Robert Crane - Family

I took the attack to him, swinging my sword as he used his hands to block, that soulless grin still exposing his teeth. Every strike opened his flesh, but no blood dripped out, and I watched as the skin seemed to pucker and bind back together before my eyes. I made a dance out of my sword, practicing a kata of my own creation, a free-flow of motion, the sword spinning in my hands. I went low, hacking at the legs, wondering if I cut the muscles if it’d slow his motion. I buried a strike in his knee and he wobbled before recovering and slicing me across the shoulder with a slash of claws that caused the fabric of my shirt to rip at the sleeve.

I whirled in a circle and came at him low again, catching him in a perfect strike across the back of the knee that cut his leg out from under him – not literally, but the force of my blow was so great that when the blade had bitten in, it reached the bone. When the momentum of my attack had nowhere else to go it pulled his leg from the ground as though I had performed a leg sweep.

The vampire stumbled, now on one leg. Sensing his predicament, I launched into a side kick that would have killed a human, hitting him in the head with it. As it was, the vampire lost his footing and hit the far wall, shattering one of the mirrors and landing on his face.

I leapt to exploit the advantage and landed on his back, driving my sword into it. I felt the impact up my arms as I drove home my blow, the tip of the blade striking and sticking against his ribs, its momentum halted. The shock of the attack caused him to whiplash and it drove his head into the mat, from which it rebounded up, a jarring motion of the spine that would have killed a normal person by breaking their neck.

His neck.

I heard the voices whisper in my head, Gavrikov and Wolfe, giving me the answer I sought. It took me only a moment to grasp their meaning and I dropped to my knees, straddling the vamp’s back as I grabbed the dulled edge of my blade and slid the sharp edge against his throat and pulled.

The blade cut through the tissue without effort, then stopped, halted by a spine that was strong, as though it was steel. His hands came up and seized mine, trying to stop them, but he had no leverage. I pulled, and felt the blade stir another centimeter, then another, ignoring the lancing pain in my hands as he clawed at them, tearing through my gloves and into my skin, ripping at my sleeves and my wrists.

I felt the last tug cut through and the hands tearing at me went limp as the sword burst free from the back of the vampire’s neck. I fell onto the mat as something heavy that wore a patch of blond hair bounced off my chest. I batted it away with a free hand. Yuck. I scrambled to my feet to see Mom and the raven-haired vampire locked in battle. She was giving him about eight different kinds of hell and he was giving it right back. I angled myself to come up from behind him as she was falling back from a wave of his attacks. I struck as he was moving forward, a hard swing to the back of his neck that sent him to the floor face-first. I followed up with a repeat of what I’d done to the other vampire.

Mother stood back and watched as I pulled, again, hands forcing the blade against his throat until I finished and fell backward again, similar to the last time, this time not bothering to get up immediately. I lay on my back, breathing hard from the exertion of what I’d just done. I saw a hand reach down. I looked up and took it, and Mother helped me to my feet. “Nice work,” she said, looking at the two separate bodies that lay on the mats. “I ran across a vampire a long time ago, when I was working with the Agency.” She frowned. “Had to use a flamethrower to put that one down.”

“Yeah, I used a flaming club to take it to these two the last time I fought them,” I said, peeling the shredded gloves off my hands to examine the damage they’d done to my skin. The gouging wounds left by their claws were mostly superficial, but they still stung. “Tough bastards, though.”

“Yeah,” she said, and nodded. “We should get going.”

I sighed. “I don’t want to go with you.”

I saw a veil slide down behind her eyes, whatever momentary pride she was feeling evaporated. “We’re leaving. Together. You are coming with me.”

I felt something like steel run down the length of my spine and I pushed my chest out as I stood up straight. The air was heavy in the room, like summer humidity was creeping in from the window we’d broken out front. “No, I’m not.”

“You will,” she said again, her voice rising, “and—” Her hand came up and then she jerked, twitching hard and falling to her knees. As she dropped, I saw two little threads trailing off her back and leading to someone standing behind her, in the shadows, a taser extended from a shadowy hand.

He stepped into the light the moon cast across the floor from the windows, and I recognized his face. “Sorry to interrupt this moment of mother-daughter bonding,” Michael Mormont said with a malicious grin, “but I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that the two of you aren’t going to be going your own way.” His mouth twisted, and his eyes slipped into the shadow as his grin became more perverse. “You’ll both be coming with me.”

One Year Ago

I did get up off the basement floor, eventually. I went upstairs and showered, a long one that lasted over an hour. I scrubbed myself clean of the accumulation of waste and stink that I had gathered in the time I’d spent in the box. After that, I sat down in the tub and let the hot water run over me, let it tap at my skin, on my head, felt the warmth as it washed over me.

I took deep breaths in through my nose and out through my mouth; I read that helped purge strong emotion. The smell of the chlorine in the tap water was faint, but I welcomed it. The aroma of the box lingered, even after the repeated scrubbings, and all I wanted was for it to go away.

I ate after that, sitting at the table in the kitchen alone, the quiet almost overwhelming. I kept the lights off. The only source of illumination was the sun slipping through the cracks from behind the blockaded windows. I ate the turkey sandwich I made for myself one slow bite at a time, tasting the bread, the mayo and the meat, and trying to keep myself from wolfing it down after going without food for almost a day. The dull colors of the walls of the house weren’t visible in the dark, but the lack of light was oddly soothing.

Once I had eaten, I found myself in mother’s bathroom, staring at the checkered tiles – one little black one every four white ones, in square patterns. The room was small, closet-sized, with an old countertop, and porcelain toilet. There was only one shower in the house, and it was in the bathroom Mother referred to as mine. She did everything else in her own bathroom, though, and there was long, brown hair gathered around the white baseboards in knots, as though it had fallen and somehow gathered itself together and tied itself up.

I took the heavy cleaners from the kitchen and scrubbed the sink, the toilet, the vanity and the floors. The sharp smell of the chemicals was heavy in my nose, and I felt lightheaded. The toilet had a permanent ring on the inside of it where the water line rested, and no matter how hard I scrubbed, I could never seem to get that faded yellowish ring off. Today I tried harder than most.

I took a brush out next, a small one for scrubbing floors, and I started rubbing at the tile. It should have been easy, should have been simple. I scrubbed as I thought about what I’d done, what I’d said, what she’d said back. I took another breath, heavy, in through the nose, out through the mouth, and kept scrubbing.

I thought about the box, all the times I’d been locked in it, and I rubbed at the tile. There was a dark spot on the floor between the wall and the toilet. I wrestled myself in the gap between them, almost wedging myself in, and started to scrub, going so far as to clean the corrosion and lime off the valves that shut off water to the toilet. I focused again on the spot on the floor, which was under where the plunger rested. I scrubbed harder, seeing the ring fade slightly with the effort.