Blood Crimes

by Dave Zeltserman

  “I hope you had a pleasant flight,” she said.

  He shifted his empty stare to look at her. It seemed as if it were a struggle for him, as if the last thing he wanted to do was acknowledge her presence. “You don’t seem surprised to see me,” he finally said.

  “Oh, darling, of course I’m not. Maybe a tiny bit surprised that you were able to find a flight so quickly out of LA—”

  “San Jose,” Metcalf corrected her.

  “San Jose, then,” she said, her smile stretching. “Always the stickler for details, aren’t we?” The sight of him brimming with all that violence excited her. It had been a long time since they’d been together. Thinking about one of their long-ago sessions made her face flush. She walked over to him and sat on his lap, her hand inching towards his waistband. Metcalf grabbed her wrist and stopped her. That surprised her and her eyes flashed dark for a moment, but she kept smiling, maybe even wanting him more than before. “Once I saw that you were trying to call me I knew you’d be heading here. And I knew you’d be clever enough to track me to my private eye’s hotel room. I assume you saw the CNN report?”

  “Yeah, at the airport.”

  “That was quite a video one of the bystanders made. Poor picture quality, but still very exciting. I could watch it over and over again.”

  Metcalf squeezed harder on her wrist. Serena had the distinct impression that he was trying to crush her bone into powder.

  “Let go, darling,” she said. “That is not very nice. And you know that I can be equally unpleasant if need be.”

  “What are you trying to do, ruin us?” he asked, his voice cracking with rage, but he released his grip on her wrist. Serena slid off his lap and moved over to the bed. Sitting down, she leaned backwards so she could support herself by her elbows, her long legs dangling off the edge of the mattress. A surging violence had darkened his face and it left her throbbing between her legs. She had to take a deep breath before she could talk, her voice huskier, her soft lilt gone.

  “Calm down, darling,” she said, her smile more of a tease than anything else. “No one is going to recognize me or any of my family from that video, so please don’t go all drama queen on me. It’s too late in the evening for that. Besides, that’s usually Zach’s job.”

  Metcalf stared bullets at her. She smiled back but was beginning to lose some of her enthusiasm. Enough was enough already. Screw him. She sat up and crossed her legs.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  “Oh probably no more than what you’ve already guessed. We decided to take a trip to Cleveland after all, and it’s a good thing we did. You should be thanking me, darling, you really should. It turns out our Jim has gone berserk. He is completely out of control. We were driving on Euclid when what do we see but Jim out in the open feeding. This was in broad daylight, mind you. And as it turns out, he’s been doing far more than just that. If you watch any of the local news you’ll see that he’s also been ripping people’s heads off in motel rooms and their arms off in movie theatres.”

  Metcalf stared open-mouthed at Serena as if she were nuts. Quizzically, he asked, “Why would he do any of that?”

  Serena’s smile turned more into a cat-who-ate-the-canary variety. She told him Hayes’ guess about the Blood Dragons taking Jim’s girlfriend and the bloody aftermath that had since followed. To support this hypothesis, she showed Metcalf the drawing she had of Jim’s girlfriend. Metcalf looked intently at it and murmured that the girl was beautiful.

  “If you like trailer-trash, I guess you could consider her okay.”

  Metcalf shook his head, looked at Serena. “I know trailer-trash when I see it. This girl’s stunningly beautiful.” He put the drawing down, violence again darkening his features. “Why did you have to massacre those police officers?”

  “It couldn’t be helped.”

  Metcalf stared at her as if she had just sprouted horns. He dropped his face into an open palm and squeezed his eyes between his thumb and index finger. In a pained voice he asked her why it couldn’t be helped.

  “It just couldn’t be.”

  Metcalf sat for a while, frozen, then pushed himself out of his chair and paced the room, all the while squeezing his eyes. He asked Serena to explain why she couldn’t have helped it.

  “There was nothing else we could do,” she said, shrugging. “They showed up while we were trying to deal with Jim. And then they started firing at us—and those bullets sting! We did what we had to.”

  “You had to drink their blood in front of all those people?”

  “Darling, we made sure they were dead first. We didn’t spread the infection, if that’s what you’re worrying about. And the sunlight, it was awful, it left us ravenous. Why let all that good blood go to waste?”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Think about it. Those people already saw Jim drinking a person’s blood, so it was no big deal what we did. They probably only thought we were all part of the same satanic cult. And that we must’ve been wearing body armor.”

  Metcalf kept pacing, kept squeezing his eyes as if he were trying to fight back a migraine.

  “What about the limousine?”

  “What about it, darling?”

  “The limo and its driver, that will connect back to you, won’t it?”

  “No chance of that, darling. We had a previous arrangement with the driver where we always paid him handsomely for his discretion. Whenever we hired him it would always be off the clock so he could pocket the large sum of money we paid him. Even if the police are able to identify his body—which will be hard given that we removed his teeth and fingers, or the limo, which will also be hard after what we did to it, there’s nothing to connect him to us. And we burnt him and the limo to such a crisp before we left that there’s little chance anyone will ever identify him. There’s nothing to worry about, trust me.”

  “What if someone saw him parked out in front of your hotel when he picked you up?”

  Serena didn’t bother answering that. What was the point if Metcalf was going to ignore her explanations. After an uncomfortable silence, Metcalf asked her how large a party she brought from New York.

  “Why?”

  “Just answer me, okay?”

  Serena counted silently to herself. “Originally five, including myself. Jim killed Henry, someone you never met so I know you won’t be shedding any tears over him, but he was a valued member of my family. Someone very good with swords. I believe he would’ve given you a run for your money.”

  “Five of you and you couldn’t handle Jim?” Metcalf groaned, not bothering to hide his disgust.

  “The sunlight, darling. We just weren’t used to it—”

  Metcalf held out a hand to stop her. The swords that Stefan had cleaned earlier were left leaning against a wall. Metcalf picked up one of them and tested the sharpness of the blade with his thumb. He seemed satisfied with it.

  “What about him?” Metcalf asked, referring to Hayes, all the while keeping his stare focused on the blade, at the way the light reflected off of it.

  “Mr. Hayes was beginning to put things together—”

  “Why infect him?”

  The flatness and pure psychopathic edge to Metcalf’s tone left Serena stumbling for words. For the first time she was beginning to fear him. Any sexual desire she’d had earlier was gone and was replaced by an icy coldness that swirled through her body. Once she found her voice, she started babbling. “W-Why? Darling, I thought he could be a useful addition to my family, and that it would be a waste to simply dispose of him, same as I thought with you all those years ago. Besides, as I had already mentioned, I lost one of mine, so I don’t see why there would be a problem adding a new—”

  Metcalf swung the sword downwards, lopping off Hayes’ head, then he looked up at Serena. She closed her mouth. She could see what he was considering, that he was trying to decide whether to cut off her head or to make her one of his experiments, weighing how difficult it would be to get her
back to Los Angeles if he were to choose the latter. She backed away slowly and thought about the window. They were on the fourteenth floor. She wasn’t sure if she’d survive the fall—unlike Metcalf, she hadn’t spent years obsessed with those types of experiments. Somehow she knew he would know from what height a vampire would die if they fell to concrete, or would end up paralyzed or with broken legs.

  “Darling,” she said as softly as she could, trying hard not to stammer—knowing that would be all that was needed to spring him into action, “why don’t you put the sword down? It’s been so long since we’ve co-mingled and there are so many things I’ve been dreaming of us doing. No one’s ever left me purring the way you did.”

  “I thought Jim was always your favorite,” he said, his tone mocking her.

  “No, darling—”

  Metcalf put a finger to his mouth to quiet her and edged closer. She realized then that the window wasn’t an option—she’d never make it to the window in time. He would cut her down before she reached it.

  Her cell phone rang and that seemed to break the trance that Metcalf had fallen into. His eyes changed, subtly, but they changed, almost as if a veil had been lifted, and he lowered his sword and stood quietly while she answered the phone.

  “It’s Wilfred,” she said, fighting hard to keep the fear out of her voice, although she knew it didn’t much matter. Like a dog, Metcalf could smell it. “He knows where Jim is.”

  The moment had passed. Metcalf let the sword hang loosely at his side. He nodded, his expression tired, an exhaustion filling his eyes. “Let’s go then,” he said.

  He took the duffel bag and stored the sword in it so he could carry it out of the room without attracting attention. Jittery, her heart beating like a tom-tom, Serena followed him into the hallway. Slowly she got her nerve back, and whatever fear she had was replaced by a white-hot rage. Not only did he sexually reject her, but the sonofabitch psycho was going to kill her—or worse—and now had the audacity to act as if she should just forget about it and go on as if nothing had happened. She decided then that after they took care of Jim she was going to kill Metcalf. Maybe have Stefan cut his legs off first, but she was going to be the one to deliver the death blow.

  * * * * *

  Jim found the Harley parked behind an apartment building. The building was different than the tenements that surrounded it; grander, older, as if at one time it had been a residence for a more moneyed crowd, but over the years had declined along with the rest of the neighborhood. While the other tenement buildings bordering it were brick, this one was stone, and had a cast iron gate surrounding it with each post topped off with a dagger-sharp spike. The gate was locked and a key was needed to open it. Jim scaled the gate, and once he reached the back door, used his shoulder to break it open. If anyone heard the noise, no one bothered to check it out.

  Once inside he took out Ash’s cell phone and dialed Raze’s number—the one Drum had given him. The phone kept ringing until it would go to voice mail, then Jim would hang up and redial. He did this while he walked the hallway along the first floor, moving past each apartment, listening, then when he was done he would move to the next floor. At times, dogs would start to whine from inside an apartment, making distressed, agonizing noises, as if they were being tortured, but after Jim would move on their whining would stop. He repeated this at each floor until he reached the seventh and top floor. There he stopped outside an apartment where he heard a phone ringing from inside. Shortly afterwards he heard Raze’s voice complaining how the asshole just won’t stop calling.

  “Why don’t you tell him to fuck off,” a different guy with a smoker’s rasp said.

  “I’m not giving the asshole the satisfaction. Let him keep dialing all fucking night if he wants. It ain’t going to get him back his bitch.”

  Jim stood silently trying to quiet the noise in his head so he could identify how many voices were coming from inside the apartment. He counted four. As he stood frozen, concentrating, he detected a familiar scent. Carol’s. She was in there, there was no mistaking it. Everything got so quiet then. He kicked the door in and found himself in an empty room. A Blood Dragon emerged from a connecting room, locked eyes on Jim, but before he could get a word out Jim fired off two shots, one missing wide, the other taking off a good chunk of the biker’s jaw. The gang member fell back into the room as if he’d been shot out of a cannon. Jim raced across the empty room into the one the biker had fallen into. Raze was there with two other Blood Dragons, all of them looking wide-eyed at him, their faces pinched, surprised. One of the bikers leveled a shotgun towards the doorway and pointed it at Jim’s chest. Jim slowed down when he saw Carol lying on the floor. Her hands and feet were tied, a gag stuffed in her mouth, her eyes yellowish and in pain as they met his. He took a step towards her and was knocked back by a shotgun blast. The biker who shot him was grinning. Jim turned on him and the grin quickly faded. Before the biker could get off another shot he was dead, Jim’s sword slicing his chest open. Another biker lifted a Glock and fired rounds at Jim, who reacted to the bullets the way a man might push through a hail storm. He cut off the biker’s arm. The Glock still gripped within the biker’s dead hand continued to fire after it hit the floor, a half-dozen more rounds strafing the wall before the gun finally came to rest. The biker stared dumbly at his arm while Jim cut him in half at the waist. The only biker left was Raze. He was the same person with the fire-scarred face that Jim had ripped off in the men’s room the night before.

  “Fuck you,” Raze said. He lifted a small black pistol, probably a 9 mm, and shot Carol in the side. It got so quiet in Jim’s head then. Fragments of time blipped away from him. He knew later he had killed Raze; he could see pieces of the biker’s body scattered across the room, but he couldn’t remember doing it. All he knew was that he was by Carol’s side; that the rag had been taken out of her mouth and the ropes tying her feet and hands had been cut away. He was holding her, trying to soothe her, whispering to her how much he loved her, but he couldn’t do anything to help her. Life was fading quickly from her.

  “Don’t let me die,” she begged, her voice asthmatic, not much more than a whisper.

  His head was swimming. He tried to think of something to say to her, but there was nothing. She coughed weakly. Blood leaked from the corner of her mouth.

  “Please, don’t let me leave you,” she forced out between ragged breaths. “Save me.”

  “I can’t. Not that. Not to you.”

  “Please…”

  There wasn’t much left of her. He tried to kiss her lips, but she turned away to show him her throat. She pleaded again for him to save her. A heaviness sunk into his chest. He tried to explain why he couldn’t inflict that type of misery on her. That he loved her too much. She couldn’t talk anymore. Her voice was gone, but there was so much disappointment in her eyes. They told him that he had failed her.

  From behind he heard someone applauding, then a woman’s soft lyrical voice saying, “Bravo.” He turned dumbly to see Serena. Next to her were two other vampires, both of whom seemed familiar, but his brain just wasn’t working. Serena stopped applauding so she could talk to the other vampires. He heard what she was saying, but her words didn’t register on him, nothing did.

  They started moving towards him, and the way they were smiling at Carol he finally realized what they were planning to do to her.

  The world slipped away from him. He had a vague image of himself flying at the shorter vampire, the one who held his sword as if he knew how to use it, then all that confidence draining out of the vampire’s eyes as he saw Jim pointing his .45 at his face, the vampire mouthing the word “fuck” just before Jim squeezed off three quick rounds, then swinging his sword low and slicing off the vampire’s feet and leaving him toppling to the floor.

  The world came back. He recognized the vampire who was trying to get to Carol. Wilfred, one of Serena’s prized pets from the old days. Jim swung his sword at the vampire’s head. Wilfred dodged it but it f
orced him to move away from Carol. Jim raised his sword for another blow and was hit hard from behind. Claws raked his face, legs wrapped around him trying to break his ribcage. It was Serena. She had jumped on his back and the force of it sent him off balance and falling against a glass window. The glass broke. Before he fell through it he twisted his body and saw another familiar vampire standing in the room’s doorway. He was bigger than the others, harder looking, and as Jim crashed through the window he recognized Metcalf.

  Then Jim and Serena were hurtling through the air. As they fell, she kept clawing at his eyes, her legs squeezing tighter. Jim twisted his body until she was underneath him. He saw the iron gate before they hit. The impact was jarring. Serena let go of him and he bounced onto the concrete sidewalk. He got to his feet, dazed, wondering why Serena appeared balanced on top of the gate. Then he realized one of daggers had impaled her and had sunk several inches into her body. She was stuck, there was nothing for her to use as leverage to free herself.

  “Jim,” she said, gasping, trying hard not to show her pain. “Please, darling get me off of this and we’re even.”

  Jim looked underneath her and saw where the dagger was sticking in. He couldn’t help smiling. He grabbed her and pulled her down, impaling her deeper until the dagger pushed through her chest. Even without the noises she made, he knew it went through her heart. He left her like that and headed back into the apartment building, racing up the seven flights of stairs and into Raze’s apartment. Metcalf was gone, as was Wilfred and the vampire whose feet he had cut off. So was Carol. The only bodies left in the apartment were the dead members of the Blood Dragons.

  Jim stood staring blankly at where he had left Carol. A small puddle of her blood had pooled on the hardwood floor. He tried to tell himself that she was dead, that Metcalf didn’t have the time to infect her, and that taking her body was nothing more than a ploy on Metcalf’s part to make Jim search for him—to make him think that there was a chance that Metcalf would turn Carol into one of his experiments. She had to be dead. He had to just think that, but the other thought nagged at him, sickened him.