InsistentHunger

by Lyn Gala

  “So they aren’t all….” Paige stopped and swallowed even though her mouth had gotten uncomfortably dry.

  “Pathetically easy to kill? Terrifying? Ugly? You have to give me a hint where you’re going with that.”

  Paige had to consider that for a second. “I expected something more impressive.”

  He leaned against the wall, his loose limbs arranged so that he could launch himself off the wall at a moment’s notice. Definitely military. “Some are impressive. Some are damn near impossible to kill. The new vampires they were making here—who knows how strong they are. If we’re lucky, we have a few more foot soldiers like that one I killed out there.”

  “So you’re hunting them?”

  “Someone has to,” he agreed. “Name’s Jim. Retirement got boring, so I took up hunting.”

  “You hunt vampires.” Paige said it out loud just to see how the words sounded. They sounded insane.

  “Vampires aren’t as common as you’d think given the number of dumbass television shows and books that try to make them out to be undead heroes, but you get nests and clusters like the one you folks have going around here. And given the mess in that room, we have more now.”

  “I’m—”

  “Paige Silver. I know. You had your partner go missing last night.”

  Paige tightened her hand on her gun and glared at him. “No offense,” Jim said, raising his hands. “I just keep an eye on the locals when the vamps go making a nuisance of themselves. Most times they’re quiet as church mice, but grabbing a cop is not exactly quiet. That’s assuming the vamps were the ones that snatched him up. So, what are the odds that the ceremony in there included your partner?” Jim watched her without a single emotion showing through his impassive face. He had to be about her age or a little older, so if he was retired already, that suggested military. Active duty soldiers could take retirement around forty.

  Paige glanced at the symbols painted onto the old floors. “This is how you make vampires? I thought there would be more biting and less with the magic symbols.”

  Jim watched her for a second and Paige was afraid she’d given too much away. Too late she realized that her uniform top still had the bloodstain on the arm that the captain had noticed. However, Jim didn’t seem to spend any time staring at it.

  “If biting made vampires, I would have been dead a long time ago. Or undead. See this?” He pulled one sleeve up to show a nasty semicircle scar. “A vamp bit nearly down to the bone. Another one caught me here.” He turned and pulled up the bottom of his sweater to show her an even more vicious one low down on his side. The ragged white edges of the scar looked like a tangled mass of tiny railroad tracks. “This one was a bugger to kill,” he said, twisting so that Paige could get a better view of the mark. “He was so young that when I staked him, he left a rotting corpse behind. Let me tell you, I prefer the older ones, the ones that just vanish into dust.”

  Paige leaned back against the rotting wall and tried to get her brain to actually sort through all the information. She should call for backup and get Forensics over here to see if there was evidence of Brady in the room. Drops of blood decorated the center of the floor between the strange symbols and her gut said that a good number probably came from Brady.

  These assholes had tied him, dragged him in here when he was dead or dying and then turned him into something demonic. But bring Forensics in here and they were going to get it all wrong. They were going to start blaming gangs or Satanists or something that wasn’t a vampire.

  Jim cleared his throat and Paige looked up, her heart pounding with panic at the thought that she’d stopped watching him for so long. “Look, if you don’t want to get dragged any farther into this, you should just walk away now,” Jim said in a gentle voice. “Trust me, one more hunter won’t make any difference and this is…” He looked around at the ratty old room. “This is just business as usual. They’ll make a few vamps to reinforce their numbers, eat a few homeless folks and then wander away. You don’t need to get involved.”

  “Yes, I do,” Paige said without explaining that she had a vampire in her basement at home.

  “No, you don’t,” he disagreed. “This is more than you bargained for, so do yourself a favor and walk away.”

  Paige stood up straight and holstered her weapon since she was pretty sure they were on the same side. That’s when she realized she’d dropped her cell phone at some point. Great. “I need to know what happened here,” she said in the no-nonsense tone of voice that always warned the guys at the station to stop screwing with her.

  “They made vamps. They probably meant to make more, but then we just killed the sentry.”

  “And?”

  “And you don’t need to know any more.” Jim’s tone warned her off, but Paige wasn’t used to letting other people stop her from doing what she wanted. A therapist would probably say she had authority issues. And she did. She liked her own authority, but she got twitchy when someone she didn’t know or trust tried keeping information from her. That was just the way she was built. If this guy tried hiding information, he was going to find out how much of a bitch Paige could be.

  “I’m already in this. I’m a cop and that probably was my partner in there last night. So either start talking to me or I’ll run you in.” Reaching down, she rested her hand on her gun, aware that she didn’t have backup, and this wasn’t some helpless drunk she’d picked up on a sweep. This man was used to hunting vampires, and while vampires were a little less impressive than she’d thought, it meant he was used to resorting to violence to get his way.

  Instead he grinned. “On what charges?”

  “Threatening a police officer with a weapon and sounding like a fruitcake. The first might not be true, but trust me, the second one is.” In twelve years, Paige had never threatened anyone with false charges, but unusual circumstances called for a little more creativity. She figured her ethics were intact unless she actually did charge him.

  Instead of looking threatened, he had the nerve to grin at her. “Are you really sure you—”

  “Talk.”

  He crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. “He was more than a partner, wasn’t he?”

  “Not your business.”

  Jim nodded. “He’ll kill you if you find him. Vampires aren’t human anymore. The blood—it’s only one part of the ceremony. They tie the victim down in the center of a magical circle and use an incantation to remove the last lingering bits of soul from the body. It’s the same type of magic some shamans use to go on spirit quests. If you can catch them at this point, the spell will eventually fade and the soul and body will reunite.”

  “He was alive?” Paige asked.

  “They like to feed on the victims right before the ceremony, that way the body is still twitching.”

  “I found the blood in his apartment,” Paige said.

  Jim frowned. “They didn’t drink it?”

  She shook her head, the memory of Brady’s apartment still raw in her mind.

  “Huh.” He seemed to just think about that.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Look, lady, vampire hunting doesn’t come with an instruction manual. I have no idea why they’d waste all that blood. Most times they feed on the victims and then drop them into the circle.”

  “What happens after that?” Paige asked. She needed to understand what happened to Brady. She needed to understand and then she needed to find someone to kill.

  He hesitated. “Knowing isn’t going to make it hurt any less.”

  “I don’t expect it to. However, if you don’t tell me, I might make myself feel better by pressing charges against you.”

  “How do you know I’ll tell you the truth?”

  “If you don’t, I will eventually figure it out. And state law says that the criminally insane can get locked up for life. I saw an ex-military man shooting at an unarmed man who disappeared before I could offer assistance. That’d hold you on a seventy-two hour for sure
and you might land in even more trouble if they caught wind that you believed in vampires.”

  That threat seemed to finally cut through some of Jim’s calm. “Fine,” he growled out. “They force infected blood into the victim through cuts…runes carved into the flesh. It’s like baiting the water when you’re shark fishing, but the sharks are a hell of a lot bigger. The last step is to slit open reality and let demons through. The demons will sometimes fight over the bodies, making them flop around like ragdolls. The worst is when the victim is still alive and making these cries of pain. The soul might be gone, but the body still…” Jim stopped and pressed his lips together as his gaze drifted back toward the symbols on the floor.

  The pain in Jim’s face had a rawness to it that didn’t come from hearing someone describe it to you. “You’ve seen the ceremony,” Paige guessed.

  “Yeah.” Jim gave a humorless laugh. “Most hunters have. Hell, most of us have done more than just see it.”

  “But why aren’t you one of—”

  “I was tied up waiting for my turn in the circle when a hunter took out the vamps. Hunters get into this game by escaping a ceremony or losing someone to one.” Jim looked at her with sharp eyes and Paige knew he wondered if she would turn to hunting after losing her partner. Right now, she needed information, not vengeance. However, that would be hard to explain to a man who’d made killing vampires his life’s work.

  “So, it’s not the bite; it’s the ceremony?”

  Turning to look at her, Jim said, “This isn’t some virus. This is pure demonic evil and a demonic ceremony is the only way to make that happen. Sometimes if you have low-level vamps in the room—the really young or really stupid ones—the demons that come through the rift will try to steal their bodies. It’s like watching rabid dogs fight over a bone, but humanity is the bone. Maybe now you see that you really are in over your head, Silver. Go home. Go home and grieve for your partner, but don’t get in the middle of a war you don’t understand.”

  “If the demons can force each other, that means there is a way to get this demon out of my friend.” Paige could feel hope like the tiniest flicker.

  “None that I know.”

  “Then I’ll find one.”

  Paige headed for the door, a nascent hope growing in her heart; however, Jim darted forward and grabbed her arm. “You aren’t going to have the chance. First, if you find him, he’ll try to kill you. Second, when the demon moves in, the soul moves out.”

  Paige shook her head. “You can’t know that for sure.”

  “That the soul moves out? Yes, I can. I remember detaching from my body, the slow slide toward some distant place. I remember that. And if the ceremony had been completed, I wouldn’t be in this body at all. I would have drifted off and left a demon in control here. And I know that when you stake a vamp, you immediately know how old they were. You catch one a few days after the ceremony and you’ll have a rotting corpse a few days old. Catch a vamp with a few years behind him and you’ll be left with bones. But if you catch a vamp that’s older than sixty or seventy, they turn to mist like the one you saw. They’re dead. They died the second the soul moved out and the demon moved in, and if you drive the demon out of your friend, then his body is going to suddenly remember that it’s dead.”

  Still shaking her head, Paige refused to believe any of that. “There has to be—”

  “There isn’t. Do you think you’re the first one to lose someone to a vamp?” he demanded, fury in his eyes. “Do you think other people haven’t tried or are you just so arrogant that you’re convinced you’re going to succeed where the rest of the known world has failed?”

  “I never said that.”

  “No, but you’re acting like it. Do you want to know what your friend is right now? If they attracted a low-level demon, he’s a big, stupid walking corpse. He has practically no mind at all. I’d call it a zombie, only those low-level vamps aren’t big on eating brains. Actually, they aren’t big on drinking blood either. They’re idiots that bigger and badder vamps use as guard dogs and cannon fodder. They’re dangerous only in that it takes a Mack truck to stop them, but if you’re driving a Mack truck right at one, it will stand there and stare at you stupidly.

  “If you walked up to your friend with one of those low-level vamps in residence, he would never stop until he trapped you, crushed you against some wall or laid on you and slowly soaked up all your life force while feeling the texture of your hair between his fingers. You’ll scream and claw and beg for mercy, but he won’t even notice.” Jim spat the words out and Paige shivered from the cold fury in his voice and the honesty in his words. But that wasn’t Brady.

  “Brady wouldn’t.”

  “Brady’s dead,” Jim snapped. “If he’s one of those ghouls, he’ll do exactly that. If he’s one of the middle vamps like the one here today, you can kill him, but you’d better do it fast because they’re strong and fast. Not the brightest, but then when they can break your neck without trying, they don’t have to be that bright. And the strongest of them…those are the vamps that even hunters leave alone. They kill each other, but we just stay out of their way. Those are the full demons and they’re smarter, faster and more brutal than any human.

  “If a full demon crawled into your friend’s skin, you won’t last two seconds. Who the hell knows what your friend is now, but if you want to go hunting him down, you’d better be prepared for what you’ll find.” Taking off his garlic necklace, Jim thrust it at her.

  “You aren’t telling me to avoid him?” Paige stared down at the woven twine and garlic cloves.

  “Hell yes, I want you to avoid him. But I’ve been in the business long enough to recognize someone who’s not going to listen to good advice.” Jim let go of her arm, the anger draining from him until he just looked exhausted. “Peasants used to sprinkle lentils or stones right outside the grave because the vamps would get so distracted counting that they’d forget to protect themselves from the ax-wielding villagers. Like I said, not that bright. So carry something shiny, preferable something small that they can touch. It’s even better if it rolls and distracts them because they have some sort of obsession with counting and putting things in order.”

  When he put his hand in his pocket, Paige stiffened, but he brought his hand out with a fist full of tiny beads that shone and sparkled. “They love these things. And I love them because it’s a lot easier to decapitate something that’s playing with beads.”

  He held his hand out and Paige slowly reached for the beads. Maybe Jim was trying to help, but the way he was describing it made her feel like she was planning on killing some mentally challenged child who just wanted a shiny toy.

  “Just don’t decapitate the young ones, the ones that leave a body. Being a cop, I’m sure you understand how much interest a case gets if the body is mutilated. Decapitation attracts attention.”

  “Yeah, it would,” Paige agreed.

  “Oh trust me, I know,” he said with a snort of disgust that made it clear that he’d had an up-close and personal run-in with a police department somewhere. “Take out the brain and the demon can’t hold on anymore. Stakes to the heart usually work, but getting that close to a vamp isn’t exactly smart.”

  Paige looked up from her handful of shiny baubles. “When you killed that one, I felt like something was scraping at me.”

  Jim took a step back, his face thoughtful. “The demon was looking for a new host. If you have any recently dead or dying around, some demons are strong enough to jump over, even without a ceremony.”

  “Can they get in if I’m not dying?”

  He thought about that for a lot longer than Paige expected. “It’s not like there are scientific studies on this.”

  “Shit. They can.” Paige’s stomach soured so badly that the base of her throat burned with acid that tried to escape up her throat.

  “Easily? No. I’ve never seen it happen and a lot of hunters think it’s an old wives’ tale the older hunters tell to scare newbies. The
y talk about demons strong enough to challenge a soul, but most of the stories say that the human had already compromised his soul by being evil or by just being so worn down with grief and anger that he wanted to move on. So I guess I’m saying that I don’t know.”

  “And you still risk this.”

  Jim pursed his lips and gave her an inscrutable look. “You’re a cop. Don’t tell me that you don’t understand.”

  “I have backup and training and a whole community to call on if I need help.”

  “So do I,” he said without explaining exactly who he had in his corner. Paige nodded and backed up onto the porch.

  “I appreciate this.” She held up the beads and garlic, but she really meant the information. She wasn’t sure it was much help because Brady wasn’t the monster Jim described, but it gave her a place to start. At least she wasn’t going to be out there looking for victims with barbecue fork injuries to the neck disappearing from the morgue. Sadly, that probably would have been her first stop without his help.

  “Just don’t count on those to help you in every situation,” he said with a gesture toward the beads. She looked at how they flashed and sparkled, even in the shadows. “They wouldn’t have stopped this one. They might have distracted him for a second, but he wasn’t one of the zombie boys. He still had a brain in there.”

  “Just not a good one,” Paige pointed out. The vamp might have taken Jim if he’d waited in ambush, especially if he was as strong as Brady.

  “No, not a good one, but some of these mid-level vamps can be smart. And worse, some vamps obsess over someone they knew in life. Your partner could come after you, and if he does, that means that he’s not some mindless foot soldier to get distracted by a little bit of flash,” Jim warned her.

  “He might remember me?” This sounded more promising.

  “He might remember something. Those sorts go after anyone who reminds them of something or someone. Some of the older hunters call them Lamias.”

  “Lamias?” Paige felt an urge to start taking notes.