The Blood Born Tales (Book 1): Blood Collector

by T. C. Elofson

  “You saw them, didn’t you?” Jack asked. “Their eyes were yellow, right? You’re not sure what to do next.” Jack paused, then turned around on the street and faced Kenny. “There are real horrors out there, Kenny. And I have a feeling you’re just getting a taste of them for the first time.”

  “Tell me, Jack… Tell me about vampires. ‘Vampires’ gets funnier every time I say it.”

  “Vampires nest in groups of eight to ten,” Jack began pedantically. “Smaller packs are sent out to hunt for food. Victims are taken to nests where packs keep them alive, bleeding them for days or weeks at a time. They really are not afraid of the sun. Well, direct sunlight hurts like a bitch, like a nasty sunburn. The only way to kill them, other than what you just saw, is beheading. And yeah, they sleep during the day. But that doesn’t mean they won’t wake up. So walking into a nest is not the best idea.”

  “Tell me. What do you know about all this? And what is the FBI really doing here?”

  “Oh, as far as the FBI is concerned, she’s just a serial killer. But they only know what I put in my reports. I have a unique knowledge of what is really going on. And from Tim’s computer online searches earlier tonight, I’m getting the feeling that you do too, Kenny,” Jack said smugly.

  “You’ve been watching us?”

  “I’m always watching. I don’t get into bed with anyone without knowing everything about them. I chose you and Detective Anderson because your profiles played to the strengths that I needed for this. Your minds had the potential for new ideas.”

  “Tell me, Jack.”

  “It started months ago, in California. Several bodies had been found. They were all drained of blood, just like in Washington State. Trace evidence at all the crime scenes had been inconclusive at best and the metal reports all dated back to different time periods. Some went as far back as the Greek Empire.”

  “How many scenes are we talking about here?” Kenny asked, his eyes rigidly focused on Jack.

  “More than a few. I can’t really tell you. Twice what has been reported in this state. Many of the victims had physical damage from years before. Far more years than were logical for a normal man or woman. Damage that no one could have walked away from. Stab wounds from blades measuring eight inches and more. Some were even shot. Most of the fingerprint analyses came up negative. All but one.”

  “Wait just a fuckin’ minute! You’re saying this killer has been active outside this state and that is really why you’re involved?”

  “I’ll get to that, Kenny. A body found in California came back with a hit off of the ten print card index. When the body showed up six months ago, his ten print card was run through all government databases and they got a match.

  “His name was Daniel Elis of Sacramento California. He was born in 1945 in California. At the age of twenty, he joined the Marine Corps and was sent to the Vietnam War in 1965. He died in South Vietnam a month later and his body was never found. His dog tags had been recovered in the battle of Bình Giã. He was thought to have been dead, but his body turned up almost fifty years later. In California.”

  Jack had recited all this from memory.

  Kenny stared in disbelief. What he was hearing was impossible. But the truth was there somewhere and Kenny had to bring it out of Jack.

  “His photograph had been taken,” Jack began again. “It was compared to the military photo of him in Vietnam. They were one and the same, there was no doubt. He looked the same age as he did when he had died almost fifty years earlier and there was only one conclusion. He was killed over there in Vietnam alright, but not by any bullet or shrapnel. He was killed by a vampire.”

  “What?! So the man was a vampire? That was the only possible conclusion?” Kenny asked incredulously.

  “Precisely. And he was finally killed by a vampire as well.”

  Kenny kept replaying the car driving past them over and over again in his mind. He couldn’t help but think that there was something odd in the man’s appearance. Then there was the issue of the yellow eyes. In his imagination, he kept trying to see the man’s face more clearly, but was unable to. He couldn’t picture the cheekbones or the mouth, even. The whole face was dark and indistinct. Kenny tried to explain that to himself. It was not working.

  “You know of her, don’t you, Kenny? …of Fabiana?”

  “How do you know of her?” Kenny asked.

  “Oh, I’ve known about her for some time. My grandfather told me all about her.”

  “Your grandfather? I don’t understand. Jack, what does your grandfather have anything to do with this?”

  But Jack wouldn’t answer that question for several moments. It wasn’t until they came within sight of Kenny’s car that Jack finally began to speak.

  “My grandfather was a hunter. At least that is what he called himself. A ‘vampire hunter’, to be more accurate. He hunted vampires.”

  Go figure, Kenny thought in frustration.

  They got to Kenny’s old black Mustang parked in the shadow of a tall warehouse just off of Freemont. Kenny opened the door and helped Jack into the back seat. It might not have been a patrol car like Kenny would have wanted, but he had cuffed Jack and put him in the back all the same.

  “We both know you’re not going to arrest me, Detective. There is no evidence. And now you’ve seen what they truly are.”

  At that moment, Kenny’s eyes glanced down at the wooden stake he had been holding in his hands.

  “What are they then?” Kenny asked. “Because it sure looked to me as if you just stabbed an innocent woman in the heart.”

  “Are we still on that, Detective? You would like to believe that, wouldn’t you, Kenny? It would make all this more clear cut. But it’s not clear cut. It’s sticky and messy. They’re vampires and not held to our laws, our standards and judgments. They’re the undead and have killed every night for hundreds of years, each night taking the lives of innocent humans to feed on. To feed their lust for blood.”

  Jack was now leaning his head out of the open car door and looking up at Kenny. Kenny kneeled down to his level, his face pensive as he looked at Jack.

  “It’s true, Kenny. For at least ten years I have been hunting creatures such as the one who is killing in your city. She is a demon. A killer. And just like any other killer that you have faced, she has her pattern, her own ways of killing. Always at night and always in a secluded area of the city.”

  “Look at the evidence, Jack,” Kenny began. “She’s not killing humans. She’s killing other vampires.”

  “I know. That doesn’t matter. She’s still a creature of evil.”

  “Each victim’s body holds evidence proving they are not human. Or at least proving that they’re not from our time. Take our last victim. The bones show proof of being from the Bronze Age. It’s the body of a vampire.”

  “Only proving that she’s killing her kind, but still killing,” Jack said vehemently. “Professional or semi-professional vampire hunters have played a key part in vampire lore for hundreds of years. My family has been hunting vampires since I was a kid. My grandfather taught me after my father was killed by a vampire back in ‘83.

  “Now, in Bulgaria, the tools used to dispatch the demons from this mortal world were a hawthorn or a piece of wood, or a wooden stake like that one in your hand. It was always said that if you staked them in the heart, they would turn to dust. In fact, that’s not so. As you saw, you only need holy water. The stake only stops them. In some traditions, the killing of vampires could only be performed by a hunter, someone like me. Some believed that only a true hunter could even see a real vampire.”

  “This is all very interesting,” Kenny stopped him in a snide and tired tone.

  “You are going into something that you are not prepared to deal with, Detective. There are far too many of them and they are coming for you.”

  “You saw the note,” Kenny stated as he climbed to his feet.

  “Yes. Your precious Fabiana. Do you really think she won’t kill him?�
��

  “What are you talking about?” Kenny asked.

  “Tim. She has him. Do you really think he is safe with her? She is a killer, you know.”

  “How is it you know that, Jack? That he is with her now?”

  “I was told as much. There’s surveillance all over this city, Kenny. Somebody is always watching.”

  252

  Chapter 49

  6:30 p.m., November 25

  Water splashed in the distance. The Trevi Fountain echoed its presence in the night air and I sipped on my bold red wine. Fabiana majestically sat across from me. Darkness continued to pour in around us as we took in the tavern like any normal two lovers on holiday.

  She sat quietly, sipping seductively on her drink, loving every moment of the little play we were performing for one another. Inside the tavern, the music of Massimo Di Cataldo seeped out of the open doorway. The wine bottle on our quaint sidewalk table was empty and my mind spun. I never really like wine no matter how often Kenny had attempted to broaden my palette. But here in this lovely place, everything seemed different to me.

  In my own little way, I was happy, I was happy to be there in Italy; it was a place that I always had wished to visit but never had. I was part Italian after all. My grandmother was from Sardinia, a small island just off the toe of Italy. My grandfather, an American photographer, was visiting Italy when he met my grandmother. Later, the two of them migrated back to America together.

  Fabiana’s eyes were like hands reaching out to me, wanting me to mentally touch her with my questions. There was something about this woman that captivated me. Here was someone with the knowledge and power of an ancient warrior, but the radiance of youth glowed from every part of her.

  “Tell me, Fabiana. Is being a vampire like it is in the films I’ve seen?”

  Her fingers fondled an olive oil jar that was hand-blown in Murano. Painted on the side was the picture of an olive branch, a symbol of peace.

  “I don’t visit the cinemas,” she said coldly. “And every human idea about being an immortal is a mistaken side step from reality. Yes, we sleep in the day. But we can go out in the daytime as long as we stay out of direct sunlight.”

  “What about stakes? Can stakes to the heart kill you?”

  “Kill us? No. Hurt us? Yes. But only the very young ones. The older we get, the stronger our flesh becomes. And it would require a lot more force to plunge the stake into our old, grizzly hearts,” she said, smiling.

  “Let me resolve a few misconceptions that you may have about my people. We can and do look in mirrors and I have no problem looking at religious icons. I may not have come from a time when Jesus Christ’s teachings were prevalent; however I find most Christian images enjoyable to look at. I’m very fond of the Mother Mary. Some Italian artists have captured her rather well. Or so I’ve been told. I never met her myself.”

  I let out a little chuckle. The thought that she could have possibly met the Virgin Mary was humorous to me. That she was, in fact, almost as old as Christ himself was an idea that was almost impossible for me to grasp.

  “Actually, I went through a point in my life when I loved churches. I couldn’t get enough of them during the Renaissance in Italy. I loved the structure and artistic freedom of them. And the idea of God gave me hope in a life without hope…” Fabiana’s voice trailed off wistfully.

  The surrounding shops, pizzerias, and ristoranti were lit up and hummed with activity, even this late at night. Cars and Italian scooters were parked at haphazard angles along the walk. The rumble of traffic and the sounds of footsteps and voices of laughter filled the night around Piazza Novona.

  “So crucifixes have no effect on you?”

  “Crucifixes are a myth. However, blessed water and consecrated grounds do have a slight effect on me, I’m afraid,” she stated openly. “In my youth, I was unable to cross over into consecrated ground, such as churches. But no longer. Blessed water will destroy us though, if we’re in a weakened state.”

  “Blessed water? You mean holy water,”

  I said it as if the words had just occurred to me, like I was sounding them out. We got up and started to walk down the walkway, a cool breeze at our backs as we passed a ristorante.

  Candlelit tables were covered in pale red cloths and the dark-paneled wall behind us was filled with bottles of wine as old as I was, probably older. Another wall was decorated in a rustic Italian scene, a lush vineyard painted in fresco. It would have been a very nice and peaceful place for us to stop if it hadn’t been for the drunken American college girls that laughed so loudly. Instantly, I was ashamed of being an American.

  “So,” I began once more, “you find the modern versions of vampires pretty inaccurate then? There’s no Edward or Jacob in your life?”

  She looked over at me with an expression I could only have described as disdain and I instantly gave forth my apologies.

  “Sorry. My daughter is all about Twilight.” I winced, waiting for her reaction.

  “The ridiculous writing of a bored housewife trying to fill her emptiness with childish fantasies,” Fabiana replied dryly.

  “What about Anne Rice? Surely she had a closer notion of… what do you call it? Oh, yeah. Blood Collectors.”

  Her look was brooding and pensive for a moment. I could tell she was contemplating how to articulate her thoughts.

  “Anne Rice is the only human writer I had ever come across that was even halfway close to the truth, but still only by a margin. I have encountered several young, new immortals who were more than a little obsessed by her. There was one who even said he was the Vampire Armand. I killed him for such an obvious falsehood. I knew the truth the moment I spotted him. He was a natural born liar.”

  I pulled the folded piece of paper out of my pants pocket and held it up to her in a kind of display.

  “You didn’t have to warn me but you did,” I said. “And you didn’t have to save my life. That tells me one thing. You think I’m worth saving. In your mind, I must have something that is valuable to you.”

  I was suddenly no longer embarrassed around her. I could talk about anything. It seemed only truth came from her and it was refreshing. No one alive would talk so freely unless they were a child. Only in adulthood do you learn to protect yourself with lies and mistruths.

  “I can help you in this,” I stated again as if she hadn’t heard me the first time. But I knew she had and, just as before, she ignored my offer.

  “You claim you have something I value. Well, you do indeed. You have your humanity. You’re a good man and you strive to do good for others. You remind me of my father. I was unable to save his life so I saved yours. In fact, I took his life. And there is not one day that slips by me that I don’t completely hate the creature I transformed into. Because of me, he is dead.”

  I began to walk a few steps away from her. My mind drifted to the poster I had put up in my house when I first met Sara. It was a black and white photograph of Venice—the canal in front of the Rialto Bridge. We got the poster at one of those import stores that seemed to be all over Seattle. We always said someday we would travel to Italy but somehow never made it. Suddenly a wave of guilt washed over me as I finally stood in the streets of Rome.

  “Don’t worry about her any longer, Tim,” Fabiana said as she suddenly appeared at my side and grabbed my arm. In a flash, we were gone. Streetlights blurred and structures wisped past like we had been fired from the barrel of a gun and rocketed through the countryside with immense force. When we came to a stop I was once again amazed at where we had ended up.

  It was three o’clock in the morning in Venice, nine hours ahead of Seattle. A waitress refilled a bottle of wine for an elderly gentleman who sat on a wooden bench outside of a tavern. He had a book held close to his face and was immersed in some great story of life and love. The distinctive smell of the canal was unrelenting but I refused to give in to it. I was going to enjoy every moment of this.

  I went to Fabiana and opened my arms. She rece
ived me with the utmost tenderness. I kissed her cheeks as though the truth had broken open a powerful iron door within her that had been keeping our two worlds apart. I kissed her on the mouth, on her hair. It was almost like the embrace of my dream. This time I understood it. It was not so much a declaration of love but more of an acceptance of each other’s passion. And the nature of her beauty worked on me, slowly transforming the way in which I touched her now.

  There was lust in me, yes, bred into my nature, but it had not been fed. A practical, vital lust, and it was part of my constitution, my vision. I had never felt it until that moment in my dream. Somehow this vampire, this amazing creature, had awoken the animal in me and I really liked the feeling. I loved the sensation of caressing her once again and kissing her freely. I was succumbing to her power. She was dominating me and that was something new and odd. She was such a small and meek looking woman, yet I was the one being dominated.

  I smoothed her hair with my hand. Yes, she was with me again. Her amazing brown eyes looked right into me. She flashed her wholesome, sweet smile. We exchanged intrepid, youthful glances and my heart beat wildly again after so much sedation. It was as if I had woken from a long sleep and now my heart and thoughts were awake, alive. I think this was the moment that I first knew I loved Fabiana.

  My skin was gleaming more truly with color now. The unnatural glisten of her eyes and the body of her flowing black hair caught me as it had in my dream. At that moment, I knew I was in trouble.

  This one, this true woman, could never completely love me. No. I suddenly sensed that she loved another. And I knew I could never replace him. I could never match up to her first and only love. But it seemed my heart was not communicating the proper messages to my brain. Because, as I stared at her, I no longer cared if she loved another. I wanted this woman. And the heart wants what it wants, doesn’t it? The brain really has nothing to do with it.