by Unknown
“If you did, would you tell me?”
“Perhaps,” she said. “If I believed you wouldn’t use it against us.” With that she faded into the darkness, gone so quickly that she might simply have vanished.
He pressed his naked body against hers and wrapped an arm around her to cup her breast.
Olivia awoke with a start and twisted to face him. “My, aren’t you up early?” she said groggily, reaching between them until her fingers found him, hard and ready. “What’s gotten into you?”
He lowered his mouth to her neck and nuzzled the spot that almost always got her motor running. Mere fractions of an inch below the surface, her lifeblood flowed. So much vitality brimming under the surface, and we’re barely aware of it, he thought.
Olivia sighed. He moved his mouth lower until he found her hard nipple and sucked it between his lips.
For a few seconds, in the darkness, he imagined another face, another body.
“Anything new?” he asked when he arrived at the Homicide Unit the next morning.
“Forensics is analyzing some footprints that might have come from our perp,” Heck said. “Or from anyone else who walked along that sidewalk in the past few days.”
“So, we’ve got nothing.”
“We got a headline,” Heck said. He tossed the Chronicle Herald onto Vic’s desk. NIGHT STALKER, the headline read in large type. Five other cases, but it took the death of a poser from the posh end of town to garner media attention.
“Who talked to his family?”
“Dees. His report’s on the computer. Nothing much of interest. It seems they were right about his obsession, though.”
“I’m going back to canvas the neighbourhood.”
“Now?”
“We’ve got nothing else to go on.”
“Who will you talk to? They only come out at night.”
“That’s just the name of a record album,” Vic said.
Heck shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“I always do.”
Vic spent the morning covering a four-block radius around the latest crime scene looking for dark cars or a man who fit the vague description he’d been given. He was hard pressed to find anyone of any description. Heck had been right about that. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see tumbleweeds rolling down the street, carried by a cool on-shore breeze. He was reminded of one of those post-apocalyptic movies where the living dead emerged from the gloom to hunt down the survivors and eat their flesh.
Three nights later, he was again awakened by a phone call.
“Yeah,” he whispered, trying not to awaken Olivia.
“He got it right this time. Another one of them.”
“Where?”
“A block from the last one.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Vic said.
It was the tall gangly one he’d encountered a few nights earlier. The one that liked to antagonize people and uttered phrases like someone suffering from Tourette’s syndrome.
A wooden stake protruded from his chest like a flagpole. There was no blood, of course. His eye sockets were empty, as if a vulture had savaged the body. Another few hours and his cheeks and chest would collapse. By daylight, only a yellowed skeleton would remain and by noon it would be as if he had never existed.
“This one was here the other night,” Vic said.
“How can you tell?”
“I recognize him.”
“Him?” Heck grunted. He turned around to survey their surroundings. “No audience tonight.”
“Maybe they’re in mourning,” Vic said.
Heck shrugged, as if he thought that unlikely.
Vic canvassed the streets for over an hour, but if there were witnesses to this tragedy, they were making themselves scarce.
“Newman. You’ve got a call,” the desk sergeant said the following afternoon. “Line two.”
“Who is it?”
“Didn’t give her name, but she says you know her.”
Vic punched a button on his phone and picked up the receiver. “Detective Newman.”
“I saw him again,” the voice on the other end said. Female, but low. Sultry.
“Saw who?”
“The human. The one who sets traps for us.”
“Where?” he asked, remembering the alluring way she had looked in the shadows, and in his fantasy.
“I will find you if you come here,” she said, and the connection broke. Vic tried to trace back the phone number, but the display told him it didn’t exist.
“I’m going out,” he told Heck, who waved a hand to acknowledge that he heard him without looking away from his computer.
He wasn’t sure how to track down a vampire, especially in the daylight. She would stand out in a crowd, no question, but there was no crowd. Should he expect to find her waiting on the sidewalk, or skulking in a dark alley?
He drove up and down the street a few times, but didn’t see her, so he pulled into an open space near where she had indicated the suspicious dark man liked to park. He got out and strolled to a spot on the sidewalk halfway between the two most recent crime scenes. Strands of yellow tape fluttered in the breeze, the only sign that something untoward had happened here recently.
A few cars were parked along the curbs, and several apartment windows were open, but no sounds emanated from them and there was no sign of motion to indicate that anyone was home. There weren’t even any pigeons on the ledges. This truly has become a forsaken place, he thought.
“I was just about to eat,” a female voice said from behind him. “Care to join me?”
Vic spun around. She was standing a few feet away, though he would have sworn she had just whispered in his ear. Despite what he thought he knew about them, she wasn’t bursting into flames or dissolving in the sunlight. Her skin even seemed to have some color, as if blood was pulsing beneath it. Her long purple dress clung to her chest and her slender hips. She was beyond pretty — she was … sexy. Dangerous.
“Eat?” He was still taking her in, observing the way the breeze billowed her dress and played with the ends of her long dark hair. She had doubted that he would recognize her for what she was if he saw her on the street. Well, here she was, and she was right.
“There’s a place over here,” she said, pointing at a dilapidated storefront.
“You said you had some information for me.”
“Yes. Follow me.” She turned and started across the street, covering ground quickly, as if she were gliding instead of walking. She entered through the front door without waiting to see if he was following. No sign announced the name of the establishment. Vic wondered if he was signifying something by accepting her invitation. He shook his head. More movie mumbo jumbo. He followed her inside.
It was a restaurant, or at least it might have been at some point in the past. Tables with checked cloths were scattered throughout, devoid of cutlery, condiments or napkin holders. The air smelled of ancient grease, stale cigarette smoke and something else, a mildly rancid odour that made Vic queasy. She went straight to a corner table, as if she came here all the time. Maybe she did. Vic had no idea what their lives were like, or if vampires could even be said to have ‘lives’.
He sat across from her, placed his elbows on the filthy table and waited, surreptitiously checking out her chest to see if it rose and fell, but she didn’t breathe. When she glanced at him, he looked away, shamefaced, like a teenager.
Though the place seemed abandoned, another one of them appeared from a back room carrying a covered serving dish. It approached without a word and placed the dish in front of her, removing the cover with a flourish. It then retreated to wherever it had come from.
Vic tried not to gape at what was on her plate. It looked like raw meat. Not a prepared cut with edges trimmed by a butcher, but a jagged clump that might have been ripped from the belly of some unidentified creature. Blood pooled around it.
She raised an eyebrow at him.
“Go ahead,” he said, s
truggling to maintain control of his stomach.
She picked up the meat in her bare hands and stuck one end into her mouth. Instead of biting, she sucked, extracting blood from tissue and muscle. When she was through with one section, she rotated the clump. Finally she ripped the meat in half with her fingers and repeated the process. When she was done, she tossed what looked like freezer-burned remnants onto the table next to the plate. She then licked the plate clean, as if missing a single drop of blood would be a sacrilege.
While his stomach settled down, Vic wondered how many humans had witnessed this ritual. It seemed like a performance for his benefit, as if she wanted to shock him. He waited until she was done licking blood from her fingers, a sight he found disturbingly erotic.
“You said on the phone that you’d seen the man again. The one you thought was setting traps.”
“He is close,” she said.
“Right now?”
She nodded, and tilted her head back, as if listening for something. “Yes. Follow me,” she said, moving so quickly that Vic had to scramble to keep up. A moment later they were back on the street, the sun so bright that it took a few seconds for his eyes to adapt. She didn’t seem to suffer the same problem, or any problem with sunlight, that he could see. There’s so much about them we don’t know, Vic thought.
She held up a hand and Vic stopped. “Here,” she said, leading him into the recessed entrance of an abandoned building. They retreated far enough to monitor the street without being seen. As they waited, he acknowledged to himself that he was entrusting his life to her. She could sneak up behind him and sink her fangs into his throat and no one would ever know what happened. His eyes would open some time later and he’d be one of them. He started breathing through his mouth.
“You humans are so nervous,” she said. “What must your fragile lives be like?”
He could have said something about how it was their fragile lives that brought him here, but he didn’t.
Seconds later, a black Lexus came into sight. Because the neighbourhood was deathly quiet, the purr of its engine and the whisper of its tires against the pavement were audible from their vantage point. It pulled in behind Vic’s car.
The thin man who emerged was dressed in dark clothing and wore a baseball cap. He surveyed the street, and then headed into the blind alley across from them, the one where Patterson’s body had been found. He carried something in his hand but, from this distance, Vic couldn’t tell what.
It was Vic’s turn to lead. As they crossed the street, he felt exposed, as if everyone behind the windows facing the street was watching. He kept one hand on his holster, in case the suspect reappeared.
When they reached the sidewalk, Vic pressed his back against the wall while he debated whether to summon assistance. Any backup was a long way off. Even in the daylight, there were no patrol cars in this part of town. The man in the alley was their only solid lead in Patterson’s murder, and the deaths of six of them.
He withdrew his sidearm and took a deep breath. “Stay here,” he said. “I’m going in.” He stepped around the corner with his weapon in one hand and his badge in the other.
The man was bent over, poking around among the debris that lined the alley walls.
“Freeze!” Vic shouted, holding out his badge. “Show me your hands.”
The man flinched and looked up. He withdrew his hands from the rubbish and held them flat and extended away from his body.
“Straighten up.”
The man complied. As Vic approached, he observed that the man’s hands were covered in what looked like blood.
“What are you doing here?”
The man started to reach for his back pocket.
Vic waggled his gun. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“I was only going to show you my wallet, officer.”
“I asked what you were doing.”
The man shrugged. “Hunting for buried treasure,” he said. “You never know what people leave lying around places like this.” He cocked his head. “That’s not a crime, is it?”
“Why do you have blood on your hands?”
The man looked at them as if he was surprised. “I must have cut myself.” He wiped them on his pants, leaving crimson palm prints on the dark material. “If you would just let me show you my wallet, we could clear this whole thing up.”
The man suddenly crouched, moved to his left, reached behind his back again, and produced a gun.
Vic fired once, missed, and rolled to the side. He heard the other gun go off. A split second later, something punched his left shoulder. He only realized he’d been shot when the pain kicked in. Crouched behind a cardboard box, he pressed his hand against the wound. Blood seeped between his fingers.
Something fluttered past. Then there was a rustling sound and a muffled thud. “Hey, what?” the other man said. Then he was screaming. “Get off me. Get it off!”
Vic emerged from cover.
The man was flat on his back, with the female sitting astride his chest, her hands at his throat. His weapon was on the ground, out of reach. His voice reached a fever pitch. “Help me. You’ve got to help me. It’s—”
He fell silent.
Vic approached, his gun extended and his finger on the trigger, ready to shoot. His left arm dangled uselessly at his side. He forced the burning pain from his mind.
She stood as he drew near. Her eyes locked onto his shoulder. Her lips parted.
The other man didn’t move. His eyes were open as if he were transfixed by the sky.
“What did you do to him? Is he—?”
“The last thing in the world we want is a creature like him among us. We have more to fear from your kind than you do from us.” She was still staring at his shoulder. “He is in a trance. He will return to normal soon. When he does, he will tell you anything you want to know.” She looked away at last. “It is good that I fed,” she said before bending down to where the man had been rummaging. When she straightened up, she held a bloody chunk of meat in her hands. “This would have been a difficult prize to ignore otherwise.” She held it to her nose. “It’s human.”
“Human?”
“A heart. Bait. We don’t kill humans, but that doesn’t mean your blood doesn’t tempt us.” She set the organ down on the alley’s tar and licked her hand clean. “You would do well to leave here. Soon,” she said, nodding at his injured shoulder.
Vic holstered his gun so he could extract his phone from his pocket and call for reinforcements.
“You are not like the others,” she said when he was done.
“What do you mean?” He almost added that he had been thinking the same about her.
“They don’t care what happens to us.”
“It’s my job to catch criminals,” he said.
“I’m not sure that your friends agree that he committed a crime. At least, not until he killed a human.” She turned and started toward the back of the blind alley.
“Where are you going?” he called after her. “You can’t leave — you’re a witness.”
“Goodbye, Detective Newman,” she said. “Thank you for your help. I could not deal with him alone. Because of the pact.” She stepped into a shadow and vanished.
Vic followed her. When he reached the end of the alley, he found no doors or windows. No way out — and yet she was gone.
A siren approached in the distance. He returned to the suspect and checked his vital signs. The man blinked. Vic wrestled him onto his stomach with his good arm and handcuffed him.
While he waited for the other officers to arrive, he removed his hand from his shoulder and stared at his own blood, wondering how hard it had been for her to walk away.
The afternoon was growing late. Soon it would be dusk. Vic regarded the windows in the surrounding buildings and thought about all the other creatures behind them that might sense the bait and the blood seeping from his wound.
She was right. He would do well to leave here soon.
The Greatest Trick
By Steve Vernon
Let’s get one thing straight.
We don’t turn into bats.
Why in the world would we want to?
But, because they saw that trick in a movie, people believe it must be true.
That’s just how it is.
People believe exactly what they expect to see and people’s expectations must always be met. For example, if a man sits down to watch a Three Stooges movie, sooner or later he expects to see a two-finger poke in the eye.
He doesn’t expect high art. He expects a poke in the eye. Anything else is a lie. Mind you, there are some of us who have raised the act of lying to a state of high art.
If you tell it right, a lie can be immortal.
And some of the most immortal lies in history began with those three magic words — “If I’m elected…”
Jessome invited me inside his office. He began our first meeting by informing me that he had a crucifix in his pocket and he wasn’t afraid to use it.
Things went uphill from there.
“Nobody is going to vote for a vampire,” Jessome said, after I explained what I wanted of him.
“They voted for Schwarzenegger,” I pointed out. “And he married one.”
“Shriver?”
“The cheekbones are a dead giveaway,” I explained. “I thought you had a better eye than that.”
Jessome sighed, a long resigning exhalation. That was his strength. He was a thin-blooded man who had smoked too much and hadn’t eaten enough red meat. Those who took him on in full-out debate were inescapably handicapped by the growing sensation that they were listening to a dying man’s final declaration.
The word was will-power.
“People have a picture in their minds when they think of vampires,” I explained. “I need to get elected in order to dispel that illusion.”
Jessome knew about illusion. The man was a guerrilla in velvet gloves. He fought by ambush, diplomatic guile and misdirection.
In short, he was the perfect campaign manager.
“You’re a man with a cause,” Jessome said.
“Yes I am,” I said, overlooking the fact that I really wasn’t anything close to what you’d call a man.