Alley Cat

The elevator opens with a ding.

I stumble out of the elevator and limp towards Luka’s apartment. Sweat plasters my hair to my face and my clothes are charred in some places. There’s a sharp ache in my right buttock which stunts my movements. I don’t know why. I want to reach around to figure out the cause, but I hear the next elevator open. The sound of an arrow notching onto a bowstring nearly makes my heart seize. The bow string stretches, and I make a run for Luka’s door.

“LUKAAA!!!”

I rap on the door’s front nonstop.

“LUKAAA!!!”

I hear footsteps approaching. A woman treads the hallway with her bow drawn. Her gray streaked hair falls in front of her face, and she stops to blow her fringe away from her field of vision. I press my back against the door, paralyzed. The woman’s neck turns my way and she pries her fingers to unleash an arrow. I shut my eyes to prepare for the worst when the door behind me creaks open. A hand yanks me inside and slams the door shut.

Luka stands before me half-naked. Water droplets cling onto his chest and dribble down his jawline. His curly hair has contracted on itself, retreating to his scalp for warmth. My eyes freeze on his face, too embarrassed to behold the white towel barely holding onto his hips.

Before I could say anything, even cough out a hasty ‘thank you,’ an arrow plunges itself through the door. It’s stopped by its own quiver that’s too bulky to squeeze through the wood. A stifled scream escapes my parted lips. Luka takes one glimpse at the arrow and huffs.

“What did you get yourself into this time?”

I notice that Luka is still holding my arm, and I shake away his touch. My shoulders heave from under me, and I struggle to collect my thoughts. It’s been a long five days. I’ve barely had any food to eat for the last three, and I’m an hour away from passing out from thirst. I turn my focus to Luka’s gaze. He’s surprisingly calm, but a hint of concern for me makes itself known in the furrow of his brows.

Why can’t you be crazy like your sister?

My agitation creeps into my voice. “Trevor’s mom is really pissed off that I killed her son.” Another arrow strikes the door, causing me to flinch. Luka smiles at my reaction. The consequence of an angry landlord is far from his mind. “She’s also a 1984 olympic archer.” The arrow burns a hole in the door, eating through the wood like acid on paper. “Did I mention that she’s a witch, too?”

“Sacred arrows.” Luka muses. “Haven’t seen those in a while. She must be really pissed.”

“I killed her son! Of course she’s pissed!” I seethe through my clenched teeth. A stabbing pain knots itself in my buttock, and I groan in pain. “Cramp!”

I grab at the wall for balance. A wolfish smirk grows on his face when he finds the source of my pain. His eyes light up at the sight of it. “You...have an arrow in your ass.”

I don’t believe him at first, so I reach around behind me only to find a long rod sticking out of my right buttock. I yank it out in a single pull. The pain radiates up my spine. I bat away a few tears stinging my eyes.

“That hurt.”

“But not as much as losing your own flesh and blood.”

Luka’s words weigh heavily with meaning. There’s an accusational tone to his voice like he’s convinced I’ve done something wrong. His eyes burrow into mine, allowing for my suspicions to sink in. I want to ask what he meant, but he goes to his room to throw on some clothes.

“Where are you going?” I ask from across the room.

“What does it look like?” Luka’s voice travels sounds faint from his room. He comes back out zipping up his trousers. “I’m going to calm down a grieving witch before she burns any more holes in my door.”

“She’ll kill you!”

I follow him to the door where we stand. He shoots me an overconfident look that’s meant to be reassuring. I have the strongest urge to wipe the smug look off his face.

“She won’t,” he says softly.

“How can you be so sure?”

Luka reachers over to scratch a small spot underneath my chin. I’ve been reduced to his little pet.

“I understand pain.”

Luka lets himself out the door, shutting it in front of me. Desperate to know what happens next, I yank out an arrow from the door and peek through the hole to eavesdrop. Luka approaches the woman with his hands held up in surrender. She draws her arrow back with caution, but Luka tells her something that I can’t hear. She lowers her bow and starts sobbing.

She cries for a long time. My hands grow cold as I stand at the doorway, listening. I know that I’m the reason for her pain. I killed her son, someone she loved, the very jewel of her eye. She had created Trevor and brought him into the world. And I took him away.

“I know what he did was wrong.” The woman said in between sobs. “He hurt so many people. I even caught him one night with blood smeared all over his mouth. He scared me. At that moment, I didn’t recognize him even though his voice was still his. He came to me with his arms open. He said, ‘Mom. It’s me! It’s me!’ But I was too scared.”

The woman went on. Even when crying, she managed to eject a hysterical laugh which chilled the air. It was the kind of laugh that was supposed to evoke pity, but it had the unintended effect of bringing out the shame in me as well.

“It was bound to happen some way or another. I guess the city could sleep a little better now that he’s gone. A part of me is relieved.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, why did you try to kill my friend if you were relieved?” Luka tries to maintain his innocence, but I know it’s contrived. He’s already read the woman the moment he set his eyes on her. He just wants her to hear her own reasoning.

The woman shrugs. All her exhaustion slams down at once, crushing her underneath its weight. Her eye bags deepen, and her hair turns completely silver. Her face sags, melting her pained expression into nothing. She ages in an instant. She’s becoming undone.

“It was the last thing I could do for my boy, the last thing I could do to show him that I still cared, that I wasn’t afraid.”

The woman cries one last time before drying her tears. “I guess I’ll go now. Don’t you worry about me hurting your girlfriend. I’m done being angry.”

“Oh.” The apples of his cheeks turn rosy warm. “She’s not my girlfriend.” Luka says with an adamant shake of his head.

“But you want her to be.” A glint in her eye saves her from melting into despair. She glances at the door from where I’m spying and I jolt from the hole. My fear is irrational, but I could have sworn that she was looking right at me. She knew that I was watching the entire time.

“Thank you for listening, Luka.”

Her voice penetrates through the door, and it has the same effect as her arrows flying towards my throat. It occurred to me that Luka never told her his name, which could only mean that they already knew each other from the start.

I trudge away from the door, wincing with each step. I stop at the dinner table and use it to lean on my good leg. It relieves some pressure off my wound, lessening my pain. My knees rock from underneath me.

Luka comes back into the apartment with an invigorated and uplifted mood. “Alright,” he says jovially. “Now if I remember clearly, you have an ass that needs bandaging.”

“My ass is fine!” I say while biting the inside of my cheek. I nervously watch Luka wash his hands in the kitchen sink and think about running towards the door.

Luka anticipates my escape and warns me from the sink. “Helene! If you run, you’re gonna get blood all over the carpet. Don’t. Even. Think. About. It.”

“I can bandage my own ass!” I argue back.

Luka dries his hands on some paper towels and rummages his drawer for a med kit. “Bandaging an ass isn’t like putting a bandaid on a cut finger.” He finds the kit and proceeds to come my way. My heart fills with dread, and I scramble for a valid excuse.

“I have the right to refuse! I don’t feel comfortable with you touching my body!”

Luka drops the med kit on the table and folds his arms across his chest in vexation.

“Fine. Just letting you know, I was in the Red Cross during World War Two. I know what I’m doing.”

The pain evades my thoughts while I’m taken off guard by Luka’s confession. “You were in the Red Cross? In World War Two?”

Luka swells with pride. “I can prove it if you let me.”

The pain in my buttock comes back stronger than before and I cave into his offer. “Okay!” I clutch my wound. My hand comes away with blood. It sticks my fingers together, and the metal smell wafting to my nose makes my head spin. “Do what you need to do.”

“I need you to turn around and bend over.”

I do just that, holding onto the table’s ledge for support.

“Okay…” It feels strange to be facing away while putting myself in such an odd position. “Now what?”

“Take off your pants.”

When I hesitate, Luka insists. “I swear. This is strictly professional.”

Even though I can’t see his face, I can hear the embarrassment in his voice. I slowly reach down and unbutton my shorts. Maybe it’s my imagination, but they pop away loudly. The zipper unzips with a scathing sound that itches the inside of my ears. My shorts and my underwear fall to my ankles in a wrinkled pile, leaving the rest of me vulnerable and bare. Goosebumps rise to the surface of my skin, anticipating the slightest touch. Blood rushes in my ears; it’s a roaring river that deafens my thoughts.

Luka winces when he examines my wound which drives a spike of concern through my head. “Is it bad?”

“She got you good but don’t worry. It’s not fatal.”

I can hear him chuckling behind, and it sends a heat wave to my cheeks. I become painfully aware of every touch and sound. Luka puts on a pair of nylon gloves and soaks a wad of cotton with some antiseptic.

“It’s going to sting.”

“Just do it.” I sound defeated and it surprises me. “You already have me bent over half-naked on a dinner table. I’m pretty sure it can’t get any worse.”

“If it makes you feel better,” Luka says as he dabs my wound with antiseptic. A sharp sensation burns from my wound and spreads all over my body. I pound the table with a balled fist to chase away the pain. “I’m not getting any pleasure from this at all.”

“Right. Because you’re so professional,” I say, grimacing.

Luka says nothing. After cleansing my wound, he cleans the dried blood crusting my lower back and legs. I never realized how much I was bleeding until Luka sweeps my entire leg with a bundle of damp cloth.

We remain silent for some time. The silence turns the air into lead. I can’t help but think back to what he said before he went to confront Trevor’s mom.

That hurt.

But not as much as losing your own flesh and blood.

Luka finds me at fault. His accusation makes my blood boil at the unfairness of it all. “You blame me for killing Trevor.” My words come out forcefully like gunshots.

“I don’t.” Luka’s tone is free from any offense. He’s not offended. And if he is, he refuses to show it. “You heard it from Trevor’s mom herself. She doesn’t blame you either. It was necessary.”

“Then what did you mean earlier about my pain being less than losing your own flesh and blood?”

Luka applies a patch of gauze and seals it onto my wound with medical grade tape. After he’s done checking to see if it’s secure, he rises to his feet. I turn around to face him. The shock of his gaze after facing away from him for a long time is overwhelming. His coffee brown eyes are intense but not intimidating.

“Out of all people, I would have thought that you would have understood her pain considering you lost a child of your own.”

“She was trying to kill me!” I’m yelling now. I want to calm down but I can’t. “I was running for my life! I wasn’t feeling very sympathetic at the moment!”

“But if you just took one moment to think, you would have realized that Jessie was grieving.”

Jessie.

Luka really did know her.

He reads the shock on my face and explains. “Trevor’s mom worked for Antonio for ten years, the same amount of time Trevor was a vampire. When Trevor turned, she desperately turned to Antonio for help. She needed charmed animal blood, blood that was magically designed to imitate human blood.”

“But she’s a witch––”

Luka’s visage darkens considerably. “The supernatural world is different. You spent so much time evading the law that you never took the time to familiarize yourself with it. Antonio has a patent on the spell used to charm animal blood. He’s the only one allowed to use it, and he has other witches working for him who will know when someone is performing that spell.”

I recall my last conversation with Trevor before I burned him alive. “And then the prices went up…”

Luka nods. “And then the recession hit. Antonio let go of half his staff, including Trevor’s mom.”

“Oh my god.”

“The world’s a mess.” Luka takes a deep breath before speaking again. “Listen, Hel. I don’t blame you for what you did. I just care about you enough to tell you the truth. You’re running in circles. You have spent centuries running away from your problems and building walls to protect yourself, but it’s not working. You tried so hard to protect yourself that you lost your humanity in the process.”

I don’t know what I must have looked like, but it crushes Luka like a punny ant under stone.

Luka tries again. “Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I said no. If I never agreed to letting my father bite me, my mother would have followed my suit, and so would have my sister. We would have grown up in little Sicily like normal children with normal lives. My father would never have gotten involved with drugs. We would have lived a simple life. I would work in the fields, marry a nice girl from a neighboring village, and die with my fifteen grandchildren by my bedside. I could have had all of that if I refused, but I didn’t. I lost your trust when I pretended to be someone perfect. I allowed my father and Antonio to monopolize an entire pharmaceutical industry for centuries, making profit off the sick and taking advantage of the poor. I did so much shit in the last four centuries that I can’t even remember it all. I became insane after withdrawing from drugs. I think I killed some people. Maybe I hallucinated everything...”

Luka has to stop to catch his breath. I recognize what he’s feeling. It’s the feeling of being lost inside your own head. When you’re trapped in the maze that you’ve created.

I place my hands on his face and steady his frantic gaze with mine to draw him back out of his mind. My hands are cold against his flushed cheeks. It’s a striking contrast that captivates me.

“But even though I’ve done so much shit, I never gave up on my humanity. I held onto it. I made it my goal to understand people, to understand how they think and how they feel. Because despite our differences, our pain ties us together.”

With my hands still holding his face, I caress his cheeks with my thumbs. “Your humanitarian philosophy is going to get you killed.”

Luka does a small shrug. “I don’t fear death. I just don’t like pain: causing it, feeling it, inflicting it… That’s why I choose to be strong by being kind.”

I stand on my toes so that we’re eye-leveled and challenge him with a daring gaze that reflects all the atrocities I’ve seen and took part in. Luka takes it all. He consumes me in a single look. His lips divide, threatening to suck me whole.

“I saw how you looked at me afterwards. You heard everything Jessie said. You feel guilty about killing Trevor. You don’t like slaying monsters. You’re not proud of your decisions and you’re sick and tired of running away.”

“Luka––” My voice breaks; I sound so weak. I hate it.

“You prefer bullet wounds and getting shot in the ass because you’re afraid of getting your heart broken. You leave people so that they don’t leave you first.”

“That’s enough.” Tears prick my eyes but Luka is relentless.

“Aren’t you lonely, Hel? Do you really plan on monster hunting for the rest of your life? Aren’t you tired of running? Aren’t you tired of surviving? When was the last time you lived, Helene?”

His questions pile on, and I don’t know how to answer. I feel numb. I slowly reach down to pull up my underwear and shorts as Luka bombards me with more questions. They burn through my mind like wildfire, razing everything I thought I knew about myself.

“I think I should go.”

I retreat towards the door. Luka has his feet planted on the floor. He has enough sense not to chase after me.

“Go where?” His voice holds me hostage at the doorway.

I have too much pride to admit that I don’t know.

“Don’t do this. Don’t run. You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

I scoff so loud that I snort out of my nose. “Afraid? Of you? I killed eight wolves this year.”

“But you can’t bring yourself to kill me.” Luka’s voice swells with confidence. There’s something haughty in his tone. He’s laughing at me. “I can hand you my gun and you won’t be able to do it.”

“Because it’s unnecessary murder!” My body burns with irritation. I can feel heat radiating down the tips of my fingers and down my toes. I’m a living fire hazard.

Luka flashes me an endearing smile that drives me to my boiling point. “Why can’t you just admit you like me already?”

I’ve had enough. I storm up to him, only to watch him illuminate with bustling joy. “Listen here, Luka Russo.” I say as I dig an accusational finger into his chest. His pectoral muscles tense up in protest; they’re rock hard and strong. “I don’t like you! I don’t like how you analyze my issues like some shrink! Your face is too symmetrical to the point that it’s weird and unnatural! You look like a Michaelangelo statue when you’re shirtless! And you think you’re a Sicilian Gordon Ramsey in the kitchen! You’re NOT!”

Luka could barely contain his laughter. “Don’t you dare compare me to Gordon Ramsey! He’s a pretentious idiot who overprices his bland ass food!”

My rage blinds me from Luka’s fake aggression, and I play into his game. “You’re a weird, Sicilian Gordon Ramsey, with really strong ethics, who knows how to patch people’s asses!”

“You’ve gone too far, Helene.” Luka says in a mocking grave manner.

I inch my face closer to his. I smile victoriously, believing that I’ve won. Luka beats me to the finish line.

“You also forgot that I’m a professional at it.”

Luka dives in for a kiss. Our lips mash against each other violently at first. My teeth sink into his bottom lip, causing him to whine against my mouth. As an act of revenge, his tongue spreads my lips, making me open to let him in. This time he tastes like listerine. The flavor reminds me of the alcohol we consumed a few weeks prior. I become drunk all over again.

Luka’s hands trail to my breasts, squeezing them through the thin fabric of my top. My nipples reach its summit, straining against the feeble barrier separating him from me. I feel warm all over. My heart races out of control as Luka frantically pulls my top over my head. The clothes fall into a shapeless heap on the floor. I kick them out of the way while Luka bends down to suck on my neck. I gasp, inviting the ticklish sensation.

He’s greedy for my body, but I’m greedy too. I take much less care with his clothes, popping off all his buttons and manhandling his pants. I think I might have torn off a sleeve or two, but Luka doesn’t mind. My eagerness fuels his excitement, and it manifests in a throbbing erection that makes me dumb.

Luka leads me to his bedroom where he pushes me onto his bed. We kiss for a bit before Luka pulls back. Sobriety clears his lustful fog for a brief period.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I do.” I surprise myself by how quickly I respond. My words are cut short by my ragged breaths. “Do you?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

Luka reaches over to his nightstand and grabs a condom from the drawer. “Just so you know,” he says while removing the condom from its wrapper and rolling it on. “It’s been a while.”

“It’s been a while for me too,” I admit.

Luka smiles before leaning in to kiss me. I get lost in his lips, in his arms. I climb on top and straddle him in place. I ride him until a wave of warmth takes me, making me fall forward as I convulse with ecstasy. After the first wave, I want to rest but Luka’s not done yet.

We make love with enough passion to make up for a century’s worth of pent up frustration.