Stake

by Kevin J. Anderson

  He kept staring at her with intense blue eyes. ‘I am no threat, I promise. All my deliveries are logged by the company. It would just be nice if—’

  ‘Keep the change.’ She thrust the twenty-dollar bill into his hand and closed the door in his face.

  Her pulse was racing. What was going on? She was jittery because of reading about hidden vampires, stake murders, and Bigfoot assaults. She’d seen too many movies, knew too many superstitions. Vampires couldn’t enter a house unless they were invited in. Wasn’t that what the legends said?

  She locked the door, threw the deadbolt, wondering if the pizza man was still standing out there, inches from the door and waiting for her to change her mind. Lexi realized she was spooking herself.

  She picked up the pizza box, no longer hungry after all. She put the entire thing in the refrigerator.

  SIXTEEN

  Detective Carrow felt little sympathy for a scumbag meth dealer. Patric Ryan was a known quantity, slimy enough to slip out of any significant jail time because evidence disappeared and charges were dropped – usually because his victims were also his customers, and preferred to remain customers rather than see Ryan in jail. Carrow knew he was a bad man.

  Still, seeing the partially decomposed head tangled in the weeds made him feel a little sorry for the creep.

  The steep bank of Monument Creek was rocky and cluttered with scrub brush and urban flotsam. Carrow worked his way down from the bike path above, grumbling. From the greenway trail, a jogger had spotted feasting crows in the underbrush at the bottom of the incline, thinking it was an odd piece of washed-up garbage. Patric Ryan was a different kind of garbage, but that was Carrow’s opinion.

  By the time Carrow arrived, the crime-scene techs had already worked their way down the embankment to the muddy drainage. Monument Creek and the greenway trail wound through downtown Colorado Springs on the east side of the Interstate. At this time of year the water was mostly a trickle, though a late-season storm a few days ago had increased the flow – enough to wash a severed head downstream.

  Planting his left shoe on a stable boulder and his right on the gravelly mud of the bank, Carrow bent closer to the bloated head. After the decapitated body had been identified by fingerprints, he had seen Ryan’s face on his rap sheet. The decomposing face bore little resemblance to his mug shot. The jellied eyes were mostly gone, pecked by scavenger birds, and teeth showed through drooping lips. His shaved head was still wrapped in a tight skull-and-crossbones bandana.

  ‘Drug dealer,’ Carrow muttered. ‘Call central casting.’

  Beside him, Mel let out a deep chuckle and grinned with his big porn-star mustache. ‘Good one, Detective.’

  A second crime-scene tech strung yellow police tape around the vicinity, even though no casual curiosity seeker would wander down the embankment to have a look. Carrow looked up and down the watershed, heard the trickle of the stream, the rustle of dry weeds. Crows cawed in the bushes, impatiently waiting for the humans to leave so they could get back to their feast. The head was far from where the rest of the body had been dumped, and enough time had passed that he didn’t expect to find any peripheral evidence.

  With gloved hands, Mel pressed against both sides of Ryan’s head, careful to keep the bandana in place as he rocked it back and forth to loosen it from the mud, grimacing. When he lifted the head free, it made a slurping sound. ‘Ewww.’

  The second tech came forward with a plastic evidence bag. ‘Trick or treat.’ Mel dropped the head in and sealed the bag.

  Carrow listened to the hum of traffic from I-25 not far away. Cyclists whizzed past on the greenway path above, but he saw no one else down by the water. Groups of homeless sometimes camped out of sight in the weedy barrens on land that no one else wanted.

  Whoever had decapitated the meth dealer had dumped his body among the weeds. Either the head had been washed downstream or someone had moved it. Carrow decided to canvas some of the homeless downtown, see if they had witnessed anything, but they would probably be afraid if a thug like Chop Chop was murdering people like Ryan and Stallings. The brutality of the act left Carrow uneasy. Maybe the next victim wouldn’t be such a scumbag.

  In the autopsy room, the coroner removed the head from the plastic bag and propped it in an empty plastic tray the size of a litter box. Orla Watson hummed as she regarded the specimen. ‘Want me to remove the rest of the body from the refrigerator? Just to make sure the stump ends match up, Part A and Part B?’

  ‘Don’t make my life more complicated. Is there any doubt the head belongs with that body? Do we have other unidentified headless corpses lying around?’

  Watson gave him a thin smile. ‘Just want to take care of every detail, especially right before the election. I’m the best coroner El Paso County’s ever had, and I want to keep my job for a few more years.’ A few of her campaign lawn signs remained in the corner of the room.

  He tried to sound enthusiastic. ‘You’ve got my vote.’

  ‘Stupid politics,’ she muttered. ‘Is a coroner supposed to shake hands and kiss babies on a campaign? It seems ridiculous. Walter was even going to write a catchy little jingle to run on the radio.’

  What an awful idea, Carrow thought. ‘Can’t wait to hear it.’

  Watson bent toward the head and used forceps to peel back the bandana, removing the fabric from the discolored skin and setting it aside. She took photos, poked and prodded the scalp. Shifting position, she looked at the ragged neck. ‘The killer used two different blades, which I already determined by analyzing the opposing stump on the torso. His throat was sawed with a large sharp knife, but the spine was probably too hard to cut through. Looks like a hatchet was used to finish the decapitation.’

  ‘The right tool for the right job.’

  With her gloved fingers the coroner pulled back the lips, tapped the teeth, then pried open the jaw. The tongue was swollen, but Ryan’s mouth was not entirely empty. ‘Maybe something interesting.’ She inserted her narrow forceps into the mouth cavity and probed around. ‘What is this, Silence of the Lambs?’ She withdrew a soft, yellowish object about the size of a hazelnut. ‘Several of these in there.’

  Carrow came closer. ‘What is it?’

  Intent on her work, Watson used the forceps to remove three more pale lumps. ‘I believe they were inserted post-mortem. Not likely he kept them in his mouth as his head was chopped off.’

  Carrow felt a chill as he thought of the violent message the killer might have been trying to send. ‘Like a mobster stuffing a severed penis in a victim’s mouth.’

  ‘Might be the same sort of thing, Detective.’ She poked the objects with the tip of the forceps. Despite the sickly smell of decay, she leaned closer and inhaled deeply. ‘It’s garlic, I think.’

  ‘Garlic? Who would stuff garlic in a victim’s mouth?’

  Watson turned to him with her owlish eyes. ‘You know what that means, of course.’

  ‘A mouth full of garlic? Is it the Italian mafia?’

  The coroner rolled her eyes. ‘Cutting off the head and stuffing the mouth with garlic? Doesn’t that sound at all familiar, Detective? It’s purported to be an effective means of killing a vampire.’

  ‘They teach you these things in coroner school?’ He looked at the head and the garlic cloves at the bottom of the tray. ‘I won’t deny that beheading is effective. Sort of an all-purpose solution.’

  The coroner paused impatiently, then prodded, ‘Hello, Detective? Vampires?’

  He thought again of the severed hands and feet of Chop Chop’s victims, who had been forced to stagger and crawl on their bleeding stumps before they finally died. ‘A sick drug lord is easier to believe.’

  ‘Even after the stake through Stallings’ heart? I think the message is that the killer believes in vampires. Or at least wants someone to think he does. Run an internet search and brush up on your vampire lore. You might need to know it.’

  Her words triggered a connection in his mind. ‘Wait – after the Stall
ings murder, we did get a crank call on the tip line. I think the caller even mentioned the beheading, trying to draw a connection between the two cases. She said to look for garlic if we ever found the head.’ He looked over at her desk. ‘Can I use your computer?’

  ‘Just don’t play games on it.’ She went back to studying the head, which seemed to fascinate her.

  Carrow accessed his CSPD account to review his case records and the logged tip-line reports. ‘Here it is, someone offering a handy list of ways to kill vampires.’ He had skimmed the tip when it came in, but dismissed it. ‘Alexis Tarada, a vampire enthusiast who wants to be a helpful citizen.’ Tarada had even included a link to her website. He clicked on HideTruth.

  When he saw the home page filled with conspiracy theories, his shoulders slumped. ‘Crap almighty, you’ve got to be kidding me.’

  SEVENTEEN

  So many targets to choose from, but Helsing had to hunt carefully. He needed to be sure.

  After leaving the VA hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area, he wandered from place to place. Making his way down across Arizona and Texas, then up to Colorado, Helsing had killed lampir, disposed of the bodies, wiped everything clean, and moved on. For a long time, he called no attention to his work. The fact that his vampire killings had caused no uproar made him certain he was right. When no one reported the disappearances, to him that meant the vampires themselves were helping cover it up in order to maintain their low profile.

  From the start, Helsing had considered this his private war, but now he wanted other people to know about the threat. Change of tactics. He had left the staked body of Mark Stallings where it would be found, as well as the decapitated drug dealer, an insidious monster who addicted his prey so he could feed on them more easily. Once the vampire threat became obvious to the public, the sheep in Colorado Springs might awaken to the danger lurking among them.

  Unfortunately, by making his crusade more obvious, he also let the lampir know that someone was hunting them. They would be wary, which would make them more and more difficult to kill. Helsing doubted the vampires knew his identity. Yet.

  He’d gone back to the Rambler Star Motel as his base, though he was careful not to grow too comfortable there. He didn’t mind sleeping in the homeless camps, but he needed certain tools and resources to do his work. Searching on the room’s old computer, he had narrowed down his leads. Next, he set about conducting careful in-person surveillance to focus his list of potential targets even further. Using the creaking laser printer, he had assembled a large file of evidence and potential targets in a manila folder. He had eliminated more than a dozen possibilities already, which only made him more certain about the names that remained on the list.

  As dusk set in outside, he sat on the corner of the bed with the wastebasket propped between his knees. After collecting several pine stakes taken from the scrap pile of the lumberyard, he sharpened them with his large knife. He sat in absolute silence, not turning on the television; he didn’t care about the news or any kind of entertainment.

  Each stroke of the long blade curled off a ribbon of wood, honing the stake to a deadly point. The smell of the fresh pine reminded him of learning woodcraft with Lucius out in the forest.

  Before joining the Bastion community, Helsing had survived for a long time on his own. He knew how to find food and shelter, day by day. He had panhandled, harvested dumpsters, found help among other down-on-their-luck people. Members of the Bastion, though, were not unfortunate, but rather a network of like-minded people who had chosen their way of life in order to survive any number of imminent catastrophes they feared. Helsing was part of that extended family, but he worked solo. Ever since his ordeal in Bosnia, he realized how few people understood the magnitude of the lampir threat.

  He scraped with the knife again. The edge was razor sharp, and the soft pine was like butter. He finished one stake, rolled it over in his palm, and concluded that the wicked tip would penetrate a vampire’s heart. He set it on the bedspread and picked up the next piece of wood.

  That afternoon he had gone to the Pikes Peak Library and taken advantage of their public internet access to post as Stoker1897 on HideTruth. Though he found the site users interesting, he placed little stock in them. Most were lunatics who believed in nonsensical conspiracy theories, but he only needed to convince one or two to help him on his mission.

  Alexis Tarada seemed sympathetic to his postings and unlike many people she actually had an open mind. She had even defended him in a couple of flame wars when other users disputed his conclusions. She was skeptical herself, but out of caution, not foolishness. Helsing was keeping an eye on her. If he could convince the right people, he might even encourage government action and maybe the FBI would begin an all-out vampire eradication program.

  Unless there were already vampires inside the FBI, and other branches of government …

  From his research and observations, Helsing suspected that a highly influential king vampire had a lair in Colorado Springs, manipulating his minions, pulling puppet strings. Helsing had to be careful about trusting anyone.

  He had been mocked too much because of his experience in Bosnia. He had learned the true nature of the threat, the lampir, but when he tried to discuss the danger with his superior officers, he’d only received looks of patronizing sympathy, even scorn. His case was transferred from person to person, until he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and paranoid delusions. A nutcase. The military considered him an embarrassment and didn’t want him telling his vampire story to anyone, so they did what they could to hide him from sight.

  Around the same time, another American serviceman, Captain Scott O’Grady, had been shot down in the Balkans. He had survived for a week in the dense forest, eating bugs, running from enemy Serb fire. After Marines rescued O’Grady, he was welcomed home as a hero.

  But poor David Grundy received no compassion, no hero’s welcome, no crowds clamoring for his story. He’d come home a mess, bounced from one VA hospital to another.

  He had grown up in a military family, and his parents were not warm people. His father was tough as nails, an officer who never missed a chance to point out his son’s inadequacies. His mother was also judgmental, without a maternal bone in her body.

  Just before Grundy was sent to Bosnia, his father was diagnosed with colon cancer and tried to tough it out, insisting that he was going to beat the disease, but he died even sooner than the doctors predicted. Soon thereafter, his mother got herself a new husband along with two more acceptable, full-grown children. When Grundy came back from Bosnia damaged from his terrible experience, she abandoned him – filing her son in the same memory drawer as her first husband – and moved on with her new life.

  The VA hospital’s universal solution was to treat returning soldiers with plenty of drugs, prescription after prescription. In California, they gave him therapy to deal with his nightmares. When the doctors insisted that his convictions were just delusions, he had snapped at them, ‘Your therapy assumes that there’s nothing real to fear. But what if there is?’

  Sitting face to face with one psychiatrist, he hoped to make a compelling argument when he told the story of Herbert Mullin, a serial killer who murdered thirteen people in the San Francisco area in the 1970s. The killing spree had garnered a great deal of media attention. Mullin hadn’t launched the killing spree out of any sort of sadistic pleasure; rather, after receiving a ‘vision’, he was absolutely certain that a devastating earthquake was about to strike northern California, which would destroy the Bay Area and kill hundreds of thousands. The only way to prevent the quake, according to his vision, was to make thirteen sacrifices. Mullin blatantly murdered the appropriate number of people, making little effort to cover his tracks. And when he was done, having accomplished his purpose, he surrendered himself to the authorities. He had done what he felt was necessary.

  The VA therapist researched Mullin and came back with a counter-argument. ‘Mullin was sentenced to life impri
sonment, Mr Grundy. He was found to be insane.’

  Grundy leaned forward, jabbing a finger toward the man’s sagging face. ‘Maybe, but no earthquake devastated northern California, did it? What if Mullin wasn’t crazy? What if his vision was a true premonition? What if he was right? Yes, he was a murderer, I don’t dispute that. He killed thirteen people. But what if he saved countless thousands by doing so? We’ll never know.’

  The exasperated therapist wrote something down. He did not look convinced.

  Grundy was institutionalized for several years, received countless psychiatric evaluations. They covered up his story – probably because he knew the truth about the lampir. Eventually, he was released from the VA hospital when there was no more funding and no more interest in treating him.

  That was only the start of his crusade.

  In his mind he became a new person, Simon Helsing, and began his real life’s work. After wandering and working for years, one day while eating lunch at the Colorado Springs mission, he had met Lucius, and a new doorway opened for him. He told Lucius his fears and his mission. He found the Bastion and his calling.

  The knife scraped down the pine, finishing another sharp point. He set the completed stakes aside, five of them. He would also hone the edge of the hunting knife, in case he decided to cut off another head.

  Brushing pine shavings off his jeans and tidying around the wastebasket, Helsing went to the desk, opened the manila folder, and reviewed possible lampir.

  It was time to get rid of another one, before they killed again.