Monster Stalker Read online

  Monster Stalker, A Darquepunk Novel

  By Elizabeth Watasin

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  Monster Stalker: A Darquepunk Novel is copyright © 2015 by Elizabeth Watasin.

  Published by A-Girl Studio

  All rights reserved.

  This is the ebook edition.

  ISBN: 978-1-936622-28-3

  For additional information, please contact:

  Elizabeth Watasin, c/o A-Girl Studio, P.O. Box 213, Burbank, CA 91503 U.S.A. or on the web at: http://www.a-girlstudio.com

  Acknowledgements:

  This book was written outside my comfort zone on many aspects. My gratitude to those who read the manuscript first to make sure I didn’t falter: Jody Susskind and Vanessa Clark. And my thanks to One More Time Editing.

  ***

  “Kill first.”

  Nico was a bullet, piercing matter. She burst into dusky skies, an airfield fast approaching her face. She hit it and rolled.

  Sun! Clouds shrouded it, but she felt its heat. She scrambled on the tarmac and saw no earth to bury herself in. When she didn’t catch fire, she touched the black surface she knelt on, warmed by sunlight. Her free hand clutched her switchblade, its blade triggered. The hot handle sparked with electricity.

  “Ow—ow,” Nico said. She dropped her blade, pulled down her cardigan’s sleeve over her burnt palm, then picked the knife up again.

  Airfield? Buildings stood on the hazy horizon. She needed to run for cover. When she tried to stand, she plopped back instead. The airfield tilted as she fought nausea.

  Mr. Bear, her sandy-coloured stuffed bear, sat strapped to the front of her black cardigan and white button-down. Nico looked down at the chest harness, made of leather, silver grommets, and fastenings, and could not remember purchasing it, much less donning it. Her left knee throbbed, and she raised it to look.

  Beneath her short black skirt with the two pleats, her black stocking had torn at the knee; the bloodied bruise already healing from where she’d scraped it on landing. She had no memory of choosing her clothes or her shoes (which were the spike-studded leather oxfords and not her black Mary Janes) though it was an outfit she wore often.

  A man in uniform coveralls and a ball cap with the logo Jifk walked across the airfield towards her. Somehow, she’d missed his approach. His tattooed face appeared friendly, and Nico thought his markings looked Maori. An identification badge dangled from his breast pocket: Tane.

  Nico blinked. She’d read that in Cyrillic, but then it rearranged itself into the Latin alphabet.

  “Here’s another one,” he said to no one in particular, though Nico couldn’t be certain he spoke to someone via a mic. “Hey there. Can you put that away, please?” Nico looked at her blade, then shut it. “Thanks. Welcome to Again NewYork. I’m going to ask you to step over here and stand in that circle, and we’ll get you processed right away.” He brought up a rectangular-shaped device in his hand. “What’s your name?”

  “A—Again, New York?” Nico said.

  “No, really. That’s your name?” He indicated again that she move towards a circle blacker than the tarmac it lay in. She hadn’t noticed it during her scrambling.

  Nico tucked her switchblade into her skirt’s waistband in back and rose. She stumbled to her feet, woozy. “No, I’m Nico,” she said. “Nicolette Alexikova.” Adrenaline receding, she felt a little like she’d been struck by lightning; her hair rose from static electricity. She looked at the pitch-black circle that resembled a pit, then at Tane. “Why am I—am I going to—?”

  “Nope. You won’t.” Tane answered. Nico toed the blackness; it felt solid. “Both feet, please,” Tane added. She put both feet into the circle.

  Everything flashed, and she threw up her arms. When she looked down at herself and Bear, they were still in one piece.

  “Vampire, right?” Tane touched his pad.

  Nico froze.

  “Well, your bio-dats say you are,” Tane said. “And boy, did you get skittish when you saw you were in daylight.”

  Nico gave her surroundings a furtive look. “Again...New York?”

  “Right.” Tane continued to enter data. “Your teddy bear doesn’t appear to be alive or sentient, so that’s just one to process for immigration. Can you confirm that you’re a vampire, please?”

  “Yes. Yes I am,” she said bravely. “And I’ve dual citizenship—American and British.”

  Tane looked up and grinned. “If that matters to you. But on Darqueworld, designations like that don’t exist; the city-states are only what the gods make of them.”

  Darkworld? Nico tried to look closer at his badge. Electricity buzzed along her skin, and the air exploded, popping her ears. She ducked and looked behind her. Farther down the field, the atmosphere split. It erupted in fire and ejected a flaming man, the ends of his trench coat trailing. He tumbled on the ground and flopped to a stop. The hole sucked in upon itself and disappeared.

  “Wow, what an entry—right out of an explosion.” Tane’s tone was matter-of-fact. Two bulky men blipped into view, and Nico blinked, thinking they’d stepped on to the tarmac as if from an invisible place. The men ran up to the one smoking on the ground—at least, Nico thought the two were men. Like Tane, they wore coveralls, but horns grew out of their heads, and their features had snouts and brows like bulls. Nico turned to Tane.

  “Am I in purgatory?” she said.

  Tane scrutinised her. “Don’t know how you got here, huh? Memory loss.” He entered something into his pad. “Don’t worry, they’ll have a Po get a good look at you, then assign you a social worker—”

  “Social worker? Now I believe in hell.”

  “Oh, is that what you think this is?” Tane’s tone was light.

  “No...hell is getting murdered and stuff.” Nico tried to ignore the sound of the two horned guys scraping the smoking fellow off the ground.

  “It sure is. Hey,” he said, catching her attention. “You’re a chrono-immigrant, if that info helps—” He pointed at his head. “Jog your memory some. You took a trip to a planet settled by others like yourself, and here you are. I only need you to tell me your era. I’m betting it’s late twentieth century.”

  Nico looked at him blankly. “The year is 1998.”

  “Great. Now, if you’ll show me the back of your hand.” He pulled out a device resembling a tattoo gun.

  “What’s that?” she said, wary.

  “A biometric tagger.” Tane motioned for her hand. Nico presented the back of her left hand, wondering if she was about to receive a barcode tattoo. Tane placed the tagger over her skin. A beam burst, pricking her. It felt like an inoculation. Then she remembered that as a vampire, she had no fear of diseases. The sensation ran up her wrist after Tane lifted the tagger, and she shook her hand, trying to rid herself of the tickle.

  If I’m in a coma somewhere, someone just did something funny to my hand.

  She wasn’t certain if vampires could fall into actual comas, and dismissed that speculation. Tane gestured to a metal arch that Nico hadn’t noticed before.

  “All done! Enter that gate there, and you’ll be processed and ready to start your new life in Again NewYork.”

  ***

  Chrono-immigrant? Nico approached the gate. It showed only the airfield beyond it. If everything happening was her conscious reality, perhaps the forethought of strapping Mr Bear to herself made sense. But what situation had she come out of, especially with blade drawn? Nico looked down in case she’d missed signs of violence on her person or clothes. She did
not seek fights, but evil could follow a girl, as she well knew. If she’d been in danger in Leningrad before coming to...Again, New York, she couldn’t recall what had happened or why.

  Therefore, I was kidnapped somehow, and now I’m in some rich man’s fantasy set. Or this is some crazy KGB plot to get vampires to out themselves.

  She stepped through the gate.

  And found herself in a security area aglow in dim blue, one with bored officers standing by roped-off stations and machines. None of the officers looked human, though humanoid enough. A great, glass bubble hung in the room’s centre; inside a large, bald female head floated. She looked at Nico.

  I’ll ignore that. Nico stared instead at a pedestal sign with an illustration of a bald person’s head in a bubble, accompanied by possibly important information. Nico couldn’t read the language, so she returned her attention to the room.

  A quick scan (while avoiding the staring head) seemed to affirm that she was the lone chrono-immigrant present. She hoped no one would confiscate her switchblade—Tane had not seemed to mind her carrying it. Nico checked her hand, not wanting an injury to delay processing. Thanks to a vampire’s healing ability, the burn was gone and her skin, whole. She approached the nearest station, where a blue humanoid male looked down at her, impassive. On the counter sat a mounted tagger like the one Tane had used, and a large metal orb with a glass top. The blue male held up a lens.

  The lens flashed, making Nico see colours, and the back of her hand itched.

  “Raqa,” he said, indicating the mounted tagger.

  “You want my hand, right?” Nico said, and then noticed what the orb contained. An insect as large as a rat sat within, wearing a tiny badge. It waved feelers and seemed to look at her with its multi-faceted eyes.

  “Click-click,” it said, its mandibles moving. Nico thrust her hand beneath the tagger, suppressing the urge to wallop the bug and run away. Rising in a shallow forest grave with beetles living in her mouth had not endeared her to insects. The bug pressed something on its tiny console.

  The beam that hit her hand seared, but Nico saw no burn on her skin. She shook her hand again.

  “Read that, please,” the insect said motioning to its glass hatch, and Nico started in surprise. She was certain it had made more clicking sounds. A message illuminated across the orb’s glass. Hieroglyphics rearranged, forming the Latin alphabet.

  “Hi farhol mal haro sowo,” she read, bewildered. The insect’s mouth clicked more, and the blue humanoid appeared to guffaw, as if they were sharing a laugh. Nico gave them a look, hoping they hadn’t made her say something obscene.

  “Translate for us, please,” the insect requested, and somehow the translation came to Nico.

  “My hovercraft is full of...eels,” Nico said sourly. That’s it. This is a dream. She enjoyed Monty Python well enough, but not that much. The blue humanoid and the insect chortled more.

  “Translation tag functioning. Step that way, please,” the insect said.

  ***

  Officers waved her off two more stations after they flashed lenses at her. Nico was glad; their stations looked like medical facilities. At the second one, a man in a double-breasted pinstripe suit, wingtips, and askew fedora lay inert on the dais, having succumbed to whatever procedure he’d received. Two bald humanoids in smocks held pads and discussed data over him. Nico hurried to the last station, where a black circle lay, similar to the one in the airfield. The bored female officer standing before it gestured in its direction. She laid a three-fingered hand on Nico’s shoulder to guide her.

  “Don’t touch me,” Nico said automatically. “Um, sorry.”

  Nico stepped into the circle. When it flashed, Nico felt as if her underwear had been frisked.

  “Hey! Mr Bear! My stuff!” she exclaimed, seeing her possessions lying in a neat row on the table, and hurried off the circle to fetch Bear.

  “Can you tell us where Mr Bear comes from, please,” the officer said in a bored tone, seating herself before a monitor.

  “Mr Bear comes from where I came from,” Nico said. “He’s—”

  Her thought slid away on a white surface in her mind.

  “He’s...” Nico frowned.

  The officer glanced at something above Nico’s shoulder, and when she turned to look, the floating head was staring in her direction. Nico turned back again.

  “Okay, thank you,” the officer said, dismissive, and Nico assumed the questioning was done.

  While Nico placed Bear in his harness again, a nude man, completely hairless to his non-existent eyebrows, walked by, bypassing the search area. In his two hands he held a claymore over four feet long, the blade pointing down. Nico looked at the giant blade and then at him.

  This is the most Freudian dream ever.

  He moved ahead as she picked up her switchblade and put it back in her waistband. Before she pocketed her Chococat wallet, she opened it. It contained rubles, her Leningrad University student ID, a credit card, a Leningrad metro pass, and her magazine clipping of the actress Sabella Peck, dressed in a men’s suit. Nico hugged the picture to her and Bear, then put her wallet away. Her passport security neck wallet had also ended up on the table; she grabbed it and the tin of breath mints she hadn’t known she’d been carrying. When she glanced back at the room, wondering if it was okay to leave, the female head in the bubble coolly watched her. Nico walked quickly to where the naked man had exited.

  ***

  The sleek platform outside the security room resembled an underground rail station. A small, fat, bullet-shaped vehicle sat on the track, the size of a transport van. Its hatch was open, and after Nico put her neck wallet and mints away, she hurried to it. Stepping in, she saw two seat rows.

  The naked man with the claymore had taken the far row’s front seat, leaning forwards with a hand on the long hilt and the sword tip down. In the seat behind him sat a Victorian woman in a buttoned overcoat, long skirts, black boots, and gloves, her blonde, swept-up hair dishevelled. She looked as disconcerted as Nico felt, one lens of her spectacles cracked. The woman was fixing her hat, which had a bent brim, and she nodded to Nico.

  “How do you do,” she said, her accent British.

  “Hello,” Nico said, wondering if the woman was an actress—though the natural material of her wool and silk clothes, lacking synthetics, appeared to have been made a century ago.

  “How do you do,” the woman then said to Mr Bear.

  “Mr Bear says, ‘how do you do,’” Nico said, and made Bear wave. “He’s not sentient.”

  “Oh,” the woman said with a smile. “I thought him an automaton. He certainly has a soulful look to him.”

  Pleased by the compliment, Nico took the aisle seat by the open hatch across from the woman. She wanted to talk more about Bear, but she couldn’t remember—

  Her thoughts skittered off into the dark again. She became distracted by the woman’s scent instead.

  The Victorian woman was the first human Nico had sensed. She wasn’t sure how she knew, especially when Tane had looked human too. Perhaps humans had a smell and warmth to their flesh and blood familiar to her—vital to her vampire nature. It drew her right then, pulsing beneath the woman’s crisp, lavender scent. She was living, breathing, and very edible.

  Nico felt her fangs emerge and kept her gaze away, hoping her eyes hadn’t changed. Her lack of control surprised her. She’d spent her entire vampire life in the company of humans and had learned to cope. She wasn’t even hungry, though she’d the keen desire to turn and smell the woman more.

  Nico took an unneeded breath, then the scent of smoke and scorched flesh overwhelmed. Two security personnel shoved the burnt man from the airfield into the seat next to her. The door hatch came down and shut, dimming their interior to near darkness, and the transport accelerated. Nico could still see the burnt man with her vampire’s vision, and he looked too crispy for her liking. He’d managed some flesh regeneration, though scorched trench coat pieces still needed picking out of hi
s skin. She scrunched to the far side of her seat.

  A chime sounded, and a projection activated in the open space of the vehicle’s interior, within view of all the occupants. A dimensional logo reading DARQUEWORLD slowly spun: a hologram.

  Wow, that’s...better than virtual reality.

  Nico stared, fascinated by the logo’s perfect solidity, and the Victorian woman leaned forwards in her chair, gazing with great interest.

  “Welcome to Darqueworld,” a female narrator announced in a smooth, sensual voice, the projection displaying a cloud-covered planet. “If you’re experiencing disorientation, know that this isn’t a hallucination or dream. If you are a chrono-arrival, or what’s known as a time traveller, then please keep in mind the cultural, technological, and species differences you may encounter in an intragalactic- and preternatural-based society. If you disembarked from an interstellar or extra-dimensional transport, you may be fully aware of where you’ve arrived. But to review, this is where you are.”

  Nico’s jaw had already dropped at the word intragalactic. The projection began to display spatial animations depicting astronomical cartography.

  “You are now situated in the Merope Nebula of the Pleiades Star Cluster, Messier 45, a cluster you may also know as the Seven Sisters, Subaru, Neith, Makara, Tianquiztli, ‘Star of stars’, and Freya’s Hens. Located approximately 400 light years from Old Earth, you are presently on the dusk planet discovered and tended by the elder gods who departed that Earth. This is Darqueworld.

  “Darqueworld is one of many celestial bodies in the Pleiades settled by former Earth inhabitants and divinities. It is also a prominent trade and travel hub, connecting to various intragalactic spacefaring cultures and species. Welcome to Darqueworld.”

  The hatch abruptly opened, briefly blinding Nico; the vehicle had come to a stop. Before she could move, the crispy man threw himself out the opening. He shambled across a platform that led to a curtain of darkness. With a lurch, he began gliding forwards, having accessed a moving walkway, and disappeared into the black.