Sasha moved closer to Eamon. “I apologize, Eamon, Marta. That was uncalled for but I just had to say that. She and Anthony are the only ones here who haven’t dealt with a hunter and they’re the most cavalier acting. Maybe not Anthony, but he’s blind.” She turned to Lauryl and Anthony. “I apologize for calling you dumb but not for saying both of you were a waste. You have so much to learn.” She walked back over to Carissa. “Fire me, I don’t care,” Sasha muttered.
“No one’s being fired,” Eamon said. “Anthony, would you please check and see if the club is empty?
Anthony checked the camera views. After a few minutes, he turned the laptop around to Eamon. “Looks about empty. The lights are on.”
“Excellent.” Eamon walked over to the desk and studied the camera views more closely. “There appears to be four of them. I suspect they all have long knives. Hence the long coats in this miserable, muggy weather.” He studied the four on camera as they paced around the room. At least three of them were. The one in the hat stood staring at the camera. “Are the two on security vampires?” Eamon asked.
“Yes,” Anthony and Sasha answered in unison.
“So it stands at eight vampires and a human against four humans.” Eamon crossed his arms over his chest. “This should be fun. Sasha, call Trevor, and let him know we’re coming down.” He looked around the room. “No one touches the one in the hat but me and Marta.”
Carissa shyly approached Eamon. “Sir?”
He turned around to her. “Yes?”
“I’ll bet the blond bouncer, Egon, is going to want to take out the shooter. Mina was his.”
Eamon wondered what prevented him from killing the man outright. “Thank you, Carissa. I think we’ll leave the shooter to… what was his name?”
“Egon,” she said. “That’s really his name.”
“Egon. What is the other one’s name?”
“Augy. Augusto.”
“Thank you.”
Carissa bobbed in another curtsey. It was out of place for a girl who was dressed head to foot in black leather to be curtsying. He glanced down at her towering high-heeled shoes and stopped.
“Ladies, if you feel your shoes might interfere with this, now would be the time to take them off.”
Sasha and Carissa took off their shoes off and tossed them toward Lauryl’s desk. Eamon noticed Lauryl was already barefoot. He wondered if she had even worn shoes tonight. Finally, he looked back to Marta, who shook her head at him.
“I have worn heels for as long as I can remember and have done many things in them. I’m not shedding them in this place.”
“Suit yourself.”
Lauryl pushed past them both and mumbled. “The floors are cleaned every night.”
Marta snickered and Eamon caught Lauryl by the arm. “This is very serious. I don’t know what the vampires you met in London told you, but these humans are here to kill us.”
“I know. I’m the one who called you, remember?”
He let go of her arm. “Do you know how they are going to try and kill us?”
“No, I don’t.”
“By separating us from our heads. That is why they’re carrying swords or long knives.”
She blinked a couple of times. “I thought it was just for effect.”
“Yes, the effect of killing us. You can only kill a vampire by cutting off their head or bleeding them out.”
“Fuck.” She wrapped her hands around her neck and walked away. Her pace quickened as she hurried over to Anthony.
Beautiful yes, intelligent, no, he thought as he headed downstairs.
Trevor and the two vampire bouncers stood outside of the door where the hunters were trapped. Augy and Egon leaned against the wall, but straightened up when Eamon and Marta approached.
“All four of them are in there,” Trevor said. “They all wound up in that room for some reason. The only one not shitting bricks is the one in the hat.”
“Thank you,” Eamon said to Trevor. “Gentleman, I’m Eamon Rutherford and this is Marta Jimenez-de Castillo. No doubt you know us through Lauryl and Anthony.” He shook the two vampires’ hands and then turned back to Egon. Eamon peered into the eyes of the tall, muscular blond vampire. Something in this vampire’s marker struck Eamon. Something unpleasant. “Sind Sie wie alt?”
Eamon’s seamless switch to German triggered a smile on Egon’s lips. “Vierundsiebzig Jahre alt,” he replied.
Seventy-four. A newborn. “Waren Sie eine Nazi?” Eamon continued.
The smile on Egon’s face faded. “Selbstverständlich.”
“Lassen Sie Mich schätzen, Waffen SS?” Eamon asked.
“Ja, Sir. Aber die ist die Vergangenheit,” Egon said quietly.
“Interesting. I’m glad your Nazi inclinations are in the past.”
“Yes, sir. Now I only want to kill the human who killed my girl.” Egon’s cut jaw line clenched and his blue eyes became icy. Egon’s English only held the slightest trace of a German accent. It was only audible now because he switched from German to English so quickly.
Eamon turned back around and, one by one, looked at Marta, Sasha, Carissa, and finally Trevor. “Black the lights out and then take them.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Suicide by Vampire
The lights going out and the doors to the dance floor opening happened with sublime coordination.
The four hunters froze in terror.
The air temperature dropped subtly as the vampires overtook the room. The breeze created by their movement disappeared with the same suddenness as their motion. The smell of adrenaline, fear, and urine blended in the air. Only the vampires detected the first two. Time stopped as Eamon watched the others pursue the stunned humans.
Anthony cut through the darkness with the skill and ease of a vampire far beyond his years, sending the hunter he and Lauryl had marked to the floor. Lauryl leapt across the room and landed in between the legs of the man as Anthony consumed him. She ripped through the denim fabric of his jeans and buried her fangs in his femoral artery. The man let out a terrified scream that melted to a whimper when her hand groped his penis. Anthony grabbed her hand and knocked it away.
Eamon stood motionless as Trevor strolled up to the human closest to the door and swept his legs out from under him. Trevor yanked him back up by the collar of his trench coat and spit in his face. The hunter kicked and squealed like a pig. Trevor silenced him with a vicious head butt that dropped the man to the floor. The dazed hunter climbed back on his knees and swayed, unable to find his equilibrium. Trevor put his gorilla-sized hands on each of the hunter’s temples and wrenched the man’s head around full force so now he faced backwards. The hunter thudded to the ground and Trevor rained a torrent of kicks down on him.
Egon hung back as the gunman pulled the 9mm Glock from his back waistband and pointed it blindly in the dark. Egon walked up to the gunman without a sound. The human turned sharply and his arm collided with the blonde vampire. The gun fell from his hand. The sound of the weapon clattering across the floor was unnaturally loud.
“Sie werden dummen Menschen sterben,” Egon whispered.
“W-w-what?”
“You’re going to die, stupid human.”
He grabbed the man by the arms and lifted him a few inches off the floor. The gunman’s feet scraped and skidded across the floor as he kicked furiously. Egon laughed and pulled off the human’s arms. Blood exploded from the sockets. The human screamed in agony and Egon chucked the arms to the side. He pulled the human toward and buried his face in his neck.
Augy, Sasha, and Carissa batted their hunter around in a killing game. They pushed him from one to the other, each biting and feeding from him for several seconds before passing him to the next. Sasha drank deeply from his carotid and slapped the man on the butt before sending him over to Carissa. The petite vampire kissed him, fed from the opposite side of his neck, and shoved him over to Augy. He wasn’t as playful. He bit a chunk from the man’s wrist and exposed the
radial artery. Augy clamped his mouth over the blood fountain and took his share of the foolish human. Each time the hunter got pushed to the next vampire, blood would spray out as the man waved his arms, trying to catch his balance. The girls clapped and tried to catch the shower of blood like raindrops on their tongues.
The leader of the pseudo-hunters was the only human not under attack. Eamon rushed him with Marta a step behind. He stopped in front of the man, causing him to take a blind step backwards. Marta flanked around him and flew onto his back, knocking off his hat and glasses. She jerked his neck to the side and began to drain him. Eamon’s face twisted in anger and he raised his hand.
“Stop!”
Marta looked up from the pudgy neck of the hunter, fangs wet with blood. “Por que?”
“Because I want to talk to him.”
“Tu eres afortunado, humano,” she whispered with a malevolent smile before she slid down his back. “You’re lucky for now.”
The hunter tried desperately to slow his breathing and control his fear. The screams of his comrades as the other vampires descended on them tore at his composure, but somehow he didn’t show it. He was more stoic.
After a moment, Eamon put his hands behind his back. Here in front of him was the murdering human who’d taken one of his vampires. Rage rolled below Eamon’s tolerance level. Only his curiosity held him back. This commonplace human had destroyed part of him. It seemed improbable.
“Human, how dare you threaten me?” Eamon’s voice held centuries of threat in its baritone timbre as it resonated through room. The other vampires peeked up for a moment, transfixed by his voice, but returned to draining their victims when the hunter failed to respond.
“Answer him, you miserable waste of skin,” Marta snapped.
Eamon glanced over at her and back to the man. “You’ve committed the gravest of errors, human.”
The hunter recovered his voice. “You deserve to die.”
From across the room, Lauryl looked up from the femoral vein she had been feeding from and focused on Eamon and the man. She sprang to her feet and was on her way to Eamon’s side when he turned her back mentally. She hesitated, but went back to the dying hunter she and Anthony shared.
“I have lived and thrived for over a millennium. When you’re dust, in a rotting box, I will be here.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that you’re a monster and deserve to die. All of you do.”
Eamon scoffed. “I’m a higher life form. My kind has evolved leaps and bounds beyond yours.” Eamon pushed the fleshy man backwards. The hunter stumbled a few steps in the dark. Marta shoved him back in front of Eamon.
“I killed one of you. One of your vampires.” The human’s voice sounded more angry than frightened.
Marta reached for him, but Eamon shook his head. The waft of air from Marta’s hand passing close to his neck caused the hunter to swat blindly in the dark. She leaned next to his ear.
“You’re going to die, cerdo.” She faded back before his waving hands connected with her.
Eamon walked a small circle around the jumpy human. Each of his steps produced an ominous thud. Each time Eamon took a step, he could hear the human’s heart raced. Eamon followed his desperate thoughts. Irina had chosen his girlfriend to be her new companion, and the pathetic man couldn’t or wouldn’t accept it. He and his friends ambushed Irina and the girl, raping and killing them. Then he heard a name that rang familiar. Bernard Townsend. He heard the name again, and something about money and a trip to London. How did this human know Townsend?
“Is Townsend a monster as well?”
The human sucked in a startled breath at the mention of that name. “Yes,” he answered with false bravado.
“You lie poorly, human. How do you know him?” The scent of adrenaline wafted through the air again. Eamon reached back into the human’s mind, but found that the memory of Bernard Townsend was fading. There was no clue as to Townsend’s motivations. Now, the human was only thinking of his dead girlfriend and his failings as vampire hunter.
“I’m the first of many hunters who are coming for you,” he said, his voice shaking.
“You are no hunter, human. How you killed Irina is beyond me. And your death, as well as your comrades, will mean nothing.”
“I kept one more human from becoming a vampire. That means everything to me.”
Eamon stepped forward on the hunter’s glasses. Their sickening crunch as he ground them under his heel brought a fanged smile to his face. “It also means your death.”
Eamon’s hand shot out and seized the hunter’s fleshy neck. The human clawed at Eamon’s hand with no effect. Eamon shook the man a few times. Humans were so easy to kill. No matter how hard they tried, they still were no match for a vampire. Especially him. This one was no different from the hundreds of hunters who had tried and failed before him. Eamon tore away the side of the hunter’s neck with one well-practiced twist, shredding his carotid artery. Marta was on him again. Eamon licked the blood from his hand and took a step back from the spew of blood. The blood spray waned as Marta consumed the rest.
Marta raised her eyes from the dead human to Eamon. “Como venganza por Irina.”
He nodded. “Yes, revenge for Irina.” He closed his eyes for a moment and gave his little Russian countess a final thought as the smell of the dead hunter’s blood floated up. Good-bye, my love.
CHAPTER FORTY
I Love You, My Lovely, Little, Gothic Doll
Eamon stripped off his blood-saturated shirt and used the unstained corner he found to wipe his mouth. He disliked fighting for this very reason. The uncontained energy and ferocity yielded messy results. However, it was unavoidable in a vampire’s life. Not so much in modern times as in the past, thankfully.
The vampires had torn through the group like paper. Eamon wondered how the hunters had found one another. He suspected the Internet. Openly seeking people who had lost a loved one to vampires wasn’t a sane thing to do. Instead of soldiers or true hunters, they were a group of soft, social loners who only fought or hunted on a computer screen or a game board. How did they know that they were vampires? That disturbed him. Bernard Townsend figured into the discovery somehow.
Stupid humans. One lucky kill didn’t make them real hunters.
The lights flipped on and Eamon looked around at the bodies on the floor and the amount of spilled blood. Most of the blood had been consumed, except for the hunter Trevor killed. That man was lying in a heap like a forgotten life-sized doll. His neck hung at a peculiar, un-natural angle. He was more than likely a gelatinous sack after Trevor had kicked the remaining life out of him.
Eamon looked over at Anthony and Lauryl, who were surveying the carnage as well. Anthony wiped his chin and cleaned the corners of Lauryl’s mouth gently and kissed her before kicking the dead man at his feet face down. More and more the doctor surprised him. Sasha had been correct. He was the more dominant one. He would grow to be a powerful vampire if Lauryl let him. Eamon knew though that she would eventually submit to Anthony and do what he wanted.
Marta walked up behind him. Her hands traveled up to his shoulders and then back to his waist before encircling him. “Once again, something was easier than I thought.”
“This was like fighting children, Marta. These weren’t vampire hunters like we’ve experienced. This was a group of amateurs who lost their girlfriends to vampires. They did have an unusual supporter, though.”
“Who? This Townsend person you mentioned?”
“Yes. Bernard Townsend, an old rival of mine,” Eamon’s voice dropped some as he recalled his last encounter with Townsend in London in 1801. Eamon shook off the unpleasant memory. “Well, he’s not much of a rival. He’s several centuries younger and much less powerful.”
“Why on earth would he send humans like these after you? It’s comical, not threatening.”
“Townsend probably played up the fact that they had killed an old vampire or outright glamoured them. He must have maintained so
me control of the hunter we killed. His mind going blank when I discovered his connection to Townsend was too much of a coincidence.”
“But why?”
“I have no idea why he’s renewing his rivalry with me after all these years.”
“The governing board? Jonathan said that Europe was already at work on it.”
“Possibly.” Eamon thought about Townsend. He’d never been more than a poor excuse for a petty autocrat. He’d always envied Eamon’s age and power. Eamon was already over four hundred years old when Bernard was turned in London.
“Do you think he wants to usurp control of Europe and America?”
“I can’t say for certain, but that sounds like something he’d try.” He frowned at Marta. “This is precisely why I prefer to keep to myself.”
“Mi amor, power struggles are common, even among humans.”
“I don’t want power, Marta,” he said flatly.
“Perhaps, but your age is your power. And covetous vampires want that. They want to be the oldest and most fearsome.”
Eamon frowned. “Well, until I choose otherwise, I will continue on as such.”
“Undoubtedly. But I think the days of you keeping to yourself are over. Everyone knows you are the oldest vampire. It’s time to act as such.”
“Did I not just say that I don’t want power?”
“Eamon, until vampires form a stable governing unit, there will be power struggles. My prediction is that you’ll inevitably be drawn into these struggles unless you’re visibly present in all of this.”
Marta’s blue-grey eyes met Eamon’s, but not in a challenge. He took solace in the familiarity conveyed in her gaze. He was left with the unhappy realization that his days of isolation were over and his line would now need active protection and watching. His line would also need to be expanded. Tonight was not the time to begin all that needed to happen. He’d start with Bernard Townsend and move from there.
“I’ll begin inquiries about what Townsend is up to.”
Carissa, Sasha, and Augusto were taking the wallets from the bodies. Eamon bent down and pulled the wallet from the hunter’s pocket. He flipped open the worn brown leather wallet and looked at his driver’s license. Daniel Sanchez. He continued to search and found a picture of Daniel, and who Eamon assumed was his girlfriend, in Times Square. He turned it over and read the back.
Life in Moonlight: The Primigenio Tales: Book 1 Page 29