He chewed a fingernail, ran a tongue along his thin lips, and smiled at me. “Have you ever filleted a fish?”
“What?” God, this freak was creeping me out. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“No? It’s quite easy.” There was a flash of metal, and the vampire was suddenly holding a thin, bright blade. I jumped; he was so quick I hadn’t even seen his hand move. “The trick is to start skinning them as soon as you pull them out of the water, before they have a chance to die. You just slip the knife beneath the flesh and pull…” He demonstrated with the blade, making a long, slow cut in the air, “and the skin peels right off.” He looked me in the eye, and his grin stretched wider, showing fangs. “That’s what I did to Kanin’s last little fish. He screamed, oh, did he scream. It was glorious.” He waggled the knife at me. “I wonder if you will be so obliging?”
My arms shook, making the sword tremble, and I squeezed the hilt to stop them. I could barely move, frozen with a terror unlike any I’d known before. An image came to mind before I could stop it: a body hanging from the ceiling, raw muscles exposed to the air as it writhed and screamed in agony. I slammed that thought away before I was sick.
“Why…why do you hate him so much?” I asked, mostly to keep him talking, to buy myself some time. My voice wavered, making me furious with myself. Dammit, I could not show fear in front of this psycho. I bit my cheek, tasting blood, and that was enough to rouse the demon inside. My next words were stronger. “Why do you want to kill him?”
“I don’t want to kill him,” the vampire explained, sounding surprised. “That would be too good for Kanin. Surely he’s told you. What he is? What he’s done? No?” He chuckled, shaking his bald head. “Always keeping your spawn in the dark, hmm, old friend? They don’t even know why they must suffer for you.” He moved toward me, and I jerked backward, muscles tightening, but the vampire only crossed the room, running his fingers down one of the metal doors. He was no longer smiling, his face as empty as a blank sheet, making him a thousand times more terrible.
“I remember,” he mused, his voice a cold whisper in the darkness. “I can’t ever get it out of my head. The screams. The blood on the walls. Watching everyone around me turn into those things.” He shivered, curling his lips back, and suddenly his resemblance to the creatures in the ruins was unmistakable. “They stuck me with the same needles, pumped the same sickness into me. But I never turned. I’ve always wondered about that. Why I never turned.”
My eyes flickered to the exit, judging the distance between me and the heavy metal door. Not enough time. Psycho vamp was probably just as fast as Kanin, which meant he was much faster than me. I’d have to buy myself more time, a few seconds at least.
Keeping one hand on the sword, I slowly reached down, into my jeans, and closed my fingers around the familiar handle of my knife. Pulling it out slowly, flicking open the tiny blade, I cupped it in my palm, hiding it from view.
“But I know now.” Psycho vamp turned, and that awful grin was back on his face. “I know why I was spared. To punish the one responsible for our pain. Every scream, every drop of blood, every strip of flesh and shattered bone, I will revisit upon him tenfold. He will know the pain, and fear and despair of every life within these walls. I will scour the earth of his blood, I will raze his lineage from existence. And only when his screams and the screams of his offspring replace the ones in my mind, when I can no longer see their faces and hear their cries of anguish, only then will I grant him leave of this world.”
“You’re a freaking psychopath,” I said, but he only chuckled.
“I don’t expect you to understand, little bird.” He turned toward me fully, fingering his blade and smiling. “I expect you only to sing. Sing for me, sing for Kanin, and make it a glorious song.”
He lunged at me, coming in fast and catching me off guard, even though I was expecting it. I swung the katana at him one-handed, aiming for his neck, but he slithered aside, stepped within my guard and slammed me into the wall. My head struck the glass, and I felt something crack beneath me, either my head or the glass itself. Before I could react, a cold, dead hand clamped around my sword arm, threatening to snap it, and the point of a blade pierced my jaw.
“Now, little bird,” psycho vamp whispered, pressing his lean body against mine. I tried throwing him off, but it was like steel cables, pinning me to the wall. “Sing for me.”