Reckless: Stuff - Act 4
by redmoon
Stuff - Act 4
Logan left the warehouse with pieces coming together in his mind. Niki was infected. Pierce was infected. Logan himself wasn’t infected. He shuddered. They had concluded that with certainty. If Niki hadn’t been infected by the original Nosphorus, then Pierce must have infected her, otherwise the paranoid street talk would have reported anything else rat-like and trying to destroy the world. The reason Niki didn’t suspect Pierce was that he didn’t appear as a Nosphorus... Logan shook his head.
No, the reason was because she was his slave. Ever since he had bitten her —the thought made his fists ball— she had been forced unconsciously to do everything her sire said. That made perfect sense, as the human thought about it. When creating an army, the one who cast the spell and created the virus was the General; his Nosphorus were his captains and each they infected– each loyal to his own captain, were the cannon fodder. And quite the effective army: A single division under one Nosphorus had nearly taken over the entire city a few months ago.
With Pierce still a Nosphorus, the plan was still alive. Without a general, though, the army had no plan of attack. It was sleeping. Growing.
Fortunately, they had a cure. A cure that the Pierce-Nosphorus didn’t know about. And once Niki was cured, she could finish what she started in the park and end all their problems. Logan paused on his way to the Biter. There was, as far as he knew, no cure for the vampires infected with the plague: the hideous torture table only worked for the human sufferers.
Logan trotted down the steps to the door of the Nail Biter and as soon as he opened the door, knew something was terribly wrong.
There were tables lying upside down and some shattered on the floor. Moaning and writhing bodies lay piled over them or cowering in corners. The walls and ceiling were decorated with potholes from a spray of bullets which had emptied out of a Magnum Wiley some minutes ago.
Logan took a deep and disappointed breath. The bar tenders of this place seemed to end up at the wrong end of someone’s wrath, but none had ended up quite so dead as Tom now appeared. Logan swallowed as the smell washed over him. Not really the stench of death: that would take perhaps an hour to come into its own. This was the rarely smelled stench of demon insides.
From the ceiling down, the Nail Biter was decorated with Tom. Logan finally realized what he was looking at and had to look away, lest he vomit.
Between the three hanging lamps were strung Tom’s black dripping intestines, almost in a festive arrangement. Among the bottles lined up against the mirror behind the bar was the unfortunate barkeep’s head, its eyes torn out and floating in the bottles of liquor on either side of the grotesque sight. Tom’s torso, riddled with bullets from his own gun, was sitting on the stool at the end of the bar; a massive chest and stomach lacking arms, legs, a head and entrails and being the obvious source for the puddle of black liquid beneath it. The slow grinding sound Logan heard was the laboring ceiling fan which spun under a great deal more weight than for which it had been designed. On each of its four blades was stuck one of Tom’s arms or legs, spinning slowly, spattering the customers below with tiny black droplets.
Beneath the carnage spread out across the room, standing panting for breath under the spinning fan, was the Slayer, her black, blood-covered jacket tied around her waist, her white shirt torn nearly off, stained with black and red blood. Her blond hair was matted with black and dark red, her bare arms were glistening with sweat and her hands were completely black. In her right hand she held some unidentified internal organ of the late barkeep and in her left she waved the Magnum Wiley, its muzzle smoking.
Niki slowly turned to the sound of the opened door and the gasping human at the threshold. Her eyes were red and black blood was smeared across her face. Her lips were dripping with the black blood and Logan was sure the thing she was holding in her right hand had been between her teeth a few moments ago.
There was a wavering moan from somewhere in one of the darker corners and Niki spun around and fired several shots into it, eliciting a scream and then silence. She slowly turned back around and dropped the smoking gun, reaching into the cleft between her mostly exposed breasts and retrieving the small white vial. She emptied its contents straight into her mouth and then took a bite of whatever it was that was still bleeding from her right hand.
With a seductive walk that nearly made the trembling Logan vomit again, Niki made her way over to him, dropping the organ with a splat and discarding the latest of the empty vials.
“Holy fuck!” Logan shouted, taking a step back. “What— what the–”
“Shhh,” Niki held a blackened finger to his lips, smearing the blood across his flesh. “Just hold me,” she crooned, maneuvering him against the closed door and rotating her hips against his. She whispered and moaned nothings to him as her bloodied fingers began to undress him.
Logan shook his head to clear the shock of the entire situation. “Niki! What the fuck is this!? What did you do!”
Niki giggled and turned around to show him the room. “Isn’t it pretty?” She took his shoulder and tried to kiss him with foul lips, but he pulled away. “Now do what you know you want to,” she groaned, her hand sliding inside his jeans. “I’m a helpless little girl, Logan, don’t’cha wanna fuck me?”
Logan recoiled, pulling her slimy hand from his waist, holding her shoulder to keep her face from his own. “Niki,” he said with a trembling voice. “I’m going to get you help.”
With Slayer strength, she pulled her hand free from his own grip and shoved him hard against the wall, pressing her hot body against his. “You can help me,” she purred, fire racing through her veins. “Do what you wanted to do the first time you saw me,” she slid her hand down to his jeans and unbuttoned his fly, trailing black slime across the denim.
Logan’s breath was fast and a cold sweat had broken out on his forehead. She certainly did have the strength to make him do whatever she wanted. He fought against her advances, trying to wriggle away from her touch. She planted a black kiss at the corner of his lips, trailing her tongue over the black mark it made.
His eyes snapped open again. Hold on, he didn’t have to take this. With his jaw clenched and her hand sliding all over him, he concentrated. The dark arts he had studied were almost always lethal or at least very imprecise. Little parlor tricks like the electricity in his hand were interesting but harmless so Logan was forced to improvise.
As the sickening feeling began to churn in his gut that she was finding satisfaction from his body, he felt his blood run hotter. His skin warmed.
“Oh, baby’s hot for me, isn’t he?” She moaned, sliding her hand up his back under his undershirt. She ground her pelvis against him and moaned. Then her hand on his back pulled away. He was growing very hot. Niki pulled her hand from his fly and looked up at him with confusion.
Logan’s face was red and sweat was pouring off his forehead. She touched his hand but pulled back right away, his skin burning like a stove top.
“Ow,” she complained, stepping back. “It’s a fucking trick,” she growled, giving him a rough shove in the shoulder.
Logan’s eyes remained closed and his flesh seemed to burn. After agonizing moments, he opened his eyes again and the Slayer was gone.
Logan raced down the street back to the warehouse. Only Pierce could solve this. As he pounded through the parking lot to the open door, he caught the scent of demon insides. Niki was already here.
As quickly as he could, Logan dashed between crates and tables to the dark corner under the lonely hanging light at the back. He stopped dead.
Pierce stood by the chair from which Logan had released him. His arms were crossed and he glared down at the huddled figure in the darkest corner.
“Pierce...” Logan began uncertainly. The vampire barely glanced at him, keeping an authoritative watch over the huddle mass of dejection. “Pierce, tell her—”
“I know,” the vampire said tonelessly. “She won’t hurt either one of us.”
“Tell her,” Logan said slowly, his eyes filling with compassion as he looked down at the silently sobbing girl curled up in the corner, “tell her she can never take Stuff again.” He glanced sharply at the vampire as the moment of silence passed. “Tell her.”
Pierce sighed. Closing his eyes he set his jaw and knelt down in the dark corner that was the ruined Slayer’s universe. She whimpered and let out a nearly audible sob, her fists pressed into her eyes, her knees under her chin. The vampire leaned in close and opened his lips.
Logan frowned and took a step closer. He wasn’t able to hear any of what was said as the Slayer cried and the vampire took from her her only consolation. The human swallowed and turned away from the pair, crossing his arms. At last, Pierce stood and offered a hand to Niki, who stood, wiping the black grime from her eyes with the back of her wrists. She sniveled and walked over to Logan, throwing her arms around him and sobbing into his wool sweater.
Logan threw a look to Pierce, as if demanding to know what was said, but finally, took Niki in a hug and led her from the warehouse. As the morning light greeted them outside, Pierce slowly paced the darkness of the warehouse. After a long moment, he stopped under the solitary lamp. Reaching up, he took the hot lightbulb between his fingers and twisted until it flickered out.
Logan lay on the couch of Niki’s apartment, the Slayer sleeping with her head on his chest. Her head slowly rose and fell with his breath as he watched the commercials. He couldn’t think right now. It was all... he closed his eyes. He couldn’t think.
He had a beautiful wife and a lovely daughter at home, probably wondering where he was. He had a violent and unstable recovering vampire Slayer on his chest that... somewhere in his life he had loved. Despite everything that any logic told him, he was here instead of at home. He held this girl instead of his wife. And the slowly turning confusion as to where he really belonged: he hated that. He should never have had to make that decision. He should never have been presented with the choice. But the girl on his chest, moving with his breathing, wouldn’t survive without him.
Faith Ford appeared on the television screen —almost a spitting image of the Slayer— in her black jacket and shoulder length blond hair for her ‘Stop the Madness’ Public service announcement. “Statistics show that one drug addict or alcoholic will adversely affect the lives of four loved ones and they, in turn, affect the lives of fifteen other people. How long before we’re all statistics?”
Logan shook his head with a smirk. He tilted his head to see the face of the girl laying across him, her expression clouded and held in some private pain. He bent his head down and kissed the corner of her closed eye. And the slowly turning confusion stopped.
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