The fall was high and dangerous, but Santino zeroed in on the ground below and jumped anyway. His senses were intensified; the air swirled around him as he saw the ground coming closer and closer. The impact was groundbreaking. The sidewalk broke up around his feet and cracked, and he could feel his heels sink into the dirt below the cement. The blood in his legs thinned out as the velocity of the impact rippled through his body. Still he was unhurt, and rose from the ground silently.
Screams and yells of panic met his ears as his eyes adjusted to the change of scenery. The crowd tried to part around him, but Santino didn’t want space. He wanted them, to eat and to drink. He wanted to stop this urge he had; however, the need to satisfy his basic instincts had to come first, otherwise he would only become more irrational.
Santino sensed a man coming near him in an attempt to assist him. Wrong move. Santino slashed his sharp nails at the man’s head and connected with his neck. Soft and tender, it was no match to Santino’s newfound power. He ripped the man’s head clean from his shoulders. The corpse dropped to the ground. Santino heard the dead man’s knees hit first, and then the rest of the carcass followed.
The blood, the gore, the flesh, and the stuff in between clung to Santino’s fingers and arm. Something urged him to eat it. He bit into the man’s face, and all around him chaos erupted: women screamed, men ran, glass shattered, and feet beat the ground. Santino couldn’t believe the taste. This was his food now; the blood was his water. He didn’t want to think that he had become some type of animal that ate human flesh raw, alive, still beating. Still he took another bite from the forehead. His teeth sliced into the skin like it was made of butter, but the bones was a bit thicker. Santino realized his many rows of sharp teeth had come in handy. With a little force, the man’s forehead broke open. Santino crunched the bone between his teeth, and the brains oozed into his mouth.
A blow struck his head and sent him forward. Santino turned to face his assailant and dropped the head on the ground. It rolled and cracked open like a coconut, its contents spilled and wasted. Santino roared, and blood and brains sprayed from his mouth onto the men in front of him. There were more of them than there was of him, but Santino wasn’t afraid. His thoughts were clear. If these men wanted to be heroes, then they could die heroes—after he had his fill of food, of course.
Four men tried to jump him from all sides. Santino had to admit they were brave, unafraid, and determined to take him down. Nonetheless, he swiped at the first man, who hit him with a metal pole, and knocked him unconscious. Santino cracked the next man’s back in half, and felt a third man jump on his back while he punched the fourth man in the nose and watched it split in half. His fist rammed twice, until there was no nose at all.
Santino flung the man from his back into a parked car. He lay lifeless. As Santino walked over to claim his prize, he stopped. He heard a familiar gasping sound. Too familiar, like the exact sound he had made when he couldn’t breathe in Kurma’s room. Like that tight feeling that you get when your throat closes up and you have to wheeze every breath in. Santino turned and saw the man with the pipe crawling on all fours, gasping for breath, his eyes bugged out.
Sirens blared, and the streets emptied. Never had Santino ever seen them so barren, even on Sundays. He knew the police were coming to try to put him down. Would they call in the RAID team, or would they have amateur officers—rookies who would be dumb enough to put their lives on the line?
Santino had to think quickly. He didn’t want to be captured, didn’t want to be thrown in jail for murdering innocent bystanders, and didn’t even want to think about the consequences of killing more people. If he stayed, there was a high probability that he would take down as many as he could; Santino had been too brave and too proud before becoming this thing, and now it was ten times worse. However, he wasn’t stupid. If he didn’t leave, the police would shoot him on sight just for looking the way he did, covered in dirt and blood and flesh.
The guy by the car moved an inch, moaned and groaned, and tried to catch his breath. There it was again: the gasping sound. The two guys Santino hadn’t killed were acting as he had when he’d first transformed. Maybe whatever was in him was highly contagious—and dangerous.
Quickly he hauled the man from the car and pulled the first guy up from the ground, and dragged both to a nearby apartment building. Inside, people ran for cover. He screamed and threw whatever was around until they got the message: stay hidden. He was hungry, but first he needed to see if these men were going to change as he had.
The foyer was empty but too open, and there were security cameras. Santino pushed the elevator button and tried to duck out of sight. He could hear the police; they had reached the apartments. The hysterical witnesses outside probably had tipped them off. Santino could hear the cops taking the safety clips off their weapons and loading their shotguns. He was amazed by his hearing, and by how many cops there were—at least twenty-five standing outside, afraid to come in. Maybe, he thought, he should roar to intimidate them a little more.
But then the elevator chimed, and Santino hurriedly dragged the barely breathing men in.
“Top floor, buddies,” he said. His voice was very creepy to him. Was it the blood that made it change like that? Santino pressed the button for the twenty-fourth floor and waited until he reached the twenty-first to press the emergency button.
Santino noticed the men’s fingers had changed colors as his hand had, so he knew their transformation was almost complete. Minions, he thought. He would have cronies, underlings, followers. Or would they be more like babies, smaller extensions of him? Santino waited for the men to grow their teeth—in his opinion the worst part of the whole ordeal.
When it began, the two men wailed as if awoken from a fitful dream. Like a father to a son, Santino instructed the first guy to try to get up. Santino helped him unfold his broken body and assisted him to his feet. The man gasped for air, uncurled his fist, and examined his new claw-like nails.
“What am I?” asked the man. Before, he’d had cream-colored skin and thick, dark eyebrows that enhanced his inky-green eyes. His features had grown dark in his transformation, and everything, including his lips, was now a shade of dark purple.
“You are me,” responded Santino. He tried to pry open the man’s mouth, to get a better look at his teeth, but was met with a nasty bite.
“Whoa. I’m not going to hurt you,” said Santino. “Open your mouth and let me see your teeth.”
“Why do you want to see?” asked the man hesitantly. “I feel funny. My throat hurts, my gums hurts, my back hurts… I want to be left alone.” He eyed Santino. “What’s your name? Where am I?”
“Not so fast. I’ll tell you everything I know, which isn’t much, but only after the other guy finishes. I don’t feel like repeating myself.”
“My name is Kosner, and I’m a plainclothes police officer. If you let me go, I promise, I won’t tell anybody what happened or whatever it is you’re doing. I swear it. Just let me go. I have kids, man.”
“Enough, dude. You’re older than me, and you’re acting like a little girl,” Santino yelled. He wanted this guy just to shut up and listen. It was as if he hadn’t heard a word Santino had said. “How do you think your daddy feels about you sniveling and begging in front of me right now?”
“My dad’s dead, man,” Kosner said in a hurt tone. He quieted down, though, and slid to the floor next to the other man, who was trembling in the corner.
Santino wanted the other guy to hurry up. The police had to be outside still, or even worse taking the stairs up and preparing an ambush. If he had to, Santino would use his new minions to block the bullets. Self-preservation ran strong in his blood, or it could have been this new animal he was, wanting him to stay alive. Either way he wasn’t going to take any chances. It was better to have more of him than one of him. What if they didn’t have his strength, and could only eat human flesh?
Then they would be worthless—just two more mouths to feed.
Quietly the last man came out of his deep coma and unwound his body from the tight ball it had been in. Santino remembered the man with the pipe well. He was, after all, the reason why Santino had been so riled up in the first place while he was outside. The man had a stocky build and big arms with tattoo sleeves. He rolled on all fours and braced himself against the elevator’s walls. Slowly he stood up and cracked his neck, then his back, then stretched his arms real smooth, as if nothing had happened.
Santino swelled with pride. Maybe this guy wouldn’t be such a wimp as the other guy. “Kosner, take notes,” he said jokingly, and then turned back to man number two. “You okay, man? What’s your name?”
The guy’s eyes were almond shaped and pitch black, rimmed with a deep blue color. His oversized, sharp teeth hung over his dark, thin lips. The tips of his nose, his earlobes, even his chin were a dark-blue color. His hair had fallen out of his head, and his skull gleamed in the dim light.
“Whatever just happened, I wanna do it again,” he proclaimed.
Santino chuckled. It looked like he had an adrenaline junkie on his hands.
“My name’s Vincin, but everyone calls me VIN,” the man said.
“Well, VIN, right now—” Santino stopped himself. “Kosner, can you please stand up? It’s time to get serious.”
VIN looked to Kosner as if just seeing him.
“I was a regular eighteen-year-old male who, up until recently, lived a regular life,” Santino went on. “I played sports, I got girls.”
Kosner cut him off. “Can you get to the part that explains why I feel as if my head has split open and why I have this insane need for water?”
“Well, it’s not water you need. Anyway, I have good news and bad news.”
“Good news first,” said VIN.
Santino was blown away. This guy wasn’t even fazed that he clearly was another species now, and another man standing in front of him looked just the same. He wasn’t losing his cool about it at all, as if it were completely normal.
“Good news: there are police somewhere in this building. Bad news: we have to stop, kill, harm, or eat them in order to escape with our lives.” Santino smirked.
Kosner said, “Wait. So what’s the good news part? I think I missed it.”
“We’re monsters, dude. Look at us!” VIN replied. “I look sick, you look sick, we all look sick. Whoever is on that side of the door won’t understand that. Now, eating them, I’m not sure, but I’ll be damned if I’m the one left behind to answer for whatever this guy did to piss off the cops.”
Santino couldn’t have agreed more. Get out of trouble now, ask questions later. He released the emergency hold, and the elevator sped toward the top floor.
“Aren’t you going to tell us what you did to get the cops after you?” asked Kosner.
“I killed a man,” replied Santino.
The elevator reached the top floor and paused before opening its doors. Santino could hear a commotion on the other side. Feet moved about, and he knew there would be a trap.
VIN looked disgusted, and Kosner turned even greener. The doors opened, and a chorus of voices yelled out:
“Freeze!”
“It’s a vampire!”
“Come out with your hands high!”
“It’s a monster. Look at the blood!”
“On the ground!”
“No, it’s a Phantom!”
Santino bared his teeth and leapt into the carpeted hallway. Vampires, ghost, phantoms, whatever they called him, pretty soon it would mean nothing. Now, the blood… Well, that meant everything to Santino.
7.
Fae and the Latin Wonders