and then they were gone again.

                “I’ll tell you a story reporter,” she said in her musical voice. Before she began, she held out a hand. The man from the bar came to her, taking her hand tenderly, protectively. “Lance, sit with me while I tell him a story. “

                Lance dropped to the sand, and helped her to his lap, appearing to be concerned only with her. The reporter knew this was the story of his life; it was also the story of his death.

                She stared at the water, the waves reached higher as if being called to her, washing around her and soaking into her. More of the energy he had seen before lingered around her, seeping through her pores and into her somehow.

                “I used to be afraid,” she said suddenly. She looked at him with human eyes. “Do you know fear reporter?”

                He nodded slowly.

                “I used to be very afraid. You see, I always knew that humans were weak, easily ended creatures: so fragile and full of faults. A small spider could snuff out their lives – “ she snapped her fingers “ – just like that.”

                “I didn’t want to be afraid anymore. So I made a deal with fear,” she continued. She paused so long, he was afraid she wouldn’t continue.

                “Love…” Lance began. She smiled at him, though she shook her head.

                “You want to know what I am reporter? What data have you gathered so far?” she asked curiously, returning her attention to him.

                “You avoid daylight. I… I’m pretty sure that’s not your true form. You have wings, like angels!”

                She laughed long and loud.

                “Did you know Gargoyles cannot be awake during daylight? And warrior angels, they have wings as well. Vampires have two faces, well, most of them anyway. Many lamia are venomous, and large cats see extraordinarily well in the dark…”

                Confusion set in deeper as he watched her. “A chimaera…?”

                Lance snorted. “Such ugly beasts. But I guess that’s the only thing you could come up with to call her.”

                She looked at him sharply and he quieted again.

                “I made a deal with fear, reporter. To be free of it. But I am so hungry, and the ocean can only keep me alive for so long. I am sorry reporter. You should not have come in search of me, some myths are not meant to be found.”

                She lunged quickly, out of phase with the physical, and was upon him before he’d seen her move. She was terrifyingly beautiful. Her eyes widened like a cat’s, but mesmerized like a snake’s. Each tooth was jagged, with pronounced incisors copiously dripping viscous venom. Her wings opened, stretching to block out the night sky. Her claws pinned him to the sand. The strike was quick, the venom paralyzing him and taking away the pain. As his life drained into her, he could still see... her beautiful cerulean wings became scarlet... a single bloody tear fell on his face as she fed on his blood, then slowly on his essence.

                “Thank you for feeding her,” Lance said solemnly.

 

back to Contest #7