By Commision, cont.

(Specifically, continuing from the exciting events of last night's post.)

The vampire-car swirled down on the night breeze, coming to rest on the street beside a large house. Three women disembarked: their skin pale, their expressions cold. Each bore a wooden stake at the hip.

The door opening at a touch, the women entered the darkened house; their movements were graceful and silent, leaving undisturbed the stillness that filled the house. As the door closed behind them, making only the faintest sound as it clicked shut, the women ascended the stairs to the upper rooms. Casey was at their fore, her muscles tense with excitement and anticipation - for thick in the air was the scent of her prey.

At the top of the stairs, Casey paused briefly, her nostrils dilating; then she turned in the direction where the scent lay more thicky, Jasmin and Miriam following behind her. Behind and below them, the downstairs murk fluctuated brighter suddenly; all three vampires startled, turning towards the foyer. But there was nothing there to see, and after a moment, they turned back to the task at hand. This mission was too important for distractions.

Another door opened, and within was a bed - within which rested their prey! His eyes were closed, and his chest moved in and out raggedly - "Some nightmare he must be suffering!" Casey speculated silently. "We will soon relieve him of it." She moved to one side of the bed, while Jasmin took the other and Miriam turned to guard the door. Casey had almost reached the bed when -

A voice came from the corner, sharp and cutting as a knife. "Halt. Identify yourself."

"What?" Casey asked, whirling. She had sensed no heat there - no blood - no presence - nor did she now! The corner was as cold as the grave - no living thing there stood! Another vampire? Well - Casey had not expected it - but still, she thought, fingering the stake at her side - she came prepared!*

"Identify yourself," the speaker repeated, her voice rigid with near-mechanical precision. With a shock of light, she appeared - a dim green light atop her palm half-blinding the night-adjusted vampires in the process. She was tall, though not exceptionally so; her hair was dark and hung to her shoulders, and her face was long. In the strange lighting, her features appeared to have a yellow cast to them, though she seemed Caucasian in race; no expression could be read upon her face, and no armaments could be seen upon her person. "What are you doing here?"

The boy's eyelids fluttered. Casey glanced at him, and then stepped forward, rage visible on her face. "What are you doing here, interloper? This is our territory - the realm of Exothia, the Dark One, Unchallenged among the Dark Kin of the Darkness! You are jeopardizing our mission here! Leave at once, or - suffer!" Beneath her rage was fear - for now that her eyes had adjusted, she saw that there was no external source for the light resting atop the woman's palm, but rather it came from within her very flesh - and what witchery could produce such an effect as that? She gripped her stake tightly.

"You wish the boy, then," the woman said, her voice level. "This is unfortunate - I had hoped to make some use of him, for my own purposes. But I see you intend violence - this is incorrect. Should not we, as persons of the members sex, act with good judgement - seek to cooperate, not compete, and in some manner share this resource?"

"Ménage à trois?" the boy suggested with a perfect accent. His eyes were still tightly shut.

Casey glared daggers at him. "You shut up!" she ordered. "You aren't even supposed to be awake!" Turning to the woman in the corner, Casey moderated her tone, making an attempt at a smile. "You're quite right, of course," she said agreeably. "Especially for those of our sex, co-operation is the natural choice. Here - let me start!"

She was quite startled when the stake in her hand, driven by her unnatural, undead strength, failed to penetrate more than an inch into the woman's chest.

Turning upwards to look at her intended victim, Casey asked, "Shouldn't you be dead now?" There was a puzzled look on her face.

"Why would I be?" the woman replied. "Or - wait - did you think I was human?" She studied at Casey's face. "No - not human - you thought I was a vampire!" For the first time since the conversation began, there was a hint of emotion in her voice - amusement.

Casey was not amused.

With a shrug, the woman pushed Casey away from her, ripping the stake from the small hole it had made. A thin drip of blood followed; it quickly subsided. "I remain reasonable," she noted. "Let us begin again. Here: they call me Hanna, in Massachusetts from which I hail. What is your name?"

But Casey's pride had been injured; and that is the one thing she could not abide. (And, too, those drops of blood staining Hanna's chest brought Casey's Dark Thirst to the fore.) Her fangs bared, she leapt upon Hanna; behind her, Miriam and Jasmin approached, hands shaped like claws. They would destroy this interloper!

But Hanna merely leaned back under Casey's attack, and then hurled her assailant into the floor, placing a foot squarely upon her sternum to keep her there. As Casey struggled to recover, arms clawing at Hanna's leg for purchase, Jasmin came in for the attack, attempting to knock Hanna off balance. But Hanna's fist came up with incredible speed, and even Jasmin's supernatural reflexes could not save her from losing half her fangs. As she fell back, wailing in pain and shock, a stake hurled past her, followed by Miriam, hoping to take advantage of the moment in which Hanna must dodge the thrown weapon. But Hanna made no move to evade, letting the stake scrape across her side, and charging Miriam flew across Hanna's shoulder to fall onto the floor with a sickening crack.

"Now," Hanna said, "I have severely injured one of you, and demonstrated that I can incapacitate the others at will. Are you prepared to be reasonable?" A cold breeze seemed to flow through the room.

Fear filled Casey's dark heart. This woman - or whatever she truly was - had defeated a triad of vampires in pitched battle, and done so without breaking a sweat. (Even her breathing was regular - as though she had not exerted herself in the slightest!) She could conjure light from her hand, and weapons could do no more than pierce her skin. Also, she was currently pinning Casey to the floor. With a terrible sigh, Casey conceded: "Yes. We can... talk."

The boy, his eyes now open, sat upright in bed. "Hey," he said, looking at Hanna. "Don't I know you?"

Hanna shook her head. "Perhaps you have seen me before - but you have no knowledge of my true nature, or my purpose here. In the interests of mutual co-operation, I will explain."

"I am Hanna. HT-002, second and finest product of the Dartmouth Cybernetics Labs. I was sent here by my masters, the High Priests of the Dart-Mouthed Gods that rest deep in the caverns beneath Dartmouth Town. In routine examination of DNA samples taken from all students, we discovered something rather - special - about this boy. Due to unfortunate bureaucratic error - for which heads have rolled," Hanna noted matter-of-factly, and Casey had a feeling she was using the phrase literally - "the boy had already made his way home for summer break before I was assigned to take him. Well - I found him, all the same. And now I will that of him I wish."

"You want to sex me?" the boy asked. "For my genes?"

Now it was Hanna's turn to look at him disparagingly. "I'm afraid not," she said, with no hint of regret in her voice. "Adolescent boys -only thinking about sex, sex, sex, sex, sex... but not. In fact, I don't even need anything below... say, your waist. These," this with a gesture of her head towards the vampires, "can have the rest." Hanna looked down to Casey, lifting her foot of the vampire's chest as she did so. "Is that acceptable?"

Casey had the feeling that she hadn't much choice in the matter. And - she thought excitedly - even with just this, the metaphorical scraps of the body - she'd bring back enough materials to Exothia for totems that would make them the most powerful Dark Tribe this side of the Rockies! No - this side of the Mississippi, even!

"All right," Casey said. "I'll agree to the split."

Jasmin, leaning against a wall and holding her injured mouth with her hand, nodded assent. Miriam didn't seem to be moving.

"Now," Hanna began, leaning over the bed (to where the boy lay, now desperately trying to squirm away, and not succeeding): "I'll begin the incisions -"

Her voice trailed off in a hiss of static as her head, quite remarkably, lifted away from her body. Wires tore and broke as the dark figure behind Hanna lifted up her severed head; then she hurled it into a corner, where it shattered into a pile of broken electronics. Hanna's body stiffened, becoming a rigid statue; the light in her hand continued to light the room with a dim green glow.

"Idiot," the fourth vampire said, her voice like a thousand tombstones all holding a eulogy at midnight. "You would give away such a treasure, so easily? Treachery our Dark Master sent me to guard against - but she did not anticipate simple cowardice."

"Forgive me, Emilia, O Dark One!" Casey wailed, strugging up from the floor. Behind her, Jasmin was franticallly abasing herself. "I am your lesser! Truly I could not match that which your great strength accomplished!"

Emilia stared at Casey coldly - and she knew that Emilia was considering putting an abrupt end to Casey's Dark Unlife. But she turned away, after a moment, and stepped towards the bed. (Hanna's rigid body she ignored with a careless arrogance.) "Now - for the boy..."

But her voice, too, trailed off - as Hanna's arm came up and punched a hole in Emilia's torso with one quick movement.

"Post-mortem twitches?" Casey suggested helpfully, taking a long step back from Hanna now that she was back on her feet.

Hanna rotated her arm back 180 degrees, sending Emilia flying through the air, and, also, a wall.

"Her brain must be elsewhere - not in her head at all!" Emilia said from the other room, rolling to her feet. The gaping hole in her torso no more than inconvenienced her. "The light on her hand - I should have realized! Well - I'll put a proper end to her this time! You two! Help distract her!"

Casey observed the room. She noted Hanna, covered in vampire-gore; Jasmin, still coddling her ruined incisors; Miriam, motionless and broken on the floor. Judiciously, she stayed exactly where she was.

"Bah!" Emilia said, stalking back into the room. "Treachery after all! Well - I'll deal with you later. First - this thing!"

Hanna's glowing hand unfurled towards Emilia, giving an unmistakable come-on gesture. Emilia looked at it, thinking.

Then, equally unmistakably, it flipped her the bird, and Emilia charged.

As the combatants crashed outside the room and, in the process, discovered the joys of exiting a building on the second floor, the remaining vampires and the boy looked at each-other. The latter looked at the vampires; he looked, longingly, at the door; he looked again at Casey's fangs, still quite sharp. He stayed put.

"Parents sleep heavily?" Casey asked, her voice sympathetic.

"Pretty much, yeah," the boy admitted.

They were quiet for another moment. Outside the room, fire painted the night sky red; it appeared that Dartmouth Cybernetics model HT-002 mounted a flamethrower.

"So... how was your day?" the boy asked.

Casey shook her head wearily.






*This paragraph brought - to you - by the Andre Norton Department - of - Hyphenation.