The engine of Fenrir roared with a deep bass vibration, bouncing against the trees, breaking the suburban tranquility of the town while Lief accelerated, leaving behind Maria's house.
The night wind hit against his jacket, taking with it the residual heat and dispersing, although only partially, the waves of electric tension that still vibrated in his chest.
While he devoured asphalt, his mind rewound involuntarily the scenes of the last hour.
The images of the shameless provocation of Airam, touching his chest with a predatory possessiveness, and then, the abrupt contrast with the mortal shame of Maria.
They were day and night.
Fire and water.
Two opposite ends of the spectrum miraculously coexisting in a single body…
Lief had to admit that Airam's actions had managed to make his pulse accelerate... That type of aggressive and direct desire had a fatal attraction for any man with blood in his veins.
But he knew that, under that layer of ice and defiance, inhabited a shy soul that accelerated for a simple word of approval.
"It is really a problematic combination," he murmured with a smile while he turned the throttle fully, losing himself in the night.
...
Time on the high school campus always has a strange way of accelerating, especially when the collective hysteria of the festivities comes into play.
When October arrived, the hallways of the high school had transformed. They were no longer simple corridors of lockers, they were orange and black tunnels.
There were cobwebs covering the corners of the ceiling, skeletons hanging from the fluorescent lamps and autumn dance posters stuck on every available surface.
"Hey, Lief! Have you decided yet? What are you going as this year?"
Frank appeared from out of nowhere, wrapping his arm around his neck while he had a smile.
Without waiting for an answer, he put his hand in his backpack and took out a case, showing it with pride.
They were vampire fangs.
"Look at this! The plan is foolproof! I am going to go as Count Dracula," he said making a dramatic pose with an invisible cape. "Think about it: noble, mysterious, classic... and with that European charm that drives girls crazy. It is a guaranteed magnet."
"..."
Lief looked at him, then looked at the plastic teeth, and could not contain his laughter.
"Honestly I think that with that on you are going to look less like a seductive count and more like a squirrel with orthodontic problems," he replied closing his locker. "Besides, are you sure that girls are going to like a vampire who smells like plastic every time he opens his mouth?"
"You are a party pooper! You have no sense of showmanship," complained Frank, putting away the false teeth with indignation. "And what about you, Mr. 'too cool to dress up'? What are you going as? Frankenstein? Werewolf?"
Lief opened his mouth to answer, but...
"He does not need to dress up as anything. He is already the most perfect prey that exists."
A soft voice charged with a magnetism that penetrated to the bones, resonated just behind them.
!
Frank froze.
Jennifer had approached without making noise, sliding through the crowd of students like a predator in the savanna.
Today she was not wearing the standard school uniform. She wore an electric blue dress, short and tight like a second skin, that outlined with a criminal fidelity every curve of her body.
Since her transformation into a succubus, her physical development had crossed the line of "attractive" to enter the territory of the "supernatural."
Simply standing there, with a hip cocked, the noise of the hallway seemed to diminish.
The gazes of the male population were involuntarily dragged toward her, like iron filings obeying a powerful magnet.
Ignoring everyone, Jennifer walked to Lief's side and intertwined her arm with his with a possessive naturalness, pressing the softness of her chest against Lief's arm without any shame.
Then, she turned her head toward Frank, and slowly winked at him.
"As for me, Frank... do you think I need to dress up?"
"..."
That simple moment of concentrated charm made Frank feel like his heart skipped a beat, or perhaps two.
He stood there staring at her, completely stunned, with his mouth open, unable to form a single coherent syllable.
His brain had short circuited.
After "evolving," Jennifer's use of charm had stopped being a conscious effort to become something instinctive, biological.
She no longer needed to try to seduce. She simply existed, and every smile, every movement of her hair, every blink emanated an invisible cloud of supernatural pheromones that nullified the will of any normal man within a five meter radius.
"Come on, Jenn, do not scare him to death. Frank has a weak heart," said Lief, patting Jennifer's hand while he looked at him with a mixture of amusement and resignation.
He could feel how Jennifer's personality, fed by her new nature, leaned more and more toward the predatory. Sometimes, her frankness bordered on a level of danger that made Airam's provocations look like child's play.
After saying goodbye to a Frank who was still trying to remember how human language worked, Lief returned home.
Upon pushing the front door, he was assaulted again by a dense atmosphere of Halloween that rushed over him.
The walls of the living room were practically covered with crepe paper garlands, cutouts of bat silhouettes and smiling pumpkins.
On the sofa, the usual cushions had been replaced by versions with embroidered skulls, and the ceiling lamp seemed to have been the victim of a giant spider that had woven a web around it.
His father, John, was doing a precarious balancing act on a ladder, trying to hang a life sized witch doll on the door frame that connected to the dining room.
Below, his mother, Sarah, acted as a guide.
"Honey, a little more to the left... No, the other left! Yes, right there!"
"Oh, come on, Sarah... this witch has a kind smile," complained John, adjusting the doll's pointy hat. "She is not scary at all. She looks like she is going to offer me cookies, not curse me."
"Shut up, John! It was the last one left in the Target liquidation section!" replied Sarah, putting her hands on her hips with indignation.
Upon noticing the movement at the entrance, Sarah turned around and her expression instantly changed to a radiant smile.
"Lief, you have arrived just in time! Look at this. What do you think of the decoration? Your father and I have been working all afternoon on this."
Lief dropped his backpack on the floor and observed the chaos with a genuine smile. This slightly cheesy and familiar atmosphere brought him a certain peace.
"It is great, Mom. It looks incredible. Very... spooky," he nodded, winking at his father.
Right at that moment, the sound of fast footsteps resonated on the wooden stairs.
"Brother!"
Three small figures ran down from the upstairs floor like a miniature avalanche. Lillith, Emma, and Esther landed on the living room rug with a contagious energy.
"Brother, brother! We already have our Halloween costumes ready," exclaimed Lillith, tugging on the hem of Lief's jacket. "Do you want to see them? Please!"
Lief squatted down to get to their eye level, looking at them with interest.
"Oh, yeah? Well of course I want to. Let me see what nightmares you are going to terrorize the neighborhood with," he said, smiling.
Deep down, he had a genuine morbid curiosity. He wanted to know what kind of masks these three little ones would choose to hide (or reveal) their true nature.
After going up and changing, they came down.
"I go first!" Emma took a step forward, pushing the others aside with a subtle shove.
She wore a white doctor's coat that was a little too big for her, rolled up at the cuffs. A red stethoscope hung from her neck and she held a toy medical kit in one hand. She adjusted some thick black rimmed glasses without lenses and, adopting a rigid posture:
"I am a pediatric surgeon. On Halloween night, I am going to perform a... 'small corrective intervention' on the children who do not behave well. I am going to excise the parts that cause problems."
Saying this, she opened the plastic kit with a dry click and took out a metal letter opener.
The lamp light reflected on the edge.
"..."
Lief noticed instantly that the blade was not dull, someone had taken the trouble to sharpen it until leaving it like a razor.
His eye had a nervous twitch.
"Excellent," he commented with a smile. "Very... educational. It fits perfectly with your vocation."
"Move! It is my turn!" Esther pushed Emma aside with impatience.
She had opted for gothic drama. She wore a long Victorian black lace dress, complex and full of ruffles, and on her head she sported a small top hat with a black mesh veil that mysteriously covered the upper half of her face.
She adopted a theatrical pose, bringing a hand to her chest and extending the other toward Lief with a gesture of tragic longing.
"Oh, my poor, poor husband... Why did you leave me so soon...? You have abandoned me in this cruel world as a lonely and rich widow..."
Lief watched her interpreting the role of the "Black Widow" with a passion worthy of Broadway and a strong sensation of absurdity invaded him.
'Who is she trying to fool?' he thought. 'Or is it that she is projecting her retirement fantasies?'
"Brother, it is my turn!" Finally, Lillith made her way to the front.
In comparison with Emma's clinical psychopathy and Esther's gothic drama, Lillith's outfit was disconcertingly... bureaucratic.
She wore an impeccable gray suit vest over a white shirt, a small tie and gold rimmed glasses. In one hand she held a thick book and in the other, a calculator.
She cleared her throat with a dry sound and her expression became terrifying in a completely adult way.
"Good morning. I am an inspector from the Hell Tax Agency," she declared in a monotone tone. "According to Article 15, Section 3 of the Underworld Tax Code, we have detected an irregularity in your account. Your generated fear index exceeds the allowed tax exempt standard. You are required to make immediate payment of the terror taxes accumulated in the last three hundred years, plus late fees and administrative rates."
She paused, adjusting her glasses and looking at Lief.
"Excuse me, sir. Are you going to pay in cash... or do you prefer that we seize your soul in convenient monthly installments with compound interest?"
"..."
In that moment, looking at the three little ones standing in front of him, Lief had to fight against a wave of hysterical panic.
There they were, lined up like a trio of middle aged existential threats:
A sociopathic surgeon sharpening her knife, ready to perform a pediatric vivisection.
A black widow immersed in a melodramatic soap opera, but ready to swindle or poison the man of the house at any moment.
And, worse than any monster, a demonic tax official holding a ledger, whose only mission was to squeeze every last penny from the soul... with interest.
Lief finally could not stand it anymore. First his shoulders shook, his face turned red, and he emitted a series of contained snorts: "Pff... pf-pf-pf!"
Then, the dam burst.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
An explosive laugh resonated throughout the living room, drowning out even the silent complaint of the witch hanging on the door frame. Lief doubled over, holding his stomach and staggering, while tears escaped from the corners of his eyes as he tried to catch his breath.
Between gasps, he pointed at them.
"You... are you serious about this? Ha-ha-ha-ha! This is... this is the most perversely funny joke I have heard in years!"
The reason for his outburst was simple, although incomprehensible to the others.
The girls did not truly understand what human "terror" was, at least not in the sense of a rubber mask or a ghost sheet. They had simply brought to light the most essential and absurdly terrifying aspects of their own demonic nature, using costumes that they believed were the height of horror in the mortal world.
And this type of cognitive dislocation created a dark and absurd humor, perceptible only to Lief, the only one who knew the truth of who they really were.
?
John and Sarah stood staring at their son, bewildered by his sudden attack of maniacal laughter.
And the three girls, who were waiting with hearts full of anticipation to be praised for being "so terrifying," watched as the smug smiles slowly disappeared from their faces.
Emma's hand, which wielded the sharpened letter opener, closed tightly and a flash of clinical coldness gleamed in her eyes.
She did not like having her work laughed at.
Esther pouted.
Even Lillith noticed how the smile on the corner of her lips became rigid. She hugged the ledger tighter and approached Lief, who was still laughing so hard that he could not straighten up.
"Master... What is so funny?"
________
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