The Selkie Ch. 03

The bitch shot me.

The Doppelgänger pulled me back into the car and drove me to safety where I could feed and heal.

I battled conflicting venal regret and perplexing gladness at having left the mesmeric vampire gut-shot -- but alive -- on the side of the road.

Never leaving a predator alive behind you is a pretty good universal precept of successful survival, yet another creature knowing what I was and that I existed for the first time in centuries meant a lot to me.

Not as much as my freedom means to me.

How quickly the vampire would heal was a mystery to me, as I'd never left one injured instead of dead before. With literal holes blown through her (I thought of the beautiful, knowledgeable, and powerful vampire as a "she" now), I guessed at least a few days. I took no chances though.

I rode for all I was worth, on into the night across the cold desert, through Salt Lake City, and across the accursed expanse of ground called Wyoming, only stopping for gas every few hundred miles as my little Ninja got thirsty. All the while I blared the radio, drowning my thoughts as best I could.

On my third stop for gas -- still west of Cheyenne -- somehow my luck got still worse.

I stepped inside the station, told the unkempt attendant to put fifty on the far pump, filled the tank, and went back in for my change and snacks for the road. I only removed my helmet after looking around to be sure that there were no security cameras on-site.

After firmly establishing myself as a full customer as is polite, I asked the awkward question of the roadside keep, made no less awkward over the years of asking it.

"Do you have a restroom that I can use?"

He handed me the key attached to a chunk of two-by-four. Everything about the man rubbed me wrong, not the least the pervy look he gave me as I accepted the bathroom key from him.

He wore the traditional smock of his trade, along with dirty jeans, a gold watch on his right wrist, a platinum class ring on his right pinky, a real diamond earring in each ear, and an unpolished silver chain around his neck with a platinum grinning skull medallion. None of his jewelry matched each other or his class. I got an eerie feeling from the cretinous man with his greasy hair, scraggly beard, and leery smile.

I should have refused the key, got back on the Ninja, and found some bushes up the road. Hindsight may be 20/20, but even intuition is at least 20/70 and shouldn't be ignored without good reason.

My good reason? I had to pee and I prefer toilets. I have become indefensibly soft.

As I opened the bathroom door around the backside of the dark station, a vampire locked its steel arms around me from behind, holding my arms to my sides and shuffling me into the unlit room.

Its attack surprised me, but its methods didn't. Vampires attack from behind in the same manner worldwide, instinctively. A planned response for those moments is the key to not being taken, as the only advantage I ever have over the bastard behind me is that I know its capabilities while it has no idea what I carry.

I pulled the string inside my right sleeve and loosed the leaf-bladed knife stashed there. With as much power as I could generate from just my forearm, I jammed the blade into the upper portion of its leg.

It roared in unexpected pain and umbrageous anger, and shoved me forward and away from itself further into the dank little bathroom as it rubbed and examined its wounded leg.

The few seconds it took gave me the time I needed to pull my Desert Eagle .50 and blow the upper portion of its head off. It crumpled to the dirty tile floor.

Believe it or not, my night got still less pleasant from there. The vampire was the immediate danger, but -- when you can't die -- you have to play the long game. I had to be sure that nothing would tie me to any crime scene that developed.

The filthy bathroom had a drain in the center of the floor and moldy tiled walls, but there were several empty bleach bottles under the browned and broken sink.

I'm sure things hadn't worked out as well for the other intended victims who'd entered the room as they had worked out for me. And equally sure that I wasn't the first person to consider the disgusting bathroom as a possible crime scene.

Vampire corpses don't dissolve, poof, or evaporate, but they do decompose with extreme rapidity. The fool on the tile before me looked like a year old corpse, which would make a more interesting case for police than I liked to leave open.

I cleaned my knife and returned it to my sleeve. The vampire had a pager on its belt with a message from only minutes earlier. That lowlife clerk must have alerted it to a potential victim.

Honestly, a pager? Drug dealers and classless bloodsuckers must be the last notable markets for the defunct technology.

I pocketed it, not wanting to raise the question of why the long dead corpse received a recent page. Better not to leave any more conflicting evidence that the situation absolutely required.

Then I ransacked the vampire's corpse for other valuables or keys, but found only two prescription pill bottles. One was full of ambien. The other contained about a gross of human teeth of various ages. I left both bottles in the pocket of its ratty lamb's wool jean jacket.

There was no vehicle outside to commandeer as a hearse, so moving the bodies wasn't really feasible. Even if I could, I didn't have time to spare. I needed to reach the Atlantic. My intuition on that count would not be ignored. Meeting another vampire did nothing to dissuade me and only emphasized my perception of danger.

I thought over my next course of action while I used the restroom (I still had to pee, after all) and wished I could wash my hands.

The gun would be tied to the crime scene and couldn't be kept. The extremely bizarre corpse couldn't be guaranteed to "disappear" effectively either, even if I could know which of the despicable partners disposed of the leftovers routinely. That damned attendant had seen my face and would certainly blame me for the vampire's body and who knows how many others if he either told the cops or botched the clean up.

He really was the lowest form of dirtbag anyway, working with a sadistic murderer in order to rob the corpses of random victims. I'd get some satisfaction from removing him from the society of man.

I walked back inside with my gun still drawn, not sure if the greasy attendant had a weapon with him.

"Hands up, Shithead!" I ordered and gestured with the Desert Eagle .50 for emphasis.

He complied, clearly surprised to see me still alive and kicking. I stepped up to him and -- without another word -- placed the muzzle to his left temple and blew his brains out.

I wrapped his corpse's left hand around the illegal weapon, checked fruitlessly for a new weapon, stole some travel wipes, and rode away on my little Ninja.

There would be holes in the narrative for a detective looking for them. No residue on the clerk's hand, a hole in the blood spatter where I'd blocked it, no scientific consistency to the way the vampire's parts and particles dispersed, and the complete lack of motive or logic in the clerk bringing a year old John Doe to work, shooting him there, and offing himself behind the counter afterward.

A seasoned homicide detective might dig into the whys, although not likely to a correct supernatural conclusion. But the county sheriff that would probably take the case would hopefully label the human a freak and close the case as quickly and cleanly as possible as a demented murder/suicide.

Ideally, I'd be in the Atlantic by then, either way.

Aud was turning out to be quite a talented fighter. My brave little selkie killed a male vampire and a witness, disposing of a natural foes like an antagonist in an Amazonomachy scene. Lucky thing for Aud, because the Doppelgänger tracked her still, but wouldn't risk death at the hands of a gangrel to step in to protect a werebeast. Nonetheless, I'd rejoin the chase in a day or less when I'd revived, ready to bring my little selkie to heel.

My dear Penthesilea, your swiftness will not save you and I won't show you my heel again.

Being found by a second vampire in as many weeks alarmed me and having to murder a man -- even such a poor specimen of humanity -- disconcerted me. I decided to head as directly and safely as possible to the ocean, forsaking freedom of movement for the refuge of the herd.

I left the Ninja in a random parking lot and tossed the bloody gloves, jacket, pants, and helmet behind a dumpster in an adjacent alley, then walked a few blocks north to a Greyhound Station, where I dropped the pager in a trashbin and bought a ticket for Houston.

The feeling that someone was following me dogged my steps. Only later did I realize that it was the Doppelgänger. Only later did I learn that Doppelgängers existed, rare though they are.

After every station transfer during the bus trip, a different person gave me the proverbial willies. First a portly man in a jogging suit, then an elderly woman in an old dress, then a teenage girl in cheap jeans and cheaper jewelry, then a frat boy, then a badly aging hippie fellow, and finally an otherwise respectable looking businessman in a decent suit.

None of them appeared to pay inordinate attention to me, or any attention at all except for when I'd stand up for one reason or another. Moreover, most of them were on multiple legs of the trip. The leg they creeped me out on, however, was always their last, which in turn allayed my concerns somewhat, because I didn't grasp why it shouldn't.

Something about each of them seemed wrong, as though they didn't properly fit or belong to themselves. But that was so vague a notion and I knew myself to be so keyed up and paranoid that I chose to ignore the irrational feeling altogether.

The Doppelgänger was killing a passenger at each rest stop and assuming their identity to continue tracking me. That's what Doppelgängers are, mimics, facedancers, morphs. They can assimilate another person's DNA for short periods of time and become an exact physical copy.

Still, in my ignorance, the 28 hour trip otherwise passed without incident. I got a few strange looks as I sewed my knives into my shorts' seams, but no comments. Easily enough, the miles were conquered and I found myself in Houston with a full day before I could shift to my seal form.

I bought a new waterproof fanny pack and stretchy bands, then rode the transit lines around until I found a row of hotels along the bay. The third one I checked accepted cash, so I took a 10th floor room. Once I'd showered the road and any lingering bits of clerk brain off, I ordered a plate of chicken alfredo, a bottle of sangiovese, a pack of clove cigarettes and lighter, and a breakfast platter for the morning. I paid, left the rest of my stolen money on the TV as a tip for the presumably overworked maid, and had a nice dinner on the very public balcony. It overlooked a busy street, but had a gorgeous view of the bay.

Looking out over the container ships pulling in and out of port, I thought of finding a woman for the night. As surely as camp followers can be found near armies, hookers can be found near sailors. Yet, if there'd been any lesson in the last few days, it was the value of circumspection and self-denial.

Were we still in the age of sail, I'd have offered my services aboard an outgoing vessel so as to leave immediately, but I hadn't the credentials needed to be hired on a respectable modern ship . I didn't even have the identification required to be a passenger and -- with the run of luck I was having -- I wouldn't risk stowing away.

Besides, with the advent of GPS and MVs, maritime operations are more accurately ship-driving than sailing nowadays. Technology has bled most of the fun and adventure from seafaring.

Seafaring in the Baltics and northern Atlantic had become my profession almost exclusively from the 13th to 18th centuries, from the mouth of the Neva River in the east to Vinland in the west and as far north as Svalbard but not generally not further south than Sutton. I worked mostly on trading vessels, but also tried my hand at fishing and whaling. Wholly irrationally, I never had the stomach for seal hunting.

A weather eye and good balance got me started on some dangerous undertakings on the open sea. Given my years underway and the fact that I survived any foolish decisions that led to shipwrecks, I became the most experienced navigator in the Northern Seas within a few generations. Once proven to each new doubter, my navigational expertise coupled with my linguistic and accounting skills made me extremely valuable for anyone conducting ocean-based commerce and most captains heartily welcomed my addition to their crews.

While I dressed in male outfits, I in no way hid my gender, which wasn't really an issue for most Nordic captains. My skillset -- always explained away as being taught to me by a deceased male relative -- made me useful to the point of being nearly indispensable, while my gender prevented my becoming a rival. (My being on a crew was unusual, but a female captain was nearly unheard of.)

If anything "untoward" happened, I'd swim for it. Usually, I'd eventually fall in with a captain I liked again and have twenty or so years of port visits and adventure afloat with a familial crew. He'd retire rich and I'd find a new situation.

And so things advanced. Longboats became skarrs, Skarrs became schooners. Schooners became frigates.

One winter night in 1747, I'd drank a half dozen rounds with my shipmates a tavern in Ostend, flush from having just sold off our cargo of whale oil at a price I'd negotiated particularly well in the bitterly contested free port. I ate a hearty dish of cabbage and sausage and downed more ale than maybe I should've done, but we were celebrating. Several of the guys had taken the carousing upstairs with a few of the many women available to foreign sailors in seaports.

My aging captain and most of the senior men were still at the bar with me when an arm draped over my shoulder. The arm was clothed in the lighter cottons of more southern sailors, rather than whaleskins like ours.

My immediate reaction was to reach for my belt knife, an action mirrored by my shipmates. There was nothing chivalrous about their response. Numbers mattered in such situations and we hung together.

A slender hand with an iron grip clasped my wrist before it got near my waist, but the female voice in my ear stayed my hand far more effectively.

"Calm, snow woman. I want you upstairs. No fight." She spoke a western germanic dialect with a strong cantonese accent. Her voice sounded the way molten steel smells right after cordium is added.

My fellow sailors laughed and returned to their steins.

"I appreciate the offer, but I'm not a whore." I answered in perfect cantonese as I gave her a once over. She was tall, taller than me by a few inches and broader too. Clearly a Spaniard by her coloring, her fine featured and symmetrical face was more handsome than beautiful. Her bearing was most striking, an aggressive pride permeated her entire being, from the fastidiously polished shiny black leather of her boots to the carefully combed shiny black hair on her head.

"That is very convenient, my pale lady of northern snows," Her eloquence in her native language was much more impressive and that molten voice in my ear while her grip still held my wrist had my knees weak. "Because I am not offering to pay you. But I promise you will thoroughly enjoy the night."

I considered, but didn't see a downside. The guys wouldn't care, the ship wouldn't leave until the afternoon tide the next day, and she clearly attracted me.

I nodded and followed her upstairs. With a confident stride, she led me to an empty room by the grip on my wrist that she'd yet to release.

She immediately removed my layers of clothing, taking me down to my smalls and out of them with an impatience that bespoke her eagerness. Interestingly enough, she made no effort to undress herself (aside from removing her baldric of course) and swatted my hands away when I tried. Given her ardor and general projection of entitled authority, I didn't press the issue.

She laid me bodily on the rough mattress, little scratches peppering my skin where the sea air was never allowed to toughen it. Her hands found my shoulders and one stayed to keep me in place with the strength of one powerful arm while the other hand explored my willing body as though she owned it.

Again, I brooked no argument and only moaned in approval as she played my body with calloused, yet talented fingers.

Her mouth found mine, tongue plunging inside. She tasted of strong rum and tobacco.

My senses were overtaken as her teeth grazed my lips and her hand abandoned my compliant shoulder to join its fellow in squeezing and stroking wherever they found my flesh. I made an honest attempt to tongue wrestle with her, but her tongue trounced mine and I capitulated into a passive role as she all but ravished me.

Keep in mind that I'm not complaining. Her ardor and dominion were as welcome as her skill and power. She engulfed my senses and the fast sex overwhelmed me into glad compliance.

Her rapacious hand cupped my cunny between spread legs and two fingers drove into me with no further prelude. The ferocious Spaniard fucked me crazy, biting my neck and shoulders while I hung on for dear life.

With desperate hands, I gripped her shoulders through her white shirt. Her face was set in determination in the flickering lamplight. The pace couldn't accelerate any further, but nor did it abate for a moment as I raced toward orgasm in exactly the manner she willed me to reach it.

I came with the power of an unfettered waterfall. She bit down hard on my breast, just above my nipple. I screamed out my ecstasy.

Undeterred from her night of carnal fun by the natural stopping point for me, she forcefully worked her way down my naked and sated body. I tried to pet her glossy black hair, but she set my hand back at my side firmly without stopping the nips and kisses raining on my abdomen.

Moaning, I accepted my position and let her act as she would unimpeded by my touch. Her lips reached my mons and her hands planted atop my trembling thighs.

She dove into me, her tongue no less domineering in plunging into my sex than it had been in kissing my mouth earlier. I panted, my pleasured body trying to adapt to her frenetic pace, although failing happily and glorying in my defeat.

One of her forceful hands left my thigh to be replaced by an elbow that pressed down still harder. A more aggressive pin wasn't her goal however, which I learned as the ball of her calloused thumb rubbed my poor clit.

I did thrash then, or my upper body and feet did anyway. My pelvis remained relatively still as was her intent for me.

Not really given a choice, I came violently again on her rigid thrusting tongue.

She stood and gazed down at me predatorily. My naked body was covered in sweat and not a little of her saliva, my blond hair mussed and damp. I thought between pants that she might attack me again. I couldn't decide if I wanted it or not.

Instead she stepped away and took a long hit from her bottle of thick rum. Then she stepped back and tipped the bottle over my lips. I coughed and sputtered, precious little of the dark liquid actually getting consumed. She just laughed heartily and poured more down my throat before setting down the bottle and sitting next to me.

Much more tenderly, she brushed the hair from my face and stroked my cheek and neck. Her fingertips touched lightly over the many places on my skin that she'd marked with her teeth.

I turned my cheek into her hand, nuzzling affectionately. She chuckled, pleased.