Octavia sat in the bedroom at Fancypants’ old house. She couldn’t sleep. Something was bothering her. What it was, however, wasn’t clear.
She had gone to bed, but couldn’t fall asleep. She got up. She felt like she should go somewhere. She got dressed and made the bed.
By the time she was finished, she still hadn’t decided that it was nothing. Even if she still hadn’t decided it was something, Octavia had to go. A strange restlessness had fallen on her body. She knew she should stay. Something told her she had to go.
She should have left a note or something, but decided not to trouble anyone if her feeling did indeed turn out to be baseless. However, as her feet took her all the way into town and to the train station, she realized perhaps she should have. Well, she still had her phone.
There was something wrong, Octavia thought as she rode the train south through the night. It frustrated her that she couldn’t name it. She just maintained a vague sense of unease. The others, with much more experience, had apparently not noticed so it must be unique to her.
So what was wrong with her?
She got off the train in London as the sun was coming up. Octavia searched for her sunglasses but realized she must have left them in Vinyl’s car. Her gun and her stake were in her purse, though. She also found the bottle of wakeup pills and took one.
Now that she was back in London, now what? Should she go to her flat? No, that would accomplish nothing, why come all this way? As she glanced up at the buildings outside the station, lit by the light of dawn, Octavia’s mind drifted to the knicknacks at Fleur’s place. Octavia’s argument the previous night regarding where Fleur had gotten them had not held water. But it wouldn’t hurt anything to take another look.
It didn’t occur to her what Fleur might think until Octavia was already picking the lock on her door. Even then, she didn’t stop.
Her phone rang. Octavia paused, and then decided she would rather not take any more time than she needed crouched in the hallway with the lockpicks. The phone had stopped ringing by the time she was inside, however.
Octavia glanced at it. The call had come from Vinyl. She must have realized Octavia was gone. Was she worried? Her finger hovered over the callback button, but she held off. Better to search the apartment first, so if she found something, she wouldn’t need to make a second call. It should only take a few minutes.
Octavia inspected the shiny baubles that decorated Fleur’s front room. She found the ones that she’d seen before, those made by Carousel Brass. Again, she felt like she was missing something, but couldn’t figure out what it might be.
Someone suddenly jiggled the doorknob. Octavia spun in place, the trinket in one hand, her phone in the other. The door opened and a man barged in, not looking surprised to see her.
The fog in Octavia’s mind lifted as if by magic. Her hands were already moving, dropping what she was holding and grabbing for weapons.
He crashed into her and both of them went to the floor. Octavia got her knees up and kicked him into the couch, which rolled over and knocked a swath of knicknacks off their perches.
He rolled, getting to his knees, and Octavia leaped at him. His arm caught her across the chest and diverted her attack, but he wasn’t stable enough to stay upright. The two of them landed in a heap, Octavia fighting to stay on top.
Her arm came up, stake in hand. His eyes bugged out as he saw it and he grabbed for her wrist. With both his arms occupied, Octavia delicately flicked the stake to her other hand and drove it home, piercing between his ribs and into his heart.
He expired right there. Octavia pulled the stake out and got up, sighing. She looked around. “Fleur will not be happy about this.”
She looked back down at the body. Who could this man be?
Going through his pockets, she discovered a phone. When she pressed the power button, a GPS program came up, showing a route that ended at Fleur’s place. Backtracking, she discovered his apparent starting place.
Her own phone was destroyed under the couch. There was no landline in the flat. Somehow, it didn’t seem particularly ideal to use this man’s phone to make a call. If he was after her, who knew who might be after him?
That still didn’t explain who he was or why he was here. She would have to find some other way to get the word out. In the meantime, she borrowed a packet of blood from Fleur’s fridge and downed it. Considering everything else that had happened to the apartment, that seemed like something Fleur would be most likely to understand. Octavia didn’t even take one of the good ones.
Finished, Octavia got going. She used the dead vampire’s phone to backtrack his route. Stepping out of the building, she squinted in the light and quickly made for the nearest tube station.
She sat on the train, looking around the compartment at her fellow passengers. Some of them stared back. Octavia wondered if she had something on her face, but obviously there was no easy way to check it.
Getting off at a close station, she made her way back to street level and checked the phone in her hand. She was only a few blocks away.
She looked up, spotting an open, grassy park behind a fence. It was a fair. Well, not a proper one, but there was a merry go round and a few other attractions set up in the park. It appeared that it had been there for a while.
Octavia rarely ventured into this part of the city, but she vaguely remembered hearing about this place. It was supposed to be historical. She’d never enjoyed things like circuses, so she’d never visited it before. And if vampires were hanging out at places such as this, then perhaps Octavia had been right to stay away.
The phone wasn’t accurate enough to pinpoint where the man had begun his journey to Fleur’s place. The open merry go round with its carved horses and polished brass seemed unlikely. One of the buildings, then? There was a restroom, a snack shop with a delivery truck next to it, and a larger building with a sign that read Fun House and Fine Jewelry.
It was then that Octavia’s blood ran cold, for want of a better metaphor. She recognized the man coming out of the fun house. She may not have known his name, but he had been there on Christmas Eve.
She couldn’t help her stare, and he caught her eye. The two of them faced each other from perhaps twenty meters. He was dressed in slacks with a checkered vest and wore a gold pocket watch on a heavy chain. Considering her options, Octavia decided that this was probably Carousel Brass.
He turned and slipped back inside the fun house. Octavia was after him like a bullet.
Bursting through the front door, her eyes adjusted to the dim light. She saw a display of intricate jewelry near the front counter. There was no one there, only a curtain that led deeper into the building. She threw it open. The hallway beyond appeared deserted and Octavia charged down it.
About halfway along she crashed into an unseen wall, nose bursting open like a fountain as her face caught the worst of it. Octavia fell backwards amid a rain of silvery shards of glass. A mirror - she hadn’t seen it.
Blood dripped on Octavia’s front and arms as she rolled over and got up. A fun house, this was going to be terrible.
Spotting the hidden corner she would have detected had she possessed a reflection, she cautiously eased around it, leading with one hand and keeping her stake in the other.
She tried to look for patterns in the floor or ceiling that could help judge her position relative to the walls. With her attention diverted, she didn’t see the attack until it was too late.
A polished sabre that Octavia did see her reflection in flashed out of the darkness and slashed across her torso. Her back arched away involuntarily, opening the wound. A torrent of blood - likely what she had just drank - came pouring out, along with her intestines.
Octavia went to her knees, one hand fighting to put her guts back in, the other still clutching the stake. Carousel Brass walked out of the maze, his weapon bloody and held casually in one hand.
Octavia defended herself from the floor, but knew he had far superior reach with his blade. However, as he raised it, his mobile rang.
Carousel sighed and rolled his eyes. He answered. “What?”
Octavia faintly heard a man’s voice on the other end. “Vinyl Scratch just tried to break into the shop downtown.”
Carousel considered it and then replied, “I’m on my way. Don’t do anything until I get there.”
He ended the call and put the phone away. He sneered down his nose at Octavia. “Your lucky day. Don’t worry, I can find you again.”
He turned on his heel and disappeared between mirrors.
Octavia desperately poked her innards back into place as her skin resealed across her stomach. Time was ticking away, time to follow him. She stood up, swaying from blood loss. She doubted Carousel was still in the building, but felt her way through the mirrors anyway until she was sure.
What had his call been about? Vinyl breaking in? Was she looking for Octavia? If so, where?
Back in the front room, Octavia searched for anything that might give her a clue. There was nothing in the cash register, money included. The counter had been swept clean of anything. She picked up the scratch pad and quickly ran the edge of the pencil across it, but the only depressions revealed, transferred from the sheet above, had nothing of interest.
Octavia’s teeth clenched, knowing that Carousel was likely out of her grasp by now. Frustrated, she pushed open the door and walked out into the day, squinting.
Her eyes fell on the truck parked near the snack shop. As she watched, it pulled away, having completed its delivery.
The side of the truck was painted with Mutton Chop’s Chopped Mutton & Meats.
Without making a conscious decision, Octavia sprinted for the truck, catching up just as it turned onto the street. She leapt aboard the step at the rear, hanging onto the rear door latch with her fingertips. Did the whole fair belong to Carousel? Did that make Mutton Chop, his associate, a natural choice for supplier? Either way, a piece of luck. Octavia considered the situation as she hitched a ride.
It made sense that a vampire would own a meat company. Octavia frowned. Though that didn’t explain why Mutton Chop’s other friend, Dirty Trowel, had been out seeking human blood.
To be fair, Octavia didn’t like animal blood either, feeling lethargic when she’d tried that diet. She couldn’t afford to be weak, though, and expired medical blood would otherwise just be thrown away.
She hung on as the truck drove for quite a while. Octavia casually tried to wave off other drivers, as casually as one could when sneaking a ride on the back of a truck through a busy city.
She saw the Thames and a couple of other landmarks. It seemed like they were somewhere near Custom House, possibly the industrial park between the airport and river.
The truck rolled through a gate, past a low wall that apparently surrounded the packing plant. A gate guard did a double take, stepping into the street in the wake of the truck and staring at Octavia with a blank look. Realization caught up to him and he dove back into the guard shack to call for help.
Octavia dropped off the truck and ran. There were barges at the river and a large industrial building housing the meat processing. She angled for the nearest door.
The hall she entered occupied most of the building. Octavia was momentarily disoriented by the huge space. It was surprisingly clean and a heavy smell of raw meat and disinfectant hung in the air.
There were people around, most of them in aprons and sterile gear. Octavia, not knowing who or what she was looking for, decided it was best to stay out of sight.
More calmly than she felt, she headed for where the processing machinery was thickest. Seconds later, though, a piercing alarm began to wail.
Most of the workers in sight seemed to react with confusion. Apparently this wasn’t a common occurrence. Octavia continued on as if she belonged there, but the siren was suddenly replaced with a PA announcement. “Intruder alert! Be on the lookout for a young woman.”
The voice started to list off Octavia’s physical description, but she was already running for cover. There was a chained-off staircase nearby. She vaulted the chain and ran up the steps. It led to a metal framework of catwalks that surrounded the room up near the ceiling.
Looking around frantically for a place to hide, or at least a place to put distance between herself and potential pursuers, Octavia spotted an enclosed area on the far side of the building. There were a few windows and it might have been an office. If she was going to find information on Mutton Chop anywhere, it would be there.
She pulled her pistol and shot out the nearest light. It was quite large, industrial style, and Octavia started to run, putting bullets in lights ahead of her. This had the effect of shrouding her in darkness, but also, based on the screams from below, it cleared out the workers.
She came to the end of the catwalk and vaulted over the side, hooking an arm around its supporting leg and landing on the floor. She pushed open the door of the office.
It was still industrial, but at least had a tile floor and ceiling tiles. There was an empty chair behind a desk, still spinning from recently being vacated by someone’s bottom. Perhaps they’d cleared out when the shooting began. She glanced around, spotting several filing cabinets.
She was tempted to check them for any possible information, but now that shots were fired, the police were probably on their way. She had to move fast. Octavia crossed the office and went through the door at the back of the room.
The hallway on the other side was back to industrial, full concrete. Octavia glanced side to side. Her nose picked up the smell of blood. Not unusual in a place like this...except it was human.
She traded her gun for her stake and cautiously made her way down the hall. The smell got stronger and the hallway ended at a heavily secured door. There were two deadbolts, and the door itself was thick steel set in concrete.
Octavia got to work. Her mind was focused, and she balanced speed with stealth. There was no telling what might be on the other side.
Her deft fingers picked their way through the unfamiliar locks. Octavia stood up, gripping her stake, and yanked the door open.
The seal must have been good, because the wave of air that came out at the door’s opening was absolutely saturated with blood. In fact, that much described the room beyond. It was relatively small compared to the whole building, but still contained some processing equipment and a few workers.
Only to Octavia’s horror, none of them wore protective equipment, all were doused in blood, and most were chained to their posts. Stepping into the room, it took her a moment to recognize the plastic explosive wired in blocks around the room and fused to blow inwards. They were wrapped in shiny silver balls and slivers of wood, shrapnel to kill anything.
Heads were turning as Octavia walked in. She realized not everyone was fully human-appearing. Some appeared to be werewolves partly through a change, badly deteriorated zombies, or vampires with unsightly mutations. Dirty Trowel had been lucky to merely have a few extra fingers.
And then Octavia stopped cold, staring. Her breath caught. Her hand dropped the stake as she took an unconscious step forward.
Her parents, barely recognizable, were chained size by side on the human meat processing line. Unbelievably, Silver Suture and Practice Pizzicato were here.
Octavia’s mouth dropped open as she walked forward, words she didn’t consciously say coming out. “What...mum, dad-how?”
It seemed that both of them were in a fog. They turned to her voice, eyes seeming not to see. Octavia’s gaze feel upon what had happened to them and her stomach turned in horror, a blessing that it had been emptied earlier.
Octavia’s mother had healed from her injuries, but not even close to properly. Her forearm, sundered right in front of Octavia’s eyes on Christmas Eve, had grown back in a rough, scaly skin that more resembled tree bark. The same substance began at her hips and extended down her legs, thickening as it went until her feet looked more like the base of trees. She could only move in short, slow steps.
Octavia’s father looked much the same as he had except for one glaring addition. His stomach was grotesquely distended, probably adding a few stone to his weight without affecting any other part of his body.
Octavia felt sick, and rightly so, but she still crossed the room. There was still no reaction from her parents. That somehow cut her worse than what had happened to them.
“It’s...Octavia,” she tried, attempting to keep the desperation out of her voice.
Her name inspired the biggest change in expression so far, which still wasn’t much. Her father’s eyebrows lifted slightly. Her mother slowly repeated “Octavia…?”
“I’m going to get you out of here.” Octavia knelt to the chains around their ankles. Her mother’s were cutting in as a product of her thickened legs. How long had they been here? The whole time? How had they even survived?
The chains were welded in place, no locks to pick. The next weakest link would be breaking her parents’ ankles. Octavia’s stomach turned once again, but she could see no other way to get them out quickly. She would have to find a tool or something.
A quiet murmur went around the room. Octavia looked up. A man she took to be Mutton Chop stood in the doorway. He was the third vampire from Christmas Eve.
Thoughts of escape, reminders that the police were on their way, flitted out of Octavia’s mind. Without another instant of hesitation, she launched herself across the room. Mutton Chop had probably not been surprised to find her there. Carousel had probably warned him and the sirens were hard to miss. However, he definitely wasn’t expecting a full-on assault from her.
If she’d encountered him somewhere else, Octavia probably would have used more caution. That was in her nature. But upon learning moments ago what had really become of her family, it was as if something had snapped. Mutton Chop probably didn’t even realize the amount of rage that had exploded inside her. There were too many sins to mention, too many things to take revenge over. Nothing but hate, no room for thought.
He raised his arms defensively, but her hands were already closing around his throat. As her thumbs began to press into his larynx, his arms came up between hers. There was a flash of something and suddenly she lost her grip.
He grabbed her by the front of the shirt and threw her to the side. Octavia managed to hook her foot around his waist and pulled him off balance. She crashed into the wall, ripping down some of the explosives.
She tried to unwrap the bundle of C4 and get up. Something seemed to be wrong with her hands. Looking down, she saw deep cuts on her wrists, tendons severed. Her head came up, to where Mutton Chop was just picking himself up off the floor. Bony protrusions that ran the length of the outside of his forearms poked out of tattered sleeves. It was as if he had built-in blades growing out of him.
Octavia had ignored her stake, left lying in the middle of the floor, in her rush to attack. Not that she could use it now, with most of her fingers out of commission. The bundle of wires and plastic explosive was the only thing in her hands.
The C4 putty squished between her fingers, allowed her to get a grip, even if she could barely grasp things. She got to her feet and started forward, holding the mass of wires in front of her.
“We really should have killed Fancypants when we had the chance,” said Mutton. “Barring that, we shouldn’t have let you live. He really made you his little project.”
Octavia charged again. Mutton slashed at her, but she managed to duck most of his strike, only losing a little cloth off her shirt. She twisted, throwing probing attacks at him, trying to wrap her improvised garotte around any part of his body she could reach.
Octavia couldn’t always control her emotions, but she never lost her calculation. Even with her mind clouded by white-hot fury, she kept looking for openings. She was going to destroy Mutton Chop for what he had done. Not just kill, that was far too passive a word.
As focused as she was on his arm blades, she wasn’t able to correct fast enough when he lashed out with a kick. It caught her in the gut and knocked her over the production line. She landed on someone and rolled to the floor.
Blinking at the ceiling, she realized her parents were standing over her.
“Are you all right?” her father asked.
“Octavia, what happened?” asked her mother. Both of them appeared honestly concerned, showing actual emotion.
A shadow fell over them. Mutton seized both her parents around their necks, his strength easily matching their feeble struggling. The blades on his arms rested dangerously close to their throats.
Octavia was up again, but Mutton warned her off. His threat at her parents’ throats was clear enough, but he added, “Come any closer and they die. Back off, girly. You don’t have any options here.”
Octavia’s eyes calculated the distance and what she would have to do. She flexed her fingers, wondering how much she had healed, if she could count on them. There was no time to find out.
She jumped for his head this time, her arms sliding over her parents as she tried to grapple Mutton’s face. Her parents both fell to the floor, Octavia replacing them inside Mutton’s arms. She felt scratches on her sides from his blades, but he wasn’t in a position to bring any strength to bear.
He took a step back, fighting to keep her away from his eyes. He raised his hands, and she switched her target to them, wrapping the mass of wires around.
Seized with the initiative, Octavia kneed him in the stomach to bend him over and then brought her weight down on his arms, slamming them down on the meat production line. The force coming down on the machinery shattered his bone blades, the bones in his forearms, and brought a scream out.
She grabbed the back of his head and drove it forward into the same edge, pulverizing his nose and teeth. One of the repairing tendons in Octavia’s wrists snapped audibly, but the job was done.
While he was down, Octavia turned back to her parents. They both appeared fully aware now, eyes wide and seeming to see for the first time.
“Octavia!” Her mother raised her hand to Octavia’s face, but her eyes went to her own abomination of a hand and she drew back.
Octavia wrapped her into a full-bodied hug, not caring. She partially disengaged to pull in her father and the three of them stood there for a moment. The relief, the newfound emotion flowed through her. The hardest part was remembering not to hug too hard.
“What happened?” Octavia whispered. “How are you alive?”
“I don’t remember...it’s like waking up,” her father replied.
Octavia pulled back, just enough to look into their eyes. “Did they do this? Keep you like this just to have you work here?”
“Dear, what about you?” her mother asked.
What about her? A shot of panic went through Octavia. What would they think about what she was doing? What she had become?
“I…” she began.
“We can worry about it later,” said her father.
Her mother nodded. “What matters is that you’re here. We’re together again.”
That was it, wasn’t it? Octavia blinked hard. “I love you both.”
They hugged her back.
“I need to go find something to get you free,” she said, reluctantly disengaging.
Octavia glanced down at Mutton, who was beginning to move feebly.
“We’ll keep him here,” said her father. He kicked Mutton in the ribs. So did her mother.
Octavia glanced back at her parents, unable to keep a smile off her face despite everything that had happened. Just the sight of them, even as they were, made her more emotional than she had been since, well, since she’d seen them last.
Their fingers slipped apart as Octavia backed towards the door. She had to find something to cut or break the chain. She turned and headed back out of the room, pace quickening. She had no idea where she would even find tools.
The explosion caught her completely by surprise, the flash of light, heat, and wind knocking her off her feet. A shard of wood glanced off Octavia’s temple, skinning her to the bone.
She felt blood trickling out of her ears, but her hearing had gone. It took a second to get her bearings. All light was gone, though that was more the fact that the bulbs had been destroyed than anything wrong with her eyes.
She got up, stumbling back into the room. It was filled with acrid smoke. Small drops fell on her from above and Octavia realized that it was blood.
Everyone who had been in the room, and every dead human they had been processing, had been completely shredded by the specialized explosives.
Octavia fell to her knees, splashing in blood. She crawled forward, her mind completely blank. There was no word for the emotion, because there was none. It went beyond anything she had ever felt before, so big that she couldn’t even process it. The enormous tip of an iceberg with further unimaginable, unknown depths.
Her hands and knees soaked in blood, Octavia crawled to where she had last seen her parents. They were nothing more than outlines now, suggestions of bodies. It looked like their hands were intertwined.
What was left of Mutton Chop was also nearby. They’d held him here, one last thing they’d done for Octavia.
“Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all” may have been true, but Octavia wasn’t sure she could overcome losing people so important to her twice. It felt as if a widening pit of despair had opened in her stomach.
Where was her stake? Could she use anything else? Could she throw herself from a high place? Could she just die right here and now to keep from feeling this any longer?
The sunlight. If she could get outside, eventually she would burn. Octavia didn’t consider how long, or who might see her in the meantime. Sun was bad for her because she was a vampire.
She got up, swaying and moved down the hallway, leaving bloody footprints behind. She pushed open a door and was hit in the face by the sun. She just closed her eyes and kept walking.
Sound had started to come back. Faint sirens, maybe even a helicopter. Octavia didn’t stop walking.
When she stumbled the first time, she almost didn’t get up. But it wasn’t as if the pain could be any worse. She kept going.
The second time, though, was just outside the meat plant compound and Octavia didn’t care anymore. She rolled over, getting out of the street so she wouldn’t be seen.
It hurt worse than any injury Octavia had received in the last two years of bloodshed. Why was this so much harder the second time? Why was she so much more emotional now?
Octavia realized she was crying and wasn’t surprised in the least. She let the blood leaking from her eyes run down across her cheeks. It didn’t matter anymore.
Her existence prior to today, was, at least, stable. How could that be possible? How could she have been able to function after what had happened? How could she hope to now?
Octavia had never been close to anyone. Truthfully, even though the love was there, she hadn’t really been close to her parents, either. She was solitary. She always had been. Staying singular had kept her from getting emotionally invested.
Octavia stared at the ground between her legs, watching drops of blood fall into a pool. What was the biggest change in her life since Christmas Eve? How had she survived?
She lifted her face at the sound of footsteps. Bloody tears dripped from her eyes, though her expression changed as she saw who it was.
Octavia sniffed and blinked, straightening her back and doing her best to appear composed. That wasn’t going to happen, not with everything she had gotten stained by, but Vinyl pretended not to notice.
“Hey,” said Vinyl softly, kneeling beside her. She touched Octavia’s shoulder.
Octavia leaned into her, and began to cry again.