Red Rain: Over 40 Bestselling Stories

by J. R. Rain

  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.

  Finis

  Return to the Table of Contents

  Also available:

  The Witch and the Gentleman

  The Witches Trilogy #1

  by J.R. Rain

  (read on for a sample)

  Chapter One

  “Hi, this is Allison. Thank you for calling The Psychic Hotline. How can I help you see into the future?”

  As I spoke and waited, I reached for my protein drink, which I had just whipped up a few minutes earlier. I found that protein drinks helped me connect with the spirits.

  Yes, I’m a telephone psychic. A pretty good one, too. I’m also a personal trainer and hoped to someday start my own gym. A gym that focused on the body and the mind. Lofty dreams, but we all need them.

  I set aside my protein drink, cleared my thoughts and glanced at my computer screen. According to my screen, I had a call on the line, a local number, too. I worked from home, plugged into my company’s switchboard, so to speak. I wore headphones with a microphone, and as soon as I clicked on the number blinking on the screen, we were live.

  The wonders of technology.

  I adjusted my headphones. The previous callers were already out of sight, out of mind. A couple of kids wanted to mess with me. Except, of course, I sensed their names quickly enough to blow their minds. Then again, they were high and it wasn’t very hard to blow their minds.

  Yeah, we got a lot of jerks who liked to mess with us. It was part of the business. We also got a lot of people who needed real help. Little did the callers know they were getting a real psychic. A powerful psychic. One whose gifts were enhanced nearly daily, thanks to my unusual source of power. From a friend of mine who just happened to be a vampire.

  Now, I focused on connecting my energy to the person on the other end of the line. I heard crackling in the background, followed by faint street noise.

  It wasn’t hard to connect with others on a psychic level once I learned how to do it. I practiced like a kid who had just learned how to ride a bike. It was a sort of mental reaching out. However, I knew it went further than just the mental. It was a brief connecting of souls. My soul connecting with the caller’s. Except he didn’t know I was connecting. Yes, I already knew it was a “he” on the other end of the line. And he had a very, very heavy problem weighing on his heart.

  “Can you hear me?” asked a hesitant voice.

  “Loud and clear,” I said. “How can I help you?”

  Through my living room’s sliding glass door, the posh apartment building across the street caught some of the mid-afternoon sun, and glittered magnificently. A seagull swooped in that moment over my balcony, which was unusual because my Beverly Hills apartment was at least ten miles from the ocean.

  “I’m not sure,” said the man.

  “Then let’s start with your name,” I said.

  “My name is Pete.”

  I sensed his crackling nerves on the other end of the line. This wasn’t going to be your everyday phone call to a psychic. What it was going to be, I didn’t know, but I sensed a lot of pain on his end. A friggin’ lot.

  “Don’t be nervous,” I said, and was not very surprised when the big seagull landed on my balcony wall. The big bird was missing a leg, but did a fine job of balancing on just one. How in the hell a seagull could lose an entire leg was beyond me.

  No, not beyond me. Not these days. Just as I speculated on the leg, I saw an image of a young man holding what appeared to be a BB gun. The projectile went through the seagull’s leg, breaking it and nearly severing it. Nearly. The poor guy had spent weeks in agony until he’d finally chewed off his own leg with his beak.

  The animal kingdom endures horrors that few of us could fathom, I had once read. I believe it.

  “Well, how much information do I give you, and how much information do I, you know, wait to receive?” he asked.

  “We can do this any way you want.”

  “Well, I would prefer not to say much.”

  “To test me?”

  “Yes, sorry. But it’s the only way I can know if you are legit.”
>
  “Fair enough,” I said. The truth was, I would do the same. His only ace in the hole was that he hadn’t told me anything yet, other than his name. “Give me a moment.”

  I really didn’t need a moment. I was already linked into the guy pretty well. But sometimes, it took a moment to make sense of what I was seeing, feeling and hearing. And yes, I experienced all three. A true rarity for a psychic.

  Then again, most psychics weren’t a source of blood for vampires. Especially powerful vampires. And my very good friend might have been just one of the most powerful vampires ever, although she didn’t quite believe it yet.

  As I made sense of what I was seeing, as a sort of story unfolded before me, two things happened: the first was that the seagull hopped a little closer on one leg and cocked its head a little to stare at me, and the second was that I gasped.

  “You’re looking for the person who murdered your daughter,” I said to my caller.

  There was a long pause. A very long pause. Before sound ripped into my ears. And I suddenly realized that what I was hearing on the other end was the sound of the man sobbing.

  Chapter Two

  I waited for him to regain control of himself.

  While I waited, I reached out further, expanding my mind, but I wasn’t God. I didn’t know all, see all. I was also not a medium. I didn’t see the dead or talk to the dead. I did, however, have other gifts, many other gifts. One of them was remote viewing, which happened to be my strength.

  In my mind’s eye, I saw a man sitting on a couch in the dark in a living room. The shades were drawn and no lights were on. His phone was pushed up against his ear as he sort of hugged himself in an upright fetal position.

  I expanded further out. It was a big home. Nice furniture. A robust leather couch banked one wall. Elegant glass tables reflected light. Framed photos were arranged across the top of a slick, black lacquer piano. I shifted my focus to the photos.