CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I WAS WANDERING in and out of stores at the promenade, empty-handed. Shopping on a beautiful day neglected to make me forget what I wanted to suppress.
“Hey!” Jake, wearing a dark pair of radiator shades, caught up with me outside of a store.
“Are you stalking me?” I snapped.
“That’s not it at all.” He waved his hands in front of him. “This is a coincidence.”
“Bullshit.”
He placed his hands in his pockets. “Was I wrong in thinking we have a thing here?” He pointed to him and me. “You wouldn’t invite any random into your home, right? Plus, in the pool—”
“Is there a point to this?” Little did he know, I wouldn’t have fucked him even if Calind hadn’t interrupted us.
“A few friends of mine are hanging out at a coffeehouse on campus tonight. They don’t have to know who you are if you don’t want them to. But, I think they’d be interested in talking to you.”
“No.”
“This is coming out wrong. It’s not like we want to dissect you. I only want to hang out with you, Regan. It’s an off-campus coffee shop on the corner of B Street and Seventh Avenue. See you at eight.”
AT THE ROUND booth inside a dim coffeehouse on the corner of B Street and Seventh Avenue sat two of Jake’s friends; a bohemian woman unable to separate from her tablet and a man in thick black glasses, who couldn’t speak without looking down his nose at people.
“Guys.” Jake stood with a wide grin. “This is Regan. Regan, these are my friends, Gary and June.”
“What’s your major?” Gary asked me before I had a chance to relax.
I stood upright, ready to leave.
“It’s typical getting to know you conversation,” Jake said. “Are you too good for that?”
“It’s typical,” I replied. “I don’t do typical.”
Gary swayed his head from side to side with his mouth agape. “My God. She sounds like my sister.”
June pointed her glance from over her tablet at me. “Your sister isn’t as interesting.”
“Women always want to claim they’re different, and therefore interesting. It’s all bullshit.” Appearing smug, Gary rolled his half-full coffee mug in his hands.
“She graduated from Berkeley five years ago with a BS in computer science,” Jake informed them.
“Someone’s been nosy,” I mocked Jake.
“What do you do now, though?” Gary quizzed.
“I told you, Gary, she’s Raymond Barcel’s daughter,” said Jake “She wants for nothing.”
Tired of them behaving as though I wasn’t there, I said something to stir up controversy. “I was thinking about becoming a prostitute.”
June gasped. “She’s joking, right?”
“She is,” Gary pointed out. “She has to be joking. To suggest something illegal in most states is ridiculous.”
“What if I was serious?” I asked.
“Regan’s kidding.” Jake waved his hand over the table to calm everyone.
June’s focus bordered on unnerving. “Remember those murders? Like what happened here back in March?
Interested, I leaned across the table. “What are you talking about?”
“The Vorarei,” she replied, assuming I knew what she meant.
My eyes crossed. “The what?”
“Bullshit!” Gary spat. “They’re a myth that doesn’t exist.”
“I don’t know,” June countered. “I see here on my tablet they found another body drained of blood and vital organs two blocks from here. Exactly like the ones they found in Paris. They also found burned remains in a mansion in Singapore. The house wasn’t registered to anyone, and there are no witnesses to explain what happened.”
I snatched the tablet from her hands and scanned through her tabs containing news articles from international sites. Sure as she had said, there were bodies found with their organs missing. Every time officials discovered a body, a pile of ash was in the same vicinity. The dates and locations of the killings matched up to my travels with Calind.
And the picture of the house in Singapore? It was the exact home Calind and I had stayed in for a day.
“Tell me this is a fucking coincidence,” I mumbled.
June took back her tablet. “While we’ve had a minor break here for a while, the murders recently picked up again. Yesterday was the fifth one this week.”
“Go back to—whatever you called them—Vorarei?” I asked, intrigued.
June bobbed her head. “There are many theories on how they’re created. The theory I believe claims they’re borne from a virus that’s thousands of years old. It spreads like any virus, through the exchange of blood or sexual fluid. The virus makes the person sick before they die. It’s different because it goes beyond attacking the immune system and mutates like a virus, but also attacks the body like a disease. After they die, they turn.
“An intact Vorarei body and its victim were discovered. Because the body was intact, the discoverers caught the virus, and it’s deemed incurable.”
Gary rolled his eyes. “All unfounded conspiracies from a raving lunatic that runs a blog from his parents’ basement.”
June shook her head with vigor. “I swear I’m not making this up. I think there’s a motive behind burning the bodies.”
“Tell me more,” I urged, trying to ignore Gary’s need to shit on June’s theories.
“I wish I could.” June’s eyes settled onto her tablet. “The information I have is all I could find. Most of it is theoretical. I think the Vorarei ingest the organs and blood of their victims. The bodies are always lacking copious amounts of blood.”
“You’re ruining my desire for another scone,” Gary protested. “Change the subject.”
I couldn’t stop thinking back to what I heard on the radio awhile back, or what happened in Singapore.
“What about the lore?” I asked, indulging her since her coincidental story was interesting enough to investigate. “Anything about sensitivity to light, supernatural powers, or anything?”
“I read that daylight is more of a nuisance than anything detrimental.” June continued to be an encyclopedia of information. “It won’t burn them to ash, a pile of goop, or make them shimmer or anything. It’s just like a pale-skinned human or an albino’s reaction to light. Stings more than anything, and they can’t stay in it for long. But, again, these are theories.”
A pestering question popped up. There were too many things I’d noticed before the experience started. For instance, the crazy man gutting and burning people.
“You said something about the virus being able to mutate, to carry over into a disease? Could it cause an abnormal growth of cells? Could it look and behave like—” I paused, thinking it was impossible. If I believed her, a virus that could cross the body and system barrier could… “Could it cause cancer?”
A hush fell across the room. Everyone stared at me as if I was a double agent who blew her cover.
“Give me your phone.” In apparent paranoia, June searched around the café. “I’ll put my number in it. We can talk more about it later.”
I slid my phone over to her, allowing her to enter her number into my contact list.
“You guys are being way too spooky over some urban myth,” Gary announced. “Ladies, there’s no such thing as Vorarei. Don’t get excited over ghost stories designed to keep children tied to their beds at night.”
I’d had enough of the social experiment, likely courtesy of Executive Suites, and the information bomb. Plus, Gary was irritating the hell out of me. I left without saying goodbye.
I wandered a few feet away from the coffeehouse and sat on the windowsill of a closed dry cleaning place to light up.
I couldn’t get what June said out of my head. The small things I’d noticed and felt. The injections Calind gave me. Was it his blood? The way the people looked and behaved at Executive Suites? Everything June said and what I’d gone through had to be tied to one place: Executive Suites.
Why did I bother questioning things, as though what June said was plausible? It was supposed to all be a grand performance based on things I typed into a computer screen several months back. Well fucking done.
“Can I bum one?” Jake appeared and stood over me.
“Depends.” I expelled a ring of smoke from my mouth. “What are you going to give me in return?”
A smile I was sure he thought was seductive crossed his lips. “What do you want?”
“It certainly isn’t you.”
He glanced back at the alley and sat next to me, feigning hurt with a sad pout. “You know, her story was a lie. June is borderline mental. She was filling your head with things that aren’t true. The murders are due to a crazy serial killer. Nothing else.”
“Gary is the dumb skeptic who gets killed first,” I surmised. “June’s the smart one who knows an unbelievable amount of information to shed light on what’s going on. Are you supposed to be the voice of reason?”
“W-what?” He looked genuinely confused.
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, but maybe the two of us could hang out sometime?”
I placed myself in his personal space. “Tell me what you’re thinking about doing to my body,” I purred, aiming to tempt him. “I know you fantasize about me. You probably jacked off this morning to the memory of me naked and wet inside the pool, grinding against your cock.”
He tucked a curly strand of hair behind my ear. “You’re really hot, Regan.”
“Follow directions, Jake.”
“I—” he leaned in my ear, “really, really want to fuck you.”
I smiled, giving him a false sense of hope. “Then why were you so scared when I gave you the chance?”
“Are you going to give me another chance?”
“I was right. You’ve been kicking your own ass for being a pussy that night, hmm?” I pressed my breasts against his chest. “You have stiff competition, Jake. Competition I don’t think you could even hope to contend with. Your competitor? A stunningly gorgeous man. He’s sleek and sexy, like his expensive sports cars.
“He doesn’t have to tell me what he wants, and he doesn’t have to ask if he can have it. He takes it because he knows he can. He made the mold and broke it. No one else has a chance of fitting into it.” I was screwing with him, and loved the reaction I received.
“Goodnight, Jake.” I put my cigarette out on my stiletto heel.
“You didn’t add a ‘never’ in there.”
“’Night, Jake.” I waved to him from behind my back and continued to travel in the opposite direction.
My feet became sore from the excessive walking, searching for where I parked the car, forcing me to stomp the pavement like a giraffe. After an hour passed into midnight, I conceded that I’d lost my sense of direction, which was laughable considering I was born and raised in San Diego. Given the lack of people around and the late hour, I needed to find my wits and get my ass back into my car.
In an alley I crossed, there was a commotion on the path. Two men were beating up a helpless homeless man. I padded up the alley, grasping my pepper spray from my keychain.
“Hey, leave him alone!” I whistled to call the men’s attention away.
The heads of the men angled in my direction. As though they were animals, their eyes glinted a reflective silver. The veins on their hands were a visible sick, purplish-red hue. Blood dripped from their mouths and fingertips.
“This isn’t real,” I whispered to myself. “This is just good makeup. Don’t scream. Don’t panic. This is all a part of my experience.”
Mr. Paré’s uppity voice popped inside my head. Remembering his words did little to eliminate my fear.
The men took in deep inhalations, appearing to get high off my scent.
I realized the homeless man wasn’t actually a transient because he was wearing what used to be a nice suit. A gaping hole appeared from his chest and abdomen. He was, obviously, very dead.
My mind couldn’t keep up with my feet and like the stupid first girl to get killed in a horror movie, my stiletto heel hit an uneven patch of pavement and I stumbled, falling to the ground.
I scrambled up, ready to stand. The men were circling me now, crowding me and giving me nowhere to go.
Grayish-hued translucent skin showed every vein and muscle in their faces. Double rows of varying sized needle teeth overcrowded their mouths. Their scleras were black. Sharp, pointed nails resembled the talons of an animal, ready to tear me apart.
A quick burst of air whirled my hair around my face. I pulled the strands away from obstructing my view.
The men had disappeared.
I stood and searched around the alley. In the distance, two bodies dropped from the sky with a grotesque thudding sound as they hit the pavement—only, they were in pieces. Their heads, bodies, and limbs fell in separate directions. Jagged portions of flesh protruded from their arms and necks as though they had been ripped apart.
I covered my mouth and gagged.
A shadow of a man appeared out of nowhere and stood over the carnage. He ignited a flame without a discernible match or lighter and lit a cigarette that hung from his mouth. The light barely gave a view of the features in his shadowed face. He dropped the cigarette to the ground, and it fell on top of a limb.
Body parts went up in flames as though fueled by an accelerant. The fire burned hotter than any cigarette could ignite. Blue and black flames burned fast and hot, rendering the body parts nothing more than molten ash in moments. A strong gust of wind swept the ashes across the alley until they were indiscernible from the trash and other pieces littering the pavement.
The stranger halted at the victim’s corpse and swooped in to examine him with his head bowed. He set him on fire; his body didn’t burn the same as the body parts of the strange men.
Done with his tasks, he moved toward me. An internal voice quieted by my morbid curiosity was now screaming at me: Run, bitch, run!
The screeching of tires echoed from the other end of the alley on the cusp of the sound of police sirens. Headlights from a sleek black car blinded me. When I turned back to see ‘Captain save a stupid woman,’ he no longer stood behind me.
I ordered my steps and approached the car. A man in the backseat leaned out of the shadows to unveil his face. Upon seeing the identity of the man, my mouth drew open in disbelief. “Emile?”
He exited the car and walked toward me. I scattered backward to get away from him. “Stay the fuck away from me!”
He bent down and attempted to touch me.
I recoiled until my back ran into the brick exterior wall of a building.
“Regan, it’s okay.” His promise was soft.
When he looked back at the carnage as though it was a usual occurrence on a typical day, I questioned my sanity.
“You need to come with me.” He reached for my hand.
The police sirens became louder. Either I’d play it out with them, or him.
I slapped my hand into his and nodded my head, giving him permission to take me away.
We slid into the backseat of the car. I glanced forward, my attention landing on a driver I never recalled him needing or having.
The driver took off, navigating the roads as if he stole the car before settling on a normal speed.
Pensive, Emile stared out of the window. I touched his face to get his consideration. His skin’s temperature felt warm as always. It felt, looked, and smelled like Emile. That knowledge didn’t remove the surrealism from the ordeal.
“This isn’t real,” I said, my words breathless. “I paid for this to be real. I mean, I haven’t paid for it yet, but it’s what I wanted. It should look real, but not be real. You can’t be real because you’re a part of it, right? And, what we saw back in that alley was a makeup artist and production crew doing something award-winning, right?”
“You’re lucky I could use the device your father placed inside you. I wouldn’t have been able to find you without it because Calind’s been hiding you. It would’ve been a nightmare if the police blamed you for what happened back there.”
“Uh…you’re worried about me being arrested more than the possibility I could’ve died? Did you have anything to do with what happened in the alley? Saving me?”
“Calind may be a lot of things, from what my friend said, but I don’t think he would ever let anyone hurt you.”
“I’m supposed to believe it was Calind who ripped those men—and I use the term very fucking loosely—apart?”
“Pull off here,” Emile ordered the driver.
The driver did as told, pulling over to my car, parked just outside of the campus.
Emile leaned forward and touched my phone. “We need to talk. When can you be free?”
Why the hell was he addressing me with formality? We’d fucked like rabbits for three years straight. “Prove it’s you.” I popped open the door, keeping my hand on the handle. “Prove this is happening, and it isn’t some fucked up dream, or you won’t see me again if I can help it.”
“You were always so fucking stubborn.”
“Emile!” My voice cracked as I lost the battle against freaking out.
Emile broke his stoic composure. He waved his hand over the two front seats and a privacy glass appeared. He reached over my lap and closed the door, allowing his hand to linger on my thigh. “If I tell you the one thing you’re dying to know, I need you to get out of this car and tell no one, not even Calind, that you saw me.”
I nodded, my mind absent my body.
He set his gaze on me for the first time during the short night we reunited. “This isn’t some game, or a paid-for experience. The experience is a cover for what’s real.”
“What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” My frustration heightened my volume. “I’m freaking the fuck out because you could be lying and trying to make me believe what you want me to believe. You could be a part of it.”
“I should’ve known,” he mumbled.
He didn’t need to ask me to leave. The air in the car became stifling.
As the car drove off, carrying Emile inside, I narrowly found my sanity again.