Only At Night update

I was overcome with worry. If I was virtually wetting myself over the madness going on outside, then knowing that sweet, delicate Carina—that warm flesh I’d been tenderly spooning all through my sleep—was out in the thick of it… well, it was unbearable. I had to know. I had to see. 

The impact had actually buckled the metal enough to rip it, a small split in the bodywork that let in the light from outside. I went to that tear and looked outside. How to describe what I saw? 

Real speed isn’t something you see often. Maybe, at a distance, a plane or a car, but they’re cold and dead—no sign of reflexes, no sense of quickness. They move in straight, orderly lines and their speed ramps up calmly from a crawl to a jog, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

Carina and the vampires weren’t at all like that. They had that animal stillness, that curious waiting where they were truly unknowable. Why would Carina stop in the middle of a frenzied attack and just stare at the vampires, padding a few steps this way or that, thinking alien thoughts, experiencing indescribable sensations? Why would the vampires hold still, as if daring Carina—the thing that had been Carina—to attack them, or almost seeming to give up the fight before rushing back to it, like they were all pieces in a game of Chess being played at random? 

I could only imagine they were fighting on a level, a plane of existence I couldn’t even perceive—like some comic book where characters jumped out of their bodies and flung their astral selves at each other. Not literally, but in nuances of body language and smell and, I don’t know, thermal vision that I was deaf, blind, and dumb to. There was a conversation going on in this group and I couldn’t speak the language—I couldn’t even make out the sounds.

It was all like some intricate ritual. I saw two vampires make for Carina. She swiped at one and he somersaulted over her claws. The other rushed in, trying to hit her blind spot, but Carina whirled on him and seized him in her jaws. They locked into his shoulder with a crunch and then she bodily picked him up and thrashed him around, his flailing body hitting the first vampire and knocking him back. 

There was no build-up, no lagtime—when the vampires moved, they were a sudden blur of quickness, and Carina was just as blink-of-the-eye fast. She turned the vampire she’d bitten into a bone-jarring vibration, snapping things all up and down his body like she was beating a rug, before she let go of him and he rolled across the floor, blood pouring from the gaping wound in his shoulder. It was so big that it was like he’d been bisected, one half of his torso flopping around like a shirt he had taken off but whose sleeve was clinging to his wrist. 

Then again the stillness, almost a confusion, this… Japanese tea ceremony as he bled, Carina licked her chops, and the vampires stood there, thinking whatever they were thinking. They hissed. Carina growled. One dashed at her and she ripped his head off his shoulders with one swipe of her claws. I watched it arc through the air, little pink drops of blood spraying from the severed neck like a ruptured aerosol container, and it came down out of my line of sight with a wet smack—like throwing a wad of wet paper towels at something.

The vampire still stood there, headless, blood flowing soundless from the hole where his head was meant to go. This seemed to kick the game into overdrive. The two remaining vampires hissed at ear-splitting levels, while Carina let out a howl—part victory, part threat. The headless vampire shuffled on his feet, like a wallflower trying to join in at the edge of the dance floor, and I was still looking at him, boggled that he hadn’t fallen over, when the last two vampires went in on Carina. 

I almost missed it—they were there and then they were on top of Carina, plowing into her, knocking back her seven feet of werewolf muscle. I felt like I was watching two jackals wear down a lion. She teetered, staggering drunkenly under their weight, but in one smooth movement she recovered her balance and snagged one of the vampires with her claws. In a flash she had pulled him off of her body and slammed him down into the pavement, cracking it and shattering him, a pink mist hanging over his broken body like a funeral shroud. 

The last vampire redoubled his efforts, digging his fangs deep into her furry pelt, and Carina roared in pain before she caught him with her claws and raked them over his back. It split his flesh right open in five jagged ravines, his blood spewing out—her middle finger snared one of his rib bones and plucked it out of his torso in exploded pieces. The vampire kept his fangs sunk in, like a rattlesnake that keeps biting after you cut its head off, while also driving his right fist into Carina like a jackhammer trying to break her down. But he pulled back his fist too far for the wind-up; Carina twisted her head around, caught his wrist in her jaws, and ripped his arm right out of its socket. 

That took the fight out of him. He let go of his hold on her, falling into his own stumbling, drunken dance on the pavement, and Carina took a moment to literally lick her wound before she reacquired the vampire and pounced on him, driving him into the pavement so hard that he literally burst. I finally looked away, though I could still hear her savaging him outside of the van. It sounded like a terrier taking down a rat. Exactly like a terrier with a rat.

Then came silence. Only it wasn’t. Even if it was only echoing in my head, I could still hear blood dripping, throats gurgling, the gases of punctured innards steaming into the atmosphere. I didn’t want to hear it, but I couldn’t resist straining my ears, trying to pick up every facet of the carnage’s aftermath. How could I not want to hear people dying, as morbid and terrifying as it was? However much I didn’t want to, there was a part of me that did, and it was able to overrule the rest of me and make me listen, right up until the side-door slid open, creaking and groaning as it was forced back into place despite the damage done to it.

Carina stood there. She wasn’t a werewolf any longer—not on the outside, at least. Her clothes were shredded, showing off her body, and she was covered in blood, even viscera, like she hadn’t taken even a moment to wipe herself off. She didn’t appear to mind or even notice being covered in a layer of gore, having its steaming heat hissing off of her exposed curves, her erect nipples, her heaving breasts. I saw her tongue emerge from her mouth and lick away a tendon that was stuck to her cheek like it was a spot of ketchup. God help me, it looked cute.

“Drive me out of here,” Carina said. “We need to be gone.”

I numbly turned on the ignition and went through all the motions of driving the van, unthinkingly driving it towards my place. Carina opened up her glove compartment—she had towels, rags, a bottle of water, and a tightly bundled flasher coat. First, she washed her mouth out with the water, spitting it out the window. Then she wet down a towel and dragged it over her face, cleaning off her bloody jowls before using the rags to wipe off the rest of her body. I was taken aback. She had all that stuff in her glovebox—what was it for? This? Maybe she was used to killing deer or something. I forced my eyes onto the road. The last thing we needed now was a car crash.

Another thought struck me, though, my mind going over what had happened like a tongue probing a split lip. “Are they dead?”

Candice laughed. “Only if they need necks to live, dude.”

“I’m serious,” I insisted shrilly. “They’re vampires, right? Don’t you need to… cut off their heads and stake ‘em through the heart and… something called a holy wafer, I think…”

“If they were master vampires, maybe. Those guys were basically humans with complexion problems. They’re dead. Deader.”

I had to make another effort to keep my eyes on the road—I could see her reflected in the windshield glass. She had scrubbed herself of a lot of blood, though leaving some behind like smeared lipstick all over her figure, and now she shrugged into the coat to cover what she couldn’t clean. “You’re very calm about this.”

“Relax,” Carina told me, reaching out and patting my knee. I felt like a dog was laying its snout on my leg. “I’m not a mad dog killer. We were defending ourselves. Those guys were assholes.”

“Shouldn’t we go to—”

“Anyway, it’s not like they were people. They’re vampires. You take a poll, a third of everybody will think we did the world a favor.”

“Shouldn’t we go to the cops?” I insisted.

Carina buttoned up the coat over her half-naked body. “You think a werewolf’s going to get a fair shake? Especially with four vampires down? No. But the cops won’t go out of their way to solve this one either. No Breathers Involved. We just keep our cool, pretend we weren’t here, and it all blows over. Red light.”

I didn’t know what she meant.

“Red light, Ivan!” she cried, and I realized I was about to shoot us right through a busy intersection. I slammed on the brakes, rocking us both forward as we came to a stop. It wasn’t the most graceful manuever, but we didn’t get into a T-bone collision.

For a moment, Carina regarded me curiously, and I remembered how she’d held herself still in the middle of the fight, just waiting. Then she leaned over to me, putting her fingers in my hair and pulling our faces together at the forehead. She looked me in the eyes, her nostrils flared, and then she kissed me, shoving her tongue into my mouth. I thrust mine against hers, filling her mouth as she filled mine. We struggled with our tongues as Carina dropped her hand to my crotch. I wasn’t hard, but it was easy for her to make me so—I grunted into her mouth as I felt myself hardening. She shoved her tongue deeper as she stroked me hungrily. 

“They were going to kill you,” she said. “You just need to remember you’re alive. Take me somewhere I can fuck you.”

“What about my place?” I asked, my voice heavy, feeling her lips against my neck with the heat of her breath flaring every second. She picked at my top button, pulling at the flap of fabric its undoing released. 

“Mmm. I’ll get to see how you live when you’re not expecting company,” she said consideringly. “Better hope you’ve vacuumed.”

The light bathed us in green. I settled into my seat as I pumped the gas and Carina curled up in her own, albeit leaning over to rest her head on my shoulder. She rubbed her head against my bicep and unbuttoned my shirt by feel. She ran her fingertips along my chest as I drove us onto the highway.

“Thanks,” I said finally. “For back there. I guess I was being ungracious. I’m just not used to… gizzards and shit.”

“It’s an animal thing,” Carina reasoned. “Someone steps up to you like that, one of you has got to go.”

“Or four of them.”

Carina chuckled and ran her fingers sensuously through my chest hair. “Like I said, they were low-level guys. Probably no real mojo in any of them. I wouldn’t expect any blowback.”

Yeah, she said that—we had no fucking idea.