Scarlet Dusk (9 page)

“—got it?” Zane called behind him.

She blinked. “Huh?”

“THE FILE!” he roared, though she could tell it had nothing to do with the loudness of the stolen motorcycle’s engine. “DO YOU STILL HAVE IT?”

Celine blushed and nodded, pulling the bundle of papers from under her arm to show him.

Zane’s face relaxed at the sight and nodded, turning back to face forward as he navigated the streets, weaving in and out of traffic.

“Why… u-uh, wh-why did you s-steal this motorcycle?” Celine asked, blushing as she realized that the machine’s vibrations and her closeness to Zane were having some serious impacts on her anatomy.

“Because I needed it,” Zane’s voice was flat. “I’m hunting somebody.”

Celine frowned, “Hu-hunting some—Why w-wouldn’t y-you just chase them in over… ah! Er, overdrive?”

“Are you going to be alright back there?” Zane growled.

“Yea…” Celine blushed, realizing her increasing arousal wasn’t going unnoticed.

Zane sighed, taking a sharp turn and forcing Celine to grip his sides to keep from falling over the side. “If who it is turns out to be who I
think
it is, then I can’t risk burning up all my energy in overdrive.”

“Who you think it is…” Celine’s nerves seized and her arousal fizzled away into nothingness, “You don’t mean
him
, do you? You don’t mean M-Mal-Maledictus, do you?
Do
you? I-is
that
who you’re after; is that who took Serena.”

“
Yea, Celine, it is, and I’m not sure if what I’m sensing his him,” Zane confessed, cutting across an intersection. “But it sure as hell
feels
like him.”

MALEDICTUS WAS OUT THERE SOMEWHERE, AND, SOMEHOW, Zane was able to track him; to
feel
his presence and chase after it. Celine’s head darted about, oscillating to-and-fro in response to anything that her growing paranoia screamed to her
might
be the creature she’d encountered so many years ago.

When Zane had brought back the curse from his mission with the taroe tribe…

She felt a whimper scuttle free from her throat and she forced away the memory of the looming creature that had
literally
burst from Zane’s body. It hadn’t taken much—a bit of confusion and a stubbed toe, if she remembered correctly—and he’d doubled over, crying and cackling all at once; the new tattoos that littered his body burning like hot coals. He was no more than a turned sang, she knew that better than anybody, and when his body began to shift and warp like a therion’s she’d known that she didn’t want to stick around. Unlike all the dumb bimbos in the horror movies, when her man started screaming in pain and monstrous extremities began sprouting across his glowing body, she did what a
sane
woman
should
do:

She ran.

Maledictus, as
its
name—or title or classification or
whatever
—turned out to be, hadn’t been too thrilled to see its first victim making a run for it, and he’d ripped the house apart in trying to chase after her; the sound of his vulgar rampage beckoning their neighbor to come knocking…

While it was tragic to a degree, Celine had never been too close with the old man. So when he went and called attention to himself, drawing the homicidal creature’s attention away from her long enough to jump out the bedroom window, she didn’t bother to go back to help him.

An old man dies; a young vampire lives. Probably not the fairest trade in the world, but she’d already come to grips with the idea of living off the death of others.

It
was
, after all, what made them what they were.

She could only imagine in hindsight what it must have been like for Zane when he’d come to after all that. Dazed. Confused. Covered in blood. Alone. It made sense that he’d come to the conclusion that the monster he’d brought back inside of him had killed her, and, in many ways, it was better that he thought that.

The Maledictus-monster thrived on the fear it crippled him with, so if it had gone through the arduous chore of tracking her down it would’ve had to sacrifice the ruse that it
had
killed her. Knowing that truth
might
have offered Zane some sort of hope then; a hope that he might overcome what had happened to him. Obviously this was not something Maledictus had been willing to risk, so it allowed Celine to live—a small sacrifice in its campaign of keeping Zane tortured by the belief that it—and, in essence, he—had killed her.

But now that Maledictus had his own body and Zane was aware that Celine’s death had all been a lie, there was no safety net for her.

No safety net
but
Zane.

“Do you really think you can kill him?” she asked, giving Zane’s shoulder a light squeeze.

“Thinking isn’t really my thing, Celine,” Zane answered, steering the motorcycle onto a new street. “I
know
that that twisted fucker has Serena, and I
know
I need to get rid of him.” He glanced back, the determination and commitment burning in his mismatched gaze, “I
have
to kill him!” He turned back and started off towards a lumber yard in the distance, “Besides, we put him in an ykali body. Those things might be ugly bastards, but they’re hardly a major threat when you—”

Zane’s reassuring words were cut short as something—something that cut through the air and howled like a banshee—slammed into the front of the motorcycle. Both Zane and Celine cried out as they flipped over the handlebars and crashed down on the sawdust-covered ground; the upturned motorcycle slamming down on Zane’s right arm. Celine whimpered against the ringing in her ears and the ache of her own impact, looking around for any sign of what had hit them. When she spotted nothing but the silhouettes of stacked logs and machinery looming like waiting monsters ahead of them, she began to crawl towards Zane, hoping to reestablish some of her shattered sense of security by being nearer to him.

A slow, wet, serpent-like chuckle begins to ooze from the darkness that the attack originated from; the sound slowly shifting to a sharp, hissing intake followed by a satisfied, growling sigh.

“That, my dear boy, looked rather unpleasant from my angle,” a serpentine voice chirped from the darkness.

Footsteps…

Celine felt her breath seize in her lungs as her heart rate tripled.

The hollow
thud
of one step resounded, followed by three sharp
clicks
. The pattern continued—
thud, cli-cli-click; thud, cli-cli-click;
a soft, almost inaudible
swooshing
overlapping the sequence
—
as it drew nearer; the ghostly outline of their attacker taking shape as he stepped out of the shadows cast by the nearby machinery.

Celine’s eyes grew wider with every step; her body quaking that much harder with every inch that was lost between them.

Another snake-like hiss oozed across their ears, rattling and squealing like a child’s laughter as it grew in pitch. “Oh my! Zaney-boy, you brought an old friend!” The rattling hisses continued, “Well, well, aren’t
you
a sight for sore eyes… well,
a
sore
eye
.”

Celine didn’t understand what the still-shadowed figure meant, but she instinctively scuttled away—away from him
and
away from Zane—in the hopes of opening up enough distance to build up a sprint. She knew that, if he was too close, she’d never get that far.

“Y-you… you remember me?”

Another rattling hiss, “Still a dumb fuck, I see. Yes, of course I remember you, bitch,” she heard a sharp inhale then, followed by a satisfied groan. “I never forget the stink of a cunt, and, trust me, the way you hightailed it the last time I saw you, that pink ass was all the view I was offered. Why don’t you bend over for me and let me see how you’ve grown?” Maledictus stepped into the light then.

Celine whimpered and scuttled back further, “Oh god! Oh god no, please! Don’t let it… don’t let it… don’t let it… Don’t—”

“Shut up, Celine!” Zane growled, looking up at the creature, “That’s the sort of reaction he
wants
!”

“Oh don’t you just know me oh-so-fucking well, you infected chode-wart!” Maledictus glared down at him with the only eye in his head, the other ocular cavity occupied by a small, reddish orb that was barely big enough to keep the lid held open. His body—no longer simply that of an ykali’s—looked like something out of an exorcist’s nightmares; a massive, hulking frame adorned in bony spikes at every joint perched atop a pair of legs that would’ve been more appropriate on something long-since extinct. As he took another step, the three talons that capped each of his reptilian toes rose and fell—
cli-cli-click
—against the ground, kicking up more dust and woodchips as they did. Seeing the two of them taking in the sight, he beamed—his face warping into something horrific—and held out his long, clawed hands. “Like what I’ve done with it? Lizard is
so
last year!”

Zane grunted, clearly still hurt from the fall, “Where is she, you son of a bitch? Where the fuck is Serena?”

“Oh, her?” Maledictus shrugged, “She’s resting; with all the pussy she’s been throwing around lately I haven’t had a chance to—”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Zane roared, starting to drag himself
and
the motorcycle from the ground.

Maledictus pouted, “Aww, still suffering from some separation anxiety, I see?” He nodded, “Alright, I’ll spare you the creamy details—and I
do
mean ‘creamy’—and focus on catching up with my
favorite
fuck-stain.” He absently scratched at his chest, letting a few loose scales rain down in the process, before gesturing to Zane, “How you been? I mean,
aside
from that fall…” his face shifted and he chattered his teeth as he cocked his head, “Please tell me that that
was
as painful as it looked,” he let out an orgasmic hiss, “Give me the satisfaction of knowing that you’re in
PAAAIIINNNNN
!”

Zane steadied himself on his feet and stood the motorcycle up beside him, gripping one of the handlebars to keep it upright.
“Sure, dick-cheese. A real pain in the balls,” he lunged forward then, dragging the motorcycle behind him. “But I’ve come to expect that from
YOU
!” he roared as he jumped into the air and used the momentum to swing the motorcycle—whipping about in his grip as though it were nothing more than a lawn chair—at Maledictus.

Maledictus finally looked
exactly
like what Zane would’ve imagined.

Before, when he was still nothing more than a curse that shifted Zane’s body whenever he took control, his appearance was nothing more than a warped shadow of whatever it truly was. Since the creature had never attracted much attention or left many alive long enough to pose, he’d never gotten the chance to actually
see
what he looked like when the curse took hold.

And, for that, he couldn’t be more thankful.

What stood before him now, however, was in every way a product of Maledictus’ vanity; a Halloween costume built of the recycled ykali skin they’d given him. And while Zane was certain that whoever or whatever Maledictus had been prior to that moment, it wasn’t nearly as horrible as what he was facing.

A massive, disgusting, horny creature…

Fitting.

It just made him want to kill the thing all the more, and the high-speed impact of over five-hundred pounds of American engineering straight to his skull seemed like a great way to get the job done.

Swinging the motorcycle for all he was worth, Zane aimed for the center of his bone-crowned head; spotting the gaping wound on the left side of his face.

Serena,
he couldn’t help but smile at the sight as he came down on the monster,
you magnificent psychopathic bitch. I love you!

Glaring up at him, Maledictus whipped around; a long, thick tail covered in a row of razor-like bone spurs coming into view as he it sliced through the body of the motorcycle. The rear half the vehicle—spitting various fluids from the severed engine and lines—careened off into the distance, shrieking with a metallic exclamation as it crashed into one of the fixtures in the distance.

Zane landed on his feet and glared at the remains of his makeshift weapon before casting it aside. “Like I said: ‘a pain in my balls.’”

“You always were quite lippy about your genitals, boy!” Maledictus scoffed, “You seem quite attached to your balls, yes?”

“Not that you’d know anything about that now, lizard-dick!”

Maledictus hissed angrily, “Haven’t heard Serena complain yet!”

Zane’s blood went hot with rage. “FUCKING BASTARD!”