The Red Slayer

True fear is watching a vampire rip through titanium like paper; creating a gash with its clawed hand before it throws its body against the opening and bursts through all at once. The torn metal gashes down its back, creating giant cuts with onyx blood seeping down the Feral’s pale skin.

It raises its face to see us on the other side of the loading bay, looking exactly like the illustration Dad showed us when we first found the lab. Teeth protrude from its mouth, covering its bottom lip. Every element of its humanity was ripped out and replaced with a monster. It stands like a bear on its back legs wearing dark blue jeans, calculating which of its prey to attack first.

The Feral begins to charge on all fours, diving into the bay where trucks would line up and comes galloping towards us.

I leap of the edge and land on the Feral’s back and it buckles under me. My adrenaline’s never been higher. I have the strength to pin its right arm behind its back, wrap my left arm around its shoulder and neck and pressure the rest of my weight into its lower back.

‘Iorwen!’ Olga screams.

’Go!’ I shout through gritted teeth. The Feral is already struggling. ‘Get out of here!’

‘Not without you!’ says Dante.

’Don’t make me come up there. Get out now!’

Luke’s lip quivers as the Feral snarls into the concrete, kicking frantically.

I hear a switch flip and an orange light flashes above somewhere. The loading bay door furthest from me and the Feral begins rising. They start crawling out the moment the gap is wide enough, taking Tara with them.

The Feral sniffs again and looks around as best it can. I instinctively tighten my grip, but I don’t think it can be strangled. It struggles against me. Instead of kicking and flailing, it’s wriggling, to escape my grasp. My balance begins to dither. Sensing success, it squirms faster and faster until my knees collapse and I lose grip on its arm just to steady myself.

It throws my other arm away as if it couldn’t care less and climbs out from under me. Bounding on all fours once again to the now-wide open doorway where my friends are stood.

‘Close it!’ I beckon.

Olga flips the switch back. The shutter begins descending, but slowly, too slowly. Anyone could run in and out ten times before they had to play limbo with it.

‘Run!’ I scream at her as I get up and run after the Feral.

‘For [fudge’s] sake!’ Michael swears from above. ’Go after her, you idiot!’

I look up and see him toss my cape into the loading bay.

The Feral stops in its tracks. It turns, sniffing rapidly like a cheetah tracking a gazelle. It picks up my cape and takes a deep, pleasurable sniff one would make while shopping for scented candles. As it exhales, those wild eyes fix on me. It opens its mouth, revealing the bottom row of spiked teeth.

I gulp. ‘What have you done?’

‘Pheromones,’ Michael chuckles. ’They work on vampires same as animals. Mixed with your scent…’

He doesn’t need to finish that sentence. The Feral has dropped to all fours, prepared to pounce, eyes set on my throat.

I can’t run. I don’t dare turn my back. Don’t look it in the eye. Don’t make any sudden moves. Fear leaks with every bead of sweat, and the Feral will consume it.

The Feral pounces. I roll out of the way just in time and fling one of my smaller knives into its arm. The scream is unearthly. Sharp strings, a recorder blown too harshly, a computer glitching out, Christine Daaé in the 2004 Phantom of the Opera movie. All these sounds and more in one scream.

The Feral pulls the knife from its arm and the black blood oozes from the wound. It drops the knife on the floor, almost mockingly. Though its skin hisses from where the silver made contact, it’s seemingly still unhurt.

I throw another knife, hitting the Feral in the shoulder. Before it can scream, I toss the other three. I hit the abdomen, the diaphragm, the spleen. It screams so loud my head is about ready to explode. I clench my teeth and recite a medley of showtunes under my breath, from Carousel to Hamilton.

I look to my left. There, stood between two bay doors are thick metal pipes marked with flammable and compressed air stickers. While the Feral is busy screaming and pulling the knives from its body, I take out my laser cutter and walk backwards towards the narrowing gap in the shutter door, picking up my cape along the way.

The laser burns through the metal and I see the first sparks before I slide through the gap before it closes entirely. Olga, standing on the other side, pulls me up.

‘Run!’ I tell her, pulling her along towards the gates where the others are headed.

We barely outrun the explosion. As the shockwave sends us to the ground, I wrap my cape around us to avoid shrapnel while the sound nearly bursts our eardrums. We stand up in a field of dust, bricks and fire. Behind us, the sealed entrance is now a giant hole.

Olga laughs. ‘What kind of mission would it be if something didn’t catch fire?’

I grin, about to turn around and walk casually towards the others, maybe give Tara a victory kiss. But before I’ve even taken a step, I hear bricks tumble and smash as a dusty figure pulls itself out of the debris twenty feet away from us. The Feral snarls, covered in its black blood, angrier than ever.

I don’t wait for pouncing this time. I grab my commando knife. I’ll chop the bloody thing to pieces. It jumps forward and I leap into the air, catching it.

There’s no clever fighting tactics this time. No expert dodging. This creature wants to kill. I have to land whatever hits I can to survive. Knees, feet, fists, elbows, blade. It’s a blur of grappling and screaming and flames.

I can’t let it get on top of me. I thrust the blade into its body every time I feel it may have the upper hand. It claws at my neck, misses and scrapes the fabric of my costume. It tries again and again, gradually getting closer.

‘Iorwen!’ It’s Luke. I see him in my peripheral vision, running towards me.

Without thinking, I take my eye of the Feral. ‘Get out of here, Luke!’

And in that moment, the Feral sees the window. It grabs a chunk of my hair and tugs, hard enough to rip away my scalp if it wanted to. It pulls me back and forth to trip me up, shaking the knife from my hand. I scream as loudly as the creature, trying to grind the balls of my feet into the ground to stay steady, but it won’t let me stay still for a second.

The tension snaps along with my hair and I land, face first, on the ground. I turn around quick, expecting the Feral to throw itself on of me.

‘Luke!’

The Feral plunges its teeth into his neck. His arms go limp and he drops his own commando knife next to mine, along with at least half of my hair.

The most dramatic of dramatic ’NO’s is on the tip of my tongue before the Feral pulls away and drops Luke at my feet. I catch him before he can hit his head while the creature flails and splutters. Foam gathers at its mouth. It turns away from us retches.

Luke grins. ‘Garlic butter.’

I sob, applying pressure to his bleeding neck with my hand. ‘Why would you throw yourself into the fray like that?’

‘You don’t have to do everything alone,’ he rasps.

The Feral’s retching continues, vomiting up the blood it just consumed. It has its back to us. It’s vulnerable. Dante and Olga reach us, bringing the first aid kit with them. The former takes my hand off Luke’s wound, applying pressure with gauze.

‘I’ve got this, ladies,’ he says. ‘Go finish the fight.’

Olga and I nod, standing up to face the vomiting vampire. ‘Here,’ she says, handing me a spare hair-tie from around her wrist. Though my hair is shockingly uneven now – the right half goes down to my ribcage as normal, while the left is just above the shoulders – I tie what’s left into a messy bun and take out my whip.

‘What do you want to do?’ she asks.

I pick up the cape and give it a sniff. Still strong with pheromones.

‘Bait it,’ I say, handing it to her.

She nods, taking it from me and tying the broken hooks in a knot around her neck. Olga runs past the Feral, letting the cape just brush against its leg. It breathes in the pheromones, standing erect with delight. It doesn’t see me jump up on its back where I wrap the silver chain around its neck.

This time, its screams are strangled out of it. The Feral grapples at the silver chain burning into its neck. I pull harder.

‘Should have kept your hand at the level of your eyes,’ I say, hooking my legs together to steady myself.

The Feral throws itself around to try and throw me off. With no walls to throw me against, it resorts to dropping to the ground to try and roll on top of me. I rock against its weight until, little by little, it stops struggling. Its limbs stop flailing and it stops tearing into its own flesh to break the chain.

I loosen my grip and stand up slowly, waiting for it to gasp at the last moment. Ten seconds go by. Twenty. Thirty. The only sounds are the flames and Olga’s footsteps as she gets closer.

‘Is it—is it dead?’ she asks.

I can’t drop my guard, even as I kneel down to get a closer look at its face. But the adrenaline in my system is waning. In minutes, it’ll be gone and I’ll have the reflexes of a drunk. I pull a stake from my corset and thrust it down to the exposed back.

Sniff!

Olga is standing too close. It smells the pheromones on the cape. The Feral jumps out of the way of the stake before I can finish it off. Its hand is around my neck before I can stop it, lifting me off the ground. It’s going to squeeze until my neck breaks.

I can’t think. I kick vainly. All I have is the stake in my hand. I thrust it into the vampire’s arm. It screams for a second before grinning through the pain. I drag it down the muscle with all the strength I have left. Past the elbow, right up to the wrist until black arterial blood sprays into my face. The Feral finally relents and drops me.

I land on my knees and plunge the stake into its chest. At the same time, another stake comes poking out of it. As the creature falls under its own weight, I meet eyes with Olga. Her eyes stream with tears as the Feral turns to dust between us.

Once the only thing between is a dust pile and a pair of jeans, my legs buckle. Olga catches me, holding my waist while I sling my arm around her shoulders.

It starts raining. Light at first and gradually heavier. Sirens are approaching from a distance. And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that it isn’t over.

Luckily, Olga brings up the one thing I forgot. ‘What happened to your uncle?’

‘Oh crap.’

I lift myself back onto my feet and run towards the gaping hole. My infrared vision gives away a body on the catwalk Michael planned to watch me die from. Judging by heat signatures, he’s still alive but unconscious. Olga and I grapple our way up and lower him to the ground, pulling him out of the smoke until we’re out in the clear air again.

Michael coughs himself awake again as Olga and I lay him down on the concrete path between the path and the gates. A fire truck is the first to arrive, hacking through the chain around the gates with an axe to drive through. As they pull to a stop and get their fire hoses ready, Dante tells them where the scientists and security guards are. Fortunately, the doors we closed behind us on our way out guarded them against the blast.

A fleet of ambulances come next, forming a semi-circle close to the mounds where Olga, Luke, Dante and I first arrived. The men we freed head towards the paramedics, bringing Tara with them. Dante calls a paramedic to bring a gurney for Luke. Police follow moments later in their cars and vans. Unmarked black cars follow them. MI5.

‘You…’ hisses Michael next to me, grabbing my wrist. ‘…ruined ev-ry-thing.’ He coughs, violently.

‘There now, don’t exert yourself,’ I say, pulling my wrist free with little effort and fastening a fresh pair of handcuffs around his wrists, after which I remove my mask and put my hand to his throat.

‘Listen. I may have spared your life tonight, even though no one would have blamed me for killing you, but that does not mean I’m weak. That thing of yours is gone now. All you did was for nothing. You better hope you’ll rot in prison for the rest of your life, because if you try to kill me again, the next time I use handcuffs on you, it will be next to a time bomb with your only escape being a hacksaw.’

Olga stares at me before she notices something to her right. ‘Iorwen, Sophia and your dad are coming over.’

I release Michael’s throat and stand up. I can’t describe the thrill of seeing those hate-filled eyes and not fearing them.

‘Why did you have to stick your nose in? Why couldn’t you have minded your own business? If it weren’t for you, I’d have—’

‘You’d have what?’ says Dad, standing me behind me.

‘I think what Mr. Hughes meant,’ says Olga, ‘Is that he would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for us meddling kids.’

I burst out laughing, as does Dad. Even Sophia cracks a smile before she declares him under arrest and her entourage of Matrix agents take him away. Dad leads me and Olga away to the ambulances where Tara, Luke and Dante are waiting.

© Alice of Sherwood, July 2020