“And where was that?”
“America.”
“Gentlemen,” Father said. “We have company.”
All three of us looked in the direction my father nodded. Two dirt-covered corpses were dragging themselves out of the ground from two fresh graves.
Dominus laughed and looked at me. “I thought those two would’ve risen by now. You want training?”
I nodded.
“You’re about to have your first lesson.”
Chapter Nineteen
Jacques turned and pointed. “Two more to the south of us.”
“It’s about to get messy,” Dominus said. “Now, wolf, don’t be cutting in on . . . what’s your name anyhow, boy?”
“Forrest.”
“Wolf, don’t intercept Forrest’s vampire. A hunter can’t have handholding or coddling.”
Jacques shook his head.
“Forrest,” Dominus said in the utmost seriousness. “The most important thing about killing a vampire is not getting bit.”
I rolled my eyes. “I think that’s a given, even for me.”
Dominus released a throaty laugh and gave a menacing grin at Jacques. “Yeah, well, it kind of goes the same about werewolves, too, but some folks don’t get it and end up werewolves anyway. Ain’t that right, wolfie?”
“Look here,” Jacques said, taking a step toward Dominus. “I’ve had enough of your pompous, belligerent—”
“Jacques!” I said, glaring at him. “There are four of us, and four vampires. You two can settle whatever differences you have afterwards.”
“You see, boy, that’s why you don’t bring a wolf to a vampire hunt. You never know who they’ll turn on.”
Jacques jaw tightened. His inner wolf gleamed in his eyes, begging to be released.
“Dominus,” I said. “You’re not only angering him, but me as well.”
“Good,” he replied with a grunt and twisted smile. “Now how about the two of you take that anger and start killing vampires.”
Perhaps I had been wrong in pursuing Dominus as the one to train me. I had no prior knowledge of who he was, nor did I know what to expect upon meeting him. But I had been desperate and thought that finding any hunter was in my best interest. His name, Dominus, had seemed like a strong title, someone capable of ripping his way through a cemetery full of vampires without blinking an eye or flinching. That’s the naivety of an eight-year-old mind, and something I needed to shake myself free from as soon as possible. But the name he carried was one that he had apparently chosen for himself. Not one from his parents or one predestined for him.
“All kidding aside, Forrest,” he said in a low serious tone. “And I’m sure your werewolf friend can attest to this, vampires can move fast, sometimes as quick as the blink of the eye.”
I nodded. And so can werewolves.
“You ever scuffle when you were in school?” Dominus asked.
“Scuffle?”
“Fight.”
“No. I was four times the size of most of my classmates. I’d have crushed them.”
“You ever fight ever?”
I shook my head and pulled my stake from my coat pocket.
He glanced back to Jacques. “On second thought, wolf, you might want to stand ready. Don’t want the boy killed on his first hunt.”
“The name’s Jacques,” he said.
Dominus pretended not to hear, and looked toward me. “Vampires are extremely strong. You look capable of doing a lot of physical damage to ordinary humans, but be prepared when fighting one of these bloodsuckers. Young ones are disoriented when they first emerge, so use that to your advantage. While you might knock one off balance with a good punch, they recover quickly. And no matter how hard you hit one, it only pisses them off.”
I nodded, taking in the information.
“The stake must penetrate the heart, all the way through. I know, before you get all defensive and say that you already know that, you must realize that near the heart isn’t good enough. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Dominus stood at my side as the two vampires approached. One was a fair skinned blonde male and the other a female with dark hair and brooding eyes. For whatever reason, I never had taken into consideration that women were amongst the undead vampire legion. I don’t know why I had thought that, but the sudden realization also made it harder for me. I didn’t like the idea of killing a female vampire, but I supposed it was better than she killing me.
The female stood on the right dressed in a modest white burial gown, showing modest cleavage; and the male to the left wore a cheap suit, one I wouldn’t want to be caught dead or undead in.
“Which one do you want?” Dominus asked.
“The male,” I said quickly. I didn’t want my first kill to be a woman, and I wasn’t certain I could drive the stake through her heart.
He raised his crossbow toward the young woman. She bore her fangs and hissed. Her contorted face absorbed her beauty, making her a hideous monster. Dominus fired and the wooden arrow pierced through her heart. She collapsed with a sharp shriek, dissolving into dust before her hands could even reach for the shaft.
“He’s all yours,” he said, nodding toward the remaining vampire.
I liked the thought of a crossbow. It killed from a distance and was less personal. Using a stake was much different, being an intimate slaying, and also more dangerous for the hunter.
The male vampire’s eyes shifted back and forth between Dominus and myself. After watching the female crumble into dust, he was more cautious in his approach.
I must admit that I was hesitant in my advance, even with the stake in my hand. I thought about what Dominus had said and realized that accuracy was most crucial. I’d never really given that much thought. To think that all I needed to do was stake the heart was one thing, but approaching a moving vampire was everything different than what my imagination had pictured the situation to be. He wasn’t simply going to stand there and expose his heart. He was going to fight and do his best to kill me before I could kill him. A moving target made accuracy a lot harder.
There was nervousness in the new vampire’s expressions, as his mind struggled to adapt to his surroundings. He was in a new reality, the world of the undead, and I was in a new world, the life of a hunter. Everything shrank around me. Nothing else existed except this vampire and myself. The gravestones around us vanished. Sounds minimized to the point that I heard the slow, almost absent, heartbeat of my undead enemy before me. My peripheral vision prevented me from seeing what was to either side of me.
He looked confused and betrayed, plus the slightest bit angry. Perhaps the eternal undead life wasn’t something he had bargained for or even wanted. Perhaps it was the horrid suit someone had buried him in? Nevertheless, he was pacing opposite me in a circle as we studied one another before attacking.
His eyes watched the stake in my hand. He held no knowledge of the power he possessed as a vampire and seeing me with the sharpened piece of wood, it must have dawned upon him that I was his enemy. Regardless of whether he had sought to live forever or not, as I later learned some foolish humans actually requested to be turned, he suddenly took a more offensive stance toward me.
I imagined the majority of creatures on earth wanted to live, no matter what their state of being was. True, some people chose to end their lives, thinking they have nothing else to live for, but this wasn’t an attitude one found in nature. I’ve never happened upon any beast of the wild standing at the edge of a cliff contemplating a leap to end it all. And this vampire was no different than those beasts. He did a quick soul-less searching and determined he wanted to kill me in order to spare his own life. However, even inexperienced, I held selfish counterplans of my own.
Where Dominus, my father, and Jacques were during this confrontation, I didn’t know. I was shielded inside an invisible dome. My mind had thrust away all other outside distractions.
My thin undead enemy hissed. Fangs protruded in an instant. He fle
xed his hands and sharper nails lengthened. Amazingly, I needed to be properly trained to battle against these undead, and yet, they possessed immediate access to their defensive mechanisms. By height I was at least six inches taller, and my weight was probably three times his. Staring into his nervous eyes, I knew if either of us moved first, it’d have to be me.
I placed my right foot forward, and he backed away, his eyes watching the stake. I moved the stake out to my side, only to see his attention following it. I rotated it in a circular motion and nothing on his part changed. The stake held him spellbound. I wondered if Roy had enchanted the wood or blessed it after carving it into shape. He had mentioned carved runes . . .
I rushed toward the vampire, and his eyes averted and focused upon me, widening like a wild animal. He shrieked, and then growled like a threatened dog. He reared back his head, exposing his fangs even more. I didn’t realize how long vampire fangs actually were. While it should have been intimidating to me, I felt a mental prodding to aim for his heart.
Since I was taller, I approached with a rapidly descending swing and aimed at his chest where I estimated his heart to be. He retreated slightly but arched forward, trying to bite my wrist. I countered with a sharp left hand swing with my fist, catching his jaw. The impact sent him reeling, and he flipped over a rugged gravestone, crashing to the ground on the other side.
I rushed to the other side of the stone, but he was gone.
I looked around, trying to find him, and an odd sensation pricked the back of my neck, like an insect crawling. I turned to see him approaching swiftly. His eyes were red, crazed, and angry. He struck me with such force that my back hammered against the massive stone where I had set my hunter box. The air was knocked from my lungs and the pain dazed me. Breathing in, hurt.
By instinct or another hunter’s foreknowledge, my left hand clutched the vampire’s throat before he had a chance to bite me. He clawed at me, trying to lean his head to my neck to bite my throat. Dominus was right. The vampire was incredibly strong, but my determination to survive unbitten was stronger.
I clenched my fingers tighter around his throat, watching his eyeballs bulge. His sharp nails tore at my coat, but its thickness prevented him from cutting into my flesh. He attempted to growl, but with my hand choking him, only a pathetic noise emitted.
Pain radiated down my spine and the back of my head ached. In spite of the vampire’s strength, he was extremely light, and I could have easily flung him backwards, but I didn’t want him to come charging back at me. I figured he’d be on me before I was able to stand. As long as I held him by the throat, I controlled this fight.
I drove the stake into his gut. I knew it wasn’t going to kill him, but being so close, I didn’t have an easy aim for his heart. His eyes widened in pain. I smiled, only because I didn’t know for certain he’d experience pain. Now, he was tugging back and pushing with his hands to get away from me, but he couldn’t pry my tight grip off of his throat.
I yanked out the stake and plunged it into him again. Warm blood coated my hand as I twisted the stake even deeper.
He muffled a groan and winced. Blood leaked from the sides of his mouth, crimson contrasting with his pale complexion.
I left the stake in his side and pushed myself to my feet, careful not to release my chokehold as I rose. Once I was standing, I gripped the end of the stake and yanked it out. With my hand on his throat, I lifted him off the ground and slammed him on his back. His ribs cracked and his neck snapped from the violent impact. His eyes widened and his weakened hands clawed desperately into the earth.
I placed a knee to each side of his waist and straddled him. Veins swelled on his purpling face from how hard I was choking him. I thought it was odd that you couldn’t kill a vampire by strangling him, even if you kept him from breathing for such a long period of time. Slowly and carefully, I positioned the sharp tip of the stake directly over his heart, looking into his eyes. I applied slight pressure, feeling the tip dent into his skin.
The fear in his eyes did nothing for me. No remorse, no regret. He knew I was going to end his undead life. Perhaps his fear was his uncertainty for what transpired next. I wondered about that myself. According to the cathedral, vampires were cursed beings without a soul. No chance of a heaven, and every certainty of hell.
“To hell with you,” I whispered, plunging the stake through his ribs and into his heart.
There was the slightest moment of relief reflected in his gaze. Once that passed, his body crumbled beneath me and his burial clothes were gone. After several gusts of wind, his ash remains would be gone.
I remained in that position for a few moments. My hands shook. My heartbeat pulsed in my ears. It wasn’t from fear, but a strange rush that empowered me.
“Not exactly the orthodox way of slaying a vampire,” Dominus said with a wild grin. “But it’ll do. Not bad work for a first kill.”
White dust clung to the drying crimson blood on my hand. I stood and dusted off the powdered remnants from my pants and the ends of my overcoat.
“Why does their clothing vanish?” I asked.
Dominus chuckled. “My guess is the heat from their disintegrating bodies as hell swallows them also turns their clothes to ash as well. I don’t rightly know.”
Shaking myself from the mental fog and trying to calm from the euphoric energy welling inside of me, I remembered my father and looked for him. I didn’t see him, and immediately I worried about his welfare.
Chapter Twenty
“Where’d my father go?” I asked.
Dominus pointed. “Over there.”
Across the cemetery my father stood over a vampire that clung to a granite gravestone. This vampire was young, maybe in his early twenties before his transformation. Father held his silver cross inches away from the side of its face. It screamed as smoke billowed off of its flesh.
“Your Poppa likes to torture ‘em, eh?” Dominus asked. “He’s been kicking and punching it from the time you started fighting yourn. I like his style.”
The vampire flung itself over on its back, trying to get away from the cross. The anger chiseled in my father’s face was frightening to behold. I’d seldom ever seen him mad, and I’d certainly never witnessed the man with pure vindictiveness possessing him. His burning rage wasn’t with this particular vampire, and I doubted in his previous slayings that he had ever been so brutal. He was torturing the vampire, but I assumed that in his mind he was picturing the baron as he unleashed his violent anger.
I took my stake off the ground and started toward my father.
“Ah, let him be, Forrest. It’s good for him to get his aggression out.”
Even though he was right, I ignored him and didn’t bother giving him a response. Prolonged blind rage left one open for unexpected vulnerabilities, especially when dealing with a desperate vampire.
Jacques had already disposed of his vampire and turned his attention toward my father, too. We met halfway across the cemetery.
“You survived your first kill,” he said.
I shrugged. “He didn’t give much of a fight. I expect that the older ones are much harder though.”
“They are.”
My father kicked the vampire and struck him in the back of the head with the silver cross. As much as it had hurt my father to walk great distances after his injuries, he fought with the vigor of a much younger man. Sweat covered Father’s reddened face. He took in gulps of air.
“Father, don’t you think you’ve tortured him enough?”
“I’m drawing him out,” he replied.
“Who?”
“The baron.”
“And how are you doing that?”
“This spawn of the devil is his making. Randolph feels his anguish.” He kicked the vampire in the gut and then he pressed the cross to its face. “A true master will come to protect his sired.”
Jacques shook his head. “We don’t know who turned this one.”
“I do,” he replied.
“Did he confess that to you?” Jacques asked.
My father’s face was dark red. “He didn’t have to.”
“There’s no way for us to know, John.”
Tears formed in my father’s eyes. The swollen knuckles on his right hand were split and bleeding from battering the vampire. The assault would have killed a normal human but seemed to have hurt my father more than the undead vampire that was hiding his face from the cross.
Jacques gave an even smile to my father. “The baron’s not coming. If he were, he’d have already appeared.”
Jacques reached for the vampire.
“Don’t you touch him,” my father said in a harsh tone. “Jacques, don’t.”
My cousin grabbed the vampire by the neck and dragged his body thirty feet away.
“Jacques!” Father hobbled, trying to get to his cousin.
Jacques grabbed the vampire’s head, jerked it back and twisted in one swift motion. Then he yanked hard, pulling its head off of its shoulders. The vampire burst into dust.
“How dare you,” my father said in a shaky voice. “How dare you rob me of my revenge!”
I ached inside for my father. I grieved for the loss of my mother, too, and it hurt seeing him torn up inside.
Father kept coming toward Jacques. I stepped between them.
“Know your place, son!”
The fury in his eyes was unyielding. He was near to striking me, and even if he did, I wasn’t moving, nor would I exchange blows with him, despite my size. He was my father, and I sensed his anguish. No one acts properly when weighed beneath such pain, but I’d guarantee he wouldn’t lay a finger upon Jacques. And yes, Jacques was more capable of defending himself than I could, but the last thing I wanted was for the two of them fighting one another. I hoped that could be avoided.
“It is my place, Father. He’s family, what little of family we have left. You turn your anger against your own blood, and you’re handing Baron Randolph a victory. Is that what you want?” I braced myself, expecting him to strike.
Forrest Wollinsky: Vampire Hunter [Book One] Page 15