by J. R. Rain
Vampire Dawn
At the base of the stairway, an amorphous entity materialized before me. It kept materializing and soon took on the shape of a young woman—a young woman with a deep gash across her throat. She appeared to be hovering in mid-air, as ghosts are wont to do.
As I stepped forward, she blocked my path. She lifted what was supposed to be a hand, but was really just a blurred stump. I tried to step around her but she blocked my path again. Each time she moved, her mostly shapeless body lost what shape it had, until it swarmed again and reformed. She shook what was left of her head.
I paused in this lower level hallway, a level that was far colder than the floor just above. A level that smelled of death.
“I’m okay,” I whispered. “But thank you.”
She shook her head again, and kept on shaking it even as I stepped through her, scattering her glowing filaments like so many frightened fish.
Shivering, I moved forward again, toward a door at the far end of the hallway. Behind that door, hiding behind a pillar of some sort, was a man waiting to kill me. Of that I was sure.
And behind him, in a room that was filled with light, was my sister.
I was sure of it.
Suddenly pissed beyond control, I marched down the hallway, and gave the killer what he was waiting for.
Me.
With one raised foot and a lot of rage, I kicked the door open. So hard that the whole damn thing collapsed forward, including some of the door frame.
* * *
The sound was deafening.
I was here. They knew I was here. Enough with the charade. Besides, I wasn’t standing in the doorway. I was off to the side, standing behind the mangled door frame as dust billowed everywhere.
I doubted these guys were trained killers. Not like the vampire hunter I’d met last year, a man who systematically hunted down the world’s vampires. No, these guys were punks. Sickos. I imagined they lured and deceived their victims. At least, that was the impression I’d had when I touched the walls. Women were lured, and, in the case of Brian Meeks, people who worked here as well.
How they captured and killed vampires, I didn’t know, but I was beginning to get some ideas, especially if my hunch proved to be true.
For now, though, I had a bastard with a crossbow to deal with.
Of course, what I should do next was still up in the air. I hadn’t really thought things through much further than kicking down the door.
Whoever he was, I knew he was alone. Only one set of excited lungs were breathing at the far end of the hall. How many more were beyond this hall, I didn’t know. How many people it took to run a blood ring, I didn’t know that either. The fewer the better. In fact, I doubted the workers I had seen in the theater were truly privy to what was going on behind these closed doors.
Whoever they were, human life meant little. Blood was all that mattered. They were nothing more than butchers.
As I peered around the door frame and through the settling dust, I could see bright light issuing out from under the door. I could also see shadows moving under the door. I had gotten someone’s attention.
As I waited, knowing that a man at the far end of the hallway was holding the one weapon that could actually kill me, the same ghost girl materialized before me. But this time, she didn’t look so staticy. This time, I suspected, anyone could see her. Anyone, as in the guy standing at the far end of the hallway.
As she turned her head and looked at me sadly, her eyes round and dark, the deep gash in her neck somehow deepened, revealing the ghostly hint of her mortally damaged neck. And as she continued to stare at me, I saw what she was doing.
Acting as a decoy.
In that instant, a shiny-tipped arrow swept through her, to thunk deep into the wall behind her. She never took her eyes off me. Instead, she smiled and dematerialized.
I yanked the bolt out of the wall—and was moving.
I swept low over the ground, moving impossibly fast. I doubted the shooter had another bolt cocked and ready to fire.
I was right, he hadn’t. Instead, he had something else.
Another crossbow.
Already armed with a silver-tipped arrow. Raising it now as I hurled down the black hallway. I’d had some experience with silver. It wasn’t fun. It was hell, in fact.
Rarely have I moved so fast. I was surprised to see I clawed the ground with my hands like a wild animal, hurling myself forward, covering the space in the long hallway in a blink of an eye.
He had just raised the crossbow, and had just started squeezing the trigger when one moment he was alive, and the next he was twitching at my feet, the crossbow bolt lodged deep into his chest. As his legs kicked and he fought for breath that would not come, I looked away and pressed an ear against the door. Voices. Movement. The sounds of water dripping.
I looked again at the man at my feet. He’d mercifully quit twitching.
I considered my options, and realized I didn’t have many.
Now would have been a good time to cast my mind out, to search what lay beyond this door, to search for enemies and, most importantly, to search for my sister.
Good plan, except for one problem.
I couldn’t calm down. I couldn’t focus. My mind was racing too fast. Blood pumping too hard.
As I listened to the sounds of distant water dripping, I fought to calm down. Took deep breaths. I thought of my sister somewhere behind this door, and my mind went off into a rage again. I nearly threw the door open and charged inside.
To do that would have been death to me...and to my sister.
I told myself to relax, to calm my mind.
Finally, finally, I was able to clear it. Enough to cast my thoughts out. Casting my thoughts into an ever-widening gyre was my ace in the hole. My edge. Without it, I was walking into a death trap.
Except I wasn’t as calm as I would have liked. The images that were returned to me were fuzzy and incomplete. Still, good enough. There were three of them in the massive room beyond. Three living, that is. Three moving. There were others. Many others...hanging. Dripping blood.
The dripping sounds I’d been hearing.
Sweet Jesus
Calm down, Sam. Relax. You can do this. Your sister needs you. Hell, you need you.
I breathed deeply, filling my useless lungs with useless air. Useless or not, it was a technique that still worked to calm me down. To help me focus.
From somewhere far down the hallway to my right, I heard a distant sound. It could have been anything. Rats. Earth shifting. Or someone approaching. Hard to tell. Either way, whatever or whoever it was, was still far away.
The others I couldn’t recognize, although I suspected the tall one was Robert Cash. The other was smaller, thinner. Stood straight. Impossible to know who she was. At least, for the time being.
I would know soon enough.
I continued my remote search through the massive room beyond. The room was set lower than this hallway. Down some steps. I saw earth everywhere. It appeared to be a cavern...but an unnatural one. Long ago it had been dug out. By whom and for what reason, I didn’t know. Maybe it had always been used to kill and drain and feed the local vampires.
I continued searching the room, looking for anything that would give me an edge, anything that would help me not step into the world’s most obvious trap. The tall man I assumed to be Robert Cash was standing very near the door. He was holding something. I assumed it to be another crossbow.
The smaller figure was standing nearby. He or she was unarmed as far as I could tell.
I continued mentally scanning the big room—the room of horror—until I saw what appeared to be more doors. No surprise there. I was certain there were many ways into this underground chamber beneath the theater.
A balcony high above. Accessed by a door to my right.
Another door? Oh?
My eyes shot open. Indeed, behind more junk and behind where the dead man now lay at my feet, was a barely discernible door
.
I quietly moved toward it. It was locked. A quick flick of my wrist took care of that.
It opened quietly enough. I slipped inside and headed up.
* * *
The stairs were narrow and suspect.
I kept to the far edges, never stepping in the middle, and swept up them as quickly and quietly as I could. I wasn’t alone on the stairs. A steady procession of faded entities appeared and disappeared. These chambers and tunnels, hallways and stairs were easily the most haunted locations I’d ever seen.
No surprise there, I thought. This was, after all, a human blood factory. A death factory.
At the upstairs landing, dim light spilled over the railing, illuminating a loft-like area filled with crap. I stepped past shovels and filthy buckets and weird-looking glass containers. The scent of blood was everywhere. New blood. Old blood. My stomach growled.
Great.
I ignored the growling, hating myself all over again, but releasing the hate immediately. It was, after all, time to save my sister.
I stepped as lightly as I could through the mess, until I found myself at the balcony I had seen in my mental scan. Once there, I looked down at the scene below...and gasped.
The sight was overwhelming, but not unexpected. Human corpses filled the room. They hung from the rafters, many chained although some were suspended by thick ropes. All were naked. All hung upside down. All with slit throats.
My knees threatened to give. Hell, my whole world threatened to give. If I had to breathe normally, I would have been gasping. I probably would have fainted.
But I held onto the railing, searching the area below until I spotted my sister near the far wall. She was alive. Mercifully, she faced away from the carnage.
Some corpses twisted gently, as if blown by a breeze. A few of the freshest corpses had buckets beneath them to catch the dripping blood.
Many of the men looked like local bums. One of them I was sure I recognized, a bum I had seen near the post office. Some of the women, if I had to guess, were prostitutes. Career prostitutes. Banged up and used and abused. Some had fake breasts. Many were still wearing make up. All had their throats cut so bad that I could see all the way to their spines.
Many of the corpses were frozen in rigor mortis. Some had begun bloating. Most had been hanging for quite some time, the flesh having long ago peeled away from the ankles, revealing bone and rotting muscles. I counted twelve corpses. No, fourteen. There were two stacked on top of each other along the far wall.
If there was a hell, this was it.
A woman stood next to Chase?. A woman I had seen in my scan of the room, but who had not been distinct enough to recognize. Well, I recognized her now. Detective Hanner of the Fullerton Police Department. A fellow investigator...and a fellow vampire.
Here at the blood factory.
I began removing my clothing.
* * *
I had to be careful.
These people had made a business of killing. An industry. They were good at it, and they knew how to get away with it, too. Especially with Detective Hanner on the force. Perhaps she influenced the reports. Redirected evidence. Controlled minds. I didn’t know, but I suspected perhaps all of the above.
The room was vast and obscured by the hanging corpses. I knew by my initial scan that there were at least two men in the corners waiting with crossbows.
Two men, Robert Cash and Detective Hanner.
And my sister.
I had to act fast. I had to surprise them. And as I climbed up to stand carefully on the wooden railing overlooking the macabre scene, naked as the day as I was born, I suspected I would very much surprise them.
The single flame appeared in my thoughts. Unwavering, bright, dominant. I focused on it...and saw the creature within the flames. The creature that would be me.
And with that, I leaped from the railing.
* * *
The loft was thirty or so feet from the ground. Plenty of room to make my transformation.
Or so I hoped.
I spread my arms wide and, as the dirt floor rapidly approached, a huge set of thickly-membranous wings appeared from my arms and legs. As I plummeted, they snapped taut and, instead of slamming into the floor, I swooped parallel to it, just a foot or two from the ground.
It was as if I had always been this giant winged monster. As if I had always had its instincts and talents and appendages.
As I rushed low over the ground, I saw heads turn toward me. I saw faces form into expressions of horror. Only one didn’t. That of Detective Hanner. My sister, mercifully, kept her head down, kept looking away from the horrific scene.
I tilted my right wing, angling to starboard and went first to the man in the near corner, hiding behind a stack of barrels that I could only assume contained blood. I assumed the man had never seen a giant, humanoid vampire bat before. The first thing he did was wet himself. The urine seemed to burst from his loins, covering his crotch. The next thing he did was fumble for his crossbow, which he suddenly seemed to forget how to use.
He was still screaming as I slammed into him, driving him hard into the wall behind him. This was followed immediately by the sound of his skull bursting open.
Now covered in human chum, I spun around in time to see a silver arrow lodge deep into the wood to my side. Jesus, that was close. I followed its flight path to the second shooter, who had left his post against the far wall and was now rushing toward me.
As he ran, he reached behind and pulled free another crossbow. Unlike the crude, medieval weapon the name evoked, this thing was fairly high-tech: laser scoped, fiberglass, molded grips and pistol-like triggers.
I leaped from behind the now-fallen barrels, flapped my wings hard, and lifted into the air again.
The second shooter was more brazen than the first. No spreading urine stains, as far as I could see. Dressed in actual camouflage, he charged me from across the spacious room, well away from the hanging corpses. As he ran, he leveled the crossbow and sighted along his scope.
Now, I can’t have that.
As the red laser briefly flashed across my eyes, I tucked a wing in, rolled in mid-air just as the silver-tipped bolt whooshed past me.
Close.
Now the bastard was stringing another arrow, notching it as fast as he could. He was still in the act of notching when my talons fastened around his head and lifted. He didn’t get very far off the ground before his neck snapped nicely, reverberating throughout the massive room.
I released his broken body, and spotted Robert Cash ducking out through a side door, when I caught sight of something else. Something winged and black and rocketing up from the ground below.
It was Hanner.
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His Last Bow
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
It was nine o’clock at night upon the second of August—the most terrible August in the history of the world. One might have thought already that God’s curse hung heavy over a degenerate world, for there was an awesome hush and a feeling of vague expectancy in the sultry and stagnant air. The sun had long set, but one blood-red gash like an open wound lay low in the distant west. Above, the stars were shining brightly, and below, the lights of the shipping glimmered in the bay. The two famous Germans stood beside the stone parapet of the garden walk, with the long, low, heavily gabled house behind them, and they looked down upon the broad sweep of the beach at the foot of the great chalk cliff in which Von Bork, like some wandering eagle, had perched himself four years before. They stood with their heads close together, talking in low, confidential tones. From below the two glowing ends of their cigars might have been the smouldering eyes of some malignant fiend looking down in the darkness.
A remarkable man this Von Bork—a man who could hardly be matched among all the devoted agents of the Kaiser. It was his talents which had first recommended him for the English mission, the most important mission of all, but since he had taken it over those talents had
become more and more manifest to the half-dozen people in the world who were really in touch with the truth. One of these was his present companion, Baron Von Herling, the chief secretary of the legation, whose huge 100-horse-power Benz car was blocking the country lane as it waited to waft its owner back to London.
“So far as I can judge the trend of events, you will probably be back in Berlin within the week,” the secretary was saying. “When you get there, my dear Von Bork, I think you will be surprised at the welcome you will receive. I happen to know what is thought in the highest quarters of your work in this country.” He was a huge man, the secretary, deep, broad, and tall, with a slow, heavy fashion of speech which had been his main asset in his political career.
Von Bork laughed.
“They are not very hard to deceive,” he remarked. “A more docile, simple folk could not be imagined.”
“I don’t know about that,” said the other thoughtfully. “They have strange limits and one must learn to observe them. It is that surface simplicity of theirs which makes a trap for the stranger. One’s first impression is that they are entirely soft. Then one comes suddenly upon something very hard, and you know that you have reached the limit and must adapt yourself to the fact. They have, for example, their insular conventions which simply MUST be observed.”
“Meaning ’good form’ and that sort of thing?” Von Bork sighed as one who had suffered much.