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Life is all a game. Even unto death. |
| [Introduction] Kill Game
When you are immortal, life is more than just day to day. It is a game. The prize is death. |
| Sam’s drug of choice was blow. It wasn’t because she was overly fond of snorting anything up her nose or even because of the high it gave her. She would accept anything that made her forget how hard it was to get through the day. No, she chose blow because Dulci chose blow. The girl lived in an apartment in the middle of downtown, just a few blocks away from the strip they liked to hang out at each night. Sam had moved in with the girl three months ago and they called each other “best friends” but Sam doubted it. They were “drug friends.” They liked to snort stuff together, but if they were best friends, one of them would have put an end to it by now. One of them would have pointed out the dark path they were heading down and they would have derailed this awful trainwreck they were on. But neither of them had. Three months they’d been junkies on a daily basis and Sam thought that any day now, she’d overdose and it would all be over. She didn’t have a death wish. In fact, dying was something she didn’t look forward to. But she also didn’t look forward to mornings or sobriety. They were all on the same scale, in her mind. That’s why she’d moved out of her brother’s apartment. Michael didn’t like it when she was high. He had a “no drug” policy and Sam had broken it more times than she could count. Michael had never turned her in, but he’d made her get sober on more than one occasion and the last time he’d done that to her, she’d packed her shit and moved in with Dulci. Michael came around now and then, when they were out at the bars. She knew he probably had found out where Dulci lived and she wasn’t sure what it meant that he hadn’t broken down the door and dragged her to rehab. He just frequented the bars and whenever he saw her, he would try to talk her out of taking that next hit. He never won. It was ladies night at the club they’d gone to. Free cover, half off drinks. Not that Sam ever paid for her own drinks. She figured she was junkie enough that people thought the more drinks they got in her, the easier it would be to fuck her. She was cruel and manipulative and didn’t tell them that her tolerance was through the roof and unless they slipped something in there, she wasn’t spreading her legs. She had someone to scratch that itch. Someone who didn’t bring emotions into the picture, someone she could trust to get her off, and someone she believed wouldn’t be there in the morning. She woke up alone every time she fucked Roman. That’s all she knew him by, Roman. She wasn’t sure of his last name or where he lived or what he was into. She’d met him at a bar once and had asked if he wanted to fuck because, shit, he was fantastic looking. But that’s all it would be and she made that clear to him and he seemed just as okay with it as she was. He never said goodbye, he was just gone by the time the morning came around. “Sammy!” came Dulci’s voice and Sam looked up from the sink she’d been leaning over. She made eye contact with herself in the mirror and looked away quickly because that was scary what she saw looking back at her. She turned to eye Dulci, who was staggering in the doorway, a beer held in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. “I need a smoke.” The asshole club owners followed the law, which meant there was no smoking indoors. Sam wondered if they lost business or gained new business over that law. It didn’t matter to her either way how the club was doing, she wanted to fucking smoke inside instead of heading out into the cold to suck one down. “I’ll be right there,” Sam said, swaying a little in front of the sink. Dulci pointed the cigarette at her. “I’ll be out back. Bring a lighter, bitch.” Then she turned and staggered off into the crowd. Sam snorted and leaned heavier against the sink. She ran the water and tried to wipe the powder away from her nose. The high was starting to kick in. Her vision swam and she tipped her head towards the ceiling, her long brown hair falling down her back. Her face was pale beneath the luminescent lights, dark bags beneath her eyes because she hadn’t been sober in months. She wondered if he Dad would be proud of her for following in his footsteps. It was a family business, being a junkie. The thought sobered her more than she wanted it to and she leaned forward again, glaring at herself in the mirror. She grabbed her purse from the sink and stormed out of the bathroom because god, she needed a cigarette. Fuck her thoughts for going down this path. These thoughts were sobriety and mornings. They weren’t supposed to be in the middle of her goddamn high. Dulci had the rest of their stuff. She’d have to take double tonight. As she pushed through the crowd, she didn’t pay attention to who was around her. She didn’t care who saw her like this or if anyone she knew figured out what had become of her. She didn’t care what anyone thought. The only time she actually looked at people was when she needed to get laid and she knew she had a guy named Roman for that. Pushing open the door to the back, the pounding, deep music flooded out into the night air, bouncing off the alley walls. Dulci was out here with a bag of white and she needed it. She tried to spot the girl in the dim lamp light from the streets and she squinted her eyes when she saw two figures standing further on down the alley. She couldn’t tell for sure if it was Dulci, it was too dark out. She made her way down the small stairs and started walking to them. If it was a random couple fucking in the alley, she was going to be pissed. The closer she got, she recognized Dulci’s short blonde hair and the skimpy blue dress she wore. It was Sam’s. The girl wore it better than she did, in Sam’s opinion. There was someone pinning her again the wall. Sam snorted because leave it to Dulci to get lucky in the middle of an alley way. “Dulci,” Sam snapped. “Give me the shit before he starts fucking your brains out,” she called as she walked up to the two, her hand held out. The person pinning Dulci against the wall lifted their head and Sam stopped short, taking a sharp intake of breath when she saw Dulci’s throat. A thick, red slit was cut clean across her skin. Dulci’s eyes were wide and cold, staring off into the alleyway, into the bricks behind them. Red stained the blue dress, it stained her skin, it stained the ground beneath them. “Dulci,” Sam whispered and she wasn’t sure what she was feeling. Remorse maybe. She couldn’t tell. The person holding Dulci up let go and the girl fell limply to the ground. Sam looked down at her for a second more before she turned and started to run, her heels making it hard and the desperate dash made her roll one of her ankles. She let out a cry that turned into a scream as instead of falling on her face, a pair of hands caught her from behind, jerking her upright. “No!” Sam screamed and she felt one hand come across her face, covering her mouth. There was something foul smelling and awful placed over her nose and it made her vision swim. She fought and kicked and landed a good blow with her heels back into the thigh of whoever was holding her. She fell forward, free of the grasp for a moment and landed hard on her hands and knees, scraping them both up. Letting out a strangled cry, she tried to crawl forward, to get away from the attacker. Something heavy hit her square in the back and she fell to the ground again, her chin bouncing off the asphalt. She lay there as the foul smelling towel was put over her nose and mouth again and it took the last of the strength from her. As she was fading away, she heard a door open, the door to the club if the sudden loud music was any clue. She heard a guy yell, “Hey!” and that was it. That was the last she remembered as she sank away. |
| Roman was no stranger to monsters. He was aware of their existence and he was aware that some of them were just as human as the next man walking down the street. Joseph Conrad had written that a belief in a supernatural source of evil was unnecessary; men alone were capable of every wickedness. He believed that. He had been alive a long time and had seen enough of evil. The alley smelled like blood. The sharp, metallic scent of it hung heavy in the air, a constellation of it etched upon the bricks. His eyes traced it, the splatter left by a knife ripping across a little blonde girl’s throat. Her body was being loaded into a van behind him. He could taste her blood on his tongue. A puddle of it stained the asphalt and hit the edge of his boots. Blue and red lights flashed over the wall in front of him, illuminating the crime scene. He could hear officers speaking to whatever good Samaritan had left the club at the right time. “I couldn’t see his face,” he said. “I think he was tall. Maybe. Maybe average height. I can’t really remember. He ran pretty quickly. It was really dark out, you know?” Not the first time he’d heard a story like that. More like the sixth this month. He would have been inclined to call it just another murder except no one could remember what he looked like, and no one else had any answers. There were plenty of smells lingering in the alley. Garbage, fear, sweat, drugs, pain. Nothing he could pin as the killer. He could smell blood though. It was thick, sharp. Intoxicating. Something stirred in him, something wicked and dark. The sensation was familiar. It was hunger. Need for the blood. He licked his lips and tried to push it down but it never died. It never would. He crouched by the puddle and his fingers came out to touch the ground. They came back red. It stained his fingertips. He was familiar with the sight. It was still fresh. The scent of it was strong, laced with drugs and alcohol. Fear hung heavy in the alley and something else more familiar. He was still trying to identify it. The beast that lived just under his skin stirred. He felt fangs lengthen in his mouth and he wanted the taste of it on his tongue. Roman was no stranger to monsters. “Well, well, Sabinus,” a man said from behind him. The voice was rough from years of smoking and heavy alcohol abuse. He smelled like donuts and coffee. He’d heard his heavy footsteps on the ground. He favored his left side because ten years ago when he still gave a shit about his job he’d gotten shot in the thigh. He wondered when the last time the man had actually drawn his gun was. He wondered why he was on the streets when he should have been behind a desk. “Why am I not surprised to see you here?” He glanced over his shoulder at the man. Officer Corgan. Not his favorite. He knew most of the cops, knew their histories and their families. He’d familiarized himself with all of them because it was necessary. His job was to keep secrets. The man thought he was overdue for a promotion and tried to throw his weight around. Roman glanced at him and then dismissed him. “The dead woman had her throat slit?” he asked. There was enough blood for it. Enough fear still lingering in the stones. It was done with a knife. Not fangs or claws. It pointed towards a normal death and a normal killer. Not a supernatural source of evil. That made it a different kind of monster. His fingers lingered on the blood left behind. The man snorted and shifted so that he was standing in front of Roman. He wondered if the man knew he’d just stepped into a puddle of blood. It was making his patent leather shoes dirty. He glanced up and the man was glaring down at him with dark eyes. Corgan hated him. He knew it without ever being told. “Last I checked this was my investigation. So I don’t have to tell you shit.” Roman pushed himself to his feet and the man frowned because it forced him to look up at him instead of down. He was tall and broad, still looking like the soldier he’d been when he died. That had been over a thousand years ago. It was a long time to be a dead man. Some days he felt it more than others. It was a disconnect, a loneliness that claimed all of his kind eventually. It seeped into his bones. “I thought this was Officer Moss’s beat,” he said. “Wouldn’t that make it his investigation?” Michael Moss was what he called a crusader. One of the good guys, the kind that still thought he could make a difference in the world. He’d known enough of his kind. Knights and soldiers and men that did what they thought was right instead of what paid. He was one of the few that knew about monsters and was smart enough to keep his mouth shut about it. One of the few that knew when it was a good idea to call Roman. “Guess you didn’t hear,” Corgan said with a smile. “His sister was the second woman, the one that got away. He’s down at the hospital, and that means I’m in charge of the investigation.” He took a step closer and it was a sorry attempt at intimidation. Roman didn’t get intimated. He didn’t feel much of anything these days. “I don’t care how useful your daddy or Moss thinks you are, Sabinus, but I find it a little suspicious how often I find you popping up when folks show up dead. So why don’t you get the fuck out of my crime scene before I have you dragged down to the station on suspicion of murder?” “If you had evidence to support that, I’d be happy to go with you,” Roman said. The man was trying to stare him down. He ignored him, stepping around him towards the white chalk outline drawn on the ground. The smell of blood grew stronger. The beast inside him surged and he ran his teeth along the sharpening fangs. Behind him, he could hear Corgan’s heart beating faster. He was angry. “You know I can hold you for twenty-four hours without evidence, right?” he snarled. “And you’ll owe me a phone call, one that’ll make sure you never hold me that long,” he shot back. He didn’t care about spending a day in a cell. He cared about spending half of it in the sunlight. It wouldn’t kill him. He was old enough that it was something he could live through. But it would leave him weak and half wasted away and it wasn’t something he was anxious to experience. If that meant he had to fall back on his father’s name, he’d do it, even if he didn’t like it. He’d spent too many years in his shadow, being his knight, his pawn, his soldier. He killed for him. It was what he was best at. “God damn fucking rich boys. Think you own the whole fucking city,” he growled behind him. He heard his footsteps retreat as he stomped back to the flashing squad care. He didn’t look back at him because he didn’t care. The man wouldn’t arrest him and if he did he wouldn’t hold him. “Will someone get this asshole out of my crime scene?” he shouted. “Just relax Corgan,” someone said. A woman’s voice. “Let Moss deal with him when he gets back.” “Fuck Moss,” the officer growled beneath his breath. Roman stopped listening. He crouched down between the white outlines for a moment. One girl dead, the other just with bad timing. There was the bittersweet scent of chloroform in the air. Roman frowned, the scent of something familiar hitting his senses again. He stared at the second white outline on the ground before he stood and took a step closer to it. He was aware of Corgan still yelling and throwing a fit behind him, but generally the police left him alone. He was a Sabinus, and they had pull in this city. His father owned this building and half the ones around it. He made enough donations that when he wanted his son to look into a murder for him, the Captain closed his eyes and stuck his fingers in his ears. Nine nightclubs and one bar. Roman ran that one bar, because it made it easier for people to find him when things like this happened. When someone or something broke and risked exposing the nasty underworld that lurked just below the surface. He made sure that no one else believed in a supernatural source of evil either. There was no such thing as monsters. Sam. The smell hit him hard and he stiffened, frowning at the lines on the ground. That was the scent he was trying to place. Sweat and drugs and smoke and Sam. He licked his lips and glanced back at the flashing lights. Roman had a thing for Sam. She was cold and mean and manipulative. He’d figured that out about her after seeing her once or twice. She looked through everyone like they were already dead, including him. It hadn’t bothered him because he was. It had been an odd moment for him. To be dead one moment, her looking through him with eyes glazed with drugs and disinterest, and then for a split second she’d looked at him and she had seen him. Suddenly he was the only living person in a room full of corpses and it was almost funny because he was the oldest dead man in the room. If he’d still had a heartbeat it would have made it beat faster. She was in the hospital. He was surprised when his lip curled and the beast stirred with a surge of anger. His fingers touched the wall. He tasted the blood it left behind. It was sharp on his tongue. It stirred the beast’s hunger. He could taste the fear in it. Taste the drugs that swam in a dead girl’s veins and her last moments of panic. He was old. There should have been something left behind. Something of the man that had slit her open. There was nothing. He was no blood witch or sorcerer, but he thought there should have been something. That there wasn’t told him enough. It whispered of monsters, and Roman was no stranger to monsters. He was one. |
| Sam woke with a terrible ache in her head. She knew what coming down off the blow felt like, and this was bad. She wasn’t ready to be sober and she wasn’t ready to wake up because if there were two things Sam hated, they were mornings and sobriety. Except this felt different. It was intense and there were pains she normally didn’t associate with getting sober. Her eyes were heavy and lidded, but she managed to get them opened and she focused first on the ceiling, because it was all she could see for a minute. It was white and clean and she knew what that meant. Hospital. She groaned, because the hospital was one of the last places she wanted to be. They frowned upon her idea of alternative medicine. “Sam?” The voice startled her, making her jump slightly against the cool sheets. She turned her head and she had to admit she was surprised to see Michael sitting there. He’d pulled a chair into the room and sat it next to her bed. He was leaned forward like he wanted to take her hand, but he knew better. She wanted to yell at him, but there was genuine concern on his face that surprised her. He looked rough, a little beat. Licking her lips to wet them, she asked, “What happened?” Michael smiled, leaning further forward. “I was hoping you could tell me,” he said. It was his “father” voice. She always called him on it because he used it often with his son, Bobby. Michael and Juliana had split three years ago and Bobby lived with his mom, instead of Michael. It was easier for her to take care of Bobby, since she was now married to a rich business mogul. It was harder for Michael, because he was a cop and cops didn’t have spare time a whole lot. “Sam?” Michael asked and she glanced at his face, realizing she’d been drifting off. “I don’t remember,” she said hoarsely. “I was at the bar.” Michael nodded. “You were found in the alley behind the bar. Do you remember how you got there?” Sam frowned. In the alley? She wondered what he meant by, “found.” Her mind started to race and she tried to put the pieces into place where they belonged. What had happened? She remembered getting high in the bathroom and Dulci had come in. “We were going to smoke,” she said. “The bars have that new rule, no smoking inside.” “What happened once you got in the alley?” Michael asked. Sam stared at him. “Am I being interrogated?” she asked, suddenly realizing that’s what this felt like. “No,” Michael answered sternly. “I’m trying to find out what happened. You were hurt and I want to find the thing who did it.” Sam shook her head. “I don’t remember,” she repeated. She tried to concentrate, tried to think hard about what had happened. She wondered what Michael meant by her being hurt. She brought a hand up to her face and her chin felt scraped up. She could see scrapes and cuts on her hands and if she concentrated real hard, she could feel them on her knees too. But there was a pain sinking deeper into her skin that the cuts and bruises. “When can I leave the hospital?” Michael didn’t answer right away and that’s all she needed to hear. He wanted her to detox. “Sam, please…” he started. “You’re a dickhead,” she cut him off. “I can legally refuse medical treatment.” “When you’re in your right mind,” Michael said and Sam glared at him. “But you’ve just been through something traumatic. You’re not in your right mind.” “Traumatic my ass,” she growled at him. “I’m fine.” “You are, yeah,” Michael said. The way he said it made her pause. She stared at his face and she watched his features soften with guilt or remorse. She thought again to the alley. To the drugs she’d taken before heading outside, to Dulci coming in wanting her to go smoke. She sucked in a breath. “Dulci?” she asked, her voice a quiet whimper and again, she wasn’t sure what she was feeling. Michael finally gave in to the temptation to reach up and take her hand. She thought it surprised both of them equally when she didn’t yank it away or yell at him. “I’m sorry, Sam,” Michael told her. “She was already dead by the time we got there.” Rolling her head away to look at the ceiling, she tried to think about how that made her feel. Dulci was dead. She was dead and Sam was alive and the world was a cruel thing because Sam should be the one dead. Dulci had things she wanted to do with her life. She’d wanted to travel and meet a guy and paint a masterpiece and Sam didn’t want to do anything but forget. But Dulci had. “What happened?” she asked. “Her throat was slit,” Michael answer. He squeezed her hand. “I need to know if you saw anything. Anything that could help. Maybe you saw the person who killed her?” Sam thought about it, her heart pounding in her chest. “Her throat was slit.” “Yeah, that was the COD,” he said. “Stop talking cop,” she snapped and Michael had the audacity to smirk a little. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I came out into the alley and there was…someone standing in front of her. I thought they were going to fuck.” She saw her brother’s cheeks flush a little at that and she knew it was only because she was his sister talking like that. Michael was a cop. He was a damn good cop and he didn’t let a lot of things get to him or embarrass him. He’d seen a lot of things while on the force, but he still hadn’t learned how to deal with Sam’s mouth. “So you saw the guy?” Michael asked. Sam nodded. “Yeah, I guess.” “What did he look like?” Michael pulled a notebook out of his back pocket. She rolled her eyes because he was in plain clothes, but of course he’d still carry around his police notebook. She opened her mouth to tell him what the man looked like, but realized she didn’t know. She tried to picture his face, but all that came back was a blur. She couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t see clothes, or hair or facial features. She couldn’t make out anything in the memory she had of the man and Dulci. “I don’t know,” she gave honestly. “You just said you saw him,” Michael said. “I did,” Sam protested. “I just…I can’t…,” she shook her head and felt something trickle from her nose. Michael’s eyes widened a little and he grabbed tissue off the table near him. “Your nose is bleeding,” he said. Said accepted his help holding the tissue in place. “It does that a lot,” she told him. She pulled the tissue away after a moment. “Michael, I can’t remember the guy. At all. I can’t remember anything about him. It’s like…he’s just a blur. Like you know when you cut out the faces of your ex-boyfriend in all your pictures?” Michael raised an eyebrow. “I get it,” he said. “But I just burn the pictures, I don’t cut out the faces.” Sam shrugged, putting the tissue back over her nose. Her hands were shaky and her eyes were starting to get heavy again. “Men,” she said. Michael smirked and closed his notebook. He stood suddenly and Sam frowned at him. “Where are you going?” “I need to go see someone,” he said. “I’ll be back in a bit.” Sam licked her lips and instead of goodbye, she found herself saying, “Dulci didn’t deserve what happened to her.” Michael looked awkward at the statement, but he leaned down and kissed her forehead. She closed her eyes and realized that she’d missed her big brother. She wondered what she was going to do now that she didn’t have a place to live. “I know,” Michael told her. “And I promise I’ll catch the bastard who killed her.” “I know you will.” |
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