“In a weeks’ time it will be forgotten, written off as a bad prank and nothing but a hoax. That is how it has always been and shall ever be. The cattle may stir when the wolf lurks, but as it passes them by they soon go back to eating and forget it was ever there.”
“Do you guys have eyes on? I’ve got nothing,” Benji stated; he had forgotten the man was there.
“Ah yes,” the voice said, “I forgot about the half-breed mongrel you employ. You’ll have to do better than the likes of him if you think to catch me this night.”
Naomi was half-way down the left side, her gun aimed at the roof, her feet moving her slowly sideways as she made her way towards the distant altar. Renny was doing the same, but his head kept moving back to the kneeling priest and he knew that the man would not be able to hold out much longer before running to see if he was still alive.
Meanwhile, he stood at the doorway, observing it all, eyes constantly moving to spy any sign of their target. He felt useless standing there as the others moved in, like he should be doing more than watching a door. Sweat began to stream down his temple and pool up underneath his armpits, making his shoulders shift a bit as he tried to get comfortable.
It’s hot in here.
“Isn’t us catching you what you want?” Naomi returned, her voice steady and firm. “You could have gotten away if that’s what you were truly after. We’d never be able to run you down if you went all out. And ducking into this church? Tell me that wasn’t planned. Kind of a sick joke filled with irony, no?”
It was like some bad movie where the hero tries to get the bad guy talking while they figure a way out of the trap they’ve sprung. Was this a trap? If they were meant to come in here, if it were planned, did that mean there might be other vamps nearby waiting to strike as well?
How do they do this for a living? The stress alone is enough to break someone if they do it long enough.
“True. I did not see the point of running from the likes of you. You are but gnats buzzing about, confident in your significance, yet nothing more than pests to be squished and quickly forgotten,” the voice said again. “I do appreciate you bringing Mr. Crawford to me though, he and I have some things to discuss.”
Hearing his name said in that way instantly brought back the taunting phone calls and videos; there was no doubt in his mind that this was the same monster that had killed his wife. Even though it was an obvious attempt to stir him up, he kept quiet and continued to watch the church interior, ready to fire the instant the fucker showed his face.
“You won’t be silent for long, my young friend. Soon, your friends will be dead upon the floor and you will be begging me to end your life. But I assure you, when the end does come, it will only be after a very slow, agonizing death. My day has suddenly opened up and I don’t have anywhere to be. No appointments to keep, no errands to run, your torture will be my only purpose and you will have my full attention.”
Renny moved to the altar and put a hand on the priest’s neck, then turned to Naomi and shook his head.
“You didn’t think he was actually alive, did you? Sitting there begging for God’s forgiveness while his closest friends bled out on the floor behind him? No, I’m saving that for Crawford. You took someone from me, someone dear to my heart, and I will make you suffer for it,” the vampire stated, this time the echo sounding a bit shorter.
Naomi wheeled about and pointed the gun in his direction.
His breath caught.
Oh, fuck me.
A hand landed on his shoulder and wheeled him about, making him face the entryway of the church and the three vampires waiting for him. The Governor’s Chief of Staff smiled, long fangs flashing into existence, his brown eyes burning with red ambers as hunger and fury flowed forth. There was a mic in his left hand, which he threw unceremoniously away and gestured to the two black garbed bloodsuckers behind him. “Take care of the others, Crawford and I need to have a chat, in private.”
“Derek!” Renny hollered as the two vampires did as they were bid and darted through the open doorway, the double doors slamming behind them, cutting him off from their support. Gunfire erupted within the church, the doors vibrating as bullets struck and peppered the formerly quiet night with their fury. He prayed for a bullet to penetrate the wood and take him in the back of the head, put him out of his misery and out of this monster’s reach, but it was thick and held despite the multiple bullet strikes.
Face to face with the demon that killed his wife, he hocked up a loogie and spat, striking the monster in the face and wiping that shit grin away in an instant. “You can kiss my ass.”
Enraged, his composure gone, the beast roared and threw him down the hallway, his back impacting a large wooden door, his head slamming something hard and splitting his vision into a cascade of stars.
Then he blacked out.
Chapter 16
I
“Hoops, shoot the fucker already!”
“Get clear!”
“That’s enough of that,” a deep voice said. An instant later, a fist struck him in the stomach, causing his eyes to thrust open and the breath to escape in a pained croak. “You had a slim chance of getting through this with minimal pain, I am not totally without mercy, but that moment has passed, and I think I’ll enjoy ripping your skin off while you watch. You see, there’s more blood in the Human body than what’s pumping through your veins, and by licking as I peel, I can feast more fully than if I simply went for the jugular.”
His heart was thudding in his ears, making it hard to make out what the monster was saying, but there was really no need, he understood regardless. “You killed my wife.”
“Take the shot!”
“Benji, watch your six!”
A howl erupted loudly to his right, despite the barriers erected between.
“No, you murdered mine,” the vampire snarled, reaching down and yanking his head back by the hair, forcing their eyes to meet. “I have waited a hundred and fifty years to be reunited with her, and you took her from me in less than a day.”
He coughed, spraying bits of spit in the vampire’s face and trying to shake his head, “I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.”
“Banker is down! Ezio, get his ass!”
Teeth flashed before his eyes, the demon’s throat pulsing with hunger as it drifted ever closer to his face. “I will never live long enough to see her again, and you took her from me.”
“Should’ve done a better job of protecting her then,” he sneered.
“As you should’ve in life,” the monster returned.
Ouch.
The hand was gone and his chest suddenly spasmed. Nearly choking, he hocked up whatever was clogging his throat and spat a wad of blood upon the floor.
“Do that again, and I’ll make you lick it up,” the vampire told him. “We don’t waste food at my table.”
“Fuck, I’m hit!”
“All those starving kids in Africa and all that,” he ventured, getting himself to laugh, then groaning at how much it hurt to do so.
There were still the sounds of gunfire erupting nearby, but it had lessened, and he wondered how many of his friends had already died; who was left to save him?
Friends? When did I start thinking of them as friends?
He could hear bits of what was going on, but had no ability to track any of it, his focus solely on the monster before him.
“You’re an ignorant buffoon who knows nothing of what he speaks, nor what he’s stepped into,” the vampire told him. “While I’m aware that our time is short, and how ironic it is for me to continue talking, I find that this sorrow within me cannot fully be realized until the true core of my pain is exposed. I have lived through decades of loneliness and despair, plodding ever onward through life, increasing the power of my position but never truly believing I’d find happiness again. And when it is finally thrust upon me, it slips through my fingers only to be lost once more.”
“One down. Hoops, what’s your
location? Fuck me, where the hell did he go?”
“You do know that schizophrenia is a treatable disease? You don’t have to suffer so profoundly, they have meds for that,” he snarked.
The hovering vampire’s eyes fixed on him once more and his blood turned cold. He had been tossed into a wooden chair in a dark room with very little light, yet still he could see the hate reflecting back at him through those demonic orbs from hell. A fist came down and struck him in the arm.
He heard the crack before he felt it, the pain exploding in his chest and making him scream. “Oh, you motherfucker.”
An instant later the monster was on one knee before him, tongue licking at the exposed bone and lapping up the blood that was pouring forth as if trying to keep melting ice cream from sliding down the side of a cone. The sickening sound of consumption made him nauseous and needing to vomit. While the beast suckled the wound, his head began to spin, his world to tilt, and he felt the pull of the blood from his veins as if a pump were being used to tug it free. A hand fell on his wrist, another at his elbow, and with a yank his bone snapped back into place.
He screamed and blacked out once more.
II
The room was silent as he swam his way back to consciousness. His arm felt like it was on fire, yet there was pressure just above the elbow and it felt like it had been tied off to staunch the flow of blood. Probably the only reason he was still alive. Opening his eyes, he saw the back of his enemy and felt hate like he’d never experienced before fill him to the brim, making him try to lunge forward but only getting a weak lurch instead; his ass never even left the chair.
“Couldn’t very well let you bleed out, no matter how tempting it was,” the vampire growled, as if his hunger was barely being held in check. “I was young and in love once, like you. I had the love of my life, I had three beautiful children, and I thought that I would grow old with them and die with them clustered around my death bed. I was naïve. The world is hard, cold, and unforgiving. It takes and takes and never lets up, not for even a second.”
Sitting there with his head cocked at an angle, his arm burning, his bone aching so bad he wanted to do nothing but scream in agony, he felt the tears running down his cheeks and truly wished death would release him from this world. For as much as his body hurt, all the pain he was suffering, nothing was worse than listening to this asshole lecture about the toils of life. “If you want a tissue, afraid you’re shit out of luck. I left my handkerchief in the car.”
His body felt cold, a breeze from the nearby vent chilling the air and causing goosebumps to rise upon his neck. His armor had been stripped, his weapons taken, and he was sitting there with a broken arm, bleeding slowly onto the floor in nothing but a pair of boxers. “If you’re going to try and rape me, could you wait until I’m dead? I’m not much into guys and I definetly don’t want that cold icicle of a prick shoved up my ass.”
“Trying to goad me into killing you? You think that’s the answer? If only Death could be so comforting. If it were, I would gladly go on myself, join my beloved wife and children in death. But it’s not. It’s nothing but a cold lonely existence bereft of those you love, your soul lost forever wandering in the wilderness. You think you want to die, but your heart pounding in your chest struggling to keep you alive tells a whole other story,” the vampire sighed, turning to look at him once more.
“I am responsible for their deaths. Not the vampire that turned me, not my wife’s insanity that killed both her and my children; me. I’m the one that moved them from Oklahoma to Arizona, the one that chose to build a cabin in that cursed canyon, not knowing that a being of hell had long proclaimed that territory as his own. I can still remember the last day I saw them, the love in their eyes, the laughter of my children, the embrace of my wife as I left to hunt for food and the bit of gold that had drawn us west. The small town of Kingman was just to the north, and if I could just scrounge up even a little bit, we would have enough to last us through the winter. With gold fever overtaking me, I blindly set forth to claim my riches, not knowing that the cave I would stumble upon would mean my doom.”
A croak issued from his throat. He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t. His throat was tight and sticky, and there was a warmth along his neck that he couldn’t remember being there before.
“Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Your blood was tastier than I imagined,” the beast cooed.
His heart sank, and sorrow filled his soul; the fucker had bitten him. I’m fucked.
“What you’re feeling I remember too well. First your shocked, then you get angry, then the grief sets in. The knowledge burns through your soul that those you love are forever lost to you, that you are helpless to stop Death from giving you his last kiss, that soon you’ll pass into the nothingness that awaits us all in the end.”
“Only, I woke up a week later in that cave, alone and hungry, the thirst for blood so strong that it would take years to finally get it under control. Yet, my love for my wife and children was stronger, and it pulled me back to myself long enough to return home and the horrors that awaited me. Without me to bring them food, my dear sweet Luana had slowly gone insane from the cries of my starving children. Their pleas too much for her to bear, her mind and heart wailing in despair, she took a knife and silenced them forever. After butchering them, she bathed the walls of the cabin in their blood, as if to spite the husband and father that had abandoned them, then crawled out to the edge of the river she’d thrown their bodies into and died upon the rocks, my name scrawled in blood next to her cold corpse.”
“Slaughterhouse Canyon, that’s what the kids call it these days. I hear they even take a ghost tour up there now and then, imagining that they can hear the wails of my tortured wife’s soul at the darkest of nights. They hear nothing but the wind, for her agonizing cries are always with me, calling for me to join her in despair. That was, until I saw your wife bound and gagged, her eyes staring at me in horror, her soul clearly that of the woman I had loved and lost so long ago. Taken aback, I lost myself for a bit there, caught up in the resurrection of my love and not realizing what it had meant, until I awoke and found that my children had spirited her away and dumped her in the parking lot; my soul aching for what I’d done and feeling her loss once more.”
“Then she rose from her grave and my heart rejoiced; she was mine once more, forever. Only one thing stood in the way of our true happiness, and that was the love she had experienced in this life. I knew that she’d never be able to embrace our existence, to love me as she should, as long as the specter of her past haunted her. So, I gave her a simple task, to end your life. That we are here today at all is my fault, I should have handled it myself. Had I gone to your apartment and killed you where you wept, she would be alive and at my side, our love finally given the chance to flourish once more. But before I even realized something was wrong, you had captured and killed her, ripping her from my grasp and casting me into darkness yet again.”
“For that, I will make you suffer as you never have before. You will become like me, doomed to walk the Earth with despair in your heart, forever searching for the love that was taken from you. There is no greater torment, believe me. I will gladly bestow it upon you just as soon as I drain you to the brink of death, enjoying every last drop like it was my last,” the vampire finished, turning to face him, eyes blazing as he lunged forward.
The door exploded.
It was dark, but he didn’t need the light to know that the enormous furred beast plunging through the doorway was his backup, finally coming to his rescue. The vampire was mid-leap as Ezio launched through the doorway, maul open and teeth reflecting in the moonlight. His jaw clamped down on the vampire’s shoulder and twisted, the two enraged monsters turning as they plunged past, knocking his chair in the process and spilling him to the ground.
He slammed his right arm against the hardened surface of the flat carpeted flooring and screamed once more. His throat was raw, his breathing rapid, and it didn’t last l
ong as the void tried to sneak in and steal him away once more. Using the pain the force it back, he pushed himself over and forcibly got to his feet, the spell the vampire had cast upon him finally silenced.
Ezio howled as teeth sank into his shoulder, the wolf’s head slamming down and knocking the vampire loose in a violent spasm. The vampire was flung against the wall as Ezio landed on all fours and growled, saliva dripping from his fangs, his ass rising as he prepared to launch into his enemy and finish him off.
The vampire hissed, his hands turned to claws, all human resemblance shattered as he prepared to meet the werewolf’s charge. The hate he felt in his heart for the monster grew in strength, and he cast about for any signs of his weapons so that he could aid his friend in battle.
Ezio did not keep the demon waiting as he immediately launched across the room and straight into the arms of the enemy. The vampire turned and seized Ezio by the back of the neck, talons digging in as he let the momentum continue forward, the wolf’s head striking the stone wall with a loud crunch.
His weapons were nowhere to be seen, but a leg of the chair he’d been sat upon had broken loose and he reached down and seized it, yanking it free with minimal effort. Which was fortunate, as he didn’t have much left to give anyhow. He was still unsteady, but that didn’t stop him as he prepared to jump into the fray.
Ezio howled in pain as the vampire increased his grip, tearing into the wolf’s hide.
Stumbling forward, he summoned up all his grief, his pain, all that love that he’d ever felt for his fallen wife and funneled it into one swift stab with the sharp end of the broken chair leg, his left arm twinging with the strength behind his strike. The wooden stake pierced the man’s right shoulder, driving forward slightly before it was yanked from his grip, the vampire recoiling from the surprise attack and jerking backwards.
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