The reporters took costume articles off fallen vampires and gave those or their jackets to six naked captives they finally freed, after Peter retrieved Jack’s axe to hack the chains or ropes. Flames spread along that south wall onto an arched ceiling, as Jack assisted his daughter and her boyfriend’s efforts after retrieving a fallen fedora. They moved those people toward and down the north stairs used in arriving here, with the hunter leading their way to the second floor.
And I’ve still got an unfinished job for tonight—can’t let HER escape.
Petrov saw five vampires now forming a rear guard atop the main staircase leading to the building’s first floor, as Angelique and three others descended those stairs, the lady tearing away her costume’s skirt down to pantaloons for easier movements. Peter reached the double-bladed battleaxe back to its owner, but Jack shook his head no while Daphne took out the last two stakes from her purse. This vampire hunter addressed his companions as the vampires waited twenty feet away, daring these humans in getting past them with smoke odors drifting from upstairs.
“Keep it, Packer, and protect Daphne. We’re going through them and I’ll get Angelique myself.” He reached Peter the gun, but that man refused it. “It won’t kill ’em, but will hurt.”
“I don’t like guns.” The liberal New York reporter adjusted his glasses while keeping the short-handled battleaxe instead. “Weren’t you listening to me on this trip, Sir?”
“Pansy,” Petrov grumbled before handing the automatic Colt to Daphne, having taught her and his two sons how to handle firearms when they were teenagers, “here, Baby Girl, you’ll take it for self-protection. This town’s got other things besides vampires lurking around in some of its shadows. Even taking stupid risks, you’ve done me proud tonight.”
“No, you might need it. Be careful, Daddy.” She pushed his offered pistol away and he holstered it back inside that trench coat. “I don’t want to lose both my parents tonight, but do whatever you have to with her.”
The out-of-town trio then charged, with Peter at Jack’s right and Daphne his left, to meet the creatures awaiting them as the freed captives stayed back in fascination and horror. Daphne plunged two stakes into that male vampire dressed in the black top hat, white tie, shirt and black tuxedo with long-tailed jacket as he swung his sword cane through the air at the 24-year-old lady before she ducked to slay him. Glimpsing that act, Jack again felt pride for his daughter.
Peter buried the axe’s blade into a male (dressed in surgeon’s white attire with cap, mask, gown and gloves) vampire’s face and throat, before the blonde female bloodsucker (wearing her Charlie Chaplin Little Tramp outfit) tackled him onto the dirty worn carpeted floor while beating the man with that outfit’s cane. Jack impaled another female vampire (a curly dark-haired Creole clad with gypsy peasant white blouse, green long skirt and red bandana) between the bosoms with another stake, while stabbing the afro-haired black vampire (dressed like movie private eye John Shaft in his red turtleneck shirt, black leather pants, jacket and boots costume) using that short sword before they fell together across that floor near the staircase’s landing.
Now I still—have to—stake this big buck.
Petrov was shoved rightward but held his quarry as they rolled down steps wrestling for advantage; the sword’s handle and pommel bruising that aged man’s chest a few times in falling. Packer struggled against being held down by the Chaplin woman’s cane as she leaned to feed on him from heightened bloodlust and tore off his crucifix’s chain. She kicked Daphne away with a swift right leg, the brunette landing on her buttocks trying to help the pinned boyfriend. Forced to choose between aiding a father or lover, Daphne recovered from being dazed and winded by that kick, and discovered her silver crucifix had fallen off somewhere now due to a broken chain. Knowing her purse was out of stakes and with no other weapon to save Peter, she then spotted one thin broken baluster spoke with its sharp jagged edge along that balcony’s railing. Crawling over and pulling it free, Daphne Petrov plunged the wooden object through that vampire’s back piercing her heart and getting briefly sprayed by the fiend’s blood.
“Wow, Sugar—you’re amazing!”
Peter shoved the quivering bloodsucker with a shocked expression aside, her fangs inches from penetrating his carotid artery, before he and Daphne hugged each other.
“Daddy,” the woman wiped her face with a handkerchief from her bag after the lovers stood together, and raced toward the landing as Peter handed her the automatic crossbow after shooting the flailing surgeon-costumed vampire (Petrov’s axe still in his head) through the heart to finish that monster.
Jack felt sore in several places tumbling onto ground level, but thankfully suffered no broken bones at his age, burning the black vampire’s left cheek above him with the cross while being choked by those powerful hands, that sword still embedded through the fiend’s chest.
I should’ve used, Petrov released the crucifix against that opponent’s smoking flesh as he began losing consciousness, a stake—instead of the sword on him—before…
Suddenly that large vampire shuddered when a wooden bolt pierced his head in the left temple with fangs bared in triumph over Jack. As the partly-disfigured black man turned to see who had attacked him anew, a bolt pierced his heart beside the sword’s blade from Daphne firing her crossbow. Quivering at that fatal impact, he fell away from the old man.
“Are you okay, Daddy?” The dutiful daughter and her New York boyfriend led those six captives down toward the prone vampire hunter as he sat up coughing and bleeding slightly from the shallow knife slash across his back. “Let’s get you and these people to safety.”
“No,” he croaked from a sore throat and refused her or Peter’s aid standing, pulling that sword from that unmoving vampire’s chest and wiping it on the thing’s red shirt before sheathing it, “I swore she wouldn’t escape me again and meant it.”
Petrov noticed the building’s front doors were both wide open, and, after retrieving his fedora off the floor from where it had fallen, told the couple: “Get those people out and call the authorities. Your mother is still my problem.”
Stumbling through those doors and looking each way outside along dark sidewalks and both intersecting streets, Jack caught his breath taking a moment to regroup.
My wounds are trivial. I can’t see Angelique or her followers anywhere nearby, but they couldn’t have gotten very far in a short time.
Waving to Daphne, Peter and the fleeing people they had released crossing North Peters Street together, flames engulfing that building behind them in third floor windows, Jack Petrov depended on his vampire tracking instincts and began walking south toward the river on Iberville Street’s east sidewalk, sounds of other Halloween celebrations overheard on the warm night’s air. After about half-a-block the old man stopped beside a staircase with wrought iron railings leading into one basement establishment whose neon sign above read Cajun Frank’s Bar and BBQ Grill. The detective paused atop those concrete steps, tempted by old demons ended with seven years of Gotham Alcoholics Anonymous meetings after an adult lifetime indulging them, before his instincts registered vampire presences behind the red-painted wood door.
Come on, Jack, it’s just a bar and you didn’t come to drink.
Entering the establishment and its low-lit interior with costumed and normally-dressed patrons celebrating or abstaining from Halloween (but not drinking), Petrov scanned the crowd. He recalled Angelique’s Marie Antoinette outfit, her blonde servant’s sequined costume, and the two other women wearing sexy Little Bo Peep and movie theater usherette attire, but did not spot those clothes within this cavernous room. Deciding to thin out potential victims for bloodsuckers somewhere inside this building, Petrov cleared his throat and stood atop an unoccupied booth’s empty table.
“I need everyone’s attention,” the jukebox in one corner played that novelty comedy song Monster Mash, so he whistled loudly with two fingers in his mouth, gaining most of this crowd’s notice, “there’s a
building fire nearby and it could spread here! Everybody get out now!”
A chorus of laughter followed from half-drunken patrons as two bouncers approached Petrov’s perch to remove this false alarm spreader. Reaching into the holster under that jacket, the man pulled his automatic pistol on the approaching muscular duo, cocking its hammer.
“Back off, Boys, I’m an old Army marksman.” As the men in red and black T-shirts and black uniform pants obeyed him, Jack fired his pistol into the ceiling twice, getting that crowd’s undivided attention. “Everyone leave—NOW! Go watch the fire just up the street.”
Sounds of distant emergency vehicles supported his claims as patrons drifted out the front door for promised excitement. Climbing down, Petrov grabbed a long, mustached, brown-haired, white-shirted bartender’s left arm as he joined the exodus and forced that man to face him.
“Hold up a minute there, Bud. Did you see a woman dressed like some French aristocrat from the 18th Century? She was with two gals wearing Bo Peep and theater usherette costumes shadowed by the blonde dude in his flashy purple outfit?”
The man resisted breaking away from Petrov after that question and rubbed his mouth in recalling various costumes patrons were wearing around here tonight.
“Yeah, I did see those folks right enough,” his accent was slightly Cajun, “they went back where Mr. Carlisle’s office is. I think one lady you mentioned has seen him here before tonight. He owns some property here. I’d better tell them about the—”
“Thanks,” Jack patted his left shoulder and moved toward the room’s rear inner exit that heavyset thinning brown-haired bartender motioned toward with a left hand, “go watch that fire. I’ll let them know what’s happening outside.”
Holstering his pistol, Jack got out two of four remaining stakes.
Now, it’s four against one.
Entering that heavy varnished wooden door marked Private on its high-placed label, Jack wished he had brought the automatic crossbow (or taken Daphne’s) for this part of his hunt, but swallowed any residual trepidation after closing that entrance and latching its interior deadbolt lock (signaling anyone with vampire hearing of his arrival). Two stakes ready for stabbing any monsters, Petrov saw two side doors along the short hallway under dim overhead lamps and another door at the far end. Passing between side exits, they burst open and a long shepherd’s staff disarmed him of the left stake with one hard blow on arthritic knuckles. Red-painted nails from hands inside a gold-braided red jacket arrested his right wrist, before the women shoved that man against the left wood-paneled wall. Bo Peep removed his silver crucifix by breaking its chain with her staff’s hook.
“Now, now, it’s not fair to sneak up on our mistress,” the pigtailed black-haired lady dressed like an usher with the gold chin-strapped red pillbox hat hissed in Petrov’s right ear while keeping his stake hand pinned, “even if you’re still technically her husband.”
“She said he’s to be captured,” the sexy blonde shepherdess with a lace cap above curled neck-length blonde hair had the deeper sultry voice opposite her companion’s but soon turned it into the naughty little girl’s teasing tones, “but can’t begrudge us a little taste.”
“Yeah,” the usherette pushed her large breasts inside that gold-buttoned red jacket (above red panty briefs, black tights and shined shoes) against Jack, licking his neck, “I always wanted to taste a vampire hunter’s blood.”
The blonde stepped back briefly, keeping her curve-topped staff against Jack’s throat, so he could glimpse her blue frilly mini-dress, white tights and laced boots, and then leaned in for kissing their victim’s left jaw.
“Let’s be quick. She and Bobby are waiting in Carlisle’s office.”
“Fine,” the usherette sighed and bared her fangs in synch with the other vampire as they leaned for biting, “this won’t hurt long, Grandpa.”
They halted as a man’s throat cleared behind Bo Peep, before the ladies and Jack noticed Bobby, the California surfer-accented curly-haired blonde man, standing inside the far doorway, staring at their actions with angry blue-green eyes and blood-stained pouting lips.
“Now, Girls, Angelique said she’ll deal with her old man personally. Bring him in.”
When that deadly duo released his arms, Petrov brought the stake (still gripped in that right palm) down to slay the usherette and shove her body against the other vampire as both fell down. Pulling one more stake from his coat’s inner storage loops (having lost track of the one he dropped earlier); the vampire hunter pounced, deflecting Bo Peep’s staff and impaling her heart as she screamed. Hissing, Bobby closed that door to protect Angelique somewhere inside the office beyond. Exhausted after those exertions, Jack Petrov slowly stood and grabbed up the shepherd’s staff off the tiled floor, breaking it across his right knee into two roughly equal pieces with sharp ends. He then charged that closed door and found it locked from the inside.
Do you think any door will keep me from getting to you here, Darling?
Petrov applied his right shoulder three times before that wood cracked and its lock gave way. Inside this office, lit by one curved green-hooded lamp on a mahogany desk, Jack found the overhead light switch by the door that turned on the overhead fan built into globed light fixtures. The room smelled of death, but there were no signs his quarry remained here. He still felt them both nearby however.
They’ve left something behind.
Seeing the red leather executive chair turned away behind the desk, in a room filled with its few other mahogany furniture pieces including two bookcases, Jack turned that seat clockwise using his right shoe and found the old man there with disheveled white hair, widened brown eyes and gaping mouth above two sets of bites in the neck, spilled blood across that stained tan suit. Angelique’s now erstwhile ally, landlord Robert Philippe Carlisle owned the old whorehouse she used as a lair, but Petrov would never learn this fixated on finding his wife. He searched these surroundings, soon finding one hidden staircase leading upstairs and deeper inside this building. The vampire hunter overheard two sets of running footsteps heading in that direction.
I’m getting too old for all this crap, but I will finish her tonight.
Ascending wrought iron steps and holding onto both railings with those staff halves as his body felt exhausted and limbs heavier, Petrov somehow reached a second story storage room for the bar/BBQ restaurant downstairs filled with stacked alcohol crates and other dry goods boxes, the heavy walk-in freezer with a closed door along the area’s back wall. They would be hard to find in here, but not impossible, the room lit by hooded overhead lamps hanging from the ceiling and several tall windows letting street lamp light shine through (along with that glow from the nearby building fire).
“Oh, Jackson, my Jackson,” Angelique addressed him from her current hiding place, as that accented voice echoed across the room, “have our lives together come to this foolish chase seeking blood vengeance against me for leaving you a dozen years ago? I’ve moved on, Mon Cherie. Why can’t you do the same? I’ve never stalked your life, as well I could have.”
“Come on, Angie,” he decided to engage her, while listening for any giveaway noises and moving between crate stacks with fading eyesight seeking signs of her or that blonde man, “was our life together in Gotham with the kids so bad? I provided for all of your needs to the best of my ability from P.I. work. I may not have cried for little Cassie after she had drowned, but felt broken inside until granting her body peace ten years later and three after you’d abandoned us to come here.”
Quickly looking left and right when leaving the cover of box stacks in moving nearer one oval-topped high window facing Iberville Street below, Jack almost reacted too late when Bobby dove off one tall box tower almost reaching the ceiling straight toward him with reddened eyes hungering for blood (some of Carlisle’s fluids still around his mouth). The hunter fell backwards toward the hardwood floor, bringing two jagged staff halves up and pierced the blonde vampire’s chest to either side of his sternu
m. Grunting and gurgling as his lungs were speared, Bobby fell toward Jack until the man used both feet propelling him onward and out that window, crashing through glass panes and wooden frame sections to flail about before hitting the pavement below screaming.
“Bravo, Jack,” the 5’ 4” Angelique leaped from her perch off boxes stacked five high halfway across the room, as Petrov lay prone with Bobby’s blood staining his coat and breathing hard in exhaustion, “you have defeated my lover of seven years. Robert Frazer was the gigolo who came here seeking love while turning tricks with men and women, until I gave him eternal beauty as Uriah once had me.”
She stripped off the powdered wig, letting it fall to the floor in revealing radiant golden-brown curled hair, as slipper-clad feet stepped beside Jack. Her gown’s upper bodice remained with the frilly old-fashioned pantaloons and sheer white stockings. That mane appeared slightly disheveled but still beautiful under low lighting, as did her youthful face and big blue eyes, those orbs looking wistfully upon this aged, estranged mate.
“After I had you declared dead in 1964,” regaining strength, Jack tried sitting up on both elbows, feeling the knife, sword, gun and one stake still under his coat, but drained as a 74-year-old body reminded him of its condition, “I never remarried and seldom dated women, whether age appropriate for me or not. I once told you how I killed my first wife Phyllis in the Catskills on our 1939 honeymoon because she had become a werewolf. Sure, the official death certificate said rabies, but my Phyllis—”
“ENOUGH,” Angelique cried, drowning out the recollection before she knelt at his right side on broken glass, “this is why I’d tired of living with you, Jackson. My private eye husband had all the adventures stalking monsters in the shadows as a vampire hunter, leaving me to care for our brats always wondering if he was coming back. I had more excitement growing up in the La Barre Circus with my parents and later performing as a snake charmer and acrobat on the midway or under the big tent. Becoming a vampire made me feel truly alive for the first time in many years.”
Both Barrels of Monster Hunter Legends (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 1) Page 27