had lost all color. The box from the bakery had been opened. Chuck noticed the pie wasn’t a circle, but a large square cut from a much bigger pie. With a twist of his stomach, Chuck observed what Brandy had found and covered his mouth in shock. Then he said, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, there’s a boob in your pie!”
The five vampires soared through the Chicago night. They hovered close together, hidden from sight by the darkness. They scoured every sector of the city. Lake Michigan. Navy Pier. The museums and night clubs and skyscrapers. The Rapid Transit System. The suburban section of Chicago that contrasted against the low-rent communities at East End, Chicago. Judging by the stillness of the night, the city wasn’t in a state of panic—yet. The possibilities far exceeded Anderson Mills, Kansas, their last conquest, the town filled with woods and hills. Last year’s slaughter was a pre-game formality. This was the big leagues. Now that they had the city memorized, they could forge ahead with tomorrow’s devastation. But first, they were going to have some fun.
The blonde vampire—nameless, created purely for looks by Ted Fuller—led the pack of vampires. They descended upon the Neo Night Club in human form and without clothes. The line outside the club gawked at what descended from the night sky. The bouncer, an Irish-American named Charlie, approached the five. “You ladies need clothes to enter here. No shirt, no shoes, no service, catch my drift? But if you want to hook up later at my apartment…”
The blonde snatched the bouncer’s neck with her claws. Her face deformed into a reptile’s, her snout convoluted, the flesh plated black, and her teeth extended as they bit down on his trachea and slurped what the jugular spat down her throat. The four others joined in, intertwining their tongues, masticating, sucking, lapping and kissing each other in their violent bloodlust for warm red blood. The blonde lifted the bouncer up by his neck and launched him across the street. The crowd dispersed immediately. Screams rocked the streets and echoed into parts of the city that had no idea the threat of monsters was so close to them.
And then an explosion rang from within the club. The front window shattered when a pelvic bone was hurled through it. Human bones served as bullets cutting through customers running from the chaos. Two eyeballs penetrated a man’s chest and spat out the other side of him. Intestines wrapped around a woman’s throat and hanged her from the street lamp. Ribs, spine, humerus, tibia, coccyx and femurs all served as anatomical shrapnel.
The blonde seized a fleeing young woman wearing a triangle-shaped, backless top. The vampire returned to human form and hugged her close to her body. She forced her tongue into the woman’s mouth, which tasted of cranberry and vodka. The woman clawed at the monster's face to escape. “Crazy bitch, no—!”
“I’ll always keep a part of you inside me.” She clamped on the woman’s tongue and reared back. The tongue tore from the stringy stump and hung limply in the vampire's mouth. She shoved the woman onto the street, her screams laced with crimson bubbling. The blonde vampire devoured the tongue, easing it down her throat.
The others went to work swooping down and wrenching heads off random partiers and spiking them back onto the road. The redhead hoisted a yellow Hummer and thrust it into four cowering friends, each college aged. They were stamped into the brick wall.
Police sirens played out against the backdrop of Chicago.
The blonde caught a shotgun blast into the side. A chunk of her spattered onto the asphalt. She lunged at the bar owner and shoved his face into her guts. “Drown inside me, baby! It’s warm just for you.”
He choked to death in minutes.
A fire broke out within Neo Night Club. Suddenly, the dead bodies on the ground jerked. The bones embedded in their heads and torsos freed themselves and flew back
Marina Dyachenko, Sergey Dyachenko