by C. T. Phipps
I immediately spun around and grabbed him, lifting him up into the air and stabbing my fangs into his neck before tearing a chunk out of his neck. Vampires could make it so humans didn’t bleed fast but, some kind of magic in the Bite, but I didn’t do it this time. Tyrone’s blood shot from his carotid artery into my mouth like a firehose. It kept spilling until his heart stopped and I ended up sucking the blood from him like a children’s juice box.
I stepped back, looking down at the dead man who’d used to play basketball a block down from my house and shook with a mixture of both guilt as well as ecstasy. He wasn’t the first person I’d killed, not even the first person I’d drained but he was the first person I’d known. It made me sick to my stomach, but the Need was quieted for a moment. The ever-present, all-consuming hunger that was always demanding to be fed only ended completely when you’d killed someone to feed.
“Jackson’s fault. This is on you,” I whispered before suddenly shouting, “Jackson! I’m coming for you!”
No answer. All of the other Knives had fled, and I couldn’t smell their wounds anymore. No one else had been killed, but some of them had gunshot wounds to the arms or legs. They’d fled the moment they’d seen I wasn’t human. Vampires were only recently revealed but it had taken a live demonstration to get them to flee. Good, I didn’t want any more mothers mourning the deaths of their children… like Damien. Like Tyrone.
Fuck.
Walking across the rat-infested hallway, I could hear the heavy breathing and smell the fear of those people hiding behind the doorways present. People who just wanted to live their lives in peace away from the worst of the violence Detroit had to offer but who had been pushed by both vampires and now gang warfare.
I heard at least one heartbeat fading away and saw bullet holes from where the people who’d tried to engage me had shot through me. Inside, I could smell death. Fresh blood that no longer pulled at the Need because I’d killed tonight. An old woman in her seventies whose body was rapidly cooling. Another innocent who had been killed because of my decision to go Death Wish on these bastards. I closed my eyes and forced that thought away.
“Keep it cool, soldier,” I said. “There’s always a price to violence.”
The door at the end of the hall, Room 33, wasn’t guarded and I shot the lock off before kicking it open. The interior apartment beyond had the lights off, and I didn’t see any sign of six guys. Instead, in there, I didn’t hear a single heartbeat or breathing, but I was too pissed off to care.
Marching down through the doorway, I ended up in the apartment living room where Jackson was sitting. He was smoking a cigarette, unarmed, and looking smug in a way a man who had just had seven of his crew killed shouldn’t. The window behind him had rain pouring down as moonlight streamed in from beyond. There were stacks of cash and an Uzi on the table in front of him. A full ashtray was there as well, full of a dozen or so stamped out cigarettes. On the wall, in red spray-paint, was Fuck the Police, Knives 4 Life.
Carl “Red” Jackson drew his name from the fact his hair was a bright shade of red, rare but not as much as you’d think for a black man, with it stylized into flat-top. The side of his face had a tattoo of a knife, and he was approaching forty even as he dressed like a teenager with ripped jeans and a Wolverine’s jersey. He didn’t look scared in the slightest. I briefly wondered what angle he was playing before deciding I didn’t care.
“It’s time to pay,” I said, tossing the shotgun on the ground. I intended to rip his throat out and drink every drop of blood in his body.
Red leaned back, chuckling. “Pay for what, Stone? Your brother? Your brother went hard and killed a member of the 88s. Wanted to be a big man and threatened the whole order. Someone had to pay the price, and I made the call it should be him rather than my brothers.”
I growled. “Lying sack. Damien told me you sent him to kill him not an hour before he was dead.”
I’d hated my brother in that moment, finding out I’d returned from watching my friends blown to pieces and having to kill my own commanding officer to discovering my little brother had become a murderer. I’d served two tours in that place, sending back every check to my family and I’d returned to find he’d thrown it away. I’d called him garbage and worse only to have those be the last words I’d ever say to him.
“And your brother was such a fine upstanding citizen,” Jackson said, crossing his arms. Not afraid in the slightest.
I almost ripped his throat out then and there. “You warped my brother. Turned him into a killer like you did the rest of my neighborhood. I’m going to remove you from this place and make it better.”
“Yeah, you just a force of righteousness now. Mister Big Bad Soldier, always trying to make us feel bad about our choices, only now you’re a murderer like the rest of us. What about Joshua? You remember him? Used to hang out at your house with Damien every Saturday. He talked about it all the time and now he’s dead. That’s on you, Stone, not me.”
He was right, at least partially, and I should have killed him by myself. I could have used my powers to sneak into his place and killed him in his sleep. I’d wanted to make a statement, though, and I still planned to. “They died because of you, Jackson. They tried to get between me and you. Where’s the rest of your thugs? You’re all alone now.”
Jackson stood up, smiling. “I sent them away, Stone. No sense in getting them killed for something I intended to handle myself. You should have just said you wanted to throw down and we could have saved the others too.”
Okay, this was all wrong. He should have been quaking on the ground, terrified of what was going to happen next. Vampires hadn’t been around long enough people could just shrug off their presence.
I took a step forward and he moved around to engage me.
Jackson continued talking. “You think you’re the Big Bad Vampire out to avenge your brother, but it’s a big world out there. You’re not the only one who has changed in recent years. How do you think I managed to get out of the system?”
Jackson’s face changed as the bones of his forehead extruded while his teeth became shark-like rather than just typical vampire fangs. Hair sprouted all over the sides of his head and palms as his loose baggy clothes became tight around him due to him gaining a foot in size as well as a hundred or so extra pounds of muscle. His eyes turned into eerie moons that caused the monster within me to take a step back. I could feel the power and strength radiating from him, every bit as great as my own.
“You’re a fucking werewolf,” I said, growling.
Jackson laughed. “Stone, I was a werewolf before your vampire sugar daddy had me sent up the river. Now I’m a vampire, and I’m going to rip your head clean off.”
I didn’t give a crap and launched myself at Jackson, grabbing the hybrid and throwing him against the wall before he grabbed me back and smashed me through the window behind him. I pulled on his shirt before the two of us went tumbling out of the window onto the ground twenty-five feet below.
The two of us landed with a thud in the overgrown muddy courtyard beneath Lincoln Park Heights. I hit the earth while Jackson slammed into a rusted, broken bicycle. I didn’t hesitate to grow a pair of iron-like claws from my fingernails and start slashing at the hybrid before he did the same, slashing a bloody ribbon across my chest.
I tried to bite his throat, only to have the hybrid slam me across the face with an elbow and sending me flying backwards across the muddy ground. Hybrids weren’t really a mixture of werewolf and vampire, you were either one thing or the other, but you maintained elements of the other if you changed. Jackson had all the strength of a werewolf added to that of a vampire and it felt like super-strength was also his power. Fuck, it was like being hit by a car just being grazed by the bastard.
“I bet you wish you’d kept your gun, Stone,” Jackson said, his voice distorted by the face a few of his teeth were missing and hadn’t yet regrown.
“I threw down my shotgun,” I said, reaching into the back
of my pants. “I’ve thrown away all of my guns.”
I pulled out two shiny Desert Eagles full of silver ammo that I’d dropped a paycheck on and started shooting into Jackson’s chest. A half-dozen bullets, walking back as I fired. I’d been Thoth’s bodyguard as well as his blood servant, and he made it a point to enchant each and every round of my weapons to make sure whatever was thrown at him by his enemies stayed down. Silver wouldn’t kill a hybrid but it sure as hell would hurt twice as bad.
Jackson howled, the agony of each bullet reflected in his cry, much to my enjoyment. I wanted him to suffer before he died. Unfortunately, I’d underestimated just how powerful a vampire he was, and he charged at me, knocking away both of my guns even as another silver bullet buried itself into his right arm.
“This is my town!” Jackson shouted, his voice quavering from the enchanted bullets burning up inside him. He grabbed me by the throat with both his hairy palms and lifted me up, squeezing. It felt like he was trying to squeeze my head clean off.
“Detroit is not your town!” I shouted. “It belongs to the people!”
“Who do you think the people here are rooting for! You? You just tore into here! They prefer me to your bosses!” Jackson shouted in my face, giving me the distraction, I needed to kick him with both my feet in the balls. “Argh!”
Jackson dropped me as I rolled around on the ground. If I hadn’t been so pissed and terrified, I would have muttered something like, “Wolfman got nards.” Instead, I crawled on the ground, going for one of my pistols that I couldn’t see in the overgrown grass around me.
I didn’t move fast enough, and Jackson was soon upon me, slamming one of his big meaty clawed hands into my stomach where he then twisted his hand. I screamed in agony as he slowly started clawing his way through me.
“I win,” Jackson hissed in my face, laughing.
I bared my fangs at him. “Fuck you.”
“Desist!” A powerful voice spoke over the field of overgrown grass.
“No!” Jackson said, crying out as if someone had just stolen his favorite toy. Yet, miraculously, he pulled his hand out of my chest.
Vampires only felt a fraction of the pain normal people felt. It was more a distinct echo of pain, existing to let us know just how much damage we’d taken but not crippling us the way it would a normal human. I, right now, was crippled by pain and was trying to hold my organs in my body even as it required every bit of blood in my body to stitch together my insides. Regeneration was a nasty, brutal process even for a vampire, and it was leaving me starving for blood. So much so I could barely hear the conversation going on beside me.
“He came in here!” Jackson shouted, pointing at me. “He came here to kill me! He killed my people! My crew! I deserve this!”
I looked over to one side and saw the figure of Enil the Second Eldest was standing next to Thoth. Neither individual had come in a car, and I wondered, for a brief moment, if they’d turned into bats before descending down or just flew here directly. I was still getting used to the fact some vampires could fucking fly and considered it to be their preferred means of travel.
Enil the Second Eldest was, I shit you not, an eight-thousand-year old vampire, at least if you believed the legends about him. He was a bald, Count Orlok-looking bastard with a scaled body and claws like a werewolf’s even without changing. He was dressed like a monk with clothing that was loose and free-flowing but new, making him vaguely resemble Uncle Fester. His inhumanity was such that it would be years before I discovered he was every bit as Black as me under those scales.
“It is forbidden to kill another of our kind,” Enil said, using deliberately accented English even though I knew he could sound like someone from the Bronx to Ancient Greece thanks to his mastery of languages. “This is our most important law. Everyone else is expendable but to slay another vampire is to die unless the law has decreed they must die.”
“He killed my brother!” I hissed at him, refusing to let it end like this.
“Your brother is from your mortal family,” Enil said. “You have a new family now.”
Both Jackson and I did not respond well to that statement, unleashing a torrent of obscenities that didn’t help the situation.
Enil walked over and placed his hand on Jackson before leading him away. “I made you, Carl. like I have made hundreds of others over the centuries. Thousands even. You are to assist in keeping the peace in the city as well as making sure ample entertainments are available to the tourists who are to come. I command you not to engage in further violence against Stone even as I insist you also clean up this mess—”
Thoth meanwhile came over me and tossed me a blood bag that I tore into like a wolf, covering my mouth with blood I licked away.
“It’s over,” Thoth said.
“It’s not over,” I hissed at him. “He killed—”
“You lost,” Thoth said, his voice cold but not unsympathetic. “If I hadn’t brought Enil here, you would be dead, and Jackson would be destroyed as your only comfort post-mortem. You are worth more than he is. Do not let yourself be destroyed for his sake.”
I tried to argue, but I found myself thinking of all those dead bodies I created to get to Jackson. “I can’t let this go.”
“Wait and be patient,” Thoth said. “Or be the better man. Your brother made his own choices and creating more corpses is sometimes the answer but not always. Take it from one who knows how sweet and horrible vengeance can be.”
How little I’d known Thoth then because he wasn’t just talking platitudes.
Chapter Eight
“Jackson,” I muttered, shaking my head. “It all comes around doesn’t it?”
I was disgusted with myself for how much I wanted to kill him. I’d had years to reflect on the deaths I’d caused and how unjust my entire quest had been. You know what had changed? Not a goddamn thing. I was still every bit as eager to rip that mangy mutt turned vampire apart as I was years ago. It kind of frightened me how much I was looking forward to it, in fact. Maybe it was because my brother’s death was one of the last things about mortality that still made me feel.
“Eventually, yes,” Thoth said, placing his hand on my shoulder. “He’s a viable suspect.”
“Why the hell would he kill her?” I said, actually interested in doing my job as bellidix rather than just jumping to conclusions. As tempting as those conclusions might be. “I mean, really, just over a book?”
“Jackson lost a lot of money with his chance of becoming famous. Not just from royalties meant for the Council of Ancients and the voivode of Texas but also from cross-promotion. He runs a music business now. That’s in addition to the businesses he owns throughout the city that paid for it.”
“Really? He’s gone Jay Z, huh?”
That made me even more irritated. I’d done my best to ignore the fact he still lived in my city, but I’d known he’d gone from being a penny ante gang boss to a man living in style. Jackson had driven out poor people from residential areas to build homes for the people who worked for the undead as well as services that catered to tourists. He wasn’t Thoth rich, anywhere near that really, but he was damn rich—certainly by my standards.
“Nowhere near as successful as Shawn Corey Carter but close enough. Jackson is unafraid of the spotlight and that allowed him to appeal to certain segments of society that are eager for any form of vampire media. There’s also the fact Rebecca Plum and he were briefly involved during her first visit to New Detroit,” Thoth said, frowning. “Back when she was still a human rather than a serial killer.”
I stared at him. “The vampire-porn writing housewife and the hybrid gangbanger?”
“Far from the strangest union I’ve encountered,” Thoth said, noncommittal. “He has the strength to have killed her that way. The Second Eldest’s bloodline has always produced incredibly powerful soldiers and his werewolf strength passed over to his undead state. Romance is also as good enough a reason to kill as any. Believe me, I know.”
&
nbsp; I paused, thinking about it. As much as it disgusted me, I didn’t believe he’d sneak into the penthouse to kill her. Mostly, because I’m sure he would have killed me if he’d found me. “It doesn’t feel right. You have no idea how hard it is saying that, either.”
I didn’t want to be reasonable, though. I wanted to track Jackson down, shoot him repeatedly, and then leave him staked through the heart with a metal rod for the sun. A part of me wanted to engage in cannibalism too, drinking his dry blood to take a portion of his power for myself.
Thoth gave my shoulder a squeeze. “It’s about the only lead we’ve got, though, and I’d rather sacrifice Carl than you if worse comes to worse.”
“Love is knowing you’ll frame a poor bastard for a crime he didn’t commit than let someone you care about go down for it. Is that it?” I now realized what Thoth was doing. It wasn’t about whether or not Jackson was guilty, it was about whether or not it was me or some other vampire. I could get behind that.
“Something like that,” Thoth said, removing his hand. “Enil is not so attached to Carl it would be a problem. Not anymore at least. He served his purpose in getting Detroit set up. Now he is just another face in the crowd.
Yeah, some vampires treated their creations like family while others treated them like employees. Temps even. This was an opportunity to save my ass as well as take down Jackson. I was impressed. “You are evil, Thoth.”
“Thank you.”
“What is Jackson up to anyway?” I asked, not really caring about who killed Rebecca Plum. I hoped they lived a long and happy unlife—as long as Yukie was alright, at least. Maybe it was just the fact I hadn’t had sex in months, but I was feeling pretty well disposed to her.
“Isn’t it your job as bellidix to keep track of vampires’ movements?”
“Yes, well, I also work nights at a gas station for crap money. Which I wouldn’t have to if I had a five-figure salary.”
“Which you’re not getting since your charge died.”
Dammit.
Thoth chuckled. “Carl Jackson has rebuilt Lincoln Park Heights as his own personal fiefdom. It has gone from being a war zone to be an upscale neighborhood for rich Detroit families. Mostly the families of Carl’s lieutenants and creations.”