hollow, baby

The street was quiet enough that Alix winced at the crunch of gravel under her boots. It was that time of night when most folks were slipping behind closed doors. Kids being told to clear their homework off the table and set it for dinner, the young and professional kicking shoes off inside the door, wondering if chips and dip after a long day would count as a real adult dinner. All would be glad they’d gotten home in time to avoid the rain that threatened in the sky that had yellowed before growing dark with scudding clouds.

Closing the truck door quietly, Alix shivered. The winter cold had eased in the last couple of weeks, taking the bite out of the air, but Spring did nothing for the electrical charge in the atmosphere. Invisible pressure growing against her skin as unease bloomed in her gut. Her fingers found the holster at her hip, the gun, unclipped, that she’d grabbed on the way out the door after Christian’s phone call.

She’d been in the developing room. Red lights glowing dimly around her, the chemical stench of developer fluid burning at her sinuses. Her phone was face down on the counter, even the small light the screen could throw out too much for her to risk on the negatives. Since the laces that had held her life together the last couple of years had started to fray she’d had the ringer turned on, checked her phone every few minutes in that anxious way she never would’ve done before. A frown had cut deep when it started to vibrate, a sigh hissing out as she’d snatched it up to step outside. The minute she’d answered it Alix had felt the momentary bite of frustration bleed out of her immediately, like her throat had been cut.

His voice had cracked on her name. Christian had been broken before, something in him cracked through the night he’d come to her having tried and failed to kill the professor’s girlfriend, his pregnant girlfriend. She’d tried to ease those band aids in place, as he’d done weeks later when she’d been the one fractured, unsteady. Stuttered words tripping from both of them until deft hands had temporarily sealed the damage. ”Christian… what’s happened?” Not on the phone. A jab of concern to her chest, like the lightning that flickered threateningly in the distance now.

Side gate. The backyard. Sneaking into his home again. Was it to avoid his wife? To try and keep this nightmarish second life from bleeding into a happy marriage. To keep her from ending up the interloper in the middle of it again.

Alix pressed her lips together, starting away from the car. She’d already ended up there twice, the kiss on Halloween making it obvious that she should’ve been drawing back. Christian had already stumbled far too deeply into something he never should have been near in the first place. The wise thing would have been to tell him she couldn’t come but the croak in his voice, that need, had driven out of the warehouse and across town to the little white picket fence faster than the sheriff would’ve appreciated.

All was quiet as she crept towards the gate, her fingers gripping the butt of the gun lightly. No crunching beneath the carefully placed balls of her feet anymore, not even the tinny crackle of a TV on that charged air. On the outside of the gate Alix paused, her other hand settling on the latch, the hair at the nape of her neck rising like the intensity of that charged had shot up and the sky would crack open any moment. It didn’t, the quiet exhalation of breath drowned only by the thin drizzle coming down.

A narrow slot of yard revealed as she eased it open, keeping her body behind the shield of the fence until she could see him. Alix’s throat went instantly dry. The night was dark but thanks to the Docs’ little gift the entirely tableau was obvious. The spade braced in Christian’s bloody hands, bodies at his feet, a sheet or something like it bound around one of them.

God.

It shouldn’t have been unusual in this town, she’d likely have been found that way a half dozen times over if she hadn’t been more careful. Christian hadn’t grown up in this world, didn’t have the senses that twitched at the merest sound. What had happened to his wife had dragged him into this but now it wasn’t just out there in the woods, it was another stain on the seemingly perfect ground his marriage was built on. ”What happened?” A simple question and yet it still stuck in her throat as she met those tears filled eyes. Once upon a time he’d fallen into her that way, something tightening in her chest as he’d shattered in her arms.

She should’ve been searching for the remaining threat, eyes twitching around the yard but they were on him. Alix’s fingers peeled off of her weapon, went to grip a muddy arm, but he was already retreating. ”Sofia … what do you mean she …” Wide green eyes watched as he peeled back the comforter.

Bile flooded the back of her throat. A sudden rush of understanding. A pretty profile beneath the cover of a cat woman mask, a bride, stunning in her dress, staring at her husband was obvious adoration on her wedding day. Photos of a half dozen occasions at least that she’d studied the morning she’d woken in their guest room feeling awkward and fragile. Grey as grave dirt now. Cold. Still. Not just dead for the first time.

Alix sank down beside him in the dirt, her hand reaching out to cover his hand. She pulled the comforter back over the woman’s face like a shroud. Like she could block out the nightmare that had reared up from nowhere. Keeping her hand over his, in case he fought the move, Alix eased herself around to face him, eyes fixed on his profile. ”The attack at the hospital? When she almost died. She … did. Were they …” She lifted her chin towards the other bodies, handled with less care than his wife. ”What happened tonight, Christian?” It was so obvious it made her want to choke on the questions. A man who’d rededicated his life to stopping those things from hurting anybody else, harbouring a monster in his own home, in his heart.

Tagged: CHRISTIAN CALLAWAY * Word Count: 1081

Looking them in the face afterwards had always been the hardest part. Her father had reminded her every time he saw her flinch from it that the monster still hid beneath that human looking face. They kept that shell of humanity on purpose, to lure you in, to stop you from realising the danger until it was too late, to punch you in the gut afterwards so that the next time you saw something like this coming you might stop just long enough for it to get the upper hand. Alix had kept her mouth shut then, lips pinched to stop the doubts from spilling out and festering at her feet when her dad cast them down.

She did the same now, looking down at the face of the woman she’d been confused for just a few months ago. It was a face Christian had loved, one he’d not seen the monster in until it had been right there in his own home. A nightmare that would be stamped over the near perfect life there had been before. Alix curled her fingers in around his as that grave pallor was covered again, hidden from sight so that you could almost believe that Sofia really had just been human. The taint would eventually steep through every memory of their lives, like it would the comforter that would serve as the woman’s grave shroud but for now …

He had killed his wife, the woman he still loved beneath the crushing weight of the truth. For years Sofia had held the mask of humanity in place. Out of a desire to keep an alibi in place? In a desperate hope to hold what she had been turned into at bay? Out of love for her husband? They were all questions neither one of them had a hope of answering now. The monster Sofia had become was beyond talking.

Alix kept her gaze on him, on those big dark eyes and shock paled skin, her fingers clutching back as Christian had tightened his grip on her hand. If Sofia had ever had any control it had broken tonight, here, bathing that perfect house in blood and the stink of death. ”Control is never easy for them but … there are those among them who can never find it. Rippers. They can regret it all they want later but just one taste of blood is enough.” Sofia had obviously had enough sense to try and talk her way out of it for a time at least. Alix’s lower lip wanted to quiver in empathy as his grief washed through her. She met Christian’s eye, nodding mutely. In the face of all of that he had done what was needed, even if it had shattered everything that had been, raking invisible claws through a life he had been trying to mend by killing other nightmares in this town. ”You did what you had to for her and she knew it. Continuing on like that would’ve taken everything she was.” Everything they had been. Now that life would be buried here in ground they’d once planned to have their happy family life bloom on.

The rain continued to fall, a somehow suitable mood for a night that was full of darkness. It did nothing to muffle the apologies that slipped out of him and had her easing in closer to his side, shaking her head as she closed her other hand around their joined ones. ”You don’t need to apologise. You didn’t drag me into this. I forced my way in and I’m not gonna leave now.” The trust that radiated from him wrapped around her throat though. Lies. Alix wanted to let her own spill but this was not the time. His life had already crumbled under one set and she wouldn’t disturb the one solid spot he had left.

Rubbing at his hand between both of hers, Alix tried to impart some warmth to the cold flesh. The bedrock was still crumbling away a bit at a time, leaving footing so slippery he could tumble. ”We can’t know, not sure, OK?” Alix lifted her hand away, curling it around the back of his neck the way she’d done when he’d come to the warehouse the first time, the cracks running through him then just on the surface, not like now. ”You did the right thing then, you wanted to protect her and stop anybody else from losing anybody that way. Maybe she knew. Maybe she was holding on to what might’ve been, not ready to give it up, or you. She loved you Christian.” Maybe there wasn’t an ounce of truth to her words but Alix wasn’t ready to believe that the woman who’d loved him had disappeared so completely with her turning.

Finally, her own lips numb, Alix glanced aside at the other bodies, at Sofia. She should do the clean up, not force him to see his wife go into the ground. Usually she would’ve used fire but not here. Brushing a cheek with her thumb, Alix looked back at him. ”Will you come with me? My car’s down the street. We should get you somewhere dry … away from here. I’ll take care of her.” Rohan. Her brother was still mad at her for the shattering blows she rained down on her own family life but maybe he would come for this to let her take care of Christian.

Tagged: CHRISTIAN CALLAWAY * Word Count: 908

Vampire. Christian had heard the word and seen the horror in what had happened to his wife – and to their unborn child – but he hadn’t known the depths they would tear their way to in his life. Had the signs been there before tonight? Alix wasn’t going to claim they were, like some sort of soothsayer. Love made you blind no atter who you were. You saw who you wanted to see, not the darkness, not until you were confronted with it in the way he had been tonight. Was part of this on her for not digging further into his life or teaching him to? Maybe.

On the surface it had all been so perfect. The woman in the photos that littered the house, the one who’d talked her husband into getting dressed up as Batman on Halloween, the one whose perfume had still lingered on the air as she’d slipped into the offered bed the last time she’d been here – she hadn’t been a monster. A grieving mother-to-be, a nurse, a loving wife, yes, but none of those precluded who she had been at the end. Christian had still seen all of those things when Sofia had agreed to what needed to be done. Those images would be what haunted him afterwards. Lingering snapshots of a life that hadn’t been all it had pretended to be at the end.

The future they’d planned for would go into the ground with Sofia tonight but snapshots of that too would linger. Alix still saw her own behind her closed eyelids at night. A little house thousands of miles from him, the shingle roof, the porch she’d lingered on with a cup of coffee morning after morning, the little gate in the yard that would slap every time she bolted through it for the full moon. Maybe eventually hers wouldn’t have been the only cup on the rail but that was a future Ralphy had cut from her just as surely as Christian had cut the life from his wife’s body. Possibilities steeped in blood. The truth of it just as scarlet and coppery on her lips now.

Alix saw Christian’s gaze drop to them as she explained. Trying to find sense in her words or remembering maybe the last night he and Sofia had been together and happy? His wife’s lips the ones he had found afterwards, reacquainting himself with the woman who was supposed to be in his arms. If Sofia had still felt what she’d seen in the woman’s eyes, then she wasn’t lying to Christian now. No matter who she had become Sofia had still loved her husband. Maybe if the truth had spilled out that night they would have laughed over it, the teasing rising about him stepping out on his wife. It was an obstacle they could overcome but this …

Guilt had left a lump in her throat then but now Alix was sure it was grief she was trying to swallow away. Christian’s, hers, she wasn’t sure which, she just taste the ash of it on her tongue s she shook her head. Alix squeezed the back of his neck, her auburn brows furrowing as she shook her head. ”I don’t know. Maybe she couldn’t bear to have you look at her another way.” As a monster. Oh, she understood that. It was the look she’d been waiting to see filter across Rohan’s face when the truth had finally come out. She’d braced herself for it, chin up, eyes sliding closed against the sight of it, anticipating the bullet tearing into his skull. It took a strength she’d never believed she’d had to do it, Sofia … maybe she hadn’t found that strength until there was no other choice.

She could give Christian choices now. There was nothing she could really do to shoulder her brother or her cousin’s pay but she’d done it for Christian before, gathering him into her when the truth of his actions had torn him apart, she could and would do it again now. A shoulder to cry on later when whatever strength was left crumbled to dust, a hand to take the hardest part of this now. Alix nodded softly, one corner of her mouth tilting up sadly. ”Of course it’s alright. We’ll go afterwards, you can stay as long as you want.” As long as he needed might have been longer than that but Alix couldn’t see all the ripples this would cause yet. ”I can take care of them while you take care of Sofia.” One last act of compassion for a woman who had lost it all in the final hours of her life.

Alix rose slowly as Christian did, watching his gaze slide sideways to the bodies on the ground. They would haunt him as badly as Sofia did, the lives he hadn’t been able to save from the one he thought he had. Her other hand came up, touching Christian’s jaw lightly as he looked to her like she could stop him from drifting into the darkness shrouding their deaths. ”They always do and sometimes you can’t give them the answers they need.” As she hadn’t been able to give Rohan the ones about herself. For years he’d desperately searched for her, hoping she wasn’t dead. The families would for their loved ones now, at least until, maybe, one day the bodies were found. ”We can leave them somewhere they’ll be found but … there’s a chance something would lead them back here.” Not to Sofia, she was beyond the legal system now, but to Christian. No, it was best that they weren’t found, maybe their family would find some scrap of hope to cling onto then.

With her hand released Alix cautiously dragged hers over her face, back through hair that had curled tighter with the rain that soaked into it. The cold bit at her fingers, must have been bone deep for him but he was prepared to see this through. She reached for the shovel as Christian brought it back, nodding tightly. Alix swallowed, tilting her head towards the ground. ”Here, yes.” There were so many other ways but each was more monstrous than the last for now. ”Out of town … pyres work best, but ... your neighbours would see here. You don’t want the fire engines rolling in. Later maybe we can…” Come back for them. Put Sofia to reset somewhere better than a shallow grave behind her own house.

Taking a few paces back Alix began to dig. Her muscles wouldn’t ache with it the way his would, the only lingering pain of what they had to do in her heart, her head while his would burn through every cell. The rain was a quiet lament for the dead, pooling in the bottom of the grave when she finally had it deep enough. Alix rolled the bodies in as gently as she could, bowing her head for a moment as she stood on the edge of the cut ground, the shovel still in her hand. She reeled off a prayer in her head, hoping for a better place for them now, asking for forgiveness for the woman who’d taken their lives. Her gaze had flickered up to Christian then, lingering for only a moment before the earth was put back over them one spade full at a time. Silently she set the shovel down and went to curl her hand around Christian’s arm, ready to draw him away from the wound that had to have been cut just as raw through his heart as the grave through their garden.

Tagged: CHRISTIAN CALLAWAY * Word Count: 1273

Standing in the warehouse, looking at the brother it had torn at her to leave behind, Alix had known that her leaving her hurt Rohan just as badly as it had hurt her. Out of all of them he’d deserved the truth the most but all those seeds of doubt Ralphy had started to plant in her head even back then had sprouted shoots long enough to strangle her. One wrong word and what she’d dreaded could’ve happened. The gun raised, the bullet put between her eyes before she had a chance to talk him around, her death – oh it might’ve been some sort of relief for her finally, but it would have its price – weighing on his conscience, breaking him the same way Christian was broken now. It was one thing to take a life, it was another to watch it fade from the eyes of someone you loved as they died at your hands.

She hadn’t told Rohan then what she was. It had taken months of him asking, the hurt of her silence shining like the shards of a shattered mirror in his eyes every single time, before she’d come clean. Alix had known the best case scenario would still take something from them. The worst would’ve have seen her lying here like Sofia was now … and Christian would’ve been cut adrift when his own life had shattered like that mirror, leaving him looking at the broken, scattered pieces of his life, with his soul cut to ribbons on their edges.

Alix blinked, met Christian’s eye as he glanced sideways at her and nodded back at him. She couldn’t promise him that those pieces would fit back together again, with Sofia gone they couldn’t produce the same picture they had before. It would be the same for the people whose loved ones lay on the grass now, growing colder and wetter as they lay there. The gaps where their loved ones had been could be filled in – with another, horrific picture that would fade in time – but they couldn’t do it now, not without both of them paying a far bigger price for Sofia’s crimes. The woman herself was well beyond paying for them now.

Something about burying her with her victims felt wrong but the two of them went to work on the mass grave in silence, the only hymn for the dead the light drumming of the rain and the scrape of their shovels. She could’ve spoken words aloud for them but felt wrong too, this wasn’t the sort of burial that came with poems or memories of the dead shared, not even for Sofia. Every few shovelfuls she would check on Christian, just a quick flick up of her eyes, watching for a sign of the last of that quiet strength finally flooding out of him, deflating what was left behind of the man he’d been – counsellor, husband, grieving father-to-be, hopeful white knight. That man was likely to have been left below the soil with the bodies, never to be seen again.

She saw his eyes cut towards the house, a frown creasing his brow that made it clear he was thinking of what had been left behind. Alix curled her hand around his arm, her chin lifting slightly. ”Not tonight,” she said hoarsely. ”I can … I can have someone deal with it. You don’t have to see that.” Not that scrubbing the place down while he was gone was much better. You could wipe the blood stains from the floor but there was no amount of bleach that would wipe the memories from your mind.

Her throat went tight as he drew away to set the shovel back against the shed, tidying up even under the worst of the circumstances. Alix shifted close as he returned, fingers wrapped around his despite the chill that had settled into her bones at least. Like a mother with a child she led him to the truck, latching the garden gate behind them again, watching him on the road, eyes flickering to the rear view. She knew what it was like to fall apart in the wake of a nightmare, so did he, but this was so much worse than it had been. Like when they had dug the grave, the drive went by in silence, just the purr of the engine and the quiet crunch of gravel under the tires as she pulled into the lot behind the sprawl of warehouses. She buzzed open the door, shepherded him inside. There was no point in cranking the heating for him, but Alix thumbed the control panel inside the door, tapping the heat control up a couple of degrees, something to chase the chill from his bones.

Boots kicked off just inside the door, she made to draw him down onto the couch they’d spent the night on before but he was already one step ahead of him. Alix touched his elbow lightly, starting past him like he hadn’t found the way there the last time. ”Sure. You don’t have to ask. There are fresh towels in there. I’ll get you something to wear …” Her eyes cut down to his clothing, stained and wet, another vicious reminder of tonight. Alix let go of his elbow, smoothed her hand down the small of his back to ease him inside. Pressing her lips together she went to her bedroom to get clothes.

Minutes later, her own skin scrubbed in the kitchen sink, her own wet clothes exchanged for leggings and a t-shirt, Alix stood on the threshold of the bathroom, knocking lightly before she stepped just inside and set the clothes down on the top of the hamper. ”They should fit. Take as long as you need.” Still, Alix remained on edge as she eased back out. She didn’t exactly pace outside the door but when it finally opened again she was on her feet, reaching for his hand again. Coppery brows drew together as she tugged him towards the bed. ”I haven’t got a spare room but … you need to get some rest. Can I get you anything?” A glass of water already stood at the side of the bed, she hadn’t known what else to get, how else to patch this up. Alix drew back the covers, against the protests that came, shaking her head as she eased herself down on the untucked side. Like she had on the couch that night she’d stay, watching over him the way he’d done her. Holding each other together in those shattering moments, a favour tossed back and forth when she wanted nothing more than to be able to toss that nightmare far away from them both.

Tagged: CHRISTIAN CALLAWAY (Finish with yours?) * Word Count: 1120