A girl entered the room from a door I hadn’t noticed before. She didn’t look to be much older than I was. A few years at most. She was dressed in a simple gray dress, a threadbare garment that hung off of her, looking like it was handmade by an amateur for someone bigger than she was, worn and washed everyday until being handed down to this girl.

Her bare feet peeked out from the gray as she walked across the room. Her eyes were downcast and she was drawn into herself, practiced at making herself small. She bore a silver tray that held a silver goblet and some food. A loaf of bread, butter, grapes and some cheese.

The mouse gremlins were curious about the new arrivals, investigating the men and this girl. I silently willed them not to mess with the girl as she walked across the room. The men and the woman sitting across the desk from me were adults who were here by choice. Everything about this girl screamed that she had no choice. I felt anger bloom inside me as the girl set the tray on the desk and bowed low. It was hot and burned my insides, refusing to be stuffed down and stilled.

Caroline ignored the girl, not even glancing up from her study of me. The girl remained bowed as Caroline took her time, attempting to get her gaze to linger on my face. My anger continued to boil as the seconds ticked by.

“Thirsty?” Caroline broke the silence, picking up the silver goblet. “I have cold water here.” She set the goblet on the desk between us. I could see it was beaded with condensation.

I was thirsty. It was a gnawing ache I’d been ignoring. The anger helped me continue to ignore it.

“So,” I ignored her question, “You like to kidnap children?”

Caroline’s eyes brightened, like I’d paid her a compliment. A wide smile crept across her face.

“Oh yes,” she said, her tone delighted. “I buy them too. Did you know your government pays me to keep them? Legally, this is an orphanage. I have hundreds of children. The good ones learn to have clever little fingers and work hard.”

I latched onto the burning feeling and pressed my tongue to the side of the glass in my mind’s eye, using it to fuel my telekinesis. The goblet tipped over, spilling water across the desk and into Caroline’s lap. She cursed, jumping up snatching up the papers on the desk and trying to shake the water off of them.

“Stupid girl!” Caroline snapped. “Clean this up!”

The girl moved quickly, keeping her eyes downcast. She didn’t say a word as, to my horror, she shrugged out of her gray shift and used it to mop up the majority of the water on the desk and chair.

I jumped up to help, but I was grabbed by the shoulder and forced back down into the chair. The man who had hold of me had a grip on my shoulder that began to cut off blood-flow. Feeling helpless, I tried to catch the girl’s eye with an apology, but she didn’t look up.

The girl was too skinny, all bony angles and ribs, like her skin was several sizes too small. She had angry red welts on her back, standing in contrast to old scars. I averted my gaze, embarrassed for the girl, and that my action had directed Caroline’s ire towards her.

The girl put her wet garment back on and scampered out of the room. I glared at the woman in front of me, trying to think how I could hurt her. I felt so angry I couldn’t form words. I wanted to tear her down, to make her feel small.

Several girls entered the room, all dressed in gray. They moved quick and quiet, mopping up the rest of the water with towels, taking away the empty goblet and replacing it with a new one. With their quickness and silence, they reminded me of mice.

The other girls finished and left, only the girl in the now soaked shift remaining. She once again bowed low and held it. Caroline made a disgusted sound, more interested in the sodden papers she held than anything else in the room. She set the mess of paper on the desk before the girl.

“Take these and copy them out. Then report yourself for fifteen lashes and half rations, you clumsy waif,” Caroline said. “Oh, and add a lash for every page you waste if you mess up.” Her tone was offhanded, as if reporting an uninteresting mater of fact.

“Thank you miss,” the girl said in a small voice. She took the stack and backed out of the room, remaining bowed low as she went.

Caroline seated herself again, looking at me over steepled fingers. “You’re a like bad penny, aren’t you? Is that why you called yourself a luck vampire? Because you take pleasure in the harm you cause? Tell me Bad Penny, does hurting my girls bring you satisfaction? Do you enjoy seeing their pain? It excited you much more than the prospect of food and water, despite being isolated for two days.”

“I didn’t…” I faltered, my brain stumbling over the last statement. Two days?

“Didn’t get enough?” Caroline smiled, a terrible thing, it made her look wicked and cruel. “If you cooperate, I can arrange for you to get your fill. Answer my questions and you can have your pick of my girls. Use her up however you like. Abuse her, kill her, I don’t care. If you prove useful to me, I can keep you fed.” She narrowed her eyes at me, managing to study my face for a long moment before her gaze slid off. “You are not human. You are also not upyri, though you wear misfortune like a garment like they do. You also have no life in you like an upyri. They drink life from blood. Is that what you need? Would you prefer a goblet of blood?”

The man who’d had hold of my shoulder let go with the mention of upyri, muttering what sounded like a prayer in Russian and backing up.

I felt sick. Stunned by the casual cruelty and dismissal of human life. My anger settled down, becoming something cold. My mind flashed to a memory…

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

***

I crouched lower in the overgrowth and cold mud, ignoring the creeping of an insect exploring my exposed neck. Armed soldiers stood arguing almost within reach of me. Their lights cut the darkness as they gestured with them, their irritation showing.

The tall grass had a sour smell, the mud beneath speaking of an unhealthy land. Acid rain had been falling in a steady drizzle for the last week, clawing at all five senses like an angry evil. The brutal, toxic gloom falling like a god’s vengeance on a broken land was working in my favor. I’d escaped and had been evading capture for three days. My captors were getting sick of weathering the hostile landscape to search for me.

“I’m telling you, the rat has to be dead, how are we supposed to find his corpse in this?” one of the soldiers complained, hunching inside his plastic rain gear. His light picked up the toxic droplets that danced lightly on the air currents.

“This is your fault,” said another soldier, “if you weren’t such a fuck up, we wouldn’t be out in this shit.”

“Fuck you. If you’d had hadn’t been playing with your dick, you would have smelled the rat as he crawled by you.”

“At least I still have a dick that can be played with, not limp like yours. I told you not to drink the water here, but did you listen to me?”

“Quiet, both of you,” snapped the commander. “Quit flirting and do your damn job. The sooner we find the rat, the sooner we can get out of this shit.”

The probing flashlight beams moved off into the darkness, overlooking my sodden and mud covered form. I hadn’t been trying to get away, I’d been circling back to their camp, causing damage. Their irritation was going to add up to a mistake. I had already gotten hold of one man who had wandered too far away to relieve himself and drowned him in the brackish mud. Next goal was to foul their food storage. I wasn’t leaving, I was going to kill them all…

***

I looked up from my dark thoughts to the woman sitting across from me. She looked different now. Her business-woman persona was a mask. I could see the cracks in it. The darkness that shone through, where the mask was thin. Her evil little eyes and long nose. Her smile no longer looked pristine. She was wearing dentures. There was a gap in the too perfect white false teeth. A long yellow fang sticking through. Her face was caked in makeup. Her hair was dyed. I caught a whiff of rotten flesh, death long left to fester.

The woman in front of me was afraid of me. She didn’t understand what I was, and that frightened her. I could see it around the edges. That didn’t make me safe. No. The opposite. Many cornered animals fought fiercely. I now knew why this was where I needed to be. I couldn’t leave until I burned this down. I needed to put the people in this room on edge.

I remembered hunting men after I had escaped captivity. They had begun calling me “the ghost” believing I had died and was a vengeful spirit. Their belief made my efforts more effective, working against them. After all, why would you make the effort, putting yourself through hell, when it’s impossible? I slipped back into the killer I had once been. Letting the cold anger spread and fill me. These were not people here with me. They were the enemy.

I smirked at Caroline, “Upyr? What’s wrong grandma, you afraid to use their name? Afraid to bring bad luck on yourself? Is offering me blood a test? You know upyri don’t drink blood. That’s a modern myth. But you’re testing me because you don’t know what I am. Gregor complained he can’t hurt me. The Tall Man left me here because he couldn’t compel me. Now you try to offer me children? I’m already in a house full of people. Do you think I can’t feed myself?”

I picked a splinter off the rough chair beneath me as I spoke. Pricking my finger, I used the blood to draw the symbol on my palm. I kept the lines light, so it would dry quickly.

“You insult me.” I left the chair, approaching the desk. “Read my lifeline,” I said, holding my unmarked palm out to her. I heard the men start for me, but Caroline held up a hand, forestalling them. “How old am I?”

Caroline leaned forward to look at my palm. Her brows creased in confusion as she looked, like what she saw made less sense the longer she looked. She began to mumble to herself, shaking her head, back and forth.

“This is… no… this is not possible… You have two lifelines. They merge and split, only to merge again. This is not even a line. It circles…” she reached forward, as if to take my hand, then thought better of it and pulled back. She narrowed her eyes at me.

“You are bluffing. When you got here, I saw you, wide-eyed, frightened. You are a child, I threatened you once and you followed me willingly to captivity.”

I grinned at her, using my pricked finger to draw the symbol on my other hand. I was grateful I could draw it without the need to look

“I needed to be invited in,” I said.

The mouse gremlins had stopped exploring the room when I had gotten up. There was a pool of them at my feet. My relationship with them felt different. I was no longer afraid of them. They had killed me once, when my luck was low, but I had been human. After I did what I did, and now that I was whatever I was, things were different. I realized something right then, right there in front of the old witch. Not once in any of the loops following the bathroom flood had the gremlins done anything to me.

The cold anger was still there, waiting to be used. I put it to use. Once again, I tipped the goblet over, spilling water across the desk and into Caroline’s lap.

She cried out and jumped up. As she did, the front leg on her chair became snagged on the carpet. The desk was setup on an old and expensive-looking rug. The leg managed to snag just right so that it broke, the chair falling forward into her back, pushing her into the desk. She cried out in surprise as the chair pinioned her against the desk. She tried to catch herself with her hands, but slipped in the water, her face slapping down against the leather writing surface. She sputtered and coughed, peeling her face off the desk, her thick makeup leaving an imprint where her face had struck.

I turned, slowing time as I did, aware that both men were rushing for me. The whole world seemed to be crawling forward except for the gremlins. They didn't seem slowed down at all. They ran back and forth, investigating things. Some had been nudging the tray of food close to the edge of the desk, and it was about to fall off. Some had been working on the chair I had been sitting on. Both men were, in fact, lunging for me. I turned time up incrementally, stepping forward to meet the first man. They weren't working together; one was far ahead of the other. I raised my palm, as casual as anything, and placed it on the head of the man who was attempting to snatch me up around the middle.

Funny thing about heads and immovable objects is that it doesn't take a great deal of momentum to knock a man cold. The luck activated, and the man hit the impenetrable wall that was the symbol, once active. I heard his head crunch as he hit it. He must have been moving faster than I thought. It was hard to tell speed with time slowed the way it was.

I withdrew a minimum amount of luck. One strand. I didn't need more, just enough so I didn't feel so thirsty anymore. Plus, I had to withdraw something so I could release the symbol. I kept time slowed. Not bullet time, as I had done in the very beginning, just enough that I could process and anticipate every movement.

The man, whose head I had caught, crumpled as the luck let go, unconscious. He crashed into the chair, and it broke apart. He might have a fractured skull. I wasn't sure, but this sort of unconsciousness only tended to last between ten and thirty seconds, so I needed to capitalize on my time.

Although the man would be fairly useless when he woke up, I didn't want to be within reach. A man that much bigger than me could still do some damage, even drunkenly confused with a concussion.

The other man's eyes widened as he saw his companion crumple to the floor, through the chair, apparently dropped by a casual gesture from me.

I imagined he had also seen my eyes glowing, the way Billy had reported they did when I drew luck. I grinned at him, stepping into my vampiric persona, shifting my stance and beckoning for him to come. He looked worried, so I charged him.

Running in slow motion is perhaps one of the stranger things I've done. Having enough time to contemplate every single muscle movement and becoming bored enough that you want to attempt to get each movement better with the next step is an interesting experience. To my delight and amusement, the man turned and fled. The gremlins were having a field day as I chased the grown man towards the door.

Slow motion was messing with my ability to hear. Caroline was shouting something from where she was pinioned against the desk, but I couldn't understand. The sound was slow and distorted.

The bejeweled galaxies and constellations began to fall from the great tree. The tray fell off the desk, food spilling across the floor. Books fell off shelves all around the room, clattering to the brass walkway on the second story mezzanine, or thumping to the wooden floor inside of the great domed room. The sprinkler system overhead went off, beginning to rain a cloud of chemical foam, not water. Emergency lights began to flash.

The running man's shoe came off and he stumbled, allowing me just enough time to catch up and slap my hand onto his back foot, halting his progress in such a way that he pendulumed forward, crashing hard into the ground. His breath left him with a great whoosh. I drew another single strand of luck, releasing the hold I had on the permanent space of reality and continuing my run over and past the man as the room behind me descended into a book-crashing, bejeweled-decoration-smashing, emergency-lights-and-chemical-foam-flashing chaos. I ran through the open door and into the hall, ready for a game of cat-and-mouse-gremlin.

***