Nocturnus Eternal Ch. 01

James stood in the rain and listened, his legs weak as she not only knew his name but also knew of his nightlife. How many times had he abused his neighbors' kids? How many little children had he blindfolded and done that one simply brutal act to?

He felt his body become hot and nauseated as she glared at him with her unnatural eyes. He wasn't ashamed of his deeds like Bobby was. Not in the slightest. What made him feel so sick was her stare, that invasive vision into his mind. He could feel her inside him, digging around and looking at things that were not hers to see.

"What do you feel when the little boys cry?"

James breathed deep.

"Do you wonder at how you've destroyed their lives or do you just kick back in your recliner and watch re-runs of your favorite sitcom while the drown in their misery?"

"What are you?" he asked and began back up towards the mouth of the alley.

"She's the devil!" Bobby screamed and pointed at her with his knife.

The woman turned, looked at the short thief and said, "You're wrong..."

Bobby readied himself to strike.

"I'm the woman the devil won't take," she said.

Bobby gasped as his switchblade was suddenly snatched from his grasp in a single phantom movement. He gaped at his open, empty hand and saw that not only was he bleeding from the edge of his own knife, but also four of his fingers were missing. The bloody stumps of his pinky, ring, middle and index fingers spurted blood, as his brain finally understood that they were gone. He looked down and saw his severed digits in a bloody puddle between his boots. The fingers moved a little as fat worms forced up from their flooded burrows in the cracks of the cement writhed about in spastic death throes.

A scream hitched in his throat and he looked up at her, his hand gushing blood. She was right in his face, never having moved and yet right there anyway.

"Boo," she whispered.

Bobby screamed and began to run as the rain sheeted down.

He heard a strange 'whooshing' sound behind him and glanced over his shoulder. The woman was gone, and Quentin was lying on the ground crying and cradling his arm. The bitch had taken the fingers off his left hand. He would never be able to pick locks again. His life was over. That bitch had ruined his life. He cringed as his stumps throbbed and flared. Bobby was so consumed with his wound that he ran straight into what he thought was a wall and bounced backwards.

He landed hard on his ass, absently putting his hands out to break his fall. The four stumps of his fingers ground into the pavement under the bulk of his weight. Bobby screamed a desperate release of air as he waved his bloody hand about as though it were on fire. The woman had somehow gotten in front of him, her face hidden in darkness but her eyes bright and fixed on him. He brought his foot up to kick her.

The mysterious woman grabbed his boot and Bobby suddenly found himself spinning in the air. The world blurred past his eyes as his stomach lurched and shifted, at the mercy of centrifugal forces. She held him by his foot and spun him around two times before releasing him into the air. Bobby slammed face first into the side of the building, breaking his nose and further agitating his hand. The air rushed out of his lungs as his body compressed in the impact. A strangled breath eeked out of him as he fell to the wet ground, inhaling a lungful of filthy runoff.

"I'm sorry!" Bobby coughed and sputtered as she grabbed him by his hair, her fingers tearing through his knit cap.

"You shouldn't be apologizing to me," she said and pulled him backwards. Bobby cried out as she rammed his face into the wet brickwork wall. His broken nose exploded in a burst of white-hot pain and stars swam in front of his eyes as she jerked him back. His hands flailed wildly as he tried to bat her away.

"Please!" he begged, choking on a foul mixture of mud water and his own blood.

The flesh of his forehead split open as the woman drove his head into the unforgiving building side again, this time cracking the faded white enamel paint that coated it. She drew him back and Bobby cried out, "I'm sorry lady! I'm sorry!"

"I know you are," she said and then slammed him into the wall one last time. Before he died, Bobby felt the structure of his skull shatter as muscle and bone caved in on him. Blood spattered the slick wall like someone had thrown an overly ripe tomato against it. The cartilage of his nose speared into his brain in broken slivers. Bobby gurgled as his broken jaw reflexively spasmed.

"One," the woman said indifferently and released him.

James Darren watched as his friend fell over backwards and splashed in the bloody water, his shattered face a ruin of gleaming bone fragments and twisted, raw flesh. The mystery woman turned and faced him, her unholy stare fixed on him and him alone. It was a horrific feeling, being singled out by something so alien and so unpredictable. Her vision penetrated him in such a way that he suddenly thought of his past time pleasures again. Her probing of his mind was such an intrusive act and he wondered if the boys he had taken had been this uncomfortable during the act? He thought maybe they might have been because in much the same way all his victims had cried, he found himself crying now.

"No no," he mouthed, unable to look away from her as he slowly backed up.

Lightning flashed again and illuminated her, her coat flapping out like some kind of cape around her.

"Oh please, Jesus," he prayed as his heart hammered in his chest, "Please Lord..."

"Leave Jesus out of this," she said. James heard her voice in his head, in the place between his ears as he saw that her lips weren't moving at all.

"Get away from me!"

He turned and began running as fast as his legs would take him. He decided that he would run into the street and scream like a madman if that's what it took to stay alive. He didn't care if he got arrested or not. He just wanted to be away from this alley and that crazy bitch. She was playing for keeps, as deadly serious about the affair as he and the others had been not more than five minutes ago. The odds had shifted in her favor in the blink of an eye; though the more he thought about it the more he realized that they were in her favor the whole time anyway. Maybe his observation of this alley as a deathtrap wasn't all that far from the truth. Either way, it was time to go.

"Help me!" Quentin screamed from the ground as James sprinted past him, his boots splashing water everywhere.

"Fuck you, man!" James breathed. He had never liked Q anyway.

"You traitor!" Quentin spat, "You asshole! Don't you fucking leave me here!"

"Shit!" James skidded to a stop. In his blind rush to leave the alley, he realized he had run to the end of the alley and found the wall blocking it off. The dead end alley had trapped him. The mystery woman, eyes still ablaze, was a living shadow against the passing lights of cars on the street. James looked up at the windows of the apartment building.

He screamed, "Help!"

James frantically darted about the narrow alley, kicking up trash and gutter water in a futile search for any exit as the woman slowly walked towards him, her pace slow and unconcerned. He felt a glimmer of hope in his chest as he noticed the fire escape to his left. He lunged for it, arms stretched out and fingers ready to grasp the ladder. He had just latched onto the first rod iron rung when something hit his back with a hard muffled thud and stole the air from his lungs.

James hung there for a moment, a look of confusion and pain etching across his narrow features before dropping to the ground. His balance felt off-kilter and the world was spinning in a mad tilt-a-whirl as he struggled to take a breath. James tried to turn and see what had hit him and was greeted by a sharp pain that began in his chest and speared through his entire body.

"What the-?" He gasped for air as his left lung collapsed in his chest. He looked down and saw a long spike protruding out from the space over her left pectoral muscle. Blood spread out across his yellow polo shirt and soaked his red flannel jacket as his hands wrapped around the cool steel that had impaled him. He fingered the spike and laughed to himself as blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth. The metal cold, but his blood was so hot.

"No," James shook his head and then fell forward, his body convulsing violently. His face crashed in a filthy puddle of trash water and splashed.

"You're right," the woman said, standing over the dead pedophile as lightning flashed again. She said, "Two..."

Quentin had managed to make it half way towards the mouth of the alley before she saw him. He looked over his shoulder and then began scrambling like a madman as she turned her full attention to him. James had bought him a little escape time, but not enough apparently. His lips were drawn back from his haggard teeth as she came for him. His chest was heaving, rising and falling as hyperventilation set in and panic gripped his soul. His pants were soaked not only from rainwater but from his own urine. It wasn't supposed to have been this way. It was supposed to have been a simple grab, snatch and bang.

He yelped as his jacket pulled tight and he was yanked backwards. He felt his neck pop as the muscles hyper extended and he was thrown to the wall. Below him was Bobby's corpse. Quentin couldn't bear to look as the woman stood before him, legs parted slightly, thick boots planted firm on the ground and burning eyes focused on him. She raised her open hand into the air, mimicking the exact movements from his slapping session earlier. Quentin knew he had lost his mind when from the tips of her fingers sprang one-inch long claws. They were like cat's claws, somewhat translucent and wicked looking.

He squinted, unable to believe what he was seeing.

"What do you think, Quentin?" she asked as the razor sharp bony protrusions glistened in the dim light, "Should I teach you a lesson?"

"Bitch!" he spat at her defiantly.

The woman slapped him hard, her claws slicing his face open in five long gashes. He didn't even feel a pull or tear. The flesh simply opened and bled.

"Speak up," she told him calmly, reciting his own words to him.

His eyes unfocused and went loopy as she slapped him again. His head snapped to one side as he recoiled from the blow. Blood was running down his neck from the open wounds on his face. Quentin felt as though the entire world was spinning away from him, leaving him the cold depths of open space. The sounds of the impacts echoed through his mind.

"Speak up," she repeated and slapped him again, adding, "Bitch."

Quentin was drifting in and out of reality. His whole body ached as she railed on him, beating him to within an inch of his life. As he floated in the mists in his own death, he wondered how things had gone so wrong so fast.

Quentin had never believed in a Heaven. If there was a Heaven, then that meant there surely was a Hell. If there was Hell then that meant Heaven didn't take rapists. He knew James would not be walking the golden roads of the Almighty's home nor would Bobby be anywhere a pearly gate. No, Heaven made no allowance for the likes of them. Not for the unrepentant. Hell was where he was headed. That thought scared him, as surely as realizing he had been outsmarted and tricked by a woman of all people.

An odd memory from his childhood came back to him as he drifted in and out of thought, another pearl of wisdom from his old man. His father had been reading a book by a guy named Milton the night he said something Quentin knew even then was profound but only now truly understood the relevance to his life.

Mark Handle, a hard drinking thief who beat his wife and kicked the shit out of his three sons in the name of "bringing them up right" and always in "the name God," was a dedicated connoisseur of literature, and Milton was his favorite. It was an odd little ritual, a bizarre interest for a man who religiously read T.V. Guide and Hustler as a daily digest of literature. One night after receiving a severe beating for being home late from school, Quentin's father had looked down at him, the belt still in his hand, and said, "It is better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven, Quentin. Remember that..."

It's funny what a man can think of right before he dies.

Bobby had begged for his life, screaming like a stuck pig and abandoning any pretense of honor or dignity. James was a damned coward who turned and ran and left his partners behind. Quentin decided he would die with a little more dignity. He would not repent of his life. It was his life, and it was the only life he had ever known. If he defended it in life, then he could defend it here in death. Should he go to Hell tonight, then he would go with dignity and rest easy in the fact that no matter what, he would still stand head and shoulders above Bobby Grogan and James Darren.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Renee," she replied.

"Well Renee," Quentin managed as his head lolled from side to side, "Why don't you fucking bite me."

"Yes Quentin," Renee nodded her head and pulled a long, wicked three-pronged stiletto he recognized as a Sai from the inner folds of her jacket. The black metal weapon had to be twenty inches long with the twin prongs at the base of the stiletto that curved wickedly into points. He looked with his good eye down the alley at James. Sticking out of his back was an identical weapon. She looked at him and said, "I intend to."

He wondered how he could have missed those daggers when he grabbed her earlier? He was considering this little mystery even as the shiny Sai dagger punched through his right eye and lodged in the wall behind him sending thin cracks up the surface. His brain quivered and hemorrhaged in his skull as the gray matter was impaled and destroyed. His left eye rolled over to look at her as his arms and legs jerked twice and then fell limp. One last ragged breath escaped his throat as blood poured from the socket and the gelatin of his eyeball oozed down his cheek.

"Goodbye, Quentin," she knelt down to him and pulled the dagger out. The fluids squelched as the long steel length came out with a wet *pop* sound. She tilted his head to one side and exposed his neck to the night. Lightning seared across the stormy sky again as her fangs slid down from their burrows in her gums. Renee lowered her lips to Quentin's neck and bit down hard.

And then she fed.