What Happens in the Darkness (31 page)

Rebecca tried to turn her head, but they held her in place. Jack’s urine splashed over her eyes, filled her mouth, ran up her nose. She desperately wanted to scream, curse him out but kept her mouth closed as much as she could. If she could get away, she would rip him apart one tiny body part at a time.

Jack pulled out a switchblade and flicked it open.

Patrick looked over. “Whatcha doin’ there?”

Jack looked up. “There a problem?”

Patrick laughed. “Just askin’. You’re some kinda sick fuck, aincha?”

Jack smirked and looked back at Rebecca. He planted himself on her belly and leaned in, grabbing her wounded breast. He looked up. “You boys better hold her good.”

They did.

Jack started with the top of the breast and sliced away, severing the meat from her body, sawing away, separating muscle and tissue and sinew.

Rebecca howled and sobbed beneath him, nearly breaking her own limbs trying to thrash free.

He ignored her movements and kept cutting, cutting until he held the breast in his hand.

Dagan sobbed, begged them to stop, screamed for help until Patrick had his vampires shove something in Dagan’s mouth to shut him up. Tears poured down Dagan’s face.

Jack tossed the severed breast at Dagan’s feet. It landed with a plop like a hunk of raw liver.

He turned back to Rebecca. “Okay, sweetheart, party’s over.” He stroked himself hard again and fucked the hole where the breast used to be, blood and tissue flying, bits of sinew wetting his cock. He stroked himself over the wound, fully emptying it.

The vampires holding her down were able to get up and leave her there. They knew she wasn’t walking away from this.

Patrick turned back to Dagan. The vampires lifted him off the ground and held him securely.

“You never should have interfered,” Patrick said, closing in, barely half an inch from Dagan’s face, pulling the gag out. “You should’ve let that prick Jeff die as I had intended.”

“Go to hell,” Dagan said, and spat in Patrick’s face.

“You first.” Patrick wiped the spittle off his lips.

They held him, one on either side, each securing a powerful grip on Dagan’s elbows and shoulders.

“Boys,” Patrick said, “make a wish!”

The vampires ran in opposite directions, away from Dagan’s body. A ripping sound and then screams as Dagan was dismembered by the inhumanly strong vampires, his limbs tearing as easily as tissue paper.

Rebecca screamed Dagan’s name despite her own assault, her mournful howl shattering windows throughout the building above them.

People who had hidden to watch the attack fell to the ground, their heads held in agony, blood pouring out of their ears and noses and mouths.

Patrick laughed, unaffected by the sound of her voice. “Finish him!”

They raised pointed sticks and jabbed him, each wound painful and damaging but not lethal.

Dagan lay on his back and tried to breath through the ragged holes in his throat.

Rebecca was sobbing, crawling along the ground, blood pouring from gaping wounds all over her body, the pain unimaginable. She was desperate to reach Dagan, to help him.

A vampire handed Patrick a sword. He unsheathed it, the metal grinding against metal, and he stabbed Dagan through the stomach, impaling him like a bug on a board.

Rebecca struggled to sit up, her body destroyed, her face unrecognizable. She would heal. Dagan would not.

Patrick raised the sword high overhead and brought it down on Dagan’s neck, severing head from shoulders. The sword’s impact caused his head to topple away, roll across the sidewalk, and lean beneath the flat tire of a taxi.

Rebecca crawled on hands and knees and collapsed on Dagan’s decapitated body, hugging his knees, a heart she’d forgotten she had, a dead thing buried inside her chest, now breaking.

She looked up. Patrick and the others were gone.

The sun would soon rise, and would destroy Dagan’s body. Strength eluded her; she wouldn’t be able to move him. She wasn’t able to move her own broken body.

She laid her head on his chest and closed her eyes, waiting to die alongside him.

Chapter 27 

Janelle and Thomas fled the zoo and headed south, running parallel along Fifth Avenue. They heard the cries of the big cats, the starving animals wanting nothing more than freedom and a meal.

She hoped the lions would find the exit. At least they’d have a fighting chance.

But there were other cries throughout the city, heart-wrenching sobs and tortured screams, somehow worse than the pitiful hunger cries of the lions.

Thomas grabbed Janelle’s hand and ran faster, pulling her to keep up.

They reached Fifty-Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, the end of Central Park.

“What do you think that is?” she gasped, catching her breath. Bent over, palms on knees.

“No idea. Maybe people getting killed. Maybe soldiers are back or something.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Something like vampires maybe. They don’t sound human. More like animals.”

“Yeah. But I don’t think the lions could’ve gotten out so fast.”

They ran some more, past the remains of the Sherry Netherland Hotel and Cipriani’s Restaurant, past a partially demolished FAO Schwartz, glass windows having exploded, toy carcasses littering the street. They ran down Fifth, toward the source of the commotion. On Forty-Ninth Street they headed west, zigzagging the streets. Two blocks later they were on Sixth Avenue and headed downtown again.

Times Square was brightly lit, flashing billboards and neon signs obscuring the sky.

*** 

“Rebecca!”

From her position sprawled on the ground, her beaten body resting against a garbage dumpster, she looked up at the sound of the voice.

He dropped beside her. “What happened?”

“Dagan …” she groaned.

Martin looked at the body beneath Rebecca’s and knew it was Dagan, recognized his clothes. “I heard your cries. I knew you were in trouble.” He gently lifted her into his lap and cradled her.

“Patrick,” she whispered.

“Where is he now?”

She slowly shook her head.

Martin glanced at the sky and shielded his eyes from the harsh Times Square lights. “Sunrise soon. We don’t have time to get back.”

The other vampires joined Martin and Rebecca.

“We hide then?” one asked.

Martin looked around at the people surrounding them, hidden from view, tucked into doorways and behind rubble. Faces full of fear and loathing, faces belonging to people wanting revenge to end the scourge in their lives.

“Too dangerous,” Martin said. “We have to get away from here.”

The children stepped out of the safety of the shadows from their crouched position behind a car.

“Janelle,” Martin said, his back to her, “good to see you again.”

She and a little boy crossed the street. The boy seemed reluctant and tried to pull her back. He nudged her with his elbow. “You know him?”

She nodded. “That’s Martin,” she stage-whispered. Then she said, “Hey, Martin. This is my friend Thomas.” She walked up to the vampires, absentmindedly fingering the cross on the chain around her neck.

Martin said, “What are you doing here? Changed your mind? Want to come with us?”

“No way. But I heard what you said. About needing a place to sleep. I can help you if you want.”

Martin smiled and cocked his head. “Why?”

She shrugged. “’Cause you saved me once. I’m repaying you.”

The vampires looked at Martin.

“Then I guess we’ll have to trust you.” He glanced at the sky again. “Not much time left. What do you have in mind?”

*** 

In the penthouse apartment Janelle and Thomas called home, the vampires slept. They had covered the windows with blankets and heavy drapes, obscuring the room from any possibility of light. They slept piled on the bed and on the floor, limbs entwined, curling against one another like a pit of vipers.

In the living room, Janelle and Thomas sat uncomfortably, wondering if they’d made a mistake bringing the vampires here.

“We should sleep now,” Janelle said. “Be up during the night. Like them.”

Thomas nodded but said, “Do you trust them? I mean, if we sleep—”

“They can’t come out in the daylight.”

“Yeah, but suppose we sleep, and then it gets dark out, and they sneak up on us all fangs and stuff hanging out and drink our blood?” He looked panic-stricken, his dark skin ashy, his brown tea-colored eyes bulging.

“No way, Thomas. They ain’t bothered us up to now. They didn’t kill us last night, did they?”

“Well
duh
, of course we’re not dead, but that’s cuz we saved them last night!”

She rolled her eyes and grabbed a package of cupcakes off the coffee table. “You’re just being stupid,” she said, stuffing the cake into her mouth, wiping cream from her lips with the back of her hand.

Thomas handed her a napkin. “Geez, wipe your mouth, Janelle. You raised in a barn?”

Janelle accepted the napkin but ignored the remark. “They could’ve killed us anyway. Or even when we got back here. And besides, Martin saved me once before. I—” She cocked her head and shrugged. “I trust him.”

“You gotta be kidding.”

“No, really. Sorta.”

Thomas grabbed another package of cupcakes and fought with the wrapper. “We could leave. Run away.”

“What for? This’s our home. No reason to run.”

Thomas stared at the bedroom door as if expecting Martin to come walking through, into the sunlight-strewn confines of the living room. “I dunno,” he whispered. “They scare me.”

Janelle tucked her feet up on the oversized leather sofa and leaned her head against the armrest, burrowing into the soft, thick cushions, her eyes closing in exhaustion. “Stay up if you want, but I’m going to sleep. I want to be up at night.”

She felt his eyes on her even with her own closed, but she ignored him. He could be such a baby sometimes. She thought boys were supposed to be brave, but all he seemed to do was whine and freak out over everything.

What did it matter if he slept or not? She planned to be well rested, planned to become nocturnal. She planned to keep a close eye on Martin and his vampires.

*** 

The Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center had turned out to be the perfect location: moored off the Bronx mainland, entrances easily guarded and booby-trapped. This section of the barge contained fifty maximum-security cells, and satellite control rooms provided clear sightlines to Patrick’s fodder. Two hundred humans were packed into the fifty cells, locked down for the remainder of the night and the ensuing day.

He left the cellblock, his vampires following. There was no reason to trust humans to guard his livestock, not when they could be securely locked in cells. If anyone bothered to infiltrate the prison and rescue them it wouldn’t matter anyway; he could always restock.

For now they left the floating prison and returned to their quarters, a basement apartment in nearby City Island that they boarded up, blocking all windows and doors. They entered through the one door they had left unboarded and sealed themselves in.

When they returned the next day they entered the cell area. Some of the prisoners rushed the bars while others sank into the back and tried to hide in the shadows.

The din of curses and threats, of bravado and terror, rose in pitch, despite Patrick’s demand for silence. There had to be a better way to control them, Patrick decided. He couldn’t allow such discord—it was setting a bad example if he continued to allow them to disobey. He was losing control.

“Get one of them out,” he instructed Kem. “I don’t care which one.”

A cell door was opened, and despite the prisoners’ attempts to escape, they were no match for the strength of the vampires. A woman was plucked from the group and yanked out of the cell. She clutched the bars for dear life, wrapping her arms around them, apparently wanting nothing more than to be trapped inside once again.

Her fingers were wrenched from the bars and she was thrown to the floor in the center of the room. Patrick hovered over her, staring down as if trying to decide the punishment of a puppy that had wet the floor.

The endless begging and yelling from inside the cells had finally ceased. Patrick could smell their fear, could taste it on the air like a fine layer of dew, and could feel the tamping heartbeats.

Delicious
.

The woman on the floor cowered, arms crossed above her head as if to stave off his blows.

Patrick snatched her wrists and lifted her off the floor, her feet dangling, wrist bones cracking and snapping like dried kindling on a forest floor. With his free hand he reached for her, clawed hand outstretched, slowly finding its way to the wildly struggling woman’s throat.

He thrust his fingers into her mouth, his arm disappearing down her gullet, clawing past the epiglottis, digging away at tissue and shredding the skin of her throat until he reached the trachea and esophagus. He severed pieces with razor-sharp nails and pulled them out of her throat, buckets of blood pouring out with the severed parts. Her arms batted away at Patrick, and her legs kicked like a dog scratching at fleas on its belly until she finally went limp.

He dropped her and she landed heavily on the floor, legs twisted in unnatural positions, head cracking against the concrete.

Presenting her esophagus to the prisoners like an ancient sacrifice, he lowered it to his lips and licked it clean. Stringy flecks of tissue and sinew dangled from his chin.

Patrick smiled, wiping the gore away with his sleeve.

“Anyone have anything to say?” he asked the terrified prisoners, his overly wide grin revealing teeth caked in pieces of the woman’s throat.

From the corner of the room a vampire approached Patrick and whispered in his ear.

“What? Where?” Patrick’s head snapped in the direction of the exit.

The messenger vampire pointed at the door, then the ceiling, and then shook his head.

For the first time, Patrick was concerned. “Well what do they want?”